Monday Mayhem!

Today is the day I give notice to the chiropractor that I quit! This will be my last week. I've given them a month to find someone to replace me, but so far nada, and it is just NOT working for me. Isn't it funny how you think something will work great, and then you try it and it turns your life upside down, and you feel like a machine, and it just doesn't fit with your life?! I liked things better the way they WERE...where I could quilt in the mornings, schedule my clients in the afternoon and make it all work around MY life...so everything is a learning experience.

Here are some pics! I am calling the red/black/butterscotch quilt "Road to Camp Gravatt" in honor of putting the whole thing together at retreat. :c) I figure if there is a Road to St Louis, Road to California, Road to....? That there can be a Road to Camp Gravatt. No other names worked....and everything else I could come up with reminded me of food. I really don't like quilts that are named after food...*LOL* I really like how the wonky star points in the sashings turned out. Fun fun fun!

The other quilt is a maverick basket that I finished for a customer. It was her husband's great aunt's quilt top or something...and let me tell you this thing was not only wavy in ALL directions and had poofy spots in each and every block, but was a trapezoid as well! The only way to work this thing was to square it off, and add borders hoping to stabilize the whole thing. I squared it....added the top and bottom pink borders, and then the two green ones. I just thought you would get a chuckle of how EVERYTHING goes down hill on this quilt. Truly a happy ending for it. Spots were SO puffy that I had to use thick poly batting to suck it all up. It worked!

Bonnie

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Quilt Camp!

I'm home from Quilt Camp! What a fun time was had by all.

First off, this retreat was the best put together retreat that I have EVER been on. All we had to do was set up and sew! Meals were provided, snacks were plentiful...we had a full 6 ft banquet table PER PERSON (no sharing!) so there was lots of room to spread out......

The accomodations were great....it was an episcopal church camp, and we were in no way "roughing it!" If you have any interest in coming to SC for a retreat, definately contact Joyce or Sherry at Just Stitchin' Retreats to see what retreats are underway in the future!

The pic of the camp shows the lake....and the trails, the pines, it was a very relaxing place for a retreat! Plans are underway for a fall retreat in October, I can't wait!

During the retreat I had the pleasure of being the on-staff massage therapist, and we had ALL slots full! I gave 12 massages over the weekend, and it was a treat to get to know the ladies a bit better. I've been a member of the Devine Quilter's guild in Columbia since moving here 4 years ago, but this is the first retreat for me, and a great way to get to know the ladies. (We are called the Devine Quilters because we meet on Devine Street in Columbia, but I would like to think we are just Devine in all ways possible ;c)

I finished two quilt tops while at the retreat. I'll have to get pics tomorrow...it's dark now...but here is a pic taken by Sherry of me working away at my machine in between massages!

Bonnie

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Small Hopes & Big Dreams!

Our guild is having a log cabin challenge this year....the quilts will be displayed at the public library. I wasn't going to do it, but I pulled out my mini-logs and figured if I made the quilt smaller than I intended.....I only needed to piece two more blocks...and border the thing. So it is done.

I killed many birds with one stone with this quilt! The blocks are paper pieced and used up my smallest crumbs. (Proving the fact that if it is still ugly, you just didn't cut it small enough!) The inner border is leftovers from my random sampler quilt border that I finished piecing at Tonyas. I only had to cut one more 1.5" strip.....so that cleared out some pre-cut strips.

The outer border fabric is the fun black with the colored squiggles that I picked up with Tonya while we went shopping in MD in October. See!! It didn't stay in my stash very long...I used it! :cD

The four basket blocks in the corners are UFO blocks....3 were pieced...one was cut out and needed to just be pieced. I didn't like doing them because of the set in seams....it just was tedious and time consuming, so it was the beginning of an abandoned project, and now they found a home in the borders of the little-logs-that-went-big quilt.

Some facts on this top: Started in 2001. block size: 3" finished. Number of blocks: 324. Pieces per block: 17. Total pieces in center: 5,508.

Definately a machine quilting project because it is very heavy with so many seams!

Bonnie

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Busy Weekend!

I am quilting furiously....but I wanted to post something I found on ebay! Isn't this a great maverick stringy quilt?! I love it..it looks very patriotic to me.

Wednesday my friend Randy arrives from California...and thursday we leave for our quilter's retreat near Aiken! I am trying to decide what projects to take. I will be doing massage at this one, and as of last count we had 9 massages pre-paid, so my quilting hours will be in between that. I have a quilt I need to finish piecing (embroidered blocks done by the client) before I can do the quilting. This will probably be good time to do that. I'm also thinking of just taking my bin of strings and string piecing my way through the weekend to see what I can get done. Nothing that requires too much concentration!

I switched to the "new" blogger. Up to this point, blogger wouldn't let me do it, it said some things on my blog were untransferrable. But this morning it gave me the chance to switch again, and so I bit the bullet. I have no idea if my template is going to be screwed up when I post this or not, so here goes!

Bonnie

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