Footballs season this year is only going OK for my teams so far but as it's also applique season, that part is going great!

Here are the 4 most recent flowers that I finished. Look at the 2 on the right. Didn't the lady who made these do a great job of fussy cutting petals? I hope she is happy somewhere that I'm doing something with all of her love petals.They sure do make me happy when I'm stitching them.

Tonight is another session of applique and I've switched over to moons for a bit. I hope I'll have another update soon.

I know what you are thinking. Maybe new fancy shoes, a new sewing machine or a big stack of fabric. But you would be wrong. Our definition of a good gift does change over time. There was a time when jewelry was the only answer to "What is a great gift that will make the angels sing Hallelujah?"
​But the new great gift I just bought for myself is a new washing machine.

But this isn't a washing machine for doing laundry. Angels don't sing over a laundry washing machine.

Angels are singing because I now have a washing machine in the dye studio! Surely you can hear them. It's a beautiful sound and a beautiful sight.

​Let me tell you, it's very difficult to find a washing machine that lets you control the water level. The one I got is this GE-Made-In-The-USA-model. It has some weird feature that doesn't let you soak as long as I will need so I'll unplug it when I need to do an overnight soak (every week). These appliances that think they know what I need better than I do are supremely annoying. But I should be able to trick this one into doing anything I want.

​Glorious, isn't it?

Since I had to run power and water for the washer I also added an outlet on the front wall so I could move my fridge and microwave (for making soap). The basement is a little spare in outlets and I previously had 4 things sharing outlet space. Now everything can stay plugged in. 

​I don't think my life could get any better.

It's not a pretty space but it is very functional and I can't wait to start dyeing some new things today.

The fabric of the week this week is the Daybreak gradient!  Through Sunday (or while supplies last) this fabric is 22% off or $7.00/half yard. This is a great sunset or sunrise background for a landscape quilt.

There are over 15 new ice dyed Crystals in the shop this week. All of the new ones are 38" square. These go fast so get your favorites before they are gone! Need ideas? Check out these quilts that Patricia Caldwell made with Crystals fabrics.

So Michael came through Thursday evening. There wasn't much damage in my area. We did lose power for a couple of hours Thursday night but mostly there were some flooded roads and downed trees in Hanover County. The place where we do our quilt club meetings is owned by the county and we cannot use the space if schools are closed. Because of blocked roads schools were closed Friday so we couldn't sew.

Big bummer.

​Fortunately, I'm a quilter and I have other things I can do!

I decided to use the time to quilt Antelope Canyon. I did this one with a pantograph. It's going to be a quilt for the guest bed so no need for "special" quilting.  Quilting pantographs bores me so between each row I worked on cleaning up the dye studio and I have it ready for delivery of my new washing machine tomorrow.

I was a little nervous while quilting because I didn't have a lot of the color that I wanted to use. But my quilting luck was with me and I had "plenty" left over. This might even be enough to sew on the binding. 

​But I'm not doing the binding yet....

When I quilt I think about things and one of the things I was thinking about was how quickly Christmas is coming up. I stated making some thread trees earlier this year and I'm going to make about 10 more on the edges of Antelope Canyon before I take it off the frame. This is one of my goals for the week. The other is to start organizing all the fabric and supplies that I brought home form the show and get my living room back to being a living room.

Kathy Suprenant created her #metoo quilt for the 2018 SAQA benefit. This quilt and others are available for sale in the SAQA store. All proceeds benefit SAQA. Kathy made her quilt using the Red Shades Pack.

​You can see more of Kathy's work on her website.

For sharing, Kathy received a 20% coupon for the shop that's good for 3 months! If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery.  The only rule is that projects have to be complete. It doesn't have to be made totally from hand dyed fabric, just include a recognizable amount.

Yay, it's Country School sewing weekend! Today and tomorrow I'll be sewing with my friends and working on my Indonesian Batik quilt. I might even have the top together by Monday. 
I also hope to get my Antelope Canyon quilt loaded and basted and read for some easy overall quilting.

​Meanwhile, I've made more Loony Moony blocks! These are so much fun to stitch.

My cold is clearing up and I plan to have a fun weekend. I hope you have a great weekend too!

