I got this email from Sherry, Editor of Irish Quilting, this morning:

Hello Quilter Friends,

Most all of you have heard about the flooding in Ireland. They say it is a flood occurrence that happens once in 800 years. The South and the West were first affected. Closely behind came the midland areas, such as, severely affected Athlone in Co. Roscommon.  With more torrential storms this past weekend, the Dublin and Kildare counties are experiencing the same.
The number of homes affected in the beginning was tremendous: 500-600.  News from County Cork put the displaced families at a staggering 18,000.
There will be a number of weeks before many residents will be able to adequately estimate the real damage to their home and belongs.

Irish Quilting is asking you if you can help the Irish families displaced. We are donating quilts to bring warmth to these victims.
Can you sew a 13 1/2″ unfinished block?
or
Can you donate a quilt?
or
Can you and your friends create a charity quilt (pattern included here!)?

If you said yes to any of these questions above, please contact us. Or, just sew and send!  Be sure to include your name. We will be working with Saint Vincent De Paul and the Irish Red Cross to give back warmth to our flood victims.

Many of our quilting groups are breaking for Christmas. Maybe your group can meet with this need in mind?–several people creating 13″ blocks will have a quilt top in no time.  Attached is a flyer asking for blocks (with block pattern) and charity quilts.

Forward all your blocks to the address below. If you know of charitable amounts of wadding and/or backing available, all is appreciated.  So often we work for charities overseas, now there’s a clear need for warmth at home, so let’s help out!

If you have quilts ready to be donated, please email
me or call me and I will arrange the dropoff/collection point for charity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want all the information, just comment and I’ll forward her email on to you.  Her email included a 13 1/2″ block pattern as well.  I’m going to host my own make a block day and I’m going to approach this at my shop and see what we can do as a shop.

Read more details at Sherry’s blog:  http://verrysherry.blogspot.com/

If you read Peaches in Stitches, you’ll understand.

It’s that time of year to review what I’ve accomplished/completed and what I have left to do.  UFO review time.

Over the next week or so I’ll share pictures of my completed project (kinda a year in review – and no I still don’t have a working camera and I still have so much to share) and share my re-evaluated UFO’s.  Which means, I will most likely be giving away some……unsure how I plan to do that part, but it will involve audience paticipation!

Check out Kim’s handy UFO worksheet and share what you do to keep y0ur UFO’s organized, please.

Maybe we can work together and knock them out in 2010?  Anyone else up to the challenge?

but disaster has struck!!!  My camera is broken and I’m unable to take pictures…AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Including the finished one of the commission repair I just did…le sigh.  I’m bummed and unfortunately can’t afford a new one for a month or so.  And I of course have a lot to share.

I have a video camera I might be able to figure out how to take stills with it…and no I don’t have a camera phone (it saved me $150 off the price of my already expensive phone last year).

So, until I figure out how to take pictures it’s hard to post anything.

I’m still around and I am sewing….hope to have pictures soon.

been a busy week and forgot to prepost last Sunday.  Lots of pictures to share, this weekend should be slower for me to “catch up”.

There is a winner in my Halloween Challenge, go and visit Mary’s blog and see her cute little Halloween quilt!  Congrats Mary.  I’ll pop your winnings into the mail.

TGIF!  Have a great weekend!

My youngest is still in bed, so we’ll do the drawing for last week’s challenge and post it tomorrow!

My finished my baby quilt commissions and they were received by the customer on Friday.  I’m so proud how it came out.  Kept the quilting to a minimum with x’s and o’s:

I also did the label:

And the customer asked if I could just quilt and bind this panel.  Again, I kept it simple with just following lines in the design:

Working hard on my diamonds commission quilt this weekend and feel I’m at the half way point now.  Hope to have it completed by end of the week!

Just realized I never made it to Thursday’s and Friday’s posts!

I’ve been so busy between covering the shop while the boss is away at Quilt Market, to being a single parent for the last week, to having a guild meeting on Tuesday, to finishing up the commission job for work….I haven’t had time to post something!

I’ll be back tomorrow with pictures!  I’m almost done with binding on my commissions!  At least my hubby returns home this evening.

I received my Summer Time Swap last week, but unfortunately I don’t have the blog of the sender.  Val from France made this lovely quilt that will be hanging up on my quilt line shortly:

Thank you Val, it’s just lovely!

Also, don’t forget about your Halloween quilts/decorations Challenge.  Spread the word.  I’ve updated the guidelines as well.

I found this link from Ms. Amy’s blog (her entry for this festival is here) last week and decided I wanted to play along.  I have several quilts I love, but finding the right one with a good story to share is difficult.

Blizzard of 2000 Quilt aka My Millennium Quilt

Size: 80″ x 84″

Fabric Sources: 2.5″ squares, Perfume Blocks, Purple front fabric all acquired from online swaps in 1999.  Backing purchased in 2002.  Binding was purchased from Patches in the process of quilting.

Quilted By: The Patches Quilting Shoppe, Mt. Airy, Maryland

The Quilt Story:

During 1999, I was active online in many quilting communities.  One of the easiest swaps and the most popular swap was the Millennium Swap.  Cutting 2.5″ squares and adding a signature square, pop in the mail and receive a new package back from someone else.  I sent/received over 200 packets – yes.  Over 200.

Another swap I did in 1999, was a Millennium fabric perfume bottle swap hosted at The Quilting Post. I received 10 blocks total in that swap.

Way back in February 2000, we had one of our famous “North Easters” snow storms and in the process I was out of work for several days.  This is when I become creative and put together my quilt top.  In two days it was completed.

Using only greens and purples squares from the Millennium Swap and my perfume blocks (along with 2 I made).  Turned the whole thing on point and used some fabric that was given to me by another online quilt friend.

It took me 6 years to find someone to finally quilt it – I decided it was easier and simpler than me trying to do it myself with limited space.

It was finally handed to me completely quilting in variegated thread on December 9th, 2006.  The cost for quilting was $300, so worth the final results.

It is one of my winter quilts, because it is soo heavy – I might be pulling it out real soon here.

Here are few more detailed images:

Do you have yours up?  I do, finally!   Also, I have several Halloween themed quilts hanging around the house….

This one is from Ms. Betsy, who sent it to me last year and hangs in my sewing studio:

This one I made as a sampler for the shop last year and my longarmer quilted it with candy corn, it hangs in place of my sunflower quilt in the dinning room:

And this quilt is our couch quilt.  It’s perfect now that it is getting chilly and I refuse to turn the heat on yet.  I made this from a row swap I did a few years ago:

Of course I have about 4 other ones in the works, can’t have enough Halloweenie things/quilts in my house.

Challenge time….I haven’t given anything away in a long time, so I have some Halloweenie panels and fabric to donate to the winner.  What you need to do is post your Halloweenie quilts (or if you don’t have one yet, your halloween decorations) and be sure to comment here, so I can go and see.  I’ll put everyone’s name in a hot and have my youngest child pick a winner, from the comments that qualify.  If you want an extra drawing in the hat, pass on the info.  We’ll pick the winner a week from today, Monday October 19th.  Please share your Halloweenie quilts with me!!

I just post an entire week’s worth of posts.  It was about an hour of work to do, but what an accomplishment and I got to show all my pictures I’ve been holding on to.  I definitely will start doing this on Sundays for the week.  I’ve enjoyed doing it!

Here’s another one of my commission works.  It’s my husband’s golfing friend and so I feel a bit more “pressured” to do a very good job (not like any of my other jobs I didn’t feel the need to do my best mine you).  It’s a 20+ year old quilt his mom made for him and it is obviously well loved and used.  After examining it, I discovered it needed 35 diamonds replace, a lot of broken stitches redo and some blocks need hand quilting.  A lot of work.

Here are a few of the blocks (there are 28 total, 25 need some kind of work):

My biggest concern was actually finding fabric that would work.  I don’t want to purchase new fabric for it because it’s too bright compared to the other pieces, so I ended up at the thrift shop and picked up a few old cotton shirts and then luckily went stash diving at a friends who has pieces that fit the scrappy theme.

Next, is how to add the new pieces in?  I’m using hand applique technique.  I made a diamond freezer paper template (35 of them) and ironed them to fabric.  Next cut the 1/4″ seam allowance, then basted the fabric to paper.

Now I’ve only got one block started (at time of publishing-plan to work on it a lot over the next week), but I’m happy with the end result.  I’m stitching in between the folds of fabric.   In the photo, the bottom left dark check is one I did and started the blue one that has the basting stitches still in.

Now, it’s not going to lay perfect due to time and stress on the older fabric, but I think once it’s quilted and washed again, it will work nicely.

Hoping to have it finish by end of the month!