It's Official . . . oh and the February Block is Posted

It seems like I have been anticipating this date for years, but it is finally here.  I am now officially retired.

My first week of retirement was a whirlwind.  Last weekend was my grandson's first birthday and the festivities for that were a blast.  He is finally crawling and oh so cute as he expands his abilities everyday with new discoveries.

Then I flew to Milwaukee to do a presentation of vocal effectiveness on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was a great trip, but a very fast turn around and a bit of a cluster changing planes in Chicago.  Did I ever mention that O'Hare is my least favorite airport? Next time I have a layover in Chicago I am bringing roller skates.

I spent Thursday running errands all over Lawrence, and still didn't get everything done in town I had planned.  I was pleased to take 10 boxes of theatre play scripts (remnants of my life as a theatre teacher) to KU to donate to their theatre department script library.  Perhaps some graduate student will enjoy them as I once did.

I filled 2 dumpsters cleaning out my office at work. . . .holy mackerel, who knew I had all that junk.  With great sadness I parted with all my high school and college papers.  Yup I really did save all that stuff. . . for years!  It was a real catharsis to let it all go and topple the boxes into the dumpster.  I shredded old student records, pay stubs going back 20 years. . . . .oh my, I had no idea what a pack rat I was.

Now I have a small -but dwindling- mountain of stuff in my living room which I brought home from my office.  My entire collection of cat figurines. . . books of poetry from my mother. . . 3' tall moving lighted flamingo. . . hey, you can't part with that stuff!!!!  I did get rid of the life size stuffed panther several years ago, and donated my jar of "ashes of problem students" to my replacement.

Today. . . Friday??. . . I cooked, baked, ran errands, shipped orders, scheduled new bookings, worked on email and organized my office.

Didn't some of you mention I would be busier after retirement than before??  LOL

Tomorrow I am going to a sew day with some friends and will enjoy a day completely devoted to working on my Deco Garden blocks!!  Phew!

So when does the relaxing start? :-)

Oh, I nearly forgot. . . block 2 is posted!  Enjoy.  If you make a block and send me a picture I will send you a free pattern by email.  Send the picture to reeze (at) morningglorydesigns.com.

Block Hop winners

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to take the studio tour!  I so appreciate all the comments (and congrats).  It was a fun blog hop and I sure got some great ideas from the other designers.

Here are the winners from among those who posted, chosen at random:

Jennifer Padden is the winner of the free pattern and two charm packs.

Pattern winners:

Gill Watson
CatthyQuilt
Gretchen
Karen Wendel
Nancy A
Donna W

Please email me to collect your free pattern!
reeze (at) morningglorydesigns.com


Those who would like to purchase this pattern may do so at http://morningglorydesigns.com

Last Day: Studio Spotlight Blog Hop

Studio Spotlight Friday -- Morning Glory Designs

Well, after two weeks of touring great studios how do you feel?  Overwhelmed?  Me too.  These great designers have wonderful spaces!   But I am pleased to invite you to take a quick tour of mine.

My studio is in the basement of my small house in Ottawa, KS.  So that means everything has to go down or up these stairs.

Yes, that really is pink carpet, and I have to say it's not my fault!  It was here when we bought the house 21 years ago and we have not changed it.

Turn right at the bottom of the stairs and you enter the Man Cave where my husband has his room for all things guy-related.

Turn left and you enter my studio.  First a word. . . My studio used to be my son's bedroom but when he went off to college he was no sooner out the door when we were remodeling the space.  Go HERE and see the complete remodel.

That was in 2009.  Here is what it looks like now, nearly 6 years later.

As you turn left and walk into the studio you see a glimpse of the "veranda" and my machine table.

My machine table is part of an old computer desk and the veranda is a huge wallpaper mural which covers the whole end of the room and wraps around the corner.

 Just behind my sewing chair is my ironing table and an old pie safe that I use to store supplies.

First, this is my sewing station.  You can see part of the veranda and my thread storage.  I wish I had a better way to store thread to keep the dust off, but as you will see this is a relatively small studio.

