New Home Adventures

Our journey to New Jersey has been very interesting. The DH has wanted to go back to his home state for many years. A change in policy at DH's employer now enables him to work anywhere in the country. With his parents getting older and mine gone, being closer to them is more important than staying in MN.

So, last summer we started looking in earnest for a home in NJ, close to family, but not too close, with a master bedroom on the main floor and space for an office for him and a studio for me.

We found a floor plan we liked in an Active Adult Community and were going to build. But within a week the lot we wanted was sold. We were offered a completed house at a price we couldn't refuse and so began our move to NJ.
This is the house as it looked before we bought it. It has 3 bedrooms, 3 1/4 baths, a family room, office, sunroom and now a studio. It's much biger on the inside than it looks (3400 square feet).

It's a little more than hour from Manhattan, 20 minutes to the beach and 45 minutes to Philadelphia, 10 minutes to Great Adventure, smack dab in the middle of New Jersey.

The house came with builder grade (which means really cheap) carpet and light fixtures,black formica countertops in the kitchen and white contractor paint on all the walls.

Before picture of the Kitchen

The second story had a partially enclosed large loft are on one side, a smaller area in the middle and the third bedroom on the other side. Of course, the large loft was designated my studio.

This is the studio before it was enclosed. And on the right is the before view from the living room. While it is a big space, it's about half the size of my current studio.

This is a view from the back of the house with one of our neighbors - There is a flock of turkeys in the woods and a herd of white tail deer along with other critters and birds

It's taken me three weeks to get this posted. Between working on the house and Minnesota Quilters' show in June, I haven't been doing much quilting, though I did get to take a class from Susan Cleveland (the Piping Hot quilter).

Most of the work is done in NJ. The hardwood floors go in the end of February. And hopefully it won't take another three weeks to get the almost after pictures up.

The Movers come the first week of March to take 90% of our goods to NJ. We confident it will be warmer next month. Check back soon for more pictures.

Something is better than Nothing - 2007 in review

Wow, 2007 just flew by. It's been a very, very busy year. I joined the Board of Directors for Minnesota Quilters, Inc. and a month later was asked to co-chair the 2008 quilt show in Rochester MN.

A team of 6 members reviewed capabilities and companies to provide online membership management for MQ and online registration for the show and other events. We chose Memberclicks and are extremely happy with the decision.

I now have a co-director of communications (thank goodness). Her name is Cindy Wilson, aka My Flamingo, and has been a partner through the MQ's online adventures.

The Fairie Goddessmothers had a Flitter at the AQS show in Paducah and three FGMs and I drove down. It was great fun and wonderful to see old freinds and meet new ones.

Also in the Spring my DH discovered he could work remotely from anywhere in the US. So, in August, we bought a year-0ld home in Jackson, NJ, that had never been occupied. We are now in the middle of long distance redecorating, visiting the new place every 6-8 weeks. We plan on moving permanently next summer, after the show in Minnesota.

May and October found me at the Quilt Market in Salt Lake City and Houston making contacts for MQ. I also helped Shelly Stokes and Mary Brandt in the Cedar Canyon Textiles booth (the Paintstik company).

DH and I sailed with Princess cruises twice this year - in January to the Southern Caribbean and through the Panama Canal during Christmas.

With all that going on, I did manage to get quite a few UFOs finished and even a new quilt or two started and completed, or just started.

Here are a few:

Finished projects in 2007

This was for my Show Co-Chair, Kathleen Winters. She is a licensed therapist and we are in "Quilt Show Therapy". The center piece is from Block Party. The corners are the logo for the 2008 MQ show.


This was a round robin from the MQ Fall retreat in 2006


My FIL gave all his sons a set of his medals from his service in Korea. He was part of the First Marine Division.



Front and back of Twirling Tulips. Pattern by Linda M. Poole

Finally finished Modena, also by Linda M. Poole

Part of the winged wonders swaps with the FGMs. This owl actually ended up at Eco-Craft since his body is made from their corn-based batting.


This minis were donated to Ami Simms Alzheimer project. They were part of over 125 small quilts presented to her at the show in Paducah.

Funny runner started in a technique class.


Just a fun way to use up blue scraps

From Quilt Poetry.

The small fairies are iron on silhouettes from Creative Iron. I designed the one in the middle. The background are 9 patches from the first FGM Flitter swap.

