{national quilt association show - you. must. go.}

June 14th - 16th here in Columbus, Ohio - the National Quilt Association hosts their annual show.  Now, I've not actually been to this show but my friends in the know say this is THE place to be this weekend.  If you like quilts, you'll love this show. My friends from The Glass Thimble, Jamie and Justine, have a gigantic quilt shop here in Columbus (in the Clintonville area) and they will have a booth at the show.  Chances are good that you might find a bunch of Two Peas stuff there and at a great price.  Ok, chances are better than good...just sayin.

{payton's quilt}

A labor of love.

Payton's Mom picked out some fabrics while Payton was still cooking in her Mom's tummy for a quilt that would wrap the wee one up when the air was chilly.

Payton was born.  Has grown to about 18 months old and I just finished her quilt.  I did size it up so she could snuggle with it while watching movies and it's large enough to spaciously grace her toddler bed.

Sometimes projects get back burnered.  For no other reason except - I get distracted with other projects.  So, on Saturday night when the Gardener, my hubby, got a phone call from a friend to help him track a deer he shot...that left me with 3 kids asleep in bed and a quiet house all to myself.  And down to my sewing room I went.

3 1/2 hours later, a sweet little quilt...actually, I guess it's a really a patchwork blanket because it's not quilted at all.  My husband came home from his adventures just in time to actually lay out the squares in an order that he said "was mathematically correct".  *shakes head*  He laid them out so that no color was repeated in any row in any direction.  Ok, so it works.  It was pretty.

I backed the blanket with some flannels, used a sheet in the center to give it some weight (instead of batting).  For a blanket like this, I pieced the top using 16 quantity 9 1/2" squares and 2 1/2" wide sashing.  Then I basted the center sheet to the top.  Put right sides together - the back to the top (my blanket sandwich in order was: center sheet, top, back), stitched leaving an opening for turning.  Turned it right side out, steam pressed the edges, pinned again and then top stitched all the way around.

Pretty quick and simple and a labor of love for our sweet friend Payton.

{car quilt. or quilted car}

"Somebody" in my family is quilting their car. Not making a car quilt.

Or a quilt for the car.

But actually creating a quilt design ON their car.

I'd say EXACTLY who it is (cough! cough! It's a girl! cough!  It may or may not be my sister or cough! sister-in-law, cough! or niece, cough!!) because I'm not sure if she's ok with me blabbing about her car.  I mean, I think I casually said something like, "Hey, can I take a picture.....(under breath) for my blog?".  She said, YES!  So, well...so I'm sharing!  Right?!  I HAD to share this because it is TOO CUTE!!

How is she doing it?  Well, that is all very cool scrapbook paper she is using.  I think she said something about japanese prints?  She's using a punch to cut all her circles and then outdoor strength mod-podge to attach them all.  She's going to do the entire rear bumper of her car.  I think it's awesome!

I SO wish my husband would let me do this to our mini-van!

Quilters quilting at the Quilt Club

A couple of weeks ago, on a very hot steamy day - me and my trunk of goodies - made our way through downtown Columbus to meet with a local quilt club during their lunch hour.  These ladies awesome employer gives them space and some funds to host a quilt club at work.  How cool are THOSE benefits?!  Nice!

I brought along a few embellishment ideas to share with them and talked a little bit about the process I use to design and develop my sewing patterns.  I brought along my Simplicity Bias tape maker to show them how to use it for quilt binding.  They really liked that (when you make yards and yards of bias - ANYTHING to make it easier is a miracle!)  The girls had a lovely show -n- tell with some of their recent projects.  (see them up there - nice huh?!)

I also brought a couple of quick sew by hand projects to share as well.  Everybody stitched along and chatted.  It was a really nice break in the day and such an honor to be invited.  And a pleasure to meet everyone from their quilt club.

Made me wish I worked at their office so I could come have lunch them at the meetings every month.

{a quilt is nice}

Recovered from the holiday?  I'm still working on it...truth be told, I got pneumonia and a respiratory infection 3 days before Christmas and I'm still not quite back on my feet.  Kind of a bummer - when Mom is sick, Christmas just doesn't quite go as planned. But I'm thankful, I am getting well.

My kids are happy.

Their bellies are full with...well, whatever my husband conjured up.  (He tried to make my famous chicken tortilla soup - bless him.  I'm still the soup king...)

