Well, the house is empty now. Chance is with his mom & Dusti went back to Idaho with her mom & Aunt Denise when they came down to pick up the last of Janel's stuff out of storage. They got into home this morning safely. Now it's my time to spend as much time as I want in my studio doing all things quilt related.

I was over to a friends house the other day & she showed me some pictures that had come with her longarm that she had purchased. The deal she got was unbelievable! Cloth, books, partially done quilts, plus the longarm! Anyway, back to the pictures. We found them in amongst the things & they were of the Tyler quilt show 20 years ago. I found a couple of pictures of a quilt that peaked my curiosity to make & as we dug further, came up with a partially done block. It was the 10-minute block that I just gave the girls to do in February! How ironic to see that the block has been around that long. Anyway, I said I could make that quilt out of my stash. So, I came home & made it!  Here it is....A Black Tie Affair!

And here's a closeup of the center ties. All the ties are black, but the center one has red in it & the surrounding ones are all textured.

This is just the top. Wait til you see it totally finished!

What's more fun than quilting? Nothing, you say? How about a girl's day out going to a quilt show? Yesterday I did just that. There were 4 of us total in our car that went to the Tyler Quilt Show. Had a marvelous time! The theme this year was "Not your Grandmother's Quilt", and needless to say, they sure weren't! Some were simple easy designs, but the quilting! It was over the top!  Here's a couple that really showed that quilting makes the quilt!

I didn't get a close up of the spinning stars, but they did feathers in all the white areas & a simple curves in the pinwheels, then bling them with crystals in the center. Absolutely stunning. Just goes to show you that a simple scrappy quilt can be dressed up with some great quilting!

If you're considering showing your quilt in a show, get with your longarmer & let her play with design to compliment the quilt. Yes, you're going to pay more for the quilting, but so worth it to get that coveted blue ribbon!

I've had a little play time this week. I've been dying to do another Carpenter Star quilt, so during lunch break at guild Monday, I ran over to Sew & Sew & picked up some fat quarters & a little more cloth. Didn't spend a lot, but look what I made out of it!

It turned out 84 1/2" square. But wait til you see it quilted!  I had enough left over to make a mini one! I'll post a picture of it once I get it all together.
Happy quilting!!

Well, Chance has been home on Spring Break this week & so we've been doing a bit of spring cleaning, both in the house & the studio. Sure nice to get everything put back in their proper places!
I did get some sewing done. I got all the blocks for the Rose Log Cabin finished. Here is a picture of the center of the quilt as it's on the design board.

I know, I have to finish the circle quilt! It's in it's final stage now, so should be showing it off soon!

In the process of cleaning up, found the tote with all of hubby's old jeans. So, for 3 days I did nothing but bone them & cut into blocks. Out of 9 pair of jeans, I came up with 179 - 6 1/2" blocks & 18 9" blocks with the pockets! Amazing how much material you can get out of a pair of jeans!

Well, here's the beginnings of a quilt that's going to show. The pattern is Rose Log Cabin by Deloa Jones. She's known more for her longarming techniques rather than pattern design, but I really liked this one & decided to do it for competition, locally.

This is the very center of the quilt. There's 4 blocks in the center, total of 36 in this queen sized quilt. I have all of these done & am working on the 44 green ones that are the alternate block. I'll post more on it as it progresses.

Well, for those that don't know, I was elected as Second VP for our local guild this year. As 2nd VP, my duty is to run the programs for the guild. Our outgoing Program Director & I did a little survey to see what interests were like & try & give the guild programming around that.  One of the things that was of interest was using color on the quilts. i.e. colored pencils, paint, inks. I've been following Irena Bluhm's work for some time & have done a piece or two of her works, so during the time that weather didn't permit me to work in the studio, I did some samples. I was able to quilt them pretty quickly, then brought them into the house to do the colorings. Here's 2 of the samples:

The blue one was done with Inktense pencils. The red one was done with plain colored pencils.

If you've been following my blog, then you know my favorite place on the internet is QuiltingBoard.com. PaintmeJudy periodically does a mystery quilt. Well, we got the final clue yesterday for the current one. It was originally designed to be square (sort of). I decided to make mine oblong, so the final step wasn't fitting to the final outcome.  But, here's mine. All pieced, now in the que for quilting.

This will go on my very large dining room table.

Disregard the circle one, there will be more about that one at a later date.