2014 SAFF Haul

Friends and I recently spent a fun-filled weekend just outside Asheville, North Carolina at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival (SAFF.)  This year's dates were October 24 - 26 at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center in Fletcher, North Carolina.  Next year...

It may turn into Snow-vember!!!  Why???

The dates for next year's event have been pushed a week later.  Thus, the chance of snow is greatly increased.  GREAT!!!  A chance to wear more of our hand knit wonders.  :o))

And this year's SAFF haul:

Spinning fiber for Phoenixfire from LunaBudKnits.

Yak and merino spinning fiber for me!  (A friend offered to spin it into yarn.  Thanks, Tracy!)

The rest of the haul.  A nice combination of purchases, door prizes, and freebies.

I made a few purchases each day.  That extended the shopping pleasure and kept me from going (too far) over budget.  :P

I missed out on the "Sock Scarf" again this year.  One of the vendors makes ONE per year.  It was still there when we left for the hotel on Saturday afternoon.  When I looked for it on Sunday morning, it was GONE!!!  I was sad, but the shop keeper said that the person who bought it wrapped it around her neck and stated, "It MUST go home with me!"  When I wrapped it around my neck I thought, "I'll get this, if it's still here tomorrow."  Sometimes... when you snooze, you lose.

I purchased from some "old standards" (Miss Babs) and some "new-to-me" (Copper Corgi) vendors.  I bought for specific projects (Viajante) and I bought just because I just HAD to have that color (The Verdant Gryphon)!  I replaced my lost umbrella with a sheepy one and I got a mini skein-winder "just because."  All told, I came home with $100 of the dollars that I went with.

The weekend was a complete success!!!  (And, did I mention, TONS of FUN!!!)

Custom CK Bags - The "First Sewing"

Threebagsfulled placed a T-shirt order in the Spring.   We had discussed the possibility of offering custom tote bags.  The prototypes were made, but I wasn't quite ready to begin (what could potentially be a BIG project.)

When she placed another order in the Fall, I decided not to waste a minute!  I posted my bags in her group on Ravelry.  I offered a limited color selection made up of shirts that I had on hand.  (Those SOLD OUT in the first 12 hours!)

I also suggested that after the initial supply had been depleted, people were welcome to select a color from those offered with the T-shirt order.  These orders would have to wait for the "Second Sewing."  (I had to wait for the shirt orders to be filled before beginning on those.)

First step:  Prepare the shirts

Second step:  Make the handles (Posted as a teaser on CK group.)

(Cut to the chase!)  Completed bags!

Interior shot:  Red bag with blue denim.

Interior shot:  Red bag with black denim.

Interior shot:  Pink and black bag.

Interior shot:  Orchid bag #1.

First completed bag ready for SAFF delivery.

Second bag waiting for post office run for shipping quote.

This has been quite an adventure.  Tomorrow, I'm hoping to have time to do the initial post office run and get the "First Sewing" bags off to their new owners.  I've already begun working on the bags for the "Second Sewing."  Most of the bags have the first few steps taken care of...  Almost time to begin stitching them together!  :o))

Someone was "late to the party", but I had ordered a few extra shirts.  The CKer who placed that order, along with the one who placed an order at SAFF, are in line for the "Third Sewing".

Take heart!  I have fabrics chosen for those orders, as well.  Only a couple more bags to finish before yours will be prepped and sewn.

Thank you to all of the wonderful Criminal Knitters who ordered Custom CK Bags from me.  It has been my pleasure to create your one-of-a-kind tote bags.  For those CKers who "missed the boat" this time around...

Spring is just around the corner!  You will get your chance to order your own bag when TBF posts next year's shirt order.  Until then...

Happy Crafting!!!

