WIP Wednesday

January 25, 2012 | WIP Wednesday | No Comments

Happy 2012!

January 10, 2012 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Well hello again!  It has been a while and I apologize for the extended break but what I love most about blogging is that you can come back at anytime! Well I decided to start the new year off….well…new! So to do that I feel inclined to start with taking this year in a new direction!  I have been busy crafting in all kinds of different forms and after a long self-imposed hiatus, have come back to also quilting again. To end 2011 off right I decided to reorganize and clean out/purge the Quilt Nook so as to get a better idea of what I was still into and what I could donate or get rid of.  That was quite cathartic and it has been lovely to get back into the nook again!  In doing this I discovered I have had a year or so of lots of starts but not so many finishes….I think to start 2012 off new I need to finish what is left behind.  I have compiled a list of this things to follow so as to give myself a place to see my progress.  As you can imagine there are soooo many new things I would like to do as well, but find making project goals while there are still so many WIP’s very counterproductive.  SO here are some of the things I would like to get finished so as to free up my goal list, besides, who doesn’t love the feeling of finishing!

Quilting:

1. Hexie quilt
2. Farmer’s Wife quilt
3. Dear Jane blocks
4. Label Quilts that have none
5. quilt and bind tops that are waiting (3)
6. Complete BOM (3) that I have had on the list

Knitting/Spinning

1. Sugared Violets (85%)
2. Kate’s Shawl (20%)
3. Rocky Coast Cardi (10%)
4. clear the current bobbins (3 different spins)

(it seems I have had a bad case of cast-on-itis lately! OOPS!)

Stitchery/cross stitch

1. finish  Lizzie Kate winter alphabet (95%)
2. finish BBD Summer House (40%)
3. continue BBD Loose Feathers  2009 sampler (just started)
4. finish Lynette Anderson button club quilts (2)

I also would like to catch up my photos, ravelry data and flickr photos.  I have a Hoop up Swap to write about and pics to upload for stash and finished projects as well.  Hmmm seems I have my work cut out for me~I suppose I should get to work then and tackle my large list! I feel if I can  move some of these to the finished pile, I will be much more inclined to move forward with a clean slate!

Hope you all had a wonderful New Years celebration and I hope to see you here again!

Happy quilting/knitting/spinning and stitching! (LOL!)

Cara

What’s new!

May 16, 2011 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Hello again!  I have been on a bit of a self imposed hiatus from all things bloggy for a bit.  I am back though and boy do I have tons to catch you up on!  First, I have picked up knitting again in my hiatus. I joined the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild (awesome group!).  I have also been doing a lot of Stitcheries and hexies-including some awesome pieces from the Hoop Up Stitch and Send swap.  I also have picked up a new (and addicting) hobby-spinning.  Yep, spinning my own yarn- SO awesome.  For now though,  I just wanted to check back in and dust off my blog.  I will be back to post separately about my quilting, knitting, stitching and spinning endeavors.  I will however share  a few pics to tide you over!

Until then…Happy crafting!

Cara

….and the winners are….

November 17, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments [2]

Wow!  Well I must start by telling you all how much I have enjoyed reading your wonderful comments on the 100 Blocks post!  Thanks so much to all of you for entering! I know you are all awaiting the results of the giveaway, so I won’t beat around the bush, the following numbers were drawn by the Random number generator and the winners of the giveaway are as follows:

#31 Melissa Corry who said: “I am all about traditional piecing. Your block is adorable. I have never tried a yo-yo but it is on my list of things to do”

If you would email me your address, I will send it off to Quiltmaker and you will receive the 100 Blocks issue!

#134 Wendy MT  who said: “What fun is Pocketful of Posies! Congratulations on the magazine ”

If you would email me your address, I will send you a copy of the 100 Blocks issue and a copy of the Pocketfull of Posies Pattern and a few other goodies.

