How fun to have my Quilt for an Hour project quilted!  I did an overall freehand feather.  This is going to go on our sofa in the family room, and will look so pretty there.  It’s just waiting to be bound, and that will happen next Wednesday at our Daystitcher’s group.  We have a group of women who all like to quilt, and we bring some kind of hand work to work on most every Wednesday.  Our local library allows us to reserve a conference room, so no one has to play hostess.  It’s a great time to finish bindings!  (Note:  The colors are really an old gold and soft yellow.  The photo below on Day 7 is much more accurate.)

I think it’s wonderful that Judy Laquidara made this quilt pattern available to us, and it was a lot of fun to do it in daily increments of about an hour.  I also found out that I like to take my time and enjoy the process, and I don’t think I EVER finished a segment in an hour, but that so doesn’t matter.  I enjoyed it from beginning to end.  Thank you, Judy!

I finished Day 8 on the Quilt for an Hour quilt last night, and it’s done!!!  I love it.  I will post another photo when it’s quilted, as the only difference from the photo below is the borders.  What a nice pattern.  Thank you, Judy!

A note to local quilters:  Sandi Andersen, formerly of our area, now in Henderson, has a blog!  I have placed a link to her blog on the right-hand side of this page.  So a big “HI” to Sandi.  We’ve missed her, and it will be fun to check in with her and see what she’s up to.

I’m up to date on Judy L.’s fun star quilt.  Today we put the segments together, and it looks great.    I really like this quilt, with the secondary pattern behind the stars and the way the sashings weave in and out, and it’s a nice lap size.  It looks like all we have left is to add the borders.  Woo-hoo!!!

Day 5 we were to complete the 24 star blocks.  Since I was a day behind, it was a busy afternoon, but I made it!  Here are the blocks laid out, without the light and dark sashings that make the quilt look so unique.  It will be fun to do the final construction and get all the components together.  None of my star fabrics are a solid, but they all read pretty solid from a distance.

Well, I was determined not to get behind in my quilting for an hour, but going out of town for a couple of days put me in that position.  Only a temporary set-back!  I completed Day 3’s assignment of making the star point blocks with the darker fabric, and I have 1/3 of the sets sewn together for Day 4.  I am very happy how the blocks look.

I also worked on my box exchange block for DayStitchers quilting group.  I have Joan’s box this month.  Using the supplied pattern and assorted fabrics, we are to make a chicken block that represents our personality!  This is just too much fun to leave alone, and I got my chicken fused to the background block.  She’s just too cute.  Next I’ll blanket stitch around the components of the chicken.  Then name her!  We are to embroider the name we give our chicken (which is to include our name) on the block.  I’m thinking of “Coo-coo Sue”, but am open to suggestions?

I feel like I’m in school again, striving to keep up with my “homework”.

I finished today’s “assignment” of half the star-point blocks made using the light background.  They went together well.  My first time to use the TriRecs rulers, which I’ve had forever but never used before. 

Colors are off in this picture.  Seems to be when I use the flash.  It washes it out too much, then have trouble getting it back.

The weather feels more like April right now, but we should be warming up a little more each day as we head towards the Memorial Day Weekend.  Wow.  Means May is almost over.

–Sue

For the first day of sewing on the Quilt for an Hour project that Judy L. has organized on her web site.  It’s been fun to gather the fabrics (mostly from stash — I did add a couple of new fat quarters), cut them out, and today to finally start sewing.  Today we made the light/dark half-square triangle blocks.  In the photo, I just laid out the components of a block to see how it will come together.  It’s always exciting to see how things are going to come together!  It took me closer to two hours to finish the blocks, but they are perfect, with the sew-it-oversized/trim-it-to-size method.  Can’t wait to start making the blocks!!!

Another busy day, although more normal weekend activities and less sewing.  However, I did get most of the cutting done for the Quilt for an Hour project, which starts tomorrow.  I’m satisfied with my fabrics, and can’t wait to start sewing them together!  I also got some things ready for our guild meeting tomorrow night, so a lot of busy-ness and not a lot to take a photo of.  It was a great weekend!

–Sue

I decided to participate in Judy L.’s virtual Quiltathon.  After having my Saturday traditional leisurely breakfast with friends, I came home and spent the rest of today (and night!) sewing.  I have been collecting fruit fabrics for a while, and yesterday just seemed like the day to start turning them into a quilt.  I was going to make a snowball quilt, but the fruit are too pretty to cover up the corners.  Then I decided they needed to look like they’re in baskets, so after a trip to the quilt shop, they are framed in a wicker-looking fabric.  The quilt will finish 7 blocks by 9 blocks, but I’m tired of sewing the rows together and need to go to bed!

Here is a close-up of the quilt top.  I am going to  border it with Fruit Ladies fabric (which is a hoot), so I inserted some four-patch stack-and-whack type blocks into the fruit.  I think this quilt will be a great picnic or going-to-the-beach quilt.

–Sue

> Our DIL Lynn is from China, and all her family is still in China.  It appears the earthquake is several hundred miles from her home area, so that is a good thing for some of us, not good for others.  It’s hard to comprehend these natural disasters that take so many thousands of lives.  Please remember them in your prayers.

> We have a new kitchen TV.  Since we do so much of our TV-watching in the kitchen, we upgraded to a flat wide-screen LCD TV set.  The change is pretty dramatic because our old TV was so bad.  The most fun I’ve had is changing the screen view to “Wide” during The Price is Right and adding 30 or 40 pounds to each of TPIR models (no noticeable change to Drew).  Just a little revenge, since DH failed to comment on my haircut last week, but today noted that “Gabrielle always parts her hair in the middle”.  Take that, Gabrielle! 

> Week’s Plan:  I need to baste a customer quilt for hand-quilting, Wednesday is our DayStitchers handwork group (my highlight of EVERY week), I need to finish up a friend’s wedding quilt (the Irish Chain pictured somewhere below), fit in some laundry somewhere, and shop for a wedding present for a 5/30/08 wedding.  Sounds like a pretty fun week!  I’ll try not to mess it up.

Sue