Candace West

So now I am a week behind on the #photoadayjuly. Was visiting my friend Jeanette Linder in Baltimore, MD. Arrived the day after the biggest storm in about 50 years and she was lucky to have power and no major damage. Many townships around Baltimore are still without power. Cell signals were almost non existent and internet spotty. Had a great time with our annual sewing marathon. Glad to be home now to get some sleep!

Visiting my friend Jeanette Linder in Baltimore, MD for a week. Spend a good portion of the day shopping. Tomorrow starts the sewing/quilting marathon!

A special thanks to Deb Levy, Cathy Vandiford Wiggins, Kim Brunner, and Sherry Rogers-Harrison for allowing me to use photos of their amazing quilts in my Color Mine Bling! class. All the students were properly wowed by your excellent art!

Norma Riehm I bid on two of your quilts at the auction and lost out to other bidders. hope that one day I will own an original Norma!

Lisa Hagstoz Calle, congrats on your MQS win, Best Digitized Design!

Karen Marchetti won an Honorable Mention for Wonderlust at MQS!

Decided to go to MQS a the last minute. I have never gone to the banquet before, how many of you are attending?

Bernina jammed up again. Time to take to a different sewing machine tech as the current one apparently does not know what he is doing!

I now officially hate my Bernina 820! It is the most unreliable sewing machine I have ever owned. Going back to the shop again today this makes the 3rd time in a month. And I just don't have a lemon, it is my SECOND lemon! They gave up on the first one and gave me a different machine. Back to sewing on my trustworthy Viking for awhile.

Productive day yesterday, finished up 3 charity quilts and made matching pilowcases for them. Need to get ready for my guilds Cruiser Quilt Workshop on Wednesday, which I am in charge of. Our goal is 20 quilt tops completed by days end. Last workshop I ran was a big success so I hope this will be even better. My Kit Squad has cut out and packaged 88 Cruiser Quilt kits so far this year so I hope that the April collection will surpass Octobers number of 91 quilts for the charity.

Teaching Patriot Star to my small group today. I use them to test out my classes to get the bugs out. Good deal for everyone they get a private lesson, and I get insight and teachers aides for the big class (25 at last count!).

Got a new vintage sewing machine for my collection today at a car swap! A Singer model 128 3/4 machine for only $15.!!

Remember kaleidoscope blocks, the old stack and whack? Working on one today and made the fatal error of a newbie. I marked where my template should go to get the designs I wanted and then started cutting the repeats. After 3 cuts I realized that that I would not get all 8 repeats from the 5 yards of fabric cause I did not lay out my templates at the start of a repeat. Should have reread the book where it tells you to cut the repeats first, then make your design choices... DUH! Now I h...

Mark Sherman Day at Creative Quilters of Citrus County guild was a great success! We had 57 guests at the lecture/trunk show and 24 students at the afternoon trapunto class. Everyone that attended had a great time. The next day (yesterday) Mark came out to my house and taught a fabric dyeing workshop to me and 8 other friends. I hope mine will be beautiful when I go to wash it out tonight!

No matter how many times I try, Cityville refuses to be blocked. So if all you do on Facebook is play games and send me game requests and your scores, sadly I need to unfriend you. Would much rather hear about you and what you may be creating than get endless updates on the games you play. Just saying...

As Education Chair for my guild this year, my first class offering will be the marvelous Mark Sherman. We are making a full day of it with his ManQuilter trunk show in the morning and Machine Quilting for the Timid Quilter class in the afternoon. I should have about 40 people at the lecture and 25 at the class. Will spend all day today getting all the details nailed down for next Wednesday

I have also been writing a tutorial for the Quilted Box. Trying to organize my steps and put them in a logical order. Which is nothing like when I am actually creating an art piece! I jump back and forth doing little bits when I get an idea so I don't lose that moment of creativity. But most people don't think like I do, so logical ordered steps is important for a tutorial.

So our guild had the challenge presentation yesterday and I was blown away at the creativity of the members in how they met the challenge requirements. I voted for this fabulous wall hanging that depicted an apple tree in each season which happened to win the challenge. I have poste pictures of my final product in my 2012 CQCC Challenge album.

Don't you hate it when you leave out a step in a project due to time constraints thinking it will look okay without that backgound fill. And then when you are just about ready to put the finishing touches on it, that area is way too poufy and now you have to figure out how to load a 9" by 10" piece of fabric back on the frame to do what you should have done in the first place. Did I mention this is due Wednesday morning at 9:00 am?! Ack!

Art is messy.

Spent the yesterday with my Kit Squad making kits for our guild's charity Cruiser Quilts. We are really getting efficient and working well as a team. Cut out and put together 19 kits for a total of 44 over the last 3 meetings. We still have lots of donated fabric so I think there might be another 100 quilts in those boxes.

Cutting out 2 new clothing projects. I have been taking a break from quilting hoping that other creative pursuits will spark new ideas for the next quilt. Besides, I love new clothes!