Pay it Forward

19 Comments

Now that Friday the 13th has come and gone, I want to talk about the upcoming holidays.
When the kids were little, we all gathered to watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas. Ya, I know kind of lame for teenagers but my husband still insists. Sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving I offer to cook (of course nothing entices grown boys to come see mama like a home cooked meal)and we all watch Pay it Forward. This movie is NOT for the little ones but it’s meaning is.
If you have not seen this movie, here is some of the info from the web.

Like some other kids, 12 year old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness
of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world
for the better. Unlike other kids, he succeeded.
Sometimes the simplest idea can make the biggest difference.

This brings me to Quilter’s!! YES! Who better pays it forward?

Quilter’s are the best people in the world, Right? Any disagreements ?
Just look at how quick Cherri House was to respond to the injured soldier’s at Ft. Hood. Quilter’s quickly jumped on board making and sending quilts.

This is my favorite book of the season, Quilt for Peace. The message is wonderful. The author, Katherine Bell has great projects and wonderful charities to make and sew for. This pretty much sums up a quilter’s heart and spirit.

What about Camille and the Kimberly at Fat Quarter Shop? Both of these people realized the power of “The Quilt” by raffling a quilt with all the money going to this sweet family.

Talk about a great project for a Stashbuster? Check out American Patchwork & Quilting’s,
A MILLION PILLOWCASE CHALLENGE. Does a million sound like a lot? It does if you are talking $$, but did you know there are over 800,000 kids in foster care in America?
Let’s get a pillow case in each of their hands!
How are you going to Pay it Forward?
The holidays are upon us and it is probably best not to send out cards such as these.
I am working now on Moda’s Christmas collections for 2010 so just in case I am snowed under,(Ha! Ha!) I am wishing you a Happy Holiday now a reminder that it is not to late to finish up those new year’s resolutions from 2009!

One last bit of info and kind of a tutorial:
Seems like everyone I know is having twins. This is my fourth set of twin quilts in the past year! All BOYS!! I am kind of liking making 2 at the same time. Deb Strain is the proud grandma of 2 little boys, Graham and Finnegan. I won’t post a tutorial on COIN QUILTS, because there are lots of good ones already out there. What I will post is my tip on being ready. Any of my leftover strips I keep adding to a running length of “Coins”. I have a couple of different ones hanging on my bulletin board and add to them constantly. I make good use of some of the fabrics I may have thrown in the trash. Instead I just keep adding them to the strips. I keep a bright fun kid one going along with what some may call a dark and dingy one.
I am ready at a minutes notice. All I have to do is choose the color of fabric to go in between my rows and how long I want to make the project.

The area in between is the perfect place to quilt the names, date of birth etc. I tell my quilter Maggie that I am just lazy and do not want to make a label so she is so kind to quilt it in for me.

Maggie also isn’t afraid to quilt with the moda snuggles. Makes a great backing!
Kuddos to all you quilters out there for spreading the love!!
Covering the world one quilt at a time!

November’s Fabricmatcher Challenge

4 Comments

Have you ever been to Fabricmatcher powered by Moda? Are you not quite sure of what fabrics you want to use for which pattern? Go to Fabricmatcher and play around. Choose from from designers such as

Mix and match from any of the hundreds of moda fabrics and viola! create your own variation of the original. Fabricmatcher will even print off the yardage requirements for you to be able to make the quilt. This is super easy to take to your favorite store, get the fabrics and pattern to start your project.

OR IF YOU WANT TO JUST START PLAYING, ENTER
November 2009 Contest:
The Fabricmatcher contest for November 2009 will be featuring
Pattern Designer, Cozy Quilt Designs.

