First year anniversary

What an interesting year it has been! I have learned from blogging (HTML strike outs, and hyperlinks :-), studying, and from bloggers. For a celebration giveaway, here is a pattern and some fabrics to get started honoring all those cats that help us out in our quilting endeavors.

And to celebrate all those sweet canines keeping our feet warm and our creative efforts dogged, here's a fabric collage of pups in carrying bags.

I will be posting the winner of this giveaway next Thursday so leave a comment if you are interested. Thank you to all who have read, commented and encouraged me through the year. I'm enjoying the blogging quilt community immensely.

Baby quilts

I delivered three baby quilts this week though I forgot to take a picture of one of them. They have flannel, chenille and corduroy fabrics in them and I quilted them with floral pantographs. Fast, easy quilts with fun baby colors and fabrics. Two were given to infants but the third one (not shown) was given to a boy almost a year old and he gave me a smile and a little squeal :-) Quite a charming response!

Mariner's Compass

I tried to post on this the other day and made a goof so let me try again.
A couple of weeks ago, I was the winner of a giveaway hosted by Yuki. The pattern and fabric were included to make this Mariner's Compass block which is paper pieced and finishes at about 12". I set about to sew this and found it challenging. It took me about 4 hours to complete and I was shocked pleasantly surprised to see that the outer circular edge fabric and compass actually came together smooth enough! Thank you, Yuki. I would never have gotten around to trying one of these blocks without your gift and inspiration.
Yuki is fortunate to have lovely feline helpers in her studio and I want to thank Snowflake (her beautiful white cat) for picking me as the winner of the giveaway :-)

Twinkle

Splurged with buying just a small amount of Kaffe Fassett fabric recently and made the quilt pattern shown at my favorite LQS, Quilter's Cupboard. I made only enough blocks for a small quilt and because I'm such a genius and purchased eighth of yard swatches instead of quarter yard...I shrunk the block size also. It worked out though and I loved being able to sew it up very quickly. The pattern is called Twinkle and I enjoyed sewing up all these bright fabrics.

It still needs to be quilted so I'll post it again and show you the gorgeous green fabric I am using for the back....it's called Cactus by Kona Bay Cottons.

messing with blog pictures

Yesterday I added Picasa to my tool box and set up a quilt album slideshow to play on my blog. It is best at the bottom of the page because of the narrow width on the side of my blog template. Would love for you to check it out :-)


I've been busy sewing and have some partially done projects but today I want to show a couple of sweatshirts that I appliqued for my mom. She is so tiny that I wished I had made the dog smaller but it looks cute on her anyway. She is always cold even when working away in her garden so she wears sweatshirts all year long.

P.S. If you want to add Picasa to your blog too...right click on the pictures and it pulls up a link for you.