Sue Spargo Trip

A few weeks ago 5 friends and I made an overnight road trip from Indianapolis to Uniontown, Ohio, which is just south of Akron.   Our destination was the Sue Spargo store.  There were a couple of quilt shop stops in Dublin, Ohio, on the way.  Since we were a group of 6, one of the girls called ahead to let them know we were coming.   There is open sewing on some Wednesdays in the classroom next to the shop so we got to meet others that were working on Sue Spargo projects.

Here is the main part of the shop.  There is lots of wool, ribbons, buttons, and thread.  

Here we are in the shop.  I'm on the left.  My basket has some goodies in it.  You will notice that you don't see much wool in photos on my blog.  OK.  You haven't seen any wool yet.  That didn't stop me from buying a few things there.

They took us on a tour of the back room.  Here is some of the wool.  The back area is mostly for mail orders.  We were allowed to go back there and shop off of the shelves.

Just look at these beautiful colors.

The wool is dyed in house, and we got to see the room where it all happens

Here are just some of the ribbons and trims in the back area.

These are all of the different type of threads.  

Here are samples from the shop that were for sale.

More ribbons waiting to be packaged.

Here are just a few of Helen's blocks that she made in a class with Sue up at Mackinaw Island.  Helen brought her blocks along to pick a sashing fabric.  They featured Helen on Sue Spargo's 

Instagram page on Featured Friends Friday.  Helen is an awesome stitcher.  I always enjoy seeing what she's working on.

I know you want to see my haul.  Here are a couple of pieces of Tula Pink that I bought at one of the quilt shops where we stopped.

Here is what I bought at Sue Spargo's.   I have a lot of supplies.  Now I just need to make it into something.   

Shamefully, what I bought that day is still in the bag.   I keep hearing it's going to  be a long, cold winter so I'll have plenty of time to work on a wool project.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.

Fall in Indiana and Beyond

It's still fall here, but it's starting to feel more and more like winter isn't too far away.  I love fall colors and use them in a lot of my quilts whether it's fall or any other time of the year.  I'll take you on a little tour of some of my fall decorations and on our fall trip to the mountains.  

This table topper is made from my Sunburst Dresden Table Topper pattern.  It's available in my Etsy shop or at Back Door Quilts.  

This sits at the end of my island in the kitchen.  I made the table runner ages ago and right now I'm unsure of where the pattern came from.  The centerpiece is a basket that I had with some faux pumpkin decorations from Hobby Lobby.  The brown ceramic leaves were made by our cousin Sandi from North Carolina.  

This is the view out my back windows.  The tree is actually in our neighbor's yard, but I enjoy it just as much as they do.   

I like to decorate the mantel for the seasons.   These are mostly faux pumpkins along with some real gourds.   I need to make sure I remember to sort out the real ones before I pack the decorations for the year.  

Here's a better look at the quilt draped over the back of the chair.  This is my version of Fall Foliage Spectacular by Judy Martin.  (It's from her book Cookies and Quilts.)   That border is a Fossil Fern fabric.  You remember those?  Some like this one were just great to pull out the colors in a quilt.  

The pillows and little quilt are all made from my patterns.  Another way that I like to display smaller quilts and pillows is in baskets.  Sometimes I drape them over the edge as shown in the photo, or I will roll them up and display several in a basket.  (The pumpkin spice sign had to move from in front of the fireplace because it's been cold enough to turn the fire on the past few evenings.)

The pumpkin quilt below is the Mini Pumpkins by Cluck, Cluck Sew.  The Welcome sign and the Pumpkin Spice Me signs are from 

Joyfully Said Signs in Middlebury, Indiana.   I love their shop and try to visit every time I'm in the area.  

I'm still trying to keep up with making holiday cards for the grandsons.

This is another fall quilt.    It's a watercolor quilt made from (I think) the book Impressionist Pallet by Gai Perri.

This sunflower quilt is a two color applique'.  These are fun and easy because once you have the pattern basted, there is no thread choice.  You choose one color and off you go.  This pattern and others like this are available from Pacific Rim Quilt Company.  

Sorry for the photo overload, but here are a few photos from our fall trip to the Smoky Mountains.  

At the time that we went, the weather was still too warm to see the fall colors.  I still think it's one of the most beautiful places.

I think the photo below is a photo of a beautiful stream from a car window doing about 65 or so......

We were going a bit slower for this photo.  Photos don't really do some of these things justice.

We drove through Cades Cove.  It's a valley in the mountains where settlers lived before the land became a National Park.  

Whenever you are in the park and see one or more rangers parked the road, you need to slow down and start looking around because they are there to keep an eye on the wildlife so that neither one interferes with the other.  Somehow this little cub had wandered away from his family.  I was in the car with the window down just enough to get a half way decent photo.  We also saw an elk, but when you looked at my photos you couldn't tell the elk from a bunch of sticks and twigs so there's no photo of him.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today!

Catching Up With You

Dear Readers

Thanks to everyone that wrote to ask if I was still among the living.   Yes, thankfully, I am.   I've just been really busy this summer and fall.    The weather has turned from fall into winter, and now we're back to fall again.  We had heavy snow flurries on Halloween night along with strong wind so there's a  lot of candy left over which is why I buy candy that we like.  During the summer, I spend a lot of hours sitting out on the porch stitching.   So I either choose stitching or sitting at the computer to write this blog.   And you know which one I did this summer.  I love to stitch outside in the natural light.

In the last month, I've done 3 trunk shows/programs for guilds.  This is how my bedroom looks when I start pulling quilts to pack.  I normally take anywhere from 35-45 quilts along with me depending on the time allotted.   The first program was at the Mudsock Guild in Fishers, IN.  The second was out in Crawfordsville, IN, which was half way to Illinois from here.   The last program was for the Indianapolis Quilt Guild South.   I enjoy getting out and meeting other quilters.   I want to thank my friend, Theresa, for coming to the Indianapolis South guild meeting.   She not only assisted with holding my quilts and packing them up after the meeting, but she was able to share some of her quilting experiences that we both have been involved in over the years.   Thank you Theresa!!!!   You were a great addition to my program!

 

Here are some of the quilts I finished.  This is the Kingfisher Stitch Along quilt.  This was an on line stitch along by Tales of Cloth and Stitched in Color bloggers.  There are 46 - 1" hexagons.  They are all hand pieced, and I did the machine quilting.   The photo was after the quilt had been folded for several days.

This hexagon sew along was in the June issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.   These are 1" hexagons, and I machine quilted this one.

This one is made up of 1" octagons.   It's not my favorite because I used all one line of fabric instead of pulling my own fabrics like I normally do.   

I've taken a couple of classes at Back Door Quilts by Brian Haggard.   He lives here in Indianapolis and does what I would call free style embroidery.   This is done on black linen with very little marking.  The left hand block is what we did in class.   The second one is the same except that I just kept adding more branches and stems.   Brian showed an example in class where he used alcohol based markers to lightly tint his work.   I have the markers and instead of trying them out to see how it would look, I've kept stitching.   That way I won't mess it up, right?   You are using all one color of perle cotton and ribbon so there is no agonizing over color.   This is a fun and relaxing stitchery project which is different from anything I've done before.

Here's the front of the house decorated for Halloween.   The decorations need to come down in the next few days.   I always hate to see them packed away for another year, but it's not the same feeling as packing away the Christmas decorations.  

I'm rambling a bit here.   I'm so far behind with updates, that it's hard to just jump back in and start writing.   I'll try and get back here more often.  

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today!