Supporting a Great Cause

You may remember this quilt top from a few months ago-I had it made when the Shades of Grey Collection first came in. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it-just need it had to be something good. Well I found the perfect use....THIS EVENT-It's a Breast Cancer Fundraising Event. Usually with donations I submit a gift certificate-but this event was somewhat personal. I went to high school with Erin, the person organizing the event and walking in the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk. Erin is walking in memory of her mother who passed away this past year. I have many found memories of Erin's parents as well since we played soccer together and her parents were always at the games cheering. So I selected another one of my favorite patterns for the back and added some of the zig zags I was working on. I love how it turned out-even if I did finish it in the shop without A/C during the hottest days in WI-yes I now can say I work in a sweat shop.

Anyways-if you're in the area and can attend the event, or even if you're not you can still contribute via Tracey's Team.

Call Me Crazy, Call Me Lazy, Call Me What You Want

I've had this quilt pieced together for awhile now and Sat when a customer of mine came in and was putting together a few fabrics in here I became re-inspired to finish this. I love the combination of colors and patterns and the simplicity of the quilt. I did a simple quilting on it and am beginning to realize that I prefer straight lines and simple quilting on my pieces-I guess that means I have a style of quilting! Yeah for me.

Anyways I decided to zigzag stitch the edges together before binding and about halfway through I started to admire the zigzag and decided that I'm not going to bind it...not sure if this just makes me lazy, but I want to see how it washes and if I still like it....if not then I'll just add a binding. If I do like it...who knows maybe I'll just do all of my quilts this way.

Anyone else know of anyone that does this? Do you think I'm crazy????

My New Best Friend

I've always been pretty bad at finishing quilts-I love putting together the fabric combinations and design but then I hate pinning and binding...hence why many of my quilts are unfinished.

I finally decided to try Basting Spray and I have now finished two quilts...well I still haven't bound one of them but hey it's a big step for me.

Here are my thoughts on basting spray for what it's worth...

-It's really good for beginner quilters or people that don't have a lot of patience to pin

-I always, ALWAYS find wrinkles and creases after the fact when I pin-I avoided this with spray basting because I could smooth it out

-they say is has no odor-well 'they' are lying, there is a smell to it-it's not necessarily overwhelming but it wasn't a pretty smell either

So far it has enough benefits for me to stick with it...has anyone else had any issues with it that I haven't discovered yet?

Virtual Quilting Bee

Interested? Please say YES! I'm very excited about this idea and should have gotten a move on it last month so that we could start right away in January, but needless to say I had some things going on :)

Anyways, this is open to anyone in the US-you do not have to live locally. Basically the Virtual Quilting Bee is made up of 12 people who are each assigned a separate month as their month to be the recipient of the blocks. The bee will run then for a year, with each person taking turns making blocks for for everyone else 11 months, and one month sending fabric out and receiving their own blocks back.

So if you are interested please email me at drawstringstudio@gmail.com and we'll go from there. Hopefully we'll get enough people right away that we can get this started. Here's a link to some block tutorials if you're interested as well. HERE