Great Saturday all around

Just came home from visiting my "Birding" quilt that is at the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton Virginia. I went with 53 of my guild friends on a bus to the show. It was one of the best days of my life. My friend Jean F (my new manager :-)),  had prepared a lot of surprises for me since I was the only one on the bus that had a quilt on the show. She had the whole bus singing a song for me as I got in the bus. It was before 6:00AM, mind you. She made a special hat and vest with everything birds. She helped me take pictures of the quilt at the show; and on the way home she had us all toasting with Champagne on the bus. I had a special glass with bird stickers. I feel like I have the "best of show" friends in the world. Thank you all for such a great day. Thanks Jean for being the best "manager" ever!

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This is what my design wall looks like today. I have 3 blocks completed for the Beyond the Cherry Tree quilt. They are not trimmed or pressed. The 4th one is in the process of "leaf audition." I am also working on 2 others that are in various stage of completion (not pictured). I need to buy some yellow thread to finish them. I am preparing a few more to work when I am away.







This next picture is the new cover for my hot pink Sony Cyber Shot camera. I have saved some of the salvage edges from a few fabrics to make a pin cushion. Well, change in plans. I made the cover instead. I started with a 8.5" square of pink dot fabric, and the same size batting. On top of the batting I did  sew the salvage edges overlaping each other ( the finished edge covering the raw edge), until the batting was completed covered. I did cut the square into 2 rectangles one is 3.5" X 7" and the other is 3.5"X 5". So the long rectangle is the one with the flap as the cover. I used a few more pieces of salvage as trim for the camera pocket; and now my camera is well protected in my purse.

Valentines day 2012

A very productive Valentines Day. I finished the third step for the "Takes 2" sew along. They are the red and white blocks. We got one extra clue to attach them together, so they are together. I did not use the paper piecing suggested. I have a Companion and a Easy Angle rulers and I can make most blocks with triangles using them. It is very easy to figure out the size of the strips you need. I just measured the size of the square on my paper piecing directions, added the seam allowances and cut the strips that size. In other words, you cut the squares, rectangles, triangles from the same size strips.
There are a lot of seams meeting on points, so I did press some of the seams open.

I also finished the BOM block for January. John from Quilt Dad was the designer. I made mine a little different. I made 2 striped pieces with irregular size strips. I did trim them to 4.5" by 8.5". I measured 3" from the left and the right corners of 1 of the long sides of the striped pieces. I cut a diagonal line between the corner top and the 3" mark on the bottom. This created the 2 striped parallelograms.
I use one of the trimmed triangles as a pattern for the black fabric. I just added seam allowances to this triangle and had my pattern for the background. I needed mirror image triangles; 2 of each.
Finally, I did sew the 2 background triangles to each stripped parallelogram and had my 2 rectangles. Just had to sew them together in the shape of the hourglass.

I miss my computer

My IMac that I did not like very much for the past 8 years is finally dead. Boy do I miss it! Serves me right.
The power system is dead and I paid a lot of money just to have some of the files recovered. That is why I have not been able to blog. I will not get another Mac. If it were a PC I could just take the hard drive and put in another computer; but Macs hard drive are behind the LED screen and it could be deadly to touch the wrong thing; even with the power off, it is still dangerous.  But enough of that.
I have been quilting some. I did finish the step 2 of the "Takes 2" and the photo is below.
I will be making step 3 soon. I don't like paper piecing very  much; and always change to regular piecing. But this time I will do as planned and make step 3 using paper piecing.
I will post other projects progress soon. I am trying this "new to me" laptop and see how it works.

PS. My "Birding" quilt will be on the Mancuso Show in Hampton, Virginia at the end of February. :-)