From Iowa to Black Friday

Whew!  Life is good, even when it whirls around you. It was so windy today I had a hard time thinking!

Queso, what's new? I have been busy doing customer quilts, my own projects, and starting another aspect of our business - distributors and representatives of Nolting Longarm machines in AZ, NM, West Texas and Southern Colorado!

We traveled to Iowa to meet with the company president and all of the employees, and got to see how these amazing machines are manufactured - all right here in the USA, starting with a block of aluminum and ending with a precision longarm machine.  Iowa was beautiful, as was our trip from St. Louis and through Mark Twain land, Amish country and the Amana Colonies.

A barn in the quilts on barns project in Washington county, Iowa.  Below is a sidewalk quilt in Kalona, Iowa, an Amish community

 they also have a cheese factory that makes and sells cheese curds that squeak when you eat them.  Yum

This is the entrance to a store in the Amana colonies, a really neat town, or series of towns in Iowa, founded by German immigrants in the 1800's.

We are looking forward to an install in Colorado in the next week or so - should be an adventure traversing the mountain passes - yikes!


OK, on with the quilt  photos - first is an adorable sunflower quilt made by Julie in sections on her embroidery machine.  SO COOL.  I did little "seeds" in the center, left the light petals unquilted and did a very light quilting in the darker yellow petals, the leaves, and then did  a radiating pattern outward in the "sky".  Awesome quilt.

 Next is a quilt made by Carol P and quilted by me with a sunburst type meander that I did in freehand over the quilt top - the sunlight photo shows off the quilting nicely.  I used a lovely shade of So Fine thread that virtually disappeared on the top.  The batting is Quilter's Dream 80/20 poly blend that I dearly love - just a wee bit of loft to show the quilting, but lays nice and flat.

Below is another customer quilt - a fairy godmother job - the customer gave me the fabrics and pattern that her daughter wanted her to make into a quilt.  She passed it on to me, and I pieced, quilted and bound the adorable 52x76 quilt.  The pattern is a "tube quilting" pattern that you can peep at Missouri Quilts. umm, and yes, I am wearing gloves while quilting this one.  It is COLD here in the studio in the mornings now!!

I took a workshop day at my local guild, the Valencia Valley Quilters, and learned how to make this cute block:  it is a combination of prairie point type folds and cathedral window style turns.  It's going to be a nice pillow.

We also have attended a couple of craft fairs, making pot holders and scarves and other small goodies.  I will have some of these listed on the etsy store by this weekend.

Queso, shopping anyone?  I did the VAST majority online and in my studio.. So glad that I stayed in and continued to digest my turkey dinner instead of battling over the latest electronic gadget.  I heard stories of hair pulling and pushing and shoving - nice, ladies, well done.

If any of you need any gifts check out etsy, the place to buy handmade goods.  My and Kim's store is: cherry lime quilts by sunshinecherrygirl.

Stay festive!

Breaking Bad, Bad Quilts

***we interrupt this blog for some important BREAKING NEWS!!  The website is up and running!!*** go check it out! www.sunshinequilting.com. I will wait here.

queso, welcome back.

So, we live in the land of "Breaking Bad" and we have become unofficial location scouts.  Every time we see a cool building or landscape, we think, "this would be a good scene for the t.v. show.  Case in point:We were out driving around and came upon this building.  I set the camera to "sepia" and took this picture.  Is this not the coolest abandoned bar?  I think Gus will be pulling up any minute.  Uh-oh, this isn't looking good.  Well, good-bye Bar.  (See! You totally believed that they blew up this bar!!  I told you i was perfect!)

Speaking of bad, I had to unsew a bad, misbehaving quilt this week.  No fun.  Seam ripper was smokin' hot.

Queso, I celebrated my birthday by enjoying some Irish food at a pub in Albuquerque.  Fish and chips and a black and tan.  Wrapped it up with a delicious coconut cake made by Jessica.  Delicious.  

I got a cute hello kitty snowglobe, an awesome Chargers shirt and the complete dino tot collection from Sonic.  For real!  I know, jealous, right?

The other great event in October is of course, Halloween! and yay, I found this wall hanging that Kim and I made in a class taught by Pati.   I had lost it for awhile, but found it hiding in the Halloween decorations.  Now I just need to add some binding and finish it off.

Last Sunday, we had a football watching and Halloween coloring party.  Here is my Hello Kitty contribution:

Krysta and Meghan made these spooky cupcakes:

and we set up the "Nightmare Before Christmas" scene for our Halloween Decorations.

On a Quilty note, here are the potholders I made for a swap with the Atlanta Modern Quilt Guild.  My swap   buddy likes aqua (the color of the vintage mason jars) and white with splashes of red, so here is what I came up with.  I have been drawing a lot of birds lately  . . . weird.  I can't wait to receive my pot holders.

And, as for customer quilts, here is "Stacked Coins" for Gina.  I also did a few others this week, pictures to follow. Here are some feathers on a quilt for me:  I plan to add some micro stippling later.

I have a temporary lull in my quilting schedule coming up, so if you want to get your quilt tops intended for Christmas gifts to me, I have the first week of November WIDE OPEN for you . . . and lots more openings the rest of the month too.

Next week, Sweetie and I travel to Iowa to talk to Nolting about becoming the distributors for them in NM and AZ!!  Very excited about that!

All right, time to go cheer for the Eagles as my Chargers have a bye week.  Cheerio

So, yeah, I was going to try to post weekly, but THEN, I went to California to get the boys all set at their respective colleges, and THEN Sweetie and I both got really really really sick with a sinus infection that lasted three weeks and THEN I had a big backlog of stuff to do, including working  -by that I mean quilting on some awesome quilts made by my friends.