My comfy chair spins so that I can turn around and press.  I have a Bernina 440 machine and another smaller Bernina 240 which I keep packed up ready to travel to classes or retreats.  All of my tools are within easy reach.

To the right, I keep all the notions I use all the time in a spinning Pampered Chef tool caddy.  Works great for me and everything is at my fingertips.

Then my machine and large acrylic table sit in the middle between two big Ott Lights and a smaller bright light on the machine.  Machine needles and bobbins are close by.

Just to the left of my machine you can see a pink cutting mat taped to my table so I can do paper piecing right here at my machine.  The acrylic table can be removed when I put my embroidery module on the machine and all my embroidery threads are close where I can reach them as I sew.

In the corner of the table is my serger.  My husband bought this for my birthday more than 20 years ago, and it has been so good I have had no reason to replace it.   I sure would love a new one with self threading and more bells and whistles, but this one has served me well for many years.

The space behind my chair is the pressing station and you can also see my cotton thread (Masterpiece) nearby.  The two drawers contain my sewing gloves, machine manuals, pressing hams and machine accessories.

 And of course there are quilts on every wall.  They are mostly small ones, but they are ones that I love which I made or were made for me by others.  Several are by master quilter and expert in miniature quilt Jayne Turner, who wrote and incredible book on Miniature quilts.  I have several of Jayne's quilts on my walls, including the one on top in the picture above.  I made the stained glass quilt below it at a workshop by Linda Everhart some years ago.

 In the basket I put pressing supplies and the pattern I am working on.  More tools hand on the hook on the side of the Pie Safe.  I hang applique pressing sheets from a hole I punched in each one and a caddy that packs into my sewing tote when I go to class.  I really work on finding ways to use the space efficiently since the room is only 12' x 24'.

You can tell I like a lot of light on my work, so I have lamps on every surface and overhead pin lights focused on each area in the room.

The pressing table is a Big Board sitting atop a folding table.  Under the pressing table (set at a height to sit and press) are baskets for scraps.

The flooring is actually cushioned vinyl that looks like wood!  I love the look and it is easy on the feet.  The floor under it is cement!

Turn around and you see the rest of the room.

The cutting table folds up and has drawers and cupboards on both sides.  I only have one of the leaves up on the table.  When I am doing large projects I can turn the table and open the other leaf.  I have a mat the size of the entire table when I have the  need to open it up fully.

The blue box in front and the red one beneath it have all the things I need when I set up a booth at a show.  It is convenient to grab the booth box, and off I go with everything I need for set up on there.

Along the wall on the right, next to the pie safe,  where I store pressing items, embroidery frames and stabilizers, and some small quilts.  Beyond the cupboard is a set of three large shelving units my husband got for me last Christmas.

On the end are projects, batik bins, template bins, and accuquilt dies,

then there are fabric bins,

then quilt storage.  Since I do a lot of trunk shows I need quilts handy and ready to pack up. There are large suitcases on the floor beneath the shelves which I can use to haul quilts.

At the end of the room is a window and book shelves for my quilting books  and magazines.  the window is at ground level and under the deck so there is no light coming in.  To keep the room bright and cheerful I painted the walls yellow and the ceiling light blue!  The plastic drawer units hold quilting stencils, embroidery supplies, serger thread, batting scraps, and tote bags.

In the middle of the room is my sit-down long arm.

It is a 22" Martelli long arm with a 4'x 4' electric table.  It has a build in cutting mat on the back side and I can raise and lower it for work standing or sitting.  I really love it.

My new Brother Scan N Cut is set up on the cutting side, ready to work on a  new Block of the Month pattern. Below the table are bins with large batting scraps and another bin with projects in process.

On the wall opposite the shelves are two big closets.  One is my fabric storage closet, and the other is my husband's closet and entry to the under stairs storage.
Here is the fabric storage closet.  It has shelves and bins.  The drawers store holiday fabric, my collection of flamingo fabric and patterns, fusible web, and fabric for special projects.

