January 25, 2010 – Freedom Star Block #4 – The Indianapolis Colts Ohio Star
Filed under: Block of the Week, Free Patterns, quilting
Indianapolis Colts Ohio Star
This week we will be making a variation of the Ohio Star Block. I designed this block in honor of the Indianapolis Colts and their victory yesterday over the NY Jets. Now they move onward to the Superbowl, February 7, 2010 where they will have to face the New Orleans Saints. If you are a Saints fans, do not worry, I will have a block for your team next week. And if you are not a football fan at all, I have given you an alternate coloring for the Ohio Star in the Freedom Stars red, white and blue color way.
I was pretty sure the Colts team colors were blue and white, but I went to their website to get the Official colors. The blue is listed as “speed” blue. I do not know what “speed” blue is, but I think my color selection is pretty close. And I have added a bit of gold, for the horseshoe, as an accent color. This block is fairly simple to make, and if you do not already know how, you will learn how to cut and sew quarter-square triangles.
Complete directions for the Freedom Star Block #4 - The Indianapolis Colts Ohio Star Block can be found under Free Block Patterns – 2010 Block of the Week “Freedom Stars” or just CLICK HERE.
Happy Quilting!
Betty
January 22, 2010 – Frame it on Friday
Today I will be taking my Sudoku quilt off of my quilting frame. It is not finished, I still need to quilt the borders. But I am packing it up and taking it with me to our vacation/retreat home “Pieceful Cottage”. I hope to be there for a full week, so I am taking lots of quilting to work on. I will set up my sewing machine in the sunroom and play soft music on the ipod.
My main objective for going to the cottage is to get the kitchen re-done and ready for quilters and renters this spring. I will be re-painting all of the kitchen cabinets from a dark old oak stain to a cheerful, bright white. We are having a new kitchen counter and sink installed, and we are shopping for a stand alone kitchen center island (doubles as a cutting table). We are also trying to get the floors changed over from rug to wood. For those of you that have visited already, you will need to come back this year and see our new look.
My postings may be scarce this week, we have no high speed internet connection at the bay house (we rely on our Blackberries for e-mail). To get the internet I will have to travel up to Princess Anne and visit the public library. Do check in on Monday, I plan to get the new Freedom Star Block posted by the end of the day.
Happy Quilting!
Betty
January 21, 2010 – My Favorite Quilt Group
Every first and third Thursday morning, you will find me meeting with my favorite quilt group, Fairfax QU. This is a wonderful group of quilters who join together to share and learn. Today we were entertained with a slide-show/ lecture/ trunk show presented by Mary Kerr entitled “Vintage Revisited: The Anatomy of a Challenge”. It was an inspirational talk about a quilt challenge issued to 19 quilters. Each quilter was given one of an identical set of vintage quilt blocks, and they were to make a 24″ x 24″ quilt designed around that block. It was interesting to see each quilter’s interpretation of the old block made new. You can read more about this challenge at her website: www.marykerr.com.
Fairfax QU is part of a larger quilt group known as Quilters Unlimited of Northern Virginia (QU). It is composed of 11chapters with of over 1,000 members! This year, Quilters Unlimited will host its 37th Annual Quilt Show on June 4-6, 2010 at the Dulles Expo Center, Chantilly, VA (just west of Washington, DC). Hours: 10-6 (Fri & Sat); 10-3 (Sun). Cost: $10 per day; $20 for 3-day pass. This year’s theme is “Quilts Tell a Story.” At the show you will enjoy over 600 quilts, dolls & wearables. There will be free demonstrations and over 80 vendors! You can sign up in advance for classes from nationally-known quilt teachers. Discounts for pre-arranged bus groups are available. For more information, please visit the Quilters Unlimited website: www.quiltersunlimited.org .
Each year one of the 11 chapters is responsible for creating the raffle quilt for the show. I am especially proud of this year’s quilt as it was appliqued and pieced by members of my Fairfax QU Chapter. Here is a photo and more information about the raffle quilt.
 www.thirdeyephotog.com. |
This is the 37th Annual Quilt Show raffle quilt which is a Pam Clarke design, appliquéd and pieced by the Fairfax Quilters Unlimited Chapter. It was machine quilted by Christy Dillon and measures 92″ X 92″.
