Category: 2006

Use for posts written in 2006

As the UFOs Turn

As you can see from my previous blog posts, I have been sewing and making progress. Still, these seem to be new projects, so I thought I would inventory my UFOs and see what I was facing. One year (1996, I think) I buckled down and worked only on UFOs and finished 9 quilts. That was a record. Most, if not all, were already started and I didn’t quilt them all, but causing them to be quilted counts for something in my book.

This list in no way implies that I will discontinue starting new projects or finish any of these.

  • Bullseye: finally found directions for doing the border the way I want it. Just need to do it
  • Garden from Pamela Allen class
  • He Tried to Make it Up to Her: needs back and to be quilted. St. JCN has to dig it out.
  • Her Eyes were Bigger than Her Stomach: needs a back and to be quilted. Very active quilt; probably not my best design, but a mile marker in the quiltmaking journey.
  • Kissy Fish: ongoing hand beading project
  • Leaf quilt: needs something that I don’t have; candidate for abandonment; sad, though, because it is a friendship quilt
  • Nosegay: top complete
  • Pointillist Palette 4: Night
  • QA Challenge Quilt: need to fuse the parts and rubber stamp the words.
  • See: started in a David Walker class. Needs fusing, stitching on of fused pieces and quilting
  • Self Portrait from Pamela Allen class
  • Serendipity Puzzle: on the design wall now. Five more blocks to piece.
  • Sharon’s quilt: blocks must be sewn together. After Serendipity Puzzle I will finish it. I don’t want a wedding quilt to be hanging around when a baby is due
  • Solid Star Friendship Quilt: need more friends so they can make stars for me in solids with black
  • Spiderweb: foundation pieced project, still piecing. Need to create the templates for the border blocks
  • The Tarts Come to Tea: need inspiration. Improvisational quilts are not the same experience when you do them alone
  • Thoughts on Dots: top complete
  • Women’s Work 2: needs focus.

Just for fun, here are the quilts on my mind. In some cases I have purchased fabric, but no sewing has been done, so they are not yet UFOs.

  • Denyse Schmidt Chocolate Boxes: see the post from August 11, 2006 to see the fabrics I will use.
Choloate Box detail
Choloate Box detail

This a pattern that can be purchased from Quiltworks Northwest.

  • San Mateo County Fair Dot quilt
  • Paper pieced Nativity scene: I downloaded this pattern when it was free a few years ago and have never gotten up the energy to be as organized as I need to be to make this, but I still want to make it. You can find the pattern at Paper Panache.com
  • Interlocking triangles #4: love the techniques and have at least one, if not two, idea[s] for more
  • Dot quilt with inset circles a la Ruth McDowell: more uses for dots and a good exercise in piecing
  • Feathered Star dot quilt from Summer issue of Quilts & More: more use for dots
  • Cross quilt: totally scrappy except for middle and background. I would also like this to be a handwork project that I can carry along with me.
  • Some kind of pink quilt with all the pink fabric I have been buying
  • Colorblocks 3: I want to use silk fabric with a lucious sheen instead of the regular cottons. Background will be cotton sateen.
  • I Spy quilt for DS: hexagons and many of the triangles are cut. I just have to start piecing them. St. JCN comes to the rescue as she cut a zillion of the pieces.
  • Garden Quilt: I have been collecting photos and patterns of interesting flowers for years and have always wanted to make some kind of garden or flower quilt.
  • Jack’s Chain: I saw a quilt of this pattern years and years ago and have always wanted to make one.

The Best Quilts of 2006 According to Me

I went to the following quilt shows this year:

APNQ, Seattle, August 2006
EBHQ, Oakland, March 2006
PIQF, Santa Clara, October 2006
San Mateo County Fair, San Mateo, August 2006

Not enough, obviously, but they provided plenty of fabulous inspiration. People are still really pushing their machines to the limit.

St. JCN suggested that I put up pictures of the quilts I liked best from these shows and I think it is a good idea.

Rules:
1. My opinion is the only one that counts on this blog. You are welcome to post your opinion in the comments.
2. I did not visit every quilt show in the world, so these are the best quilts that I saw.
3. I did not take pictures of quilts that were not interesting to me, so these are the best of the quilts that I photographed.
4. If one of these is your quilt, I will be THRILLED to post your name, and, possibly, a link to your site or blog (at my discretion).
5. I probably would have picked different quilts if I had chosen them right after I saw the shows. As it is, I am at the whim of colors from a camera and the computer.
6. Subject to change at any time.

