Sunday Finishes

This evening I finished quilting the latest of Hannah's quilts. Multiple fabric colors allow a wide variety of thread choices and I ended up with a gold/green Valdani 100% cotton thread. The bobbin thread is also Valdani a solid gold cotton.

The backing is a very pale green print and this color choice seemed the best. I decided to use a panto, I was unsure how well I would be able to see the thread, as it turned out it was a wise move!

Yesterday I began to sew the binding on another baby boy quilt and this evening finished it off making it a fairly productive weekend.

There is no batting in this quilt, the Minkee backing is enough.

He's Baaaack!

Our little guy is on the mend, PTL, fever down and he is eating and playing.

He and Daddy came for dinner this evening and what a joy to see him running around laughing and chasing the two Aussie Terriers, Button and her friend Tiki [who is having a "sleepover"!]

Whew, that's a relief it was quite a harrowing week until the antibiotics kicked in and the fever stayed down. He still has the chesty cough but that will take a while to clear, meantime no swimming and I know he is missing his pool time.

This was the first real illness Matthew has had, he has been wonderfully healthy just a couple of sniffles that may have been allergy related. It was very hard on his Daddy to see his little boy so sick and feel helpless to do anything immediate to make him feel better. I suspect that it was a bit of a shock to his Dad to experience this part of parenthood, those of us with older children all know how it is to sit up with a feverish miserable little one and have so little we can do.

Goes along with the joys of parenting, no avoiding the tough parts is there?

AZ Huggy Bunch met today but I failed to get pics. We did however all make some progress and although we were missing two, Shayla and Alissa, we had a new quilter join us, BJ brought her friend Donna. It was all good as always, fun, food and fellowship and some sewing too, LOL.

Wordless Wednesday, More Water Baby!

He needs prayer, he has pneumonia.

More Quilting!

Today BJ came to sew with me, she working on scrap blocks while I managed to get a couple of backings prepped for flimsies so they are ready for the LA when I am ready for them!

BJ had to leave earlier than usual for a family event and then I managed to get Andee's beautiful sampler quilt finished.

It's for her nephew who has joined the navy hence the navy themed backing!

The thread is a nice fine, shiny red, don't know the brand because my friend Gale gave it to me along with a couple of other colors from a batch that she picked up at Houston QS. I used it top and bobbin and I like how it quilted in, showing just enough of the quilting on the front and blending on the front and back so as not to distract from the piecing or the print. The quilting is freehand "peacock feathers".

On a family topic, little master Matthew has been ill this week, Friday his Daddy took him back to the dr. because along with the upper respiratory symptoms he had a fever, 103.2.

He has crackles [or rales, sounds of some "junk" in his lungs] so he is on antibiotics. Poor little chap was so ill yesterday and still not good today. JW and I both thought he was wheezing earlier too so we are hoping that the meds will clear it up quickly it makes us feel so bad to see him in so much misery.

Anyway he was supposed to go to the shore with his mom and her family for a week but that has been delayed a day or two until he feels better.

I miss him already!

Playing with guest dog "Tiki" earlier this week.

French Braid Quilt

This evening I finished quilting another wall hanging of Leslie's. I love how it looks like a stained glass window.

It's quilted with Superior variegated Rainbow thread, great shiny thread that sews like a dream in my A-1 machine!

I quilted everything except that narrow solid black border, I was thinking it might be a good "stop" border-but would it look better quilted do you think?

AZ Huggy Bunch

Five of us met today and we had a visit from Andee too, so we hope to see her here again to sew in the near future.

BJ said Andee needed to try the baked banana pudding I had made and she put her stamp of approval on it!

As did the rest of us a bit later after we shared a lunch of Margarita pizza, chicken salads and roasted cauliflower salad!

Today we all worked on a quilt project together making scrappy red, white and blue Disappearing Nine Patch [D9P] blocks for a Quilt Of Valor. We got off to a good start........

then Alissa came and we had to break to check out her latest project- Alissa likes to sew tiny pieces together! She is probably the most "modern" style quilter among us, preferring these graphic sort of quilts. This will be a city skyline scene, it's going to be very cool!

I managed to catch our youngest member taking a phone picture of the progress we made on the QOV.

We ended up with the thirty blocks we wanted for a quilt that will measure around 60"x70", we are not planning to put borders on it.

Next time we will square up the blocks and sew them all together and I will quilt it with the flag and star design that works so well for these patriotic quilts.

We were all quite pleased with our work and our first community project as a group- I sort of think that makes us an "official" group!

A Wall Hanging

A couple of months ago I quilted that beautiful "Meteor Shower" quilt for Leslie for her GD's HS graduation. The quilt is not going to off to college but this wall hanging will remind her of the lovely quilt at home on her bed.

The view from the back.

Quilts Finished For Friday

At last count I had 12 un-quilted tops on my on pile! I made a promise to myself to get them finished and this past week I crossed two off the list. They are both orphan block quilts the blue one I showed a few days ago and then there is this one, a compilation of the leftover fabrics from three other quilts!

The backing too is left over fabrics from other projects and as has become my habit of late the binding is cut from the extra fabric from the back- I like scrappy bindings especially on a scrappy quilt! It's quilted with red thread and peacock feathers.

Now still there are another ten, and I will try not to add to the pile until it gets a little shorter. Try, I said, the operative word...............

Potholder Blocks And Quilts.

The national leader of a military support group I belong to has retired from the position and the other members decided to honor her with a "Potholder Quilt". You can find an explanation here.

The plan is to make our potholders with a 12.5" Civil War block design and CW repro. fabrics.
I hadn't ever heard of the idea but I wanted to contribute and time being of the essence I chose a simple two colored Churn Dash block. I grabbed the first two fabrics that came to hand from one of my CW collections and whipped mine out in haste this morning .

We are meant to write our names and the state we represent on the front but I had to put mine on the back because the writing wouldn't show on this busy fabric.
It goes off in the mail to the recipient today and when she gets all fifty [ or maybe more, some states have more than one coordinator] she will have enough blocks for a large quilt!

AZ Huggy Bunch

Five of us met on Saturday and all made some progress. BJ brought turkey wraps and deadly [for our figures] brownies for lunch, Lauren and Shayla brought their wonderful chicken salad and I had made fresh biscotti.

BJ showed off her latest finish, now bound and needing just the label. We all love it.

Here is Lauren's work so far on her "Rattlesnake" quilt - she has decided that she will need to make eight more of these PP blocks to have a more useable sized quilt.

I finished binding this orphan block quilt.......

and cut up the fabrics for another baby boy quilt.

Shayla learned to machine applique and I forgot to take pics, and Alissa worked on her cityscapes quilt, I promise photos from these last two next AZ.HB meeting.

Our next full meeting will be in two weeks and we are planning to make patriotic blocks for Quilts Of Valor for Wounded Warriors. We will pool our red, white and blue fabrics and make scrappy D9P blocks.

Wordless Wednesday, Two Year Old Water Baby!

BJ's Quilt

The past week has been very busy, young Matthew here, a family party or two and a little health issue! Then when I wanted to blog, Blogger kept telling me that I was "not the author of any blogs"! Hmm, last time I checked I maintained two blogs, the other one gets much less attention, it's for the Colorado Chapter of "Home Of The Brave Quilt Project ". I need to put a link in my side bar from this blog, there is a link to the website but that's very out of date as I have no one to help me with the HTML.

This is the first of BJ's quilts to be "professionally" quilted and she is very excited.

It's a really pretty quilt and in keeping with the organic nature of the fabrics I chose to quilt a meandering leafy vine in the main body and a leaf border.

The thread is Superior Sew Fine in a light green and the batting 100% Hobbs cotton.

BJ stopped by to pick it up after work and has challenged herself to complete the binding by Saturday when our AZ Huggy Bunch gathers again.

Last Saturday BJ,Lauren and I sewed and I finished the shams to go with the red,white and black quilt I gave to my brother recently- I used a scrappy D9P second generation design.

I have to mail these off to Australia.

Matthew's New Shoes

Last year I took Matthew to the Stride Rite store for new sandals and finally got around to repeating the act this year for shoes that would fit his much larger feet - and also because I was tired of replacing these after they fell off ! He has other shoes but these seemed to be the more frequent footwear of choice.

With apologies to all "croc" fans, I cannot wear them, they fall off my feet to begin with and Matthew has the same problem! I persuaded GF to come along and we headed for the Mall.

First stop, the Stride Rite Store, right across from the small one's play area which BTW, Matthew loves!

We had anticipated some protests from the young fellow about shopping before playing so we sneaked into the store keeping me between Matthew and the playground!

Fortunately the first pair he tried on worked so, whew, that was a relief, then off to the playground.

The next 40 minutes or so entailed much climbing.........

always up the down, you see.........

sliding..............

running ...........

falling..........

all thirsty work!

Until GF said "time for ice cream" ! No pics of our stop by the Gelato shop, I was too busy sharing with Matthew!

The "new shoes" boy!

Do you see that he is wearing one of the Aussie shirts I brought back from our recent visit DownUnder.