The drawing for this beautiful quilt will be held on Sunday, June 6, 2010 @ 3:00 PM at the Quilters Unlimited Quilt Show. Tickets cost $1.00 each or 6 for $5.00. You need not be present to win.
Betty
January 20, 2010 – Winter Quilt Retreat
There are still openings in the Winter Quilt Retreat at Pieceful Cottage and if you sign-up with a friend you both save $25.00! Cost $275.00/quilter for 3 nights lodging, all meals , pattern and lessons. Fabric and supplies are extra.
Winter Skies Wall Hanging - Pattern $8.00
Winter Skies Wall Hanging - Pattern $8.00
February 4-7, 2010
Winter Skies Wall Hanging
a “Learn to Quilt” Retreat
This quilt is designed for new quilters and quilters who want a re-fresher course. Learn great techniques for rotary cutting, piecing and pressing. You will also get great tips for basting and machine quilting while making this adorable “Winter Skies” Wall Hanging.
Your DreamCastle Quilt Retreat will start shortly after your 6:00PM arrival on Thursday night. The welcome to the bay includes a “Wine, Cheese and Chocolate Party” with a special treat of Smith Island Cake. You will spend the first evening socializing and getting settled in at the cottage.
Friday morning generally starts with an 8:00AM continental breakfast, including, oatmeal, fruit, yogurt, muffins along with coffee, tea and juice. The first session of your class begins promptly at 9:00 AM and goes until Noon. After lunch you will have some free time to take a walk, or snuggle in a chair to read a book for a while. The afternoon quilting session starts at 2:00PM and goes until 5:00PM. Dinner will be served around 6:30PM and your evening hours are free. You may want to sew some more, or just watch a movie.
Lunch usually consists of soup, salad and sandwich. Dinners vary by season, but always include healthy foods with lots of fresh vegetables, and local fish when available.
On Saturday you will start quilting again right after breakfast with another three hour session from 9:00AM to Noon. You will have the rest of the day to sew, relax, take a walk or watch the sunset. There will be a late dinner served at 7:30 PM with more wine and chocolate!
On Sunday you can sleep in or get up early and take a walk. Brunch will be served at 10:00 AM followed by your final sewing session from Noon to 3:00PM. Your retreat will end with a late afternoon snack while you share your work at show and tell, with an opportunity to take plenty of pictures and exchange e-mails with your new quilting friends.
So what are you waiting for, sign-up today!
Betty
January 20, 2010 – Electric Quilts with EQ6
I have been designing quilts on my computer with the help of Electric Quilt ever since EQ1 when it was a DOS program. Now I own the latest version EQ6, along with some cool add-on programs like Block Base. These programs allow me to take almost any quilt design that is in my imagination and draw it out on the computer. I am lucky to have some local quilters that also own the program and we have formed an EQ Club. We get together on a monthly basis and challenge ourselves with virtual quilts. Last year we worked on a color study and this year we will be working on a row-by-row quilt that will go into our local quilt auction.
My quilt designs so far have been fairly traditional. Blocks can be pulled from the program’s memory and used as they are or combined with other blocks to create new quilts. I can also take a block from the memory and add or subtract lines to make a new block. Then the program gives me a choice to print out templates patterns, paper-piecing patterns or rotary cutting directions for the block. EQ is also a useful program to help me prepare my teaching materials. I can capture block images and put them into a word document, or save them as a photo document to publish on the web.
So far my applique skills have been limited on EQ, but this year in our EQ club we will be working to improve that. Using the Applique Drawing book published by EQ , we will go over one lesson a month and master the applique features presented. There are six lessons in the book so we hope to finish lesson six in June. This should be a fun way for us to learn together and challenge ourselves to design applique blocks.
The EQ6 program lets me store all the quilt ideas that I have bouncing around in my head. Some of these designs will eventually turn into quilts, and others will just stay in the file program. Sometimes I start out designing one quilt, but I can end up with as many as 25 – 30 quilts with different color version in my EQ sketchbook. I am certain that I have more electric quilts designed than I could ever possibly have time to stitch out. So, I pick out the best quilts, and try to stitch them out, leaving the rest in my virtual EQ imagination files.
