Halloween Hauntings

This entire week seems to have been the week of last minutes. You know, the kind of requests that are from crazy other people and are needed Right. Now. Please!  

It started with Jenny's needing a hand-decorated tee shirt for Marley. It ended with Grandmay being said hand-decorator. Tuesday they started looking at Pinterest ideas. They needed it today for a school contest. 

Marley wanted something in this vein, so Wednesday Jen picked up some Halloween fabric in a deep purple with spiders. 

Making the m was relatively stressful easy using my ruler to make sure I got the wide letter they wanted. I simply ironed on a bit of fusible web, cut out the letter and pressed it onto the shirt so that I could easily stitch it down. It was finished with a day to spare. The end result is pretty good, except that Marley demanded wanted a girly bow. Marley got a &*O% red bow and everyone is happy.

Sorry that you really can't see the shirt because of the bunting. That was last night's project--in preparation for the hayride planned for Monday night's trick or treating. Note: again, Grandmay is ahead of the game.


Jen bought a panel of Halloween bunting pieces. At first I had plans to sew a backing to the individual bunting pieces, but I decided to just cut them apart and sew them to double fold bias tape. 

I happened to have a four yard pack of orange. Not enough. So I added some green. It doesn't work so well, but this is a one-time use project, and they were thrilled with the outcome. They are easy to please, aren't they?

It's one very long banner of about 5 yards, so decorating a trailer may be challenging, but we already have an idea or two that may work. 


Tonight Dusti and her boyfriend showed up for a few minutes with a quick request: Grandmay, I need a tee shirt that looks like "Thing 1" for work tomorrow. What!?! Are you serious? So much for staying ahead.


Luckily, she meant she had the tee shirt and an iron on and needed an iron. And an ironer. But being the ironer was not a big deal after the shock of thinking that she wanted me to sew a shirt tonight. I think she may have suckered played me, but I can't say for certain.

I'll leave you with pictures of a few of the Jack-O-Lanterns that students painted for the annual contest at school. They are in a display case in the art classroom, so the pictures are a bit blurred, but you can see enough to know that our students are pretty artistic and resourceful. (And maybe a bit competitive.)

What have you been doing to prepare for Halloween? 

Join me in linking up with

Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts

Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or Not Fridays and TGIFF

Fort Worth Fabric Studio

Easter Pockin'

In central Louisiana, especially in Avoyelles Parish where we live, there's a tradition that involves knocking, or as many say "pocking" eggs.   Basically it involves several people, each with boiled and dyed eggs in their possession, who compete to break the eggs of their opponents.   Everyone is supposed to begin with the same number of eggs, but we're not big on rules around here.

Everyone is an opponent.  The last one with an unbroken egg is the winner. Another way to win is to keep track of how many eggs one of your eggs breaks.  Everyone is on the honor system, but it's relatively easy to keep track of those who claim to be in the running for winner--all it takes is a quick look at how many unbroken eggs a person has.  

Richard and I knocking against each other.

I was doing quite well with a pink egg, which had broken three other eggs, but I set it down on an end table and it rolled away onto the ceramic tile.  The tile won that round!

Poppa put himself in charge of handing out the eggs.  

(Make note of this.)  

It's really lots of fun.  We're not a very competitive family, but Easter seems to bring out the best in us.  

Jenny's surprise after Stacey crushes her winning egg.

It's important to keep your eggs organized.  Ma-ma (Rich's mom) is just a bit OCD about her eggs.

Papa knocks eggs with everyone....a couple of times.  He goes through a dozen eggs in just a few minutes.

 Sometimes we get so excited, we just have to grab someone to hug tightly.  If it happens to be "my best cousin," well, so much the better.

 And the winner is......

Poppa. 


Somehow he managed to end up with the oddly shaped, heavy-on-the-shell, deformed egg.  It probably has nothing to do with his being in charge of handing out the eggs.  

On a side note, there are a couple of towns in our parish that have egg knocking contests.  The rules are strict and the competition is fierce!  

I hope you had a wonderful, blessed Easter, also.

Une tête à tête

I was very disappointed last week that my design submission was disqualified and didn't make it into Connecting Threads' contest, but I've had a sit-down with myself.

In Cajun French we call that a tête à tête (literally, head to head) meaning a low, private conversation between two people, but it can also mean a face-to-face discussion in which one person comes to understand something important.  Generally that person deserves the tête à tête.

So I'm facing reality now.  I really needn't have been so disappointed.  After all, I didn't give myself enough time for research or planning.  I surely did not consider that what is a great design to me may not be from another point of view.  And I didn't get much input from others.  

Basically I made an interesting discovery about the contest, had a whirl-wind romance with my ideas and in a week submitted my design.  Disappointed?....well, I hadn't considered that I might be!  

I should know better, but every now and again the wild artist persona splits and runs, and the rest of my persons can only sit and watch.  I know, I know, take the meds already, right? 

So, now that I've over it and am moving on, I thought I'd share the artwork I created before the disappointment started: alligators and lotus flowers.  My intent was to sprinkle the alligators across bright yellow and green solids and the lotus flowers on orange and muddy browns.   Ah, maybe next time.

What a disappointment!

Voting begins today for the Connecting Threads Fabric Design Contest.    My design did not make it into the competition.  I don't really know why except that it may have been "disqualified due to poor image quality or inability for the design to be reproduced with screen printing methods in 15 colors or less. Photographs of artwork, snapshots, pixelated artwork, and designs with numerous colors in small spaces all fall into this category."  

I was so excited.  Oh well, on to other things...
You can still vote on the Connecting Threads' website.

A Finish, Food and Fun

Finish a quilt top today!  Of course, it's only the top: I still have the quilting to do and hope to load the quilt on the long arm machine tomorrow afternoon.  

