Spring Cleaning

Freddy inspired my black and white collection. I am changing out the blue and yellow fabric for some of my Asian fabrics. I have way to much bright and funky fabs, but they are just about my favorites.

Hi all...thought I would post some pix of my studio. Actually some of my stash shelves don't look half bad...the other jumbled up mess with the stuffed animals is on the living room floor....yikes....I need to open a zoo. Most of those bears were made by me, and I hate to give them up. Plus, there are about a zillion quilt magazines all over the place. My newest sorting method is to flip through the magazine really fast...if nothing catches my eye...boom...GONE!! I make copies of what I want to save and hopefully use one day. That seems to work pretty well, but I am getting behind in making the copies...of course I have to live nine lives like my cat to get all this stuff used up and made. But I hate to tear up magazines. Then I give the magazines to my guilds for sale. We use them to raise money.

SOme of the gals actually are surprised at my organizational skills. I only need a warehouse to get it all stored, and a ton of shelves to pile it up. Oh, well, I am making progress...friend Stephie is getting nervous with all my cleaning. I think she is worried I am losing my mind.....like the sign in my studio........I have lost my mind, and nobody cares.!

Well, I will take some pictures of my classroom tables so you can actually see bottom. It is quite nice. I just have to find some more beads to embellish my QA challenge quilt. I never do hand stuff, but feel challenged to make the plunge on this one. I will work till I run out of ambition, time, and/or beads. Gotta go eat some dinner.....till later, Judy

Lunch at the Koi Diner

I finally finished (almost) my latest piece. I took this class from Barbara Shapel...she is great, and you should take any class you can from her.

I knew I wanted to make mine koi circling around the food! I am pleased with it, pretty much. I still have to add water lilies, and do some painting on the fabric. I may get brave and try to enter it in a juried show.
We had some more snow last week, and it is still mostly here. THe temperature has been so cold the rain has not been able to wash it away. I feel bad for all my friends in CT with 2 feet of snow, and more on the way. I am glad to not live there anymore.

Two of my Goofballs just left. They are a small group of gals who come the second Tuesday of the month. Dana was working on an Asian type jacket. We like to try new things and play around with some funky new ideas whenever we can.

I hope your new year is wonderful, filled with lots of great quilting projects and creative new ideas.

There is so much new fabric out there that it makes you head spin! I am definitely trying to NOT buy too much, as the more I clean my studio, the more I know that I don't need one more thing.
I just got a note from my friend Betsy...in KY. She helps birth foals....what a fun job to be around all those beautiful animals, and she is a FABULOUS quilter to boot. I have one of her fabulous leaf quilts.

Check my website, as I have posted this quarter's classes with the help of Jan, my website guru. I am going to post classes for the East coast in a few weeks.

In the meantime, as we try to thaw out, happy quilting.....judy

Four and Twenty Black-birds

Greetings from freezing cold WA....we have had freezing weather the past few days with a dusting of snow....my bird feeders are getting a workout with all those cold little birds looking for some lunch.

We have had hundreds of red-winged blackbirds in the yard...they fly in a cloud, all in unison, and eat bugs on the ground....then fly to the feeders for sunflower seeds for dessert. It is quite a sight, with the red of their wings flashing brightly as they fly around. I have been planning to make a quilt with red-winged black birds and flowers...but they flew so quickly I couldn't get a good picture.

Our Christmas was interrupted with Ken's cold...so we stayed home and I quilted and dug around in the studio. He is all better now, so we leave shortly for my brother's to spend New Year's. The sun is shining brightly even though it is very cold, in the teens.

The fish pond is frozen over, but the critters seem to take it all in stride. They don't even go into their little shelters.

We have much to be thankful for over this season, and hope you all have a wonderful holiday and bright and healthy new year. I hope to have some new quilts to post next week.

The quilt pictured is from my friend Lori. It was huge, but I got to quilt lots of my designs in....it was a fun quilt.