Betty
Do you have an EQ club, either on-line or through your guild? Wouldn’t it be fun to get together at Pieceful Cottage for an EQ Escape weekend! Call me for more details on creating your own custom EQ Quilt retreat.
January 19, 2010 – The real “Chocolate Factory”
This past weekend we traveled to NYC. We took a bus from Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. The bus stop was located near a McDonald’s, a nice place to stay warm and get some coffee while waiting. Our only difficulty was finding a parking spot. The parking lots are open during the week, and on Saturday, but not on Sundays. We would have had no way to retrieve our car late Sunday night on our return trip. We did finally find parking in a hotel lot. I suspect most of the bus riders get dropped off, or they come into the bus stop through the Rosslyn Metro Station. Next time, we’ll take the Metro. The bus ride was smooth and efficient with no stops, all the way to NY. We were dropped off just outside of Macy’s on 34th Street. It cost us just $25.00 each one way. When you figure gas, tolls, and the cost to park your car in NY, this was quite a bargain.
Our purpose in visiting NY was to watch our daughter and her entire swim team at a meet on Saturday. They won. So that was exciting. Of course, we wanted to spend time with our daughter, Kelly, so we took her out to dinner. We found a nice quiet Italian restaurant where we could sit and chat and eat good food. She loved it since we were paying. We tried to get tickets to a Broadway Show, but were unsuccessful, so the three of us ended up watching the football game from the TV in our hotel room. It was all good.
Sunday was a messy day with lots of rain. Hard to enjoy the city or to even walk around with the rain coming down in buckets. So we slept in, of course! Our daughter told us of a great place to eat brunch, and we were to meet there at noon. All that I knew about this place was that they served great hot chocolate and had lots of other chocolaty items on the menu. When we entered Max Brenner’s my first thought was this place looks like a chocolate factory. There was little on the menu that did not include the word chocolate somewhere in the description. If you are a true chocolate lover this is the place for you! The hot chocolate comes in three flavors of chocolate, dark, milk and white and is served in a cute little Hug Mug. I did not know to ask for the hug mug so mine came in a regular glass. But it was still delicious. My husband, Tom, ordered a butterscotch milkshake, mmm! very good. For food, I ordered the Pearl Sugar Waffles, banana split version, and Kelly got the Tutti Frutti waffles. The waffles came on a plate with a scoop of ice cream and chocolate sauce to pour over all of it. What a sugar and chocolate rush. Tom refrained from ordering food, he knew he would have to help us finish ours. What a great NYC experience. We found the real “Chocolate Factory” and I loved it!
Betty
Register today for the next Quilt Retreat weekend!
February 4-7, 2010 Winter Skies Wall Hanging - a “Learn to Quilt” Retreat
January 18, 2010 – Freedom Star Block #3 Nine Patch Star
Freedom Star Block #3 – Nine Patch Star
This week’s block is a simple yet elegant nine-patch variation. I was inspired to create this block to go along with the nine-patch exchange from my Worker Bee. Look for the complete directions under the Tab at the top of this page marked Free Block Patterns – 2010 Block of the Week “Freedom Stars” or just Click here.
Watch what happens when a few of these blocks are combined into a quilt. I love the way the star points form a secondary circular design. I also think this block would look great in many different color combinations or made from batik fabrics. Give it a try.
If you send me photos of any finished blocks/quilts, I’ll post them into a gallery page to share with everyone.
Betty
January 15, 2010 – Frame it on Friday
Sudoku Quilt
Today is Friday the day that I place a new quilt top on my quilting frame. I have chosen to get my Sudoku quilt finished. A Sudoku is a number puzzle solved by placing a unique number 1-9 in each block of 9 squares on a 3×3 grid. For more information about Sudoku puzzles and their history see this wikipedia article.
My husband solves the Sudoku puzzles published in our daily paper and struggles with the Samuri Sudoku puzzles in the Sunday paper. So, I gave him this quilt top for his birthday.
