Our Favorite Quilting Tools

Last weekend was our annual August quilt weekend for the Brown Baggers. I thought it would be a fun idea to ask all of the girls to share their favorite quilting tools.

As a quilter, accurate measuring is very important. Here are the favorite rulers among the group.

Marion's favorite tool is her 6"x24" Olfa ruler.

Joanne loves her June Tailor Shape Cut ruler. You place this on top of your fabric
and cut strips with it. It is hard to get a picture of something that is clear.
She is holding it up against the white board.

 

Kim P. loves her June Tailor ruler that allows her to make
half square triangle blocks and square off blocks as well.

Quilters love to cut fabric and snip threads. Here the girls showed off their favorite cutting tools.

Terri loves her spring-loaded snips

Paula is partial to her spring-loaded scissors.

Kim G. loves her 60 mm rotary cutter.

Extension tables and portable tables also make quilting easier.

Joannie loves her Sew Ezi table. It folds up flat and she can bring it anywhere.

Jo Ann loves her extension table.

Here are some other fun tools.

Karen, who is an awesome machine quilter, loves her quilting gloves.

I love my extension cord reel! It's got six plugs.
It lives in my car, so I always have it for quilting.

Joan has a very strong love for her magnetic pin cushion.
She's had it for a very long time.
It's held together with some tape at this point.

Valerie says never leave home without your quilting calculator.

Nancy D. loves The Angler 2 tool. It attaches to your
sewing machine throat plate and helps you line things up.

However, Lexine wins for the best answer. Her favorite quilting tool? Why her Brown Bagger Quilting Friends. "The Girls motivate me to keep on sewing!"

From left to right, front row: Lexine, Marion, Kim P. and Terri.
Back row, from left to right: Joanne, Kim G. and Joannie

Stay tuned for more quilting adventures with the Brown Baggers. Come back to see some of our finished projects from our August weekend.

What is your favorite quilting tool?

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Pets on Quilts Show Entry

I am pleased to announce our entry in the Pets on Quilts Show found on LilyPad Quilting's blog. The show will run from August 11th to August 17th. Voting begins on August 18th, so please return and vote for us! Use the two links above to visit the Show and to read Lily Pad's blog. I am entering in the Dogs on Quilts category.

Two of my favorite things: Quilts and Pugs! What's cuter than a pug? Two pugs of course! And what's cuter than two pugs? Well, LarryPug says three pugs of course!

My pugs are Romeo, who will be 12 in December, Elvis, who will be 11 in October and LarryPug who just turned 4 in June. The quilt shown is a Atkinson Designs' pattern called Popsicle Sticks done in batiks. This is a fast and fun quilt to make. I love scrappy quilts with lots of colors and this quilt shows off my handsome pug boys in all their pug-a-licious beauty.

From left to right, Elvis, Larry and Romeo

Elvis says the batik fabrics highlight his black fur coat just splendidly.
Larry says he thinks that he looks better. I say that they're both cute.

Elvis and Larry are ready for their close-up.

It's hard to take a bad picture of Larry. He's so cute and quite a camera-hog.

Another view of the three boys. I got very few photos of all three of them because Romeo had
more important things to do such as patrol the yard and pee on the bushes. He kept jumping off
the wicker sofa and out of my photo.

Here is my handsome husband Mike holding Romeo.

Come back and visit our blog soon. I will be doing an entry called Pets on Quilts Show Bloopers to show you what really happened during our photo shoot. I wish that I had shot video instead. Try taking photos of three pugs. They're just like wriggling toddlers.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my beautiful boys. If you visit from the Pets on Quilts Show, please leave a comment.

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Planning Ahead

Today I made some preparations for Fall.

First, I booked myself (and Marion) on a fabric shopping tour of the garment district in New York City in October. It was pretty easy to convince Joannie to join us, and I'm waiting to hear back from Carol. I found the tour on one of the blogs I like to read. If you'd like to join us, click here for the information.

