IT'S ABOUT TIME !!!

 

Hello to all my reader friends , I feel very embarrassed about my sporadic post, anyhow I have some photos of my projects ,above is a photo of my fat quarters that I had purchased on my trip to the states a couple of years back I washed and hung them out to dry and I loved how they look ,so I took a photo to share.  This is taken at my mom's house in Lamia.

This is a footstool that I made for my dear friend Zaharoula I made a cover for it and did some applique on the top.

This is me in my studio ,which doesn't look like this anymore .I will post a new photo soon .

Here I am in the process of changing it.

This is Vivianne Andersson a blogger from Sweden that found my blog and had by chance come to Athens for a Conference .  She came to my shop for a visit is was such a pleasant quilty visit .

This is my last years student Dora and her quilt , isn't it beautiful??

My last years students from left Liza,Dora,Elena with their quilt projects.

This a friends daughter which is a quilt admirer ,and with a patchwork bag that I had made that she loved and I gave it to her ,doesn't she look great with it.     Thank you for visiting and I will be back soon now that I got back on the horse . Wish all of you well and will try to make time to visit some bloggs  which I truly miss.  Theodora

AWAY BUT BUSY

 Hello and here I am finally, I hope all my friends are well and busy as I quilting and making various projects which makes me happy .  I have been busy with organizing my studio in my store . I have some wonderful news ,I started to teach quilting that is why I have been away from blogging . It was a lot of work trying to make space to put in a couple of tables and to have enough room to move around soooo here is what I have been up to.

  I started some projects of course ,I began making houses and made more smaller one's with the left over pieces which was a lot of fun.

I also cut into some beautiful fabric my dear friend Cyndi had sent me a while back ,they are so beautiful that I just couldn't decide what to made with them ,I have the blocks sewn up ,but not put together yet I can't wait to do that and load it on my quilt table to be quilted .

   The desk table  was given to me by the lady across the street ,the store across the street was finally rented out to a lady that turned it into a translation center sooo she didn't need this that was left by the previous renter ,lucky me I got it and it worked out beautiful.  I was looking for something like it and it is more that I dreamed , it even has drawers and two shelves and a little cupboard on the side that I sit .   I had just received my new  Janome 1600 ,  I have already quilted around 5 quilts with it .  I had mentioned on a previous post that I was waiting for my new machine to arrive and Marilyn had suggested that if I name it ,it will work better, so I name thee Marilyn and she works great for me. 

This is my friend Matoula she had come to town for a couple of days and I showed her how to cut ,she is a new quilter and if you read on an earlier post she had come to the quilt con. in Thessaloniki that took place in Sept.

I made this as a sample to make with my quilt students  I made some simple applique shapes.    They have completed the top and this coming Thursday they will put batting and backing and start quilting it some will make it a pillow some a wall hanging .   I will try to remember to take a photo when they come I keep forgetting to do that .

This is a needlepoint heart that I picked up at the flea market and I just added triangles around it ,I don't know what to make it into yet  probably a table cover I think would be nice.

This pile is a bunch of shirting scraps from a shirt market across the street that they had given me and I saved them and I am making a bunch of log cabins ,I love the log cabin, so I got them out one day and started cutting into 2 inch strips. I also made sale boat appliques ,but forgot to take a photo, I will do that on the next post

One nice Sunday I came in and removed a part of the cabinet that is built against the wall to store our painting collection I looked around the store where to put them and I managed to find some space here and there .   I had to cut the wood with an electric saw and then had help move the quilt table the other way around so I could have more space .

I made a ladder in order to display my quilts ,and I brought it down and painted it white .

And tada this is it !! how does it look ?? I am pleased with it .These are quilts that I quilted on my new machine.

This is a photo of me making the ladder it was supposed to be in a different order ,but anyway I worked real hard trying to nail and screw all the pieces of wood together after cutting them in pieces and measuring it took me forever,but it is done.

We know a man that has a stand at the flea market downtown and he stopped by one day to talk to hubby about some paintings that he has come across, I right away told him that I need a sewing machine, and he came back a week later and told me about this machine, and I got it with the table ,It stitches like a dream and it is an old stitchmaster made in Japan it is a 73 model the belt is crumbling and I need a new belt for it ,but other than that it is awesome I love it.

I went bird crazy a couple of day ago and I have half a dozen cut out and some are sewn and some need the buttons on the wings sewn ,I think they are cute .

I also got cupcake crazy and made a bunch of them , they are just hanging on a design wall that I made.

A  couple of weeks ago a friend told me there is a box with a cover down my the dumpster if I wanted it ,so I walked by and took it and painted it and made a cover out of some upholstery fabric samples that I had in my stash . I love it do you??

And this is how my studio looks like today ,I will be posting more often now that I am content with my studio , I still have things I need to do to make it better for me ,but for now I am good .  I hope every bodies studio is the way they would like it to make it easier and more enjoyable to sew .  I wish all of you a wonderful day and I truly miss blogging ,but as you can see I had so much to do and in between that keeping up with frame orders since it was always a frame shop/art gallery now is is a frame/quilt/gallery LOL . by for now.   Theodora

MY MACHINE QUILT FRAME

Hello there !! here I am finally after a long month of working long hours in the shop trying to make space for my Hinterburg machine quilting frame.   I had purchased it while visinting my mom in Oregon back in April soooo this has been a long wait to get it over here and waiting for the right time to get it set up .

In the begging it was just a box sitting and waiting for it to be opened and put together.

