Monday, February 28, 2011

It's official - I am blond!

I was looking back at family videos this past week and realized that I am always changing my hair from brown to blond - I am feeling like a blond now - so my occasional ditsy..ness matches the color of my hair! Ha ha!



Also - just wanted to let you know that I am going to start accepting SPONSORS on my blog so that we can have more giveaways and funness going around. So - if you are interested and you have a quilty or crafty blog, email me for pricing!

judi at greenfairyquilts dot com

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Anxiety in all forms.................

"Dear Jane" anxiety to be exact. I don't know if you realize the pressure that comes with quilting a quilt like this - seriously - months of piecing go into this and Gwen did a fabulous job putting this "Dear Jane" together and now it's on the frames just staring at me. I am hoping the inspiration hits me tonight and the nerves go away..........


Whatever the outcome - I hope Gwen loves it!


Anxiety in another form - new line in and I can't sew on it right now. I must have this line! Well - I kind of do have it, but Clint would rather sell it to our customers. So, go get yourself some "Hullabaloo" by Urban Chiks - it is soooooo cute.

Friday, February 25, 2011

My bed has a new quilt................


My Mom is the BEST! Each year she makes a quilt for one of her kids - I have patiently been waiting 7 years for my quilt (only 'cause I am her 7th child) - but I didn't think I would see this day coming because she has threatened me that she would never make me a quilt because I am a little picky and I know how to quilt.

BUT...................... She made me one! Yahoo! I LOVE IT! We picked out the fabric last year - Simple Abundance by Bonnie & Camille - and I love how it turned out. The quilt is from a magazine, not sure which one - but my mom did the center of the quilt a little different.

Anyway - I can't tell you how fun it is for me to walk into my room and see this new quilt on my bed knowing that my mom made it for me. I will treasure it forever! I love you Mom!

Oh - and she made me the pillow throws as well - I love her - she made me think I was going to have to make those myself so it was a fun surprise when she gave me those as well.

We just spent the last three days with my parents and my brother and sister and it was so much fun - they just left so I am totally sad knowing I won't get to see them until May when I am up in Salt Lake checking out Market.


My mom pieced the quilt and quilted it as well - I think it is beautiful. She told me how nervous she has been on whether or not I would like it, but no worries there - she did a beautiful job.



I absolutely love the cross-hatch in the borders. So AWESOME!! The quilting is just perfect for the quilt. She tried to do something different in each section of the quilt and it worked out really well.



This is the center of the quilt that she changed up a bit - I LOVE IT!


If you look closely you can see that she quilted "Clint & Judi" in the center. So fun!

Thanks again Mom - I love you so much!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

I don't cook - no really.............

I don't cook!! But I have been coerced into realizing that I must cook. The family has gone way too long with horrible food. Seriously - I should start a blog with all my failed cooking adventures. I just don't love to cook - I can follow a recipe, but it takes so long and I am completely uncomfortable in the kitchen. I would rather be quilting!!
Anyway - my super talented sister-in-law Shan was in town this past week and put together a meal plan with 15 easy meals that I can rotate through so my family has a better variety of food choices. So - this week I have made three different dinners - successfully. YAY!
With a plan it wasn't that bad - I picked out what to make and I had all the ingredients because Shan created a shopping list from her website, printed it out and we went to the store armed with the best deals and price matched the items to keep the cost down. You can read about our adventure here.


So - this incredible yummy sauce is the Wingers Sticky Fingers sauce - I still can't believe that it was made in my kitchen - it is sooooooooooooo yummy! Shan has the recipe here.


This isn't a food blog and I don't have the best food pictures, but this was incredible - I didn't realize you could get completely full on a salad. I guess making good food can do that to you. I (we - my sister is here) grilled some chicken then put it into the sauce to soak up the flavor, then added the chicken to our salad. So good.

I am trying hard to be excited about cooking - Shan helped me realize that this won't go away - we have to eat every day and I might as well start enjoying the process.

On another note - so sorry about the lack of quilting pictures in a while - I have had to work on a few "secret" projects that I just can't share now. I will be getting back to the quilting asap! To all my customers - I will get your quilts done - no worries, but I need more time in the day!!! I feel like I am saying that way too much.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

How it works around here..............

Okay - so the big question that I get all the time is "How do you do it all?" Well - I don't. At least I don't run our website, which is the biggest part of our business. I think it's about time that I make sure Clint gets credit for all the hard work he does. He works long days so that I don't have to. I get to be a Mom for my kids.



Here's our inventory - it's organized and if I try to look, or move any of it - I will get in trouble. This may not look like a lot of inventory, but it is always moving with orders out and UPS coming in everyday. Clint knows where everything is, he knows how much we have and he does all the ordering, re-ordering etc.... He answers all your emails (unless you have a quilting question) and takes care of all the customer service.



Shipping supplies and paper - again, organized. Clint is a super organized person and I am the complete opposite of that. I won't show you my desk right now! ;)


Here he is filling your orders - he has quite the system - he tried to teach me once, but I didn't do as well as he would like. :) So, if you are ever wondering who packs your fabric - Clint does, and he's a one man show. He tries to get everything out as soon as possible, but he is just one man!


