Me & Martha!

What a nice surprise I got at work yesterday when a very nice lady approached me and said that she is a follower of my blog. Meet my friend Martha from Baton Rouge. She happens to be in the area. Bountiful counts for this area doesn't it? Her son lives there and they are here visiting for a few days. I am so glad she made it down south to visit the shop and myself. I feel very blessed to have such great followers. Martha always leaves the nicest and uplifting comments. It was a pleasure meeting you Martha, it's nice to put a face with a name. I hope our paths will cross again real soon. I need to mention that Martha is a retired Jr. High sewing teacher. I told her that was where my love for sewing began. If it weren't for Mrs. Manwaring where would I be today? Probably not meeting "SEW" many nice people. I love my job!

Just a Reminder!

If any of you have forgotten Thursday is "Bag Ladies Club" at the Corn Wagon(Springville). We will be making these adorable zipper clutch's. I still have a few openings left in the class. If you are interested you can either call the shop or e-mail me to get the supply list. Wouldn't these make great Mother's Day or Graduation gifts filled with something special for the reciever. We meet at 6:00 and usually wrap things up around 9:00 p.m. I'm pretty sure there will be treats too. Hope to see you on Thursday. Happy Sewing, Shannon

Ouch, it's HOT!!

What a dummy, One would think I knew how to use an iron,

This will leave a mark!

Pretty Posies are making the rounds!

Barbara Larsen the Home Ec and Teen Living teacher at Mt. Nebo Jr. High invited me to come to her classes to show her students my presentation on posies and the many ways you can accent with them. I met Barbara several months ago in one of my quilt classes. She does a wonderful job with her students. Her sewing projects are fresh and fun. Just what the young girl's like these days, so why don't we add posies to the list.Some of the ways you could use this posie are to accent hats, jewelry, bags, headbands, jackets or maybe even a bathrobe and slippers. Oh and even flip flops, a favorite to the girl's.
Let the learning begin.

I don't know how Barbara teaches such a big sewing class. It takes patience I'm sure. But this class was well behaved and willing to learn.Shannon meet Shannon. I love my name and especially when I can share it with someone else.

I told these students this is where it all started for me. I had the best Jr. High sewing teacher that instilled in my heart the love of sewing. I hope I have lit a part of their fire within

to keep sewing and creating. Keep up the good work ladies and a few gents.

It's Easter time!

The lillies are bought for our loved ones at the cemetary, check. Cupcakes and treats are made. Check.
The eggs are filled. Check.
The baskets(bags) are stuffed. Check.
And the eggs are colored!

Have an "EGGS"-cellent Easter.

But remember Jesus is the reason for the season.

A Baby Pinwheel

Yup another Twsitert quilt, this time a baby twister. This quilt is called Pinwheel Party Quilt taken from the book Let's Twist by CS Designs.

It uses 1 charm pack or 36 5" squares and four coordinating pieces of fabric. For this quilt I used Hope Valley from Denise Scmidt. The colors in this line are beautiful oranges ,pinks, purples, greens, and blues. My background fabric is the solid gray from the Sunkissed line from Moda. It just ties all the colors and prints together.

I usually do my striped bindings on the bias but for this one I thought it would be fun to do the stripes going up and down. I really like the look on this one.

The backing is an allover piece from the same line, a magenta pink with orange flowers.

Some of you will recognize these little itsy bitsy pieces. They are the trimmings off of the new fabric put out by Denise Schmidt. I was able to score some of the pieces from our local JoAnn's. Yes, you read it right, I said "JoAnn's".

Denise is now designing for them. I don't buy much fabric from the J store. I guess you could call me a bit of a fabric snob for not doing so but sometimes the quality isn't as good as of that you find in your finer quilt shops. This line seems to be of better quality and is the $9.99 price range, but that's when the coupons come in handy. I think I got 17 pieces from her 21 piece collection. This line is kind of a mixture of Denise's Hope Valley and Katie Jump Rope collections. The red, white and blues remind me of a picnic. Now there's an idea, a picnic quilt! Just might have to do that.

So if any of you are big fans of Denise's work you better hurry in and get you a few of these cute fabrics. They tell me they are going fast. And you can see why.

WIP (Works In Progress, that would be quilts!)

And these are not the only ones. I have many more hiding in closets and sitting on my sewing room floor but I thought I would share a little sewing love with you today. So here are four recent projects. And don't worry I will get all the others done sometime. You all know the saying, "There's always tomorrow!" Right. So here we go. This first quilt is for a shop sample so it had to be done right away. I finished up yesterday and it's going to work with today so Mona can get it quilted. It's called Around the Block from Sweet Janes Quilting and Design. The fabric is the newest line out from MoMo called Just Wing It. Isn't is so cute and punky, just like every line of fabric they have. I guess for sewing on Sunday I just didn't have the rythmn. Things just didn't go well that day. I had problems with the border and had to unpick two full sides. Argh! Then when I got done sewing these rows together I noticed this. Two blocks together that are the same. Can't have that now can we. For some reason this little mistake bothers me, does it you? So more unpicking. I gave up and went back to it yesterday.

This next quilt I am going to teach as a class at the shop. It's a fun raw edge applique that Tricia Cribbs calls Slappique. This pattern is in her new book Turning Twenty Slappique. The fabric line I am using is Elizabeth's Letters by Jill Finley of Jillily Studio for Henry Glass. Jill is a local gal here in Utah County. I keep telling you we have some incredible designers in this state. And I can't wait to share another one with you in just a few short days. But if you want to see it before check out Emily's blog. But anyway you can see this quilt at the shop during our openhouse the first week of May. Come sign up for the very simple, cute quilt.

