Design Floor Friday - Frenzied!!!

What's on the Design Floor this week, Joyful???

My entry for the Dye Frenzy Challenge which includes THIS fun fabric:

I've posted partial pictures, so as NOT to reveal too much before the 

August 15th due date.

But, I didn't want to wait too long to get started.  So I picked a jumping off point...

And, once I decided what I wanted to do, I got right to work:

I'm fairly proud of myself.  I got the top made on July 24th!!

Not bad, huh??

That leaves THREE WEEKS to do the quilting and embellishments.

I'm planning to use piping, couching, other artsy techniques...

Just to do something different (for me!)

Until next time...

Experiment with FUN!!!

Wonderful Wednesday - Jean's Art O' Rama

Disclaimer:  The following DID NOT happen on Wednesday, but it WAS wonderful, so I wanted to share it with you in a Wonderful Wednesday post.  Enjoy!!


On MONDAY, I enjoyed a "Play Date" with my friend Jean.  She has a "Wet Studio" AND a "Dry Studio" that she is willing to share with members of our group.

Dry = Quilting

 Wet = Dyeing and painting

We  spent most of our time Wet Studio working on a "hair brained scheme" that I thought up over the weekend.  An idea that I have no space or materials to bring to fruition.  Enter, Jean.


Would you like to take a peek???


OK, but remember...  It's a SECRET!!!


We started out in Jean's Dry Studio to look at some of her recent Mono Prints.  She had them up on the design wall.  (Another thing that I don't have.)  I couldn't believe it!!  She offered up some of her "rejects" for the cause.  Thanks, Jean.

Would YOU reject THESE???

I wouldn't!!

Anyway, once we had seen all of the fabulous projects on her design wall, we went into the Wet Studio to set up supplies for our art-y session.

Stamps...

... Inks and paints...

And had a look at the pieces that I brought along. THESE are some of my Mono Prints and Hand Dyed pieces from NT's recent Dye Frenzy at our friend Dee Dee's house:

Ultimately, I selected a combination of pieces, some paint colors and "weapons of destruction":

Then, we worked together to create:

I did the majority of the stamping and felt like I was channeling Deborah Boschert, from the blog Deborah's Journal, during part of the process.  She incorporates circles in much of her work.  Although, I'm not planning on doing any hand stitching on these pieces.  That's another of Deborah's trademark techniques!

Jean encouraged me to add more color to some of the pieces (when I thought they were done) and she also did all of the fiddly detail work with a TINY paintbrush.

We were a REALLY good team!!

How can I help you clean up, Jean???  OK... I can wash stamps while you clean up the paint and inks.

Thank you, Jean, for sharing your space, time, and materials.  What a FUN morning!!!

Until next time...
Share your resources!!!
(Your friends will appreciate it.)

Mail Call Monday - Be Inspired!!

I WON!! I WON!! (But, YOU already KNOW that (because that was a few weeks ago.)  I blogged about it in THIS post.

Well...

You know how it goes.  Sometimes life gets in the way of our quilt-related endeavors and work often gets in the way of our personal pursuits.

Sometimes...

The car eats our bills or the dog eats our homework.  Don't laugh!  It can happen!!

Anyway...

Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts mailed MY PRIZE and (just when I thought that it might have been eaten by a mail sorting machine) LOOK what arrived last week:

It's my package from Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts!!!

Would you care to see inside???

Here's a sneak peek:

Oh. OK!  I'll pull the contents out of the envelope so that you can see better:

Hey!  What's THIS??

Amanda Jean included a personal note (Thanks, AJ!):

Multiple photos all over the cover of the book are a pretty good representation of what you will find on the pages between front cover and back:

Cool!!  After taking a few photos for you, I sat down and opened the book.

That was around 11:30 AM...

And didn't put it down until I got to Amanda Jean's Date Stamp quilt at 1:00 PM:

I wanted to save her quilt's story until I'd had some lunch.

Once that was done, I sat back down in my "reading chair"...

Got cozy...

And didn't put the book down until I had finished the last page at 3:30 PM!!!

