Snowstorm!

Headed back to Colorado for my guild's spring retreat, DH and I made a rather late start.

As we drove north the temperature dropped at each stop so by the time we got to Cortez there was a biting cold wind. The fellow in the coffee shop told us it was to be down to the 20's in Cortez tonight and I wondered then how cold it would be up here at 9,000ft!

Soon after leaving Cortez we ran into this-

and this..........

and this.........

visibility was getting worse......

These unfortunate folk who were driving a little too careless for the conditions.....

Then the storm slowed a bit and this lovely winter scene emerged......

This is Trout Lake.

We arrived safely, stopping down in Ridgway before coming up the mountain in order to find something to eat -Thai food, it was the only thing open at 8.45 pm!

The house was pretty chilly till the heat began to "kick it up a notch" and I have a microwaved rice-bags on my feet and my hands!

It's still snowing, I hope the roads aren't bad in the morning, I'm not happy driving on snow.

On the other hand, I am so happy to be seeing my CO. Huggy Bunch ladies tomorrow.

The retreat begins Friday morning, three days of sewing and fun and fellowship with the nicest group of quilters in CO-IMHO!

AZ Huggy Bunch

We met again Saturday to work on our quilting projects together.

BJ here with her version of D9P.............

and progress to date.

Lauren is making "Outside The Box" for her friend.........

and here her progress today, she has more blocks at home.

Shayla completed her quilt with the application of the label.

She also made another thread catcher [this one a gift for her Home Ec. teacher] out of this fabric below, from my stash. I have already made and backed a quilt with this fabric and there is yet more-I bought what was left on the bolt at BC's 75% off sale a year or two ago! I quite forgot to get a pic of the finished gift but I am trying to obtain one and will add it when it comes in!

Shayla also received her" baby quilt" from me- just a little late! I had made one for her older brother and really don't understand why Shayla never got one [I think maybe they were living out of state at that time] but when she loved my Brown Bag Challenge quilt I decided to gift it to her.......

As a young quilter with so much potential I thought she would appreciate the paper piecing and the custom quilting that make this quilt special!

And here is the label!

My project was a set of vintage hand-sewn Sun Bonnet Sue's I purchased from eBay a year or two ago.

There are twenty of them and I think that I have enough of the 40's repros from my stash to border them with the blocks, same as the sashing. It will be quite a good size then, about 66" x 82" large enough for a little girl's single bed.

Now I just need some granddaughters...........

Tammy's Quilt.

Tammy received her "pink and blue" baby quilt on Thursday and as you can see she seems delighted with it!

I have two more baby quilts to deliver but one is awaiting baby's name and the other goes to Aus. with me next month.

Fastest Ever HST Method!

Just when you think you have all the quickest ways another comes along! Friend BJ recently told me about a new[to us] way of making four HST's at a time, lightning fast!

Of course I had to put it to the test and decided to make HST's for another baby quilt I think it's the seventh this year already!

You begin by cutting two squares of your contrasting fabric, this works for any size square or triangle. I used 9" squares and got 6" triangles.

Place right sides together and sew all around the outside with a 1/4" seam.

Cut corner to corner both directions.

I took down a new tool to do the cutting, a rotating cutting board, boy does it make it easy to do multiple cuts on a single item.

You will end up with four perfect HST's so easy it's almost sinful,LOL!

A word of caution, if you are using directional fabric as I did for one, you will need to decide if you care if they all go different directions or else choose a particular plan and stick with it for every block. I chose the latter idea.

You can see that mine all came out exactly 6", but you could make larger or smaller depending on your original square.

Needless to say I am totally stoked on this, it is my new favorite quilting secret! By putting it on my blog I have blabbed to all and sundry now so I hope you can use this next time you make HST's-if you didn't already know about it!

PS. "Pirate " reminded me about the bias on the HST's-I did think about it and even wondered if it would be an issue but I sewed more than 40 of them together with no stretching. If you were concerned about it you could starch the fabrics before you begin, but I think as long as you are aware that you're dealing with bias, and reasonably careful you'll not have a problem!

My quilt turned out perfectly square.

Here is the completed quilt,

freehand folk-art flowers for the quilting motif. The clown fabric is one of my recent purchases, but the other two came from stash as did the backing,

which had to be pieced to make it large enough!

No label yet, we are not sure of the baby's name, though we know it's a girl.

QOV#5

This pretty quilt is a beautiful gift for another wounded warrior. Pieced by Angela Neff, I just finished the quilting this evening.

Once it is bound,labeled and in a presentation case it will go off to Alycia in CO. who distributes hundreds of QOV's each year to our wounded military heroes through her contacts with the base Chaplains.

The fabric on the back has the words, "Service" "Honor" and "Duty".

QOV #4

QOV #4 for the year, I want to quilt at least 1-2 / month for our wounded warriors, so I am right on track.Quilted with a yellow Valdani variegated thread with a flag and star panto, one that I use frequently for QOV's. The fabrics have stars so it seemed appropriate and I am very pleased with the result.

Newest Quilt Of Valor

Two more quilt tops came my way from Bernina Connection for Quilts Of Valor, QOVF.org.

Here's the first of those quilted with freehand peacock feathers.

I really like this scrappy traditional quilt.

The backing below, where you can see the quilting much better.

Hoping to get the second one on tonight, just taking a wee break from baby quilts, LOL.

The Twist And Shout Quilt

Lyn Brown's free pattern "Twist and Shout" looked like something I could use, simple, fast and easy but it appears that I spent a lot more time and effort than I did.

Wanting to demonstrate how easily it goes together, I pulled out some fabrics from stash that work into the pink and blue color scheme an expectant friend requested [it's a girl!]

The idea is to sew together a combination of two sizes of squares, then slice up the top and sew the pieces back together so the blocks are set on point with the side and corner triangles already done! Sound interesting? Well follow along as I use Lyn's clever idea to make this sweet baby quilt.

According to her pattern-which you can download free here, I cut 124 x 4.5" squares- for my quilt I used half pink and half blue. Then I cut 9 x 8.5" squares of a different pink fabric, remember I need to stay with pink and blue and I am working only from stash.

After sewing the squares all together you have the design above......

which you then mark into three sections...........

sewing along one quarter inch either side of your mark.

Then you-gasp- cut it apart like so.......

re-arrange the three pieces as below.............

sew it back together........

to end up with this-isn't it deliciously clever?!

It is quilted with Sew Fine thread in a light pinky peach with free-hand folk-art flowers.

This cute Easter Bunny fabric was in my stash just begging to be used for the backing!

The label will go on as soon as Tammy tells me the baby's name and don't forget, full directions and free download on Lyn's website.

Happy Birthday Two Year Old

Little Matthew is two today, how those two years have flown, and he isn't so little either, 36.75" tall.

Instead of making an entire cake, I made cupcakes, half with chocolate ganache and the other half with cream cheese frosting with a little orange zest for flavoring!

Feeding Daddy some..........he needs the sugar he has to study for a big test in the morning.

That was the one with cream cheese frosting...........

Now here's the chocolate, he loves chocolate, as do most of his ancestry including great Grandfather who will be 100 next month so it hasn't harmed him!

This one is a classic, he was so excited! Of course this was more sugar than he would normally have in months.

But then he settled down and got to the serious job of eating!

Happy birthday beautiful boy!