On the road to Spring Quilt Market 2011!

Janice and Kim Jones

Wednesday May 4th, my designer friend Sandy Fitzpatrick Hissyfitz Designs  and I flew to Denver and were driven by Mary Corcoran (see the bio on my website) to her home in Laramie, Wyoming. Tonight is our first event at the quilt store in town, Quilt Essentials. Owner Mary McDonald has been remodeling the shop since I was last here in September. It is beautiful! Tonight the three of us are having a Trunk Show and Tell at the store. Tomorrow we will be doing 30 minute demos in two parts of the stores. Monday Sandy will be teaching machine quilting and that evening I will be teaching the Two Hour Tulip Purse pattern.

We stopped a one quilt store on the way from Denver to Wyoming as we had heard they carried the Tulip Purse. It is in Windsor, and is called Quilters Stash. While there, we got to visiting with another customer and learned once again what a small world it is! The store customer, who now lives in Virginia, was from this area. She said her husband was from Burlington, NC. I shared that I, too, was from Burlington. What fun to continue the questions and to discover that her husband and I had gone 12 years of school together! Her name is Kim Jones, and her husband I remember so well from school, Keith Jones. Kim and I had our photo taken and I will always remember visiting with her that day.

Next week we move to Park City, Utah, a ski resort area 30-45 minutes outside Salt Lake City, Utah. I will add more blog posts as the week goes on!

New Pattern Revenue to go to Water.org

I have finished reading the book by Rich Stearns, The Hole in our Gospel. It has been a long time since I have been moved to get off my backside and do something to change a little corner of the world. As a result of a Guideposts article, hearing Rich speak in person, adopting a little girl from Guana and reading this book, I have made the following decisions:
1. All proceeds (yes, proceeds, not profits) received by Anything But Boring for the new pattern Kit 'n Kaboodle, available at Spring Market in Salt Lake City, Utah in May 2011 will be donated to Water.org to help provide clean drinking water to communities who do not have it.
2. Even though I tithe my income from my business (that is 10%), I commit to additionally donate equal amounts that I spend on my annual pet care, which is a luxury item in this country. This is usually around $600.00 a year, including food, vet visits and flea treatments and heart worm pills.
3. I also commit to donate equal amounts that I spend on my hair cuts and color, as well as cosmetics and skin care. This should amount to about $600.00 a year, as these things are also luxuries.

It is very easy to sit in my deeply cushioned office chair, typing on my state of the art iMac in temperature regulated air listening to the birds sing outside and think, "What good can I do?" Instead I choose to do what I can, and pray for wisdom and guidance to be able to do more.

If you would like to "do" something too, here are some suggestions taken from the end of the aforementioned book:
1. Buy a world map. Use push pins to mark crisis and pray for those affected.
2. Tune into poverty. Podcasts are available at www.worldvisionreport.org.
3. Sponsor a child. Go to www.worldvision.org/thiog or do a search for "sponsor a child".
4. Form friendships. Many world cultures are just a neighborhood away in many cites now. Visit ethnic churches in your area to get to know people from other places.
5. Watch a movie. Films are a powerful and influential medium in our culture. Watch movies such as Blood Diamond to learn about child soldiers and the diamond trade; Hotel Rwanda to see courage in the face of genocide;, or Slumdog Millionaire to understand the plight of street children in India. Discussing the movies with others afterward enhances the experience. Go to www.theholeinourgospel.com for a list of other thought-provoking films.

Oh the threads!!!

I was cleaning my sewing room today getting ready to leave town for a 5 day Color Class with Hollis Chatelain. My friend Mary C. is going to use my machine to quilt on a great new quilt which will be in my pattern line soon. As I was sweeping I noticed some thread hanging out of the bottom of my sewing chair's casters. I decided to pull them out. As they kept coming out I decided to turn the chair upside down and work on all 4 casters. Oh my!! What a mess! I am sure I have pulled threads out before, but never have I put it upside down to work on it. I am shocked at how much came out of the 4 wheel casters! I thought I would take a photo and share it with you, because I am sure you wouldn't believe it either!

