Cspoonquilt

Spring has come early to the Central Coast of California.  Spring always gets me going in the garden and we have no shortage of Spring flowers which gets me to brush off my old florist skills and bring some flowers inside to enjoy! I've always liked minimalist arrangements.  I call them pseudo- Ikebana arrangements.  Traditional Ikebana has alot of rules / guidelines that I don't follow but this style still capture that general idea. I could not resist these rannuculus they look great in this beautiful china vase. And here is my favorite wild flower; Toad Flax.  I cast their seed around my flower beds all Fall and Winter whenever rain is coming.  Then watch for their little seedlings so's I can nurture and transplant them all around the garden. Here they are in the garden bed.  One packet (costs about $4.00) lasts all season and brings lots flowers, joy and satisfaction. Well this is not exactly a Spring flower but I think you will find ...

I had a great time visiting the guild in Madera.  Madera is a farming community off of I- 99 not to far from Fresno. I really enjoyed the Guild's Show and Tell and they were a very attentive audience!  In my free time my hostess suggested I checked out Quilter's Paradise in Old Town Clovis.  What a treat!  This is a great Store: lots of great fabric, friendly staff, nice and spacious and it had a nice space in back for classes, always a plus in my book!      There were lots of Turn of the Last Century buildings with an Antique Mall on almost every corner. This wonderful old building had been a hotel.  It has been recently renovated.  The front rooms are a great boutique and the back is a resturant all done up like a Victorian dining room! Very cute! I would have stopped for some tea but I had to get back to Madera for the guild meeting! cheers, Claire W.

woo whoo, I'm off to Madera to day to present my trunk show! Should be a lot of fun!  Got the names of some good Quilting stores to visit along the way. Yippee! Also I was visiting  google + the other day and  Elita  was asking about using fleece as a backing.  If you have a long arm (it's to slippery to quilt on a short arm without a frame) I think fleece or plush backing is a great way to go.  It's soft and hug able and you don't have to use batting.  I actually prefer plush throws 'cause they are even more squishy and the quilting looks great on the back.  I buy them on sale at places like Ross, it's even cheaper than yardage and you can buy a size that fits. Here are some pix. this is plush this is minky cheers, Claire W.

Well back in  January  I declared that I would finish 2 UFOs for every 1 NEW project that I started.  Actually I've done better than that because I've been on a real 'finish'um up' kick!  Part of this was motivated by my local Guild's Faire at the end of Feb.  So here's what I finished for the show: A small landscape that I started in a class in 1996! The center of this quilt was begun in 2003! This quilt was begun in 1997! So you see with the 2 other quilts I finished in January That makes 5 finishes so theoretically I could start 2.5 new projects!  I confess I started one the other day but I'm thinking about making it a Mystery so I can't show you a picture.   I will blog about some details on these quilts and more pending finishes in subsequent blogs.  Happy Saturday!  Cheers, Claire W.

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I finally got myself organized and took my Great Grandma's treadle sewing machine cabinet to the re- finishers.  I think it came out really well!   And since I had the machine refurbished awhile back it is now 'Fully Operational'! It took quite a bit of monkeying with the tension on the pulley thingy and a generous application of machine oil...  but we got the old girl sewing again.  I think it's probably been at least 30 years or so. I thought for her relaunch I'd start with something simple. I'm hoping the serial number can tell me a little more about this wonderful old machine! This was in fact the machine I learned to sew on when I was about 9.  And this machine did belong to my Great grandma Lonette Niles, my mother's, mother's, mother.  She came to live with my mothers family for the last 7 years of her life, in 1930.  Which is how my mom and then I, were lucky enough to end up with it. Since my mom was an only child,...

Congratulation to Susan of  http://sewinginwisconsin.blogspot.com/   and Francine of  http://mochawildchild.blogspot.com/  they are my winners in the Blog Hop!!!   I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who participated in the blog hop and all the people who visited my blog and left such nice comments! I try to visit your blogs / profiles and return the favor as much as possible. Part of the fun of the blog hop for me is getting feed back here's a sampling: I got several comments on other ways to use crumbs, -several people mentioned they use crumbs to stuff things like pillows etc. -several people mention using crumbs for notebook or album covers etc. -Anna  http://annanowicki.blogspot.com/  has a great tutorial dated Feb. 24th about how she made a Kindle cover with her crumbs, she also makes bracelets with crumbs! I'm glad to see people are really using their crumbs! wooo hooo! And in answer to my question about ...

If you are looking for the blog hop scroll one post down I will keep it open until tomorrowAM.  And if you are interested in scarves made of crumbs read on! So here's another way to use those shreds and slivers. Since these were all blue and white crumbs I thought I'd tried to attach them to a piece of white silk for a backing.  Since I had such great success with the Solvy?! Sprinkled blue and white crumbs over the silk. Sprayed it with spray starch, put acid free tissue over it, ironed it flat. Pinned it all over with lots of pins and sewed parallel lines about 1" apart. Removed the tissue Rotate the scarf 90 degrees and sew more 1" grid lines Looks like this on the silk side.  Once it was all sewn, it was rinsed and thrown into the dryer to help the scraps "bloom" kind of the way you would wash and dry Chenille to bloom. I like the thready edges but I think I will cut it in half lengthwise and edge it with blue sa...

Here on the Central Coast of California we really can't complain about Winter toooo much 'cause nature is pretty kind to us.  We do get the occasional high winds, power outages, and if it rains for several days in a row with high tides; low parts of the town have been known to flood (that really can be a problem).  But we've none of that bitter cold stuff or shoveling snow 'til you are so tired you could just spit.  But I'm happy to be in the blog hop just to say hello and exchange info. and ideas so here's my give away... I've been playing around with jelly rolls lately.  Because I'm toooo cheap to pay someone else to cut my strips for me I've been making up my own.  So here's a bunch of strips I put together; 10 - 5" strips (one strip is hiding in the picture).  That's equal to 1/2 of a jellyroll.   I know-   jelly rolls are 2.5" strips but I figured you can cut them in half if you want or you can use the extra width for wh...

We had about 400 quilts on display at the Faire this year.  That's not including all of the vendors display's!   My hat's off to the Quilt Faire committee!  Everything from Set-up to Programs to Take-down went very smoothly.  And we always have a small army of volunteers from our membership who make themselves available to help with any task!  To learn more about Pajaro Valley Quilt Association check out  PVQA.org . Here are some more pix from the general exhibit. The above quilt was made by one of our nationally known members, Rachel Clark.  She's probably more widely know for her artful patchwork garments.  But in this wallhanging she was exploring the issue of our Founding Fathers and their  inability to address / abolish / exclude Slavery from our land. I did not get very good pix of the garments but here's one that came out. (Again I apologize for the lack of labeling on these pictures. ...