It is still Renaissance Faire season here and I’ve been going almost every weekend. We even camped in the rain 2 weekends ago. Here are some of my favorite pictures so far this season:
Hubby and me
My dear friend Stacie & Me
My Jingle Ho friends (one is missing) L-R: Sam, JoJo, Cheri (new ho), Mish, Marty, Bottom: Me, Sati, Vicki
My dear friend Sati with Vikie’s daughter
Daddy and Daughter (Kendra’s birthday trip to faire)
Kendra and mom
The past few days have been a struggle. Things came to light Monday night and crisis mode kicked in. All I did was ask for support from my friends and they were there. Suggesting healing thoughts and actions. Letting me vent and keeping me strong and focus on my end goal. That’s what great friends do. I’m not so deserving of such wonderful people, but I’m soo grateful for them and I hope they know I’m here for them as well. There’s still a lot of work and challenges ahead, but I’m up for the task, because it involves the rest of my life.
Now I’m done talking in code and sending love out to all my friends, I’ll share a little bit of quilting stuff.
Since Mimi’s class, I’ve been geared up to work more on my first applique project and restart it with a different perspective.
It’s called Applique Affair by Laundry Baskets Quilts. I met Edyta at Spring Quilt Market and she is another one of those quilting personalities that makes me think of Mimi. She is gentle, sweet, very conversational and down to earth. Not to mention she’s young! 
Here’s her pattern:
Now, I never follow a patterns suggestion color layout–that is my own “outside of the box” way of thinking. So here’s what I’m picked out for my backgrounds. The solid is for the main/center blocks and the cross-hatch is for the outside borders:
LOL…black!! And I’m using batiks for all the pieces. Though I’ve noticed I need to find a super sharp needle, because of the batiks weave it’s challenging to needle through it. Any suggestions??
One of Mimi’s techniques involves drawing your layout on your fabric. Well, in this situation it’s a bit challenging and a light box doesn’t work so well on the black fabric. I forgot I had purchased transfer paper when visiting Anjea. I dig it out (after a brainstorming session at work on how to mark my black fabric) and tested it:
The yellow works well, though I was afraid with my handling of the fabric as I do the block it might brush off. So, I retraced the lines with a silver quilter’s pencil.
I’ve prepared 2 blocks to do while spending time with the hubby in the evenings. I hope to kick this project off real soon.
Still drooling over the Halloween Baltimore Album. I did like one suggestion of making it bigger. I don’t what a wall hanging, I want something to decorate my bed! I’ll keep drooling and start making a holiday wish list
what an exciting day! I had a blast sharing the love of quilting, shopping, eating and laughing with 6 other friends! It was a fully packed van!
I was on a set budget and did fairly well in keeping in that budget. I purchase 2 items that I wanted to get and an extra bonus item I’m totally in love with. I was good and didn’t purchase any fabric –though I came sooo close to purchasing a $150/kit, I did pick up a cheap little $12 kit instead. I got my show pin and a group pin.
Here’s my newest booty (l-r: my second thread catcher for my travel hand work bag, a pattern for hanging my pin collection on, my new pins, and my bonus project bag with tons of zipper pockets directly from Pat Sloan—oh did I mention I talk to Pat? ) :
And Eva and Laura got me this cute t shirt (I don’t own a quilting t shirt):
We had a wonderful time and I think we all did well on our shopping budgets! I think we are done with shows until next year.
We did see a lot of quilts that were shown at the Lancaster Show in April. There was a nice selection of quilts and highly impressed with all the appliqued ones. Here’s my gallery of all the pictures I took. I do have last year’s pictures still up, if you are interested here as well.
I think my favorite quilt was this one:
We did get our tradition group picture- this one was taken in front of our own guild quilt (Four County Quilt Guild) which we (as a guild) have entered the past two years’ raffle quilts for judging into Quilt Odyssey. Eva got a better picture, poor Jane likes to look around when the camera is snapping l-r: Donna, Cheryl, Me, Jane, Eva, Pam and Laura (trip virgin to our group) in front.
I’m beat as I’m typing this post up after our trip….Sunday will be recouping day
and have been trying to catch up on simple things around my house. Seems like I haven’t found time for catching up.
Trying to do laundry now, trying to organize my sewing space at the same time, and sending out May birthday cards.
I had a wonderful birthday last week! First my son surprised me with his girlfriend – we don’t get to see her too often, so it was such a nice surprise and she got me hooked on the Tudors!!
Then on Wednesday I had dinner at the Green Turtle in Mt. Airy and was joined by several friends throughout the duration.
