Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Just shy of a month between posts... I have been so busy I don't even know where to start.  I still haven't shared all of Houston with you, and I do believe I had one more post about the Mancuso Show in West Palm Beach... maybe one day, but not now.

I'll start the catch-up with Jeannie's "Perfect Bliss" quilt (a special edition Jenny Haskins/pattern by Simon Haskins)  more info about the pattern here.
This quilt turned out stunning... did we expect anything less.  Jeannie is a fantastic embroidery teacher and I absolutely LOVE her color choices.  Okay, ready for the funny part about this quilt... I just quilted my own competition in our local show.   Really!  Both of us fall into the Professional category so I quilted this beautiful quilt knowing it many possibly beat my own competition quilt.  The things we must do...

Okay, next item is NQR, but it made me absolutely positively delighted.  My husband put up Christmas lights outside.  I know, no big deal right... BIG BIG DEAL!  We moved to Florida ten years ago.  It has really never felt like Christmas.  No snow, no frost, no boots and sweaters... I was born and raised up north where it is always cold at Christmas and I have many, many memories of White Christmases.  In other words - I LOVE SNOW!  (If you don't remember last year, here's a link -- we went to Jersey for Christmas -- I hoped and hoped for snow, what did we get - a blizzard!).  So to move to Florida and have it be 85 degrees at Christmas and your wearing shorts and flip-flops Christmas day just does not feel Christmas'y... no matter how much I decorate it doesn't feel right.  So this year Joe surprised me with outside lights -- I was gloriously happy.  It's still hot and sticky, and I'll still be wearing flip-flops, but something about outside lights makes me feel just a bit more festive!

Then there was Sally's "House on Willow Hill" -- super super cute quilt!  You can't see the quilting very well in this picture but the quilt was a little late (oops) and needed to be shipped out that day, couldn't wait for the late afternoon sun that shows the quilting so well.

Then there was Donna's T-shirt quilt and Merry's Butterflies -- both super cuties.

And then two more shirting name quilts for Mary.  Mary has done a few of these shirting quilts and I add the text for the names - they turn out awesome every time!

Carol made an awesome tumbling blocks wall hanging for her daughter -- just happens to be in my favorite color... brown!  And she also made this super adorable popsicle wall hanging for her granddaughter.

Okay, some more NQR stuff -- sorry I can't help myself, it's Christmas!  Okay, here's my tree and just a few of the boys...

And last, but certainly not least, was the MCQG Christmas Party.  This is the guild with the Star Challenge, remember, Stella Luminosa.  If not, click here or here.  Well, turns out my challenge won (1) Best Machine Quilting, (2) Presidents Choice, and (3) Viewers Choice -- not so bad!

So that sums it up... well, most of it.  I promise to TRY to post more regularly like I do on facebook - go ahead and friend me, if you're not a fan of either of my pages you should be -- Creative Longarm Quilting and Karen Marchetti, Longarm/Quilt Artist.