More Iowa State Fair Photos

I thought this was a cool way to display old license plates. I have several old ones that were Dad's that I may have to make into this.

This was another sweet display at the state fair....so many fun things to see and do!

2 Friends Kaleidoscope

This is another new/old pattern that will soon be for sale. I had a picture of it a while back on my blog. My good friend, Gwen is doing all the hard work for me, that's why it's called 2 Friends Kaleidoscope. Thanks Miss Gwen. I have a link to the Sew Darn Crafty blog with a picture of it there. Check it out here! https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTB17iOh8A8TsZgq7QqIEZpBP5T18Gte1ycvTs38q_mIhZXe9ex5P7N5YAaJAMdwPVq_H6440HOtSNiM03IGg_i4-IC0Wlb23XupTqI1yZpLqhqHHJnzYnMmZC4Wdcxq7rzB5MZ0LWLj68/s1600/polka+dot+sew+darn+crafty.jpg

Iowa State Fair!

This is my good friend, Gwen Cox, from Birmingham, Alabama, at the poultry building at the Iowa State Fair. She came for her yearly trip to our state fair. We saw lots of things at the fair, but we both enjoy the quilts about the best of all! She is a fellow quilter also and has taught me lots about quilting. She worked on a new pattern for me while she was here. I'll show you pictures of it later. This quilt below is the 1st place winner in the found and finished category. I enjoy that category the most of all, since that's what I do a lot of the time. It was one of the few that was hand quilted and also won an award for that.
Check out this link for lots of other fun sewing and crafting ideas...http://http//sewmanyways.blogspot.com/search/label/sew%20darn%20crafty

Freezing corn in Iowa

It's been kind of a busy summer. Here we are a couple of weekends ago helping freeze corn at Farmer Jack's. That's Farmer Jack and his dotter, Faith on the right, and grandson Kooper and hubby Lonnie, in the skidloader. We all had lots of fun putting up over 200 packages of corn. I like to serve the homegrown corn at retreats along with homegrown beef and pork and other veggies from the garden.

These 1st two pictures are close-ups of my mostly vintage..baby girl..Dotter's Puzzle. The color isn't the best, the backround fabric is off white.

I went to a Quilts of the Bluffs meeting in Council Bluffs, Ia and one of the young gals there taught me a trick when you're sandwiching/pinning quilts. I used to think I needed to close every pin before I went on to the next one, but the way she did it, she left them all open and closed the pins after it's all sandwiched. It doesn't matter at that point if you move the quilt around and it's a lot easier to close the pins if you can get them closer to you and move them around a little. Is that clear as mud?! Hope it helps somebody! Anything to speed things up a little and make life a little easier!

I have a good friend who is hand quilting this quilt for me now and it should be ready for display at the AQS show in Des Moines.

Doll quilt from vintage fabrics

I worked on this little doll quilt yesterday. It's such a fun little size. I'm making up kits for these and decided to test a kit, to make sure I had enough material in the kit, and I did. Why do I doubt myself?

I machine quilted it in about 15 minutes. Fast and fun!

This is one of my quilts upstairs on the retreat beds. I picked it up at an auction for a song because it had a tear at the top. I married it with this slobber guard and it's almost as good as new! I was trying to get a picture of the cute little children's print, you'll have to click on the picture to see it closer. It is machine quilted. This next quilt is also one that I picked up at an auction. It is machine quilted with about a 1 and 3/4" grid. Does anyone know the name of it? I may make a pattern for this some day.