More pillowcases

I have sewn another 40 pillowcases and they are ready to deliver to 35th Avenue Sew and Vac, they collect pillowcases for Back to School Clothing Drive. I have been able to reduce the fabric in my stash which keeps me motivated to make more pillowcases. I have now made a total of 70 pillowcases and I plan to make more, maybe I can get to 100 completed pillowcases.
I will keep you posted on my progress.

Pillowcases

I have been busy these last few weeks sewing pillowcases. I have found that making pillowcases is a great way to use fabric in my stash. I construct the pillowcases using the roll it up pattern found on the Million Pillowcase web site. On Monday, I delivered 30 pillowcases to 35th Avenue Sew and Vac, they collect pillowcases for Back to School Clothing Drive. I will continue to go through my stash and will be making more pillowcases, I will keep you posted on my progress.

Katie and Molly

Katie and Molly are good buddies and they have really brought out the best in each other. Katie is 7 1/2 years old and Molly is 4 years old. Molly loves everyone while Katie is a bit more selective, but with Molly leading the way, Katie has become more outgoing. It is not often I am able to take a picture without either Katie or Molly deciding to move. I usually end with a picture of one poodle and one black furry blur. Katie is on the right and Molly is on the left looking much serious than she really is.

Quilt ladder

Finally, my quilt ladder is set up in my office area, it only took 6 months! I ordered my quilt ladder from DWR Custom Woodworking when I was at the Houston Quilt Show in November 2013. At that time, I was not in a hurry to receive the ladder. The extremely cold winter weather in Pennsylvania delay the shipping of my ladder but it finally was delivered the end of March. So why is it May and I am just getting my ladder set up? Long story short, the ladder is much easier to put together if 2 people are doing it. Last week, my electrician came to install receptacle strips to my desk and I persuaded him to put the quilt ladder together.

Circles

June 2013, I took a quilt cruise to Alaska, one of the featured teacher was Sue Spargo. My class project was embellished circles. I found some fabric and based my circle color choices on the chosen fabric. Sue was an excellent teacher and I learned quite a few embellishing stitches for my circles. Sue's book, Creative Stitching which includes step by step instructions for 50 of Sue's favorite stitches was an excellent resource for embellishing the circles. I finished embellishing the circles and and I can't wait for the piece to be made into a pillow.

Ellie

I attended the Arizona Quilters Guild quilt show on Friday March 28th and bought the pattern, Ellie the Elephant designed by Barbara Jones. http://www.bjdesignsandpatterns.com
I loved the whimsical patchwork elephant. I decided to make Ellie and challenged myself to only use batik fabrics from my stash and I was able to complete Ellie in just 2 days. Ellie is constructed using raw edged appliqué, I used a dense satin stitch to appliqué each piece to the background. Ellie was given to Jessica Jones Gamez on Tuesday April 1 to be machine quilted.

Fiesta Mexico

AQS, American Quilter's Society, held their first show in Phoenix this year and my quilting buddy from Henderson Nevada traveled to Phoenix to attend the AQS show February. We alway have a great time when we attend quilt shows and take classes. I signed up for an appliqué class with Karen Kay Buckley, the class project was one block from Karen's award winning quilt, Fiesta Mexico.

I finished the center of block and have started on the borders.



This a picture of Karen's finished class project. As you can see, I have a lot of work to finish my class project.