New Patterns April 2009

I realized when I was looking over some photos today that I never posted any pics of the new designs. So I will send some new pics of the quilts I debuted at the Quilter's Heritage Festival in Lancaster, PA this year.

Pattern: Grandma's in the Kitchen


Pattern: Fender Bender
Sized for an extra long twin bed


Pattern: Trellis Rose
This pattern is a reprint from 2006 made with different fabrics.

Hope you like the new designs. Soon I will post a pic of the new BOM patterns I have released this year.
Happy Quilting!

Guild Night

So Monday was a bit of a busy day and nothing really exciting to blog about unless you want to look at pics of my computer screen while I worked on the Guild Newsletter or the printing of Block 4 of the Civil War BOM I am doing for Millstone Quilts. I also made the election ballots for the quilt guild elections for the 2009-2010 board.
I didn't think you would find that very interesting. But, on the way out of my driveway I saw this little baby of the power lines. I say baby because I am quite convinced that all the redtail hawks in the area are all my babies. We do have a pair that lay in the same next next to our garage every year and raise their babies every spring. So... I am pretty that they are either one the pair or one of the babies. I see one almost every day but today I had my camera at the ready.

And then I went off to the Guild election meeting *yawn* because it was my duty to the Guild to go... but I did make a stop on the way.
This is the only way that I could make it through the meeting. Thank God for Iced Coffee.
Cheers!

McCafe

No matter what kind of day you are having I think just knowing there is stuff like this just waiting in the McDonald's drivethru makes everything soooo much better. I don't even care about the calories. It's like McDonald's is reading my mind. I love the beads of sweat on the cup. tehe


Enjoy!

Millstone Quilts Outdoor Show 2009

On May 2nd and 3rd I had the wonderful opportunity to host a Cabin In The Woods Trunk Show at Millstone Quilts in Old Church, VA during their annual outdoor quilt show, sale and BBQ. Each year Millstone hosts a customer quilt show on their grounds where customers can show off their quilting talents. They have a 25% off sale for anything in the store and they serve a free southern style BBQ lunch. It's a really wonderful event and I was asked to bring down the quilts and greet the customers.

Here is the trunk show set up on Saturday morning on the porch of my favorite shop down by the creek.

All the new designs were on display as were most of the old designs in the line. Isn't this the cutest little shop. Little is actually very deceiving. This "little" shop has three floors of fabric and is definately worth the trip.
The quilts were on display in the trees all day until about 2:30pm when the rains came.

Here is the trunk show rearranged on Sunday to accomodate the rain that lasted all day. I was nestled on the porch on Sunday (at one point wrapped up in one of my samples due to the draft) and greeted customers with Smoke the cat. Who, I should mention, is not friendly. He is a certified attack cat so if you ever get to Millstone... I would advise saying hi to the cat from a distance. However, Smoke and I became fast friends. Well he liked me anyone. We played a great game of cat and mouse (he was the cat) and he enjoyed torturing me by laying on top of all my business cards on the table and swatting at anyone who tried to take one.

The show turned out to be a wonderful success for me and the sale was a great success for the shop. We were even able to talk a couple of gals into signing up for the Civil War BOM that I designed for the shop this year. All the quilts looked great and I received many compliments. The crowd favorite at this show... Grammy's Thread Box which is the spool quilt in the middle of the above photo.
Happy Quilting!

Friday's Field Trip

Yesterday I kinda caught everyone up on all the work stuff but promised to catch up more with some backwards posts with pics. So I here is a little snippet of Friday that I will share with you over coffee. Little Brat took a Second Grade Field Trip to The Gari Melchers house in Belmont (Fredericksburg, VA). For those of you not familiar with Gari Melchers (and who would be unless you are REALLY into art) he was a very famous painter/artist. He was known primarily for his portraits. He studied in Germany as a boy and had studios all over the world, most noteably in New York and Paris. Won many awards... blah, blah, blah... and settled here in our home town. He bought a beautiful estate and filled it with his wife's enormous china collection (so big in fact that they cannot display all of it). Sounds like many of us with our fabric. I took a few shots with my point and shoot camera on the estate. I am always looking for interesting B&W pics to decorate our cabin. The grounds ar positively beautiful so if you ever get this way you should stop in and visit and then go down the hill and have lunch at Annie's Cafe.

This is a pic I took of Little Brat and me on the grounds. The kids had a great time learning about life cycles on the farm and art from the wonderful volunteers. They even had a little scavenger hunt and ran all over the grounds.

I was glad I had the opportunity to be picked as a chaperone and hang out with Little Brat for the day.

Happy Mother's Day

So a friend pointed out the other day that I have spent way too much time working and connecting on Facebook and haven't posted anything on my blog in 2 months. That's terrible. So today is the day that I rectify this travesty. I don't want anyone to miss out on the going's on around here. So here was the actual important happening from 4am this morning.

In a nutshell... the last two months have really been all about work. Yes... there has been some socializing and Facebooking and visiting family. But mostly I have been attached to the sewing maching and computer and working like a dog. I managed to put out two new applique patterns and one re-release of a quilt design this year. I will be sure to post the pics for you in the next Blog. They premiered at The Quilter's Heritage Celebration (an International Qult Show in Lancaster, PA). The designs were quite popular.

I picked up three new clients at the show and of course many, many new customers. I was able to stay at the booth throught out the four day show and meet lots of friendly quilters and sign many patterns. Immediately after getting back it was time to get to work on the Civil War BOM that I designed exclusively for Millstone Quilts. They began the project back in March and I am working on making sure they have everything they need each month. I also had a few more new clients not from the show. I had two trunk shows running through April and my first outdoor quilt show/trunk show with Millstone the first weekend in May.

All were very successful... I have had to reprint both new patterns twice already in the last two months. The company is crazy busy. I am crazy busy. Yesterday I found a new home for a dog and drove 4 hours to deliver it and visit with my Mom for Mother's Day. Today was my Mother's Day. I got home last night at Midnight and awoke at 4am so it was inevitable that I would nap today... and I did.

This morning I was presented with three red roses from my Mom (in honor of the three Grandsons I have given her). My boys gave me a new book, some iTunes gift cards and a wonderful iPod docking station to make a stereo for me in the house and studio. It was great. I also bought a couple of used digital point shoot cameras for my business. So I put on shoes and went out in my pajamas this morning to take a couple of pics.


I found this small Bleeding Heart blossom with this daddylonglegs on it. I was testing out the macro capabilities of the new camera. He looks like he found the perfect spot huh?

I love the way the buttercups poke up through the stones in my sidewalk. Some people would mind that but I don't. These are about the only flowers I have in my yard today.

I have been growing Clamatis on my porch for the last four years. I got three blossoms last year on this side of the railing and my old lab walked out one day and wagged her tail and knocked all the blossoms off. Today I was very excited to see all the new buds on the plants. I have high hopes for big beautiful blooms this year.
Well... it has been wonderful checking back in with everyone. I will post more this week.
I hope all of you had a wonderful Mother's Day today and can't wait to get caught up on all the blogs posts I have been missing.