Seasonal Quilt- Easter Egg Basket

Easter is coming April 24th. This is such a beautiful time of the year. My Seasonal quilt will have many pretty things on it for Spring. Silk flowers pinned to the plain blocks, birthday pictures of those family members celebrating an April birthday. This Easter egg basket may be made out of paper or felt, and pinned to the plain block. Real plastic eggs may be inserted in it to give a 3D effect. If you wish to write grandchildren's names or children's names on the eggs first, this will be a surprise for them to see their egg on the quilt. Be sure to make the Scrappy bunny. It will be in the paper on April 6. I'll put it on the blog, too. It makes an adorable children's quilt. Just making one Scrappy Bunny for the Seasonal Quilt will be fun, too.
Happy Days!

Pattern for 12" Lover's Knot classic block

Lover's Knot construction

I put the patterns for this block in the newspaper. Here is the method of construction. The pattern is given above.

QUILTERS BEWARE!

Thought this sounded like something all quilters should know about........not a good thing to use, I'm afraid! Below is an email from a friend who thought I'd like to share this with my bloggers...........B

This email came from a friend of mine who took a quilt cruise with Carol Doak.
Some of you may have heard about this pen. You may not want to use it.

This email was on our chat forum from the Carol Doak foundation cruise group. Feel free to mail it to other quilters.
Too good to be true; I'm glad someone tested it, even through the washing process. It sure could ruin a quilt!
Sidney Smith
My fellow teacher Charlotte Anderson shared this bit of info and I know this pen was discussed recently on the cruise.

I thought I'd give you all a heads up about Frixion Erasable pens. A student showed me hers at Road to California in January. She drew a line, thin but quite black, and then ironed it and the line totally disappeared. It looked like the coolest thing ever!

So I went in search of these pens, which you can get a Staples. I bought the pack that has three colors in it - black, red and blue. Being quite the skeptic about things that are too good to be true, I read the back of the package. In small print it says: "Do not expose to extreme temperatures (<14degrees F;> 140 degrees F). If pen is exposed to temperature that reaches 140 degrees F the ink will be colorless when writing. To restore color, cool to at least 14 degrees F and the ink will again write in color."

Aha! I said to myself. If you iron the ink it's going to be way over 140 degrees so it's going to disappear. So I took some fabric and scribbled on it with all three colors. Then I ironed it and, sure enough, all the scribbles disappeared. But then I put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes and all the lines reappeared. I left it for about a week and a half while I went travelling and today I tried to wash the ink out. It didn't come out with soap and hard scrubbing and not even after I put rubbing alchohol on it. So then I ironed the piece dry and all the lines disappeared and then it went back to the freezer and all the lines reappeared (perhaps just a bit fainter).

This experiment was enough to persuade me that these pens are too good to be true and even sort of creepy - the ink is always there even if you can't see it. I wouldn't use them on any fabric or quilt you really cared about.

If I had a blog I would have put this on there but since I don't any of you who want to pass on what I've written can feel free to copy and paste this post.

2011 Raffle Quilt

Wow, this new raffle quilt is truly beautiful! CASHIERS' SPLENDOR is the name of it. It was made by the Cashiers Quilters' Guild members, designed by Lois Williams and Carol Daniels, and hand quilted by Liz View. It is just gorgeous!

Oriental Wall Hangings

Japanese poppy squares used uniquely

Can you spot the Japanese poppy blocks on each Oriental wall hanging? They are so pretty with oriental fabrics. These are Michael Miller panels that I bought and added borders of Japanese parasols and the Japanese poppy blocks. I did "Sashiko quilting" (Japanese style quilting with large white cotton thread making each stitch the length of a grain of rice. I learned that in Japan a few years ago.
I am also giving you the pattern again for the block, that you can download from the blog. Check May 5, 2010 blog for directions. Happy Days!

March 1st St. Patrick's Day the 17th yeh

I have been under the weather with asthma and laryngitis.....no voice for 4 full days. Terrible for a lady to have that. I'm sure Mr. Whoozy even got tired of having to read lips. ha
Here's the Shamrock pattern for you to use for your Seasonal Quilt for the month of March. Click on May 5, 2010 on the right hand side of this blog and it will have "how to download" just one thing from the blog. You can use the pattern to make 3 Shamrocks for your plain blocks on your quilt. I am not using mine like a huge bulletin board. So handy. Just pin the things you want to remember to do on certain days onto the plain blocks. on a little piece of paper taped to the shamrocks. Neat.