Awards, friends, and pretty blue bags...

This blog is a little bit of everything... stuff I make, stuff I like, our house projects, and my life overall. One of the things I love about blogging is that it documents a lot of the little things that happen that I might not focus on otherwise. I like to look back at my posts from the past two years and remember when we painted this, built that, went there, or did that. In a small way, this blog is also documenting the story of our lives. There are sometimes things I want to document and remember for me that probably aren't interesting to you. Just skip these posts.

Earlier this week, Zac and I went to the Junior League's annual dinner. I have been a member of the Cincinnati League for three years, and I've really enjoyed my experience. I was honored at this year's dinner for my volunteer work. I was so humbled to be chosen. The dinner was beautiful and it was a wonderful celebration of the thousands of lives in our community that have been touched by the League's volunteer work this year.

JLC Outgoing President Melanie Chavez, one of the most inspiring women I've ever met.

My sweet friend Erika presenting an award.

Receiving my award from Brooke. Yes, those bags are what you think they are. Yes, I almost died of happiness when I saw them. I didn't even know those bags came that big!

Tory, me, and Natalie. Tory and Natalie are two of my favorite friends!

And in case you were wondering about that bag...

It is a gorgeous bud vase that I can't get a good picture of for the life of me. But it looks gorgeous in our china cabinet and I'll think of this night every time I use it. It will definitely become a family heirloom piece for us.

Thank you to the JLC for honoring me with your Rising Star award. I'm proud to be part of a such a dynamic group of women!

Holiday Helping Hands

Last fall, my friend Clare asked if I would help a class with a service learning project. Clare has a really cool job - she works for a foundation and is in charge of pretty much all service learning projects in our city. If you aren't familiar with service learning, it is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.


I worked with students at Arlington Heights Academy. This is a sort of last chance high school for a lot of kids. Many of them have struggled at other schools for various reasons, but here they have an incredibly supportive teacher who truly loves them as individuals. She seeks out unique learning opportunities for them that set them up for success.


And, each December, they execute an event called Holiday Helping Hands. These students, many of whom come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, donate various items from around their house to fill a secret santa like store. They create a literal wonderland in their school and invite hundreds of kindergartners to experience holiday magic. They create reading and math activities that teach the students while they have fun. It's a truly magical experience for both the older kids and younger ones.


My role was to help them make a quilt hat would reflect what they learned from the experience. My first visit was last fall, where I taught the students about quilting and helped them create a design. The students came up with exactly what they wanted - my only role was to make sure it was "do-able."


The students decided that they wanted a picture border around the outside, so they also chose pictures to go around the edges.

When I came back the second time, I had printed the photos onto photo transfer paper. The students cut out the pictures and ironed them on to white fabric squares. I was so surprised... they loved it!

Another part of their design was creating twelve circles that simulated a Candy Land board, one of their main decorating themes. Each circle had a word that described their service learning experiences.

They traced the shapes onto wonder under paper and then chose the fabrics they wanted to use. 

I took their work home and tried to turn it into their original design. I brought it back to school for them to tie together. I thought about quilting it for them, but I wanted to give the students as many opportunities to touch the quilt - literally and figuratively.

How cute are these high schoolers? Many of them are just freshmen.

I still need to add the binding -- but here's where we are now.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work with these students. Is the design my favorite of all time? Probably not. Is any single part of it straight? Nope - many hands don't make straight quilts. But it darn well might be one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

The Quilt Festival Part II

Yesterday I showed you all of the cool vendors, so today we'll explore some of my favorite quilts. There were so, so many, but I tried to be selective!

That's a QUILT. Isn't it unbelievable?? The lighter dancers are embroidered in thread. It was totally and completely stunning. and I didn't get credit info for this one either. Second media pass fail. 

Spring Blossoms by Terry Aske

Springtime in the Garden by Mary T. Schneider

I am obsessed with this one. How amazing is the applique? The picture doesn't do the colors justice. And look at the striped binding! Darling.

Something like this might be my next project. Swoon.

Is this quilt not absolutely beautiful? I captured the women in the picture to show you its size. It was HUGE.

The Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild had an exhibition of Ohio Star Quilts. This one is by Amy Thonnerieux, and was one of my favorites.

I'm sure I'm biased because I love Cincinnati, but look at this beautiful landmarks quilt project completed by the Contemporary Quilt and Fiber Artists. Members of the group worked together to create panels for an expansive quilt depicting neighborhoods and landmarks in Cincinnati. It was incredible.

Love the riverboat!

And the skyline!

There were many, many more beautiful quilts, a lot that we couldn't take pictures of. It was such a great experience, and I'm grateful for the International Quilt Festival for making me feel like a rockstar with my press pass. Can't wait for next year!

The International Quilt Festival comes back to Cincinnati

You might remember me going to the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati last year... the day before my wedding! My gramma and I snuck away and it was a great experience. I was so excited to see it was coming back again this year, and that I'd have more time to enjoy it.

Coolest part #1:

I was fancy. I got a media pass because of this blog. When the exhibitors saw the media badge, they were extra nice and let me take pictures of anything I wanted!

Coolest part #2:

Meeting Andi, from Udandi, in real life. She's my third friend I've met on Twitter and then met in real life, and she is awesome. Seriously - go check out her blog. And her second blog.

The festival seemed even larger than last year. Half the exhibition hall was set up with booths and the other half displayed the most beautiful quilts. I'll go through the vendor part today and the quilts tomorrow, because otherwise you'll be overloaded with pictures!

This lovely lady from Embellishment Village showed us how to use Angelia Fibers, which were amazing. Have any of you tried to sew with them? She made beautiful applique designs (the butterflies on her jacket are made from it too) but I loved it most for embellishing quilts, which I've never tried before. 

The Angelina fibers fuse to each other. Here she set the iridescent fibers over the "water," and it truly added movement and depth. Gorgeous. I think I'm going to order some to play with! There were a lot of other applications for it too. Andi and I were mesmerized.

She had also made this gorgeous quilt. The dresses are 3 dimensional -- the aprons lift off the quilt. Isn't it so cute??

How cute is this??? Look closely - the triangles at the top hold a yard stick! I love texture and dimension on quilts and the pocket for the tape measure and thimbles holds them! I didn't get the information from this quilter (media pass fail), but it was too adorable not to show you.

There were a lot of booths selling wool this year, but Woolylady was our favorite. We met the nicest woman (hi, Lisa!) who actually hand dyes all of the wool. Her partner Gail is who creates the beautiful projects. We must have talked to her for twenty minutes -- I just couldn't pull myself away from the gorgeous colors!

It was stunning. So soft to touch. The most beautiful vibrant colors. I'm still dreaming about it. One of my other favorite vendors was Handbehg Felts. Because of this:

The applique is made from felt. I love the somewhat random stitching on it. Here are some close ups of the squares...

Isn't the wonky stitching so cool??

The woman who made the blocks said you can't really screw it up. They have patterns every month on their website, and this quilt will be one of the free patterns up soon!

And just when I thought I couldn't fall in love any harder, check this out.

This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a garland made out of felt balls, wooden thread spools and Christmas themed fabric scraps. It was absolutely darling and would look so sweet hanging from a mantle!

That's just the first half of our experience. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post about the gorgeous quilts we saw. They'll blow you away!!

What is this funk?

Hi friends. I feel like I'm in a bit of a blogging funk these days. The weather here has been gorgeous lately... so I can't blame that. Let me quantify gorgeous for you:

That's in Ohio. In MARCH. I'm praying this doesn't mean my non-central air conditioned house will be a nightmare this summer, but it's already pretty warm!

Even the poor plants that were menaced by a puppy last summer and fall seem to be looking pretty good!

I spent hours last year untangling this clematis from an awful Virginia creeper, painstakingly saving its beautiful-ness.  Then Derby ate it. It's making quite the comeback though... I took this picture on Friday night and by Sunday night it had already grown to the next horizontal wood piece, which is at least a few inches. It has gorgeous purple flowers in the late spring / early summer, so hopefully those will still bloom this year!

Is anyone else in a blogging funk, or is it just me? I'll be all done with school in about six weeks (can I get an AMEN!), so maybe it's just this last little bit that's the hardest.  I'm definitely still mid-quarter life crisis, too. 

So what's new with you??

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fun and safe time celebrating the end of 2011 and the start of 2012.

Zac's brother and sister-in-law spent the night with us in Cincinnati, and we had a blast.  They left early this morning to start what we're calling their "Grand Adventure" - a 5 month trip through Russia, China, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, and wherever else they feel like stopping. Crazy right? You can follow their adventures here if you're interested.

We went to a dueling piano bar, which was a lot of fun. It was mostly just fun spending time together... and commenting on the ridiculous outfits people had on. When did we get so old and snarky??

Last night as the ball was dropping I realized that I wasn't quite ready for 2011 to end. I only need a few more days, but I'd love a little bit more time to wrap up some loose ends and plan for the new year. There's something I just LOVE about the start of a new year. It feels fresh and so full of promise.

I need a little bit longer to finalize all of my resolutions and goals for the year. I'll be back tomorrow to share them with you, but in the meantime I'd love to hear some of yours! I'm the queen of, "Oh yeah, I want that one too," so you can make this process easier on me if you share!

Happy New Year!

Quilt Festival

This post is a little bit overdue, but I realized I never shared my pictures from the Quilt Festival with you!! My grandmother and I went to this event the Thursday before our wedding... as in, 48 hours before we walked down the aisle!

It ended up being a really nice break. We took a few hours to walk around, see the beautiful quilts, and even buy ourselves a few presents (well... Gramma bought us a few presents!).

The quilts were INCREDIBLE. Here are a few of my favorites:

These quilts are airbrushed, and then the artist journals in all of the free space. You could buy an 18 inch square piece for $600, and honestly, it was worth it. SO beautiful.

A close-up of the journaling.

Bad picture, sorry. This is a quilt. Not a painting. Not a picture. A QUILT.

Gramma looking at quilts.

This is one of my favorites. The dyed yoyos make...

THIS!!!

I love portrait quilts.

There aren't even words for how beautiful this is.

And just so you can see what it was like to be there...

We had a blast - thanks, Gramma, for taking me!!