I finished the applique while I was out of town. The quilt is now set together and basted. I love it!

To plan the quilting designs I placed frosted vinyl over the top and drew with a Sharpie, doodling different quilting designs over the top. I think I've figured out how to proceed in most areas. 

TIP: It's a good idea to cut a big enough piece of vinyl so that you don't risk going off onto the fabric with your Sharpie. I know that I should run painter's tape along the cut edge of the vinyl to stop the pen, but I'm always in too much of a hurry for that. If you look closely at the bottom of the photo above you can see that I was lucky to stop drawing where I did. Maybe next time I'll use the tape!

I hope to get this mostly quilted this weekend, in between other things that are going on. It would be great to have this off the list by Monday morning when we begin our summer construction project.

Remember last year when we remodeled Mom's house? This summer we are helping Christopher replace the bad siding on the side and back of his house. There are two windows and exterior French doors to be replaced which leads to sheetrock repairs inside. Lots of painting outside and in. We think we can get it done in 3 weeks if all 3 of us stay focused and work fast. Texas weather is about to hit 100 and stay there which is an incentive to get it finished.

I'll take pictures. Stay tuned…

Laura D., the creator of the SuperHanger, was kind enough to send me one for review. Click here to see more about it. I like it! Her website shows that the hanger can be used for over-sized clothes (like sports uniforms) but it's really nice to hang a quilt over.

I roll my quilts and store them on high shelves in my closet but there are times when I have a work in progress that having this sort of hanger for will be terrific. They are reasonably priced and I happily recommend them to you.

In other news, I received the box of fabric that I bought at the Sewing Party last week. (Many thanks to Jean for sending the fabric so quickly!)

My favorites may be the grays. They are lovely with the clear colors that I mostly use. The fabric that looks like newsprint was a gift from the owner of the shop. I will think of her smiling face when I use it!

Many of the fabrics I bought are from Yuwa and are hard to find. These imported Japanese fabrics are more expensive than typical cottons and they are hard to find unless you have a shop that stocks them. I think I'm going to start stocking them. I may have to wait until Fall Market, but soon, they're coming…

FYI – I always, always, always wash and dry my fabric before adding it to my stash. Here's what the same fabric, ready to be put away:

Gotta love new fabric!

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!