I can tell you what you do — you google it! I bought a Stila shadow/blush set when I was in CA. The big shimmery powder was cracked when I opened it. I couldn't take it back because I left town too early the next day.

So I did what I could to keep the broken bits in the set and when I got home I watched this youtube video:

I didn't love the broken shimmery powder enough to re-press it. I also didn't like the cream blush that came in the set. I do, however, like this set because it is a great size to travel with. I decided to replace the blush with a Bare Minerals powder blush.

I scooped out the cream blush and cleaned the tin it had been in. I assembled the tools as instructed and pressed the powder into the tin in the set.

I have always thought that the Bare Minerals containers had a lot of powder in them. Not so much! 

The pressed pink blush you see above is a bit bigger than a half dollar coin and not much thicker. It came out of this container:

Loose powder takes up a lot more space than pressed powder does. Really, I should not have been as surprised by this as I was. 

If/when the broken shimmery powder falls out I'm going to replace it with something that suits me a little better. Isn't this a nice thing to know how to do?!

Amazingly enough, I am STILL in California! I head home tomorrow at the crack of before dawn. I'll miss the lovely, cool breezes but I will be happy, happy, happy to be home!

I want to share some of the photos I've taken in the last few days. I taught 2 workshops for the Beach Cities guild. The classes were great fun! I managed to get my camera out on the second day. Here are both ends of the classroom with my students hard at work…

We were working on the Chirps block. Here's is Jean's, in progress.

I love this block! It looks good in any fabric I've seen it made in. Jean placed her bird carefully so that the word "friendship" showed. FYI – this is a Japanese fabric and it is amazing!

The class was held at the Sewing Party Quilt Shop. I LOVE this shop!

The models/quilts tended to be modern in attitude…

The colors tended to be clear. And the owner buys lots of very interesting Japanese fabric in addition to fabrics from American companies. I shopped. You can too! Look for sewingparty.com online, check out the blog, or call them 949-725-0492. 

Jean took me county western dancing! Let me say right now that I cannot dance but I had a great time. We went to Swallows in San Juan Capistrano. On Friday night the locals who dance every week and know each other well were out in force. Great people watching. It made me want to go home and take lessons. With Steve (are you up for that?). Jean twirled me, with only a little success, in class the next day. Seriously, I am not light on my feet.

That's it for now. I'm visiting the Conejo Valley Guild now. Had class yesterday at the Quilt Studio (another great shop!) and I lecture tonight. I'm on my way very soon to have lunch at a place on the beach. It'll be good to see the ocean before I head home! I may get to post again before I leave (I have a few more photos…). Later!

Red makes you look. That's just the way it is. If you want to get someone's attention, make a red quilt.

I took the following photos on a couple of my morning walks in California. First, this double door. The structure was good but not spectacular. It was not surrounded by particularly lovely dwellings. But those doors and that dark wood around them were marvelous.

Look at the same image, cropped. So nice. The shift in the angles of the lines and the subtle changes in value in the reds and browns make this really good to look at. That bit of vertical white in the lower left along with the very subtle horizontal line of white above the door bot add to the composition. Those light bits make the tiny round lock even more visible.

And then there were these fancy geraniums…

Do you smell peppermint? That's all I could imagine when I looked at them.

Yesterday I showed you a Halloween North Pole. Today I have to share Sherril Gerard's version of My Whimsical Quilt Garden. Sherril was in my class at the Orange Grove Quilt Guild. I was able to take more photos of Sherril's quilt! From a distance it looks a lot like the quilt Linda made…

…but up close you can see the bugs that Sherril fussy-cut and appliqued in place!

The inked ants are a crack-up! And you might notice that there is more ind-work around the some of the bugs. Note the feet and antennae on the bug, above.

I am, once again, happy to see what another quilter has done with one of our patterns. 

PS – Sherril also said that she was hurrying to finish the quilt so that she could bring it to guild while I was there. It was only after it was finished that she realized the bug fabric on the back was upside-down. So she added this note to the back. This is a woman with a sense of humor!

I met Bette Bradley at the Flying Geese guild a few days ago. At show and tell she showed this quilt…

I have never seen a Halloween version and wish I had thought of it myself! If I am remembering the story correctly, this is not the only Halloween North Pole quilt Bette has made and I think she made this with another quilter.

It may be that you don't know our book, Welcome to the North Pole. Click here to see it. Surprisingly enough, this book is the one of ours that has been in print the longest. I think it is still popular because it is very easy to personalize. And it's cute!

I wanted to get more, better photos of Bette's quilt, but couldn't. I'm hoping that you can see some of the details in her quilt in the photos I did get. Click on either of these photos and they should open up larger.

I just love it!

I read an interesting op ed piece in the NY Times today: "Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty?" by Diane Ackerman. She writes about noticing, on a walk through the park, that so many people's eyes and ears were glued to their devices and that they were missing so much of the beauty around them. It's a piece worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

"…As an antidote I wish schools would teach the value of cultivating presence. As people complain more and more these days, attention spans are growing shorter, and we’ve begun living in attention blinks. More social than ever before, we’re spending less time alone with our thoughts, and even less relating to other animals and nature. Too often we’re missing in action, brain busy, working or playing indoors, while completely unaware of the world around us. One solution is to spend a few minutes every day just paying close attention to some facet of nature. A bonus is that the process will be refreshing."

In my lectures I try to point out the importance of paying attention to what you see. I find that the things/shapes/colors that make me stop are worth at least of little bit of my time and attention. Even if they never end up in a quilt, what I see informs the quilts that I make. That said, I am also guilty at times of paying attention to my iPhone instead of the actual world around me. 

I very much enjoy my digital devices. I use them to stay in contact and to record many of the images that strike my fancy. They are oh so handy! I just have to remind myself that sometimes it's better to look and not record. That said, here are some images that I've captured and have been meaning to post. 

On my walk yesterday morning, the colors on this power pole made me stop. I love the mix of blues and whites and browns. Then I looked up.

The pattern of the wires, etc., was really nice. The lack of color, in comparison to the colors on the pole below it, was also interesting.

Farther down the street were these blue utility 'objects.' Isn't the picket fence behind them nice? The fence was completely out of place where it was, but still – nice. I'm pretty sure the colors are what made me stop but I also like the mix of shapes and lines.

I saw several of the circular pipe-like things with dots/holes that I'm guessing are for ventilation of something below ground. I was in Costa Mesa, right next to Newport Beach. I think this shade of blue belongs to one of these cities.

There is something about aqua that I can't seem to get enough of. I'm sure I'll get over it but I don't know when.

This fountain was outside of the the room where I taught class yesterday for the Flying Geese Quilt Guild in Newport Beach. We had a lovely day and the splashing water outside sounded so nice!

The only time I had my camera out was before class and I the only thing I had time to photograph was the fountain. And sure enough, it was the many shades of aqua that drew me in. The fountain looked to be made from some sort of agregate rather than concrete.

I don't usually think of mixing purple with aqua, but isn't this great! 

Last for today is the picture I took a few weeks ago showing the front of the library in Kansas City, MO. The whole front of the building was covered in 'books'. It absolutely worked. It made me think of my son, Chris, who loves books more than anyone else I know. So Chris, this one's for you: