Qubee Quilts

Hope that everyone is having a very merry Christmas. It's been a very busy past few weeks for me. I will be glad when it is all over. One would think it would have been a bleak retail season, but not in the sewing machine industry. People are crafting and making more of their own gifts. In this time of a downturn, families are becoming closer by working on projects together. There were people doing last minute make-it-yourself gifts at 4pm today. It was hard to believe, but I think they get a rush off of it. Not to disrespect the procrastinators. Yes, even I have waited till the last minute before getting some quilting done. With all hustle and bustle of the Christmas season I have managed to get some quilting done. I had thought I blogged on this quilt before now, but could not find an entry for it. I was working on a Quilt called Little Bits and it's from the book Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson . I just love this book. I am thinking...

The nights are cold and it really is starting to feel more like Christmas with each passing day. I just wish spring would hurry and get here. I hate having to scrape the frost off my car windows each morning. I love to come home from work when it is dark out because I know when I get home this time of the year I can turn on the Christmas tree and see it's full beauty. I am finding th ere is something peaceful and serene about this. I would not have thought this possible in years past. I found an awesome book from my local library. It's called Stars by Magic by Nancy Johnson-Srebro. It looks to be super easy. You can do diamond free stars from squares and rectangles. Perfect point and no Y-seams! That is the best part. I have always wanted to make eight point stars, but with the Y-seams I'd avoid them. Has anyone played with this technique? What are your thoughts on this book? The BH and I were coming home from dinner one night when I asked if he would like t...

YES, Christmas has found me this year. It was a busy Sunday for me. Right after I did my post I got the Christmas tree up. Good things the lights were already on the tree or I might not have wanted to put it up. Placing on the ornaments brought back years of memories. Once the tree was all together the BH and I stepped back and took a look and felt it needed something else so we ran out and got some ribbon and that did the trick. The silver of the ribbon brought out the beauty of the tree. Here is a little wall hanging I did two Christmases ago. I am just now getting it hung on the wall. I tried lots of colors for the outside border of this quilt and the blue worked best. I would have never thought this quilt would call for blue. The blue is of oriental flowers with some gold mixed in. "If there is love in your heart and your mind You will feel like Christmas all the time" Charlie P.S. For those reading this with a reader or something of the like I have updated ...

Glen emailed this week and asked if I was doing okay because he has not heard from me in a while. Yes, I am doing fine. Everything is going good. I work in the sewing retail world and it is busy, busy, busy. I have not been doing much sewing because all I want to do is go home and not look at people. Retail has a way of taking Christmas out of a person. Before I started working retail some 7 years ago I would put up something like seven trees. Had lights on the outside of the house. I used to love Christmas. I would throw the holiday party and send out cards. Now that I am in the retail world and am around people that do not even care about one another and will fight for the last item. Will bitch at you because something is now on sale and when they bought it over a month ago it was not and now they want a price adjustment that we can't give. The true meaning is no longer there. It makes me not want to do anything Christmas related and my BH gets screwed every year ...

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! It's my ALQS quilt. Don't you just love all the green colors of this little work of art? It is made by Barb of CatsnQuilts . Check out her blog and post a comment on what you think of this beauty. When I first saw this quilt on the ALQS blog I had commented that the greens of this quilt seem to be calling to me. Little did I know then that it was being sent to me. I can not thank Barb enough for all her hard work on this quilt. Now I am just waiting to hear from the person I made a quilt for. It might be a few days as it's being sent to Canada. This was a very fun swap to be a part of. I did have fun making the quilt. I would not mind doing this again. In fact I have a few idea's for the next quilt. I think it's going to be a B&W one. I also wanted to show you a quilt that I had done a few months back. I got the idea from Quilt in a day. The pattern came from the book It's "El" ementary. I pie...

I never thought I would be posting something like this on my blog, but I think it says it all.

I was reading John's blog today and he has started on another project called Tokyo's Triangles . The inspiration is based on this quilt from the Tokyo International Quilt Festival. This idea comes from Sarah and Amanda Jean and they have started a flicker group and invite anyone that would like to make this quilt to join in on this great madness. I think I am going to follow them and make this quilt as well. It looks like it will be a lot of fun and will go together kinda quick, but will use many geese of all sizes. Leave a comment and let me know if you too join this fun and adventurous project. The quilt is made up entirely of flying geese, but some of them are tall & skinny while ot hers are short and fat, resulting in a beautiful forest-like effect. I am going to use the plaid fabrics that I have talked about in my past post and just add a background fabric to it. This would be a great way to use this fabric. I love flying geese, they are my favorite b...

Just think, there are only 53 days till Christmas. Has anyone got their Christmas shopping done yet or even have their tree up yet? It just seems that Christmas will be here before we know it. I have not thought about either one yet. I guess I should start. Woke up this morning and it was foggy outside and it made me think of Foggy Day in London Town by Gershwin. Guess I am just a hopeless romantic. With it being foggy out and not much else to do I was able to work on the Through the Woods quilt that I had started a while back. I just about have all the flying geese sewn together and then I can sew all the border strips together. The fabrics in this quilt are fun and got me out of my color realm with it's "Bright and Merry" colors. It's going to be a great fall day here in Kansas City. I think the BH and I are going to head over to Blue Spring and do some hiking. They have this great one mile tail that has some awesome cliffs that we get to pass by. I...

Wow! Where does the time go? Just seems like we start October and here it is coming to a close. What does that mean for me? It means holiday hours at work. I get to go in an hour earlier. Woot! :-( Christmas is almost here. We get to put the tree up, and at least i can look forward to that. Plus I get a year older in the coming months. :-( In the last post I had mentioned that I would be getting pictures of the Sewing and Quilting Expo. I did remember to take my camera, but they had signs up that read taking of pictures are prohibited. I just could not bring myself to sneak in a few shots. I did think about it a few times. Then I thought they would come and haul me away. I will do my best to describe what I saw. The one that just stands out in my mind is a small wall hanging made by Sue Hausmann. It was done using the new 4D Family Portrait and an embroidery machine. The picture was of her grandsons graduation and it looked life like. Better than any picture st...

Are you ready for the Se wing and Quilt Expo this weekend at the KCI Expo center? The expo is going on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I will be there on Thursday morning after I have breakfast with my mother. We are going down to the Corner Cafe in Riverside and I am going to have some biscuits and gravy. Yum yum! Let m e know if you are planning to be at the sewing expo. Maybe we can meet. I will get some pictures and post them here after the show. Remember this group of fabrics, from a few months back? I still have not come up with any ideas for this fabrics. Please post any patterns you might think will look good with this group of great fabrics. There I go again with that autumn color pallet. I just keep going back to it over and over again. Who want to be the first to follow my blog? C lick the link on the right to sign up and let others know you read this blog. Thanks! Charlie

I am loving t hi s autumn weather we are having. All the leaves are changing and turning into bright yellows to vibrant reds. These are my colors. I fall back upon them time and time again, but I am trying to think out of my comfort zone. Hard to do sometimes. I am just drawn to the Autumn colors , and if you look at my stash it just screams out Autumn. I have decided that I am going to try to use up most of my stash, it is just getting way out of hand and I am always wanting new fabric, but never use up what I have. Sometimes I think it might be best if I just buy what I need. Lets face it, how many of us really use our st ash? Maybe a piece here and there, but for the most part we buy what we need. I would like to be the fist to say: My name is Charlie and I am a fabricaholic. Who would like to stand with me and join our little 12 step program by using up their stash. Show of hands please. Can't take it with you and if I were to ever move I do not want to schlep ...

I do not have my computer back up and running yet. I have since found out that I have a fried mother board and I am not sure what I want to do yet. I think I am going to take my BH's computer and he will get a laptop. We just need to save up some money. A good laptop is not as cheap as a desktop. I am still working away on my Another Little Quilt Swap quilt. I have all the blocks done and have all but two blocks sewn together to complete the top. Then I will be ready for the quilting and binding. You would think I would have a 20" square quilt done by now, but for some reason I am finding this harder to do than a lap size quilt. I am joining another swap. This time around I am partaking in a fabric square swap of 5" squares. A great way to rid of them left over scraps that I no longer want. Juliette over at Chickpea Sewing Studio is hosting this swap. The Spare Change swap is easy -- you just need to send 24 5"x5" squares of fabric and a self-address...

Wow, what a roller coaster ride the last few weeks have been. Not only for me, but the rest of the country. It seems that we are all on the downhill side with the ups nowhere in site. The last post I told you about the computer woes I was having and it seems I am still having them. I thought all was well and I was up and running, but it seemed that after I used the computer for 15 minutes it would reboot itself. I had run virus software and it told me I did not have any problems on my computer. I just wanted my problems to go away and get my life back to normal so I thought I would once again reformat my computer, but this time wipe the hard drive clean. I get the windows recovery disk back out and reboot and choose quick erase hard drive. I get the warning message that all data will be deleted from my computer. I let out a big sigh, thinking all my problems will be a thing of the past. Oh boy, was I ever wrong. My computer gets 93% done and just for no reason reboots it...

I've had computer problems. It seems that I can break a computer just as quick as it takes my BH to fix it. We used the repair utility that comes with Windows to fix my problem and thought it was going well, until I get a new copy of windows and all my old stuff is setting in a folder marked old computer taking up space. I have no idea how to get it restored. I have replaced most of it already. I have just lost a few items that I can not restore. I am sure they're still on the computer if I only knew where to find them. It feels good to start fresh. It's cleans the soul. Block of the month will be awhile before I get anything else posted. I lost all the block info to the computer problem. Moving on to some good news now. Thursday night my BH and I went to Starlight theatre here in Kansas City. It's a theater under the stars and it has one of the largest stages in Kansas City. It had been raining all day long and I had thought we might get rained out. S...

Today was a perfect day. The weather was just right, not to hot and not to cold. My BH took me out for a picnic tonight when I got home from work. It was so thoughtful and sweet of him. He had made chicken salad sandwiches and macaroni salad and we went to a local park. What a great way to spend a Friday evening. After dinner we went on a 1.3 mile hike. Wow, that was a trip let me tell you. My heart was beating fast. I am not used to all that exercise. Maybe I need get off my butt a little more... :-) It's just a perfect day. I am glad I spent it with you. Oh such a perfect day. I am, glad I spent it with you. You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else. You keep me hanging on. Oh such a perfect day. I am glad I spent it with you. -Lou Reed Then I went shopping at Macy's, they are having a huge sale this weekend. I bought two hundred dollars worth of clothes for about sixty dollars! I love big sales at Macy's, sometimes you can find clot...

Take a look at the first 6 blocks of our BOM. There just waiting to be sewn into the quilt. I need to get off my butt and get that done. Just another UFO in my ever long list of items. If I stop adding to this list maybe I can get it done. Who knows? The orange in the picture seems to jump out at you. Lets hope it's subdued once I'm done.

Below you will find our 6th block of the month. This time around we will be using some of the techniques we have learned from the other blocks. We will be using the HST and No waste flying g eese method. It's hard to believe that we already have 6 blocks done. Whoot! Cups and Saucers Click here for instructions

Below you will find our 5th block of the month. This time around we will learn how to make flying geese by using a no waste method and getting four geese units out of one square. This is the only way I make flying geese. Click here for the How-To . Flying Geese Pinwheel Click here for instructions

In my last post, I had stated that I do not have many pictures of the quilts that I have made. Guess what? I have some to share with you of the quilt I made for my mother-in-law. She was grateful enough to take some for me and I thought I would share them with you. There is nothing like seeing the real thing. See, I really do make quilts and not just use EQ to make them. I remember, when I went out shopping for fabric to make this quilt. I went to like 5 different quilt shops just to get all the fabric I need. Spread the wealth you know. This quilt has over 25 different fabrics in it. I love to use lots of fabric in all my quilts. Miss Rosie would love me. I think that the striped strip birders set the quilt off. I had to cut 5 long strips on 45 degree angles. What a pain. It does make the quilt. If I did not love my Mother-in-Law I'm not sure I would have gone to all this trouble. Wait, yes I would!!! I love that "pop" factor on a quilt. I just might need to ...

When I started this post Robin Fox's song I See Stars came to mind. Does anyone else out there know this song other than me? If you were to look at all the quilts that I have done or even designed you will see that most of them have stars in them. I designed two different quilts, one for my mother-in-law and another for my sister that used star patterns. As you can see they are alike in some ways, but at the same time very different. I know that the one on the right is a double pinwheel block, but to me it fits the star theme. Below are two more quilts that I have designed. On the left is the quilt that I designed for a good friend, entitled Chasing the Stars. The one on the left I designed for my good friend's mother, entitled A Mother's Love. There are many other quilt patterns with stars that I just love. I have not had the time to try my hand at them. Then there are some star patterns that I don't think I will ever try for one reason or another. Lets jus...