Seeing Stars Quilt

Remember the Retreat I went to in February?

Well, I'm finally posting pictures of the quilt I made for the class I taught. I really like this quilt and right now it's hanging at American Quilting. If you have any interest in this quilt they still have a few kits available for $45.00. The kit includes everything you'll need to make the quilt top along with the instructions for making it.

This quilt was too cute not to blog about it. I'm just sorry it took me so long to bind the quilt and then to take pictures of it.

Just to clarify. The block is not my design (it's out of a book called Block Party) but how I put it together is my idea and design. I added those cute little corner triangles to each block to create a secondary pattern. It creates a shoo-fly block where you see the post and sashings come together and I figured out all the math to extend the pattern into the border. It's fun to take a standard block and make it yours.

Here's a closer look at the detail.

Notice how I carried the design out into the border. It makes it look really cool.

This is the quilt block.

May Flowers!

Happy May to Everyone!

It's been raining for the past few days and so the May flowers should be blooming. I know the tree blossoms are out around the neighborhood and it's so beautiful and I've seen lots of beautiful May flowers blooming all over blogworld. It's been fun seeing all of your gorgeous blossoms.

I love flowers but don't have a flower garden. I wish I loved to garden but don't have the time right now in my life so, I really appreciate the beauty of everyone else's gardens around the neighborhood and in blogland.

Keep an eye out over the next few days for a fun announcement. I can't say anymore. You'll just have to wait. It's really fun though.

Ancient History

This is sooo funny and maybe a little embarrassing but I thought I'd share it with you.

I was at my quilting group tonight and Shari said that she had joined Facebook (I have yet to do that) and she was telling us that she had entered her name in google and found her name in a few places and how much fun she was having. Well, I just thought tonight while I was reading some of the blogs I follow in my google reader that I would do the same thing as Shari and enter my name.

Well, I was really surprised to find some of my ancient Tole Painting books for sale on Ebay and other places. How funny is that? I've linked each picture of the books to the seller if you want to have a look at them. It's funny to look back to 1992 and see how much you've changed and definitely how much the color palettes have evolved. I really dislike BLUE and PINK now but I loved it then. It was the popular color of the time. Do you remember?


Of all the books I did for Provo Craft this has got to be one of my favorites because it brought together my love of sewing, crafting, quilting, and painting. It was my last book for Provo Craft and it came out in 1995. There are two of these books available HERE. You will have to scroll down until you see the picture above.


"Tie One ON" was one of my favorite books and I can't believe I forgot about it. I probably still have some of the samples somewhere in a box in the basement although I did give a lot of things away to friends and neighbors when we moved from California back to Utah.


This particular book was my FIRST book with Provo Craft. I was so excited when I got the call from Provo Craft that my designs were accepted and would be made into a Tole Painting book. Provo Craft was as big a name in the Craft World as Moda is in the Quilting World.

It was a really big deal back then (at least to me) and in a way I felt very inadequate to be able to associate with my Crafting IDOLS. You could say I was a bit intimidated. I was able to travel to Utah at one point for the photo shoot they did for my FIRST book and it was SOOOOO much fun. I was kind of AWESTRUCK to say the least. Even after all of these years I am so grateful for the experience and it was such a blessing in our lives at that time. We had a young family and lots of school debt so this was the opportunity that helped us pay that off. What a blessing.

You'll probably laugh but, I remember sitting on the floor in the livingroom of our little apartment with my scroll saw between my knees cutting out the designs that I had just drawn on paper (I'd have to vacuum up the sawdust quite frequently) and then I'd take the cut wood and sand it. Then I'd paint it and then seal it. As I would paint and design I'd have to make sure that I was writing down the dimensions and the paint colors along with the techniques. It was a very long process putting together a book.


This book was funny and I can't believe that it was even half as popular as it was. But, everyone loves containers and these were fun. They used canning jars and the small ones were baby food jars. They were fun to make and I saw them everywhere at different boutiques and crafter's malls in California. It was fun to see other people like my designs.


I was in several other Books that included many of the Designers for Provo Craft. They often refered to these as combination artist books. These were a lot of fun to do and to be included with all of my painting HERO's was a fulfillment of a dream. I still can't believe it.