And one of my peas has been amazing.  Who knew she could do dishes?  Change Sprout's diaper?  And keep the house running while the Gardener has been at work.  I'm very proud of her and very thankful because she really allowed me to rest and lay down when breathing...air...of any sort, was a real challenge.

Christmas is a gift that no illness can take away.  It didn't really matter that I couldn't cook like I normally do or other things we didn't get to.  What we did do was just be together and quietly celebrate the birth of Jesus.  So, in that essence, our holiday was simply awesome.

I wanted to share with you what arrived in my mailbox just before the holiday - a quilt.  Nettie, who blogs at A Quilt is Nice made the sweetest little baby quilt for Modern Relief.  This year, a whole host of quilters got together and donated some amazing pieces of art to a raffle where the proceeds go to World Vision, an organization working to end hunger.  Over $5000 was raised to this effort and I was so shocked that I had won Nettie's quilt!  (I NEVER win anything!)

I'm probably not explaining myself very well as my head is not all that clear - you can go read about it on Nettie's blog.  

Nettie's workmanship is beautiful...this quilt is absolutely precious.  I don't even know how she made it.  The blocks are all wonky sized and it's so adorable.  Truly, a work of art.

Well, this quilt wasn't in my hands for very long.  My two peas who have some mild "challenges" had a favorite teacher last year that we love and treasure.  She made a significant difference in their lives through not only her example of how she taught, ran the classroom and lives her life, but she also helped us to find a new pathway for my girls "challenges".  She reminds me of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus books.  She's just that kind of teacher.  She saved my girls, she made them feel like they could do anything.  And she's probably the first teacher that made them believe in themselves.

This special teacher, she is expecting.  A baby boy.  Coming this Spring.

I knew that as special as this quilt is - that I wanted to share it with this very special person.  I told her the story about Nettie and the raffle and the Modern Relief efforts and how the quilt was just passing through my hands to the intended recipient.  And it made her cry.  She absolutely loved the quilt and she's even thinking about decorating the nursery around some of the prints in the quilt.  I knew as soon as I saw this quilt that it really wasn't mine...because a new baby boy is going to be wrapped in this very soon.

xoxo,

Trish

Hodgepodge...that's kinda my schtick

I'm a scrappy kind of sewer. I like to use a lot of color.  Patchwork.  Scrappy.  Rough.  Imperfect.  I like it that way.  For Christmas in 2008, I made my parents a scrappy quilt.  Just a throw quilt to use in front of the telly at night or in the car while they travel.  My Mom handed it back to me a few months ago because a couple of the blocks had pulled apart.  (pats self on back...way to go Trish).

It was December 22nd and I was still sewing away at this quilt.  I stayed up until 3am one night just so I could sew kid free.  My parents really liked it so I felt bad that it had pulled apart.There and over here.  See?  That's where the blocks had pulled apart.  Is there a legit way to patch these?  I have no idea because I'm not really a quilter so I did what I do and got more scrappy with it (as if it weren't scrappy enough already).  I thought if I put some kind of square block on them that first of all, they would have to be pretty big to cover the full tear.  Second, I thought, it would be so much like the blocks that to only have a couple where the tears were would make the whole quilt look odd.  SO...I frequently revert back to dots.  My logo being the peas, I try to replicate dots in a lot of things that I do.  And that's how we came upon patching with dots.

But I couldn't do just two...I had to do more over the whole quilt to "even" them out.  Luckily, my niece was here last weekend.  She wanted me to do some dorm room sewing for her and so she stayed the weekend with us, watching kids so we could have a date night and then sew for her.  (Dang, if I only she lived closer.  I could SO enjoy that at least every other weekend...it was great to have her around but she lives an hour and a half south of us.)

Anyway, once I patched it...um, everyone loved it in our house.  My niece slept with it.  Everytime I lay it down, the kids come running to snuggle up on it or under it.  I really need to make one for ourselves I guess.  Well, see there?  Sprout...running from the playhouse like she had "quilt radar" when I laid it down to take a photo.

A perfect summer afternoon, napping on a quilt in the shade.  Mom...I'm just sayin', not sure this quilt will be making it back home to your house anytime soon.  Sorry about that.

Join me back here tomorrow...for a lovely sponsored giveaway from Lisa Leonard designs.  So many lovelies to choose from - one lucky reader will get something wonderful!  Come back and find out more tomorrow...

xoxo,

Trish

Day 7...a hat for you, Angel Love Art Quilt for my Mom

First - odds were pretty good on our post for Bows and Blossoms and their wonderful giveaway for this adorable hat.

