one of the things keeping me busy

was finishing up this african print turning twenty quilt!

I was finishing it as a get well present for our principal who was out with surgery...OUCH!!! did i say she loved it???

It actually has a small story. I used to work for our principals sister and they are both elephant crazy. When she hired me i was busy sewing up fabric into turning twenty agains for presents so i thought WHY not use up some of the african fabrics and make her one...I EVEN had a lovely elephant print...the bright green one in the lower left side...poor elephant is standing on its head:...

ANYWAY so the top was done in a jiffy but it laid around for a while( a year or so)...on the very large foot stool in the living room....till a friend Marsha Boasso saw it and asked what it was and i told her...she thought i ought to finish it...and then Dr. E got sick and the rest was history....Did I say she loved it?

Quilt Show

Thank goodness Ille and Marie showed up to help or we would NEVER have gotten done! WHO knew it would take so long?

Our local library the new Columbia County library is having a traveling crazy quilt show sponsored by the Georgia Quilts Council and the library director Christina Rice asked me to organize some crazy quilts from our bee to put in the two locked display cases ...did i say these are enormous...we only had enough stuff to fill one of them...and MOST of it was mine and NOT crazy quilts...just a little crazy quilt related ...as in HIGHLY embellished...there are even journal quilts(the ones that are NOT touring with wherever Karey is sending the show from the book) and postcards in there!!!

Thank goodness Ille and Marie and Kay sent some stuff or we would have had a very EMPTY show case!!! I even took my grandmothers crazy quilt from the 30s. She made it from wool scraps from family clothes....and went crazy on it using the feather stitch all over it...as Fons and Porter would say ...it was one of those projects that took a long time and kept ladies busy so they could think while they sewed and when they were finished they could say they DID it! NOT the most beautiful quilt BUT well loved...only quilt in our family...she put a wool blanket in the middle of it and it weighs A TON...

Maries daughter waiting and waiting for us to be done....you can almost hear her thinking IS IT DONE YET MOM?!

The other case with some of the crazy quilts from the touring show ...the one on the bottom is my grandmothers crazy quilt...all wool
Hey Ladies you are making quite a mess:> We only had a little over an hour to hang these because the library was closing...and ille had to rush to walmart and back to get fishing line and dowls and other hanging things while i made cards for the items in the cabinet.

Some more of the crazy quilts...thank goodness i was there...these never would have gotten hung because fishing line was needed to hang them...there are about 30 of these...because the library was closing i did NOT have time to find out who did them. I was taking pictures as we walked out the closing library ...the security guard was beginning to glower at us because he thought it was TIME for these crazy ladies to get out of his library:>

An UPCLOSE Picture of my Grandmothers quilt....it filled the whole bottom shelf of this very large case...its at least a double bed sized quilt

So would you believe its

done ..started as this on Oct 28 and finished by Nov 24...amazing what a wild group of women can do in a month...and have GREAT fun along the way

...quilted by our good friend Judy Lockhart...quilter extrodinaire...she took this pic too while it was still at her house....

BUT Marie and Shelvy have sewn on the binding AND a sleeve over Thanksgiving weekend...AND its all done...now to give it to Betsy on Tuesday...she will be sooo tickled...and we KNOW shes going to cry..our bad right:>

the sewing room and closet makeover...

My youngest son had the brilliant idea of putting all my sewing stuff and fabric in our smallish walk in closet...we are hoping to rent the house for masters week....and there are requirements...like closet space in EACH room...something there was NONE Of in the sewing room...it was full of fabric...the master bedroom on the other hand has TWO closets...

you can see what it used to look like on my old blog page at http://scquiltaddict.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html...there were two tall shelves, a short shelf, four of those plastic drawers, and a closet full of cubbies...slam full of fabric...

this is the heap i took off one set of shelves in the sewing room....on the day bed ....someone might get buried if they dont watch out:>those blue tubs are full of the blue and green fabrics that took up four shelves on the two tall book cases...and yes those are the dreaded five gallon tubs full of blue and green fabrics...Another shelf full of dupioni, hand dyed silks, and Kaffe Fassett fabric...my new current love in fabrics!

heaps of ribbons covered with dust...at least some of them!

heaps of trim that i bought two years ago to use on purses...still in the original plastic bag from Mary jos...did i say we discovered trim in the remnant bin...$1 or so a pack...what a deal...you know how we all like a good deal...course its no longer a good deal since i didnt use it! not one scrap of it! If you looked at my old blog post about the sewing room you can see the trim ...bought in July 06...as well as all the ribbons hanging all around the door way...

I put the wire cubbies in the closet all the way to the ceiling as well as two sets of the shelves...the wire cubbies hold an amazing amount of fabric...I also took down the curtain rods...who knew that they just popped out...and so did the closet shelves...they are all stacked neatly in the closet on the one remaining shelf....so the closet can be restored without looking for all the parts one day!

Discarding fabrics...now filling a five gal tub...and another five gallon getting full of old projects

The bed beginning to see daylight...but covered with the browns that i took out last nite to go thru...these are the ones i am thinking of ditching HALF without even going thru...I rarely use brown even though i love the color...so what do i need with them all..same thing for the greys...you DONT need a jillion of them if you have a few good mottled or striped batiks...
the left side of the walk in closet...the old shelf from the sewing room...plus a set of cubbies...the cubbies are 18.5 " across...and fit a piece of fabric folded in half yards perfectly...


the metal cubes on the right side...three across and hmm is it 6 tall? 18 of them? I dont know ...will have to count...
THis...ahem...lovely shelf is currently on the back wall of the closet...and am stacking to do projects on it for now...I seem to now have a plethora of shelving...
WHats left in the closet right now...wont take long to clean it out...i am putting a tower of these cubbies in each closet for things like sweaters...and t shirts....

Apparently this artist has become a

quilter too....this was made up quickly from the block heap that i had sewed up earlier this month...wild wonky log cabins...Jeff is racing it off to somewhere to see if it can get sold...evidently it wowed everybody that saw it...and i do have to say its pretty cool for an innovative quilt with handprints...not your average handprint quilt....

yes i know crass commercialism but lets face it....do we really like to be starving artists living in hovels???Not I nor Jeff....

These last i zapped together from a couple of prints that I took pics of and then I inserted them using paintshop pro into the quilts that we got ready for the show in Aiken...and it was MUCH faster:>

This was sooo quick that i am looking around to see what else I can zap together...my quilts, jeffs artwork....ez pz....

I also discovered how to turn out a dvd on this Mac and that was well just so time consuming NOT....amazing how quickly we turned these three quilts into a dvd that actually worked!

Play day products -Tommy tulip and a quilt or two

What better cat to put in a post also about quilts than the quilt cat Tom himself...he helped pin quilts together all weekend..he was in quilt cat heaven...then he decided to pose by the tulips...I think this needs a little more work...but not sure what...more white in the eyes...have to find my white gel pen.....and I woke up thinking of a great background color BUT now i can not remember what it was...it will return right?

Okay so why was tommy so fascinated with DEAD tulips...we had driven him crazy all day with quilts...my friend Connie and I sewed together a turning twenty top and pinned it for my brother in law...my dh asked for brown...I had to perk it up a little with the green....I am thinking it looks like camoflauge? anyway everyone loved it....laid out on the kitchen floor to be replaced by Jeffs fabulous art work...no comparison...but you will have to come to the show in Aiken to see the paintings...:> my bad...but you can check his work out at his website...this is another posting of the card for the art show at the aiken center for the arts

He painted...while Connie and Rachel pinned Rach's FIRST grandchilds quilt...and its as cute as can be...I quilted it for her...piece of cake in a few hours...Connie fed us...we all went home exhausted but happy about 9 pm....me sneezing and kept saying I am not sick i am not sick i am NOTTT sick but with those kindergartners coughing and sneezing and flaking out all over the place i feel like grunge today...KERCHOOOOO...see my new bookcases??? dont they look great!!!

THe last two quilts are oldies but goldies...one recently quilted by that dynamo quilter Bonnie Hunter...awesome job...hope you can see it in the pic....this is one of the very first quilts i made when i started quilting again...almost cut my finger off making it with a rotary cutter...all the way across my index finger...but I saw some of my fav scraps of fabric in this ...alot of Hoffman batiks and flower prints...yummmy stufff......its huge king sized and will go to my moms if i ever have time to get binding on it...but HEY mom ...its here!!!!and a thread painting that I did of Santa who comes out just for Christmas...hmm then why is he still out:> Lazy me...havent put up all the decorations...maybe by june...hummmm maybe leave them up all year:>

Saturday play day at my house

Well people were coming and going all day...some came early and left early...some came late and stayed...thanks Ille for helping clean up!! Ille is after us again to finish our Patti Culea stargaze tome that we started in a class at Fiber on a whim in Atlanta...these ladies will be the top of the box that the tome goes into..only been working on this project off and on for a year and most are not nearly done!!! These ladies will go on the top of the box for the tome...well why do we need the arca aka box??? to keep all the pieces in silly!:> BYTW these are a series of patterns made by Patti Culea......

the top one is my ladies...the bottom two are illes....

I painted the background by first letting the ladies dry and soaking the fabric and putting setacolor and lumiere on ....it then ran like watercolor...I also added some fabric glitter to the ladies before they dried...
Not to be out done..Ille likes to paint so much she painted one for Kim too who was too busy appliqueing...
Ille painting and Sue getting ready to paint...

Some of sues fabulous work photographed on the back of one of the Callaham quilts...the magenta polka dots...

Sues book made from wallpaper and other things she had laying around...its soo charming...
the inside of her book
The outside of her minibook


Kim and her needle turned appliqued flowers...kim has been working on this a while because she usually really into something wilder like making crazy beaded purses....today she was laid back and tame...but its gonna be a gorgeous quilt one day....isnt it kim? kims blog
she also took some pics of play day...we should have take pics of each other with our identical cameras:>


These are pictures of Illes box that she has been working on too...she took a workshop from Kristi Steiner and Susan Edmonson up in the North Carolina mountains last September...I hope the pictures do it justice...its exquisite....and nope duh didnt take a pic of the box closed....its really THREE boxes that fit inside each other..think i will have to try one of these....when i have time...got to get off the computer and make my brother in law a bday quilt...he has ms and is really sick...so off to make a guy quilt....