I hope Lori Holt from "Bee in My Bonnet" won't be too mad at me but I found one of her books while I was digging up some of mine. I have to tell you she's been my inspiration for a VERY VERY long time. Lori, I want you to know that I have this book still to this day. This book was printed in 1992 the same year as my first book and the same year my Mom passed away (the one pictured above isn't mine) and I even made the little boy and girl on the front cover. You are still an inspiration to me TODAY!!! Thanks LORI! I wish you the very BEST in all of your endeavors!


Oh Love Chunks! Do you remember these? They were everywhere. Lots of Laughs and sweet memories. Mine is the Cat on the top row in the middle. Too funny! Remember all of the Cookie Jar books, well, I was in a few of those too along with Hangups, Christmas Ornaments and other books that I can't even remember without finding my box of books.

Thanks for going with me down memory lane and I hope you enjoyed this post. It's been 17 years now since that time of my life. I have to say I do miss my mom and I wish that she had been able to see some of my accomplishments. I know she would've been proud of me but I was always a little sad that she didn't get to see my first book. She did know that Provo Craft had accepted my designs but the book came out soon after she passed away.

This is hilarious, but . . . I just found my book "SEW Much to Paint" on AMAZON. Go figure! I'm getting a kick out of this.

Well, it's 12:30 a.m. and I have to get up in six hours. I was falling asleep in class today so, I will sign off here.

Have a great day today!

The Wizz Ripper Gripper

Do you remember when I talked about some of my favorite tools, HERE?


Well, I showed this picture of my favorite seam ripper and many of you were interested in how you could acquire one.

Well . . .

The Good News is: I found my original packaging with the web address.

The Bad News is: I put the web address in and it came back with some other website.

The Good News is: I went to google and put in the NAME of the seam ripper and it came up.

Yippee!!!

More Good News is: You can go HERE to buy one of your own.


Here's their Contact Information:

R & L Machining Inc.
17000 S.W. Friendly Lane
Beaverton, Oregon 97007-9875
Phone: 503-590-5619
Email: RLQM@aol.com

Cost $14.95 plus $2.00 S&H

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is my current favorite book. It didn't take me long to finish it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm kind of sad though that I have to wait until September when the sequel comes out. Yes, it was that good.

Here's a fun site promoting the book. The website is done by Scholastic. You can also read the first chapter on this website.

Also, Here's an excerpt from the book. . .

COULD YOU SURVIVE ON YOUR OWN, IN THE WILD, WITH EVERYONE FIGHTING AGAINST YOU?

Twenty- four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

The Sequel "Catching Fire" is coming out September 1, 2009

New Project

I'm starting a new project and it's because Spring is FINALLY here. Thanks to the coming of Spring and to all my quilting friends! . . .

I feel inspired!

I've been wanting to make a Spring quilt and when I saw this fabric I knew I had to use it. I'm not going to say too much right now but I will say that it uses lots of Half Square Triangles with a bit of applique thrown in.

I'm using 13 prints from the Bubblegum Basics Collection by Quilt Soup for Henry Glass Fabrics. It's a bright, happy, and whimsical collection. Just perfect for Spring!

I hope Spring has Sprung in your neighborhood!

Spelling Test

Are you ready for a Spelling Test?

Yesterday in class we had our weekly spelling test. We have less than 25 days left in the school year so each week the words have gotten a bit harder. Some of the kids are still struggling with sounding out some of the words and often misspell a word with too many vowels or prefixes or suffixes.

You don't often think about how difficult the English language is until you try to teach a child how to read. My daughter Natalie is a writer and I'm always impressed with her knowledge of the English Language. Of course, she did graduate with a degree in English Language so she knows what she's talking about way more than I do. You can link HERE to read an article she wrote about Why English is Weird.

I was correcting the said spelling tests in class yesterday and was blown away by how many of the kids got this word wrong. Infact, over 1/2 the 2nd grade class spelled it incorrectly, that's 15 out of 26 kids to be exact. So, I decided to write down the different spellings then put them up on the whiteboard for Miss N. to review with the class.

Anyway, back to my original thought for this post. It's actually in the form of a question.

How many ways can you spell the word EASIEST?

I want you to think phonetically . . .



Are you thinking?



Do you have a number in your head?



Well, here's the variations my class came up with for the word Easiest:.

1. easyest

2. easist

3. esist

4. eseaist

5. yesyist

6. easyiest

7. easyist