Halloween/Quilter's Harvest

Sorry, I'm a bit late announcing the winner for the Quilter's Harvest ticket, but I was a little busy this weekend, carving pumpkins

(which I've decided is about as much fun as mini golf:)

And enjoying the way this little girl pulled of her "angel" costume.

[Isn't she the sweetest? ]

Unfortunately, both of my battery packs died so I didn't get any pictures of my son, who was a "rocker/gangster".

In our neck of the woods, the children trick-or-treat on Saturday night, if Halloween falls on a Sunday.  Things got off to a very rainy start last night, but the rain finally subsided and my family was on their way.  Only about 5 groups of trick-or-treaters stopped at our house.  Kind of sad, but I guess kids don't want to make the trek to our quiet little cul-de-sac.  They gotta go where the big money is, I guess.  I hope you had a more exciting Halloween than we did!  I've been feeling a little under the weather so I didn't mind a quiet night at home with a little hand applique and some shows. 

Anyways, on to the winner of the Quilter's Harvest ticket:

The winner is:

Gnee at Singing With Birds who said,

"Oh, this would be a dream come true! Crossing my fingers and hoping to win...thanks for the chance."

http://www.singingwithbirds.com/

(Gnee has a fabulous blog!  Definitely worth checking out. 

Can I just say, "Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll?!?"  Yumm!)

Gnee, Congratulations!  Email me your address and I'll get that ticket to you.  I know you're from Idaho, so if you think you won't be able to make it then let me know and I'll choose another winner.  This should be a blast, so I hope you can come.

Also, for those of you who want to purchase a ticket,

contact Just Sew at 801-492-7929. 

Gather your daughters or girlfriends for this fun day out of treats

both sweet and pretty!

Alpine Retreats, The Quilter's Harvest [and a Free Ticket for You!]

Back in August, I got an email from Sydney Haglund from Alpine Retreats asking me if I would be interested in being a teacher at one of the retreats she is hosting in her BEAUTIFUL home here in Alpine, Utah.  I was very surprised (and flattered!?!) considering the list of other amazing teachers she has lined up.  Even though I felt completely out of place next to these ladies, I couldn't pass up the great opportunity ~ so I said, "Yes!"

About a month ago, Sydney held a "teachers luncheon" at her home and can I tell you that I was loving it?!?  It is beautiful inside and out.  The food that she served from Dear Lizzie's was delish.  The view was fantastic.  Her home was clean, beautifully decorated, cozy and all set up for a perfect weekend retreat with quilty friends!

Sydney loves to host and entertain.  She knows how to do everything right - down to the last detail!  She even had fat quarter favors for each of us at our place settings!

It was such a blast to meet with just a few of the other teachers Sydney has lined up.  Amanda Herring from The Quilted Fish (whose new line of fabric - Sweet Divinity - from Riley Blake is so dang cute!!) and Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side (we got to hear a little bit about some of the fun new projects Amy has coming up, including a new book!) and Jill Finley from Jillily Studio (who I already knew a little bit) is so sweet and a wonderful example of being a mother first, amazing quilter second.

(L to R: Amanda, Amy, Jill and me)

After getting to know each other a bit and touring Sydney's beautiful home, we talked about how it might be fun to have a big event to kickoff the start of

Alpine Retreats.  So, Sydney organized a really fun shop-hop, if you will,

called, The Quilter's Harvest.

The 3 best local stores are participating:

Just Sew (5 min. drive from Alpine Retreats)

The Quilting Cottage (10 min. drive)

Broadbents (20 min. drive)

Each quilt store and Alpine Retreats will offer a make-and-take project.  The stores will be offering discounts, you'll meet many of the Alpine Retreat teachers and you may even get some SWAG (o.k., I just learned that word form Amanda.  Let me put it to you this way, you might get some free stuff!)  Plus, stop at Dear Lizzie's for a complimentary drink and treat while on your tour!  It will be a great day ~ Friday, November 12th. 

Space is limited.  Tickets are $20 each and includes the supplies for all of the projects and treats from Dear Lizzie's!    Click HERE to see photos of many of the projects you'll get to take home.

I'll be there, doing a make-and-take on my new wrist pincushion:

You can purchase tickets from any of the participating quilt shops.

I hope you can come.  I'd love to meet you!

Oh, and I get to giveaway one free ticket to The Quilter's Harvest so if you think you'd like to come, leave a comment below and I will pick a winner on Friday, the 29th.

The Start of a Polka Dot Quilt

I'm going to be making this up for the store:

84 different polka dot fabrics.  Each one will be used in the quilt twice.

