Spring is finally here and more OC!

Spring comes later at 9,000ft. and this year especially with all the late snowfall. The bulbs I planted last fall around Matthew's memorial are coming up & the daffodils & crocus are blooming, along with some little hyacinth I planted inside the deer proof fence. It seems that the deer have no taste for daffodils so it's safe to plant them anywhere. The bluebonnets are still developing their leaves but I found one blooming on the path that leads behind the house & I noticed some beside the road at the lower elevations. In a few weeks they will cover the entire area & everywhere we go up here there will be a sea of blue flowers.I am still working on OC steps 4 & 5, & hope to have them done before Bonnie posts the final clue next week. We have company arriving Sunday, nephew & family from Boston with 3 yr.old twins, so I might not get much sewing time the next week or so & I just don't want this to become another UFO. Here is my step 4 block & one block from step 5, I see a lot of red & blue & of course orange, so I'm thinking it might make a nice Quilt Of valor for a wounded warrior, what do you think? We have a lot of blocks left over but Bonnie has a pieced border in the plan, no doubt where the extras will go. I am pleased that I chose brighter blue & red for the yardage, I think they really help to distract the eye from all the ugly & weird scraps I used in the little blocks.This quilt will be entirely from stash, I have a large piece in the blue family for the backing,but I haven't made a noticeable dent in my stash strips so I must continue to make scrap quilts along with the planned projects.

Kaffe Fasset quilted & ordination pics

This evening I finished quilting the Kaffe Fasset. I thought that I would never finish the floral border, big mistake in my quilting design choice I should have done the same all over design ,as in the middle or a simple panto because with such a busy multi colored floral you can't see the thread so you don't know where you have been or what you have just done! I had chosen a variegated thread & didn't like the effect so I frogged then I had tension issues so I frogged some more, can't stand those railroad tracks & eyelashes! I think I need new tension disks for the bobbin case so I must order a few & some tension springs to have on hand. The black borders in this quilt went quite easily as did the Baby Butt feathers [as Nichole Webb calls them] in the main body of the quilt, but that floral border became tedious after the first side. I hope that Leslie doesn't hate it, I think it will look well on their bed but it's certainly not my favorite work. In spite of Leslie's meticulous cutting & piecing & reworking, there was still some fullness in places which was not too difficult to quilt out but I did spritz the more obvious areas with water then applied the hot hair dryer- that seems to take out a lot of poufiness but of course one must be sure of color fastness before attempting this. I can still see a few areas that aren't as flat as I'd like but probably not noticeable to others.
Here are a couple of photos from Kris's ordination-I love the one of her with Bishop Sandy Greene. Guess I need to get a couple of hours sleep-we are leaving early for the drive to CO. tomorrow-I have a tough time deciding what to pack of all my quilty stuff when we will be away for some weeks. I know that I need to get caught up on the OC Mystery, Bonnie posted step#5 today & I have yet to begin on step#4! I wouldn't want to run short of a project or the necessary fabric & the nearest QS to us in CO. is about 2 hours drive so I would probably order online. Thousand Bolts has a big Memorial Day sale ......I will probably need to get a few little bits & pieces......

Pink bargello

I am pleased to report another project done as I finished up the piped binding this evening. I have to make the label yet, that's a job for tomorrow. In the morning I have to take my car in to Andrew's shop for detailing, it is very overdue so it will be nice to have it spic and span!
Today I went to the Mac store at the Biltmore for a class on iPhoto, that's a great program with a lot of nice features. I took notes, heaven knows how one would ever remember everything otherwise. Next Saturday I am signed up for another Mac class in some of the basics, it may cover a lot of what I know already as the iPhoto class did, but it's all helpful.
Kris's ordination service Saturday was very moving, and Sunday she read the Gospel message for the first time. I wonder if she will ever become accustomed to her new title, "Rev.Kris "!It looks as if we'll be heading up to the mountain house shortly, the weather has to be better there, it was 110deg. in Phx today & the same predicted for tomorrow, that's 15 deg. above normal for this time of year. Supposedly we are to have a cool front later in the week that will drop the temps below 90, seems hard to believe but that's what can happen here, though we know that the triple digits are almost here to stay for the next few months.

