The theme for this week’s Quilters’ Show & Tell event is Green Love (St. Patrick’s Day). Any quilting style is acceptable as long as your quilt has lots of GREEN. Unfinished quilt tops are welcome as well.

Read the Guidelines and submit your photo before Friday, March 15th, 2013 at 8 a.m. (EDT).

Sponsors

To sponsor a weekly Quilters’ Show and Tell event, please send me an email and I’ll send you the information package. Check available dates here. Sponsors are featured on the voting post published on Friday.

Guest Judges

The guest judges for this week are Jill from The Quilt Rat and Jo from Jo’s Country Junction. They’ll both have 100 bonus points to award to their favourite quilt(s). I asked them both, what they’re working on, and here’s what they told me…

Jill – The Quilt Rat

What have I been up to lately?

Well, those that visit my site know that I enjoy experimenting will all sorts of ways to play with fabric and thread. I am not a fan of Winter and like many, can hardly wait for the arrival of Spring. I did entertain myself thru the season by trying some snow dyeing, here is an example of fabric and threads created using various snow dyeing techniques.

At the moment, I have finally gotten around to quilting my king size bed quilt. Look, can you see my machine in the background….I swear this quilt is growing, I am now on to the final borders.

I also find papercutting a great way to keep my creative juices flowing, this week’s contest being a nod to St Patrick’s day and all things green, inspired this shamrock snowflake.

Visit Jill at The Quilt Rat!

Jo – Jo’s Country Junction

We have been really busy over at Jo’s Country Junction. I am now sharing my space on the web with my daughter, Kelli. She is writing some of the posts for the blog and we’ve teamed up and are working on projects together. We have two projects that we are working on for Moda Bake Shop that will be published on their site in the next couple months. We have a quilt block that will be featured in Quiltmaker’s 100 block issue that will be out in May. We also have a quilt that will be featured in Quiltmaker’s July/August magazine.

Here is my “Nine in the Middle” UFO that I recently finished.

We have started to hit the road teaching at guilds too. We are having lots of fun with whole process teaching class and doing trunk shows. It’s honestly been so fun getting out and meeting blog readers and fellow quilters.

I got a new beagle puppy, Ruby at the end of October after our beloved Gracie died. Life has been a big adjustment with a puppy. I have fallen in love with her though and am so glad we were able to find her. She shows up on the blog all the time.

We gained a son in law and will gain a daughter in law in August. We love them both and have really enjoyed the changes happening with the family.

I have decided this is the year of the UFO. I have finished THREE already this year and have several more projects that are now quilt tops and are waiting for their turn to be quilted on my new APQS Millennium. I have really enjoyed getting back to these projects and reaping the extra space in my sewing room has been great too.

Here is my Tumbler quilt. It was a UFO for a LONG time.

Kelli and I post our happening on the blog daily (sometimes even more often). We are always updating, sharing projects and recipes, sharing our stash reports and what we’re reading so feel free to come on over any day and see what we are up to. Make sure to stop by on Tuesday for our “Try it on Tuesday” posts. We get great goodies from book companies, pattern publishers, fabric manufacturers and the like. We review the products and often give them away to our readers. It’s lots of fun and our readers love it.

Kelli is working on a few UFOs too. This is her Odds and Ends quilt top.

Stop by and chat…we’d love to hear from you!!

Visit Jo and Kelli at Jo’s Country Junction!

Last Week’s Quilters’ Show & Tell

Thanks to everyone that entered quilts and voted for last week’s Quilted Pillows Show & Tell event.

Guest Judges

Here’s how the guest judges awarded their bonus points:

Sarah from Sew Joy Creations awarded her bonus points as follows:

30 points – Linked – 30 + 61 = 91 points
14 points – Facets Pillow – 14 + 10 = 24 points
14 points – Antonia’s Butterflies – 14 + 32 = 46 points
14 points – Spinning Canoes – 14 + 44 = 58 points
14 points – Patchwork Pillow – 14 + 43 = 57 points
14 points – Butterfly Garden Cushions – 14 + 61 = 75 points

Jackie from Canton Village Quilt Works awarded her bonus points as follows:

33 points – Stripes Squared – 33 + 21 = 54 points
27 points – Antonia’s Butterflies – 27 + 46 = 73 points
15 points – Kirigami Snowflake – 15 + 28 = 43 points
15 points – Radiating Dresden – 15 + 25 = 40 points
10 points – Sedona Star – 10 + 111 = 121 points

Winners

The winning quilted pillows are Hartjeskussen by Carla Cornelissen which received 171 community votes…

… and Holiday Lane by Pauline Francis which received 125 community votes:

The winners from the comments are #19 and #37:

They’ve all won both copies of the Quilters’ Cookbooks that I put together from recipes submitted by quilters around the world.

Quilters’ Show & Tell Links

• Rules and Guidelines
• Submit your photo
• 2013 Themes, Winners & Sponsors
• Guest Judges

To celebrate National Quilting Day next Saturday, quilting buddy Benita of Victoriana Quilt Designs is hosting a Virtual Garage Sale.

It’s an excellent opportunity for sellers to de-stash and for buyers to pick up some bargains.