Congratulations to my winners and I hope you enjoy the prizes! To those of you who are still interested in a copy of the magazine, it did hit newsstands today so hurry and get your copy while you can! You won’t be disappointed!

I will be back tomorrow with a small recap of Houston market this fall!

Until then….congrats to the winners!

Cara

100 Blocks Volume 2

November 12, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments [171]

Hello again and good Friday to you all! Well, today’s the day! I am just popping in to tell you a little bit more about the my Rosie’s Posies block that is in the second volume of 100 blocks by Quiltmaker magazine!  This awesome second volume is to be hitting your Local Quilt Shop and newsstands galore on the 16th of this month- but a few of us and Quilty Pleasures  are participating in the blog tour to give you some sneak peaks ogf our blocks! In case this is the first time you have heard of this special edition, last year Quiltmaker magazine published Volume 1 of 100 Designer Blocks- well it was a huge hit and actually sold completely out!  So imagine my surprise when I was asked to contribute a block to the Volume 2 of this issue!  I was thrilled to say the least! So since this was during my first time exhibiting at Spring market, I decided to do a variation block from one of my most popular quilts, Pocketful of Posies.  This is the block I came up with…

Rosie’s Posie’s is #101 in the applique section of the issue.  For this block, I used my favorite moda dots background fabric and all of the yo-yo flowers are from French General’s Rouennierre’s line- I love the beautiful reds, creams and browns in this line and it inspired the “Rosie” in the posie!  In this version of the block I also changed the Ric-Rac to a white and added some stem stitch embroidery to give a little more detail to the posie.  Here is the quilt that inspired the block!

This is one of my favorite quilts to date! I love hand work and so the yo-yo’s were perfect to keep me busy and posies are one of my favorite things so they just went hand in hand.  The original quilt is called “Pocketful of Posies”.  This pattern is available on the website.

So now to the good stuff! To celebrate the blog tour and the magazine, Quiltmaker is giving me one copy of this collector’s edition to giveaway, and I am also giving away one of my personal copies along with a copy of Pocketful of Posies pattern.  So here’s the drill, you have several ways in which to enter:

 Simply leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite quilt technique is!

Become a follower (see the google follower box on the left hand column) of my blog and let me know

Blog about the giveaway and let me know.

Retweet my blog tweet and let me know

Follow me on twitter and let me know (you can find me on twitter by clicking the twitter icon in the right hand colum)

Oh and just because I will also throw in some yummy fabric goodness to the pot……so go on and get your comments in and while you are at it hop on over to Quilty Pleasures, the Quiltmaker Magazine’s blog and see who else is on the tour today for more chances to win a copy and or some other goodies- you just never know!  The giveaway will close on Monday night at midnight and I will post the winners shortly after that!

I hope you enjoy the tour!

Until then….Happy Blog-hopping!

Cara

Quiltmaker and market

November 8, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments [4]

Well, here I am back in the swing of things and dusting off my blog after a bit of a hiatus!  Wanted to pop in and let you know about a wonderful blog tour that is happening starting today and is hosted by Quiltmaker magazine.  It is to launch Volume 2 of their awesome 100 Blocks issue to be on Newsstands November 16th. Last years Volume 1 sold out very quickly and I have a feeling that this volume will too!  

 All week long you can visit some of the wonderful blogs of some of the featured designers in this issue!! Of course no tour is complete without lots of giveaways- and you can be sure that here will be no different!  Yes you read that right, I said here- and that means I can tell you about my wonderful news!  I have a block being featured in this issue too!  It is so exciting to see it in print! 

So, go check out http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/ to see all the details about 100 Blocks Volume 2, and pop back in on Friday to see my post about the block and to enter the giveaway!

I will leave you now, with a sneak peak of the block I submitted!

Until Friday! Happy Quilting!

Cara 

…and the winner is….

July 20, 2010 | English Paper Piecing, Giveaways, Uncategorized | Comments [5]

Wow!  That is all I can say!  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all your comments, visiting your wonderful blogs or Flickr accounts and even learning about some fabric lines I did not know about!  Thank you all so much for participating!  So I will get right down to it then!  The winners of the giveaways (according to the random generator) are as follow:

The  Flower Sugar 2 fat quarters and Quilt Nook Gal Designs Pattern goes to:  #39 Katie B from Katie’s Corner

The French Generals new line Maison De Garance fat 1/8ths go to: #148 Baukje from Busy Bee Free

and

The Robert Kaufman mini charm bundle goes to: #105 Michelle who did not leave a link but wanted to start hexies-this will be perfect!

Well, Congrats ladies and if you would just email me your addresses I will get those goodies out to you! ( mcara2{at}yahoo.com) in case you need it! Thanks again for all who participated and I look forward to hopefully seeing more of your blogs and comments in the future!

On other notes, I seem to have gotten my hexie mojo back again.  I think it may be the overly hot and humid weather we are having, which makes The Nook way to hot to use the iron and Nina much during the day.   Or maybe it’s wanting to be at the pool every day but whatever it is I seem to be making progress and loving them even more!  First up are the hexies I showed you in the last post using Cosmo Crickets Early Bird line.  Here is the finished piece waiting to be hand quilted and made into….well, I  will show you soon!

Next are my Fig Tree hexies that I started at Fall Market 2008 while sitting in the line a sample spree.  I have to date basted a ton of them but have also completed 9 whole flowers!  (I know not much but there was a year long hiatus)

  So I decided I need some more hexies and also some of the background done. This is the status of that project:

The completed flowers are shown, then the tall stack is the background hexies I basted the other night while catching up on my SYTYCD episodes.  Then the pile in front is the background hexes I basted today and lastly the wild pile to the right are more Fig hexes that are pinned and ready to be basted (there are 100 of those!). 

So the giveaway is closed, thanks again for all who participated and as soon as I have your contact info I will post the goodies off.  Right now though, my pile of Fig hexies are calling my name so I will be back later in the week with some more intros.
Goodnight all!

Cara

Introducing….and a Giveaway!

July 12, 2010 | English Paper Piecing, Giveaways, Lecien, MODA, Quilt Market, Quilt Nook Gal Designs | Comments [195]

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday start to your July! We had a great week of seeing family and friends and of course the usual Independence Day festivities!  I am back now and ready to introduce to you a couple of my new designs. These 2 pattens were just a couple of the pattern line I introduced at Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis this past May.  I thought it appropriate to start with my little Welcome quilt as a beginning of the intros to the 6 patterns available.  I had a lot of fun designing this quilt to hang in our foyer to welcome my friends and family to our home! Here it is “Sugary Welcome”.

This little wall hanging is made up from a few fat quarters of Flower Sugar 2 by Lecien Co. and involves raw edged applique and a little foundation piecing.  I am not usually a fan of foundation piecing but when I was taught to use freezer paper as my foundation paper while working on my Dear Jane quilt, I totally changed my mind!  Stay tuned as in the next couple of weeks I will be posting a tutorial on how to use this method for the pineapple block.  I am also including this in the giveaway , which I will tell you more about at the end of this post!

The next quilt that I will introduce you to is “Irish Folk Dance”.  This quilt was a dream to make using Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks Voile line.  Such soft fabric and has a great feel after it is washed too!  I used strip piecing for the chain block and added some blanket stitch applique with the petals.  Here are a couple of pics of this quilt:

I will introduce the other 4 quilts later but if you are interested in them please check them out here.

I have also been working on some new designs and some old projects.  With the heat setting in and us spending more time at the pool, I pulled out my hexies to work on.  Of course I decided I needed a new hexie project and so I grabbed some paper pieces and my Cosmo Cricket Early Bird fabric and away I went!

I am hoping to finish it up and will post pics when it is done- just a little project for some instant gratification!

I also have promised a post market/happy summertime giveaway…..are you ready?