The bad news is that some of the threads are still stuck in all 4 wheels and I took a photo of that too. I removed all I could using a pair of jeweler's tweezers.

All of my machines are mechanical and require oil to run safely and smoothly. I am diligent about keeping them in good repair. Not my chair though! You better believe I will be careful of the "stuff" that ends up on the floor, as the wheels pick it up like a vacuum!

Making a Fishing Rod Cover

Making quilts often leaves me with long scraps of fabric and batting. My middle son (John age 30) asked me to make my oldest son (Gerald age 32) a fishing rod cover for the new pole John made for him. He showed me a purchased cover that was neither long enough or large enough to fit over the eyes of the rod. The purchased rod holder was black and was bound with black fabric. I had some beige fabric that looked a little like fish scales that was left from the back of a quilt. I never throw big scraps like that away. I measured the rod length (it comes in two pieces, so the longer of the two was 58 inches.) and the width. Since I had four pieces the size I needed, I chose to do what any quilter would.....make a quilted holder instead of a plain fabric one. This rod will be shipped to Seattle, WA, which is about 3000 miles cross country, so I figured a little extra padding would be a good thing.

I layered the long pieces and long scraps of batting and quilted them.

Next, I cut it into two long pieces and layered them so binding could be added. Lastly I added tie straps and fold over top, and a seam down the middle to separate the two pieces of the rod.

These photos are of the beautiful rod my son John made. If you have a fisherman/woman in your list of friends, they may want to see these photos. Yes, that is copperhead snake skin on the rod! Gerald was an avid snake lover and caught a copperhead one day before school. He was holding it when I opened the front door and almost had a heart attack!
John finished the bottom with a 1978 penny, the year Gerald was born. He has not seen it yet, but I know he will love all the detail and work John put into it.

Here is the rod cover finished with binding and
cording to tie it together.

Free Pattern

Three friends and I organize drawing classes for Hollis Chatelein once a year. We have completed Drawing I and II, Portraiture, and next year is "The Color Class". One of our class supplies is a large 3 ring binder. Having spent the last 3 weeks quilting on a quilt for NCQSI 2011, I decided to sew something fun and quick. I found this free pattern from Moda Bakeshop called Funky Quilted Binder Cover by Maria at Passing Down Crazy. (Here is the link to the pattern: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2009/04/funky-quilted-binder-cover.html)

The cover needed to be colorful, of course, and I was going to use left over batiks from making purses, cut into squares. When I dug into my scraps, I found something even better. I had little pieces of hand dyed fabric from Lorin Fields (Local Colour Hues localcolourhues@gmail.com). See Blog Post dated 2/3/2010 for the original project made with these lovely fabrics. I cut the already sewn together strips into 2-1/2 inch squares. When I still had little pieces left, I cut them into 1-1/2 inch units. Using an orphan block from a Carol Bryer Fallert class as the center front, I added the smaller pieces as a little border. With black as the large border around this, I then pieces and added the 2-1/2 inch squares as a checker board for the spine and back. It was quilted in simple straight lines. Left over yellow made the pockets for the binders front and back. I even had the binding from a left over project.
This was simple and pretty quick since I had so many of the parts already from other projects.

My friend Sheri and I had a wonderful visit to England! The ladies we met at Sew and So's in Bungay were so much fun! Rob and Verona took such kind care of us for the afternoon! You can see the photos of the ladies listening intently as I demonstrated how to put together the Two-Hour Tulip Purse. Later we shopped around the cute town and had a snack with Rob and Verona before taking the train back to London.

Visit to Bungay, England

My friend Sheri and I visited the Quilt Store "Sew & So's" in Bungay, England a couple weeks ago. I did a demonstration for the lovely group of ladies.