APNQ

Piece O'Cake pattern
Piece O’Cake pattern

Yes, this is made from a Piece O’Cake pattern. I don’t care, I love the pattern and the rendition this quiltmaker created is wonderful.

Piece O' Cake pattern detail
Piece O’ Cake pattern detail

Here is a detail of the border, which I also love, because it reminds me of Mary Engelbreit designs. Don’t you just love the dot flowers? Great use of fabrics as well.

Best use of puffy paint I have EVER seen. The fabrics are fantastic and used well also (look at this quilt with your head tilted to the left)

Candy Wrappers
Candy Wrappers

I like this one, because it is different. I could do without the brown, but I love the blocks. The person who made this made an effort and made a quilt that is different.

Pineapple
Pineapple

I am a sucker for Pineapples and this is an excellent use of the Pineapple pattern. It looks like some of the silks that I have.

Special Exhibit quilt
Special Exhibit quilt

This was part of the Beverly Dunivent special exhibit. I bought this pattern (reprinted by her) a few years ago after seeing it (and her) on Simply Quilts. I love this quilt. I don’t know if I will ever make it, but I love it. (look at this quilt with your head tilted to the left)

EBHQ

One thing I like about the EBHQ show is the way the members use clean lines and simple shapes in their piecing patterns wih interesting fabrics to make engaging quilts. It was very hard to choose the ‘best.’

Mary Mashuta Baskets
Mary Mashuta Baskets

I love basket quilts. I am pretty sure this quilt is by Mary Mashuta and she is a genius with stripes. the quilt does have that sweet look she uses so often. I guess it is the soft/pastelly colors.

This reminds me of IT3: Spiky Stars.

I think of Christmas applies when I see this. I like the scarlet used with the lime/icky green. I also like the fact that the quiltmaker added some oranges and pinks into the quilt to add interest. I would like to see how this color scheme worked with different patterns.

The blocks are very sharp. I also like the use of color. It reminds me of Colorblocks 2.

Fun and cheerful. May be a Freddy Moran or it may just be by someone who took her class or read her book. This is a fun link as well to Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran quilts.

Whimisical and I like the shapes of the various flowers. Great use of color and fabric.

Excellent repetition.


Icky colors, but fantastic quilting. See the detail below.

I like the individual blocks more than the overall quilt, but I do like the color scheme, because it is restful.

The blocks just suck me right in.

The triangles come across as really interesting shapes here. Reminds me of earthquakes as well.

PIQF
Each basket had a different flower in it. I believe that this one was done completely by hand. The attention to detail was wonderful.

An old Piece O’ cake pattern that I love. The signs on the houses and buildings were done in Spanish.

Fantastic water effect.

Wonderful colors and details.

I love Mariner’s compasses.

I also saw this at the San Mateo County Fair. I love the use of black and white.

Wonderful star pattern.

Matador Garment
Matador Garment

I am not one much for garments, but this piece is wonderfully funny. I am really glad it won a prize. So often, judges have no sense of humor.

I like the way the stars overlap and contain little surprises in the center. I would love to see this done in brights and black.

Ronda K. Beyer, It Ain’t Easy Being Green: Love the colors; the quilting was fantastic. It won one of the prizes.

I love the wheel patterns. Again, kind of muddy colors, however.

San Mateo County Fair

The San Mateo County Fair’s quilts seem to be populated in large part by the Peninsula Quilters Guild. The piecing, in large part, is wonderful and there are a lot of quilts that display excellent piecing skills as well as a good use of color.


This is probably my favorite quilt of the year. The pattern is simple, yet complex. It really is a good use of dotted prints. The variety of fabrics and the way it is not easy to tell how the pattern was put together makes for a quilt. I couldn’t stop looking at.

Detail of the above.


Again, nice repetition.