Yesterday I was back in the dye studio all day to start restocking things. It's nice to be back in "normal"mode now that the show is over. This morning I finally finished editing all of the photos from the quilt show so that's what I have for you today. Just click on the gallery to go through the photos as a slide show.

This cold is supremely annoying. It's not horrible like the one I had last year that lasted 6 weeks. It's just a normal cold that prefers for you to be a complete slug and watch bad TV and that's mostly what I'm doing. Although I did play with EQ some yesterday on some ideas for a quilt made with Shades Packs. But I also had an energy spurt in the afternoon and took full advantage to finish my Maine placemats.

While we were on vacation I, of course, visited the local quilt shops and picked up a dozen fat quarters of Maine-themed fabrics. These aren't my style of fabrics but it seemed like a requirement to buy them. I knew they would end up as placemats or some other small project. I also left them on my cutting table so that I'd be forced to deal with them soon.

Once I got home I spent a stupid amount of time trying to come up with ideas where I could use all 12 fabrics. Seriously, I bet I spent 3 hours on this and, as you would expect, nothing really worked. Some of the prints are way to big for little 4" pieces, like the image above.

I finally decided that my Fat Quarter Placemat pattern was the best option. It uses 6 fabrics so I picked the 6 that went together best and moved on.

I wanted a set of 6 placemats so I needed 6 fabrics even though each placemat only has 5 fabrics. With this pattern you can make 5 or more. But the big pieces really show off the fabrics well and they go together quickly. When I made these the last time I didn't even do any quilting and that worked out fine but I did a lot of straight line quilting on these because they will be easier to iron and will look better longer. The quilting was very zen and was nice to do as I listened to my latest book.

I even did traditional binding (topstiched on the front) which I rarely do on a placemat. generally I take the raw edge and turn it to the back and stitch it with a twin needle from the front. But these needed the brown binding to rein those prints in. 
​
Today I'll dye napkins to match.

Here are all 6 together. I'm really pleased with how they turned out and I think the Fat Quarter Pattern worked great for these novelty prints. They would be fun to make for kids in character prints or for your table in Holiday prints....any holiday. They are nice because they are fast to make.

I had 6 fabrics left over and I know myself well enough that I'd also spend way too much time trying to figure out something to do with them. That's why I used those fabrics for the backs. Now all 12 fabrics have been used and I can move on to something else.

Maybe I can get through next year's vacation without bringing home another project!

The fabric of the week this week is the Violet Shades Pack and it's 20% off through Sunday! Violet is a lovely textured bluish purple, like the tiny flower. 
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Stash Packs are the chocolate truffles of the fabric world. Instead of just one piece of fabric you get a variety of fabric treats. With Stash Packs you get 10 fat eighths of fabric and if you are doing art quilts of applique you are bound to find just that little bit of perfect color that you need. This week I 2 new ones in the shop for you.

I'm sorry I went AWOL on the blog last week. I had great intentions of posting every day but my social life got in the way. Chris and I lived in Virginia Beach over 20 years ago and we have family in the area. Every day after the show I visited with either family or old friends. It was fun to catch up with my nephew and his wife and two former co-workers that I hadn't seen in years.

The show itself was an interesting experience. AQS runs a good show. Everything was where it needed to be and it's run very efficiently. Set up and take down was easy and all of the vendors are friendly. I met many of my customers and got some new ones. It was all good.

The only downside was that attendance wasn't even close to what they expected. It was slow and I think there were numerous factors. First, there were competing events in the area and the weather outside was fabulous. Fall is coming in a couple of weeks so I think people went to some of the outside events while the weather was still good. Add to that the devastation in North Carolina that probably reduced the number of people coming from the South and the fact that people living on the Peninsula of Virginia LOATHE coming through the tunnel to get to Virginia Beach and there were probably many factors contributing to the low attendance. They will have the show again next year so hopefully the attendance will be even better.

For me, it was a great opportunity to hear from my customers and see what people were drawn to. AQS even did a video interview that will eventually show up on their Quilttv Youtube channel. It will be featured sometime next year along with a product review in the magazine. That's going to be some great advertising. The only complaint that I have is that my friend gave me her cold!

The quilts were amazing, as they always are in and AQS show. Here are some more photos for you. I'll have a third set later this week. If you clock on the gallery it will open a slide show view so you can see mroe details.