New Tute for our famous 'Masks'!

Check out my new 'tute' under my 'Tutorial' tab. 

This tute is for the famous 'masks' that everyone is sporting since our world has become crazy!

Check it out and let me know what you think!

You can make comments here.

Thanks!

Happy Quilting, Sharon
Permanent "Quilting the Kaye Wood Way" Certified Instructor since 2013
'Grand Ruler' instructor for Marti Michell since 2019

Creating memories

We had a houseful of guests for Thanksgiving 2014. I wanted to get a picture of the mess in the kitchen, but this is what I found. Amazing and much better than what I remember when I was a kid with the same number of people that descended on Mom's house. 

I caught a couple of my girls by surprise. 

Good friends made it down from New York State. 

 Sitting around after the food is consumed.

The older kids helping the youngest.

We had a good day with lots of yummy foods created by many hands. Thank you, Julie for our first Thanksgiving in 15 years! Love you!

Until next time,

Happy Quilting, Sharon 
Permanent "Quilting the Kaye Wood Way" 
Certified Instructor since 2013

Last month of 2014!

Here it is the first of December AGAIN....

Another Thanksgiving is gone with all of the yummy foods and visiting friends and family. I did the 'black Friday' thing for the first time ever. I went with Julie and am so glad that she didn't want to get there when the doors opened. We only had to wait at one store and it was fun talking with 'strangers'..... 

Now to get some more stuff done for my last craft fair of the year. I am working on quilts, towels, hot pads and wine bottle vests. 

Also, all of the items on my ArtFire site are on sale through the 20th of December. 

So, enjoy your last few days of this great year!

Until next time, 

Happy Quilting, Sharon 
Permanent "Quilting the Kaye Wood Way" 
Certified Instructor since 2013

Happy Friday everyone! 
What a busy day! Got up and cleaned the floors.... yep, they were DIRTY... then jumped in the car to go have new tires put on. 


Oh my, what an ordeal that was! Can you believe that it can take someone a little over 2 hours to change four tires? Well, if you go to Pep Boys on 75th Ave and Peoria out here you will certainly find out, just like I did! I couldn't believe it... 


Then we high tailed it to Wickenburg so that I could have my Aunt's quilt appraised.... Will get the written appraisal next week... can't wait. Then we stopped at Habitat for Humanity, a second hand store up there. Nice store! Lots of nice things too. They even had a Singer Featherweight sewing machine in a case, no extra feet though.... They wanted way to much for it, but when we checked out the gals at the counter said I needed to talk to Wade about it if I wanted it.... Nope, I'm happy with the one I have. We have a Habitat for Humanity store down here, too. We visit this one frequently and find lots of deals....


Then out to supper with friends. Peoria Cafe is the best fish fry in town and we always manage to take someone new there every so often. So tonight was the night. Then we came back here and I had to show off my favorite room. I know, what's new, right? 


Now it is the end of the day and I am going to put this tired body to bed. 
Have a great one and I'll see you all later!


Happy Quilting, Sharon 
"Quilting the Kaye Wood Way" 
Certified Instructor since 2009

Good evening all! What a great weekend this has been. I have accomplished a couple things that have been on the 'to do' list for a long time. Some time ago a member of the church asked me to help her with a project and brought me the supplies to make her a couple 'Temple Bags'. Well, I managed to get one done right away and since then have dragged my feet. One thing or another got in the way as well as my ambition. I have also been working on the wine bottle shirts for the craft fair this November, so that helped get me motivated again. I decided I had better get the 'Temple Bag' done and out of the way BEFORE I went on to the next 'want and need to do' on the list.

"Path of Light" by Kaye Wood

About a month or less ago I read on Kaye's newsletter that they wanted several someones to test out the pattern, "Path of Light" and write a review on their blog. This pattern uses one of her special 'Starmaker' rulers. The magic of her 'Starmaker' rulers is that with 3 rulers you have every angle known to quilting and you can use them on all different patterns and you won't have to buy a hundred zillion rulers for each quilt you want to make. A picture of the pattern from Kaye's site and directions is above and when you look at it you may think, "Oh, that is sooooo complicated!" Well, folks, I am here to tell you different! As with all of Kaye's patterns it just looks complicated, but is very easy to do. I do a few things a little different than Kaye, but putting her patterns together is not one of them. Kaye only uses a dry iron, not steam because of the bias edges on her blocks. Steam stretches the blocks, so this is one place I follow 'the expert', another thing I do is to starch my blocks. Kaye uses 'sizing' instead of starch due to the 'burn' factor. As of yet, I have not had my starch burn on my fabric, but may change if that ever happens. As most know the female of the species has the prerogative to change her mind! I just did 4 blocks (used 3 in my project) and only put a single border around the blocks for a table runner. This project including digging through my stash for the fabric took me less than 4 hours and that included several short breaks to talk with DH, a few quick glances at the TV, photo taking, frogging a couple whoops, potty and drink breaks. Not bad for only glancing at the directions before I put it together, huh? Here are a few of the pics I took while I was putting this together.

As you can see I even made a couple boo-boos. You need to pay attention to the squares BEFORE you sew them together :)! Can you tell the difference in these two blocks?

Then here is my final project.

This pattern has 3 ideas with it. A pillow, quarter quilt and dresser scarf. I wasn't sure what a 'quarter quilt' was until I read Kaye's description. It is a quilt that is over the foot of the bed and would be a great decoration to spruce up your bedroom and give it a new fresh look with less expense. What great gift ideas!

I hope you all enjoyed my short 'tut' on Kaye's great new pattern, "Path of Light". To get your copy why don't you jump on over to her site and get yourself the pattern and ruler!

Now, before I go for tonight I have to add in a great picture of a couple of my grandkids and their new friend. I snitched several photos of my daughter and her family's vacation. This one happens to be one of my favorite of the collection. What do you think?

Do you think they pick good friends?

Don't forget to come on back on October 1st to see what I have on the list for the 'Fall into Fall Giveaway'!


Happy Quilting, Sharon
 "Quilting the Kaye Wood Way" Certified Instructor since 2009
 www.coyotequilts.com

Happy Weekend Everyone!!

Busy, busy, busy week this past week. I started a new job with an allergist and worked at a Mollen clinic. Of course the highlight was my BIRTHDAY!! I don't usually brag about my birthday, but what the heck, I may not have many left!!! No there isn't any medical problems, but I am over 50 now and I doubt I have 50 more years to go....

One of the things that we have decided to do is to move. Yep, you read right, we are moving. For now it is going to be into a temporary place and put everything into storage. So that means the quilting is going to slow waaaaaaay down. I will be able to get tops done and sew little projects, but the quilt frame will have to go into storage. That's okay it will make it easier for me to concentrate on my new job and maybe we will be able to take a couple of road trips!!

On one of my forums I joined a Birthday Block Swap for this year and I have received 4 blocks so far. Here they are, aren't they BEAUTIFUL??

Now here are the blocks I have been swapping for the Sew Along. Every 2 weeks we have a new pattern and partner. These quilts will be prized possessions when I get them together.

 

I packed up some of my blocks I have ready to put into quilts and other blocks I have swapped. I have enough swapped blocks to make about 5 quilts. Maybe one day I'll be able to get them done!!!

Since we are moving we are having a garage sale. I am not keeping a lot of our big furniture so if you are in the area come on over on the 24th and you just may pick up some good deals.

Next week I will be teaching a class at Church how to sew together pillow cases, then in November I will be teaching a couple quilt classes. I can't wait for the quilt classes!! It shall be so much fun. I'll also be able to drop my favorite sewing machine off to have an over haul. She sure has been temperamental lately and I'm not sure why. I guess it is just because I work her to hard!!

Well, I am off for some more packing.

Happy Quilting,
Sharon

www.coyotequilts.com
http://myquiltingbuddies.blogspot.com/

Busy Life

Yippee!! I spent a grand afternoon with Lynne and she received her birthday surpise. Here is the picture.... I really like this pattern and am making one for myself, but it is going to be in browns instead of greens. I am putting different borders and blocks than in this one.

It's only 4 days until we climb aboard the plane for our trip to NY and it's only a week until Julie and Jim get married. I just hope it stops raining out there so we don't all get water logged.

I have been slowly getting things together that I needed for the trip. I bought my outfit a couple weeks ago and I got my nails done yesterday. I forgot how much I really like having fancy nails!!!

Now, I just need to find a job so I can afford to keep them. My job taking care of Judy ended on June 18th when she was moved to a group home. After Carl's visit to the hospital we decided that we needed to be able to do a few more things and go see family more than we were able to do with Judy here. I am going to go back into Hospice nursing, which I love. I know one outfit that has offered me a job without an interview, but am not sure if I want to go there. It is a new outfit and I'm not sure if I really want to be involved with the 'ground breaking' work that is needed to get a Hospice up and running. The other side of the coin is that I know most of the nurses that work there and that is why I have been offered a job. I'll make that decision when we get back from NY.

I have cleaned carpets and moved things around in the house this past week and then this week all I have done is go running around. Last Saturday Carl & I went to estate/garage sales, Sunday was church, Monday was shoe shopping, Post office run and lunch with Carl, Tuesday was nails and visit Judy, Wednesday was lunch with Lynne, Thursday is going to Janice's to help her figure out her embroidery machines and Friday is a 'need to stay home day'. I wonder how I managed to get my house mostly rearranged, kitchen table cleaned off, kitchen counter cleaned off so we can sit at the bar or table to eat and all of the other sorting and cleaning I have accomplished. We have also managed a walk most every night. Last night we even went out after dark and got an ice cream cone...together!!! It is almost like when we sold the house in Groton and we didn't have any kids at home anymore. I am looking for more fun times together, even the simple things.

Happy Quilting,
Sharon
www.coyotequilts.com

Good Morning All!

This morning is quiet. No running to be done, no kids around and husband at work. I am cleaning up the e-mail and getting a couple loads of wash done then I am hitting the sewing machine.
I have one quilt loaded ('Fall Trees with Ease') on the frame
and one on the design wall ('Pink A-Maze-Ing'). Both of these are going to be demo quilts for shops to hang to find out about interest in classes. I recently signed up on a 'find a teacher' site. Boy, was that a trial in patience and computer glitches. It sure is a slow process to get things up and running. I just hope that when I start teaching that it just keep going and going.

The quilt with Pooh on it is a friends quilt that I made 8 years ago. I did all of the embroidery then made the quilt and quilted it. This is the first picture I have of it. Not bad for one of my first quilts.

Since the accident I have been having headaches and my neck hurts anytime I spend a any time on the computer. I think that I will be going to the doctor to have everything checked out later. I sure didn't want to have to go, but it has been almost 2 weeks and things should have calmed down by now. I just kept thinking that the only thing they would tell me was to 'give it time'. I just hope there isn't much else going on. I don't want to stop doing things because I have a headache. It tends to slow progress down around here and I don't have time for that.

Happy Quilting,
Sharon