Laume and the Gift Bag Redux

Laume, one of my five readers, she of Beach Treasure Blog, wrote in the comment box:

This whole gift bag thing – I’m on the fence with it. On the plus side, the gift bags in the photos are so adorable I want won for ME! On the negative, even though it takes an insane amount of time, I do like so many things about wrapping paper. I like wrapping gifts. I get bored with the same paper year after year though, so wouldn’t fabric bags be even worse! But they would be traditional and I tend to get attached to all things traditional.
For a number of years I’ve had an insane amount of wrapping paper and ribbons and things-you-can-stick-on-packages to use up. Some I bought during my years of being addicted to after holiday shopping binges, some from my mom who gave me all her shopping binge excess when she moved. I’ve made a commitment to use it all up as best I can. I’m really excited because I’m almost completely out of wrapping paper this year and I don’t want to buy any new so I can start fresh with any idea or theme I want next year. I have whittled my box of ribbons and stuff down to half a box, still have lots of that. And don’t even ask me about my entire BOX of boxes of Yule cards – sigh. I might start giving those to my kids.
It does occur to me though that I’m always at a loss for the proper sized boxes for small items. Maybe making up some of this gift bags for smaller items would be a good thing.
What do you do if it’s a fragile item? Put it in a box and then in a bag?

Oh,and P.S. – because I obviously didn’t write enough in my first comment! – I also love the way the wrapping paper entertains my cats. They love “helping” me wrap. They love sitting and leaping from the piles of wrapped packages. They treat them like perches. I suspect that gift BAGS would be treated more like cat beds and would be all fuzzy and cat hair decorated by the time I handed them to their recipients. But most fun of all, I love how the orgy of unwrapping creates an entire room awash in boxes and paper and ribbons and my cats dive and swim and tunney in the great big sea of paper. I believe my cats wait in anticipation ALL YEAR for that one glorious night of wrapping paper bliss.

The extent of Laume’s comments demand that I write another whole blog post about gift bags. So, I will answer each of Laume’s section in order, unless I don’t feel like it:

1. This whole gift bag thing – I’m on the fence with it. On the plus side, the gift bags in the photos are so adorable I want won for ME! On the negative, even though it takes an insane amount of time, I do like so many things about wrapping paper. I like wrapping gifts. I get bored with the same paper year after year though, so wouldn’t fabric bags be even worse! But they would be traditional and I tend to get attached to all things traditional.

We use mostly gift bags, when they aren’t in storage, but we can’t get away from wrapping paper. Our wrapping paper does tend to last for a long time since we only use it for people we don’t think will get the gift bag thing.

We now have about 10 years worth of bags and I can’t remember all the fabric I used until I see it. My SIL commented that she had wrapped something in a bag I made in 1996. She wasn’t even in the picture then! I love that history aspect.

It is also great to use fabric that you don’t want to cut up, because you get to see it in all of is glory over and over. Also, I have no intention of making a Christmas quilt and there are so many wonderful Christmas fabrics that gift bags are a great excuse to buy cool Christmas fabric. Every year I make new bags to spice up the array of bags and use up more fabrics.

Of course, you can also make gift bags for other holidays and events and use up those large conversationals that you love, but will never use for a quilt.

2. For a number of years I’ve had an insane amount of wrapping paper and ribbons and things-you-can-stick-on-packages to use up. Some I bought during my years of being addicted to after holiday shopping binges, some from my mom who gave me all her shopping binge excess when she moved. I’ve made a commitment to use it all up as best I can. I’m really excited because I’m almost completely out of wrapping paper this year and I don’t want to buy any new so I can start fresh with any idea or theme I want next year. I have whittled my box of ribbons and stuff down to half a box, still have lots of that. And don’t even ask me about my entire BOX of boxes of Yule cards – sigh. I might start giving those to my kids.

Well, I can’t really help you with the boxes and boxes of gift wrapping supplies. I definitely think you should use them up…. or give them away. If you enjoy the gift wrapping process (which I absolutely DO NOT), then go for it. Gift wrap is good for little kids, too (though they do get the hang of opening gift bags soon enough). As I mentioned above, we still use gift paper for some gifts. I think gift bags, aside from the fabric acquisition benefits, are great for recycling and reusing. Very little mess in the house and the recycling bin does not overflow.

We still buy cards every year and send them out. They have nothing to do with gift bags except that I can choose to write nice notes to people in my cards rather than spending 3 or 4 days wrapping.

3. It does occur to me though that I’m always at a loss for the proper sized boxes for small items. Maybe making up some of this gift bags for smaller items would be a good thing.
What do you do if it’s a fragile item? Put it in a box and then in a bag?

Yes, boxes are good for small or fragile items and we do put them in the box and then into the gift bag. you can wrap fragile items in bubble wrap (or those pillow things that come from Amazon work, too) before they go in the gift bag. I have also been known to wrap fragile or small items in small gift bags and put them in a larger gift bag especially if they are a group. This is sort of an alternative to the whole gift basket idea.

