The little green circles are all a bright green velvet, but the camera flash made some look lighter.

And the larger black circles are black velveteen.

After dinner I got to have my b-day gift.  I already knew what it was, as DH just gave me the $ to get the one I wanted (I can only imagine what kind of purse I may have ended up with had he picked it), but I was good and left it in the bag until today <G>.  I normally wouldn’t spend $ on this type of thing, but it was just too good a price at the outlet mall.

OK — Better get started on dinner, gonna make lasagna so I won’t have to cook tomorrow <G>!

I bought a bolt of the new cotton/silk blend PFD fabric, and played around a little with it.

The fabric is 55% cotton and 45% silk.  The thing that I found interesting, was how differently the front and back of the fabric accepted the color.  The colors look nothing alike on the front/back of the same piece, as you can see below.

I decided to play around with this fabric a little to see what I would use it for, and decided that it really isn’t ideal for piecing as it is fairly slippery which makes it difficult to both cut, and sew.  But —- it is AWESOME for applique!!!!  I started this little wallhanging to try it out, and I love it!  I just finished it up over my Chrismas Break, and hope to get it quilting soon.

A couple of other things I wanted to play with and have for sale at QwM were some rust/overdyed fabrics, which are pretty cool, but ALOT of work, with being more than one process—–and definately NOT something I want to do for re-sale.

And some bleach discharged/overdyed fabric.  This is also alot of work, but absolutely gorgeous!!  And I plan to keep all of this for myself <G>!

And last but not least, I had all of my fabrics dyed, cut, priced, and was really pleased to sell quite a bit of it at the show.  I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how I would display the large pieces (which was the majority of the fabrics).  I ended up purchasing a clothes rack at WalMart, and some curtain rings with clips.  It worked out really nice, as you can just slide them and pull each piece out to see the whole thing.  I have a bit of a problem with things when they are not all nice and neatly organized, so I was having nightmares about the thought of just having them folded on a table, with a bunch of people opening them up and then not folding them back up “right” — LOL!!!  Jan (one of the photographers for the event) sent these pics from vendors day at QwM — thanks Jan!

Since I found these next pictures while I was looking for the pics of this years challenge quilt, I may as well show last years too!  I really liked this one that I did for the 2007 event.  If you want, you can list your challenge piece for sale, and so I did last year, and was shocked to have mine bought right away, I truly didn’t think anyone would buy it.

Since I had been dying so much fabric, I decided that I wanted to do something to thank some of the OLAQ members who volunteered for various jobs to make QwM a success — I decided to dye silk scarves, and wow did they look awesome hanging out to dry!!

I was really happy with how they came out, and the girls all seemed to like them.

So —- Hmmm, this may be harder than I thought, to even remember what I did.  As one of the planners for Quilting with Machines I was really busy in the months leading up to the event at the end of Oct.08′.  I spent alot of time dying fabric, as I wanted to have enough to take and sell at vendors day during the event.  My MIL came one of the days that I did some  dying, as she wanted to dye a large piece of hand-dyed green fabric for a wholecloth.  While she was here she took the following pics —

I have to tell you that by the end of this day, my MIL decided that dying fabric is just WAY too much work as far as she is concerned – LOL.  And — she didn’t even like the way her huge piece of wide fabric came out.  But — she just (in the past few days) has finished the wholecloth using the fabric she dyed that day, and I think she now likes it <G>.  I’ll have her send me a pic of it so I can post it here — it came out great!

I have continued dyeing, and dyeing, and dyeing more fabric.  Wow, I have probably done like 60 or more yards, and once it is all cut up in to FQ’s, half yards, and yards, and it is all folded, it sure doesn’t look like much!?  I did keep quite a bit as large pieces, for wholecloths, etc. 

I will be teaching twice in Oct. and have been working on new class samples.  I am so sick of carrying the same old ones around.  I also want to have some smaller pieces to show rather than having to lug around a bunch of full size quilts. So this is something else that has been filling alot of my time.  And then of course I am “trying” to keep up with my customer quilts.  Oh yeah, and “trying” to finish a new book before Oct. (been working on this for months — LOL, and probably NOT gonna happen, not by Oct. anyway)

About a month ago our puppy Junior (well, he was 8 months old, but was still growing) had a siezure.  So we went right to the vets, and he was put on a regiment of seizure medicine.  The vet said it could possibly be an inury to his brain (that would eventually heal), as canine epilepsy would have shown itself at an earlier age.  So we started the routine with the pills, twice a day for a couple weeks, then once a day, and it went on and on to see how much he would need to take.  So for three weeks everything was great, not one seizure.  But, then we got to the point where he started taking one pill every other day, and the very first day with no pill, he had a terrible seizure.  So, left a message with the vets office (of course these things always happen on weekends, and this was Labor Day weekend, to make matters worse).  We were told to just give him some more pills, and get the meds back into his system.  He was having a few seizures each day, and not every fully recovering after the previous one.  It was so sad, he was running around, and even trying to play, but was soooo disoriented, he would run into stuff.  On Sun. he actually did really well, and only had one seizure in the morning, and was fine for the rest of the day, so we were hopeful that finally he had enough of the meds in his system to fix him up.  But, that evening the poor guy had another one, that just went on and on for about 5 hours, and in the end was just more than his body could take.  I was told  that dogs don’t know what is happening when they have a seizure, so I am hoping it is true, and he didn’t really know what was happening.  So needless to say, I have felt like doing absolutely nothing for the past week.  I just can’t believe that this happened to him at less than a year old.  DH says that God knows how much we love our animals, and that is why he sent Junior to us for the short time that he had.  Boy, I sure do miss him (and the total caos he brought to our house LOL). 