(L-R: Eva, Sati, Jane, me, Linda, Jackie II, Cheryl)
Cheryl presented me with my own birthday cake (evil woman she is):
Needless to say, my kids helped me eat all those bad things!
Then I went to Bunco with Pam and her fun friends and won the Bunco pot of $36….sweet!! Needless to say, it ended my birthday on a high note….but not to end the celebration too soon, my friend Stacie came up for Saturday night and we drank wine, watched the 2nd season of the Tudors (which she got me for my bday gift) and just talked. What a week!!!!
I also received my Miniature Booty 3 Swap from Norway! Laila has incredible craftsmanship! I’m soo in love with all the items I received from her. She is highly talented and I feel honored she agreed to be my partner! I haven’t hung it up yet, still need to clean the wall it will hang on in my kitchen, but here’s the booty:
My booty will be on it’s way tomorrow to it’s new home. I can’t show a picture because it’s so specific, it would give it away 
I work today, but tomorrow and Thursday I plan to focus on my sewing space and get things packed for the deep reorganization that will happen. It’s going to be crazy and awhile before I sew on my machine again, but I have all my prep work done on my latest hexagon piece and started basting the little suckers last night…so easy to do while I’m watching TV
We have been enjoying the company of my brother & sister-in-law and a surprise bonus visit from my oldest niece with her husband and 2 little girls. Our house was a rocking last night!
We spend the entire day getting lost in Pennsylvania, but did end up doing some amish things, like buggy riding:
My girls got the front row action sitting next to the buggy driver and the full horses’ behind effect as well….it was highly amusing! We ate a nice restaurant at Bird In Hand (town’s name), but we paid way too much for a lunch buffet. Speaking of “buffet”…….oh, wait….
So, Cheryl who was doing some binding work for me on a table runner called yesterday to return it and see if I had anything else…hello, sure I do!! So, she surprised me and took my sunflower wall quilt and finished the binding yesterday…WOW….I’ll get to see it tomorrow when we hook up with her and her family to see Jimmy Buffett in concert! FREEE….they are lawn tickets, but I’ve never been to a Buffett concert and I am a pirate after all. It should be a lot of fun!
Well, this morning, realizing we missed the mail lady yesterday, finally checked the box to see that I had received something from Anjea!?!? Opened the box to my amazement and saw this 9″ adorable quiltlet:
I took pictures and immediately hung it up with my other little ones:
I’m soo excited and love it!! It hangs next to my grandmother’s dresden sampler. Thank you Anjea!
I have amazing friends and am so grateful for them in my live and appreciate all their talents, love and friendship. I can’t thank them enough.
and a HOT one here in Merry-Land!! 99 degrees…that is the temp without the heat index…YUK…good thing I have a good friend and we visited a quilt show!!
First, let me start off by saying thank you to all the comments on the last post. I don’t feel I need to respond to any of them, because you all said the same thing. It was very frustrating when I was doing some admin stuff to close out my swap, thank you for listening.
Second….I MISS YOU!!! I haven’t had time to sit and enjoy your posts, so I’m in the process of doing that this evening and tomorrow.
Thirdly, I have PICTURES
The wonderful and thoughtful Cheri make some very cool coasters to work nicely in my sewing area. Notice the fabric in pink is the same as my curtains in blue Isn’t that cool! Thank you again, Cheri!
Next I have done some sewing!!! I started this project using my new pattern book “Let’s Do Lunch” and realized after I sewed most of the triangles, I did it wrong and need to rip most of them out to redo…le sigh…but it’s going to be way cool when it’s done:
I also made lots of progress on my 9 Patch Pizazz and will post pictures of it as I hope to finish it tomorrow!
Did I mention I went to a quilt show today? With awsome air conditioning. It was put on by Quilter’s Unlimited and was a nice simple show. I guess it wasn’t what I totally expected from a show, there were no awards or ribbons. Keeping that in mind it was a great way for local quilters to show off their projects. I really didn’t find any quilt that just stood out, nor over impressed me. But I was tickled to see kitties and a Dear Jane Journey quilt. This picture is of my good friend Donna who chauffeured me to the show (she just rocks my socks). She kinda blends into the quilt doesn’t she?
I created an album of quilts I enjoyed from the show, click here.
Of course there was shopping…lots of good buys and we spend the first 5 hours wandering around vendors, spending money and gather information. Here’s what I came home with:
Not to bad, it helps I have limited fundage
Whew…..I’m tuckered out now….but I have so many things to do.
There are soo many to share, especially from the quilt show and pyrate invasion. So, I made an album for ya’l to skim through.
Here are a few of my favorite:
L-R: Anjea & Melissa (another online friend), me on the porch at Patches, Sharon (the young co-worker), me & Anjea as pirates, and Stacie-who was also visiting this weekend from Florida.
It’s been a lot of fun and I think we have worn each other out! We are planning to do some site seeing in the rain, then Anjea is off to the airport for her trip home 
But there is loose talk about her coming out in the fall to attend faire—all the pirates want her there!
There is still more pictures of quilts and quilt yakking I need to share…oh and I’ll reply to everyone’s comments later today…..off we go!
It seems like forever without internet access…..haven’t been online since Thursday, mid-day til this morning and my inbox showed it!!!
Well, I didn’t accomplish my 3 projects on my weekend get away, but I did make one pillow case and finish the blocks I need to complete a top (and finished putting the last 2 rows together this morning before work).
So, let’s start off with the filling up of the van. Keep in mind my husband didn’t think we would need to remove the back 2 seats – thank goodness I thought better and removed them. 4 sewing machines, 1 cooler, 4 suitcases and SEVERAL sewing supply/project bags each – we had a fully loaded down van:
We had such a WONDERFUL time, TONS of food and dolphins playing all day on Saturday right outside our hotel ocean front. What a sight to watch the sunrise with hundreds of dolphins playing. It was incredible! Unfortunately, cameras didn’t pick them up, but we saw them all day.
We did the touristy thing and saw the Hatteras Light House, visit a local craft shop, and visited a nice quilt shop on the way down and again on the way back….we love Nancy’s Calico Patch! Unfortunately, the Barefoot Quilter was closed when we swung by it, but now we know where it is.
I wanted a irish chain for my flip flop batik I have been holding on to since last summer – and going to the beach it seems an appropiate project to work on this past weekend….wanna see the last picture taken (right now, 3 rows are all together, and the last 2 rows are individually done). It was originally suppose to be 3 x 4 blocks, but ended up adding more to make it as nice size beach blanket.
I don’t have a picture of my very fun, beachy feely pillow case – but I’ll do that this evening.
We all laughed soo hard and had a few opinionated moments, but just loved the weekend and friendship that came out of it. We are already talking about making this an annual thing. L-R Me, Jackie, Cheryl, and Judy
Florida is next on my travel list to visit a friend – though it doesn’t involve quilting things, it does involve the beach!
today is one of them. Well, I spent all afternoon walking off a over stuffed lunch from Olive Garden. My girlfriend is a lot more “girly” than me and aided me in getting a few new sweaters to wear for work and we shopped a few other places, including Target where I got new items for organizing my sewing area.
I feel a lot of weight on my shoulders I need to just let go, so that’s the muddling through part —ya know, things that make you feel “blah”. So, I’m about to set up this new coolio storage organizer with bins (that was on clearance in the kid’s area at Target) and fill it up with fabric stash and projects…..here’s their picture:
The best part are the colors….don’t they look beachy bright? Perfect for my piratey themed sewing area and life……yeppers, it’s the simple goofy things. I’ll post pictures tomorrow, once I fill it up!
Update: ugh, nothing like tearing open the entire box, setting all the pieces out and read to put together —to discover no hardware was in the box….yes, on front of box it clearly states-Hardware included. Guess I’m going back to Target tomorrow….
my title works here–and I wasn’t expecting that and so my title is a wee bit non-creative! Didn’t in my other blog, just 2 minutes ago….shhhhh…don’t want to jinx it!
Well, yesterday was wonderfully crazy!! Our shop is having a 25% of ALL fabric in the store (min of 1 yard cuts) and folks were taking advantage of it!! If you are in the MD area, it’s worth the drive out to meet me and see the shop!!
And bonus for me, I got to meet a wonderful online friend (whom I met in livejournal.com land)! Carrie and her adorable son came to get in on the fabric sale (I’m a bad influence) and she was very impressed and promises to visit more often! WOO HOO! 
I took a few quickie pictures of the baby while he assisted me in fabric selection:
Isn’t he a cutie! Carrie came in with 2 missions and left with 3 All complete projects though! It was such a pleasure to meet her.
I also finished the shop’s newsletter and will be updating more of the website today at work. I have a lot of ideas for the website, just finding the time to get them in, is always the hard part!
I’m still working on the clearing out my sewing area. Was disappointed that Walmart didn’t have a book shelf unit I wanted and don’t feel like trucking to IKEA – so I need to rethink and be creative. I haven’t started too deeply into the project being I’m working, but tomorrow and Thursday I plan to be very focused on this process.
I’m going to spend an hour time now before work and finish the binding on my Doll Quilt Swap – want that in the mail by end of week!
