Want to see my winning quilts? (two i made won ribbons and two of my customer’s quilts won as well!!!)

You can find the winners and photos of the winning quilts here:
2011 Crossroads Harvest Of Quilts Show Winners!

You can also see ALL the quilts that were entered into this years show here:
Crossroads Harvest of Quits 2011 on WebShots.com

More quilt show pics coming in the next few days!

If you would like to see the photos yo can find them by clicking the photo below!

Yes, i did wear my PJ’s outside to take the photos, but then again so did my two nieces so at least we all matched!

First off, my room is now 95% complete, only missing the new closet doors and some furniture then i will post you some after photos! I must say it looks pretty darn good!

Secondly, Ice. That’s it just Ice.

Mother Nature has it in for me i swear. Last week my area was blessed with our first big storm of the year. And unfortunately it was a Ice storm. many family and friends were without power, some still are.  Snow we can all handle, we are all use to the snow. It’s the Ice that causes problems. Trees break, fall on power lines and boom, no power. Or some idiot that didn’t listen to the raido or tv reports that said DO NOT GET OUT ON THE ROADS got out on the roads and crashed into a power pole putting a whole town in the dark. The ice fell on top of a layer of half melted snow. Then we got a layer of sleat (close to two inches) on top of the ice, then we ended up with, what the local weather station called a light dusting of snow on top of that. Well the light dusting turned out to be over 51/4″ of snow. Remind me the next time the weather guys say a light dusting i should probably be prepared for more! Schools were out every wear, my nieces spent a few days with my why mom and dad worked. i had wanted to get back to quilting last week but thanks to the power flickering on and off at less than scheduled times i was afraid to even plug the machine in.

now i am a week behind on my schedule and i have to rearrange everything, darn it the year just started and i am rescheduling everything!

Why me?!

Anyway, i have some photos of the ice and snow to share but they are still uploading. I’ll try posting them later tonight for you all to see!

Sunday was sewing day with the Nine Patchers Quilt Group at the Kluthie Building in Beecher City.  The other girls worked on quilt projects, some personal stuff, and some worked on Charity quilts. it was kind of a mash up kind of day. We also talked about our upcoming quilt show (I’ll talk about this in another post) I however am still without a sewing machine that doesn’t eat fabric so i decided to bring along my supplies to get my Cricut Cartridges organized.

I had been looking online for some better storage solutions that a shoe box and cam across a post about using a Snapware Ribbon box and some plastic canvas to make a great little storage container. I was lucky to find the ribbon box at Joann’s for 50% off and used it to make my “old” storage box. Old meaning it used it for like a week before i “improved” on the ideal and made a new one. This was the first time i have purchased Snapware, it’s not available locally so it takes a shopping trip to find. I must say i became a fan rather quickly. looking at the many boxes available i could see a number of ideals for organizing the my numerous crafting and sewing supplies!

The Ribbon box worked well only it would not hold the same amount of books as it would the cartridges. in other words it held all my cartridges and only half the books. At first i thought i did something wrong but nope, apparently a lot of people that use this storage method dispose of there books and just keep the overlays. Sorry Peeps, but I NEED MY BOOKS! The ribbon box just wasn’t going to work for me. So i picked up another Snapware box, this time at Target and decided to give it a try. it took a little trial and error to figure out how to cut the canvas but I think it turned out pretty good. i made enough spaces to hold Fifty carts, more than i own so i have room to grow. In the other portion of the same layer of the box i took some plastic canvas and made a tray that will hold my Cricut tools, Extra blades, and such. This also served to hold the cartridge divider in place and not sliding all over the box! Well it will hold them as soon at i can get to them, right now they are stuck somewhere in my bedroom closet! The second layer of the Snapware box is for my Cartridge Books and Overlays.

yes the box will probably be pretty heavy once its is full, but it’s OK as i do not ever figure i will be taking them all with me if i join in a crop or travel to a friends house to scrapbook. I’ll keep my little Ribbon box to use for that! here are some photos of the completed box, let me know what you think!

The Completed Box

Still have room to buy some more!

Even more room for Books and Overlays!

