See what I've been up too....

"Happy New Year!!"

Remember when Frosty the Snowman wakes up and says that and we all chuckle because he is clueless about the day and time?  That's kinda where I feel like I am these days.  Clueless about what day it is, where I am, but I just keep on going!!  lol!!  Yes, LOL!!!  I know you all can relate!!

I've been as busy as ever!!  Here's just a few, yup I've still got more to share, but here's a few of the latest beautiful quilts that have come my way.....

Bev in NH did this drop dead stunning quilt for a 16 year old niece.  I love it!!  Bev does such fabulous work!

This great one came from Caitlin in NC.  Caitlin works at Spoonflower, it's a cool place to get your own fabric printed.  Take a peek!  This was a Christmas gift for her brother and sister in law, lucky couple!

Next we have Cecelia in WV.  I LOVE this one too!!  The colors are fabulous!!!  Makes me want to add another quilt to my "Gotta Make" list. Cecilia has a blog:  My Quilting Room, looks like she hasn't posted in a while (we all know what that is like, right?), maybe this will be a little inspiration to get back to it.

Tita in VT finished this beauty at the quilting retreat that we attended last October.  She decided to use up some of those Kaffe Fassett prints that she had in her stash.  Resulted in this great little quilt.

Erica in NY - love the contrasting colors of this one!  Erica also has a blog,

Heart, Poodle ~ A Quilting Blog  drop in and read her story on this quilt she sent me.

She can tell the story much better than I can. 

Sandy in NH - dropped off a couple of wonderful quilts for me to work with.  The pink baby one is going to wash up all soft and wonderful for some special little girl.  Loved the daisy's on her other one and I managed to find just the perfect design to go with it!

Rachel in NH kept me busy with these three.  Notice the way she fussy cut the first one?  It appears as if there is a true lattice around each one of the blocks!  Rachael has the patience of a saint, probably because she is!  You might remember Rachael from my blog posting Retreat Fairlee Credible Bowheads when she attempted to teach us how to make Cathedral Windows and we started at 10 pm. Not good!!  AND Rachael also put the quilt together for Sharon and Andy, she is a sweetheart!!  Okay, back to her quilts - the second one is interesting that the antique style print shows the Sun Bonnet as a print on the wall of the little girl's room.  The last quilt is a sampler style quilt that I helped get to the finished stage.

Northern Lights Quilting Guild in NH - great quilt using half square triangles. This quilt will go into our Community Service quilt stash and will be given to a family when needed.  Great program.

Nancy in PA sent me these three great quilts to work with.  I did a simple meandering stitch on the first one and it came out wonderful!!  Again another perfect example that you don't have to have a fancy stitching to finish a quilt nicely.  We used a deep contrasting black thread for the next one.  NOT my style, but it's what Nancy wanted to do so I stepped out of my box for this quilt and LOVED the results!!  The last little quilt had so many cute little cats on it, so fun to work with!

Marsha in VT kept me busy with her quilts.  The first one is one that she did using the 2" strips at one of our guild's Sit & Sew Saturday.  It turned out fabulous!!  The second is a scrappy one that she works on continually.  She cuts all of her scraps into 5" lengths and then used a white strip to sash them with.  The finish quilt is great and a PERFECT way to use up those scraps!  The third quilt is a blue and yellow sampler, followed by a super sweet baby quilt and lastly a warm and cozy fall quilt.  They were all great quilts for me to work on, and now Marsha has 5 less unfinished tops-YAY, Marsha!!

Can you believe it???  THIS is what I've been up too!!  All of these and more! 

Yep, more!!  I've got one on the frame now (Karen) and I'm working

with Terry, you all know, Terry's Treasures, who has been so

 patient in my getting to her quilts. 

I've got three boxes (Judy Mc, Betty Lou and Anne Marie) that need postage

and emails written and I'm waiting for Judy S to let me know her box arrived.   And Tita called today tempting me to go on a road trip to Quilted Threads!! 

For more pictures of these great quilts head on over to the other blog you won't be sorry that you did, here's the link:

Insanely Cheap Quilting 

I probably won't post again until after the New Year, so I'd like to wish all of you a

Safe and Happy New Year!!!

Thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say............

Bedrunners?