One of the great things about gift bags is that the present can be any shape. I, once, made a special bag for a weed whacker! Large things take a lot of fabric, but make it easy to wrap as well. Just stuff the thing into the bag. It does take a little extra time to make those special gift bags.

4. Oh,and P.S. – because I obviously didn’t write enough in my first comment! – I also love the way the wrapping paper entertains my cats. They love “helping” me wrap. They love sitting and leaping from the piles of wrapped packages. They treat them like perches. I suspect that gift BAGS would be treated more like cat beds and would be all fuzzy and cat hair decorated by the time I handed them to their recipients. But most fun of all, I love how the orgy of unwrapping creates an entire room awash in boxes and paper and ribbons and my cats dive and swim and tunney in the great big sea of paper. I believe my cats wait in anticipation ALL YEAR for that one glorious night of wrapping paper bliss.

Make your comments long, if you want! I love it!

I am happy for your cats and their joy of the holiday season. We have no cats, so they don’t factor into the equation. We have Sparky the visiting fish and he is fine with the gift bags.

Just incorporate some bags into your traditions. You don’t have to convert all at once. It will get your into your sewing room during the holidays, which will lower your stress level and be a fast and satisfying project. You will also get lots of comments around the Christmas tree. They look so pretty under the tree.

Go forth and make gift bags!

Serendipity Puzzle Moves Forward

While I haven’t done a lot on Serendipity Puzzle, I have made a little progress. I cut a bunch of patches and then started creating the Flying Geese elements. I wanted to have enough to be able to move the elements around and have some choices for color.

The other day, I rearranged some of the elements to start some of the other blocks that I need.

 

I happened to slap the above patches up on the design wall and found that I really liked the color combination. Something about the progression from red to the green stripe appeals to me. I want to figure out a way to keep them near each other in a block.

The good news is that I found out why the yellow pieces were causing me some problems. In the above photo, you can see (on the left) that the yellow point is really sticking out. It was quite a puzzle (no pun intended), but St. JCN helped me figure out that I had cut the squares too large. I switched rulers mid stream and was stuck on the cutting that I did for Thoughts on Dots and cut the same size (6.50″) for the yellow patch rather than the 6.25″ it should have been.

The offensive patch is still in the piece, but not for long. I will unsew it soon. I tossed the other too large triangles into the scrap basket, I can’t accidentally grab them. They will become something else someday.

Updated Blogroll

In case you hadn’t noticed, December and July seem to be bad months for blogging for me. Don’t give up! This, too, shall pass. Like everyone else I am busy, though trying to be relaxed about the whole holiday thing. The cards are done, except for a few “problems” and one where the card and address are never in the same place at the same time. We’ll get there. Presents, pies, TTSP!

Blogger seems to be bleeding quiltmakers. Both Deirdre and DebR of the famous Red Shoe Rambling have defected to other blog services. In any case, I have set up an account on WordPress as well, but haven’t moved everything there yet. Darn! Not a trendsetter this time. Stay tuned.

Quick Sewing for the Holidays

Whew! A major project is over with today and now I feel like I can breathe with no guilt.

Last weekend (when I was breathing WITH guilt) I stopped for awhile and made some gift bags. Every year I make some new ones in addition to the ones we use from previous years. Each year some are given away and we get some new ones from other family members who make them. All of mine are in storage so I have to make a bunch this year or else, God forbid, wrap gifts in wrapping paper. Bleah!

Gift bags are GREAT for the following reasons:
1. No buying gift paper or tape. This saves time, money and energy!
2. You get to use all that quilting fabric you bought for that Christmas quilt you never got around to making.
3. Easy to wrap.
4. Easy to rewrap. If the gift tag falls off, just untie the ribbon, look in the bag and put a new gift tag on it.
5. You get to see your cool fabric over and over each year.
6. Wrapping gifts takes half the time. (Yes, you have to make the bags, which takes time, but once that is over with – and you were going to sew anyway, right? – gift wrapping is easy.)
7. You can get lots of Christmas fabric on sale after Christmas inexpensively.
8. You can use this idea for any gift giving holiday.
9. Your friends and family will be impressed.
10. Use up fabric you won’t use in a quilt, but still like.
11. GREAT for those large conversationals.
12. Quick to make.
13. You don’t have to wash the fabric, because the sizing gives body to the fabric.
14. Great way to try out different embellishments and stitches using your fancy machine.

For those of you who love to wrap gifts, don’t make these. For everyone else: make a bunch and impress all of your friends.

Photos of the Moment

I spent the day in Berkeley walking around. It was a beautiful day, even if a little windy at times. I saw many cool things that were great inspiration, but these were the ones of which I took photos. What can you make with them? I will post an image for anyone who makes something with these photos as a starting point (rated E, G or PG! or at my discretion). Comment to the blog and I will get in touch with you!

Green house with trees

Red leaf on sidewalk

Shadow on tree with trike

Flower in leaves with fence.

Serendipity Puzzle

Serendipity Puzzle is my new project. It uses the latest group of Piece O’ Cake fabrics, called Serendipity, plus some of the woven plaids from their 4th plaids collection. The plaids I am using are POCP 437G, POCP 437O, POCP 437R, POCP 437T, and POCP 437Z. I bought these fabrics in June at Quilting Adventures during my trip to Maryland and Virginia.

This project is a follow-up to Thoughts on Dots as I am still using color and giving myself some limits (using, basically, one line of fabric). This time however, I am doing more piecing. Initially I am finding that piecing blocks allows me to sew a few seams, even if I have only a few minutes, thus making progress. Thoughts on Dots required larger blocks of time for the staring and arranging part as well as once I started sewing. Neither is bad, just different. It is satisfying to be mindful of the process.

P&B offered a free pattern for this line of fabric, which I liked and provided inspiration. Ultimately, however, I decided not to use it. I am doing a variation on the triangles theme from the free pattern but using the Dutchman’s Puzzle design. I think the Dutchman’s Puzzle pattern is more organized than the pattern they offer. The free pattern has a nice look, just not for me at this time. I guess I need order in my life!

I plan to use the turquoise for the sashing and borders like P&B/Piece O’ Cake does, but am thinking of slight variation. Stay tuned for more info as that part of the project develops.

In the above photo you can see that I have cut and selected some of the fabrics in preparation for piecing.

Above is a detail of the center block.

Several days pass….

On and off since the second week of November, I sewed a few seams as time permitted, steadily making progress. I don’t plan on setting the blocks this way, but wanted to see how they would look together. This also allows me to review the use of fabric and identify any problems that may be developing. As you can see, I have several blocks and have still not used all of the fabrics from the line. I flipped over the stack of fat quarters so I would cut some new ones the next time I cut the larger triangles.

Some issues I want to work through with this piece:

1. Distribution of the red: I think that the red is necessary, at least at this point in the piece, but it seems to be a bit dominant, so I need to take care where I place it. I also want to use different reds. There are 3 or 4 in this group.

2. Mixing up the various prints: I need to think about whether to place duplicates of fabrics in one block or to ensure that all the blocks have different fabrics. This depends on the number of different fabrics that I cut as well as similar colorways in different patterns.

3. Brown: I am afraid that the brown will be a dark hole, but like the chocolately feel of it. I may, in the end, take it out (yes, that means unsewing), but I want to wait to see how it looks when I have more blocks.

4. Number of blocks: I am not sure. I think I will make at least 9 and possibly 16. I am thinking that this will be a baby quilt for a friend. We will see.

5. Variation in blocks? : I am thinking about mixing 1-3 regular pinwheels in with the Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks to add interest. I may make a couple just to see how they look. As Lorraine Torrence says in her design classes “Make visual decisions visually.”

What is the Difference?

I experimented with pressing on two of the blocks. One I pressed towards the white (example: top) and one I pressed towards the color (example: bottom). I think it is hard to tell the difference online, but in person, if you look, you can tell that the color pops forward more on the bottom one. Ruth McDowell talks about this in her classes and her Piecing book. I don’t think it is relevant for this piece, but it is an interesting exercise.

Itten: The Elements of Color

I am back in study mode and reading a couple of books on quiltmaking and art. One of them is Itten: the elements of color: a treatise on the color system of Johannes Itten based on his book the Art of Color.

If you have not seen Itten’s color wheel, it looks like

Itten's Color Star
Itten’s Color Star

.

If you buy the color wheel (or Color Star as Itten calls it), it comes as a set with covers for the color wheel that allow you to see the complements, split complements and the triads, etc without the interference of the other colors. Buy it at Amazon or your favorite local art store. Expensive, but totally worth the money.

Anyway, The Elements of Color is a condensed version of the The Art of Color. I haven’t yet read the entire book and may not before I have to take it back to the library, but found a few tidbits that are worth thinking about.

pg.8: “Knowledge of the laws of design need not imprison, it can liberate from indecision and vacillating perception. What we call laws of color, obviously, can be no more than fragmentary, given the complexity and irrationality of color effects.”

It seems to be that the author is saying that by knowing the laws of design and color, we can use all or parts or none to liberate us from indecision in the design process. This seems to be that old adage about knowing the rules allows you to make a conscious decision to break them.

pg.12: “Developments in color chemistry, fashion, and color photography have aroused a broad general interest in colors, and the color sensitivity of the individual has been greatly refined. But this contemporary interest in color is almost wholly visual, material in character and not grounded in intellectual and emotional experience. It is a superficial, external toying with metalphysical forces.”

I think this is an interesting statement because it implies that there is more to seeing color that the visual-sensory perception. In fact, Itten talks a lot about the study of color including how color is used, what it means, how other artists used color and the various implications of the use of color. This brings me back to other books I have read about colors being associated with emotion, the meanings of color in different cultures, etc. It also made me think about how colors are associated with different aspects of religion (blue for the Virgin Mary) and different events in our lives (black for death in the West, white for death in the East).

TaDa!!! Thoughts on Dots COMPLETE

Below is the last iteration of the corner I was working on. It was amazing that when I woke up and looked at it on Sunday morning I REALLY liked the piece. I was lukewarm (and somewhat worried) about it on Saturday, but kept working through it and feel like the work paid off.

I realize that the changes are subtle and those of you in blogland will have to study them to see the differences, but here IRL, there were differences that mattered.


The piece is a monster, so, without help, this is the best photo I could take. I’ll get a better one up.

Thoughts on Dots Nearly Complete


The two photos above are how I left Thoughts on Dots before Halloween and my trip to Arizona. One fabric (Top photo: 4th from the bottom and 3rd from the right) looked like a plaid and had to be removed. Fabrics that were too beige had to go as well. I did leave a couple that were beige-ish, but still very “dotty.”
The problem with the above layout is that the white background fabrics I added are too active. In this entire piece the white, IMO, is acting like a resting point for the viewer’s eyes. In this section the whites are not doing their job. I separated some of them before I took this photo, but it still wasn’t working quite right.

I think the other problem was the differences in sizes of the dots. I didn’t have them mixed up enough.


This photo is a bit wonky. I am really having some problems taking photos of this large piece, because of the construction and all the stuff being where it is not supposed to be. In any case, I think that this is nearly the end of the design phase. The piece is really coming together, which is great, because I was really unhappy with the layout when I got back to it last night.

Back Porch Quilting Adventures

I spent a few days in Monterey at a conference and had it on my list to go to Back Porch Fabrics. I missed them by a few minutes on Sunday after my drive down, but went on a lunch break on Tuesday and, even though I only had a few minutes, it was great. What a wonderful store! It is light and airy with bright, bright colors. So different from the dreary browns I have been subjected to recently.

Additionally, Jean, a CQFA member was there working. We were able to have a nice little chat while she cut my fabrics. I got some great fabrics.

I also bought the relatively new Sandra Meech Book, Creative Quilts. It was an impulse buy, but the displays were so good at Back Porch that I couldn’t help myself. I almost bought another as well, but restrained myself.

Creative Quilts
Creative Quilts

Before I left on my trip, I ordered some more additional pieces of the Serendipity fabrics (these are the Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins fabrics from P&B not the new Robbi Joy colelction) from Joyce at Quilting Adventures. I am gearing up to make the quilt out of the whole line and want to use the turquoise as the sashing and some of the border. Most of these fabrics you have seen before. You can see them in one of my August posts. They were waiting for me when I returned.

She sent them along with a nice little note. What a pleasure to work with her. If you have not been to Joyce’s store, go there on your way into or out of Washington DC. If you can’t go to the shop, at least take a look at the shop blog. It will give you a sense of the shop. You can also take a look at the some June posts to get a sense of my experience there. I did take some photos of the shop, but can’t find them now. If I come across them, I will edit this post, so check back. QA will be moving in December, so any photos I post will be archival footage anyway.