Rocky Road to Dublin class pictures

What a great time we had at last Saturday's class.  There were 5 in the class and we had a great time.  Lots of talking, laughing, and quilting.  We used Pat Speth's Nickle Book.  Everyone used different charm squares and we had such a great variety that no two looked alike.  Here are some of the photos from class.

Surprise!!!  I'm the teacher today!!!

HI Lois!  Hi Mary!


And down here is Sara and Janie.  How ya' doing?  Keep sewing.  Can you believe they said I was a slave driver?

                                                                                     

Hey Susan, no slacking.  You got 3 quilts to get done by Christmas for those grandkids.  What a bunch of lucky grandkids, can you adopt a bear?  I could be a grandbear, hey I like that.      

Way to go Lois.

Yea Mary.

Good job Janie.  You'll be done in no time.

Sara will have hers quilted by next month.  You go girl.  Am I a great teacher or what?  Who knew a bear could have such a great class, of course it was really all the wonderful students in today's class.

If you're interested in joining us in a scrappy class, we've got one scheduled for July 26th.  We will be making the Streak Of Lightning.  We're going to make another Pat Speth Nickle quilt from her book on August 23rd, so come join us for either one.  What's the best part?  Well, we're using up lots of scraps and that gives us a reason to buy more.  

Another One Bites the Dust

Yes, one more spool is gone.  And we've got another quilt top to add to our stack.  Veronica says she's going to quilt it on her 8900.  That's her favorite sewing machine these days, and yes, she got it from Scott at Citrus Sew and Vac.  She actually has 2 of these machines.  Why 2, you ask?   Well, just in case somebody needs to borrow one of course.  Not just anyone though, only her daughter. Her daughter did have an issue with her machine and was not able to finish her part of a round robin round.  We won't say bad things about that machine, but it was not a Janome. Veronica's wonderful son-in-law went out and bought her daughter a new machine and returned Veronica's machine to her.  He even carried to Veronica's car for her, he's awesome.

Sooooooooooo, how many machines do you have?          

Do you like this fabric?  It is available from Cactus Quilts in Texas City.  The appliques are a panel. She just went over there on Tuesday to get her border fabric to finish it off with floating stars and all of the fabric is available.  As a matter of fact, this quilt will be hanging at Cactus Quilts when Veronica gets it quilted.  


 See ya'll Monday, I'm taking the weekend off.

eBosser

Have you seen the eBosser ?  Well, we got one.  We have a Go! and Go!Baby and we have lots of the Accuquilt dies.  We use them to cut fabric for our kits for our cruises.  We do like them, but Veronica's arm gets tired of cranking so she has to grab Kevin and make him help.  Well, with the eBosser, there is no cranking the handle because it's electric.  Best of all, it takes the Go! dies. Yes, seriously, it does.  So if you don't have those dies, but you've got Sizzix or Cuttlebug dies, the eBosser can take those as well.  Veronica is cutting fabric like crazy.  She's hooked.  Veronica has been cutting fabric for her scrap quilts.  We'll have pictures of those shortly.  So where do you get one?  Call Scott at Citrus Sew and Vac.              

So this is what the eBosser looks like...

with fabric, dies and the cover for the dies.  By the way, I'm working on a Hexagon quilt, so I needed to cut more hexagons.  I like doing it this way because all of my sides are the same size.

Here is a picture of my hexagon quilt.  I'm trying to use different scraps, I needed to clean out the scrap bin and this was a good way.  This is also a great project to take along on the airplane.  I use the English paper piecing method using Paper Pieces shapes.  They have some of the best products.      

Rocky Road to Dublin

On June 28th Veronica will be at Cactus Quilts in Texas City teaching this quilt , it's called Rocky Road to Dublin. She used 3 Charm Packs of 5" charms, 5/8 yards of black and 1 1/2 yards of white on white.  it's 60" square, but you can make it bigger if you'd like.  If you've got any 5" charms on hand or even if you don't, come on down and sew with us.  Class starts at 10:30 a.m.


The secret to the variety of charms in that Veronica used 3 different charm packs for her sample.

Canada

Wow, we made it.  We're in Canada.  First off we ate, of course!!!  We walked almost 10 miles according to Fittie.  He's my fitbit buddy.  And I made two great new friends.  This is number 1, he was hungry.

Here is the second one.  They were both at the pier where we were eating Fish and Chips.  There were lots of little kids feeding them and they were jumping up out of the water.  It was fun to watch.  After we watched them for a while, we walked around near downtown and then we finally went back to the ship.  We've got to pack since we get off the ship tomorrow and fly home. We're going to miss all the friends we made on the ship and all of the quilters.  We'll do it again soon, hope you join us.  We've  got our cruise to Roatan-Honduras, Belize City, Belize and Cozumel Mexico.  We leave on May 24th from Galveston, Texas and return on May 31, 2015.

Hope to see you on a cruise soon,

Ketchikan and even more bears

Well here we are in Ketchikan.  It's reallllly cold today, but we set out anyway.  We walked all over downtown, ok, really just a couple of blocks and then got back on the ship because we had more quilting to do.  Do you see the map  of Ketchikan, it's not very big at all.  That's Kevin, he's trying to be cool with his new sunglasses.  Doesn't matter that the sun is shining in my eyes (sigh), I'm just another bear hanging around Alaska.

