Moving delay....

Moving back to our home school has been delayed for a few weeks....so we are all chomping at the bit at this point! This is the renovated front of the school. We have watched it change for the past year and a half. The large window is center front, right above the main door and in the library!

The old front of the school. These are taken from a different angle...now I am wishing I would've gone over and taken some decent pictures before they changed it. The big door was the front entrance. The library was right above it. So it's basically in the same place, but with the renovation the whole building moved out closer to the street.

The entrance to the library from the hallway.

 My desk looks pretty close to finished! I won't know how to act in such beautiful surroundings!

 The big window from the inside!

 Close-up of the window seating.

 This is looking towards my desk from the north side, there will be tables and chairs in this area. I am so excited and ready to move! Hopefully soon!

Birthday shirts & celebrations

 Two of my sisters and my brother were all born in November, five years apart, but birthdays ending up within one week. Five years ago, when they were 45, 50 & 55, they decided to celebrate their birthdays by going to Vegas and many of us went with them. This year, two out of the three hit big "0" birthdays, so we had to celebrate. I made special shirts for them to wear at their parties.

My sister Nancy just arrived from British Columbia for an extended holiday vacation, so we surprised her at a local restaurant last Tuesday. She was surprised and here is modeling what we gave her to wear.

Sharon is my youngest sister and her daughter planned a surprise party for her in Earling on Saturday night. With many family members in town for the holiday and lots of friends, we had a great time. Here she is dressed in her finery.

Our family likes to do birthdays up in style!

 I have four sisters and one brother...he hadn't arrived when we took this picture. Several people took this pic, so I hope I can get a better copy from someone else. This one turned out a bit blurry.

I am teaching  Sampler Club classes tonight and Wednesday night. It's fun to see the finished blocks each time!

quiltinjeanie: MIA

Where has the last week gone? I can't believe I haven't posted for a week! It has been a busy one, though. It went by in a blur of Thanksgiving with family, 2 surprise birthday parties (one sis turned 50 and one sis turned 60) and a bit of shopping on Friday. So maybe we come back to work to rest!

I did manage to get this new quilt cut out, so yesterday was excited to start putting it together. It is the Turning Twenty, #8. I have been itching to make something out of black and white, so this seemed like the perfect project for it.

I threw in 2 different pink and black fabrics for a little pizazz, so I hope it adds to the quilt, not distracts.

It is going together pretty quickly, even though I have to keep doing the math since I am making it smaller...12 fat quarters instead of 20.

At one point I had all of these sewn and cut to size and then thought I had made too many.

Luckily I refigured and it was right. Whew...don't you hate when that happens?

Sometimes the first time making something is an adventure!

I have the blocks ready to put together...so will be sewing some more tonight.

I hope you had a great holiday weekend!

Finished hexie pillows and tshirt quilt class....

Here are pictures of my finished hexie pillows. They were fun and quick to make. I used the HexNMore ruler which made it simple to cut out the hexies and the triangles.

I want to make a couple more projects using this ruler...she is coming out with some more patterns soon.

I put envelope backs on these pillows. The pattern directions do feature this, but I would've done it anyway. I don't like to wash the pillows, and it's so easy to slip them out and wash the covers this way.

Saturday's T-shirt Quilt class went well. There were some quilting newbies in class, and they did very well! I didn't pictures of all of them but here is a sampling.

The new quilters seemed to enjoy the process, so I think we might be seeing more quilts from them!

My sister Nancy came in last night from BC, Canada for an extra long holiday stay. She normally comes for about 3 weeks before Christmas, but wanted to come early this year to help our parents a bit. Mom has one chemo treatment left, thank goodness, but has been pretty worn out so it will be good to have her here to help them. So we are looking forward to some fun family gatherings ahead!

Hexie pillow

I started a new pillow the other night using the HexNMore ruler. This time I used a charm pack to cut the hexies. It worked well and I love the variety of fabrics available when using one. I trimmed it last night and put an envelope back on it and the other, bright colored hexie pillow. So they are finished! I will take pix of them tonight. I will be demonstrating this ruler and all you can do with it on Small Business Saturday, Nov. 24, at Cut Up and Quilt. Jaybird Quilts, the designer of this ruler, has new patterns set to come out to use with this ruler and I am eyeing one that I want to make! Do you like to try out new techniques and tools? It's always about the fabric too, but trying out new techniques is so much fun!

Back to the Circle

 After I got home from the quilt show on Sunday, I got out the Circle and Spin I was working on last month and made some more blocks. Not sure how I'm going to work in the hot blocks yet.

 Conrad was enjoying himself! There is no taking pictures without him unless I put them on the design wall!

 He must've gotten distracted by something!

Quilt show at Lauritsen Gardens

 On Sunday I went to a quilt show at the Lauritsen Gardens, in Omaha with friends. I have to confess I have never been there before, even though I have talked about going many times. If you go when the weather is nice, they have gardens to walk through, but they have events going on year round. One of them is this quilt show.

The quilts had a botanical feel to them, with many art quilts of varying techniques.

This one used many small bits of fabric then covered with netting and quilted to hold it all in place. Very pretty! The little leaves were then sewn on top, through the middle.Seeing this one reminded me that I still want to try that technique.

Lots of the quilts had many different fibers and other items to add interest.

The large flowers were thread painted and then appliqued onto the quilt, which gave them a 3D effect.

Small quilts were sprinkled all through the inside gardens...I especially liked this one with it's intricate quilting designs.

The leaves were painted on this collage of mini quilts. It's always so inspiring to see quilts in any setting, but this show was a reminder to me of some projects on my to-do list that need to be tried! I took lots more pix and will post some more later in the week.

Fun, fabulous Christmas Stars!

I taught the Star of Christmas table topper on Saturday....the star isn't readily seen as you are making it, but as you reach the finish of slashing and sewing back together, it emerges.

There were many variations on the Christmas theme, though you could definitely make this star out of just about anything.

Using stripes in the connecting strips adds interest to these stars.

These nontraditional greens turned out pretty with white strips.

The red connectors brought out the red in this nontraditional tree fabric.

Using a directional print worked too, as the block stayed right sides up!

You can make this into a tree skirt too, if you wish, just by cutting through the side-setting triangle into the center.

Very festive tree skirts for the holiday season!