To make this quilt I started with a Sudoku puzzle solution that my husband had solved. For each number 1 to 9, I assigned a bright batik fabric. I had to be very careful about my fabric placement and keep the fabric squares in the same order as the puzzle solution. I used Kona black as my background fabric. The finished quilt is about 48″ x 48″.
I think I will quilt it with black thread. In each fabric square I will quilt the outline of a large block number representing the number 1-9 which the fabric was assigned from the Sudoku solution. In the borders I will quilt some mathematical formulas.
If you are interested I will be offering a quilt retreat the weekend of May 13-16, 2010, where you can make your own version of a Sudoku Quilt. The retreats are held at our vacation home “Pieceful Cottage” in Deal Island, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The weather in May is just delightful, you can spend your time quilting, taking walks, reading, or just sitting on the screened porch, enjoying the view of the water.
Betty
January 14, 2010 – Just Do IT!
One of the quilt bees that I belong to is named the Worker Bees. It’s a great name because we do a lot of projects. We trade blocks, or fabric, and work on quilts for our auction. Any member can propose a project, and the members who want to join in, just sign-up. One project we are working on this year, is a 9-patch block exchange. For the first six months we exchanged 9-patch blocks made up of five dark colored patches and four cream colored patches. Each month we made blocks of a different color way following the ROYGBIV rainbow scheme from red to purple (we combined indigo and violet into purple). This year we will be exchanging 9-patch blocks made up of five cream colored patches and 4 dark colored patches. Again following the ROYGBIV color scheme, one color per month. There are about 7 of us in the exchange, and we are making two blocks per month for each person, plus one for the auction. So I had 16 blocks to make. At the end of six months I should have 84 blocks. I will combine them with the ones from the first 9-patch block exchange into one large quilt. I can not wait to get started.
This month we are also exchanging “ARROW” blocks. Only four of us are participating in this exchange. It was initiated by a member who wanted finished blocks for her daughter’s graduation quilt. The arrow is a simple paper-pieced arrow made up of 4 pieces. We are making up 4 blocks for each participant and each of us got to decide on our color way. My colors are road-sign yellow for the background with black arrows. I think after I get my blocks together, I will embroider messages in the arrows, like “EAT YOUR PEAS!”. I had 16 blocks to make.
The deadline is this morning 10AM. I worked hard yesterday to get the 16 blocks finished for both exchanges. A total of 32 blocks. I have learned from past experience, that missing the deadline, just means getting myself into trouble. More projects will pop up next month with new deadlines. And it just gets harder to get it all done. I am proud of myself for finishing what I signed-up to do, on time. And so my motto for this year is “Just Do It!”
Betty
January 13, 2010 – Peppermint
I have always loved the flavor of peppermint. I am a tea drinker and peppermint tea is one of my favorite choices. Last year for Christmas, I received a whole canister of loose peppermint tea from my son. What a treat. Mint and chocolate together is especially good, think Girl Scout thin mints or York Peppermint Patties!
It is possible that I love peppermint so much, because I can “smell” the menthol that it releases. I was born with fairly rare genetic disorder known as “Kallmann Syndrome”. See Kallmanns.org for more info. Because of this syndrome, I have no sense of smell. Yes, I can still taste, but if the pizza in the oven is burning and I was standing right next to the oven, I would never know. Last Christmas, when I opened that canister of peppermint tea leaves, I had a sensation that was the closest thing to smell that I can experience.
Each year we hang candy canes on our Christmas trees, and each year I take them down and wonder what to do with them. We have two kinds, the original red and white striped peppermint canes and the newer, chocolate mint one’s made by Hershey’s. This year I stood the leftover canes up in a fancy glass on our kitchen counter. And now every time that I make a cup of hot chocolate, or my morning tea, I plop in a candy cane and watch it melt. The Hershey’s Chocolate Mint canes are very good in the hot chocolate, and I use the plain one’s to sweeten my tea. The melted candy cane serves as my spoonful of sugar in more ways than you might think. Peppermint is known to help with nausea, digestion, headaches, anxiety, depression and skin irritations. To find out more go to the UM Medical Center Reference site. It seems to me that this is a great way to use up all those candy canes, sweeten my morning drink, and have a healthier start to my day.
Betty