Little Stacks of Happiness

I finally finished cutting all of the 3 inch blocks to send to my bee buddies from Bee Stitched. In the end I decided on this block:



It looks a lot harder than it really is. When you break it down it is two different 4 patches turned in different directions to make the stars. I will have to cut plenty more squares if I end up deciding to do little stars in the boarders like in the inspiration quilt. Over all I have more than 65 fabrics going into this quilt. Some are in every pile and some are not. I also left it open to my bee members to swap out for some of their favorites with a few specifications. I know I can be picky but I want this one to be something I absolutely love.

Growing Collection

It's a little hard to believe that just two weeks ago I had never seen a piece of flea market fancy in person. I had literally drooled over it in so many beautiful quilts on blogs and in the Material Obsession book but I had never actually seen it up close much less held a piece. Well through a few well timed swaps, a new bee buddy, and some Christmas money I know have a bit of a collection. Now I know there are people out there who were lucky enough to purchase this fabric when it first came out and they have been hoarding it scared to cut into it ever since. Not me here is the one and only picture of my little collection you will probably ever see. Because right after I took it I started cutting. The posies arrived in the mail today so I snapped the photo and then started right in. See I have plans for all of these prints to be in a couple of bee blocks for March and i need to get those packets out in the mail. So I am trying to get them all ready to package up before the end of the week. I already know they won't be there by March 1st because of the big quilt show I am going to this weekend. Well lets just say I am a realist and I know that if I send the packets off tomorrow or Wednesday I will be sure to find something at the vendors tables that I will know should have been in those quilt blocks. Hope my bee buddies don't mind to much.

What's in a Blog

What a nice surprise I had today when I found out that I had been nominated for a beautiful blogger award. Since I am so new to blogging I didn't really think very many people actually read my blog. Part of me was a little amazed to find out that not only are people reading but they actually like my blog as well. Well in order to accept my award I have to follow a few rules so here they are:

Here is the lovely button and here are the rules...


To accept this award, here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award. Thank you, Marguerite!
2. Paste the award on your blog (over there on my sidebar, I want that one to hang around for a little while).
3. Link to the person who nominated you.
4. Tell 7 interesting things about yourself (see below)
5. Nominate 7 or 8 blogs (see below)
6. Post links to those 7 blogs (see below)

Well lets see now I have completed steps 1-3. 7 interesting facts about me that might be a bit of a challenge but I'm willing to try.

1. I LOVE polka dots. Any polka dots though I find I don't wear them very often or really even have much stuff with polka dots on them. And yet every time I see things with polka dots I think how much I like them.
2. I played the alto sax in the band all through junior and high school. I only picked that instrument because it was what my brother wanted to play and he got stuck playing the clarinet first. Truthfully I always wanted to play the flute.
3. I took dance lessons for 12 years but I'm not sure I ever really liked it. Don't kill me mom I'm sure I had a lot of fun sometimes.
4. I have always wanted to run a summer camp and I am still convinced that someday I will though I have no idea how I will get there.
5. I was a girl scout and I even earned my Silver Star. The second highest honor you can get in girl scouts. I like to think of it as equivalent to the Eagle Scout since they only have one level and not two.
6. I started scrapbooking before I found my love for quilting and I can still almost immediately pick out some of my favorite scrapbook designers fabrics even if I have never seen it before. I worked in a scrapbook store for a while and would spend hours at a time just staring at paper. I imagine that is what it would be like to work in a fabric store now.
7. My favorite type of food is Sushi. When we lived in Charlottesville the sushi chef knew me by name and always made me freebies. Once Kenny (the Sushi chef) left to go home to China to take care of his mother I stopped going to the restaurant. It just wasn't the same. No all Sushi is not created equal.

Now for the hard part. I am suppose to nominate 7 blogs that I admire. I have been stalking quilting blogs for over a year now and there are a ton out there that I really like. But having to nominate someone for an award really made me think long and hard. I was so surprised to have been nominated myself that I wasn't sure how to go about selecting seven fellow bloggers for the honor. So here is my list in no particular order. Some of these lovely ladies have been blogging for a long time and some are pretty new. All of them are creative and I appreciate that they are willing to share their talents and lives with me as I read along.