In the meantime...HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL. judy

Where's the ARK??

This Saturday was our Longarm meeting and we had the pleasure of going to Jo Ann Blade's beautifully decorated for Christmas home. I posted a few pix including a sideways teddy...I don't know how to flip things....sorry. Where is my guru?? This past weekend was flood zone here in our area. My friend Liz had to call the fire department and get them rescued by boat....they are safe and dry in a motel in Darrington, WA. I didn't even know Darrington had a motel...I think they will get back home today, and thankfully the water just missed getting high enough to get into the house. They did move their cars to higher ground.

The rains finally have stopped, and our pond is way down since Ken had to pump out lots of water. It was just a couple inches from the top, and with the rain and warmer weather the fish were getting a bit active. It will be raining all week off and on I guess. Tomorrow my Goofballs come and we will make a field trip to OVer the Rainbow shop on Camano Island...be sure to check it out on the web...overrainbow.com I don't remember how to link, so you will have to do it the old fashioned way. They have such great fabric. I am following my guru's advice and putting the pictures on first....I need to put more but wonder if everything will get all messed up...so guess I better just send you all this little note for now, and more pix later. IN the meantime, I hope you all have a safe and dry winter, at least for awhile....and minimal snow for those of you who live in the snow belt. I guess it is hard to escape totally in those climes...I remember from MI and CT.....

I am trying to get my schedule ready to post on my website as soon as Jan gets back from her lovely trip down the Danube for a Victorian Christmas. Have fun quilting, and will write more later...judy

It's freeeeezing!!

two more lone stars...one out of some great Christmas fabric and the other from a newer line of grapes in fall colors...pretty neat. I want to make one with oriental koi fabric and some more with Christmas fabric.

The flag was frozen the moring we left Graham, WA at my brother's ....the Saturday after Thanksgiving.....

HI to all you hardy souls out there....seems like all we get here is freezing weather every nite and frosty windows and ground every morning. THe critters are all huddled up against the fence waiting for their breakfast. Poor Brooklyn is as the bottom of the pecking order, and she gets the leftovers!

I am working on my winter teaching schedule which I hope to post on my website in the next couple weeks....with the help of my website guru Jan. She loves to do that stuff...good thing, cuz I hate that stuff and don't know how to do it anyway. I have a beautiful quilt of hers to do soon....it is a raw edge floral, and will be fun to decorate with thread. Watch the blog and I will post it when it is finished.

We are right in the swing with all the guild Christmas parties...2 down and 3 more to go, as well as our museum board lunch and big meeting this month. Otherwise pretty quiet and time to quilt some of my stuff I hope.

Then, I plan to dig out the studio...I guess I should post before and after pix....it just seems like getting to the after is always so hard.

Guess I will post a couple of my latest quilts on today's blog, and then get on to some more lone stars. I am totally taken with that block, and have been collecting any lone star designs that catch my eye, especially if they are a bit more unusual. Just hope I have time to make all the ones that intrigue me. Hope you all have a warm and happy day.....till later...judy

HAPPY THANKSGIVING....a litle late!!

Moe will definitely need to get to the beauty parlor after this bad weather!
Some Thanksgiving day pictures....we have much to be thankful for. I am grateful to live in such a wonderful nation and that our armed forces are there to protect us....I am thankful for family and friends and of course, my wonderul husband. And thankful for the many blessings God has given us over the past year.....even the snow!

Happy Thanksgiving a few days later....we had an interesting week with about 4" of snow, icy roads, and our area tied up in traffic jams and accidents. My studio had frozen pipes, and we were just trying to keep things perking along in this storm. The critters did fine, and probably loved the cold weather, especially the alpacas.