Here’s a sneak peek of some of what I’ll be de-stashing:

Yes, those are gorgeous hand dyed fabrics .. I just have TOO many! And perhaps some yardage and fat quarters.

Everyone can submit items to sell. Read the full details here: Virtual Garage Sale.

Updated: The items I have for sale are here: Mishka’s Playground

You know the saying, “the best laid plans” .. well that definitely applied for me today. I knew today was going to be BUSY what with the Quilters’ Show & Tell event and then the Blog Hop Party.

No problem, my day was planned, I’d get up at my usual time between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., quickly get dressed and take the puppy for a walk, come back and get the Show and Tell post done, then I’d do my own Blog Hop Party post. By then, it would be around noon, and I’d start reviewing and approving the party posts, with an anticipated finish time of about 3 or 4 p.m.

Well, that didn’t quite happen. Early this morning I received a surprise phone call from one of my best quilting buddies that she was in town and wanted to get together. It had been well over a year since I’d seen her! She hadn’t even met Milo yet and he’s 1.5 years old this week. It had been way too long and we were past due for a visit. So, of course, I had to invite her over and spend some time catching up.

We had a wonderful day/afternoon, and while I do hate to be late starting our party, I’m sure you can all understand that spending time with a quilting buddy was so worth it.

So, let’s get this party started!!

It’s time … for our Beat the Winter Blues – Quilters’ Blog Hop. We have more than 200 bloggers participating in this party. I hope you’ll visit all the participants, check out their blogs and enter their give-aways. You’ll have until March 14th to enter all, or most, of the give-aways.

If you’re new here to the Quilting Gallery .. welcome! I’m Michele Foster, aka Mishka, your hostess for the blog hop party and owner of this web site. I hope you’ll spend a few minutes checking out the various sections of my site including:

• the Quilting Bloggers Directory – with more than 5,500 quilting friends from around the world.
• the Quilt Shops & Services section which is a unique map-based directory of quilting retailers and professionals. – It’s soon to be updated too.
• the Quilt Guilds Directory where you’ll find guilds around the world.
• Quilter’s Market where you can search for the latest in quilting books, patterns and notions from independent designers/developers.
• hundreds of free quilting projects.
• and coming soon is the Quilting Events section which will feature both physical and virtual quilting events for you to visit and/or participate in.

Wait, there’s more….

Each week I’m thrilled to share with my readers a Quilters’ Coupon from one of our favourite online quilting retailers. Don’t miss the 50% off fabric sale from the Fat Quarter Shop this week. View the sale here!

Also each week, I host a Quilters’ Show & Tell event. This week, we have 58 gorgeous quilted pillows for you to vote for your favourites and another give-away for you to enter. Vote and enter the give-away here!

Lastly, I love to host swaps. Registration for our latest swap, Dreaming of Spring Mini Quilt Swap is now underway. Hope you’ll join us and make new quilting friends around the world.

You can keep in touch by subscribing to my weekly newsletter or our Facebook group.

Product Review and Give-Away

As a blog owner, every now and then I get a request to review a book. Well, as it so happens, appliqué is my absolute most favourite quilting method. You wouldn’t know it by viewing my own latest quilts, but appliqué is my passion and I dream of the day when I actually have time to get really serious about this quilting technique. It just feeds my soul like no other quilting technique can.

Needless to say, I’ve purchased many appliqué books and videos, reviewed numerous blog posts and watched YouTube videos about appliqué. Really, its an obsession of mine.

So, when I was asked to review Jeanne Sullivan’s latest book Simply Successful Appliqué, I was thrilled at the opportunity.

It is very, I mean extremely, rare for me to rate a book as Excellent, but Jeanne’s book is definitely one that is well deserving of that rating. If you’ve ever been terrified of appliqué, I promise you that you will not be disappointed with this book.

I really do consider myself well versed in appliqué techniques, but reading this book, I’ve been utterly completely amazed at how many tips that I’ve picked up. It’s hard for me to express, but let me just say, this is the BEST quilting technique book I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

For those that know me, you’ll know that I have never proclaimed such in the past. So, my hat goes off to Jeanne, and I just hope that one day I have a chance to meet her in person and thank her for opening up the world of appliqué to me that I had no idea was missing and for really getting down to the nit and gritty of this technique so that any newbie could be successful.

I took a few photos of the inside pages of this book, but I strongly recommend that you check out the Amazon listing here, as you can preview the book for yourself.

In addition to the “how to appliqué” instructions, there are eight patterns included on CD with the book that you can print out yourself. As someone who is very strapped for time these days, this is HUGE and much appreciated. Not only can I print out pages of the individual appliqué shapes on freezer paper, but I can also print out an overlay of the entire project so that the shapes are aligned correctly.

Give-Away

C&T Publishing has graciously offered a copy of Jeanne’s book as a give-away. North American residents will receive a physical copy of the book, while international visitors will receive an electronic copy.

To enter my give-away, just leave a comment below answering Have you done any appliqué before? Would you like to try?. I’ll pick one winner randomly from the comments on Thursday, March 14th.

Blog Hop Party

Visit the participating blogs in the blog hop by clicking the image below.