Creativity takes many forms around here, and it’s not always quilting. Today LittleOne and I spent most of the day scrapbooking and making cards at the Gussy Goose. Beside the two pages for her scrapbook featuring some pictures from Girl Scout Camp, she made these cards so that she could write thank you notes to family for Christmas gifts:

I made some of my own, with some bits of papers and lace I already had, and the only piece of really cool floral paisley paper with glitter that the store had left:

I could have made more (I should hope, since we were there for five+ hours!) but I did help LittleOne a bit with her cards, and I’ve also come to a conclusion about this scrapbooking/cardmaking thing: It’s just about the same as quilting in a certain way, when it gets right down to it. Quilters have huge stashes of fabric and other supplies at home (at least all the ones I know anyway), and I have a feeling scrappers are the same with their papers.

I’ve never been able to walk into any quilt shop and purchase all the fabrics for a quilt all at once, because the shops never have all the fabrics I need all at the same time. Whether this is because I’ve never lived anywhere that had a quilt shop that constantly carried an enormous number of bolts of fabric (thinking of 7,000 to 10,000 bolts as enormous here), or whether it’s just because Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s National Quilting Day on Saturday, March 17th! What will you do to celebrate? Here’s a few ideas:

Visit the National Quilting Association website to find out more about National Quilting Day. Visit the Virginia Consortium of Quilters for a list of Games for National Quilting Day (these would be great for a quilt retreat too!).

Go to a quilt show! Check out the Dallas Quilt Celebration, The Cabin Branch and Stone House Quilters Quilt Show, The Glendale Quilt Guild Quilt Show, The Broward Quilt Expo, The Seaway Trail Foundation’s Quilt Show, or The Quilters Anonymous Quilt Show, just for starters. If you’re in my area, check out the Gussy Goose Craft Shop’s Quilt Show! Yes, despite the fact that the big spring bazaar is going full steam this weekend and the parking situation is madness (more than the usual madness at Patch Barracks!), the Gussy Goose is open, and presenting their annual Quilt Show.

Can’t get there? Grab some friends and have a Quilting Bee! Visit your LQS and buy fabric to start a new quilt project, then spend the rest of the weekend quilting! Or, get out a UFO or WISP (I know you have them!) and quilt all weekend so you can make some progress.

At the very least, snuggle up under a quilt and watch a movie like How to Make an American Quilt or read a book like The Quiltmaker’s Gift with your child.

What will I be doing? Hangin’ out at the Gussy Goose, presenting machine quilting demonstrations, signing books and CD’s, and then later, hosting a Quilt ‘til You Wilt with my quilting buddies until the wee hours on Sunday! I’ll also be machine quilting a UFO: an Irish Chain quilt that I pieced for a class a few years ago, and I marked it and started the quilting while I was in the States with Dawn for the Gaudynski workshop (I’m showing a sneak peek of the quilting that I already have done here). Whatever you do for the day, stop back by and share!

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It’s looking better than it was on Sunday, anyway. I went to the fabric shops as planned today, and didn’t find exactly what I needed (now why doesn’t that surprise me??), but did find some hopefuls. I didn’t get to play right away though, because the day was rather full, with an appointment to make my hair behave again bright and early (note to self: no more appointments out of the house before 10:00 a.m.!). So, at 7:45 a.m., I’m cruising through morning traffic to make it to my 8:00 hair appointment more or less on time.

I took a new quilt book with me, as well as my fiction fix of the moment just in case the quilt book didn’t keep me occupied long enough for my hair to lose it’s dark roots and be beautiful again. I just got Puzzle Quilts by Paula Nadelstern in the mail from Amazon last week, and haven’t really looked at it completely yet. This wonderful book completely occupied me for my whole appointment, and I’ve still not gotten through it all. It’s not even that long, just so absolutely stunning and absorbing that I was happy to just stare at the beautiful quilts and blocks in it. A more complete review will follow, but I don’t want to get sidetracked with that quite yet.

Back to the creativity/fabric issue. After the hair was taken care of, I headed over to Patchcom to visit Birgit, in hopes of finding the perfect fabric to solve my current quilting woes. Well, the perfect fabric wasn’t there, but I did pick up a couple of things (who can resist??), one of which I thought might help the problem, if not solve it precisely, and the other was just a “gotta have” fabric. I made my way to the Gussy Goose after that (via the insurance company to renew the insurance on the house and DH’s truck since it’s that time again), and there was no perfect fabric there either, Read the rest of this entry »

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