Second, in case I was in any danger of running out of Unfinished Projects (known as UFOs in the quilting world), I also signed up for a two session class at Heart in Hands Quilt Shop. This class features my two favorite (NOT!) techniques--curved piecing and paper piecing. Not sure what I was thinking except that I LOVE the project. Joannie will be joining me in my insanity. At least it's a small project, so maybe I will finish it.

If I'm able to finish this project with a minimum of hair pulling, here's the Judy Niemeyer project I really would like to make.

OK, so a girl can dream, can't she?

At least I have my beautiful Double Wedding Ring quilt that Joannie made me for a wedding gift. Maybe I can convince her to make it bed-size...

Hope you are having a great day!

On Friday I am linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Richard and Tanya Quilts, and Sew Many Ways. I love all of these great blogs and I am very appreciative of their generosity in hosting these linky parties. If you come by for a visit, won't you please stop and leave a comment?

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

My week, my friends, our quilts

I am lucky to have a lot of girlfriends that like to quilt. On Monday nights, I sew in my Studio with my friend Joannie (and my friend Sue who you haven't seen recently in my blog because she is away for the summer). This past week, I blogged about my Monday night fun with Joannie here. On Thursday nights, I sew with my former Hampton Inn Homies. And once a month, usually on the first Sunday, I sew for the whole day with my Brown Bagger buddies. The Brown Baggers have been sewing together for about 15 years. About half of the original members are still in the group. There are 18 of us on the official roster with a couple of regular guests. The room we rent only holds 16 comfortably, so we have to keep it limited. Ironically, the room my Hampton Inn Homies rent on Thursday nights is ENORMOUS and there are only eight of us. I've been trying to recruit my friend Lisa to join us, but she is very creative with her excuses.

Thursday Night Follies
Did I mention that the function room has an adjacent bar? Yes, my gal pals are enjoying our new location...perhaps I can use this as a recruiting tool. This past Thursday I layered both of the baby quilts that I blogged about here.

Say hi to my friend Nancy. The consumption of
alcohol does not impair her gorgeous handwork.

Ginny is enjoying her itty bitty bottle of white
wine. It goes well with quilting, she says.

Ginny made this cute little bag.

Beth and Judi are behind this t-shirt quilt that Beth is making
for a friend who lost her little boy to a sudden illness.

Super Pat completed a SuperMan blanket for her nephew.

Sunday Fun
Today's group get-together was small. There were only seven of us. We celebrated Nancy D.'s birthday with two different kinds of cake. Yum!

Lori brought a finished project to show us. She made this gorgeous duffel
bag and matching cosmetic case for her niece's birthday. Lucky girl!

Nancy D. was busy today hand sewing quilt
bindings and hanging sleeves.

Here is her scary-licious Halloween Row by Row.

Terri was hard at work on her Millennium Quilt. It is one of her
Quilting New Year's Resolutions to finish this very old UFO.

This is Terri's work space. I love how organized she is.

Here are Valerie, left, and JoAnn.

Valerie made this fabulous quilt for her grandson Nolan
and JoAnn did all of the machine applique. Check out the photos
below for some of the adorable details in this quilt.

There are cute little cats driving some of the vehicles.

Here is Bob the Builder hard at work.

Pat was being pimped out by her daughters to make
baby shower gifts for their friends.

All these two bags need are handles and they're ready to go! Aren't they nice?
Much more sophisticated and stylish than your average diaper bag.

I finished my Construction Quilt. Yeah!

Check out my quilty shoes! They are from Keen.

Tomorrow night I'm getting together with Joannie and I want to finish my Winnie the Pooh Baby Quilt. The Brown Baggers are having our annual August weekend beginning on Friday so I will have three whole days to sew!!!! Right now I think that I am going to work on a kit that I bought to make a quilt for Michael's sister. But I reserve the right to change my mind.

Hope you have a very quilty week!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Pug Portraits

My nephew Josh, age 14, loves photography, both stills and video. He spent a week this summer at a camp learning more about video. When he visited us last weekend, he showed us the movie that he had produced. We were pretty impressed.

