No Regrets

It's been a looooong time since the last time I posted, and there's been this little thing called life that got in the way.  There have been some huge changes in my life over the past year, but the most wonderful, most unexpected was landing a job I had long given up on. Last summer, one week before the beginning of the school year I was hired as a para educator in my dream school district.  It literally has been a dream come true!  Even though it has been a tremendous amount of work, my role this year doesn't even begin to prepare me for my student teaching experience next fall!  Yes, next December if everything goes well I will finally and officially be a certified teacher.  My story is a long one, but the short version is I graduated with my degree in middle childhood education nearly ten years ago and tried to run from my calling of being a teacher.  Well, it finally came full circle and I love it even more than I thought I would.

With all of this being said, I had to make a difficult decision and finally made it over the holidays.  My business is closed.  There is just no way that I can continue to put the time and commitment into that of business owner while giving 100% as a teacher.  Over the past few weeks, I have been finishing up my customer quilts and am looking forward to (hopefully) working on my own projects - I should say, I am really looking forward to this!  While it was fun to see my patterns come to fruition and it's really fun to still receive royalty checks - :) - there are so many other quilter's patterns I would like to make.  It will also be fun to not have to think about the design process and worry about the customer's reactions to my machine quilting.

Are you still with me? I hope so, because I'm about ready to make yet another announcement ... I have decided to keep my blog up and running and want to begin blogging again, but with a broader purpose!  I am so lucky that my mom and I are best friends and we're hoping to make this blog a collaborative project so you'll be seeing more because there's two of us!  We love to eat good food and are finding with our schedules, we're not eating the kind of food we want to be eating.  So, one of the things we want to start incorporating is more recipes and tips-and-tricks for busy, on-the-go people who still want to eat well.  A goal of ours is to have better photography ... I am such a homebody, it's pathetic!  We absolutely love where we live - Gettysburg, PA - and would love to share more with you about the region and why we love this place!  So, hopefully there are coming attractions, we're going to try our best to share with you!

Finally, a good friend of mine has a life motto, "If it's not fun, I'm not doing it!"  A great life motto and one that will hopefully come out through in our future blog posts!

Thanks to all of you who have stuck it out with me!

Hugs,
Meg

Quilts of Valor + "New" Pantos

I promised myself I would get a blog post up this week!!!  I'm so frustrated with myself for not being more on top of blogging!  BUT the good news is as long as I can work in the time to actually write the post I have lots of good stuff to share as I've been saving it all up :)

Last summer I began volunteering my longarm quilting services to Quilts of Valor.  I have been doing approximately two quilts each month.  It's been a lot of fun and has given me a chance to try out a lot of different quilting styles.  Many of the quilts I freehanded with my machine, but the two I'm going to share today show two pantographs I bought specifically to use on Quilts of Valor.

The above photo shows the pant laid out on my longarm quilting machine.  It is from Urban Elementz and can be found here ("From the Heart").  The thread I used was by Superior Threads and is from the Magnifico line (one of my favorites!).

Here's a look at the other quilt I did for this same group, but with a different pantograph.  This pantograph is also from Urban Elementz and can be found here ("Star Spangled Support").

I hope you enjoyed these AND I hope I'm back here next week! :)

Have a great weekend,

Megan

Knock, Knock ...

Me: "Knock, knock ..."

You:  "Who's there?"

Me:  "Ivaben"

You:  "Ivaben, who?"

Me:  "Ivaben Gone for a while."

Ok, so now you know the truth about me ... I am a total dork ;)  I was pretty pleased with myself when I came up with that joke, lol!

You may have noticed we haven't been around for quite a while, and boy have we missed blogging.  BUT other than a whole lot of pictures of boxes and us moving things around, there hasn't been a whole lot to share.

Now though we're getting back up and running and we are SO excited to get back into somewhat of a routine which for us includes blogging.

As I continue to get things more organized there are projects we've finished and are looking forward to sharing.  Now that we're more settled we're working to establish the longarm quilting side of our business and are looking forward to doing more of that.

Some exciting news includes that this summer we'll be hosting our first Quilt-A-Long based on a pattern from the fabulous Judi Madsen's (aka the Green Fairy) new book, Quilting Wide Open Spaces. The Quilt-A-Long will be a longarm quilter's QAL, won't that be fun?!?  The pattern I've chosen is definitely going to stretch our skills and hopefully yours as well!  Be sure to check back for more details!  AND I have to THANK Judi for giving me her blessing for moving forward with this project - Thank you for your support!  If you haven't purchased Judi's book, you can buy one from her site signed - HERE!  It is an AMAZING book for us longarm quilters and freemotion quilters, I've already used some of her suggestions to improve my quilting! PS You will be required to buy the book if you take part in the QAL.

I've been blessed to continue working at A Touch of Thread in Ohio one weekend a month.  There, I teach longarm quilting to beginners - those wishing to rent time on the machines and I lead the Saturday longarm quilt guild.  If you're in the area - Zanesville, Ohio - we'd love for you to come and see what our group is all about.  If you'd like more information, please email me at megan@cherryvalleydesigns.com

Enough talking, here are some pictures ...

This is my Work In Progress ... I was going to use metallic thread for the first time on a customer quilt and obviously didn't want her quilt to be my practice piece.  So, I was going to just practice on the muslin, but then got this idea to make something and so one thing turned into another and now I have three spools of Superior's kimono silk thread to use as filler in the background and these fun paints and paintstiks to finish my "practice piece."

One of the great things about our new house is that we now have a dedicated studio space (more on that to come)!  A few weeks ago we got our sofa and chair where we can relax in between projects but more often then not you'll find my boy Max enjoying the sofa ... specifically keeping watch of everything happening on our street ...

"Ho hum, nothing too exciting ..."

"Ooh, what's that?!  What's going on out there?!?"

"Seriously mom, are you done with all the pictures?  You're interrupting my people watching time!"

I'm off to spend the afternoon at Gentle Giants Horse Rescue where I'm doing my orientation to volunteer with the horses. I cannot wait, I'll be sure to share pics of my time there!

Until next time!

Megan

A special shout out to our two linky parties today, be sure to check these sites out for more fabulous blogs!  Work In Progress Wednesday and 

TGIFF - You're in the Right Spot!

Hello Everybody!  It's nice to have you here from TGIFF, I am the host this week and glad you stopped by!


Today I'm sharing a quilt I finished up this week that I will be teaching at A Touch of Thread in Zanesville, Ohio during October.  The quilt is now hanging there and is the pattern, "Afternoon Delight" by Elisa's Backporch Design.  I was surprised at how quickly the quilt came together - I got it pieced in one day! - and love the fall colors to it.

I quilted it on my Gammill and used a new panto I got from Willow Leaf Studio called Autumn Oaks.

The top thread Superior Threads So Fine #728 - it's variegated - and I used Superior Threads Omni #3035 in on the bottom.

The backing is hand dyed batik flannel from Sew Batik and I am absolutely in love with it!  I washed it prior to quilting with Synthrapol and it is soooooo soft!

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to add your link. Also, don't forget the rules:

1) Say "hi",
2) Comment on other's links, and
3) Add away!

Have a wonderful weekend and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday!

Megan

Snowflakes and Such

I finished up this quilt last week and dropped it off to the owner yesterday.  This was the first quilt she has EVER made, can you believe it?!  This is a variation on my Jolly Holly quilt and she made it last year when I taught the class at A Touch of Thread.

I took over my sampler quilt (I'll share more about this next week) and she picked out the designs she wanted.  She decided she wanted snowflakes in the outer border, vines in the inner border, overall meandering in the body of the quilt, and stitch-in-the-ditch around the snowflakes with tight meandering in the white background.

A few weeks ago I started working at A Touch of Thread one day a week to help out and have had the opportunity to "test drive" the Ellisimo by Baby Lock.  Wow!  All I can say is now I know how people feel who drive cadillacs ... LOL :)  Anyways, I decided to make a matching pillowcase to go with this quilt and try out machine embroidery - something I've never tried.  It was a lot of fun and a nice surprise for Rose.

Thanks Rose for letting me quilt your quilt!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Megan 

We're linking up today with: Finish It Up Friday; Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?; Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday.

Ch, Ch, Changes ...

Hi Friends!  For all of you who are still "on board" with our blog, we appreciate your patience.  This has been a summer we did not expect at all!  You know the saying, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans?"  Well, let's just say God has been doing a lot of laughing, because nothing has gone according to our plan.  The good news is things are working out better than we could have imagined and I guess that's the whole point, right?

So, here goes the story ...

We listed our house in March and were told there should be absolutely no problem selling our house.  We had been wanting to move since last fall ... yes, one year ago! ... and had waited, because the realtor said the housing market drops off in the winter.  Ok, we're patient, we can wait we thought.  We've had very, very few people look at our house and kept traveling back and forth from our current home in Newark, Ohio to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - a six hour trip - where we've been looking for a new house.  We have had the most amazing realtor EVER.  If you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Gettysburg area, I couldn't recommend Mary Hankey enough out of the Re/Max of Gettysburg office (I just had to give that shout out!).  Anywho, Mary took us to one house and after that it would sell within days, literally.  By July, we had just given up and felt like nothing was going to work.

However, there was a house outside of town on two and a half acres that we were really in love with and Mary kept us updated that it hadn't sold/didn't have a lot of interest.  About three weeks ago, though, a house came up for sale in town (where we had originally wanted to live) on the same block my dad grew up on!!! :) Four houses down nonetheless!!!!  Three days after that the house in the country sold!  Someone walked into the realtor's office who was a family member of the current owners and said, "We're buying it!"  Seriously!  Now, we're really nervous, because there's only one house that truly interests us and meets our needs and it's coming into fall when the housing market slows down. So, we call Mary who tells us to contact the bank she works with and let them know our situation. Ughhh ... we really don't want to do that and this is so not going according to plan!

But!!!!! ... it worked out and our offer has officially been accepted!!!! We're moving in December which is still three months away :( but at least we have a house and can start having more of a schedule than we've been able to have just biding our time and waiting for when we could move!  We still would love to sell our house, but it's not the necessity it was a week ago ;)

We are all just bursting at the seams - us, our family back in Gettysburg and our friends back there!  We can't wait to move and get started with this exciting new chapter in our lives.  The house we're buying is quite large, but needs some TLC and we're so looking forward to turning this house (see below) into our home!!!

So, with this huge anxiety out of the way we're moving forward with other items on our agenda, like, quilting more, writing patterns more and a bunch of other things!

We hope you are all having a wonderful week and we'll be back later this week with a beautiful quilt we quilted for a dear friend of ours!

It's National Dog Day!

Happy National Dog Day to our band of happy hooligans who never leave a dull moment in the day!

"Say, what?!" 

"Rudolph, ain't got nothin' on me!" 

"I'm sexy and I know it, know it." 

"You said food?" 

"Awwww ... shucks!" 

"You can't tell us apart? Ha! That was the plan!" 

"Excuse me, did you say dog day?!"