November Desktop Calendar

Another log cabin variation!
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!

October Desktop Calendar

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!

September 2012 Desktop Calendar

Well August suddenly turned into a hectic month...I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that our 2 steps forward resulted in 10 steps back. Bleh.

My daughter pointed out that I must be just a tad depressed as evidenced by almost all my quilts and designs as of late - I'm definitely in my Brown Period. Won't be as lucrative as Picasso's Blue Period, though. I've got 4 quilts sooooo close to the finish line and 3 of the 4 are predominantly brown. And two of them are baby quilts. Maybe I need to up my meds.
But at least the calendar background isn't brown...just the quilt.

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!
Here's to September being a better month than August!

August 2012 Desktop Calendar

So about a week ago, Marija Vujcic, a fellow-EQ7-user posted that she'd designed a couple of wreath blocks in EQ and put them on her blog, Marija's Fabric Creations. I'm nosey, so I checked it out. Loved the wreath she made with them. And the other alternate design ideas were cute too. Then I noticed that they were basically log cabin-variations.

Ding-ding. Lightbulb moment! I could save myself some time and effort if I stole - I mean borrowed Marija's wreath quilt to use as my desktop calendar. Not that I mind the time it takes to work up my desktop calendar every month, and not that you're not worth the effort, but really, it's so much easier when someone else does the work!

So I emailed Marija and asked if it would be ok to use her design on the August calendar, and she graciously said yes. So here it is! I changed it up a little so I could at least pretend that I had some input. Yes, I may be prone to slackerhood, but I'm not a total slacker...

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!

And a big thank you to Marija and Marija's Fabric Creations!

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!

Toot, Toot!

Even though the monthly desktop calendar post is due to be posted in 1.5 days, I couldn't wait to toot my own (and my customer's) horn! Mary Lane Brown, of The Tulip Patch, has a quilt showcasing Moda's "Flora" by Lauren & Jessi Jung, in Moda's upcoming book, "Sweet Celebrations with the Moda Bake Shop Chefs," by C&T Publishing. Out in time for Fall Quilt Market.

Mary's done several projects for Moda Bake Shop

You can get the skinny on Mary's blog, so I'll just cut to the chase for my part. Mary called me a few months ago and said she needed to get a quilt done poste haste, and could I do it? I was swamped with quilts waiting to beat the deadline for our guild's show, but I squeezed it in anyway. I'm a soft-touch, and hate saying no. Back in the old days, because I was constantly being asked to make brownies, drive carpool, be a room mother, etc., I actually taped a piece of paper on my phone that said, "I'm sorry, I can't talk right now. I'll need to call you back." That would give me a little time to think about the request and formulate a plausible reason why it would be absolutely impossible for me to...whatever-it-was. Then when I'd call them back, they'd beg and plead til I gave in. I tore up that note and wrote another one: "I'll have to ask my husband." (Not politically correct, but it served its purpose.) Unfortunately, that landed me back into the same loop: I still had to talk to them again, and I'd end up giving in. Again and again. Then, it hit me: they weren't asking me because I was me - they were asking me because my name was Anderson. There were only a couple of other "A-named" families in our church and school. My name was just up at the top of the list. I was crushed. They didn't actually want me, they just wanted someone to answer the phone and say yes! That's when I realized that this was good news! I ripped that note up and wrote another. Just one word. (No, not that. That would be two words!) It was NO! Feel free to use my technique...it's kid-tested and husband-approved. So where was I? Oh yeah. "Of course I can do your quilt!" So I did.

Congratulations, Mary - it looks terrific!

June 2012 Desktop Calendar

Ok, the year's almost half over - how are you coming with your UFO's? That bad, huh? Me too. I can get these virtual quilts done a whole lot quicker than the real thing, so I don't feel like a total slacker...

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!

May 2012 Desktop Calendar

Because we've opened the Cabin Too retreat this year, I'm making all of this year's calendars log cabins or log cabin variations. This one uses a Twisted Log Cabin block that I found in Electric Quilt's EQ7 program...my ONLY design tool since they came out with EQ as a DOS program about 15 years ago. This particular block can be paper pieced with foundation patterns printed directly from the program. But I'm SO not tempted to do it.

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!