Treading Water

Fallon 11, Maddy 7, Elliot almost 8, Griffin 10 and Finn 2 months

I have had no time to blog or sew and feel all off kilter!
Here is a picture of me and the grandchildren yesterday. It was a perfect and relaxing day. The boys cooked brunch for all the moms and cleaned up!
Hope to be back soon.
Kelly

Wow!

Picture by Terry Kramzar

Our guild the Penn Oaks Quilt Guild had our quilt show this past Friday and Saturday. I was very honored to receive the Best of Show for my quilt, Red and White Lone Star.
We had 100% participation from out 54 members which says a lot about all of these wonderful people.
It's been a long couple of days and I need to catch up on lots and lots of things. See you later this week!

Kelly

Crafty

Today I had some last minute quilt show errands to do. One of them was to get some gift bags so I went to Michael's. Craft stores have not been a priority for a while and what a pleasant surprise! I found this fabric washi tape in pretty, floral colors. It is like a sticker, you peel the backing off to use it.

This is the brand and they had tons of cute things in a large range of colors. It was hard to narrow it down. I am thinking of using regular fabric, maybe with some glue?

I like the pack that has the 2 colors, again I could have bought every color....restraint.

I saw this idea in Country Living magazine and thought it would be a good grandchild project. We tried it with regular washi tape but you could see through it and it didn't look as nice. It works the best on a straight edge jar (not tapered). What a fun way to store my pins!
I am now hunting through the pantry for expired jars of food!

Kelly

Vacation Goodies

We only had one rain day on our vacation and decided to venture out to get the grandchildren some souvenirs. Of course I searched out a quilt shop and found some pretty fabrics. Aren't those blue sailboats cute?

In keeping with the Florida theme, I found these dish towels by Moda at the shop. I think Moda does vintage very well. I have always wanted to try out the Flatter Spray, so I picked some of that up as well. You use it like starch but it does not stiffen the fabric.

This is the scrap bundle I won last week from Retro-Mama. These have my name written all over them!

I put the pincushion in a bowl that I have in my front hall with some others. It looks right at home!

I think this will be my first project out of the book. I will be making 3, for some little boys.

I really missed my sewing machine while I was gone. I was so tired last night but did manage to get some squares sewn.

Our Penn Oaks Quilt Show starts this Friday and Saturday. Thursday we spend the whole day getting set up. I hope if you are local you will come and see our beautiful quilts. You can get more information HERE.

Not only will there be over 100 quilts but vendors, homemade food, door prizes, raffle baskets, mini raffle quilts and our adorable sewing themed cookies. Hope to see you there!

Kelly

Beach Basket Cottage

This is where I have been for the past 10 days or so. My husband and I escaped to Anna Maria Island in Florida. I loved this little cottage they call "Beach Basket" It is a vintage little place but with all the must haves, like air-conditioning!
It is one of the barrier islands near Bradenton and Sarasota. The beach was beautiful, sugary, white soft sand, turquoise water and lots of pretty shells. I did get sunburned!

The weather was amazing, the mid 80's.  At home they were getting freeze warnings!

They had pretty, beachy artwork, some by local artists......

We went for a bike ride one day and look what we found. How about this for some random street art?

Hundreds of beach toys stuck on a chain link fence. It was very colorful and very fun. Not so sure about the bottles though....

and pretty dishes that made it feel less like a rental and more like a home. I also love the wood cut outs around the shelf.

We spent a lot of time around the pool. We had coffee and breakfast every morning out here. My sister in law and her husband were here for a couple of days and she very nicely made bacon and eggs every morning.
After a day at the beach we would come back here, take a swim and then grabbed our books with a cocktail or two. All I can say is that is was extremely relaxing and you could walk to the restaurants which we loved. Two nights we walked on the beach to a restaurant called The Sand Bar and had to find our way back in the dark,  it was actually very easy.
If you want more information on the place and some better pictures, you can check it out here Beach Basket. All the opinions are my own and I was not compensated. It was just a very lovely place!

This is a crazy week but I hope to get back with some more sewing related content.

Kelly

Oh My Goodness, I Won!

This morning I turned on the computer to check my email and found out I won a giveaway from Kim at Retro-Mama!

The book looks great with lots of cute projects and if you notice those prints and colors have my name all over them!

Aren't these cute? With 3 new grandsons this year, these could be nice little presents for them.

These really caught my eye, as I have a weakness for a cute pincushion!
Thank you so much Kim I can't wait to pick out a project!

Kelly

Quick Sew

I really don't have time to sew today but I just wanted to try out 1 block.

I wanted to see how it would look with this background. The plan is to make a big pinwheel quilt. It's one of those patterns I have always liked and lends itself to scrappy. I am not sure about the background. I want something low volume  and think this might be too busy.

You can find the block in a new book called, Farm Girl Vintage by Lori Holt. She has great simple ways to make blocks and there will be a QAL starting in May.

I took a break from cutting up all those sections for my grandsons' baby quilts. Any guesses as to what pattern I am making? They will both be the same pattern, the colors will be mixed.
I am also going to get outside and enjoy this beautiful (finally) day and pick some daffodils!

Kelly