Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Airbnb

Are you familiar with Airbnb? We were introduced to it by friends of ours who use it. The Airbnb site has the best description of it:

Airbnb is a social website that connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay. Through their experiences on Airbnb, guests and hosts build real connections with real people from all over the globe.

Guests gain access to unique and distinctive spaces and immerse themselves in the culture of their destinations. We call that traveling like a human! Hosts can effortlessly showcase their spaces to an audience of millions, whether they have an urban apartment or countryside castle.

Our friends rent a room in their flat and they have used Airbnb to find rooms in various American and European cities. They told us about it and suggested that we offer the guest house.

So we did.

Ant it's been great so far! The cool thing is that you can find just about any kind of place to rent from a $10/night futon to a private tree house and everything in between. It works just like other internet-based sites with active feedback so that you can see if it's going to be a place you like.

We listed out guest house in September and are getting a couple of rentals a month. We're making a little mney but we are also meeting some really interesting people. We didn't know what kind of people would want to come stay "way out here" but it turns out there are 2 basic groups. We have the people from DC who want to get out of the city for a quiet weekend and we get people who are driving long distances on I95 and need a place to stay overnight. We are 8 miles off the interstate and about 2 hours south of Washington, DC and it seems to work out to be a pretty good half-way point for a lot of people. Because the guest house is separate people can arrive as late as they want and not worry about disturbing anyone.

Airbnb does a great job with communications and managing the fees and payments. You do have to check with your local authorities to determine any licensing you would need and taxes that you need to pay. Here we have local transient occupancy and federal sales taxes that I pay monthly. The sales taxes are file with my business taxes.  But even that is pretty straight forward. 

Recently I've started using it to try to find places to stay. With my food allergies I have to stay in places where I can prepare all of my own food and where people do not use fragrances. I was able to have some nice conversations back and forth with people and found a great place to stay for my next trip! Check it out for your next trip.

I don't want to leave a post without any photos or fiber content so I'll share this postcard.

I decided that I would give our guests welcome postcards. This is the design that all of our winter guests are receiving!

 

Blogger's BOM and Design Wall Monday

I don't have a lot for Design Wall Monday today but I do have the latest installment of the Blogger's Block of the Month on my wall.

It's not my best work for sure. I like the one on the left but I'm not so fond of the one on the right. I may replace those triangle edges with solid white. Ignoring how mine look, it's a very cool block designed by John at QuiltDad.com.  

Here are all of my blocks together. I was originally going to use white for the side triangles but knew that I would be sashing the blocks in white and thought that might be too much.  But I think those green pieces have got to go. This is the 5th block in the series and you can find all of the information about the project at Canton Village Quilt Works.

While I noodle that, go to Judy's blog and check out what everyone else is doing this fine Monday.

Coming Home Fabric Palette Projects

I am ending the Coming Home series with a lot of projects! If you are interested in the Coming Home fabrics you can find all of the information here.

A few weeks ago I made the Coming Home quilt . Between the quilt fabrics and the sample fat quarters that I made for the palette, I had lots left over.  I started with the same pattern as I used for the Color Palette placemats and made this set. I really like the gradient as the feature fabric. All of those different patches came from the one gradient. 

I also wrote up instructions for making these placemats and you can get it here.

Next I got out the Go! Cutter. I love this tool for taming scraps. Because I had lots of leftover fabric and because these are sufficiently manly fabrics I decided to try to cut out enough fabrics to make a Verteran's quilt.

There were lots of pieced strips so I cut tumbers from those and from the fat quarters. I was still short some tumblers so I peiced enough bits to cut 20 more tumblers. I have enough here for a 48 x 60 quilt and will use these strips (leftover from the quilt) for binding. I think that the pieced tumblers will make the quilt even more interesting. I will work on this at the next Guild Sewing Saturday.

With the rest of the scraps I cut out lots of other shapes trying to get the biggest shape possible from each scrap. I have a bin where I keep these. When I get enough of a shape I will create an ultimate scrap quilt.

Now you know that I am haunted by little bits of fabric. I just can't let them go! These cards were made from the trimmed raw edges.

I wove the background and stitched it directly to the card and then fused on 2 circles. The top one was first stamped with the gold leaf motif.

I had a little more time in the day so why not try some postcards! Some crazy peicing, a little stamping and some programmed stitces and now my February birthday cards are all taken care of.

I put these in the garbage can before I could change my mind and keep them. Chris has alread taken them to the dump and I miss them. I really must get some therapy for this.

I really enjoyed working with this palette but I'm very excited about the new one that I will introduce February 5th!

Coming Home Placemat Tutorial

 

Remember these?

I made them again using my Coming Home fabric palette so I've decided to call them the Coming Home placemants and you can find the tutorial here.

Reflections

There is a pond across the street that has 2 pair of Mallards on in. I see them almost every time we walk and I was hoping to get some photos. They must be camera shy because they weren't there when I tried this week. I will keep trying but meanwhile I will share these pretty pond reflections.