December Daily album cover

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am using this album from Stampin Up! in Real Red. I found the candy cane ribbon at my favorite scrapbook store in Wisconsin, Making Memories and More. Unfortunately, I don't know who makes it, but I immediately thought of my December Daily when I saw it in the store this past October and snatched it up. It is adhered all the way around the cover using the Xyron sticker maker.

Here is what the album looks like when you open it up:



The tags were made by putting this snowflake sticker from Paper Source (all of their stickers make me drool) on to a round metal tag and then adhered to the cover with glue dots. Unfortunately, the glue dots don't stick super well to the fabric cover, so I have had to re-adhere and apply lots of pressure to make them stay. But I love how the tags look on the album - it makes it look so polished and less bland.

And since you could see it in the picture of the open album, here is a close-up of the intro page:


The star letters are from Jenni Bowlin, purchased at the same time as the candy cane ribbon, and the rest of the product comes from my stash. I covered a piece of semi-chipboard cut to size with a piece of ivory paper that I inked with Antique Linen distress ink (the "chipboard" came in a package of pillow protectors). You probably can't see it very well in the picture, but I stamped stars into the background using the same Antique Linen distress ink. It looks really subtle in person. The December strip came from a sheet of 12x12 paper that had all the months on it -- I originally got it to put in my honeymoon album. And the 2010 comes from a set of alphas that I have had for a while. I don't remember who makes them.

I am loving the process of making my album -- it is so putting me in the Christmas spirit. And I am proud to say that I finished the foundation about 2 weeks before December 1!! I think that's the first time I have ever finished something ahead of schedule!

My take on the 2010 Houston Quilt Show

Of course I took a picture of the penguin quilt! Feeding Time by Joyce O'Connell

I have gone to the International Quilt Festival in Houston every year since I moved here. I love it. It is so much more than traditional pieced quilts. It is an art show where the main medium is fabric and/or items that have been pieced together in the style of a quilt. (One year there was a "quilt" made out of squares cut from Coke cans, just to give you a sense of how far the boundaries of the term quilt are stretched.) It is inspiration. It is an explosion of color. It is a place to explore vendors from all over the country who have some connection to the craft of quilting (although there was a lot of scrapbooking crossover this year!) It is incredible and not to be missed if you find yourself in Houston the first weekend of November.

The main section of the show is the judged quilts, and attendees are encouraged to vote for what they consider to be their favorite quilt for the Viewer's Choice award. Here are my top three choices for Viewer's Choice:



Long Road Home by Peggy Parrott
This quilt had so much detail that everywhere you looked you found something new. I loved how the house in the lower left corner is in black and white (just like the movie) and how from there the quilt shifts to being in Technicolor. I also love how the Wicked Witch's dress forms the tornado.


Kirara's Walking Road in the Wood by Ayako Kawakami
This was another one that had so much detail that you kept seeing something new everywhere you looked. Every square is a house of sorts that has the quiltmaker's daughter in it somewhere, including a quilt shop! I also really liked the dimensionality and the see-through aspect of it. My sister loved the logs that formed the outer border.

And the one I ultimately decided on:

On a Quilted Breeze, entered by Nan Scott (but it is a group quilt)
The quilting on this was so cool and added so much to the quilt. There were fish in the sea and birds in the air and all kinds of other things you don't see right away on first glance. The sail though was the most amazing part - it is a quilt!

This piece was from the Text on Textiles exhibit and I wanted to highlight it because I love pieces that I learn something from. This piece in particular was a fascinating history lesson, conveyed as what I would call non-traditional memory keeping/scrapbooking.

Sarajevo Rose by Renelda Peldunas-Harter
It is the story of a woman's time in Sarajevo with the US Army and explains what a Sarajevo Rose is both in words along the outside of the quilt and with a visual picture (the red parts in the center of the quilt). So, so interesting.

Another finished quilt top!

I am so excited to have completed my THIRD quilt top this year. Yes, that's right I have finished 3 quilt tops this year, an absolute record for me, especially since I have only finished 2 other quilt tops in my lifetime!



This quilt is for my cousin. My sister and I planned it as a baby quilt for her when she was in fact a baby. We got everything done in a timely manner except the outside borders. Then as time passed and I hadn't made any progress on it, I decided that it would be more practical if I made it bigger. I figured out that I had enough fabric to enlarge it and then put it away again. I finally added the bottom third this month. My sister was in town this past weekend, and she helped me get the outside border on, the backing made, the quilt top ironed, and the threads trimmed and voila, it's done! It only took us six years -- my cousin will be 7 in February!

I am having it quilted on a longarm by That Quilter - I am excited to see what she does with it!

And because I finished three projects this year, I allowed myself to buy fabric for three more projects at Quilt Festival this year. Logical, right?