There are still a few days left to enter the Nature’s Best Quilt Contest for your chance to win fabulous prizes. Registration closes on Friday, September 25, 2009. Voting will start on Saturday morning and last until October 4, 2009.

Two of the entries submitted for the small quilts and projects contest caught my eye as they were done by a 5 and a 6 year old from Germany with a little bit of help from their mom. Both quilts have won awards too.

Swimmy by Hendrik, 5 years old, won second place in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts 2008.

Visit in my Garden by Jonas, 6 years old, won a second place in a German competition from the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland in 2007.

While I don’t have kids of my own, I hope I’ll be able to share my quilting love with my nieces when they get older and come visit me in Ottawa.

Contest Links:

• Guidelines and Prizes
• Register – Small Quilts and Projects
• Contestants – Small Quilts and Projects
• Register – Large Quilts
• Contestants – Large Quilts

I was very pleased earlier this week to learn that one of the missing mini quilts from the Spring Blooms swap finally arrived from Australia to it’s new home in Kansas, USA.

I know two quilts have officially been lost in the post. One from the UK to France and another from Brazil to the United States. I want to thank both Maggi and Glaucia for generously offering to make new quilts for their partners to replace the lost ones. Maggi’s replacement quilt is the one pictured.

I am still hopeful that mini quilts for Claudine, Holly and Sue will arrive as I have heard back from their partners that they would be sent (or have been sent)… almost 3 months late.

There is one person that I have not been able to reach despite repeated attempts. Robin has offered to be a Swap Angel and make a new quilt for Jay. Thanks Robin!

I have a couple more Swap Angels to call upon if the three missing quilts mentioned above don’t arrive soon.

If there’s anyone else that has not received their Spring quilt, please contact me. I’ve tried to keep track, but it’s possible an email or two fell through the cracks.

I had no idea how time-consuming organizing the swaps would be. Just under 3,000 emails so far for the three swaps: spring, summer and friendship bag.

Despite the few bad apples (swappers), it’s been fabulous to see so many gorgeous creations. You can see them for yourself in the various Flickr groups:

• Spring Blooms
• Good Ol’ Summertime
• Friendship Bag
• Inchie Ornaments – Register here

I will be adding a level of experience question to the next swap registration: beginner, intermediate, and expert. I will be matching partners the best I can based on their experience level.

I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions from participants. Is there anything I can do to make the swaps better? Has your experience been good, fine, bad? Any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated. You can leave a comment below or send me a private email.

It has been suggested by a few that I charge a small admin fee to help offset the time and costs associated with running these swaps. Ideally, payment would be via PayPal, but other arrangements can be made if that option doesn’t work for you.

I’ve added a poll below. It’s anonymous. I’ll make a decision next weekend if I’ll start charging the admin fee for the Fall swap due to start September 28th. Thanks for your vote!

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I also want to thank those of you that have sent a donation. Your support is greatly appreciated.

I set up a Cafe Press store to sell Quilting Gallery merchandise. All products and sales are handled directly through Cafe Press. They print the items, collect payment and ship them. In a few months, I might even receive a commission cheque. ;)

They offer tons of products and options, so I tried to pick the ones I thought would be most popular. If there’s something else you would like to see, please leave a comment or send me an email, and I’ll see about adding it.

A few of the items available:

Visit the Quilting Gallery Merchandise Store.

This is the final week to take advantage of the summer special for the Quilt Shop Locator where you can advertise directly to quilters for less than $7.00 a month.

The Quilt Shop Locator is a growing network of quilt shops, online retailers, retreat facilities, pattern and fabric designers, authors, teachers and other quilting professionals from around the world.

This powerful map-based tool makes it easy for quilting enthusiasts to find retailers near and far. It’s an excellent advertising option for online-only retailers too. Especially in these more difficult economic times, potential customers are more apt to buy from you if they know where you are located. It’s the trust factor. Unique categories allow customers to find you here too.

Give it a try! It’s only $40.00 for six months of advertising. You won’t find online or offline targeted advertising anywhere else for that kind of price.

Join Today!

Summer special ends September 15, 2009.

I have always been intimidated by free motion quilting, until now.

My first attempts were awful: jumpy, inconsistent stitches, tension problems, stitches where I didn’t want them, etc. I was determined to improve this year.

I have been working on six baby quilts for the local guild to donate to NICU babies. Pictures as soon as I finish the binding. I’ve free-motioned them, in a large meander, as they don’t like a lot of stitching on them. I can definitely see improvements in these six quilts.

I have Patsy Thompson’s fabulous DVDs, and replayed Volume 0.5 again the other day too. This time I paid very close attention to the placement of her hands, stitch length and how she was moving the fabric. It helped a lot.

This weekend, despite my “don’t start anything new” rule, I cut up six gorgeous fat quarter batiks to make six Friendship Bags. If you decide to do this too, be warned, I had JUST enough fabric with the FQs. Only one little 2″ x 8.5″ strip and a few scraps left over.

I first cut out the lining pieces (15″x8.5″) and the two handles, 10″ x 2 1/4″. I cut the rest of the fabric into various strips ranging from 1″ to 3″ x 8.5″. In hindsight, I should have made them 9″ to give me more room to trim after, but then I probably wouldn’t have had enough fabric to get the length required. These measurements are coming from Rachel’s Friendship Bag Tutorial.

I stripped the pieces horizontally to make one long piece ~15″x8.5″, then spray-basted on batting. Then it was time to play with the quilting. I’m using a gorgeous variegated thread (Coats, I believe) with Bottom Line in the bobbin.

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During the Spring Blooms swap, Gabi Tietz posted this adorable mini quilt and the little purse.

I emailed her to ask her about it. She told me that her and a group of friends have been making these friendship bags to share with each other. They’ve been having a great time.

Gabi suggested this would make a great swap. I agreed.

Shortly after our exchange, I heard about International Friendship Day and decided this would be perfect day to start the Friendship Bag Swap.

One of my main goals for the Quilting Gallery site has always been to bring together quilters from around the world. I’ve always wanted this site to be very International-based. It’s through the experiences of all quilters everywhere that we can each learn and be inspired by one another.

I’m very pleased to host this Friendship Bag Swap. It’s a small project, with lots of room for creative goodness. Head on over to read the guidelines and then register to participate. Here’s the list of participants.

To get you started, Rachel Griffith put together this fabulous tutorial.

Registration closes August 20, 2009 and I’ll send out partner information by August 25, 2009. The deadline to mail your friendship bag is October 6, 2009.

Please don’t email me to register, instead use the registration form provided.

When I was looking at the Summertime swap Flickr group, I noticed this gorgeous creation by Stacey. It reminded me of friendships throughout the world. It’s a free pattern from Barbara Skjønberg from Norway, entitled All the Children of this World.

If you’d like, here’s the code to use the swap graphic on your blog.

A HUGE thank you to Rachel for creating the tutorial for this swap. You are very talented and very generous!