We went to one of the stores and I got captured.  I was telling this mama bear that I knew how to cook, remember I was making waffles on the ship with Mona Lisa, so guess what?  We're off to cook up a storm.  They don't know how to make waffles.

Oh, on the way to the kitchen, I found this Bear Crunch and got away from mama bear.  I'll be here eating...

Is that a bear paddle????????????????  Yikes, are those claws??????????????????  Help, get me outta here.

Eagle to the rescue.  

Did you know that the eyes of a bald eagle are so keen they can spot a fish from over a mile away. Bald eagles are truly impressive birds of prey.  Not only can they spot a fish from over a mile away, they can also fly at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour and dive at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.

Hi Buddy, have you seen my ship?

Look, I found a baby eagle on my way back to the ship .  How cute is he?  Oh, no I see his mama again, gotta run. Wait, I want a hat, I need to be a "real" Alaska bear.  This is our last stop after all. How does this look?

I'm hungry, I'm going back to the ship where they have berries...........

Canada watch out for us, we'll be there tomorrow.

The did you know info on bears and eagles came from Captain Bob Allen's route map and field guide.  I got it the day I tried to drive the boat, remember?   Thanks Captain Bob!

Debbie's class

We were so lucky to have Debbie Caffery on our cruise.  She's a great hugger.  All of her classes were full and all the ladies loved her.  I did too, if you can't tell by my picture.  I'm trying to   snuggle in her neck, but I'm a little short.                                                                               

It was love at first sight for me.  

   

Check out my new shirt.  I was kinda' cold in Sitka, so Scott bought me this shirt and then added some bling to it.  Do you see what it says?  It says "I Love Janome" and I really, really do.  If you don't know who Scott is, he's the Janome dealer that has been doing cruises with Veronica for 10   years now.  That makes them reallllly old....friends was what I meant.  If you're looking for a great machine call Scott at Citrus Sew and Vac in Ocala, Florida, that's where Veronica gets all of her     machines.  Scott is great, you can call him if you have a problem or question and he's always       there to answer you and help out.  He's a great guy.  I'll give you his phone number, but don't tell him it was me.  Ready?  Here it is.  Call Scott at 352-620-0225.  Sneaky, huh?                                                                   

June from Quiltmaker had name tags for all of us, well, ok, not really for me, but I "borrowed"  one.  Hey, I'm important too.                                                                                                  

Here is June and Sharky with me.  I'm the handsome furry one.  

This is Deb.  She and I are sitting on top of the world.  

Cuddly!

Look, I've got more sweeties.  We were in Debbie's class.  

Look, that's the chocolate bar over there.  Who would have thought, a chocolate bar....  yum!

Tomorrow is Ketchikan.  Yippee.  

Sitka Alaska and the Big Bears

Did you know black bears come in more colors than black?  While black bears get

 their name primarily from the coloring of their fur, they come in a variety of colors including brown (cinnamon bears), cream and blue, yes blue, they are the glacier bears.  

Ohhhh, so fluffy.

Run Kevin, run!!!!!  I'll save you.  There are so many bears up here.  I'm feeling lost in the crowd.  

Help!  I can't get down.  Ok, let me try getting down on the other side.

Didn't work!  I'm still stuck.  

Thanks lady!  She loves bears and she helped me out.  

OH, more food.  Let's eat.

Yikes, another bear.  Run guys, run Scott, run Kevin, I'll keep him busy.

See all I had to do was talk him to death.  We're all friends now.

Well, that's all I did in Sitka.  I saved the guys and now we're off tot he ship for more quilting fun.  Who are we quilting with?  Stay tuned and you'll see.

The did you know info on bears and eagles came from Captain Bob Allen's route map and field guide.  I got it the day I tried to drive the boat, remember?   Thanks Captain Bob!

Yummmmmmy Food in Alaska

They've got lots of salmon up here.  Who knew?  Well, I for one am happy, happy, happy.  

I've never had this much food in my life.  

Then there's the ship food.  There is food everywhere, all day long, all night long.  They have all kinds of food and berries by the tons.  I spent so much time eating all around the ship, that I was offered a job.  Here I am, I'm making waffles with Mona Lisa.  I love her.                                

Don't know who this guy is, but he greeted us and I thought I should add him to my list of new friends.

This is Finna.  She made me bacon and eggs every morning.  She got me ice cream every night after dinner.  She's a keeper.

Ok, so after eating all day, I thought I would try to go dog sledding to run off some of that wonderful food.  These are 2 huskies I found just hanging around.  Ok, so they're not real, but a bear can dream.......   

  They are kinda' cool though.

Who is that handsome bear? 

We're having so much fun on this and all of our other cruises, you should think about joining us on one of our cruises.  We've got one scheduled for May 2015 and we're planning more.  You can find out about our May cruise to the Caribbean in a blog post we did on May 24th.  come join us and stay tuned for more adventures from Alaska.