Thanks to Y'all...I Won!

About a week ago, Michele over at The Quilting Gallery had a Memory Quilts contest, and I entered one of my quilts, "Sean's Medallion." It was a special quilt, made for the family of a very special man killed on 9-11. You can see the story of how his quilt came to be in the previous post. Anyway, thanks to all of you, my quilt won! And today I received this in the mail:

"Hmm...wonder what that could be?" she thought. "I don't know anyone in Canada...I don't think I've ordered anything. Hmph. Weird." What's weird is that I can remember my best friend from 2nd grade's birthday (haven't even heard from her since 1968), but the fact that, less than 10 days ago, I won a contest sponsored by a Canadian online quilt shop was completely gone from the file cabinet of my brain. More like a sieve, but anyway... This is what I won: 2 gorgeous quilting magazines!

The first one, Quilter's Connection is a Canadian magazine with lots of beautiful projects.

The second one, Vignette is from Australia and has full size applique and embroidery patterns and recipes!

Yeah. I probably won't try any of the handwork, but that Quilter's Cake has a pretty good chance of showing up at my bee this Thursday! Especially if I can get Gillian to do the honors. My thanks to the sponsor of the contest, Valerie Moss, of Pastimes Online.

Check out her website - I'm ordering the Quilter's Tea to go with my Quilter's Cake. Her Sewing Machines BOM is kinda calling to me, but I know me: not gonna happen unless I can strongarm someone else into making it for me. Anyway - many thanks to Michele at The Quilting Gallery, Valerie from Pastimes Online, and especially, you for voting for Sean's quilt.

Vote for Me!

Two posts in one month - what's up with that?! Well, I'm glad you asked! Over at The Quilting Gallery there's a contest going on for Memory Quilts. I submitted one I did a few years back for the family of Sean Canavan, a man that died on 9/11 at the World Trade Center.

The quilt was commissioned by his sister-in-law Jean, for her husband, Sean's brother Cieran. She asked that I use a photo of Sean skiing and that somehow, I represent different areas in his life in the fabric choices, blocks and design. A tall order to say the least. I submitted several designs for her to choose from, and this is the one she liked the best. It's green for his being Irish, with shamrocks in the corners, made from shamrock fabric I had in my stash. The blocks around the center medallion are Irish Chains as well as the tools of his trade: carpentry.

The back was made up of fabric that represented his interests in music, skiing, fishing, woodworking and especially his love for his country. I lucked out with the patriotic fabric having mainly blue and green rather than all red, white and blue, as it went better with the quilt.

I printed the label through my ink jet printer and surrounded it with the shamrock fabric.

Sean Canavan 1962-2001 Voting opens today and closes on Monday at The Quilting Gallery Thanks for your vote!

July 2012 Desktop Calendar

Happy 236th Birthday, America!

Click on the calendar to expand the image to full size, then right-click and choose Set as Wallpaper or Background. To really jazz up your desktop, right-click on your background and choose a color that coordinates with the calendar - or do like I do, and set your background color to black. It goes with everything and really makes the colors pop! And when your friends say, "Where did you get that?" Send them to see me!