Here's a picture of a bed runner that I quilted for Judy in NC a while back.  Judy always does a fabulous job on her piecing and makes my job super easy.

She also sent me this adorable little quilt.  The pictures do not do the quilt justice.

I believe she called this one Crisscross Applesauce.  The back of this one was as fabulous as the front.  But I can always count on Judy for sending me nothing but wonderful things to work with. 

I don't think I've been out of my room for the last 4 days! Thank heaven for the crock pot otherwise my family would starve.   I spent 5 hours on one quilt on Sunday and 2 and half hours on a bed runner for Brandy last night!  Both were just an edge to edge designs, nothing really that special.  I'm beginning to log the time spend on each quilt to get an idea on how much time I actually spend at the machine.

Speaking of...I'd better get back at it.  I'm just now getting to quilts that came in the first of November, so I am terribly behind.  I've posted more pictures of Judy's quilts at the other blog, you can check them out here:

Insanely Cheap Quilting

But before I go....anyone doing the SewMamaSew giveaway day? 

I'm thinking....yeah or nah? Do we really need it right now? 

Well, that's it off to do a load of laundry and try to get a quilt or two done today!

Thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say............... 

Quilts on Monday

Judi in VT sure can keep me busy!!  Most of her quilts are lap quilts, but they are fabulous!  The color combinations and the designs that Judi works with are amazing!!  I would say that Judi is very much the non-traditional quilter, throws caution to the wind and ends up with some very cool art quilts.  Here's the ones that I have recently worked on for her......

Cute little I Spy, not a traditional quilt for Judi, but a work of love.

Again, the color combo on these were amazing!! The fabrics were beautiful!

I think this is one of my very, very favorites!  the top is one piece of dyed fabric, and the bottom is a combination of many different pieces.  Judi appliqued some flying geese (used print on fabric) on this and it was stunning!!  I wish I had a picture of the finished quilt!

Don't forget that you can click on the picture for a closer look and as always I've posted more pictures on my other blog, check them out here:

Insanely Cheap Quilting

Hope you all had a super fabulous Thanksgiving with lots and lots of family and friends at your table.  All the kids were home and we had some friends from Indiana join us, it was a great Thanksgiving at our house.  The time passed much too quickly and the house got quiet faster than I would have liked for it too.

I'm off to finish a story about Sally the Left Handed Quilter for the guild, and a couple of other fun games to play at the December meetings.  Got a fun idea of using quilt block names to create words from Sue at Quilt Times.  Using EQ7 to make the words, managed to come up with a block for every letter except the Y and I'll be using "Yo-Yo's" for it.  It's going to be fun....I hope!!

Got to scoot...tons to do, and those quilts are screaming my name!!  Have a super duper wonderful week!

thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say.............

Yep, I've been busy or A Parade of Quilts

Recently I posted that gals love coming to pick up their quilts because they get to see all of the ones I have sitting around in my quilting space.  Can't call it a 'studio', don't know why, just something I've gotten hung up on way back in the scrapbooking days.  Everybody had a 'studio', not me I've got a 'space'.  More on that later.  Let's get to it shall we?

Bev in NH

OMG!!!!!  I just about couldn't let go of this cute little puppy dog quilt!!  Bev does such a fantastic job with her piecing and she keeps telling me she's a beginner.  If we all could quilt like Bev there would be no bubbles in the borders, open seams in the quilt, just

a perfect job.  Anyway here is the adorable little puppy quilt complete with

puppy paw prints.

This quilt was a gift for a friend of Bev's, another perfect quilt....

Andrea in NH

Andrea got my name and number from Karen (Kelsey's mom and I've got a Karen quilt on the frame now).  This lovely quilt had been laying around unfinished for a few years.  I got the impression that Andrea loved the quilt, but not the hand quilting. I can completely relate!!  So for about $35 she got the quilt machine quilted and here it is ready for binding....

Tudy in OH

Tudy is a blogger, and is Terry's Mom.  Terry always has great projects on her blog!  Just checked Tudy's Craft Cupboard and the gals have posted lots of pictures and a short story about Tudy's quilt.  The thing I love best about this quilt is the name of the quilting design, Emily.  Emily is Terry's daughters name and the quilting design looks beautiful on this great quilt.  Here's a picture that I have to share...

