Last week I flew to Oklahoma to visit a good friend and to pick up two new additions to our family... two 8week old Chihuahua puppies! Origonally the breeder lived right here in Oregon near us, and in fact Mom has one of the puppies from the same parents as these two cuties. She is the sweetest, most personable dog and I wanted that sweet disposition in my new puppy. Unknown to us, the breeder moved to Oklahoma while I was waiting for my puppy to be born. He told me that I could just have the puppies since he knew they would be going to good homes, but that Id have to make all the travel arrangments. Well you cant just ship these tiny things, and I just happened to have a good friend in OK, so off I went to get the puppies! Here they are in action. Mine is the darker chocolate one, and my dad is taking the lighter tricolor.

I havent been posting all that much, things have been SO busy for me lately. So I figured it was about time and thought Id share my newest pattern sample. There is a Tote and a Wall Quilt but all I have pictures of is the tote so far. The directions are being written up this week and I'll do better photography once I sew a few more beads onto it. Here it is: Crumb Quilt Pizzazz

Play Time! I had an hour to kill today (Fathers Day) before we left for my brother's house. So after reading a post by Esterita Austin about her Misty Fuse with Pearl Ex, I decided to try it! I tried both black and white misty fuse with first an Antique Gold and then a Pearl, then my 11yo daughter came in and joined the fun using both the Gold and the Pearl and a duo green-blue on her little snip of Misty Fuse. What Fun!! There is a tiny bit of difference between teh white and black MF but not much. Haley's piece is the smallest square on the black fabric, see how pretty it is!

found my needle punch stuff, going to have to play with this!

Last month our Art Quilt Group had guest teacher Melanie Chang (who is now a memeber of our group!) teach a class on her style of fabric painting. She uses a dry brush technique with a contact paper covered line drawing behind the fabric to use as a guide. Mine isnt finished yet, but this is what I have done so far.

OK so Ive followed the rest of the lemmings and created a blog. So here it goes, I'll start with...My Studio since thats what Ive named it.

My studio is a partially converted two car garage. I say partially because I didnt want to permanently convert, we want to be able to sell this house in a few years and still have a 'garage'.
Starting as you enter the door from the house and look Left, you see my sink (luckily this was already in place), dye storage cabinet (garage sale find for $20) and work spaces. The table partially under the counter in the lower left corner pulls out for a work surface and the rolling cart to the right of the water heater holds supplies and serves as a mixing area.






Moving to the Right is my fabric stash. My very MESSY fabric stash. One shelving unit is all clothing or other types of fabrics, next is all my cotton quilting fabrics with some synthetics, silks, ultra suede and other neat stuff on the very bottom. The third unit holds all the hand dyed fabrics, both purchased and stuff I did myself, pfd fabric on the bolt and in piles, tubs and mason jars. On top of the first unit are my tubs of wool felt and roving, batting and bolts of fusibles and stabilizers.





Next is the ironing board and storage area, design wall and some of the sewing machine tables. My Juki and the Embellisher are at the bottom of the picture.










Here are all the machines. in front is my Viking, this was my first good machine and I just love her. She is sitting on a Sylvania sewing machine desk. Behind her you see the Janome 6500 and then the Juki and Embellisher again, and the serger. They are sitting on a huge U shaped office type desk I got from my sister in law for FREE.

You can also see my huge thread stash... there is more that you cant see too! The jewelry cabinet thing against the wall is another garage sale find ($20) and stores all my beads.



Rounding the corner is my drafting table, at the moment it is set up for beading and well... holding messes LOL!










Next is the office area and my laptop with all the printers etc. My husband brought me home a small flat screen monitor to use as a secondary on the laptop. Behind that is the laser printer that I use for publishing patterns. To the right are storage shelves for paper, toner, patterns and other office supplies.







Here you see the storage shelves better, the front of the garage, filing cabinet, the scrapbooking supplies shelves (yes another addiction), my cutting table and an additional ironing station set up on a butcher block. The small plastic drawer tower between the table and scrapbook shelves holds all my decorative yarns and trims.

If I were to allow you to see to the right one more time you'd see my freezer and the last remnants of what used to be in the entire garage... The Dumping Grounds For All Things With No Home, the pool pump which cannot be stored out in the shed (freezing temps will ruin it), and another desk saved for my 16yo daughter to use as an art table.

OK so that was my studio tour, hopefully I can start posting pictures of things Im working on soon!