Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Marguerita’s Blog

250 Quilties

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…5″ square, give or take a quarter inch…. Sarah and I make these for Quilt Market, which we will be attending in less than a month. This year we will have a Take & Teach on Sunday morning as well as a few “in-booth” demos through the weekend and a Schoolhouse session on Thursday. Notice my blue foam quilting table? 🙂

I have enjoyed a wonderful fall weekend, full of sun, fabric and quilting, while Tom and his son have been building a shed for a friend. Tom is in his truck, answering a call and is son is inside the building…

Midarm Machine Quilting Class

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I teach quilting on a midarm machine whenever I can and at the Valdez Quilt Festival I was invited to teach this class twice. I really enjoy showing quilters why I love this system more than the longarm 🙂

I’ve owned both a longarm and midarm system and quilted on the home sewing machine as well, so I try to give the students a full perspective on all three but the class really is about using one of these new, quilt friendly, frame quilting machines. Here’s a pic from my Thursday class.

Crazy Shortcut Quilt Workshop at the Valdez Quilt Festival

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Whooooowheeeeee!! I had the time of my life!! Sarah and I taught the most fun class I’ve ever been in and the quilters went home with just an hour or two of stitching left to have finished and quilted quilts!

And guess what I found in Valdez? Rabbits! 🙂

I taught my class on using a midarm quilting system on Thursday and Sunday and on Friday & Saturday we did our shortcuts quilt as-you-go method.

The drive home was just lovely. It’s been years since we’ve driven to Valdez, a 425 mile trip for me from Seward, and we visited some familiar places and a few new ones too.
This is Tiekel River, at about mile marker 50 of the Richardson Highway. I have a few more photos on Flickr here and you are invited to take a look. There are photos of Worthington Glacier, the top of Thompson Pass (in the clouds, of course!) and a couple of the Wrangell-St. Elias mountains and last is one of Sarah touching the Alaska Pipeline at about mile marker 82 or so. We have the same photo from when she was about 9 or 10 years old 🙂

Next trip is to Houston, Texas, at the end of October and my thoughts are with the people of Texas as they struggle with the damage done by the hurricane.

Seward in August

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Some photos I’ve take recently. Tom came home briefly, bringing the jitney in. This photo was taken about about nine or nine thirty at night.

Earlier that same day a cruise ship left port. Notice the fireweed? The story goes that when the fireweed is done blooming, two weeks later it will snow.

Today the silver salmon must be jumping right off this side of the bay because the fishing boats moved over here, at the end of our street. In the distance are the lights of a tender coming in from Prince William Sound with pink salmon for the cannery.

Valdez Quilt Festival Sept. 11-14, 2008

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We are going to Valdez!! Sarah and I haven’t been there for years and we are looking forward to seeing the town again, cruising through Thompson Pass, taking photos of Bridal Veil Falls and Horse Tail Falls, and maybe finding some salmonberries.

I used to drag Sarah (and sometimes her friends and cousins) all over the state as she was growing up. I love traveling in Alaska!

At the Festival we will be teaching the Crazy Shortcut Quilting in a two day marathon class (Sarah will stay up with the night owls and I’ll get up with the early birds) and I’ll also be teaching what I know about using a mid-arm quilting system to quilt for yourself and others. I am *SO* looking forward to the drive, it has always been one of my favorite trips. The mountains up at Eureka are just breathtaking, the St. Elias range is so impressive and so far, unless I’ve been in an airplane, I haven’t found a view like the one from the top of Thompson Pass. You can almost see to Cordova!

Here’s info about the Festival, we hope to see you there!

Stitch Envy

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Whenever Sarah does a demonstration of our Crazy Shortcut Quilt techniques she mentions “stitch envy”. It happens during class when the students are quilting their squares using the decorative stitches of their sewing machines. They look at the quilters next to them and the stitches they have on their machines, and well, you get the idea.

We teach a lot of ways to get the most from your machine no matter how many stitches it has and I’ve quilted on machines with just 5 or 6 stitches – changing width and stitch length just to get some variety.

Today I got an email from a really cool lady who couldn’t wait to show me what she’d stitched up after reading our book. “We inspired her” she said, “and be sure to look at that crown stitch” she said. So I looked at her photos and now I have stitch envy!

She has crowns!

I want crowns!

Look at those stitches. I am so broke that I just couldn’t ask what machine she has – – I’m afraid to ask! LOL I’ll be dreaming of stitches tonight….thanks to Sandra Wucher of the Stashbusters Group on Yahoo!

Empty Nest

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At what point does “whew, I am so glad I don’t have to clean up after them anymore!” turn to “Oh, how I miss the pitter patter of their little feet…”?

My answer – -‘not yet’! LOL 🙂 Hehehehe

The baby bunnies went back to their outside home, as healthy as I can get them, my 22 month old granddaughter is home in Anchorage after spending the weekend with me and Tom is fishing in Homer (a long way away). I am……home alone!

Let’s see if I can finally be productive. You should see my ‘to do’ list. I was remembering quilts that I need to finish in my sleep last night. Then there’s some painting I’ve been putting off, cleaning out more stash, scanning photos & backing up computers….

My little helper got me started yesterday before she left….

Baby Bunnies

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On July 5th Tom brought home 2 baby bunnies that each had conjunctivitis in one eye. It just broke my heart. I didn’t post about them, or take photos, because I was sure that they were going to die. They were very, very infected, starved and barely 10 days old. The only hope I had was that they moved around and wanted to eat. So, we regularly soaked and cleaned their bad eyes, painstakingly cleaned up their fur, fed them alfalfa hay, fresh dandelion greens, ground pellets and goat’s milk (by eyedropper). They lived.

They are still under “clean up” care in my living room but they are eating, playing, grooming themselves and each other and their fur is almost totally clean. I believe that they will both be blind in their infected eyes, but I am not positive. The white rabbit’s bad eye almost looks normal now. I just can’t figure out how to give an eye test to a bunny! Lol 🙂

Gone Fishing

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Here’s the F/V Dolly B towing her jitney and skiff out of the harbor and in the second picture you can see the boats as a tiny spec. They are on their way to Nuka Bay. It’s about an 8 hour run and fishing there opens at 6am tomorrow morning. Please wish them safe travels and successful fishing. This trip is for Wild Alaskan Red Salmon.

So, what this really means is that I am free!!!! Yayyyy!

I’ve been working my day job and then working on either the property (clearing & cleaning) or the boats (endless maintenance) afternoons and early evenings, and in between caring for the baby bunnies Tom rescued (long story – coming soon). No quilting. I want to finish my funky quilt and now Sarah has posted a design that I like and want to try too… And my pal Margie has found a great plugin for WordPress photo management and it looks both incredibly learning intensive but everything and more that I’ve been looking for!