I was very fortunate to have Kristine and Thomas come down to Athens for the quilt exhibit that was scheduled on the 27th of Oct. and they came down a couple of days earlier to help me ,since they have one and Thomas had put together a couple of them.  Kristine and Thomas are the couple that organized that wonderfull Quilt convention in Thessaloniki in the city which they live .  It was a challange finding the poles and getting them to fit , they have diff. sizes here than the U.S. We had two to choose from, one was a bit to big and the other was just a tad to small so we had to find some special caps  that went around the smaller ones  to make them fit ,soo finding the poles was the hardest part.

We worked well into the night getting it installed properly .

kristine has been working with that particular frame and she knows exactly how it should be.

And here it is all complete my friend Madelyn came and helped put the wood pieces together  with Kristine ,while Thomas and I went hunting for the poles. 

And this is Thomas resting in my rocking chair , a well deserved rest.  Know you notice the machine is my old Singer since I don't have the knew machine (Janome 1600) has not arrived yet . And to top that my machine had tension problems  so , we couldn't quilt with it ,it would go and then the thread would break .  I looked at it carfully and discovered that a screw is missing from the bobbin case.

Here I am with my quilty friends ,Madelyn,Kristine and I .

 I am happy just getting it installed and ready and waiting for my new machine to arrive.  Since then I  have removed the machine and had it repaired .  I have been sewing a knew quilt top when business permits and that keeps me busy.  I wish all of you well I am very sorry that I haven't been able to visit or  reply to your comments from my last post ,but I will  be back to my old self soon .  xoxo Theodora

First Quilt Convention in Greece

 Hello to all my friends ,I have dropped out for a long while as you can tell.  So much has happened and the most exciting thing is the first ever Quilt Convention in Greece , the organizer is my dear friend Kristine in the city in which she lives Thessaloniki  And the place that hosted it was at the Cities Y.M.C.A  it is a huge beautiful classical building in the center of the City very near the water. I traveled  by train with my friends Madelyn and Rachel and the first thing we did after checking in at our hotel is to go out to eat and there they are above waiting for our dinner to arrive . There were six lovely ladies coming over from the U.S.A to teach various techniques in quilting ,about color theory ,art quilting,Dresden plate,cathedral window,stain glass window,free motion quilting,paper piecing and beginners quilting.

 Women traveled from all over Greece to take part ,my friend Matoula which showed an interest traveled from Aigio which is even further away.  Here we are the day before after setting up the quilts on a ride on an old Sail boat called Liberty which was built in 1934 on the island of Samos and took place in the 2nd world war and is now docked on the port on Thessaloniki , the new owner has turned it into a coffee /bar so for the price of any beverage you get to enjoy a half hour cruise on the  Thermaic Gulf 

 And we also took photos with the White Tower.

 And this is a photo of the quilts displayed ,there were tradition and also a Greek Challenge .  I entered my spider web quilt and a Greek Challenge .  I must tell you that Kristine had mentioned to me she needed a translator and just then Ada which lives in Sparti left a comment on my blog and I got to thinking maybe she would like to come up to be a translator ,so we connected and she came up and we even stayed in the same room with Matoula and I .

Here I am in my first workshop holding Notions Patricia's dog ,we are doing the Dresden Plate  our Teacher was Patricia McCartney from Trinity Texas . Patricia is the best she brought us all mats and cutters and sewing kits along with kits with patterns and olfa cutters it was like Christmas.

Everybody was excited and started working  and Patricia's dog Notions in sitting in the middle watching us ( he is a stuffed toy dog ,but don't tell Patricia that) Notions traveled all the way from Texas .

Here is Matoula proud of her work and Ada is sitting beside her.

We had lunch breaks and coffee breaks brought to us by Thomas and Kristine ,they were the best hosts ever they worked so hard to make this happen.

Here is Rachel and Ada on the Liberty after the second day enjoying a beverage ,but the ride was short due to too many waves.

Here is the Second workshop and my teacher was Patricia again,we did stain glass window and cathedral window, all the ladies are working hard to finish there windows.

Here is Kristine and Thomas serving us coffee and sweets we were so pampered .

A group photo with our teacher holding Notions .

Matoula with Patricia at the end of all the workshops. we all helped carry machines down stairs and to be taken back to the local Singer shop which was donated by the owner Alex. We visited his shop and purchased some supplies, he carries various products for quilting.

We walked in the rain.

On the last evening we went to Kristine's house to use her quilt machine which was so much fun ,we all got a turn , here is Rachel .

This is Ada having a turn.

And here is Matoulas chance ,Kristine is in the black dress always showing and explaining none stop.

This is my Greek Challenge ,I quilted it in ten days after putting it together and sewed the binding while on the train.

This is Madelyn's Greek Challenge.

This is the morning of the last day and the director of the Y.M.C.A is giving a her speech thanking everyone for there participation.

And here is Kristine which had given a wonderful speech
BUSINESS MISSION STATEMENT
TOQUILTORKNOT.COM
The misson of toquiltorknot.com is three-fold: to bring and expose quilting in all of its forms to the country of Greece, to use quilted gifts to love people less fortunate with the love of Christ specifically orphans, widows, the aged, and women who have been rescued from a life of trafficking, and to help poor, disadvantaged women establish viable business ventures using quilted products as their medium of sale.

 Kristine gave special thanks to the six women that had come to teach .  And her goal to make quilting known in Greece and how it can help women go to Kristine's site on the link above to find out more about Kristine.

It was a most enjoyable four days spent here at the Quilt Convention and I hope it will happen again next year . I also hope women sign up for quilt classes and more and more women start quilting .  I wish all of you enjoyed my trip and hope you have a nice day.