What have you been doing While Staying Safe?

Hope everyone has been taking care of themselves and staying safe. Since I work from home most of the time I have been getting some things done and making slow progress on organizing the quilt room. Last year I learned about a die company from Austrailia called

A1 Craft and Quilting or as most call them Blue Wren. They make some cool dies I haven't seen anywhere else so I have ordered a few of them and tried them out. For Christmas they have dies for Kangaroos pulling the sleigh.  
This is one of the dies I will be trying in the near future. Trying to decide on fabrics. Also for the first time ever I tried the Tumbling Blocks no Y seams. The 6" size goes together really fast but sure uses up some material. These are just a couple of things I have been playing with. Have you been doing some sewing and making projects while staying home. Even if you have been quilting are there other things you make? 
Well guess I will read for awhile. 

In the Quilt Room Today

Today was a good day and I spent some time in the quilt room. I have been working to get things cleaned up and organized so hopefully I can get busy finishing a mountain of projects that have been collecting. Some need borders added so they can be quilted some are a set of blocks made and just need to be made into a top so it can be quilted. That's my main goal this year to get as many of them quilted or ready to be quilted. We will see how well I do. Is anyone else trying to finish projects? I will be posting finishes as I can get them done hopefully it will work out to at least one a month. Will see how well I do.

I Am Once Again Going to Try Very Hard to Post More Often

I have been wanting to get back to doing Machine Embroidery. I used to do some many years ago and quit when we decided we needed to live somewhere other than WA state and started looking for a place to live. We looked for about 3 years and finally decided that we liked the Rupert, Idaho area and started looking for a place to buy. We purchased our place in Sept/Oct of 2008 went back to WA and started packing to bring some things down before winter set in. We managed one load  and went back to WA and packed up everything we could to be ready to start moving after the winter. By the end of 2009(and 7 loads later) I came down around the end of October and stayed here for the next 6 weeks while my husband was in WA taking care of some things and getting another load ready to bring down. My quilt room with all my material, quilting machine, other sewing machines etc. took one and 1/2 loads to move. The full load of the quilt room was the heaviest load we moved. So now that we have been here for 12 years I have finally started back to learn how to do machine embroidery again. So this November during the Black Friday sales I purchased a Janome 500 e and so far I am really enjoying it. There are a bunch of tutorials on youtube which have helped quite a bit and the book that comes with the machine is pretty good compared to some I have seen. The reason for such a long post is that my fourth project was done today and I'm quite pleased with how well it came out. The Tiger can be found on the Urban Threads website.

Catching Up Once Again

 It seems I am always running behind these days. Accuquilt has been keeping me busy with new die releases this year. There is a sale of up to 40% off of 60+ selected dies going on thru July 31st. More new dies being released in August and special EVENTS going on at Signature Dealers around the county where if you are lucky enough to attend you can purchase the new Arkansas Traveler Die which is only available at these events. When researching within a 200 mile radius around me the 9 other Signature Dealers listed not one of them shows or mentions Accuquilt products, classes or events or any items made using the Accuquilt products. I would host an event if I could afford to do one which sadly I can not do at this time. 
On a much lighter note the AccuCutUps group on Facebook meets the third Wednesday of the month. Each month we a block of the groups choice and have been having a good time learning about the dies and patterns to be made using them. In June we were fortunate to have a couple of guests who made blocks with us.
These are just a couple of the things I have been working on. The bottom left is Frankie exhausted after all the sewing I have been doing. Hope you are all getting things done that you wanted to make with more projects in mind to do. 

Welcome to 2019

The time sure flies the older you get the faster it goes. I don't know if I mentioned it or not but I am an Authorized Retailer of Accuquilt Cutters and Dies. I have a facebook group (AccuCutUps) for my customers so we can exchange ideas, ask questions post our projects and so on. We meet monthly to sew and visit sometimes we do a potluck and other times we just bring a lunch. At the request of the group we do a block of the month so they can check out dies they may be interested in adding to their inventory. The block for February will be the Pineapple Die which I have been having lots of fun with. I made a table runner that needs quilting and a couple of other block playing with some color packets I had on hand. We have also done the Kite Block, Lemoyne Star, Ohiostar, Blazing Star, Apple Core and if I remember correctly we also did the Snail's Trail. We will be meeting again on 20 February if you are going to be in the Rupert, Idaho area and would like to join us you can contact me for directions at 208-430-7144 or email is ohiostar46@gmail.com .
By the way in the previous post I mentioned the contest Warm Company was having. I did not win but I thank all my family, friends and customers who did go and vote for me it was fun to see the many different quilt shops and quilting businesses nominated.

The Warm Company is Having a contest

Hello All,

The Warm Company this link will take you to their contest. It is a vote for your Favorite Small Business the winner will receive a roll of batting. Who can't use some batting.

I've also been showing a block a month in the AccuCutUps group I have for my customers on Facebook. So far we have done the Ohio Star, Lemoyne Star, Hunter's Star, Flowering Snowball, Apple Core, Spider Web and the Kite die. I don't remember off the top of my head if there were anymore but we will be doing the Pineapple die in January. If the weather is bad I 'm thinking of doing in as a blog tutorial so you could just follow the steps here and sew at home.

So what has everyone been making this fall with all their fabrics. This year was Accuquilt's 10th anniversary so they released several new dies which has kept me busy making samples so I'd know what the patterns looked like and how to put them together. Here a few I tried out. The Pineapple Die, Leaping Frog, Bear Paw and Spider Web.


Also made the Spool Die, the Lemoyne Star, Blazing Star, Flowering Snowball and the Wonky Heart. I did a couple of Christmas Trees from the Christmas Medley die and practiced using the embroidery you can get for them. I'm going to be trying more of that in the coming year. I'm learning the Embrilliance software and using it on my new Brother PE 770. Hope to be posting more of that in the coming months. 

You can find other pictures of things I have been doing at Instagram.com/ohiostar46 if you'd like to see what I have been up to. I'd love to see what you have been doing if you'd like to share.

Happy Halloween

Hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner. Fall is definitely here in Idaho we've had some rain and the days are getting back to 50's and 60's hope they last for awhile I'm not ready for cold weather yet.

Have been working in the quilt room making a couple of Trick or Treat bags to send to my Great Granddaughters. One is in Michigan and the other is in Pennsylvania. I'll have to get the pictures transferred from my phone to an album so I can find them when I want to post them. They can be seen on my Instagram account which is https://www.instagram.com/ohiostar46/ if you would like to see some of my pictures.

Are you working on Christmas already or some other projects. Would love to see what you have been doing.

Anita