The pattern I'm using will be: Dot to Dot by Cotton Way.  

We'll be selling kits at Just Sew.

Time to get started!

Doing Inventory.

It's a good thing.

Last night I had a quilting group over at my house.  Part of the deal is for the hostess to show the ladies her sewing room, finished quilts & works in progress.  At the end of the night, I pulled out all of my quilts to do a little show and tell (most of them are still on the floor "taking a little breather" from my quilt cabinet).  Pulling them all out like this proved to me that the number of quilts I have is starting to get a little out of control :) 

I do give my quilts away from time to time but my quilt cabinet is now filled to max capacity and I have many more displayed throughout my home.  Pulling all of these quilts out has helped me to realized that it's time to part with some of them.

Also, in preparation for having the ladies over, I tried to organize my fabric, books, projects, etc. 

My fabric is now divided into piles:

1.) Fat quarters

2.) 1/8 yd. cuts

3.) 1/4 yd. cuts

4.) 1/3 - 7/8 yd. cuts

5.) 1 yd. or more cuts

Now I can see exactly what I have to work with!

Anything smaller than an 1/8 yard goes into one of these glass jars.

I've got my works in progress stored in clear boxes (AT EYE LEVEL) so I can try to focus on them.  I should try to finish the WIP's that are stored in the smaller boxes, because I really don't think they will take that long.  Why is it that they become old news and it's so hard to get back to finishing them?!?

 Here is my snowball quilt waiting to be quilted.  As you can see, it's all ready to go; green minky, batting and quilt top.  I just need to make quilting it a priority!  There are also three more small projects on hangers, waiting for me to get to them.  

Everything is visible so there should be no more excuses! 

Doing inventory has helped me to see what I've got going on.  I found a few projects that I had forgotten about.  I ended up getting rid of a few left over blocks from a quilt that I knew I would never use, an embroidery pattern that I had traced onto the wrong side of some fabric (whoops!),  fabric scraps that were really odd shaped that I knew I could part with.

It feels good to clear out.  No need to get bogged down with things that aren't inspiring, that are just weighing you down with a big, long to-do list. 

So, what about you?

Have you taken inventory in your sewing room, lately?

Haunted House Quilt

WARNING: There is not a witch, ghost, or pumpkin on any of the fabrics in this "Halloween" quilt.  If that does not suit your fancy, turn back now.

I just finished this quilt last night.

The only fabrics I had to buy were for the outer border and binding. 

The rest came from my stash. 

(Who knew I had that many blacks, whites and oranges in there!?!)

The pattern for this quilt came from the book called, Folk Art Quilts: A Fresh Look by Sandy Bonsib.  I've made quite a few quilts from it, including this and this.  A few years ago I met a blogger that had made this quilt up in Halloween fabrics and I knew that I wanted to do that too.

A friend borrowed my book and now it's in storage (that's another story) so I didn't have my pattern, but I did find the house block pattern (for free!) on Sandy Bonsib's website HERE.  It was easy enough to figure out the sashing, posts and borders so I was able to do it pretty much the same as Sandy's quilt.  Her pattern is called "Home is Where You Hang Your Heart" and she had a cute little heart hanging from one of the houses, so I decided to hang a moon to keep with the Halloween theme.  I hung it from the only block that doesn't have polka dots on it, so, of course, the moon had to be in dots to compensate :)

The outer border fabric is called Halloween Night Dot in Black Orange from the line, Halloween Night by Minick and Simpson for Moda.  The binding is called Awesome Cross Hatch in Pumpkin from the line, Awesome by Sandy Gervais for Moda.

And pom poms. 

Oh, the pom poms. 

I had no idea how labor intensive it would be to sew them on, but I endured the 3 hours it took me to sew them into the binding [I think anyone else could have done them a lot faster.  I think I'm just really slow.]  And p.s., they wash up well.  However, I think they shrink because my quilt is not laying flat...don't know what to do about that.

Anyways, more scraps on the back.

Can you see the spiderweb quilting design?  Kayleen Parry in Lehi, UT. did a fantastic job quilting this for me.

Since I don't have any "Halloween" prints in my stash I decided to bring in the spiderweb design in my quilting (just to spruce things up a bit).  Neither the house blocks or the fabrics are "Halloweeny" so I thought it needed just a little something that screamed "Halloween". 

No pun intended.

Jamberry Nails Winner!

True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 63

Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Suzanne ~ you are the winner! Congratulations!  Please e-mail me your address and the Jamberry Nails design that you would like most and we'll get those sent right out to you!