I showed DS1 a few of the quilts.  His favorite was made by Cheryl Arkison and it immediately sparked a creative thought in his brain!  (Be sure to see the last bit of my note below.)

Here is a copy of the note that I sent, upon completion of the book:

Amanda Jean,

My copy of You Inspire Me to Quilt arrived this morning. I have to tell you... it was all I could do to put it down to have lunch!!

I made myself complete some work before opening the book.  Good thing!  It turned out to be 1:00 before I stopped half-way!  After lunch, I decided to write out the bills before I picked it up again.  When I finished the book, it was 3:30!!

While the majority of the quilts are NOT for me, but I'm pretty sure you can tell how much I enjoyed the stories.  Oh! DS1 already got inspiration from the book for a new art piece!

Thank you, again, for a wonderful gift.

The Joyful Quilter

Until next time...
Tell YOUR story with quilts!!!

ScrapHappy Saturday - RSC15 - Week 30

Welcome to Week 30 of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  I was feeling better this week so I was able to do a bit more sewing.  It was a busy week made more pleasant with the advent of sewing time...

SUNDAY was reserved for giving my DH a haircut and doing a couple of loads of laundry.  While the machines were busy I put together SIX Crumb Blocks which included some RED scraps:

MONDAY's sewing didn't include any RED scraps, but I completed another SIX Crumb Blocks:

On TUESDAY, I got down to business with some RED scrap sewing BEFORE:

AND after a trip to the doctor with DS2.  No worries!  It was just a routine blood draw.

WEDNESDAY, after breakfast, I completed ONE Maverick Star Block in RED:

Along with THREE Tiny Nines, also in RED:

On THURSDAY, the quilters were HERE.  It was my turn to host our weekly meeting so I didn't get anything done in the morning (what with last minute preparations, baking, and putting on the coffee!) However, I spent some time in the studio after lunch with "The Quilt Ladies."  I trimmed up SIX "Rainbow of Crumbs" blocks:

As you may recall, FRIDAY is my day for Knit Group.  No sewing in the morning, but after lunch with "The Girls", I was able to get in a bit of studio time.  I seem to be stuck in a Crumb-y rut... because I finished another FIVE "Rainbow of Crumbs" blocks!  :P  These are SEW much FUN:

On SATURDAY morning, I worked on this post and joined Angela's LINK PARTY.  This week, you will find me at link number 12.  Oops!  Make that lucky link number 13.  Apparently, QuiltDivaJulie beat me to the punch (or I looked at the number WITHOUT my reading glasses!!)  Hurry over to see what RED goodness all of the other Rainbow Scrap Quilters have been up to... you won't be sorry!

Until next time...
Get Scrappy!!!

Design Floor Friday - Gifted!

Last month, I got lucky!  I won one of the Grand Prize Drawings for the Irish Chain Quilts Blog Hop at the Happy Quilting Blog.  I wrote about my winnings HERE and shared photos of the loot in THIS POST.

Well, since I was feeling fairly good this week (after being sick for 2 weeks), I decided that it was time to put my plan into action.  (Said plan was hatched a week or two ago, but I simply didn't have the energy to act on it at that time.)

Anyway...

I laid out the fabric gifted by the lovely Melissa:

Arranged it in such a way that there was a good balance of color:

Transferred the squares up to the open area just outside the studio door and got to work:

The rows were sewn and returned to the Design Floor:

Then, back through the machine they went... to be joined together to form the top:

See Joyful sew:

Sorry!!!  Joyful got hungry.  The pressing will have to wait and so will YOU!!  :o))

I'll leave you with a preview of the Twister Quilt that will result from my hours of sewing (and pressing), using this pattern and my friend's large ruler.  (Thanks, again, Margaret!):

Until next time...
Stitch Happy!!!

Wonderful Wednesday - Withholding Liberty

You probably don't remember, but the last Sunday in June was spent quilting with my friend, Needleb.  I'm sure you know that we always have a good time.  What you may not know is that on that day she came bearing gifts:

Needleb brought a stack of scraps and said "Take what you want."


WHAT?!?!  You've GOT to be kidding!!!  (Nope.  She wasn't kidding.)

So...

I took a look through the stack of gloriously soft prints and chose bits of any duplicates or multiples that she had.  I laid them out so that I wouldn't accidentally take an extra piece and then thanks her profusely for sharing these treasures with me.

(See the 3 rows in the middle of the photo.)

She came over to look at what I had selected and proclaimed that I hadn't taken enough... so she added MORE to the pieces that I had taken!

(See the top and bottom rows in the photo.)

But, WAIT!!  Why would she do that?!?!

My friend, Needleb, saw a discussion (on Ravelry) that I was involved in about Liberty of London fabric (and how I was drooling over it and chomping at the bit to have some of my own.) She happened to have been gifted a bag of scraps that included some Liberty fabrics. Not only did she bring some over for me to see the very next time she came to sew, she (generously!) SHARED the fabric with me. Now that’s a REALLY GOOD FRIEND!!!

Love ya, “B” and thank you, again!

So, Austerity Quilters, that’s how I came to have adopted MORE strays… er… fabric scraps!!! :P

Friends are good, good friends are better, and quilting friends are the BEST!!!

ScrapHappy Saturday - RSC15 - Week 29

Welcome to Week 29 of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!!  It's hard to believe that we are already two weeks into the second half of 2015.  Speaking of seconds...

Early SUNDAY morning, after reading more of the RSC participant posts alluding to a 2nd Sampler Block...

... it finally dawned on me that I had missed an important post.

WAIT!!  WHAT??

How did you manage that, Joyful?!?!?

Apparently, Angela posted her tutorial on Monday (to give those of us working on her Sampler time to work on the connector blocks and row assembly), which would explain it since I didn't spend that much time on the computer since was sick all last week.  :o((

Click on the LINK below:

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler - July Block 2 - Lantern Light

Later in the morning, I took DS2 to a band mate's house for delivery to camp and when I returned home I noticed that one of my "specimen lilies" had bloomed (AND not been eaten by the local deer OR rabbit!!!)  Lucky for me, it fits within the parameters for July's Color of the Month, too:

In a...

nice, soft...

shade of...

RED-orange!!!

I took things fairly easy today, but (between naps) I decided that it was about time to complete something that I started early LAST week... so I finished FOUR of the Tiny Nines that have been begging for my attention:

MONDAY was an odd day.  DS2 is off at a Jazz Workshop for the week.  I'm hoping to make the trip down on Friday to see the End-of-Camp performance.  We'll see how I'm feeling by then...

In the meantime, I entertained myself in the sewing room by trimming up and adding on to the stack of Crumb Blocks that I worked on at my monthly Quilt Bee meeting/Sew Day this past Saturday:

TUESDAY morning, I remembered that I'm REALLY supposed to be concentrating on RSC blocks in the Color of the Month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge so... (after a trip to the doctor) I passed over my "Rainbow of Crumbs" blocks in favor of making TWO String Blocks in RED:

WEDNESDAY was another FREE day for me so I pulled out my scraps and sewed FOUR "Rainbow of Crumbs" Blocks to add to the ever-growing pile:

On THURSDAY, I attended my weekly Quilt Group meeting.  When I got home, I only had time to write up the blog post and head to work.  :o((

FRIDAY wqs Knit Group.  I went for a little while before heading off to Wilmington, North Carolina and the campus of UNC-W for the annual End-of-Camp Jazz Concert.  This was DS2's 4th summer of attendance and he hopes to sneak in a 5th year before heading off to college next year.  To say that he enjoys it is an understatement!!!

On SATURDAY morning, I finished up this post and joined the LINK PARTY over at Sew Scrappy. Click over to see all of the wonderful RED projects that were made this week.  While you're there, look for me at link number 14.

 BTW... I am starting to feel better, since the medicine kicked in.  Thanks for all the well wishes last week!  It's hard to believe just how hard a sinus infection can kick you on you rear!

Until next time...
Get Scrappy!!!