Long Weekend ahead!

I can't believe the summer is over. With the long Labor Day weekend just about to begin, it's back to school for the kids and summer is gone. Well-maybe! We are supposed to have a series of 80 degree days and with little humidity here is Wisconsin lately, the days have been perfect lately.

The latest version of the Care Quilt has been passed back and forth between Jeanne and I about 4 times this week. Right now she has it and is trying to figure out what color yo yo's should go in the corners. The butterflies and hearts are embroidered and the buttons are in place as accent. The plan is to get it all ready for machine quilting this weekend and drop it off at the Quilt Shop on Tuesday. I think we can make that happen.

We hope you enjoy your weekend and that there is plenty of time for family AND stitching along the way!

flowers and embroidery

Sunday I spent time roaming through the Memorial Park Gardens of Appleton, WI. It was a kind of hot start to the morning even though we started the walk around 9 a.m. Interesting to see were the vegetable gardens that were fenced in for protection against critters and a Petting Zoo Garden where all the plants had animal type names. I'm sharing 2 photos of the wonderful sites so you can enjoy them too!

Jeanne and I are starting to increase the pace of our designing and stitching. We have decided that we will try to get 4 new patterns ready to introduce at the Houston International Quilt Market late in October. With the price of everything going through the roof, we aren't quite sure we can swing a visit to it this year. Airfare has jumped to $800 a ticket and the booth price has increased by $200! But we know we will have new patterns to share so we HAVE to get busy. I am starting to embroider on a 2nd version of our Care Quilt-butterflies and hearts-what is better than that??? And Jeanne is trying to move ahead with a new towel pattern that we love and have selected Rosie's Garden fabric to accent with-from Quilting Treasures. Stay tuned-photos probably by the end of this week!

Back to Care Quilt

I've been working pretty steady on a new version of the Care Quilt. At the same time, I seem to be accummulating miscellaneous 5 1/2" squares that would be perfect made up into a new bag. And then, of course, that measurement also works for large yo yo's...hmmm...do I sense a theme here? Jeanne has been tossing ideas at me left and right for stuffed animals that would be perfect made from fat quarters of flannel.

We are enjoying a week of cool weather-quite different from the usual dog days of August. Our gardens are full of the next crop of flowers-the phlox and zinnias are full of color. But who has time to pick flowers???

Free Pattern up on web site

Check out our web site for the August free pattern. You should really like it-it's a fun one to stitch!

I got home today and found a huge box of fabric by the door! How lucky are we??? It's a bunch of new fabric lines by Quilting Treasures. I will take a photo tomorrow and upload it. Right now I am just slowly taking each piece of fabric out of the box and spreading them all out on the table. Maybe I'll let Jeanne touch them tomorrow!

July Over and Back to Work!

It seems so long since I updated this-sorry folks! With company from Spain and a series of wonderful outdoor parties going on, my focus drifted to summer and not work. BUT I'm BACK! Hope you enjoy the zinnia photo Jeanne took. She has a wonderful series of flower beds that I will be sharing with you over the next week or so. We are meeting tomorrow to regroup and decide what the next push in designs will be. While we wait for new fabric deliveries to show up we are still hard at work on new versions of the Care Quilt and our new embellished bag design. Stay tuned for more!