Our lovely random number generator - and Deb - this little lovely is all yours.  An email is on its way to you for your mailing address.  Thanks so much to all who entered and visited Suann at Bows and Blossoms.

Don't forget - there is still a few days left to win this from me over at Where Women Create

Second, today my plan was to do nothing.  So I wandered down to my sewing room after church today to do some nothing and got this made.  This is on its way to the winner from my Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway.

And then I got around to making my Mom her Christmas gift.  One of them at least.  I wanted to make an art quilt wall hanging.  My first attempt - I was happy with how it turned out.  I found a bag of old lace and stuff in my craft box from my high school crafting days and loved some of the vintage findings in there.  I have a whole big bag of really old lace.  So cool.

I used fabric scraps, old vintage lace, ribbon, yarn, buttons, beads and a piece of vellum.  I set it all on a piece of fusible fleece interfacing first to act as a glue for the base and then kept adding things on top.  Then I did a variety of stitches - kind of like a crazy quilt - all over the place.

For a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with it and I know my Mother will love it 'cuz she's my Mom and its like hanging my drawings on the refrigerator - she always loves what I make for her.

xoxo,

Trish

Bloggers Quilt Festival

So I heard a little rumor from Kaye that this quilt blog festival was going on.  They time it so that it is going on during the International Quilt Market .  The Fall market is the BIG one of the year.  There is also one in the Spring but the Fall one is where most new releases on fabric lines, etc are launched or revealed. If you've been with me for any length of time you'll remember this.

The result of that is that I am STILL working on designs.  Here's the thing.  I had 3 companies that were promising.  One who sent me an email when I got home and said they loved my stuff and they would be in touch very soon.  That sounds good, doesn't it?

Well, a month later I got a short note from them that said "they decided to go another direction".  I was ok with that because there were still 2 others in the running.  Both of those said that I needed to tweak some things, work on colorways, etc but that they really loved my designs.

Last week, after not being in touch with those companies since May, one of them emailed me again and said they were really impressed with my presentation, really loved my designs and looking forward to my resubmits.

Again, sounds promising.  Really.

Problem is, I'm not a graphic designer.  SO...I'm slowly trying to figure out what I need to be able to do this myself and I'm asking for help from some friends.  And I continue to network with others who have done this before me.  Sandi Henderson and Bari J and Lila Tueller - all very kind in offering me advice and encouraging me along.  Networking is so very helpful.

I was in such a hurry before to get "there" but now, I just put it in God's hands.  If it's meant to be, it will.  If I'm blessed enough with talent and skill that can grow into a career to help support my family - then it's God's plan and it will happen when the time is right.  I'm much more relaxed about the process now.

For months, I've been planning to take November and December off.  I just submitted an article to a magazine for publication.  I have 3 publishing companies that I'm working on book proposals for and I'm actually pulling in some all new sketches to build my collection that I have now named, designed my selvedge edges for and have a few sewing patterns to go with...and I will actually have, before Christmas, the first of those patterns for sale and ready for distribution.

In God's time.  Not mine.  If it's meant to be.  It will.  If not, then I'll keep doing what I'm doing.  Sewing for my friends and family and loving every.  single.  minute. of it.

Which brings me back to the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

You are supposed to write a post about a quilt and tell it's story.

The first quilt I ever made, I made when I was about 10 weeks pregnant with the peas, my twins.  I didn't know it at the time that there were two of them in there so I was only making one.  I actually haven't made a second one yet.  And they are now, ahem, 8 years old.  It was a nine patch with a flannel back of bears with angel wings.  Adorable.

It's been loved...to pieces.  I've told them I'll have to cut it in two for them and make them into little wall hangings or something.

And then last Christmas, I made my parents a big throw quilt.  I also put a flannel back on it because my Dad is always cold.  The front I did just giant blocks and put a cute vintage cowboy flannel on the back.

There really isn't any story to this.  Except I was so busy working filling orders that I didn't get to make this until the week of Christmas.

And I had a new baby at home.

And I stayed up into the wee hours after everyone was in bed asleep sewing.

And piecing.

And quilting.

I have alot of respect for quilters.  It's a big job.  But the results are timeless.

I say that because in the baby's room, framed is a quilt square from a quilt my great grandmother made.  It had started to fall apart and so each girl in my family got a square of it framed.

And I made Christmas stockings for my parents from it.

And I still have more left.  There will be some other sweet projects to come along, I'm sure.

xoxo,

Trish