The rules for the contest are as follows:
1 – You may use any Moda fabrics on your project.
2 – You must use a pattern designed by Cozy Quilt Designs that is available on our Moda Fabricmatcher website. Simply select Cozy Quilt Designs as the Designer under Find Patterns.
3 – Your project must be named Cozy Quilt in order to be eligible. You may enter as many projects as you wish, however they must have Cozy Quilt as the project name. Simply number them with a 1, 2, 3, etc. after the name.
4 – The November Contest will end on November 30, 2009 at midnight.
REMEMBER: You must have your Stash including your Projects available for the Public to view. You can change this in your profile settings.
The Moda Fabricmatcher judges and Daniela Stout of Cozy Quilt will select and announce the winning project in the month of December 2009. The winner of this contest will win a Fat Quarter Bundle from the Designer of their choice and a collection of autographed patterns by Cozy Quilt Designs. The winner will also be posted on our Moda Fabricmatcher website.

NOT SURE?

You can also shop for creativity by viewing some of the other quilts on Fabricmatcher.
Go to the Show & Tell area, choose a designer, click on the project tab. You will find
hundreds of digitally created options from other fabricmatcher members.

Enjoy!

Your Moda Fabricmatcher Team

quilt market and festival

7 Comments

I am back from Quilt Market and a day of Festival. Wow! What a great time! Everyone I met was such a delight! Lots of shopping, visiting and fellowship amongst the quilters!

A FEW QUILT MARKET PICS
Kelli Trimble and Melody Busch at Sample Spree

The next Moda BakeShop Sampler box was a big hit at Market. It is the cutest box of 12 different fabric collections – (40 – 2 1/2″ squares of each fabric from the collection) Also included in the box is a charm pattern booklet with an assortment of templates and the history of charm quilts from Barbara Brackman. Everyone here wants to buy 2, 1 to open and 1 to keep unopened. Run to your store (late November) and tell them you must have one.A picture of my latest quilt, Martinque by 3 sisters. I Love it and I think a
magazine is picking it up for a future publication! Yeah!

Six Degrees of Separation
You’ve probably heard of the Six Degrees of Separation concept. Any one person is connected to any other person through six or fewer relationships, because it’s a small world. There is a movie and a game devoted to this concept. The Kevin Bacon Game. ( for hours of mindless fun go here and test your movie trivia)

Due to the power of the Internet and social medias, the saying is quickly turning to 3 degrees of separation. Knowing someone is not actually ever meeting them in person, right?!
Well I wanted to introduce you to some of my 3 degrees of separations that I can now say I have met instead of just knowing them through the world wide web.Elise and Carry from our distributor in the Netherlands. They came to visit us between Market and Festival. I took them to visit Ft. Worth to see some “Texas Cowboy Stuff”. We couldn’t resist stopping by Cabbage Rose Quilt shop. I just had to take their picture
in front of the Texas flag door!
Karen and Rachel from Home ala Mode were busy having a great time at their first booth at Festival! Did you know there were moda home items? Apparently there were alot of people that didn’t and their booth was swarmed by anxious buyers. Crazy busy having fun!

I have had the pleasure of meeting Larisa and Rimma about a year ago, but was excited to see them again.

Larissa and Rimma along with several other Russian quilter’s put on a wonderful exhibit at Quilt Festival. This still applies to my 3 degrees theory because I did meet other friends of theirs from Russia. Beautiful exhibit. Great job! Read all about the Festival going Global.

Doug Leko from Silver Lane Quilting

I could go on and on about this young man. He is actually standing in front of the quilt he made for us. He is amazing! Remember his name because you will seeing it often in the future.
Also I have to mention his mother, Elaine. Good job, ma’am.

3 of the authors from the Moda Bake Shop came with their quilt shop.
Vicki from Mid-Ohio Knitter, Rachel from P.S. I Quilt, Julie from JaybirdQuilts
Lauren & Jessi Jung standing in front of their introductory collection, Botany.

And as my girl scout training taught me,
Make new friends but the keep the old.

I had to snap a picture of some of the moda crew enjoying a beautiful day at Festival.
and for my random picture……..
Just like every quilt shop has a holding area for the guys, we had a holding area for

Pep , Bruce and Hassen to watch all the activity.

Until next time…..