Betty in NH

This is the second quilt I've done for Betty, it is an adorable little girl's quilt with

lots of colors and pieces!  She did a fabulous job....

Sue in NJ

Sue has sent me a few quilts, but this one is the best yet!  Love the color combination of this one.  Sue now has another great quilt to add to her collection.

Gene in AL

We all know Gene from Gene Black an Alabama Artist he sent me his Lantern Quilt for quilting.  Here's a picture that I got before sending it back to Gene.

Sue in NH

This is another example that simple meandering can finish any quilt nicely.  Here's a quilt that I quilted for Sue, the charge was $35 and her quilt is just about done.  Looks great!!

Joyce in NC

The gals from North Carolina sure do keep me busy, but I see some super fabulous quilts working with them.  Here's the last batch that I got from Joyce, I think she's been working on or through her stash.  Some really great quilt here...

Well, that's it for today!  I still have more that I could post but I need to scoot the feet and get busy!!  Making all of those Thanksgiving plans to cook, picking up Marcy my sweetie daughter later today at the airport and hopefully some friends from Indy will be joining us too.

As always, I've posted more pictures of each one of these fantastic quilts on the other blog pop on over and check them out, you won't be sorry that you did!

Insanely Cheap Quilting

Thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say............

Catching up....

Things have been as crazy as always, but I'm beginning to see the light of day here.  My new co-position of programs chair at the guild is slowing down as Annette and I have set the schedule for next year and have signed on for a monthly Sit & Sew for our members.  Good thing, I'm slated to take over the prez. at the other guild that I belong too...I'm already having one way chats with many of the member about the guild.  More on that later, I want to take this post and get some things out of the way.

I received this wonderful PIF from Clara at Cannellaemele.  Clara lives in Italy, how cool is that?  Her blog name translated to English means cinnamon and apples, and it makes perfect sense!  Her wonderful blog is filled with examples of her hand work and often she shares pictures of her wonderful cooking.  If you'd like to see a little of Italy head on over to Clara's blog and become a follower.  She posts in Italian as well as English so it's a very easy read for those of us state side.  Okay, here's what she sent, isn't it adorable???

 Easier than trying to take picture of self while wearing apron...

 Isn't her hand work beautiful???

 My hubs is second generation Italian, I muddied the waters being of 'mut' decent.  I am lovin' this new book that Clara sent!

I've picked these as the first things I'm going to try.  Can't wait!!!

I've just about got all of the quilts that I've been working on in files and posted but not published in the Insanely Cheap Quilting blog.  I've shameless fallen waaaayyyyy behind and not posted since October 4th, which was about the same time I unloaded the camera.   I have no idea how many quilts I'm going to have to share, but I'm just going to post them all at once.  I've got more that I'm working on/with.

Off to the quilting room, need to get things in order for a guild meeting tonight and another quilt on the frame.  Thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say.......

Quilting Brings us together....

Just finished loading the retreat pictures and I've got tons to share.  Seems like my last few posts have been about friends.  I thought I'd start on the same note with the retreat pictures.

Retreats are fun.  You eat too much, usually sleep too little, some of us get a project or two further along in the process. But the absolute best part of retreats I have found to be spending time with the important people in your lives.  Just take a look at these pictures that I have today...

 Sisters Nancy and Eileen

 Had to take a couple...they were out of control.

 Sisters Nina and Suellen

 Sisters Anne and Mary

 Mom and daughter...Ruth and Gisela

Cousins Peggy and Penny

 

Friends Terry, Pat and Judy

 

Friends Linda, Josie, Betsy and Joyce

 

Friends Barb and Jane

This is what it's about....family and friends spending time together. This was my second retreat with this group and learning the stories behind the friendships was time well spent. I hope in the years to come I can learn more about these amazing women and their stories. 

To quote a line from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding "The men may be the head of the house but the women are the neck and they can turn the head anyway they want."  Yep, the men may have the illusion of being in charge but it is truly the strenght of women and their bonds that keep the world going. 

  It was a fabulous weekend thanks to everyone who attended.  More pictures and stories to come this week.  Hope you all had a fantastic weekend, I certainly did....

Thanks for checking on me,

hugs,

joanne

love to hear what you've got to say....................