Fall 2014 (Ravelry) UFO Club - The List

It's that time again.  The Fall 2014 (Ravelry) UFO Club has closed its sign-up period and all lists are in. Well, except mine.  Sorry!!!  I blame work, followed by DS2's football game on Friday, and 2 family birthdays to celebrate yesterday, along with a trip to the hospital for DS2.  This is the first chance I've gotten to sit down and blog.  Quickly, as I have to leave soon to take DS1 back to dorm.  He was home for Fall Break this weekend.  :o))

I have a few changes to make on my UFO List for this session of the UFO Club, but you can find the bulk of the list HERE.  I added fresh photos for the Summer 2014 session of the UFO Club.  Only one of the quilts shown were completed.  Just ignore Inspired by... The Series.  That will be replaced by The Tiffany Mystery, a quilt that was begun more than 8 years ago and never got past the cut pieces and sew half-square triangles part of the process.

Can you help me find the directions for the mystery???  I'm quite sure that I don't have a CLUE where they are!!!  Here's hoping that they are in the basket with the fabric.  (Whew!  At least SOME of them are there.  Didn't check to see if they were ALL there, but my guess is that if some are there, they are all there.)

It's a LONG list, but by NO MEANS is it a COMPLETE list of my UFOs!  Keep coming back to see what I finish next.  It should be one or more of the following "new" quilts that have been added to the list.

Three "T" Quilts:

Jacob's T-shirt Quilt

The small Frankenstein'd blocks still need to be stabilized.

Kennedy's T-shirt Quilt

The sports jerseys still need to be dealt with.

The Tiny (Christmas) Tree

Not sure about the bows in the corner...

Until next time...
Happy Quilting!!!

Summer 2014 (Ravelry) UFO Club - The Results

The Summer 2014 UFO Club is now CLOSED. Any interested quilters with 5 (or more) UFOs were required to sign up by Midnight (EDT) on July 7, 2014. All qualifying UFOs must be completed by Midnight (EDT) on September 30, 2014.

Membership: (15)

SEND: (5)
mducky: 1 completed project
freshwaterfibers: 1 completed project
andimc13: 1 completed project
MamaPro: 2 completed projects
jrnylst: 1 completed project

NO SEND: (10)
sockjeannieous: 2 completed projects
kris7: 6 completed projects
needleb: 2 completed projects
basketcase9702: 1 completed project
Yarnosophy
monicarose51
amalberti
hexiemum (formerly known as Sandybags): 2 completed projects
aerieiris
Ukelady: 2 completed projects

Session Totals: 11 quilters completed 21 projects.

Congrats! to all of our finishers and thank you to all of our cheerleaders. We had a wonderful session and your support encourages us to keep plugging along at our UFOs.  Kris7 somehow managed to finish SIX projects during the Fall 2014 UFO Club!  How many more UFOs could she possibly have?!  LOL!!  (Judging from my own UFO List, she could still have quite a few!!!)

Thanks to all of our participants, finishers and non-finishers, alike!  Non-finishers, if you made progress on ONE of your UFOs, the Club is working!!  If you still have 5 (or more) UFOs, please come back for another round of Finishing Fun.

We had both a Queen and a Princess of the Last Minute this time around.  :0))

MamaPro now holds the title of Princess of the Last Minute, finishing TWO quilts the day before our September 30th deadline.  Our reigning Queen of the Last Minute is Jrnylst, who finished one of her oldest UFOs only hours before the deadline.  Way to pull out a win, you two!

Until next time...

Happy Finishing!!!

Quilt Show Surprise!!!

The Durham Orange Quilters' Guild recently presented:

Quilting:  Stories in Stitches

The quilt show was held August 22 - 24, 2014 at the Durham Convention Center.  This was a new venue for the show and a different time of year than we normally hold our shows.  The change was two-fold.  Our previous venue was unavailable for rental and the new venue was unavailable at our "usual" time of year.

All in all, I believe the show was a success.  We seemed to fit the space well and (considering that it was August) the show was fairly well attended.  The show also included vendors, our boutique, a silent auction for charity, and a great number of demonstrations held throughout the weekend.

