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I took a recent trip with the Zion Choir that my son performs with over Mother’s Day weekend to chaperone, where I worked on “the coat” while the kids played.

While there, I visited the local quilt shop and realized that the Clear Lake Bed & Breakfast where the Choir was hosted, would be the perfect location for a Quilt Retreat. Here are some pictures that I took of the B&B and the weekend:

Robin and me, with Clear Lake in the background, on Mother’s Day.

Zion Choir, mighty talented 17 & 18 year olds. They do the songs on this podcast. The intro song is “Sing Praise to Him” and the out-going song is “Down to the River” from “O’ Brother Where Art Thou”. The choir is lead by Christie Williams and her son, Blake.

Kids in the fantastic kitchen at the B&B. Three ovens!

Singing to their Moms “I Often Go Walking” through their cell phones on Mother’s Day.

Beautiful views.

Sit a spell, take your shoes off…

My room for the weekend, with a hot tub on the balcony. Don’t you think this is a great place for a quilting retreat?

Boat ride around the lake.

The Boy Wonder gets air on a ski kite.

Evening concert on the porch. It’s a wonder I got any sewing done — but I did!

Liz and Beth at Market

Thanks to Jamie Mack, of “Quilter’s Corner” quilt shop in Finleyville, PA for sending me this picture of the girls.

Visit the Lizzie B Cre8ive blog to see the recap and pictures of Market and to leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of their new book, Whimsyland.

And don’t forget to take a turn around the Lizzie B store while you’re at it, they’re having a sale especially for Quilting Stash listeners, 30% off patterns and kits through June 5th! The code you’ll need to use when ordering is MARKET09.

Congratulations to these two Cre8ive Cookies for winning the coveted Most Cre8tive Booth award at International Quilt Market for the second time in a row! It just goes to show how truly Cre8ive they are!!

Here are the links for new products that Liz and Beth talked about in the podcast”

Grabaroos  the GLOVES!
Roc-Lon multi-purpose cloth (for EASY floorcloth painting!)

Things we also discovered we loved but are not so new… Theresa’s Hand-dyed Buttons I’m a huge fan of Theresa’s buttons, too. I use them on my quilts and my hand-made journals.

and   YUMMY new colors of wool from Weeks Dye Works

I hope to see you in the Quilting Stash Classroom!

©2009  Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved

Class 1 of Quilting Stash Classroom is underway and you’re all invited to have a seat in the session.

Who wouldn’t love to make a beautiful sampler quilt like this…

…AND learn quilting techniques that will stay with you the rest of your life?

I will be accepting student registrations until May 29 for the first run of this eleven lesson class. You can even test-drive the first lesson for free, without registration. For our inaugural run of the class, I’m keeping the registration cost down to $65 for this ten week class. That’s over $120 savings compared to the in-store version of this same class.

Please come and check-out what I have to offer with this amazing learning experience.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Oh, I can’t tell you how happy I am that the coat that I was designing for Lecien fabrics is finally done and mailed off for their booth at Spring Market!

You remember the Baltimore coat that I did for the special exhibit at Pacific International Quilt Festival last October. I can’t wear it anywhere, so I wanted to design a coat that could be an “every day” coat.

Here are the pictures of the coat, as it progressed. I hope you enjoy seeing how it evolved.

Here are the coat pieces on my design wall at Empty Spool Seminar in March. I had a length of fabric quilted by Shelley Nealon of Quilted Bliss, then I cut out the pieces.

I love adding birds and other sweetness to my designs. I usually do this bird as a bluebird. This time I wanted Robins. I wonder why… ; )

A first pass at a front design. I didn’t like the “bulls-eye” effect of the flower, so I scrapped those and choose something better that you’ll see below.

Then, I went to my retreat at Camp Ocean Pines and worked on these:

Look familiar? This the design that is now my website banner. I love this design and wanted to use it for the coat. It’s a like a great big tattoo on the upper back. Not that I would have one, mind you.

A little rosie. I love these little things. I use them a lot.

Here is the coat back piece. I constructed it by appliqueing the center piece first, then added the right panel, then the left on this princess seam coat.

The little yellow dots have become my trademark, it seems. They add just that little bit of accent that is like a beauty mark. And they are so difficult to stitch when the coat gets nearer to completion.

The coat front piece. See what I mean about those little roses? I also like heart shaped leaves.

Now look at the flowers on the right. No more bulls-eyes. These look much more natural. I like shading.