In the morning I'll go on a swamp tour with my sisters Laura and Angie.  We did this last year (here's the link to that post) and had a wonderful time.  Laura got some great photos--one of which won a competition at Paragon Casino.  I blogged about that photo here. The rest of us enjoyed the wild life and learned quite a bit about Louisiana.

Speaking of Paragon Casino in Marksville, several of us met there tonight for their Friday night seafood buffet.  The food is so good, but I mostly ate the crab!

 Happy swampin'
Mary

Hurry to Pin and Win!

Pretty soon Moda Bakeshop will close the Love It, Pin It, Win It Contest, so if you haven't entered, you'd best go there now and get started.  

Another way to enter is to go to my Pinterest board and repin some of my pins.  I have one board with just Moda contest photos.  

Hover over a photo and click on the repin button.  It will automatically pin to the last board you've pinned on.

It's really easy, but be warned: it's addicting!  Pinning, I mean.  Of course, Moda fabrics are addicting, too, so be careful when you purchase them.  Not that just being careful will help much. But, you know, walk away when you have enough.  

Just don't walk away now, you need to enter the contest.  I mean, who doesn't need free fabrics that are this pretty?

Have a great weekend and happy quilting,
Mary

Love It, Pin It, Win It!

The good folks at Moda Fabrics are hosting the Love It, Pin It, Win It! contest.

http://www.modabakeshop.com/

Contest rules are quite easy, go to the Moda Bake Shop website and choose some of your favorite recipes.  Pin the ones you really love on one of your Pinterest boards.  I put my pins in the board titled, "Heart, Quilts."  So you can just repin one of those I pinned from Melissa Corry this morning.  

Later four random winners will be chosen from the pinned photos.  The grand prize is a set of the ingredients (fabrics) to make your favorite recipe.  (Note that fabric will be from what is currently available.)  Other winners will receive a Moda pre-cut.  Not bad for taking two seconds to enter.  

There is one stipulation: Each pin must have the three tags {#modabakeshop #modafabrics #lovepinwin}  That I can't explain.  I have no idea  how to make a tag, but it's easy enough to copy and paste onto the bottom of the pin.  

As I said, I simply repinned many of Melissa Corry's pins and then followed her example for a few that she hadn't pinned.  It really is easy.  Already I have 9 or 10 MBS pins on my board.  Since the contest runs until Sept. 22, there's still time to pin a few more, so have fun with it.

Happy Quilting, Mary

Only one day left

For my Red, White and Blue 4 1/2 inch fabric squares giveaway!  Click here for the details and to enter!

Entries will close tomorrow at midnight, and I will choose a winner on Thursday.  Once I've contacted the winner, I will announce it here.


Good luck and happy quilting,
Mary

Quilting Gallery

I finally entered one of my quilts in the weekly themed contests at Quilting Gallery.  I've said several times that I would just for the fun, but life gets in the way of so many good intentions.  Finally!  I've done it.  Since the theme is Log Cabin Quilts and I've made a few, I thought now would be a good time.


I entered Rory and Meggan's quilt, "Louisiana Bayou" which I gave them when they married.  She chose the quilt one day while looking through the ones I'd completed and fell in love with the greens, golds and browns of the bayou quilt.  Since she also loves red tulips and this quilt has small red centers in each block, it was perfect for them.


For his part, Rory was partly the inspiration for the quilt.  He was working for a gentleman who makes handmade furniture, including a fabulous bed he designed and named the Louisiana Bayou Bed.  Richard and I took a tour of his studio and I fell for the beauty of one of the beds on display.  Rory explained the background of the bed and my mind could not stop thinking of the kind of quilt that such a beautiful bed deserves.


Unfortunately, I couldn't make a quilt big enough for that bed.  At the time I was quilting everything on my Bernina since we hadn't purchased the longarm yet.  It's very difficult to make a queen size quilt......a large king is impossible--at least for me!
Here's a close-up of one of the blocks.  All these photos are of the quilt on my bed before Meggan and Rory got it.


I'm supposed to encourage you to vote by clicking on the button on the left of this page.  I'm not sure exactly what will happen but I think you'll be taken to the Quilting Gallery site where you'll get to see all the quilts and vote on your favorite.

Before you do that, though, leave a comment and let me know what you think.  Have you made a quilt that someone loved so much that giving it away was a pleasure?  That's how I felt about giving this quilt to Meggan and Rory. It was a pleasure to see her face when she opened the gift, and I am especially happy to know that they use it.  Do you get the lasting pleasure of knowing that the quilt you gave away is used and appreciated?  Isn't that the most wonderful feeling for a quilter?

Lastly, if you're reading this post on Friday, it's the final day to enter the giveaway.  After midnight it will be too late to enter.  I'll choose a winner on Saturday morning, email the winner then post the info for everyone to see on Saturday sometime in the afternoon.  You will find everything you need to enter here!

Cute It Up Giveaway

One of my favorite blogs, Cute it Up, is having a giveaway!  I thought you might be interested....I know I'd love to win!  If you are interested, get busy cause the contest ends in just a few days.

Not a lot of stuff today, we're almost out of school (one more day, yay) so I've been terribly busy trying to pack up my personal stuff, clean up the library, and help with the end-of-year paperwork.  That's way more than seven hours can contain, so I've been hanging out for an extra hour or two each day in a effort to wrap it all up.  


Tomorrow, however, I will drive away from MHS for the last time as a member of the faculty, so I'll probably leave at a normal time.  I hate long goodbyes--that means I'll finish up the last of the packing and load the car, then make my rounds to say goodbye to my friends.  


Hugs to everyone at MHS, thank you for a great eight years.