Thank you to our Quilt Show Vendors:

Artistic Artifacts/Batik Tambal
www.artisticartifacts.com

Cotton Fields Quilt Shop
www.cottonfieldsnc.com

Dragonfly Quilt Shop
www.dragonflyquiltshop.com

Empty Pockets Alpaca Farm
www.emptypocketsalpacas.com

French Connections
www.french-nc.com

Lynne's Outlet
919-742-6084

Quilter's Gallery
quiltersgallery.net

Thimble Pleasures
www.thimblepleasures.com

The highlight of the show, of course, was all of the beautiful quilts!  So many beautiful quilts, in fact, that I had a hard time choosing my favorite for my vote for the Viewer's Choice award.

Another highlight of the show was the number of winners from the Nimble Thimbles (my quilting bee.)  Congrats! to each of you.

And... (drum roll please)

The fate of my quilt entry:

Wall: Miniature
2nd Place - "Inspired by... " The Series

My WINNING entry!!!

This little quilt (series) has been in the works for quite some time.  The challenge was issued in December 2010.  The completed quilt tops sat on my sewing table for a month before being quilted.  The unbound quilts sat on my table for more than 3 YEARS waiting to be finished.

The quilt show was coming and this was the closest to completion.  One of the little quilts had already been bound!  The medium and small one remained.  I had 2 months before the show.  I could SO do this!!!  Although, it wasn't quite as straightforward as I had first believed.  The smallest of the series REFUSED to be bound!  So... you may notice that I opted to serge the tiny quilt.  And then came the challenge of how to hang the tiny trio in a quilt show! Thankfully, my inner artist decided to come out to play a few evenings before quilt turn-in day.

I am happy to report that this project is DONE!!! (As evidenced by the above photo.)

Inspired by... The Series can now be removed from my UFO List.  It may be my only finish for the Summer 2014 session of the UFO Club!  That's OK... it's still something to celebrate.

Why???

Surely, one of the paragraphs above explain my position on the matter.

Here's the Back Story:

My Circle Challenge for the Art Bee was due in February of 2011, but I didn't even start it until 2 weeks AFTER the deadline!!!  I hate to recall the truth, but I had known about it since December 2010!

Why did wait? Well, I wasn’t feeling inspired. :o(

Based on a piece of art by Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, I drew up my design, but I didn’t do anything with it…until the Saturday that my friends went off to The MidAtlantic Quilt Festival and I decided to stay home to spend time in my studio!  The challenge deadline had come and gone.  My mind was clear enough to begin what ended up as a series of quilts:

Even though I tell the story a little differently (memory being what it is...older and more forgetful ever day), I actually began by making one the size of my drawing (done on a napkin!) and stepped it up a little bigger (and then a little bigger than that.)  My pieces measure 2" x 3", 3.5" x 5.5", and 8.5” x 11".  Basically, that's a business card, an index card, and a piece of notebook/computer paper!

To see the inspiration piece, look for:

Beatriz Milhazes
Popeye, 2008
Acrylic on canvas
78 3/8” x 54 3/4”

Who knew that a 3 month challenge would turn into a 3 year adventure???

Until next time...
Happy Quilting!!!

The SSB Reveal

Happy Labor Day!  It's a holiday in the United States and I am enjoying some much-needed rest and relaxation.  Including some time in my studio with NeedleB this weekend!  These things work together to make The Joyful Quilter truly joyful.

It's been a few days  since my last post (which was MONTHS overdue!) and I thought I'd do a bit more catching up on the blog.

I hope you've been doing well.  We had another life-threatening medical emergency in our house since I've been away.  Not to worry!  Although, this did include a late-night trip to the emergency room and a complete diet overhaul for my DH who is not a heavy man (by ANY stretch of the imagination!), but who had a great love for unhealthy snack foods which brought his blood glucose to dangerously high levels.  Two weeks and two different meds later, things are under control once again.  Hooray! for modern medicine.

I'm writing to share my SSB project with you.  Those initials stand for The Secret Sue Bag.  It was a custom bag for a good friend who (jokingly - since I charge a fair chunk of change for my bags) commented that she would love to have one of my custom bags.  (Special thanks to NeedleB for sharing her bag-making technique!  I've tweaked it to make it my own, but I'll always refer to it as YOUR bag.)