These, are the goodies I am giving away

The first is a copy of Sugary Welcome by Quilt Nook Gal Designs and accompanying it will be the lovely stack of Flower Sugar 2 fat quarters!   The second is a stack of French General’s line Maison De Garance in fat eighths.  And third someone will get that cute little bundle of Mini Charms from Robert Kaufman- would be perfect for hexagons or a charm quilt! I believe it includes some of the new lines they are releasing including a few of Tufted Tweets!

So now you know what the giveaway’s are, now how to be entered!  There are 5 ways in which you can get an entry:

Simply leave me a comment and tell me what new lines of fabric you are looking forward to coming out.

Become a follower (see the google follower box on the left hand column) of my blog and let me know

Blog about the giveaway and let me know.

Retweet my blog tweet and let me know

Follow me on twitter and let me know (you can find me on twitter by clicking the twitter icon in the right hand colum)

So there you have it! I am excited to see who gets the goodies!  I will leave the giveaway open until Monday July 19th at which time I will tally up the entries and announce the winners! Good luck and thanks for visiting me! 

I hope you enjoyed the introductions and I will be back with more and some other things I am working on!

Until next time,

Cara

Lancaster and some other goodies

June 26, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments [1]

A couple of weeks ago my parents came to visit.  Usually when they come my husband and I get to take a mini vacation which is always welcome! This time we decided to go to a beautiful B&B in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania- it was spectacular! Very rural but quite beautiful! The English gardens in the back yard were just amazing- I wished I had brought a couple of quilts to photograph there.

 As part of our mini vacation we went driving to see the Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse PA. They have the cutest boutiques, a yarn shop and the best homemade jams and such!  O f course my favorite stop there is to go to one of the best quilt shops in Lancaster! The Old Country Store  is right across the road from this unique shopping village and let me tell you, if you are ever in the area you have got to check them out! 

They have one whole wall dedicated to MODA.   They have kits, books, and precuts. They have an entire section just of Kona solids and of course reproduction fabrics. 

T L-R: Store front,Kona solids wall. B L-R: MODA wall, Cutting table

You would be hard pressed if you could not find something you liked there.  As it was there was a ton of fabrics I wanted but just could not justify getting. So, I decided to get some basics for applique and sashing and since I have these charm packs of Funky Monkey for ever, I got some yardage of Goodnight Monkey in Flannel to do a quilt for my son. 

In the front of the store they sell gifts and other handmade items and they also sell handmade quilts from right there in Lancaster county!  The best part though is the quilt museum they have above the shop.  It was definitely the highlight for me!

Since it is summer, I tend to go back to work on embroidery/stitchery and applique  projects and am incorporating some of this into my latest designs! I was reading on twitter about Sublime Stitching’s cute little floss cases and just had to have one! Here is the loot from there: my little polkas dot case (LOVE dotties!) and some thread heaven (recently recommended to help make my applique and embroidery smoother).

So it has been a good couple of weeks for stash building and goodies!  I am going to head off now but in my next post I will start introducing my latest patterns that debuted at market!  Oh and just a heads up- I will be having a giveaway on that next post too and just so you can get a head start- see the google followers box up there on the left hand column? Well, anyone who is already a follower prior to the giveaway will get 2 extra entries for the giveaway so check it out!  I will be back in a few days to tell you all about it!

Until Next time!
Cara

The last of Market Wrap-up and A Swap!

June 19, 2010 | Quilt Market, Uncategorized | Comments [1]

So last post I talked about setting up our first booth at International Spring Market in May, well now onto the other fun stuff that is market! The night before it opens, there is the fabulous event that is sample spree.  It is literally a mad dash to get the latest and greatest coming out.  People line up for hours prior and we were no exception! I waited as patiently as possible with some old and new friends.  One friend that was very new to us was  Annik – this was her first market so we were filling her in on our own experiences. Please pop over to Annik’s blog Mini Mushrooms and say hello- she makes the most fabulous  bags. It was great to meet you Annik!  Of course I also sat with my old Quilt Buddy Stefanie  and Jennifer.  It was so exciting to talk about what we wanted and where we were going once it was time.  I took this pic from our vantage point of one of the 3 lines….