Both layers of the open Storage box

First off, lets start with the remodel. I took up all the trim around the edge of the room so i could take up the yucky flooring. I was told it would damage the drywall, i was prepared for it, but i got lucky, very little damage! Just gonna have to do a few quick fixes, nothing major. My flooring guys (that would be the guys on DIY network!) say that you need to start taking the floor up exactly were you stopped putting it down. OK, start were i stopped easy enough… WRONG! That flooring was a pain in the, well you know. I tried and tried and tried to get that first piece of flooring to lift up, nothing i did worked! i couldn’t get a screwdriver under it nor could i wiggle the pry bar under it! I wiggled and jiggled and screamed! After about a hour of trying to get the darn pry bar under the darn flooring i gave up, went to the door way, stuck the pry bar under the floor that had a edge exposed and presto! The flooring is now gone! Yes the first few pieces were a pain but it was a heck of a lot faster than trying to start at the edge of the room! I remember when we put the flooring in, it took us a couple of days to do the full room, well it only took a couple  hours to take up the floor in the blue half of the room including taking it out to the dumpster!

(Mya wondering what i’m doing)

(flooring and padding ready to go to the dumpster!)

Now the flooring cam up yesterday, today however was a much more “fun” kinda day.

It started with me oversleeping, nothing new there i do it all the time its a perk when you work for yourself. Anyway, i was going to finish up fixing the holes in the drywall… only i couldn’t find the plaster. Yes that’s right, i have lost a two gallon bucket 2/3 of the wall full of plaster. I can’t find it anywhere! i have looked looked and looked all over the house, in every room, in every closet, and in every trash can. It has officially grown legs and walked off! OK, no big, i can just paint the ceiling, its ready to go. WRONG!

I went to get one of the two new paint rollers i purchased this summer, can’t find them, made a call to Aunt G’s office and she reminded me we used them this fall to paint the propane tank and that they are hanging outside. great they are gonna be rusted such fun. So i tracked out into the snow to get the roller only to discover she didn’t take the messy paint filled roller covers off before she hung them up. The roller covers wont come off, the paint we used to paint the tank is dried (duh!) and the covers are totally stuck to the rollers. OK no paint today. I’ll just start taking down some of the trim in the Pink half of the room after all i got to do something to keep my occupied.

You see there is a archway between the blue half and the pink half. It “was” trimmed out in some beautiful Oak trim, but when i took up the flooring i noticed it was going to have to be replaced because the new flooring is not as thick as the old yucky floor so down it was going to have to come.

Oh don’t get me wrong, it came down just fine. The two side pieces popped right off, the angled pieces fell off like they weren’t even attached to anything and the top center piece….

fell right down on my head.

Yap, now i have a headache, a gash on the top of my head, and i have gotten nothing done today.

At this point i didn’t care, i was DONE. I took care of the cut on my head then grabbed a cup of coffee, some popcorn, propped myself up in my favorite chair, covered up with a quilt and watched a movie!

Whoever is trying to tell me i don’t need to fix up my room… please go away, leave me alone, let me finish it already!

My day was a very long day… how was yours?!

OK, i feel better, for now!

Slowly, very very slowly. That is how tings are going. I forget how much work it takes to remove oak trim without damaging it so it can be used again, and yes it will be put right back were i took it off from but i have to remove it so I can get that nasty laminate flooring up and the new tile down! i hate the ideal of painting oak trim, but it will look best that way in the new room. Right now i am thinking of going with a Crackle paint treatment for the trim but it all depends on if i can find the supplies needed. Have to make a trip to the local Menard’s and see what i can find. I was going to do just that today but no such luck!

YES! We got snow! SNOW SNOW SNOW!

I love snow!

Can you tell?!

The trees were very pretty.. for a bit, then the wind picked up and the snowy trees lost there snow and the roads once again became a bit trick to travel on.

Anyway, the trim is removed from the “blue” side of the room and i have started doing the wonderfully fun job of patching the drywall. Who put all them holes in my wall in the first place? i don’t remember ever having that much stuff hanging on my walls… ever! If you have never had to patch drywall count yourself lucky. Sand a bit, fill the hole with filler, wait for it to dry, sand again, and if you are OH SO LUCKY you get to start all over again on the exact same spot!

Tomorrow I’ll start taking up the flooring in the blue half of the room, i think i might feel like i have gotten something done if i get some of that yuck out of the house! Why did i let everyone convince me int he first place that i would like the laminate flooring? Yes it was easy to clean, not it doesn’t last forever, it scratches, it chips, and you can’t do anything to repair it when it does! Oh and heaven forbid if someone would spill something on the floor and not tell you about it until it had a chance to soak in, cause if you don’t clean it up ASAP the edges of the laminate will start to curl, and once the curled edges dry they are sharp and can (will!) cut the bottom of your feet. I got the scar to prove it! I wish i had gone with the tile in the first place but nope i let others tell me what i wanted… i really hate “others”!

You see i have a love hate relationship with our local FedEx delivery. Why you ask? Because they can’t seem to find my house… EVER! I live right on a main highway, i have given them directions i don’t know how many time as to how to get here i even once hung red balloons from the mail box and still, they couldn’t find me. They say i have to give them my “physical address” Well i gave them the only address i have. I even went to the local post office that delivers my mail and asked them if they could tell me what my physical address was. I was happy no one other than me and the two postal workers were their at the time, i swear every time they see me they start laughing. You see i live in the country, no 911 in my county, no street address, no fancy numbers to put out on the mailbox. Just a Rural Route and a box number that FedEx says is a post office box not a home address. I hate FedEx. Why is UPS can find my and FedEx can’t? Why is it they can find my next door neighbor’s house, who has the same type of address i have, but they can’t FIND ME!

Stop,

Breath.

Count to ten,

Take a deep breath,

With life gives you lemons, make a Margaretta… or three!

Anyway, thanks to my aunt working in the local town i am able to have them drop shipments off with her, cause they can find her. But they can’t find little old me in the only blue house on this stretch of highway, that is in drastic need of painting, With the larger than average black mail box with Red lettering, that has the same junk car setting in the driveway at all time, has a big old ugly dog  in a homemade kennel next to the drive way, a sidewalk that seems like a mile long when i am packing in groceries every Saturday, and at least a dozen cats sleeping on said sidewalk.

Saturday “they” were supposed to deliver a package for me, i knew it wouldn’t arrive. They couldn’t get into my aunt’s office, the school is closed on Saturdays after all. They did however leave it at my Aunts office this morning and this is what i got….

new Cartridges

Ten New Cricut Cartridges! All on sale of course! Purchased online at www.cricutmachien.com if you have a Cricut you should check the site out, they have GREAT, and i mean GREAT DEALS! The most expensive one in this order cost me only 18.00! Most of them were only 15.00!

Now to get my room finished so i can actually use the things!

We have a great guild, and once again Sue W. was in charge of the raffle quilt for our next show. Sue has been in charge of the raffle quilt for the past few years, and has a great group to help her out when it comes to making the quilt top. This year they chose a Burgoyne Surrounded pattern. The fabrics were purchased (i believe) at our local quilt shop Angie’s Nine Patch in Effingham IL, and Quilters Dream Poly batting was used with a white on cream backing fabric. I used a Dyed natural thread as it matched very well with the all the colors of the fabric, saving some time not having to change colors of thread!

i have quilted this particular pattern only once before, but i wanted to do something “more” quilting wise for the raffle quilt. What a great time to get quilt block huh?! i ended up taking a few photos of the quilt, printed them out and used them to sketch the quilting designs on until i found a set of designs that i liked. I was also a bit leery with this years quilt as a couple of guild members were overheard at last years show saying that the quilt had to much quilting on it. I wanted to have that WOW factor but i didn’t want to do to much to take away from the quilt pattern itself. This made it harder to come up with the designs for the quilting! Feathers,of course, (in the background area) had to be included as they always draws attention to the quilt, and i decided to go with a simple piano key border, simple yes but every quilter in my area loves the treatment so i went with it! i did some simple lines in the actual design portion of the quilt block to keep the flow going, then add in a few swirls and it done! I am concerned that the quilting is not consistent over the entire quilt. The feathers are more close together than the lines and swirls but i think with the batting used it will be OK, i think!

See how the feathers swirls around in the same direction? I had to watch this lick a hawk! I had to frog a section as i quilted the feathers the wrong way. 20 minutes to quilt its, five hours to take it out!

This is the back of the quilt, see how the feathers are closer together than the lines and swirls? i am hoping this will be OK but the more i look at it the more i think i should have added something more in that area to fill it in some.

Raffle tickets will be available soon from any Crossroads Quilters Guild member as well as at the show!
I will be sure to post more info on the show soon, lots of changes this year most importantly being a new venue!
Thanks for taking a look!

I’m not going to post them all here but if you want to see them just click the photo below and it will take you to the album!