A winner has been chosen...

Congratulations Selina at Selina Quilts!

 

I have been in contact with her and will be sending her prize soon.

If you have a moment, please visit her website, and share some love.  Selina has the two most adorable bulldogs, she makes some beautiful quilts, and is inspiring me to do more charity work with my art.

 

Thank you all for the positive response to my blog anniversary, and to my new followers, welcome!  You'll see I don't post often, but I like to put lots of pictures in my posts to make up for it!

 

 

Belle is reminding me that I need to catch back up on the Snapshots QAL, as I am now THREE blocks behind.  Yikes!

 

Alright everyone, let's get out there and sew, the holidays approach!

 

~Brandy

September Activities

Welcome back!  Oh man, this last month has been busy busy busy at work.  I am the National Rodeo Secretary for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, (aka college rodeo across the USA) and the beginning of the school year has a lot going on for our office.  I kept thinking I wasn't getting anything done because of how very fast the month went by, but I actually accomplished some sewing!  One thing I practiced was getting into the habit of going to my mom's house every Wednesday to work on the quilt my Grandma Linda asked me to finish, and I'm so happy to report I've nearly half the blocks together already!  Here's an idea of what I started with:

 



And sadly I don't have a progress picture, but I will remember next Wednesday to have my mom take one of me working on it.

 

We had the Walla Walla Valley Quilt Festival mid-September and I volunteered for a few hours Saturday at the front door.  I had a blast hanging out with Lianne (our guild president) and one of the other girls who I just can't remember her name to save me.  John and I walked around Sunday for about 2 hours examining all the amazing works.  Here's my quilt hanging up, and my block challenge on the wall with the others, there were some really creative blocks:

 

I'm on the bottom row with the black background

 



I also participated in the APQ Pillowcase Challenge Sew-a-thon and using some fabric from Grandma Linda's stash made this awesome pillowcase:

 

This is made using the "burrito method" that is a free pattern on APQ's website (link above)

 

My amazing piecer: the 1954 White

 

Ta-da!

The most exciting thing was you could enter at some of the sponsors websites and win fabric to make more pillowcases, and I won!  I received an email from Shannon Fabrics a few days ago, and I plan on donating all the cases to children in Walla Walla, hopefully the children's ward at the hospital.

 

I have been so fortunate, won 4 drawings in 2 months now!  Can't wait to pay it forward in the upcoming blog hops.  By the way, I'm participating in not only the Black Cat Crossing, but also the T'was the Night, yay!

 

Here are photos of the items I won from Carol's drawing at Just Let Me Quilt:

Two yards (!) worth of solid and two fall panels

 

 

 

And then I received the package from Sew Lux Fabrics who I had won a $50 gift card from:

 

Ooo!  What an unexpected surprise!  I love presents within presents.

 

It really struck me how much more special this nice wrapping made my prize seem.  I am going to start prettying up my giveaways, because I can!

 

 

For the most part I ordered things I would not normally buy for myself, such as fabric with no plan or a bag pattern...

 

For some reason I was really drawn to purchasing this pattern after seeing all the amazing ones people have made and hearing how tough it can be.  Sometimes I like a challenge.  I'll probably take this on in a couple years.  I hear you also need ~$100 worth of materials to make it, so I'll start saving up too.

I also bought a spool of white Aurifil thread, because I go through it!  I really enjoy how smoothly it works in all 3 of my machines, I must say.

 

Ok, here's one last thing we did in September, we hosted a rock crawling event for remote control vehicles.  Some are very lifelike, some look like bugs, but everyone has a good time.

Getting in some stitching while at the track.

Our youngest competitor (pretty sure he's only 3 years old) driving a scaled truck through the course and doing really well.

John giving Terry some direction over a tough log section.

One of the competition (aka bug like) crawlers crossing the bridge John built.  I helped paint it.

 

See, John's working hard and I'm supervising.

 The event went really well, and we're hoping to keep building awareness over the next couple months for a good turn-out in Spring.

Thank you for visiting, see you again soon!

~Brandy

 

An August Finish, I'm a Winner, and Fair Entries

Well!  One can tell we started working full time again, as I only have one finish this month.  Turns out I'm not so great at organizing my free time, weird.  (That's completely sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell lol).  However, I do have a finish, and I am so happy with it!

 

Using the Clover Clips for the first time.  And as everyone else says, they are awesome.

 

Showing off the backing and length of the table runner, it's 56 inches long, 18 inches wide.

 

 

And complete!  It maybe took me 2 hours to sew down the binding, and mostly it took that long because we were watching the Seahawks play the Raiders last Thursday.

 

I'm making this one extra big so you can see my quilting!  It turned out good enough, I have to keep telling myself I'm still learning, but I will say, my dad could tell it was footballs, and that is what matters.

 

 And the table runner is staying at our house, to complement our banner:

 

 

 

 

 So then, this has been a really "winning" month for me, and I fell so blessed.  It happens when it needs to most, the last few months have been a little tight.  The first item I won (and of course don't have a picture of) was the door prize at Guild!  I received six fat 1/8ths of baby-themed flannel and a package of crib-sized batting.  The second item was from Carol at Just Let Me Quilt who had participated in the Pets on Quilts Show at LilyPad Quilting and had a giveaway which I won :)

I was not expecting the amount of fabric she sent me, what a pleasant surprise!

