If you're familiar with the Harry Potter books/movies, you'll recognize Hagrid's cottage above. Barb from New Jersey just visited the theme park at Universal Studios in Florida and she posted about it on her very interesting blog: Fun With Barb and Mary. 
Today we stop to honor our veterans. 
This beautiful "Little Red Zinger Quilt" was made by Bari Berger of Missouri and featured in the Blogger's Quilt Festival on her blog "My Crazy Quilting Life." See more photos there.
Diana Sharkey of Mt. Kisco, NY made this quilt called "That's Graphic." It won Honorable Mention in a recent show. I'd like to get a good close look at this. Beautiful quilt, Diana.
Kelly at the Pinkadot Quilts blog in Downingtown, PA had a recent post showing how she makes the handles for her basket blocks. (Zig-zag machine applique, sew inside curve first.) I laughed when I read her comment: "If it's a little off, so much the better." Haha. I think the handle is right on the money; it's the basket that's off! I like it.
It seems we all love spider web quilts, and we've seen some wonderful ones on the blogs this year. I love Kelly's version: in the area where we often use a "background" solid fabric, she used the "stack and whack" concept and repeated the same image in groups of four. What a great idea! And the rick-rack emphasizes it. Nice job, Kelly! 
Alia took this photo at a recent meeting of the Muscat Quilt Guild in Oman. You can see many more on her blog: Coffeebean's Dailies. This colorful quilt by Samira is one of my favorites.
Nancy in Florida made these adorable dolls for needy children. You can read about it on her blog: Quilted Potpourri. Now that's some shirt! Nice job, Nancy.
Today the Blog Tour stop is Kathy Mack's blog: Pink Chalk Studio. Look what I found when I went there. A Japanese selvage with the best color windows I've ever seen! All different animal shapes. Yayy, Kayo Horaguchi!
Please make a healing heart quilt block for Myra who is battling cancer right now in New Zealand. Her friend Karen Jones says it will be a big encouragement for Myra to receive heart blocks in the mail from us. Karen should know. When she had cancer all her quilting buddies made the blocks for the quilt shown above. Karen is doing well now, and this quilt is a very special keepsake. (By the way, Myra made three of the blocks in Karen's quilt.)
I just finished this Asterisk quilt which will be raffled to benefit my Mom's nursing school alumni association. I designed this block which was the Empire Quilter's Block of the Month last year and appeared in Quiltmaker magazine too. The link to a tutorial is in the sidebar at right. (I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this one!)
One of the nurses made this label. Didn't she do a great job? She also made another little one with my name on it, and I put it in the other corner of the quilt.
My friend Jackie Kunkel of CV Quiltworks in Canton, CT did the machine quilting. Isn't it beautiful? Jackie is a fabulous quilter; one of her customers sends her quilts all the way from Spain to have Jackie quilt them!
It's challenging to make a quilt that you think will appeal to a large group of people that you don't know. But I like how the solids go with the bright Kaffe prints and the quiet background prints. I think it looks modern, but not too wild. Mom likes it too. 
This is how I feel about my 1,000th post. I love doing this!
Like a big pile of selvages, the Selvage Blog blog now contains 1,000 posts! Hard to believe, especially since I worried that I wouldn't have much to say when I started. That obviously hasn't been a problem.
This creative Selvage O'Lantern Quilt was made by the talented Riel Nason of "The Q and the U" blog from Canada. She really knows how to manipulate those selvages, doesn't she? She talks about working with selvages on her blog. It's interesting. Riel, you are a selvage rockstar!
When I told Megan at C&T that we were following the Blog Tour on the Selvage Blog, I asked if they'd like to provide a copy of The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman for a give-away here. She said, "Great idea!" So leave a comment today to enter the drawing. Winner announced tomorrow. The quilts shown above are from this book.
C&T is coming out with a new book: The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman, and they're sponsoring a Blog Tour which starts today and runs until Nov. 6. There will be lots of give-aways, interviews with the author, and some surprises. You can follow the whole thing right here by clicking on the Blog Tour link each day.
If you've seen my quilts, you know that I really put my heart into the piecing. But when it comes to the quilting, I just want to get the job done without ruining a good top. So I use my Juki 98Q to sew parallel wavy lines across the quilt. I'm afraid that if I tried to make them straight, some would be wavy. So I just go with wavy right off the bat. If I plan to enter the quilt in a show, I make the wavy lines closer to each other. That's my idea of heavy quilting.
But look at these awesome free-motion filler designs by machine quilting genius Leah Day! She has challenged herself to come up with a new pattern every day! And you can watch videos about how to do them. Her website is Day Style Designs. See 365 different patterns like the ones shown in this post: The Free Motion Quilting Project. For the latest on what Leah is up to, visit her blog. She has an excellent post on buying sewing machines too.
I think discovering Leah's work will have a big influence on my quilting life by enhancing the appearance of my quilts and adding more fun to the process of making them. Wowzers!
The pattern designs are called "Fossil Bed," "Little Hands and Fingers," "Space Star," "Spaghetti and Meatballs," and "Elodea" (listed from top photo to bottom).
I've seen gorgeous machinie quilting before, but the difference here is that I think I can actually do these! I'll let you know how I make out. Thanks to Liz Broussard who made the brown selvage quilt (that was featured here a few days ago) for telling me about Leah. I love how inspiration spreads through cyberspace!
Hovding in Sweden has come up with an inflatable bicycle helmet that starts out like a protective collar (see below, left), but it has an airbag that inflates on impact. Actually, it looks like it inflates before impact, judging from the crash-dummy tests on YouTube.
We seem to be finding some interesting headgear lately: hat with attached beard, brain-hat, and now this! It's only a concept; not yet available for sale. (P.S. I like that black dress. The pony tail, not so much.)
This wonderful Brown Selvage Quilt was created by Liz Broussard from Houston, TX.