Thanks everyone for playing! 

These Jamberry Nail shields are a fun treat

so if you'd like your own set of nail shields, you can order them HERE.

Moda Bakeshop Project

Remember that Punctuation fabric that I was playing with a while ago?  Well, my hands were busy making this little project for the Moda Bakeshop.

That's project #2 for the Bakeshop.  Kind of exciting.  Go on over and check out the free tutorial.  I'd love to know what you think!

Also, click HERE to enter my giveaway for a sheet of designer Jamberry Nail shields.  Giveaway ends Friday night at midnight.  Winner will be announced Saturday.

And click HERE to enter my sister's blogiversary giveaway.

Giveaway!!!

Hi.

These are my toes.

What do you think? 

[I can't believe I'm showing my toes to ALL of you!  Eeek!]

But, I'm loving them right now. 

This orange floral design on my nails was a perfect way for me to kick off the Fall Season.

[I told you I was "Feeling Festive"!  Fall is in the air!]

One of my best friends, Keri, started a new business with her two sisters called Jamberry Nails.  Today she was sweet enough to let me try out their product.  And, they want to do a giveaway on my blog.  So one of you will also get to enjoy these designer nail shields for free! 

Jamberry Nails has a design for everyone and for every occasion.  My 5-year old has been asking me all day when we're going to do her nails!  :) I think these would be great stocking stuffers, teacher gifts, or just fun for the occasional girls night out party.  They're affordable too ~ $15 per sheet [which does 2-3 sets of hands or feet.  Each application lasts several weeks and is easy enough for anyone to do ~ even I [quickly] got the hang of it!]

There are two different way to enter this fun giveaway. 

1.) First, go to Jamberrynails.com. 

Look around at all of their different products

and come back here to tell us which design is your favorite. 

2.) Become a follower of A Little Bit Biased and leave a separate comment saying, "Follower!"

The winner will win one sheet of nail shields (their choice of design).

The giveaway will end Friday, October 8th @ midnight.

We'll announce the winner Saturday.

Good luck!

Oh, and don't forget to enter my sister's 3-year Blogiversary Giveaway HERE.

Feeling Festive

 The other day I decided it was time to use up some scraps.  Sometimes I like to do a project just for fun ~ not for Gigi's Thimble, not for work, not one thats been hanging over my head for sometime.  Just a good old spur of the moment-kind-of-project.  I decided I needed something for Halloween.

My kids designed these two blocks on the bottom:

The only fabric I had to buy [for the whole thing; back included] was the orange and black polka dot for the border and an orange plaid for the binding.  Oh, and I splurged on some black pom poms that will be sewn into the binding.

This one is going to the quilter SOON.

Some Sweet Things -

I wanted to show you a few fun things I've received lately.

First, from Trish, I received these beautiful pieces of jewelry as part of a bartering thing she does.  I sent her 9 yards of fabric from my stash and she sent me these:

 [every girl needs to have a little red and aqua in her wardrobe, right?]

I love this bracelet that Trish designed with fall colors in mind.  I'm so excited to start wearing it soon.  [I especially love that little green bead right there on the bottom!]

Trish is just the sweetest, most sincere, person.  She will barter with anyone, so if you're interested, click on over to her blog and leave her a message.  I know she's been trading with some pretty cool people lately, so her stash must be getting quite large.  Go Trish!

Then, for some reason, my sweet SIL [Brittany] made me this DARLING pillow:

She said it had something to do with "thanking me for getting her a job at Just Sew" [the really rad fabric store that I work at.]  But really, I didn't get her a job.  I just got her an interview.  She got herself a job with her mad skillz and her darling self [o.k. apparently I really wanted to use the words "rad" and "mad skillz".  Excuse my weird mood.:)]  But I'm sure it's more my pleasure than hers.  It's really fun to have her there.  She is an amazing quilter/crafter/sewer girl :)  Just check out her blog ~ you'll see.

Anyways, Brittany found the adorable *FREE* stitchery pattern here. 

She added her own touches to make it into the most perfect pillow for my soon-to-be new sewing room.  Darling, right?  Thanks Brittany!  I loooove it!

And last but not least, I HAVE to tell you about a very sweet giveaway that my amazing little sister, Cassie, is doing right now [you know, the one that makes those darling book marks?]  It's her 3-year Blogiversary so she's doing 3 very cool giveaways [first up ~ something to make your mouth water].  Click on over here.  You won't be disappointed.

O.K., writing that made me realize how hungry I am.  Gotta go!