I LOVE October!

Hexie Pumpkins

Not just because it is my birth month, but we have somewhat cooler temps in FL (80s instead of 90s) and pumpkin 'everything' comes out of everywhere:) and my FB feed gets bombarded with beautiful Autumn pictures that I am so envious of!  My energy levels jump off the charts (usually) when surrounded by all that color and crispness.  Here in FL not as much but I can feel a difference than before all the aforementioned.  I just want to design design design!

 

This year I haven't had as much time to do so since I was still playing a bit of catch up over my crazy summer and preparing for my trip to Virginia to teach workshops at the Fairfax Quilters Unlimited guild.  If you are in the area, contact them and come play!

Beaded Holly class



Seahorse Workshop

Make sure you tune in for the November, Quiltmaker 100 Quilt Blocks Blog Hop of which I will be participating in for the release of Volume 12.  I have a fun new block in there.
In other good news, I have 2 quilts to finish when I get home for upcoming magazines so stay tuned for that as well. 
If you read this particular post because of the pumpkins, maybe you don't know about my shoe BOM.  Scroll through a few other posts and if you are intrigued, you will want to watch for the fun October boot next week:))

In the meantime, keep quilting!

What have you been doing the last 2 months?? Part 1

Mid February I headed to North Carolina to visit my younger daughter.  From there I headed to Virginia to visit my mother and attend the Mancuso Mid-Atlantic show in Hampton, VA.  I have gotten very spoiled being juried into the show every year for the last 5 years.  This is my 2012 entry and soon to be pattern.  These colors just sing to me.

SimplySweet
Juried entry, Mancuso Mid-Atlantic show.

Simply Sweet detail

This quilt is hand appliqued, hand quilted, and hand beaded.  Quilt designs come easy to me but the actual quilting designs are harder...all that blank space is like looking at a blank piece of paper when you are expected to write something.  Thankfully over time the meditation of applique brought me some fun designs to play with and I was very happy with what I came up with.

SimplySweet detail of center.

In the second detail photo, you can see the actual quilting stitches that I did in different colors of variegated threads from Weeks Dye Works.  I used their floss for years when I cross stitched and was delighted to find they have quilting thread now too in lovely colors.

You can also see more of the beading.  Stopping was so hard and thankfully the deadline was there to tell me to stop beading.  At one point I wanted to bead the entire border...the gold beads looked so wonderful on the purple border!
In the first photo you can see the border beads just in the corners.

How do you know when to stop a project?

Shop Hop in NC

Here in southeastern North Carolina we are preparing for the annual shop hop called "Romancing Eastern North Carolina". From Wednesday 2/4- Saturday 2/7 come visit 8 shops from Jacksonville, Morehead City, Washington, New Bern, and Kinston.

Again this year I was asked to design a new pattern for The Quilted Butterfly in Morehead City. We decided to go with a small project that is useful, a stashbuster, as well as a doorway to the best addiction of all... beading:) Here is the "Sparkling Scissor Case".

I love the way beading can completely change the look of a fabric. The fabric used for this design was ideal for allowing someone to try their hand at beading by following the design of the fabric. They can embellish as much or as little as they would like. There are two sizes in the pattern for a 10" and a 7" case. You can see the difference in the fabric between the larger embellished case vs. the smaller unembellished case. I can't wait to make more of these.

Don't Go....

Have you ever been in a situation where you are making something for a challenge, swap, etc. and you realize that you absolutely love it and don't really want to send it? That is what happened with the piece you see below. It is a postcard made from a piece of tapestry with some beading...not very intricate but I love it.
It started out as part of a bigger piece that was trimmed down and so it became a leftover. I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago to enter it into a new life and fell in love with it's simplicity, color, and movement. Making this was good practice for the new piece I will eventually submit. I'm not usually worried about keeping something I love because I know another idea and /or design will come to me. This one took it's perfect place above my favorite wrought iron candelabra.