Ordination Quilt

This week I have been working on creating this quilt for my friend Kris who is being ordained to the diaconate tomorrow. There are close ups of the quilting on my webshots http://community.webshots.com/user/aussieros
I love watercolor quilts, they are such "eye candy" for me and a very satisfying artistic process. I must have made nearly 20 similar to this for special occasions, birthdays, graduation etc, but most are a little smaller. I try to take pictures of all of my quilts but sometimes I just forget so my portfolio is incomplete.
The pink bargello awaits binding still, I want to do a piped binding as I did on this quilt, Monday I hope to report the bargello completion. Then it's back to the longarm to quilt the kingsize Kaffe Fasset and a Storm at Sea that is all batiks including the backing. Batiks can be a PITA on the LA causing skipped stitches especially when the backing is also batik so I am hoping this one will not be a problem as I need to get both finished before we leave for Colorado for about 6 weeks. One of the most recent QOV's was batiks and I had a lot of broken thread issues but that was during the timing /missing screw period so perhaps that contributed.I still haven't done step 4 of the OC mystery and the next clue is about due. I may not catch up until after we go to CO. -our guild up there meets Wednesdays at a church in Montrose to sew on projects of our own choosing, a weekly mini retreat that can be very productive with no family interruptions.Time for a cuppa then off to bed- I found a wonderful tea shop nearby called Souvia that has an exotic & wide selection of teas of every flavor & style, green tea, black tea white tea & Rooibus which is a decaffeinated herbal tea.We need to be at the church around 9 so I need to get cracking if I'm to get my beauty sleep!

QOV's done!

The QOV's were done a couple of days ago, I'm awaiting the names of three of the AZ Army National Guard from Lucas. There's no point in mailing the quilts out of state when we have combat wounded here in Phoenix.The pink bargello is perhaps 2/3 quilted, I seem to have been distracted by all kinds of other things the past couple of days and yesterday I had to frog a lot of quilting that had less than pleasing tension issues showing on the back. I am still transferring files & working at the set-up of the MacBook, today I spent several hours in a futile effort among other things trying to load the HP printer drivers finally making one of my two free "help" calls to Microsoft & getting some answers about Entourage. iPhoto seems t0 be my other major problem right now & it's a pain working back & forth between two computers, I really want to ditch the Dell! I'm way too weary to do anything more tonight!

Tucson trip

LA friend Debbie[a LA'er for AZ. HOB] drove to Tucson & we met up with Loretta, AZ. HOB Coord. & her friend Cathy. Of course the trip included some quilt shop retail therapy but I only spent what I had planned so I wasn't too bad! It was a long day, over 300 miles round trip plus a major forced detour on the way home, there is always some kind of "work" on the highways. In addition to my fabric purchases I came home with a couple more projects courtesy of Loretta, a quilt top & backing to be completed for donation & enough blocks for another QOV, both off her UFO list & onto mine,LOL! And from Loretta, two more quilt patterns & a book! I have unpacked & petted my purchases, which incidentally were all on sale, & here are the pictures. The marbley pieces with the coordinate are for a WHIMM, aren't they gorgeous? Then these sort of retros are Valori Wells , I love them & want to make a padded computer bag for my MacBook with one of them. Do you see a theme developing here, does it look as if I'm in a "brights" phase, ya think?! Do other stashers also find that your fabric falls into one phase or another of buying trend? As for these last two fabrics, the pink print is replacement for one of the many pinks I used in the Pink Bargello [previous post] & the yellow Ginny Beyer is a good stop border for the small Resurrection water color quilts that I make.
Last but not least here are pics of the two QOV's that I quilted Thursday after I finally got the A-1 retimed & the missing screw replaced. I hadn't been able to use it for a week & boy had I missed it! These are now trimmed & binding in place for final stitching, labeling & laundering before going to a military hospital to offer comfort for a Wounded Warrior.