JUNIOR

JUNIOR and ZEKE Playing tough guys LOL

I wanted to share a few pics also of some of the latest fabrics I dyed.  I recently got the book “Free Expression” by Robbi Joy Eklow, and in it she gives instructions for how she dyes her fabrics. She hangs it over a pole, and then using squirt bottles puts the dye on at the pole and lets it run down the fabric.  So I gave it a try, and I love how the fabrics came out.  I think this is my new favorite way to dye fabric.  It is a little (well alot) messy to do, because the dye drips and splatters quite a bit, but the results are well worth it.  What do you think?

This piece is my absolute favorite in the batch

This was the piece that I put on the ground under the pole to catch drips

And a couple dyed just to use up the leftover dye one day

This one is sateen

OK, better get to work— I’m working on a never ending Double Wedding Ring quilt.

Last week I decided to take a break from the never ending quilts to do some fabric dyeing (which I haven’t had an opportunity to do for ages).  Wow!  I forgot how addicting it was —- and such an awesome artistic break from the monotony of those quilts.  So, I decided that I am going to add dyed fabrics to my business (just what I need, something else to do <VBG>).  I figure I come into contact with alot of quilters at classes, shows, etc., so why not have it available for sale.  And besides, if I don’t sell it ——- I get to KEEP IT!  I dyed about 30 yards this past weekend, and have plenty more to go —- got a little carried away on the fabric, and now have approx. 100 yards still to play with.

I actually had some help from my husband who was pretty in to it, about 15 minutes after I got started, he decided he wanted to dye himself some t-shirts, which turned out OK. I told him that really wasn’t the method for tie-dyeing, but he didn’t care, and could barely wait til it was time to rinse it out and see what it looked like.  The second day, my son was mad that he had missed the whole thing, and “he” wanted to do a shirt.  It was funny watching him ponder exactly where to put his gumbands and predict what the outcome would be.  Only bad thing was that I was doing over dying that day, and the only colors I had mixed were brown and black.  But, like DH the previous day, he didn’t care, and actually, I really like the way his brown and black t-shirt turned out.  Here are pics of some of the fabrics (and of course the t-shirts). 

The sateen below is my favorite to dye!

The T-Shirts

An old faded denim shirt for myself

I have also been working on hand appliqueing this little piece the past couple of weeks.  I decided that I needed something that I could work on in the evening if I sit down to watch TV (so I can feel like I’m getting something done at the same time <BG>).  It’s only a tiny thing, but I was worried that anything much bigger might never get done.

OK, better get back to the never ending ALLOVER quilting!!!!!!!

                             BEFORE                                                                 

Turns out I have yet another quilt that is nearly impossible to get a picture of that shows the true colors.  I guess because the paint is metallic, the flash is making the colors even brighter than they really are.  The photo below is without a flash, and it makes the colors darker than they really are.

Sooo, the actual coloration is somewhere between the two <G>. 

This wonderful old 1957 turntable ?!  He told me he just couldn’t pass it up (sitting out in someones yard with a “free” sign on it).  And besides, it IS the same year as his car (behind it in the pic).  He spend a couple of hours cleaning it, and it looks and works just like new.  His love for the old extends even to his vehicles —- as you can see from the picture of his daily driver below:

He hates that he has to use my Honda to commute to college, he says that it is not a “real” car.  But he uses it of course (since the gas is free in it <BG>).  I do get irritated with him bringing all of this “wonderful” stuff home, and then having to find somewhere to keep it, but it is pretty neat that he has an appreciation for it. I just hope when he gets his own place, it is a big one so he can house his “collection”.

Even with all that I have to do when I get home, I still love going.  Although —- I usually don’t stay as long as I did this year, and by Fri., I was ready to go home.  I had a great time as always, and got to visit with both old and new friends that I only see a few times a year.  My classes went really well, even though I was a little nervous about doing my new Wholecloth Class.  I wanted to share how I design my wholecloths, but was a little worried as to wether or not I could relay to my students how exactly I think about, and design them.  But, I think it went well (the critiques said so anyway <G>), and almost everyone went home with a fully marked Wholecloth ready for stitching.  I can’t wait to see what they create!! 

Oh, and I was also very suprised to receive a third place ribbon for ”Amish Electrified”, it is the raffle quilt that I made for our Long Arm Guild (Ohio LongArm Quilters).  To be honest, I never thought it would get a ribbon, and wasn’t even paying attention during the awards ceremony when they did that catagory. 

The quilts in the show this year were AMAZING, I can’t wait to see what everyone does next year.  It’s hard to believe they can get any better — but I KNOW they will.  I didn’t buy  much, just some trims for couching, some new paints, a few threads I want to try, a few marking templates from Quiters Rule to play with, and some gorgeous hand dyed velvets. When I got home and unpacked my purchases, it was obvious that the color theme for what I bought this year was black and copper so maybe next year I’ll make something in those colors.

As for my new wholecloth, I was really bummed that I didn’t actually get it completed before sending it to MQS.  It was there, and all of the stitching complete, but went minus it’s finishing touches (which were major elements of the design).  I had planned to paint some areas of the quilting, but quickly realized there was NO WAY that was going to happen in the amount of time I had.  And because my order got screwed up, none of the embellishments I ordered came before I had to send it either (perhaps next time I’ll plan better, but — probably not).  But, that’s ok —- because when I finally finish it, it will be like a totally different quilt <BG>.  I’ll post a pick of how it looked when I sent it in.  And very shortly (I’m in the painting stage now) I’ll post the after pic of how I intended it to be.