We had a great time in Santa Barbara,GO GAUCHOS!!

 met Kim down there and got the younger one all set for school.  We got him the coolest orange beach cruiser and checked out some great restaurants and stuff.  We took a side trip to Ventura and ventured into "Superbuzzy" headquarters!!  Kelly was soooo nice, and let us wander the warehouse of her online store that specializes in Japanese fabric and other Japan-abilia like HELLO KITTY. We shopped, shopped, left for lunch, came back and shopped more.  Sweetie was very patient.  We got some luscious loot.

I'll take him, please!

Part of my haul

Happy Mochi Yum Yum by Monica Solorio-Snow

Even the scraps are yummy

Mystery Bakery set!

Is it weird that I am a grown woman, with a law degree no less, and I still love Hello Kitty???  I think this guy would stick up for me:

Antonio Garay, NFL football player, Hello Kitty lover. Picture snagged from Yahoo!

L.A. was our last stop, where we met up with older son, had some delicious food and went to the mall for some apartment and college essentials.  His apartment is perfect for him, little kitchen, balcony, close to the bars (WHAT??) well, he is 21. . .

 Go Bruins!!

OK, so here is what has been on and off the machine since the last post:

Wedding quilt, half quilted

A beautiful log cabin quilt made by some of my quilting buddies in California, for one of their daughter's wedding.  I chose a grapevine and grapes panto for this queen size beauty.

Close up of quilting

"Modern Baby" by Gina:

With Minkee on the back!  SOOO cute!

Here is Kim's blue and orange quilt, very bright and happy.

And, Jeannie's SF Giants quilt, with fleece on the back:

and . . . 

Dr. Suess quilt by Gina

I also did an ABC's quilt for Gina, but forgot to snap a pic.

And, here is what I have been working on, on the design wall - a memory quilt made from calendar year tea towels, a commissioned quilt from my Aunt for her mother.  It will be two sided when done.  A great way to preserve the towels and see them all out at the same time.

OH, and we went to the New Mexico State Fair, yes to check out the fried foods, but also to check out my quilts that I entered.  I entered 6 items and won 4 ribbons - a first, a second and two thirds.  My table-runner and a wall-hanging did not place.  Here is Spiked Melon proudly wearing its third place ribbon:

 
Cooking has been kept to a minimum, given the sinus infections, but when we did feel better, we made cookies.  Princess cookies with our little princess.

Everyone say "sprinkles!"

Well that about does it to catch up.  Chat at ya soon, and until then, I will be going to a quilt show and vendor fair on Saturday, watching football on Sunday, and quilting every chance I get. Oh, and in case I don't get back here before then, Happy Birthday to me on the 13th.  Cheers.

Queso . . and Green Chile

Queso, it's been ages since I posted.  I am going to try something new.  Weekly posting with categories:  What's on the design wall?  What's on the Quilting Frame?  What's on the stove?  and whatever else I can think of.

Before I get to all that, I really need to be marketing my fledgling business and the website is ALMOST READY.  www.sunshinequilting.com is the site.  Check it regularly and one day it will magically appear.  Thanks to Lucy at Pearcenet designs.

SO, What's on the Quilting Frame?  The Nolting 24 pro in the Sunshine Quilting studio is getting a workout!
Here are the baby quilts I did this week:

First up is this adorable cars quilt made by my friend Jeannie.  I quilted each car differently.  The blue one has flames, the orange one has a surfboard on top, the yellow one a banana,the purple one has a star, and the red one (that has the country boy in it) has rope like a rodeo cowboy.

Next up is an airplane quilt (transportation theme here)

Loopy planes in the borders and empty spaces, filled in by loop de loops:

And Kim's playful kitties needed some string to tangle up in, so I quilted loops and tangles all over.

And here is what's on the design wall.  I had some leftovers from making a quilt (to be seen on this very blog after I quilt it), so I arranged the blocks thusly:

Then I pulled them down and came up with this pinwheel setting.  I like much better.

And, what's cooking?  As the title of this post implies, it is green chile season here in New Mexico.  If you don't know how this works, it is pretty cool.  Folks line up to buy a box or two or three of chile (15 lbs or so each), then take it outside the store and have it roasted on an open flame.  Then it is placed in bags and it "sweats" for a few hours so you can peel the skin off.  Wearing rubber gloves of course.  Then when you are   done, you put the roasted, peeled chile in zippered bags and freeze.  When needed, you take a bag out, defrost, add garlic, salt, and add to recipes, to eggs, to pizza, burgers, mashed potatoes, as desired.  Here is Sweetie laboring over the chile.

 And the finished product.   I know this looks like an episode of "Breaking Bad" (which is filmed here in the Albuquerque area) but it is really legit.  ALTHOUGH now that I say that, this stuff is treated like a valuable 'commodity' that people will ration, bargain for, trade and hoard.  It goes something like, oh crap, I only have three bags of chile left and it's only June -- the harvest is two months away.  Maybe I will call Dad and see if he has any left - I can trade him for some when we get our new supply."  SERIOUSLY.

SO my recipe of the week is anything and everything with green chile.

And, to wrap up this post, what have we been up to?  Getting 2 kids ready for college and one off to preschool.  Visiting Carlsbad Caverns, entering quilt shows.  Oh yeah, I won 2d place at one local fair, and then 1st place quilt and best of show in needle arts in another fair.  WHOO HOO!!

Tomorrow, I am taking my entries to the New Mexico State Fair.  Awesome!!  Wish me luck, see you next time.