Little did she know that I was planning to make one for her birthday last month.  Of course, she figured it out once I asked her to choose fabrics!  :P

The bag itself was still a surprise, since I didn't reveal any of the details of the bag until it arrived in Knittingsuek's mail box (well in advance of her birthday.)  The note on the package instructed her NOT to open before her special day.  Her own DH took my note literally and hid the package!  I wrote right back telling her to let him know that she could open it if she really wanted to, but she decided to wait.  Whew!  Crisis averted.

The back of the bag with a view of the side pockets and strap detailing.

A free-form "S" applique adorns the front pocket of the bag.

This shot shows a glimpse of the interior pocket and the sewn-in label.

I had a lot of fun deciding on the details for this special bag.  I was rewarded with a huge "OMG! OMG! OMG!  I LOVE IT!!!"  That's pretty much the best response that a quilter can hope for in this day and time.  :o)

I have to tell you that I also created a challenge for myself when making the handle for the bag.  I'm still not quite sure what I was thinking when I cut the strips for the handle!  They weren't the proper width to form a tube (without the handle being uncomfortably narrow.)  My solution???  I turned the edges and added a piece of grosgrain ribbon to finish it off.  Brilliant!!!

Knittingsuek loves Sock Monkeys.  Adding a Beanie Baby Sock Monkey to show off the fun print on the interior pocket was a last minute decision.  The bag was such a hit that the poor little Sock Monkey hasn't been mentioned... for all I know someone took him out of the package before it was delivered!  :o(

Well, I'm off to take my college boy back "dorm".  He was home for the holiday weekend and needs to be back for tomorrow's classes.

Until next time...

Happy Quilting!

MTS Meets the End of the Line

This post, like a few others, is a little late in being published.  I'm not quite sure what happened to the first half of this year, but I feel like I must have fallen off the face of the Earth for a while.  Please forgive the delay.

From The Quilt Fest of New Jersey X Website:

"The Quilt Fest of New Jersey.... will feature a Merchants Mall offering the best in fabrics, notions, sewing machines, wearable art, embroidery and everything for the quilter and home sewer!  (Garden State Exhibition Center, Somerset, NJ.)

In 2014, the Quilt Fest of New Jersey (March 6 - March 9) will continue the "Tri-State Quilt Competition" open to quilt artists who are residents of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

We hope you will enjoy the variety of The Quilt Fest -- its exhibitions, workshops, lectures and Merchants Mall."

One of those exhibitions was the Mountain to Sea Quilt display.  This brought us to the end of the tour.  The most exciting part for me is that I used to live in New Jersey.  I spent 11 years there.  My husband was born and raised there.  Our children were born there.  My quilting life was born there, too.  Although, I didn't get to go for The Show, I am pleased that some of my old friends were able to see a piece of my recent work. 

Of the Mid-Atlantic show:  The report from an "insider" was that our Mountain to the Sea special exhibit quilts were hung on the front wall of the quilt show!  Mancuso added a (tiny) picture of the series in the show handbook. It was a thrill to see them there! The only drawback of being so prominently displayed was (as one of the Art Bee members pointed out) it did mean that people occasionally rubbed against the quilts as they made their way thru the crowd.  No harm was done.

The final destination for the majority of the quilts in the series will be the offices of the Friends of the Mountains to Sea Trail.  (Info re: where and how to see the quilts HERE.)  Several of the quilts will remain with their makers and one quilt has been sold into a private collection.

Volunteers are the heart of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.  We need people with a wide variety of skills and interests to build and care for this beautiful trail. Here are some of the ways volunteers can help:

• Build and maintain trail
• Lead hikes
• Write articles and other publications
• Staff festival booths
• Speak publicly about the MST
• Raise funds
• Office help (in Raleigh)
• Hospitality at trail workdays and annual meeting (in Greensboro)
• Other? Let us know how you’d like to help.

If you would like to volunteer in other ways, please contact Kate Dixon, Executive Director, at kdixon@ncmst.org or 919-698-9024.

Look for note cards available for sale once all of the quilt makers have sent in their permission.  Once they receive the quilts being donated, they will be looking for opportunities to display them.