Karen’s Opinion

It is cold and rainy here in Indiana so I am trying to bring spring into my home with decorations. I have put out Easter baskets and brightly colored quilts. I did have Easter candy but I ate it. Here is a picture of the new chair decorations I made for our front porch.

I recently attended the Mountain Quilt Fest in Pigeon Forge Tennessee. During a dinner, I found myself fortunate to be sitting with a couple of interesting ladies.

Hollis Chatelain is a texture artist who was born in Pennsylvania but spent many years in Switzerland and several African countries. Her travels have influenced her art. Her use of color is amazing as she brings to life people she has met and places she has seen. She was very soft spoken but her quilts speak loudly. It was fun to listen to how she was worried about the weather and her trip home to North Carolina. She is a real person with an amazing talent. She taught classes entitled Painting Images with Dyes, Quilt Line As the Third Design Aspect, Understanding Value to Enhance Color and Upcycle Your Jeans into Art. She also held a lunch lecture entitled Influences of Africa.

Jan Krentz was also sitting at my table. If you have seen quilt books about star quilts, you have probably seen books written by Jan Krentz. She seemed to be about my age and I couldn’t help but admire her silver hair. I’m thinking about saving tons of money spent on hair color and letting my hair go natural. If only I had a way to see if it would be as pretty as Jan’s.

Jan is an expert at teaching star quilts. During this festival, her classes were titled Love That Lone Star, Hunter Star-Variable Hunter Star, Quick Rolling Star, and Rainbow Split Broken Star. She also held a lecture/dinner titled Quilts and Techniques. Her classes were geared toward the skilled beginner/above. I would love to take a class taught by Jan. She seemed like an interesting and fun lady.

From Craftsy:
5 Ideas to celebrate National Quilting Day!
posted by Lindsay Conner on Mar 12, 2014 in Quilting

March 15, 2014 is National Quilting Day, but we bet you already had it marked on your calendar. If, by chance, the holiday slipped your mind, we’ve gathered some fun ideas for celebrating national quilting day!

1. Give a quilted gift

Do you have a neighbor, babysitter or hairdresser who deserves a little recognition? Make a simple quilted pot holder and pair it with fresh flowers to give a quilted gift that’s sure to be remembered. After all, quilting is a hobby that’s designed to be shared. Maybe your gift will inspire the recipient to take up quilting as a hobby!

Tip: Fresh-baked cookies paired with a quilted mug rug makes an excellent gift for friends and family members. See our roundup of our favorite FREE quilted mug rug patterns for inspiration!

March 15, 2014 is National Quilting Day, but we bet you already had it marked on your calendar. If, by chance, the holiday slipped your mind, we’ve gathered some fun ideas for celebrating national quilting day!

Mini Quilt and a Potted Daffodil
1. Give a quilted gift

Do you have a neighbor, babysitter or hairdresser who deserves a little recognition? Make a simple quilted pot holder and pair it with fresh flowers to give a quilted gift that’s sure to be remembered. After all, quilting is a hobby that’s designed to be shared. Maybe your gift will inspire the recipient to take up quilting as a hobby!

Tip: Fresh-baked cookies paired with a quilted mug rug makes an excellent gift for friends and family members. See our roundup of our favorite FREE quilted mug rug patterns for inspiration!

Women Sewing at a Quilting Retreat
2. Host a retreat or sew-in

Sewing with friends, new or old, is a great way to spend the holiday. Hosting your own retreat for National Quilting Day can be as simple as inviting a group of local quilters to sew with you in your home, church or community center. Plan a catered meal or ask attendees to pitch in and bring a dish to share, so your quilting marathon won’t have to be interrupted when it’s time to stop and eat. You can make the day extra special by organizing a fabric swap of Fat Quarters, Charm Squares or scraps.

Tip: If you don’t have a good space to host a quilting retreat or sew-in, why not organize a shop hop or bus trip with some of your fellow quilters?

3. Support your local quilt shop

A great way to support small businesses is to take a friend with you the next time you go into shop. So grab a quilting buddy and stop by your favorite quilt store in town. They may just be having some great sales and clearance fabrics in honor of National Quilting Day! While you are there, recognize the person at the cutting counter by letting them know you appreciate their help, and ask them if they have any great time-saving quilting tips. You never know what you might learn.

Tip: Bring your child or another young family member with you to the fabric shop, and offer to teach them how to make a simple quilt. You’ll feel inspired by passing on your love of quilting to the next generation.

4. Make a quilt for charity

Do you have a quilt top lying around that needs to be basted and quilted? If that unfinished project is just taking up space in your sewing area, commit to finish it by the end of the month and donate it to a local or national charity that accepts finished quilts! Project Linus and ABC Quilts are two national charities that would love to receive donations of quilts for children. Locally, you can check with transitional shelters for men, women and children, children’s services, nursing homes, local hospitals, or police and fire departments to see if they can recommend a good home for your charity quilt.

Tip: Learn more about donating your quilts with our post on quilting for charity, which features some resources for how to get started.

5. Pose some quilting trivia

No Quilting Day celebration is complete without a little recognition of our quilting roots. Challenge your friends to some trivia based around the history of quilting and update your Facebook status with some fun quilting statistics. For instance, did you know that quilters own an average of 2.7 sewing machines?

Tip: Visit the National Quilting Day Association for more ideas on how you can spend the holiday.

How will you be spending National Quilting Day?

We added a room onto the back of our house and are just now getting to get carpet for us. You would think, since we own a carpet store, that we would be able to buy carpet and get it put down. Well, it still costs money and so many other things came before new flooring. Also, when hubby installs our carpet, it means that he isn’t making money so it always got pushed to the back burner. The stars aligned and we finally are having the carpet put down. It is already looking good! I can’t wait until it is finished.

I hope that winter is on the way out. We are having thunder storms here in Indiana. This has been the weirdest winter that I can remember. The icicles have built up so thick on the back of our house that water began pouring in, wetting the cedar siding walls. The gutters are full of ice.

I hate to give our dogs baths when it is cold outside but our Shitzu, Brody, was smelling very doggy. He just had to have a bath. He doesn’t really mind having a bath and sits still so I can blow him dry with the hair blow dryer. I put just a spritz of perfume on him and he runs around the house like a maniac. He must have worn himself out. This is how I found him and our Boston Terrier, Elsie.