this n that

I want to say Welcome to the folks who have been using Google’s Follow feature to follow my blog.  If you haven’t clicked to “Follow” me, see the sidebar at the very bottom and click away.
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The last technique of the week was the “halfway” point for the year if I had been doing them consistently and not taken a summer break.  Not bad, right?  It’s still 26 new techniques for you to try.
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Over on Quilting Arts’ website, I’m hosting a forum challenge to get your creative juices going!  So take a look over there and join us to win a fabulous prize by participating.  The theme is “Put Your Best Face Forward”.  Please join us!
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I’m working on three major projects at once.  One is a secret for now.  The second is 3 gallery pieces for our Fiber Art Diva’s show at the end of October.  The third is this and next week’s technique of the week at the same time.  Next week’s takes some advance preparation, so I’m working on it concurrent to this week’s.  I hope you’ll forgive my lateness on this week’s, it will be worth it. 
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My Houston dance card is filling up.  If you will be there, and want to meet up, I would love to say hi!
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These 3 are rarely in the same room, much less within inches of each other.  How nice of them to make a cute nest on my clean laundry.

Did you see?  Count them… 3 new Techniques from this past weekend!  Hope you caught them all…
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My husband and I are enjoying a whole month of not travelling, which means we are actually in each other’s company for more than 2 weeks straight.  
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I thought I lost my list of “Techniques” that I made early in the year of all the things I wanted to try.  Once September rolled around and I was ready to start them again, I could not find the list.  I dreaded having to remake the list, I knew it would be impossible to remember them all. That was why I had the list in the first place.  But after cleaning my studio a bit, I found it under a pile of stuff.
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Speaking of studio, I haven’t finished my makeover yet.  I have some shelves to buy, paint, and install and my new design wall to create.  Once I finish those, some rearranging and I should be good to go.  The closet makeover is almost done as well, and I have just a few plastic tubs for storage to buy before I am done.  I saw that OfficeMax had a P-Touch labeler on sale, so I may pick that up to label my bins.
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The weather finally turned cool this week, but I am hoping that I can get one more hot day so I can try my hand at dyeing.  It’s on the technique list, so I want to give it a shot.  I also need one more warm sunny day for a photosensitive project as well.
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This is a stitched antique piece at my mother-in-law’s house.

The wedding is over, and life is returning back to normal. The flowers were great, we received many compliments on how they looked, and her photographer even wondered if I did this as a business! (uh, no!)  When I get some pictures of us in our finery, I’ll post them, but being an attendant in the wedding means I couldn’t take any photos. 
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My sister had the most adorable cake topper at her wedding made by Sophia’s Workshop, which we both picked out from Etsy separately, which means it just had to be.
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I am taking classes at CREATE this week, and I will report back here and on the QA forums with all the cool stuff and fun we had.
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I got my IQA Houston Quilt Show registration back and I super excited to go and have fun.  It will be my first Houston show! Now I have to make loud pants for the Loud Pants Luncheon, which should be a hoot.
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In just 2 more weeks, the Techniques will start back up again!  I know you are all excited, and there’s some summer dyeing I am hoping to squeeze in before the weather gets too cool. 

How fast has this summer blown by?  I can’t even tell you…
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So these are the bouquets of flowers made for my sister’s wedding.  They are all finished except for a couple of things left to fiddle with.  I think they turned out just like the picture of them in my head, so that makes me happy, and ultimately all of the hard work worth it.  There are also about 20 boutonnieres as well as the bridesmaids and bride’s bouquets. The blue/teal one is the bride’s, the larger of the other two is for the maid/matron of honor, and the smaller one is for the rest of the attendants.
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The lecture our Fiber DIVAS group gave for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild went really well.  I was a bit concerned how to show my small quilts when I thought of mounting them temporarily to foam core boards.  I used examples from each year as representative of my work and filled 3 black foam core boards.  We had a good time, and I hear they enjoyed our talk, so that made it even better.  I’ve been toying with the idea of developing a whole lecture on small weekly journal quilts and the trunk show of my quilts to go with it, so this was a nice exercise to see if that could work out.
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I am hoping I get a chance to get outside and try some dyeing techniques for when the “Technique of the Week” resumes.  I would hate to have been so busy that I missed all the good hot dyeing weather.
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If you will be a the CREATE event on Friday Aug 27th, I will be there taking a class and attending the Artist Vendor Faire.  I hope if you will be there too you can stop by the Quilting Arts online forum and let me know so we can meet up!