….crazy right?  Once inside, I went for the Moda and Lecien Co. tables first and got most of what I was looking for!

Then after Sample Spree, we stopped in at the Fabric 2.0 party at the Hyatt Martini bar…pretty cool to meet some fellow bloggers IRL! Specifically I finally met John aka Quilt Dad and I also met Carla from The Scientific Seamtress and saw Angela again (she was there with her uber nice mom)-great to see you again Angela!  So great to meet so many of the faces behind some of my fave blogs!

The next day opened market. That in itself is a surreal experience! Having attended before I figured it would be old hat, but it is definitely different while showing your own work.  In the next week or so I will be introducing the new quilts that we showed in our booth and tell you a little bit about them, so please come back for that!  I lucked out and had fabulous people in the booths surrounding me.  To start with the beautiful ladies from Favorite Things- they were there all the way from Vancouver! Their booth was so cute.  Across from them I met the wonderful Darlene from Crow River Mercantile.  It was her first time as an exhibitor too so we had lots to share- she also had some pretty awesome wool BOM’s.  Next to Darlene and across from me was Rebecca Ruth-her and her husband were so fun.  And on the other side of me I met Tiffany and Roni from Tiny Seamstress Designs.  Tiffany’s bags are just to die for!  Unfortunatley I only had pics of Tiffany and Roni as I really did not get to take many pictures at market- just too busy! 

Aren’t they awesome?! We all had a lot of fun helping each other out, having a little drama {security?!} and meeting some fabulous people along the way.  I was sad to say goodbye to these fun ladies!  One of the coolest meeting to happen was when Mark Lipinski came down our row ( thanks to Rebecca)! I was actually on a small break and Stefanie asked him to wait until I got back….I guess he admired my Pocketful of Posie’s quilt… so once I came back and got to meet him we had our picture taken in front of said quilt.  I tell you, Mark is just hilarious in person! What a sweet guy he is too- he had us all in stitches and it was quite the excitement for us down in row 1!  If by chance you read this Mark, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and thanks for the picture!

Photo courtesy of Annik Miller/Lemonade Bags

Along the way I also met up with some other new bloggers and some I have met before! Unfortunately I did not carry around my camera {shame on me} but it still was great to meet Anne Suttton, Lynette Anderson, Brenda Riddle, Monica/Happy Zombie, Pam Kitty Morning, V and Company and Kate Spain.  I am so happy to have met or seen all of you and hope to see you again at Fall Market!In the end Market was an awesome experience and I had so much fun, learned a ton and met some great people- old and new!   One last picture from Minneapolis is of the goodies I brought away with me from Market:

I hope to have some new designs using some of these soon so be on the look out for it! Oh and next week I will be having a giveaway that will include some of those goodies AND do you see the 2 rulers in the bottom of the pic?  They are these very cool new tools that I will be blogging about in one of the next posts!  They are so gonna make life easier! Susan Brown from Simplicity Studios had a booth in row 1 with the rest of us too, and did an awesome demo using these that had me sold! 

As parting news, I also got accepted to be be in my second Doll Quilt swap!  This one proves to be just as cool as the last as people are already posting their ideas and some have already started on their quilts!  I am excited about this one as I too already have some good ideas for my partner!  If you would like to see what this is all about please click on the button below for some awesome inspiration! Definatley some really talented people in this one!!

 So that ends my market posts -in the next few posts I will be introducing the new patterns for Quilt Nook Gal Designs, talking about my trip to Lancaster’s Old Country Shop and of course talking about the awesome rulers that I got at market- oh and don’t forget, the post market giveaway will be announced in one of those posts!

Until Next time!

Cara