Here they are all together before the coat is assembled. This is what I saw when I woke up yesterday morning. I knew that all of the design elements were complete. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to know that I could just finish the coat already!

So here it is, all put together.

and here is the back:

and a close-up:

and another:

The above flower was inspired by some flowers that I found in Renae Haddadin’s garden when I visited her last June. I LOVE the lady bug! And the flower!

I sewed the buttons on the coat while WebGuy drove me to UPS to overnight the finished coat. Talk about deadlines! I’m so glad that I’m all done now, so I can concentrate on the upcoming Quilter’s Palette online class.

Oh! Here’s one more picture — the quilt that I did for the Lecien booth also, using their new “Floral Collection in Pastel” fabric — gorgeous hand-painted fabric.

It’s going to be a new pattern, Floral Elegance, which will be in the SimpleArts boutique soon.

Happy Quilting!!

My good quilt-pal uploaded pictures of my coat in the Lecien booth on FaceBook so I could see it there. What a pay-off to see it there! It makes it all worth the 120+ hours that it took to make the coat, start to finish.

Thanks, Beth!!

©2009 Annie Smith  All Rights Reserved

Please, go check this out. I hope you are pleasantly surprised!

Click the image below

Running time: 01:22:00 Size: 36.8MB

At long last, but saved for a special occasion — the 4th Birthday of the Quilting Stash Podcast –ideas for busting and organizing your stash by Quilting Stash listeners!

Here are the photos of Stashes sent in by QS listeners. Before you look, I want to thank every one of the clever quilters that sent and called in their ideas to share with the rest of us.             :::Loud and long clapping hands:::        I love how they each used methods that work for them. None of these stash solutions happened all at once or overnight, and what we’re seeing may have been done in steps.

The following quilters should be proud of their organization!!

So here we go:

Cindy’s stash

Claire’s stash

DeeDee’s stash, done creatively

Denise’s stash

Dionne’s stash, and here’s another view:

Jan’s stash, a combination of storage organization

Jeanette’s stash

Julie’s stash

Lynn’s stash

Michelle’s stash — personally, I would love for my own stash to look this organized. You’ll see mine at the bottom of the blog. Don’t peek yet, because you’re gonna want to see the next picture, which is the Family Tree quilt that Michelle did with the leaves painted by her friend:

and here’s a close-up:

Paula’s stash. Don’t you love that gorgeous Double Wedding Ring quilt on the wall?

Phyllis’s stash – remember, she talked about the wire bins being large. It’s nice to be able to see what each of the participants where talking about.

Debbie’s remodeled sewing room, using some of the pieces of furniture that her son left behind. I think using the loft bed as a cutting table is absolutely ingenius.

This design wall is the “reese’s pieces” of Debbie’s sewing room — she hot gluedd buttons from her button stash all the way around the design wall, and then put plastic over the bottom portion so her cats wouldn’t climb it. Pretty clever!

Sandi’s stash, part one. The strip quilt is one of the ones that Sandi made for the family’s camper.

Smaller shelves installed within existing shelves – great idea!

Shulamit’s stash, and her “Two of a Kind” quilt, beautiful!

Julie’s stash, neatly labeled drawers make it easier to find what’s inside.

Vicki’s stash

Liz’s stash, still in progress

Linda’s stash, with installed curtains to keep everything neat and tidy – and to keep dust away and light out so her fabrics won’t gt fade lines.

ok – here is a peek at my stash — strictly NO laughing!

Looks tidy and organized, but what do I do when I’m looking for a particular fabric? Well, I can tell you, I don’t go looking through these heavy boxes — I go to the quilt shop and BUY MORE!

I haven’t had one moment to begin to cull through my stash and off-load what I don’t want any longer since we moved to our new location last June. I really want to house my stash in cupboards with doors, so I can simply open the doors and put my hands on exactly what I want. That is my dream… which I hope to be able to do THIS summer!

See the smaller boxes on the top shelf? Those are my UFO project boxes. I read in “Quilter’s Newsletter” or another magazine (I wish I could find the actual article so I could quote verbatim), about a quilter who had several UFO boxes. She was looking at them one day and wondered if her family would know what to do with them if she had an untimely “exit”. She decided to put a 3×5 card in each of the boxes with a friend’s name, who would appreciate a quilt partially made that the recipient could finish — they would then have a quilt started by a beloved friend. I think that’s a stellar idea, personally.