Soooo, I had a hot dog for Thanksgiving Day dinner, and we waited till Friday to take our bird and trimmings to my brother's house south of here a couple hours. Ken did a masterful job of baking the bird....it was really pretty roasted to a golden brown. I tried a new creamy type pumpkin pie......I think I will go back to my standard recipe off the can of pumpkin. I think that one is still the best! All I care about is the mashed potatoes anyway.....I have to laugh as yesterday some guy was interviewed on the radio who went on a 60 day potato only diet...he even lost 20 pounds and his cholesterol dropped 40 points or so....he was from the Washington potato board or some such thing. Now we need an icecream only diet...I will be happy to research that one!

Well, the one good thing that came out of our belated Thanksgiving was that I did quite a lot of sewing. I am nearly finished with my bordered diamonds and a couple other quilts as well. I even did some of my quilts on the longarm!

Well, that is my holiday report....on to Christmas and NO SNOW, I hope.....have a great week...judy irish

It's About Time!!

mystery picture....ha....this was 13 years of thread that had wound around the wheels of my long-arm...Ron Paul said he was glad to see I actually used my machine....now, I am watching closely to see that I don't get thread in my tracks and around my wheels. It sured gave the gals in the class a big laugh!

our snow protector over the heat pump by my studio.
This sunflower quilt was my favorite in the Innovations show...I have lost the name of the artist, but will find it and give her credit. It is painted and stitched....TOTALLY FABULOUS.

HI all....I did try to post last week, but something crazy happened to my nice long letter, and it disappeared....so I will try again today. I hope you are all enjoying a great fall and getting lots of quilting done. Ieven quilted two of my own tops yesterday and the day before. Even so, I did lots of customer quilts and am doing a very nice paper pieced block of the month. Boy, some teeny tiny pieces there. It is made by Sandra Chadwick in CT. Also received a Baltimore Album that took three years in the making...from my friend Pat Jennings in CT.

Well, after the great Leavenworth show I got busy with Innovations.

It was a great show, although not so big as usual, and there were fewer classes, too. A sign of the times, I guess. There were some really great pieces in the quilt show, and I took a class from Ron Paul on machine maintenance. I brought the head of my Gammill, and discovered I most probably needed a new motor. Well, it did sound like a cement mixer with marbles inside. We took the machine to Oregon and a great Gammill dealer and quilt shop, where I did get a new motor, my needle positioner switch replaced with a more modern new-fangled thingie, and a check-up. Guess I have to go back this spring for new gears. I didn't realize I had put that many miles on it.

Cindy Roth asked me to help her do a little program/trunk show one evening at Innovations. It was fun...question and answer and trunk show. I think it will be posted on her website...you will have to check it out. I hate to see myself on film, so likely won't look!

After Innovations I did a couple trunk shows for guilds...one in Anacortes for the Fidalgo Island Quilters...a great group of folks...and then for Bellingham, the Moonlight Quilters...another great group. It was fun, and I hope to be able to do workshops for them some day.

More teaching of quilting and woven quilts, and tomorrow I teach from The Bold and Beautiful book at Aunt Mary's at Smokey Point....then Saturday for a group of gals....machine quilting. It should be great fun.

Yesterday we had a great time giving the alpacas a pedicure...the hard part was catching them!

Our neighbor breeds alpacas, so we called him to do it....they were good boys once we caught them. The goats were curious as usual. Speaking of goats...we have two little bitty goats that live next door now....they are the cutest things, and cry like babies. I just had to check them to see if they were ok...they were! But they were sure crying like babies. They are small enough to pick up and hold and cuddle.

We have had sunny weather for 3 days. I am glad of that. We have been getting the pond plants out of the ponds and putting the lawn mowers into the barn...so I guess it is defnintely winter.

We also had to build a cover over our heat pump top keep the snow off the unit...it got pretty demolished 2 winters ago...just trying to be prepared. I don't think the insurance company will give us another one!

Oh, goodie.....chocolate cookies coming....Ken is going to make cookies later for my class tomorrow. YUM....

Well, that is about all the news for this time...I will hopefully be a little bit better about writing in the future. In the meantime, have a great weekend.....Judy