Baby Shower Fun!

Today was a friend's baby shower and I was working on a baby quilt for her, but the record high pollen counts this past week really zapped my energy. So that quilt is not finished, but luckily I had a baby quilt in reserve.

So this is the quilt that I gave to my friend and she LOVES it!!! Once I finish the other baby quilt I'll put it aside for the next baby girl that comes along :)

I'm beginning to feel better so I hope to get back to the sewing room and get some things done. I hope you are all having a great weekend!

Home From Retreat......with swollen feet

I got home this afternoon from guild retreat and as always it was a BLAST!!!



This coming October Bonnie Hunter is coming to our guild to do a workshop and lecture. So Nancy, Judie, Fran, Belinda and I decided to all cut scraps into the pieces needed for the Pineapple Blossom and work on the pattern at retreat. So at 1pm Friday afternoon we put the scraps into piles and went to work on our tops!! I finally finished my top (36 blocks with sashing) at 5:30am Saturday morning and then headed to bed. Here's my top.....I still need to decide on borders, but I'm thrilled with it so far and I can't wait to take the workshop from Bonnie in October.


After lunch on Saturday I started working on the baby quilt that I need to have finished for a shower this coming Saturday. I used a Jelly Roll from Moda's Santuary line and a piece of tan coordinating yardage for the center squares. The center squares have redwork style machine embroidery using a varigated pink/orange thread. I finished this top in about 6 hours and managed to get to bed at 2:30 this morning.



This morning I got up at 7:30am and went to work on an old UFO. I now have the rest of my 4 1/4" Nine Patch block units sewn and subcut for my Blooming Nine Patch. This quilt was atarted in a class around 4 years ago. I didn't realize that I was so close to being finished with this top. Soon I'll be able to start putting the top together and then it will be ready for quilting.



Apparently my body is not very happy with me not taking the time to put my feet up. I was sitting at the sewing machine or in the car for 63 of the last 72 hours. So now I am sitting here with my feeties up and trying to make them go down to a normal level. Moral of the story...... take time to put your feet up when power sewing at retreat.



I am also happy to say that this was a Stashbusting retreat!!! Not only did I refrain from buying any fabric and managed to use quite a bit of fabric from my stash. Here's the report:

• Pineapple Blossom top - 7 yards of stash


• Girly Baby Quilt top - 4 yards of stash


• Blooming Nine Patch - 2 yards of stash (to replace one of the fabrics that I was short on from my original selection)

That is a total of 13 yards of stash used this weekend. I am sooo thrilled with this!!!

Quiltathon Saturday!!

Well I managed to find my sewing room and participate in the Quiltathon that JudyL is sponsoring thi weekend!!

The other day my daughter mentioned that she was invited to a friend's birthday party this Sunday and she asked me to buy said friend a gift card and then make a purse to put the gift card in. So I pulled out my purse patterns and found this one. My daughter and her friends are very much "into" Japanese anime and all things Japanese. So I made the purse using a dark blue oriental print and then a print that has some Kanji symbols on it for the lining.

The purse is all finished and the gift card is in on of the pockets, ready to be given at the party in a few hours.

And I couldn't resist snapping this picture of the kitties passed out on hubby this afternoon LOL. What a bunch of slugs LOL

April UFO

The number has been drawn for the April UFO challenge and this month's number will bring the Japanese Kanji Quilt to the top of the UFO pile. I made Churn Dash blocks using oriental prints and have embroidered different Japanese Kanji characters into the center of each block. This quilt will belong to my almost 15 year old daughter who is in love with Japanese anime and all things Japanese. I finished the top in time for her 14th birthday (May of last year) and it has been loaded onto the HQ16 frame once but got bumped for a customer quilt. So the backing is already pieced and the top is all ready to be quilted. Now to get it loaded back up and quilted in time for her 15th birthday (May of this year).