The other part of that is — what if you actually finished the UFO and gave it to your beloved friend instead of letting the box sit on the shelf? By choosing who would be the recipient, you’re already half-way to deciding that you’re actually going to finish it, because now you know WHY you want to!

Here is the link to the website mentioned in the podcast:

Block Party Studios

I hope this podcast has given you some inspiration and ideas that will help you gt your stash organized and under control.  You know, we feel a lot less guilty about buying new fabric when we have our stash in control ; )

©2009   Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved

Running time: 00:40:29 Size: 18.6MB

Visit Marie’s website

for a chance to win an autographed copy of “A Single Thread”

and stay tuned for the May 26th release of the sequel:

You’ll enjoy Marie’s website, which offers you a chance to become a Reading Friend and have access to all kinds of fun things, including see a picture of “Broken Hearts Mending” and get the instructions to make on of your own! I can’t wait to see the quilt for the new book.

©2009  Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved

Running time: 00:59:18 Size: 27.2MB

Here are the next couple of interviews from Empty Spools Seminar at Asilomar, in one show.

Below is Quilting Stash listener, Kathy Del Beccaro making tiny things:

Chicken a la King, Chicken in a Basket, and Freddy meets Sally Collins!

Kathy and her House quilt

Kathy’s quilt in progress

Penny, Kathy’s new friend, happily at work

And now, Freddy and Gwen, sporting my favorite color…

Gwen and Freddy’s class, there were 40 students in all

And now, here’s the answer as to why Freddy is wearing my Mom’s hat:

I brought this faboo hat that was my Mom’s to Asilomar to use as my Muse when I got “quilter’s block” and modeled the hat when I gave the keynote lecture. I really do use this hat to help me get back on my creative footing.  Freddy loved it — all pink and mostly red, her favorite color also. I walked in to Merrill Hall the morning after my keynote to find Freddy wearing my Mom’s hat and posing for pictures. The hat was perfect for Freddy and she wore it all morning while she was teaching. I wore it several times during the week while I worked on my new coat…

Here is a sampling of students’ quilts from Gwen and Freddy’s class:

I love these quilts and it was so fun to see what all of the students made in Gwen and Freddy’s class and be able to be a fly on the wall, being in the same building, while they taught. It was a great week!

Links for things talked about in the interview:

Monterey Peninsula Quilt Guild, where both Gwen and Freddy will be teaching later this year

a little sample of Majolica ware that Freddy mentioned

Freddy’s studio can be seen in a book that I just picked up, “Organizing Your Craft Space,  by Jo Packham – the gal who does “Where Women Create”

the Sister’s Outdoor Quilt Show where Gwen and Freddy will release their new book, Freddy and Gwen Collaborate Again!

Jeanne Mills Textile Tours, get more information by calling Jeanne at 831-647-8973.

That’s a wrap!

©2009  Annie Smith  All Rights Reserved

Running time: 00:42:51 Size: 19.7MB

Carolie at the door at The Cotton Patch in Lafayette, CA

The Cotton Patch “satellite store” at Empty Spools Seminars.

We can get into as much trouble here as we can the store in Lafayette!

Here is the list of SF Bay Area quilters* that Carolie talked about:

Jinny Beyer

Roberta Horton and Mary Mashuta

Sonya Lee Barrington

Yvonne Porcella

Jean Ray Laury

Cathie Hoover

Rachel Clark

Cara Gulati

Judy Mathieson

and the biggest surprise of all, C & T Publishing!

*This list doesn’t include all of the Bay Area quilters — there are several more, but this is a list of those that Carolie mentioned. Apologies to any that were left off the list, unintentionally!

©2009  Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved

Nancy Mathewson!  Congratulations, Nancy — and many thanks to all who commented and listened in to the podcast interview for Kay MacKenzie’s new book.

Keep listening! There’s much more to come!

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My friend, Kay MacKenzie has a brand new book out:

and I’m participating in Kay’s

Kay stopped by the retreat in Cambria a few weeks ago to lend her voice to a podcast all about her new book so you could listen in…

Just click on the PODCAST link to hear all about it.

Kay with Willie, the quilt puppy, of course!

Kay, explaining her new book with Martingale Publications.

Click here to visit Kay’s blog, All About Applique, to check out the other Book-a-round blog hostesses, but leave a comment here for a chance to win an autographed copy of Kay’s new book!

Kay’s “Confused Apples”

Darling project quilt from the book. Thanks for holding, Linda!

Kay’s sampler quilt from one of her other books

Isn’t this quilt simple and precious?!

©2009  Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved