I recently taught at a retreat held at

"The Ranch at Possum Kingdom Lake".

There were eight ladies from the McKinney area and we had a great day.

They were a lot of fun to be with and I enjoyed teaching in such a beautiful venue.

The Ranch is a gated community on the Brazos river with gorgeous views of the river and ranch land.

 This is the entrance gate. 

 The home where the retreat was held was a stone structure decorated with a Texas theme.

This is the the living room

and the staircase to the bedrooms.

The upstairs bedrooms were all decorated around a theme.

The bluebonnet room was blue and white. 

Notice the headboard made out of a door and crown molding.

The blue and white quilt was perfect.

The fish room had a fish over the bed and a great bookcase made out of a canoe. 

The cowboy room had rustic bunk beds.

The western room had an Indian to guard everything.

The master bedroom had a rock fireplace with boots and a great rabbit on the mantel.

Take a look at this bath tub!

This ironing station was one of a kind.

The ladies worked hard and made great progress on their

Evening Star or Shining Star quilt tops.

 I love looking at the different fabric choices everyone makes.

The fellowship with such wonderful people is what really makes my job fun.

I also want to announce the winners of two contests.

The contest on my blog as a guest blogger for The Quilting Gallery was won by Sandra Keesee.

  The winner of the contest on dellaQ Textiles was Christi Scheffel.

Congratulations to both of you.  

I am a guest blogger on The Quilting Gallery.

I am certainly honored to be blogging with the others in the group.

Visit the site to read all the great blogs.

There are some fabulous giveaways going on so be sure to read about those.

This is what I will be giving away.

I have exciting news.

I have a quilt on Page 20 of the Spring 2009 issue of

Better Homes and Gardens Quilts and More magazine.

It is a very simple but fun quilt.

Be sure to check it out.

I also have new fabrics that I am playing with.

They are from Moda Fabrics.

This is The Caroler by Mary Engelbreit.

 This is Snippets by American Jane.

I am using the Jelly Rolls, Layer Cakes, and Turnovers 

in a new series of Kindergarten quilts.

I will post pictures as I make the samples.

Today I received email from two separate quilters. I would like to share their pictures and stories with you.

They both sent pictures of quilts they had made using my patterns.

The first one is from Cecelia. She wrote

Debbie-

I just want to thank you for the Simple Stars, Beautiful Quilts booklet and the Broken Star pattern.

I'm putting the borders on my very first one -- a king size for a customer, and it has turned out great.

Also, thank you for the mystery....it looks like your Carpenters Star quilt but that would be such fun.

Here's a pictures before the borders and I will send a photo of the completed quilt once it's quilted. 

Hugs

Cecelia

Edna, TX

The second one was from Joanne

Ms. Maddy,

We emailed a couple weeks ago and I told you how much I appreciated your patterns.

Below is the Texas Star quilt, queen sized, I made from your book (Southern Stars).

Close up view

It is for my graphic designer/illustrator daughter who works in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn.

Last June she and I bought some vintage fabrics at the Brooklyn General Store, with this project in mind.

Then I built out the palette locally mainly with Amy Butler prints.

With my husband out of town and a flexible work schedule, I cut & sewed this quilt in 3 ½ days.

Now it is with my wonderful machine quilter,

Paula Rostkowski, www.aquilterswork.com, and she will quilt the light green fields with feathered paisleys.

Paula is super, if you are ever asked for a reference for a machine quilter in northern Illinois/northern Chicagoland.

Thanks again for the great patterns

Joanne

Wouldn’t you love to go shopping for vintage fabrics in Brooklyn.

Infatuation 

I know you fondle it when you wander through your favorite quilt or fabric store. 

You run your hands over pillowcases in the department store.

What fabric can make you consider giving up chocolate or wine? 

For me, it’s silk.  How about you?  

Admit it, you want to wrap yourself in it!

Hello there!  I’m Della Quimby, owner of della Q. 

That’s my boyfriend’s dog, Lucky.  She is as sweet as she looks. 

I’m basically her butler; I open the door to let her in and out all day long.

Are you participating in Debbie’s latest contest? 

Be sure you join in to win a bundle of della Q’s taffeta silk.

All you have to do is go to my website della Q and sign up to receive my newsletter. 

Our fabric is made in Vietnam. 

We have been using our fabric in the manufacture of our

knitting needle cases and bags. 

Have you seen them? 

This is our most popular needle case, The Que™ for circular needles.

Many of my customers were starting to ask about just buying my silk. 

At first, I said, “I don’t sell just the silk”. 

Stupid!  I quickly realized that if I spend time in Vietnam

selecting fabric and designing our pieces,

why couldn’t I just have the fabric manufactured for quilters and sewers? 

TaDa! della Q Textiles!  Ok, it wasn’t that easy, but let’s pretend it was. 

Check out our silk collection, including kits with Debbie’s patterns.

I spend about three to four weeks a year in Vietnam

working with our production process. 

Have you been?  You should go. 

The food is great, the people are amazing and the textiles are luscious. 

The currency is the “Dong”; my boyfriend thinks that is really funny. 

I know, immature.  Check out all the vibrant colors.

Blah, blah, blah.  Enough about me, let’s talk silk. 

What’s the secret to working with it?  Fusible interfacing.  That’s it. 

Fuse it before you cut it with an ultra lightweight interfacing

so you don’t change the hand. 

I’ll share another secret with you about della Q silk. 

It’s washable. 

It does take on a bit of a vintage look, but frankly, I quite like it. 

The piece below was washed in a front loader with a mild detergent and then air-dried. 

It also tends to come out a bit brighter. 

More Contest Fun

We had so much fun with our contest on this blog that

I want to tell you about a couple of current contests.

 The first contest is being held by my friend and colleague

at della Q.

Della designs and imports silk taffeta.

She has beautiful finished products designed for the knitting

 industry and absolutely gorgeous silk taffeta yardage.

She sells to retail customers and also to wholesale customers.

If you are a shop owner be sure to check out the wholesale area.

Della will be giving away six fat quarter bundles that equal

NINE YARDS of silk fabric.

That is six bundles to one lucky person.  

All you have to do to enter the contest is go to her website

della Q and  sign up for her newsletter.

This contest will end February 28 @ midnight.

As many of you know, I am new to the blog phenomenon.

I would like for you to let me know what some of your

favorite blogs are and why.

I would love to visit them to see what is of interest to all of you.

Check back tomorrow because Della Quimby from della Q

is going to be my guest blogger for the day.    

We have a winner!!!

She did her project called Jill's Quilt under the name jkozole77.

Be sure to take a look at it on Fabric Matcher.

This contest was so much fun!

We had lots of projects and great comments from everyone.

I think all had fun doing the projects on the Fabric Matcher website. I hope you will all continue to play on that site.

Be sure to look for the featured fabric Soiree by Lila Tueller for Moda Fabrics.

It should be in your local quilt shops soon.

Thanks again to all who played.

We will announce the winner of the contest tomorrow.

There are only eight days left to enter the contest to win a big fat quarter bundle of

Soiree fabric by Lila Tueller & Moda Fabrics.

We are in the process of updating the contest entries.

 Debbie has been under the weather this week and when she is feeling better we will get the blog updated with additional details.