Lisssa

To Market To Market to buy a fat…. quarter

9 Comments


That Monica is a genius!! and so is Pam KittyMorning! This is so much fun!
By the way we are setting up a photography area in the moda booth so come on over with your buddies and snap a few pics! Of course you have to supply your own camera and poparotsy!!

Want another sneek peek about Market stuff? Read Lynne Hagmeier’s new blog!http://kansastroublesquilters-lynne.blogspot.com/

I can’t believe Market is almsot here. It is kind of like giving birth stretch marks included!
Thanks to all, see you there!

and the winner is…….

3 Comments

I had my very own random generator, pick a winner. Her name is Susan Stiff, so blame her if you didn’t win, hug her if you did. She drew 2 names from the hopper.

The winner is ……………………..opps I mean the winners are John from Cary,North Carolina and
She Sews and Scraps. Send me your shiping addresses. Thanks!Enjoy!

I will be at QUILT MARKET very soon. I will Tweet, blog, facebook and have a wonderful time. HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.

Just in case you have not checked them out, read sandy gervais’s blog for a behind the scenes look at her getting the quilts done for Market.

And check out what all is happening over at Sweetwater.

Tutorial

15 Comments
For those of you that do not know this, quilt Market is 2 weeks earlier this year. In the long run this will be a good thing but in the meantime I think it is STRESSING out a few people. I have been reading designers blogs who are designing, writing, sewing, stressing. Seriously, there is not enough Chocolate or Pizza to go around this time of year. Don’t believe me, just read Sandy Gervais blog. This time of year is like Christmas, you can’t change the date. It is coming no matter what. The only thing that is stopping it is the deadline. If Market was later, we would all try and do more and more and more. Look at it this way… now there will be more time between Market, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Opps didn’t mean to stress you out more !)
The girls are going to kill me but I have done this any way. DISCLAIMER: It is Saturday here, No makeup and they did not know what I was going to do with these pictures. I think they will be tooooooo busy to sign on to the computer until after Market.
Here is the tutorial: When you read this you MUST follow along and do it.!
STEP 1: RAISE YOUR RIGHT ARM STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR

Mariza and Esperanna- Sample DeptCarolyn- Queen of everythingSTEP 2: BEND YOUR ARM BACK AND TOUCH YOUR LEFT SHOULDER.Eladia and Outlaw-Sampling and book and pattern buyerSTEP 3: PAT YOURSELF ON THE BACK! GREAT JOB EVERYONE! (are you following along? Stand up and pat your self on the back. This is a tutorial you can do right now. Do it!)Sorry Outlaw but I had to use this picture. Outlaw always shuts her eyes in pictures so I clicked the camera quick to try and get her. PRICELESS!Pat someone else on the back, then laugh and have some fun! Okay back to work!!

Giveaway

202 Comments
Giveaway?
Did that catch your eye?

I just recieved a copy of the new Holiday Issue of McCall’s quilting December 2009 issue. I was excited to see my quilt made the cover, AGAIN… folded and stacked with designers such as Chloe and Colleen from Toadusew, Sarah and Delores from Homestead Hearth and a dear friend, Gerri Robinson from Planted Seed Designs. And of course much more inside.
I do not know if you know of the MANQUILTER, but he is who quilted this quilt so I thought I would give him a shout out also. Isn’t that a great word, Manquilter? Of course you have to say it in a deep voice for the full effect.
Yes I said giveaway… keep reading.
The gals at McCall’s are so clever. They did a quilt option using the same pattern but did it in 30’s fabrics and used embroidered tea towels as the centers. Just that idea alone is worth running to the store to pick up your own copy. (pg 64)
Also there is an ad on page 49 from moda about something new available in stores late October. Clue- Fanfare Gift Wrap. Check it out.
Here’s the deal. Thanks for reading to the end.
The giveaway is for a magazine and my scraps from this collection. Scraps?! I have good scraps and after all it is a free giveaway. Rounneries will be in stores soon, so once you win my scraps you can order all kinds of yardage from your favorite shop.
I mean run to the stores this group is going to go fast!
Just make a nice comment and you will be entered. Drawing will be September 30th.