He packs the orders and puts them by the door - then he bags them up and the postman comes to our door and takes the packages from there.


One of Clint's favorite things is to put a pin in every country he has shipped to. He had a pin for every state in the United States, but it looked a little cluttered - anyway - black pins for every country we have shipped to and red pins for everywhere Clint has been.


So - there you go - he's an amazing man and I am so glad that we get to work together. I just tell people that I get do the fun part of our business - I get to design and long arm quilt and keep up this blog. Which reminds me - I have to get a lot done!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

FREE SHIPPING 'TIL MONDAY NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

February 2011

FREE SHIPPING - 3 more days - on top of all our sale prices!!!
Who doesn't love FREE SHIPPING??? Simply enter the code freeship during checkout in the coupon/voucher box, click on "recalculate," and you will get your entire order shipped for FREE!!!!! (Domestic Orders only on orders of 2 items or more)

For international customers, enter the code discount to get an additional discount off your order.

Not only that, but the FREE SHIPPING is on top of all our sale prices!!



Promotion ends Monday night the 21st, so hurry!!
Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend!
Clint and Judi Madsen
Green Fairy Quilts

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Basics Charity Challenge............


Please, Please take the time to read about the Basics Charity Challenge going on over at Cara Quilts. I have always considered Quilters to be some of the most giving people and I know that you can take a moment to go and give to a local shelter. Please - do what you can and be sure to go back to this blog post and comment - there are huge prizes being given away which makes it all the more worth it!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Sleeping through the night............


Life is so much easier when your baby sleeps through the night and I am happy to say that Noah has been sleeping through the night for a few weeks now. He's 3 months now and the best little baby! I love being his Mom - there's nothing better!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Jen's Quilt

Jen's quilt in her words -

The quilt patten is from Carol Doak's book, Mariner's Compass Stars. The pattern is the Fire and Ice quilt that is in the book. I modified the quilt slightly by reducing the star featured in the middle and added it to the four corners of the quilt instead of a solid square that the pattern called for. I began making the quilt in a class taught by the queen of paper piecing, Carol Doak herself at the Lowell Quilt Festival in Lowell, MA.

Most of the fabric is Timeless Treasure's Jacobean Arbor line which I've had for a few years now and is hard to find at this point. The rest is mostly Mark Lipinski's Elements line with a few additional blenders added in.

Here you can read about when she finished the quilt top.


Okay, from now on - I will be sure to get all the details of the quilts I quilt before I post about them, I should have done that already, but sometimes I just get anxious to post then end up having to find out and answer all the questions coming about who's quilt, where to get the pattern, etc....
Anyway - Jen's quilt! She did a marvelous job on this quilt and it was so fun to work on. I used So Fine thread from Superior Threads, and this little quilt took me 13 hours to do.


Since I took these pictures at night, I couldn't get the right coloring in all the pictures - but I did some swirls with circle filling for the turquoise fabric - that was very time consuming, but I love the effect it gives the quilt.


This coloring is much better and you can see the awesome effect of the quilting in the green - also time consuming, but worth it. I love it! I just marked the quilt with a disappearing purple marker and I used my 9 inch ruler to do the rest. It worked out so nicely because of how well Jen piece this quilt. It was very straight.



Okay - the back - I love it! I can't tell you how fun it is to take a quilt off. Every time I pull off a new quilt I get a huge rush of satisfaction knowing that "I did that." It really is so fun to quilt!




Well - another quilt finished, another one to get done. :)

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Attempt at fashion..... HA HA!!



Okay - so confessions here - I quilt in my sweats - I have, now let me count.....................oh I think about 20 different sweat pants - Clint hates them, but I happen to love being comfortable - but mostly because my jeans at this point aren't comfortable. So, last night on a whim I decided to go and spend my spoils for some new clothes, and hopefully make myself a little more attractive to the guy working behind me. I went to Maurice's and the girl was awesome! I told her I knew nothing about clothes because I am a t-shirt and sweats kind of a girl and she threw several outfits together for me. This is one of them and I happen to like it - my jeans are comfortable - because they fit and the top with the sweater is nice. I felt so much better going out today! Anyway - long story short - Clint told me my shoes don't match - What? Are you the fashion guru? Don't you know I do this to please you - not me, because I would rather be quilting in my sweats.


So - what do you think? I like these shoes - first time I didn't wear running shoes or flip flops out - don't they match my outfit? Help me - I need validation!! Please?? ;)



Okay - so another part I have to confess about myself is that I don't know what my natural hair color is - I was blond growing up and I am going to be going back to those roots - well - I will have roots, but I will keep you updated - if you even care!

Well - thanks for listening! Phew - it felt great to get that all out!

Oh - and I don't want Clint to look bad - he did like my outfit - he just doesn't like my shoes - but I usually just hear the negative - I don't know why...........