 The other half of the closest has fabric bins sorted by color, and large drawers with wide backs and large yardage cuts.  The doors are covered with vinyl back tablecloths I use as a design wall.

My posable dude sits on the top of my long arm to keep me entertained while I quilt.  Below is another picture of my long arm with some fabric I was practicing on and the round holder used to move the fabric.  You can see the cutting mat better in this view.

This set of white drawers are all UFO's.  Ok not proud of the fact that I have alot of UFOs but at least I know where they are.  These are some of my retirement projects.  LOL  Above the drawers, in this alcove, are shelves with sewing notions, zippers, ribbons, and pattern boxes.  You can see the ruler racks on the left.

Now we are back around to my cutting table where I store all my rulers on the table in a stand and on the wall in a rack.

And that is the WHOLE studio.  Yes, it is all in one room.  OK, I have an office upstairs where my computer is located where I do all my design work, but it is pretty small and currently a mess, so we aren't going there!  haha

Next to the door is a small shelf where I keep an embroidery basket, a tin of pincushions, binding scraps, and my helper, Rockie.

 On the day I took these pictures, it was nearly 70 outside so I worked at my outside office, on my back porch.  Of course I can never go anywhere alone, my helper Buster and Rockie were nearby.

My outdoor desk with laptop where I do a lot of my design work in nice weather.

Thanks for taking the tour of my studio.  Leave a comment and you will be entered to win a free pattern.  I will give away 5 patterns to five random commentors.

If you go to my Facebook Page and like it or leave a comment you will be entered to win a pattern and two charm packs to make the pattern!

Don't forget to check out my website for my new patterns, my January sale, and my January 10% pattern special discount when you use the MGD10% coupon code at checkout.  Good through January 30!

Thanks and happy Friday.

Oh, and did I forget. . . . .??  

Today is my last day of work as a college professor.  

As of 5 pm today I am officially retired!  Oh yea. . . . . .:-)

Happy Day

Some days I just can't leave well enough alone.  I am designing two block of the months this year.  One for my quilt guild and one for my blog.  They have a few blocks in common but are really quite different.  So I am playing around with settings for the guild BOM and this is what I have pretty much decided on.

Kaw Valley Quilt Guild Block of the Month Setting.

I added the modern touch of stripes as frames for the blocks and really like how it looks with the black sashing. The blocks are a variety of sizes with a couple of really big blocks in there.

Now here is where I went wacky.  I took those two big blocks and turned them into borders and then made all the rest of the blocks 12" squares and then added a few more blocks I have been playing around with just for fun.

Deco Gardens on steroids.

I kinda like it.  :-)  Not that I will ever make it, you understand.  But it really has that busy nouveau look that I like.

Then I had to see what it would look like with a black background.  This is the part about never being able to leave well enough alone.

Deco Gardens on Steroids at Night

The lesson in this for me is "don't design a quilt that I am not willing to write a pattern for."  Yup, this falls right smack dab into that category.  But I had fun playing with the design in EQ7 on the start of my long 3 day weekend.

But what the heck. . . tomorrow is my 60th birthday, so if I put a candle in this it will make a great cake!  Happy day to all of my birthday twins who share January 18 with me, and my nephew Tim up in heaven.  He didn't get to have many birthdays, but at least he got a good birth date!  :-)

I started looking at cakes and found some I would really like to have!  I didn't go to cake wrecks, altho they have a great selection.  I found plenty of great ones in a google search!

 This one is really cute!  I love the teapot and cups.

And this one has such great colors. . . and M & Ms!!!  Yum.  But these may be my favorites:

I love this camp fire cake.  Reminds me of summer by the lake.  I understand the glass of wine but the baby bottle?  Must be for my grandson.  His 1st birthday is January 21.

This may be just a bit more liquor than I can drink on my birthday, but the idea has merit.

Ok, this is more like it.  I am more of a wine girl than a liquor person.

And this one is even better.  Enough to go around.  I like a good wine tapper.

Now if I leave it up to my kids I am probably going to get one like this:

or perhaps this

but the very best is just chocolate!  Yummmm

Perfect!