1. Bea
2. Molly
3. Crystal
4. Katy
5. Corey
6. Leanne
7. Melissa

Winner Winner Do Over

Well I waited and waited and no word from Mary C so I am staying true to my word and drawing again. Funny thing is a put the info into the random number thing again and it pulled seven again. Mary C when you get around to reading this make sure you email or comment me and let me know who you are and I'll get something out to you. But then I hit the button again and it gave me number 6 which is BailyGirl. So Congratulations BailyGirl. As you are not set to no reply I have emailed you requesting the info I need. Thanks to everyone for playing and I hope to see you all again soon. Hopefully I will have some sewing done before the end of the day.

WINNER WINNER

Don't you hate it when people make you wait all day to see who the winner is. Well I do so I promise not to be one of those people. After a little confusion this morning and some help from my friends I figured out how to close comments on the previous post and then drew a winner by random.org



The winner is number 7 (Mary C). Mary you are set as a no reply blogger. Please send me an email with your details. If I don't hear back from Mary within 24 hours I will pick another winner. Thank you all for your wonderful comments and please come back to visit soon. I am going to a great quilt show next week and I can't wait. I'm sure i will have a ton of things to share with you then.

Sorry it's not a more clear picture. I guess next up on the list of things to learn is how to put a copy of the random number results into a blog. Hope you all have a great weekend.

I'm Blessed

Lately I have been feeling very ho hum about life in general. There have been bumps in the road with my job, my husbands job, finances, you name it insert speed bump here. Through those bumps I realize how blessed I am. I'm blessed to have friends like all of you who care and are supportive. I'm blessed to have a close relationship with my mother after years of never seeing eye to eye and times I am quite sure I was a pain in more ways than one. I'm blessed to have a father who still thinks of me as his little girl. I'm blessed to have a husband that loves me despite my many moods. I'm blessed to have quilt friends who are as obsessed with fabric as I am and who are willing to share their good deals. I'm blessed to have fellow bulldog moms who offer advice and understanding of how stubborn they can be. I'm blessed in so many ways.


Lately I have also been lucky enough to find some very hard to find out of print fabrics. I have great friends who have willingly shared secret locations even offered parts of their stash for me. I know that through the next year as I participate in bees with some of you and blog with some of you I am going to be blessed beyond measure. And because I am blessed I want to share some of my good fortune with you. Last week thanks to Mary I was able to purchase my favorite Flea Market Fancy Print ever. And so I decided that I am going to host my first giveaway. I am giving away a fat quarter of this FMF print along with a few other goodies. All you have to do is leave a comment. Let me know how you found my blog and if this is your first visit or if you are a returning guest. Easy as that no need to become a follower or repost this to your own blog. Though I won't argue if you want to share about my humble space with your friends. I'm going to leave the comments open until Saturday morning and will announce the winner shortly after.

Please please be sure you are not set as a noreply comment. I want to respond to all of you and of course I want to be able to let you know if you are the winner. I've had several of these already so please double check your profiles.

Sneak Peak

So I started getting all of my fabric together for March for the Spider Web Bee and then I pulled up my list of address to do the envelopes and somehow I missed that when we got the finally list some of the months had been rearranged and I'm not until May. Oh well it works out fine because it gives me time to find a few more orange fabrics I would really like to include. So I switched gears and started getting things together for my Bee Stitched group and my Fussy Cut Bee because I am in fact sending out fabrics for both of those bees in March. It works out pretty well because the block I chose for my month in Bee Stitched is a scrap busting block so while cutting my fabrics for my Fussy Cut bee and the strips for the Spider Web Bee I just cut an extra strip of each fabric and trimmed them down to the right size. Since I don't have a lot of scraps yet this is the easiest way to do it. Of course I am going to encourage all my Bee Stitched buddies to feel free to add any of their own designer scraps to the blocks as well but I want to be sure they have enough to work with in case they don't have a lot of scraps or in case they love my block so much they have to make one of their own and so then don't want to share (Just kidding girls you have already proven a hundred times over that you love to share. Just thought I would follow suit and give a little sneak peak at some of what will be heading their way.