And the third blessing was from my entry in the Sew Lux Christmas in July sew along.  I won a $50 gift card to their shop!  I placed my order and it will be showing up this week, and I'm very excited.  I was able to order items I normally wouldn't get for myself (a pattern and a layer cake), and some Aurifil thread which is always useful.  So a big thank you to the ladies who had these giveaways, and thank you to the fabric gods for my good fortune!

 

And last, but not least, we had the Walla Walla County Fair and Rodeo this weekend.  All three of the quilts I entered won blue ribbons, which surprised me.  John says it's because I know all my little errors in my pieces so I expect others to see them as well.

There's my BOO quilt to greet everyone as they come up the stairs in the Pavilion.

My star quilt is in the center on the bottom, and the blue hearts are on the right.  The judge left me love notes on the labels of my quilts, which I appreciate.

We received tickets to the rodeo via my dad (Thanks dad!) on Friday night, which was super fun to attend, especially since I work for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association or NIRA, which in laymen's terms means college rodeo, and there were kids who's names I recognized!  And the fact that it is a PRCA event (aka professional rodeo...) makes it even more impressive that college level students participate and win.  Sweet.  Here are a couple of the more clear photos I got that night.  The lighting is hard to work with unless you have a REALLY nice camera.  But I got some fun pictures!

 

 

 

Now I have to finish up the block I'm entering in the Block Challenge for the Walla Walla Quilt Festival that is coming up in a couple weeks, I have most of it done but here's a sneak peak:

The colorful one is the challenge fabric.  I chose to make it a two color block because I felt it shows off the challenge fabric the best.

And here it is in process, the blanks are filled with quarter-square triangle blocks, it is very good looking I think.  I'm excited to see what everyone else's interpretations are of this challenge fabric.

Thanks for visiting, I'll be sure to share the photos from John and me visiting Kalispell, MT a couple weeks ago, it was fabulous!  See you soon!

~Brandy

 

A Perfect Picnic blog hop WINNERS and my vege dip recipe

Welcome back and congratulations to the winners of my giveaways!

 

 

The bottle of wine goes to #65 BONNIE from MAQUOKETA, IOWA who said:

Love your quilt (both sides). I live outside of Maquoketa (fun to hear people try to pronounce this one, too), Iowa. Thanks for sharing and for the chance to win.

 

And this charm pack goes to #69 KATHY from ONTARIO, CANADA who said:

What a great picnic! Fantastic idea to bring kites... so fun!
Looks like you had a great time!
I'm in Ontario, Canada and am enjoying the blog hop so much!

 

You can visit Kathy at her blog: http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/ she has some amazing projects she's worked on!

 

Emails have been sent and I am waiting for them to respond with their addresses.

 

I loved this blog hop and hope that you did too, as I've told a number of people it's so wonderful to be able to share projects and ideas and be able to inspire each other on such a grand scale.  Why, even Carla has a virtual bridal shower going on for her daughter (who is getting married in October) where we can share recipes with her, how awesome is that?!  I just love our quilting community!  And now here's my recipe:

 

 

Vegetable Dip

 

1 C sour cream

1 C mayonnaise

1 tsp Beau Monde seasoning

1 tsp dill weed

1 tsp chopped parsley

1 T finely chopped onion (or 1/2 tsp onion powder)

~1 tsp garlic salt

 

Just mix it all together, refrigerate for ~1 hour for better flavor but can also be used right away.  My husband uses it for chicken, tacquitos, burritos, etc. as well as the veges.  I like it best with carrots myself.  This recipe came to us from my Great Grandma Pawlik, and I've been eating it most of my life, so it's been around for at least 25 years (I'm 28).  I hope you like it!

 

Thank you for visiting, hope you have a wonderful day!

~Brandy

A winner has emerged!

 

 

 

Congratulations to Janarama on winning my drawing from the Don't Let the Door Stop You Blog Hop!  An email has been sent her way and I await an address.  I hope she will enjoy the little extras I'm going to put in there.  :)  Do visit her at sewpeacetopeace.blogspot.com when you get a moment.  She told me her inspiration comes from books, magazines, blogs, and all over the internet.  I was amazed at how many of us are influencing each other through our blogs, it makes me very happy to think I could inspire one of you.  Thank you all for visiting, come back again soon!

A Winner has been chosen...

Of all the wonderful people who left me comments, I can not think of a better person to be chosen by the Random Number Generator: Linda from Buzzing and Bumbling!  I highly recommend you pop over to her page and see just what a wonderful person she is, and why I believe she is very deserving of this little gift.  She told me she is very much looking forward to spending the Christmas season with her sons this year.

Once again I thank you all for visiting my blog, and I look forward to talking to you again next year, if not sooner!  I have an extensive list of things I would very much like to finish before the end of the year:

mom's lap quilt
dad's lap quilt
owl wall hanging
my car quilt
my mom's car quilt (refurbishing)
sister's patchwork giraffe
best friend's son's patchwork giraffe
Mortimer Moose wall hanging
Christmas table runner

so I won't be participating in another blog hop this year, but as I mentioned earlier, my mom's lap quilt will be entered in the Iron Quilter contest!  Alright, off to sew!