Projects to be Finished

The Fairie Goddess Mothers have created a challenge for 2007: Finish your UFOs. First you have to name them and then, when each project is complete, send the coordinating FGM a picture. Participants get a ticket for each named UFO finished or converted to something else. The tickets go into a drawing at the end of the year. As an incentive (for me) to get these pieces finished, I hung most of them on my design wall. It seems "out of sight, out of mind" is very true for me. If I look at them every day - I will get them finished and off the wall. If they're in a drawer, I forget about them. I have kept them all in the same place, so this wasn't hard to put together.

So from Left to right: top row - there's a table runner, a twisty log cabin block, Holiday Hexagons, a machine applique rose, another rose and Hummingbird and another log cabin block. Second row is another table runner, an applique inspired by freinds who are ballroom dancers, Twisted Tulips, a bag of fusible still life objects, stars on point left over from the trees quilt and a strange medallion thing that needs some blue. More than half of these started in classes, but a few are my own design.
This isn't so much a UFO as it is a work in progress -- It's hand applique and I've been working on it for about 5 months. It's my evening and traveling work. The design is inspired by the pressed metal tops on two tables we have.
Sorry for the sideways - this is a machine applique of Quilt Poetry's floral meditation. It's sandwiched and ready to be quilted.
OK - this one is the oldest UFO. It's a reproduction of an antique quilt that is in the Minnesota Quilter's book. I used QuiltSmart's Lone Star pattern to create the spokes. It's been sitting for at least two years, needs some fixing and quilting. It is about king size and will be quilted by a long armer -- I'd just as soon not struggle quilting huge quilts.

After examining the state of my in-progress projects I feel I'm in pretty good shape. I really want to finish these before starting anything new. But garment sewing, purses, crochet and knitting somehow get infront of these projects.

ART MEME - pay the creativity forward

In response to Ginabee's posting at http://ginamariebee.blogspot.com/ I'm joining the ART MEME challenge. I've also taken the lazy way, since Gina is such a good writer and copied most of her posting. She says it so much better than I could. Google Art Meme to find other bloggers who are involved.
The first five people to respond to this challenge via comments on this post will get a small piece of my creativity. It will be something to do with string being sewn, beaded, embroidered, painted or manipulated. I'm not quite sure what, but you will get something that I have made with love in order to 'spread the love' and creativity. The catch with this is that you also have to make the same sort of offer on your own blog. That means, this is not an exchange, you do not have to send me anything in return, but you must try to "pay it forward" through your own blog. So get commenting, and once I see you've taken it up, posted it and got people taking part then I will start making things.

Harmony 880 Remote

Having spent too many hours setting up this remote I'm ready to rant, just a little bit. OK, it's actually not the hard to set it up, but the update takes way too long. And when something doesn't work the way you want, you have to go through all the menus and update again, which takes way too long. Once you remember to click next after selecting what you want to do, update takes way too long. I even got into a loop where the set-up program wouldn't recognize that one of the devices was set up ok. Did I say update takes way too long??? It mostly works ok with one slight problem, but I was able to get it to switch the AV receive from TV to VCR to DVD to IPod.
Really, this is a wonderful remote that means the other five can sit in a drawer. The on-remote help feature really is helpful. I got this as a Christmas Present and now that it's set up, there's only one remote to get lost in my cave.

My Cave

For the past year I've mostly been hiding (sulking, skulking) in my cave. This summer we painted and rearranged it and I feel like a light has been turned on and the Creativity Fairie has come to live with me. I really do believe in Feng Shui. It probably still needs some fine tuning, but I'm quite happy here now. This is the "studio" side with windows on the left (as you're looking at this picture) that look out on a pond.

This is the other side of the space which is my "office". You can see the window that looks out on the pond. There's also a sliding glass door in the middle (far right in this picture). That blue chair is where I put my ice skates on in the wintertime. Beside the door is a Futon with a quilt cover. Opposite the door is a TV on a turntable so it can be seen from either side. Originally, my studio was on the office side and felt very cramped. When my DH started working from home I had to give up the office on the main floor. By switching sides, reorganizing (donating a lot of stuff) and working mostly on a laptop, there's more space. Now I just need to get more lights on the studio side for those early morning hours and grey days.