Uncategorized

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. At our guild meeting this week Jackie G. told us of our guild’s commitment to making ornaments for one of the museum’s Christmas trees. She also asked for any member who has an easy ornament pattern to please share it. With this post I am testing whether I would be able to post pdfs here for members to access. Please try clicking on the link below and then in a comment let me know if it opened successfully for you or not. Thanks! ornament demo

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Amazing! When you see the finished quilt, even after watching the video as it takes shape from the wood, it appears to be a gorgeous creation in cloth. Such skill. Click here.

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Have you heard the news that Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine is going out of business soon? I was caught off guard by this announcement. I started subscribing to QNM way back in the days of Bonnie Leman, its original publisher. I consider it one of the influences that made me the quilter I am now. I will definitely miss it. I am not one who is happy with digital publications, should they decide later to perhaps publish it only digitally. If there is not a hard copy print version, then I am gone as a subscriber. Even daily blog posts or e-mails are not equivalent substitutes in my book. Here is a link to an interesting post from a much more recent addition to the quilt magazine market, with some information on the publisher’s outlook, and a magazine’s writers’ take on this. Interesting to say the […]

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Finally things around here are settling down and I’m back in the quilt room more. My teaching assignments are farther apart for the summer so I’m tackling a bunch of UFO’s. I finished up some runners that were all pieced and just needed either the layering etc, or even less. It feels good to get those off of the bed in the spare room. Right now if I had a surprise guest they’d have to sleep on a dog bed! I’ve also been getting back to zentangling and free motion quilting practice. When I ran across this video in my e-mail today I really was interested. Graffiti quilting. Looks so much like zentangle–with some twists. Can’t wait to finish up the topper I’m working on now so I can try out some of the graffiti ideas in its quilting. See what you think about this […]

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Who does your quilting? Are you one of us who does all of your own quilting because “it’s not your quilt if you pay someone else to quilt it”? (overheard being said by a visitor to our quilt show as she saw the name of a long-armer on the quilt label) Do you do some of your own quilting and hire some of it out? Hand quilting or machine quilting? I enjoy doing the quilting of my projects. I do all of it by machine, some free motion and some walking foot. But what I don’t enjoy about the process is the layering and the basting. Definitely a necessary evil-but evil nevertheless. I do remember crawling around on the floor basting a larger quilt to be done on my domestic machine. And the aches and pains in my knees and back after that adventure are […]

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. It’s often difficult to come up with quilt ideas for the men in our lives. Even changing the fabric choices to near solids often doesn’t make a quilt design quite manly enough. This morning I came across this quilt idea which is perfect for the sports fan. A baseball quilt! Actually with a bit of ingenuity any ball–football, soccer ball, golf ball–could be placed into this plan for a super quilt! I’m thinking I may make this into a softball quilt for my sister who just retired from many years of very successful coaching of varsity softball teams. See what you think. Click here.

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. It has been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve been making samples for classes, alternating with preparations to begin registrations for our new “Saturday Seminar Series”. Check it out as it gets posted at our guild’s page. The committee, my co-chair Jan, and I are hoping that you’ll find several classes to interest you this year. We’ve worked hard to incorporate all of the suggestions given, and to resolve your concerns. We’re hoping that our members, and their friends who are always welcome to join us, will be pleased with the changes we’ve made. Seminar has been a tradition for over 40 years in our guild–we’re hoping to honor the goals of seminar even with the changes that had to be made. I’ve been accumulating some quick links to interesting posts at other web sites-with help from some of our members. So without further […]

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Beginning to get life back to normal in this household. Still will have to take down and put away the holiday decorations, but otherwise life is much calmer. I leave my decorations up until the Epiphany at least. We always had to wait to put the Magi near the creche on the 6th. I have seen lots of Christmas trees at the curb already. Even a few were out on the 26th. How about you? Are your holiday things already packed away, or do you stretch it out a bit? I’ve got a few quilting resolutions for myself that I’ll share. And I’m asking you to share a resolution or two in a comment after you’re done reading. Okay? Last year I resolved to use more orange in my quilts and I think I accomplished that well. It was a reach for me since in […]