He took some great photos of the pugs when he was here.

Romeo in his Happy Place, aka his crate. He uses it as his club house.

Love, love, love this photo of Elvis. It is so hard to get a good
photo of him since he is black.

He got a lot of photos of Larry, which is easy because Larry likes to have his picture taken.

I really like this one of Larry.

This one is Mike's favorite.

Larry

Larry

and more Larry!

Larry says that you can never have enough Larry!

Larry says "Thank You, Josh, for taking my
photo one million times!"

I gave Josh a box of old cameras that my Dad has passed on to me. There were instamatics, a Polaroid and a camera with a bellows. He was thrilled! Mike gave him one more, so he went home with 10 more cameras for his camera collection.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my beautiful pug boys!

Adding a link on Sunday to Sew Many Ways. If you stop for a visit, please leave a comment.

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy with Romeo, Elvis, and Larry!

Nephew Time!

Our two oldest nephews came to visit us last weekend. Although they only live an hour away, we don't get to see them often because their lives are jam-packed with school and activities. Friday night was pretty mellow. We took the boys out to Bamboo for dinner. Bamboo has Chinese food as well as sushi, so both boys were happy. Sam is an adventurous eater, so he had sushi with Mike, while Josh and I had Chinese food.

As usual, I got up early on Saturday morning and took the pugs out. Everyone else was still sleeping. I snuck over to the Studio and assembled some blankets for the Etsy Shop. At 10:30 a.m., I took Romeo to the vet to have his ears checked. He's had a nasty ear infection for a couple of weeks (this on top of his recent eye surgery), but he is finally on the mend.

At 11:00 a.m., I got home to three handsome men making me a late morning breakfast...

Danger! Men cooking!

Young chefs in action

And not burnt toast and orange juice. No, Josh and Sam made strawberry crepes from scratch! Josh, age 14, was the head chef, his brother Sam, age 17, was his assistant, and Uncle Mike was the kitchen supervisor. The crepes were delicious (sorry, no photo!). It was quite a treat to have such a gourmet meal, although cleaning up after the three of them was no easy feat... I think they used every pan and bowl that we own.

After breakfast, Mike took the boys to an indoor rock climbing facility down the street from our house. They climbed for several hours and had a great time. The pugs and I stayed home and took a little snooze on the couch.

Josh

My husband, Mike

Sam

There was some rest time and some Facebook time after rock climbing. The pugs enjoyed a lot of attention from Sam and Josh. On Saturday evening, we had a cookout. This time, Mike cooked. We kept it simple with hot dogs and hamburgers. Josh served as Mike's assistant. It was a beautiful night to eat outside.

Josh, Sam and Mike

Check out Mike's fabulous apron featuring tattoo-printed fabric.
It reverses to a guitar print on the other side.

On Sunday, we had planned to take the kids on a hi-speed boat ride, Codzilla, through Boston, but the boys slept in late again and we went out to breakfast at our favorite 50's Diner. The boys and I all had pancakes. Plain for Josh, Blueberry for Sam, and Chocolate Chip (you'd expect anything else?) for me. So, instead of the boat ride, we took them to Monster Golf, which is like playing miniature golf in a haunted house. It is dark and all lit with black light inside and if you're wearing anything white, it glows. Oddly, when taking photos there, everything looks pretty normal.

It was super dark inside, so I was pleased that the
photo came out. Josh is glowing slightly at left.

Monster Golf played some fabulous eighties tunes as background, so Mike and I also enjoyed the music. Mike and Sam tied for first place and Josh was second. I, of course, came in last. Then, unfortunately, it was time for the boys to go home. We had a great time with them. Hopefully they will come visit us again soon.

I received the greatest compliment (EVER) from Sam when he was here. He is turning 17 in the fall and I asked him if he was getting too old for my novelty pillowcases. Sam said, "Aunt Nancy, as long as I have a head, you can make me pillowcases." That's the way to make your Aunt Nancy feel good! Sam--I'm rewriting my will tonight!

Hope you are having a good day! Happy Friday!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy