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. :-)

My "Birding" Quilt

Birds of a Feather, which I have renamed Birding

Details of Birding

More blocks with blue eggs

About 1 year ago, I saw the directions for this quilt at Humble Quilts blog. Lori was giving them away. I did not win them. But I did find out through Lori that it was a Black Bird design. One search at Google and I found out it was now a book called "Birds of a Feather." Amazon came to the rescue. I bought the book and have been making this quilt on my travels and during my quilting bee time. I did change some of the blocks a bit and I also made my own borders using the elements from the blocks. I still remember where I was when I made the blocks. The pears were all made in Granada, Spain, while I sat on a deck looking at Alhambra. I demonstrated to some ladies in Seoul, Korea how to do needle turn appliqué while making the long thin block with the 6 flowers facing down. I only know "thank you and please" in Korean, and they did not speak English; but we all spoke "needle work."
I like this quilt a lot. It was fun to make and it looks great in my house. Jan Struble from Durham, NC quilted it for me.

Denise the pig bank

This is Denise. I bought her last year at a Goodwill store. Let me back up. 

I find a lot of coins on the streets and put them in my shoe for good luck all day. DH always makes fun of me and tells me to "find a million dollars," I guess that would be "good luck." My thing is that one cannot be greedy.

So I decided that I was going to put all the money I found in 2011 on a bank and count it at the end of the year. Since Denise is a pig, I had decided that all the money would go to an animal shelter. So January 1, 2012, I opened up the bank and I have collected US$6.10. How about that!

I did find some Australian dollars and Euros. But I converted them to USD when I got home. The 2 bills I found in the woods near my home. Probably some poor jogger lost them.

I have started to collect the "found" coins again. Happy to report that Denise has already 3 cents for 2012.

 

It Takes 2 part 1

These are the first 6 blocks from this sew along. I am using a solid red from Kona fabrics called "Cardinal" and a solid white from a bolt that I have for 5 years or so. I am debating with the red work embroidery. I think I will use the white blocks to add some quilting instead. I do not enjoy embroidery at this point. I have done it so much, that I am tired of it. I am looking forward the next blocks on the 15th of January.
This was a lot of fun. I have not trimmed the blocks to size or removed the marks from the appliqué. I will wash them soon. I need to buy the color grab product before I wash these blocks, just in case...
I will trim when we get the instructions to put these blocks together in March. This delay will prevent the many loose threads that always happens when I handle the blocks of my quilts.