Ok you guys see these two crates of homespuns. I have had these hidden for quite some time and I bet some of them are about 20 years old. I got them out and started going through them. And I am making a Twister quilt to go on a bed downstairs. I didn't want anything to fancy for that room so this is going to be perfect. I am loving the way this quilt is turning out. I can't wait to show you the finished product. My goal is to have it completed by the time I have to go to Panguitch in June so I can show it off at my Twisting class.

Here's a peek at the quilt. It's all cut and put back together, which is the funnest part of this quilt. I have one side border put on which is the charcoal strip.

And the last quilt for today is a Nellie's Needle pattern called 4-Patch Fun. A this one talented gal just happens to be from Utah too. This quilt is made from charm squares. I am using my 75% off fabric I picked up at Deseret Book in St. George about 3 years ago. It's the woven's from the 3 Sisters fabric line Peace on Earth. It doesn't even look like Christmas does it? The colors are beautiful, sorry the camera didn't do such a good job.

Now here's my delima. Should I use plaid fabrics for my inside and outside borders or should I use what I have pictured below? This look gives it more of a western flare. Help me, tell me what you think. Plaids vs. prints.

Thanks for letting me share a few of my favorite things with you today. Happy sewing everyone. I'm meeting some of my sisters for lunch today, yahoo. We haven't been together for quite sometime.

A "SUPER" Fun Spring Retreat!

Pie Plate Patterns held their spring retreat last weekend in Fairview. I was fortunate to teach two classes this year. I chose the Bella Bag and the Twister quilt. I like to take treats to my students so for the bag class I took them all a $1,000.00 chocolate bar to put in their finished bags, that is if they hadn't munched on it during class. I've said it many times and I'll say it again. Every sewer needs chocolate!

Everyone had an enjoyable class, I hope. I had a couple of ladies sewing bags for the first time. It makes me feel all good inside when I hear comments of how much fun they had and they can't wait to try another one. I hope all the ladies came away with that feeling.

Just look at all those cute bags. Good job gals.

The meals Bonnie and Brenda prepare for us are amazing. These ladies really know how to take care of hungry sewers! Just an example is this chicken salad crossiant sandwich. Oh my it was delicious. I need to get this recipe for sure. They also fixed us a roast beef and potatoe supper, taco salads, chicken and rice and they all had the extra trimmings to go with. Thursday afternoon I took Sylvia's bowl making class. At first I thought this class was going to be a little intimitating but I had such a great time learning a new technique.

Here's some of Sylvia's finished bowls.

Lynette and Suzanne from the Corn Wagon came down to take the class and to have supper with me. It was fun having them there. There's always a little laughter going on while sewing. Lynette is makinng a bread basket.

Suzanne and her scrappy bowl. Here is my bowl just starting to take shape. Did I mention how much fun these are to make, and easy too.

Here's my finished bowl. Not to bad for a first timer, huh.

Three times cute!

Friday afternoon Gracie Lou's Quilt Shop put on a great trunk show. Isn't this Sew Diva a fun quilt. It was adoooooorable! Carrie Brown is the owner of the shop. She brought some of her old quilts to share with us. What great treasures she has.

We were asked to bring red, white and blue scraps with us to the retreat. We would be making blocks for the Quilts of Valor project. They set a goal to have 80 blocks sewn before the end of the weekend. And we did it, now these blocks will be put together and given to a widow and her brother-inlaw in California. Bonnie got to know this awesome family while she was serving her mission for the Church of Jesus Christ. The husband and brother lost his life by a roadside bomb in Afghanastan. I was really moved by this kind gesture. Here are my blocks.

Friday night was spent Twisting the night away. I had 10 ladies in my late night class. For their treat I took them Twizzlers licorice. Oh did we have a good time, this group was a really fun bunch of ladies.

Donna is making a Halloween Twister, it's going to be a great quilt.

Here are the semi finished quilts. I can't wait to get pictures ladies! You promised.

This is Bonnie(the organizer), I should of grabbed a chair to stand on. She's just a little bit taller than me. I'm glad I can call her my friend.

Saturday morning they close the retreat with breakfast and show and tell. I didn't have many of my students come back for this but Sharon didn't miss out on it. Her bag turned out cute as always. Sharon is one of my regulars at the Corn Wagon.

And this is Brenda(the organizer) with some of her quilt blocks from her class.

And tah-dah we have a Twister cut and all put back together. She was having to much fun to quit. She must of sewn all night to get in completed. Now it just needs borders.

Here's Kathy and Louise with their partial quilts. They are coming right along.

Here is some of my loot I got to bring home. They drew my name for a bag kit on Thursday afternoon, now isn't that wierd, a bag lady winning the one and only bag kit. Friday afternoon I won some sewing notions and on Saturday morning a won a "Fresh" Jelly Roll from Designer Deb Strain. At these retreats we also have midnight sews at 10:00. The first night we made pillowcases for charity, the second night we made portable ironing boards and I showed them how to make Pretty Posies and the last night, Friday, they made headbands. I was to pooped to sew that night after "Twisting" all night.

I look forward to this retreat every year. Now I can't wait til fall, I'll let you in on it when I have more details. Why don't you come join us?