Luke's Baby Quilt

When I saw these fabric panels in Texas I fell in love with them, had to have them. So .... I bought the panels and the coordinating fabric. Then I saw this adorable blue fabric that says "mommy loves you, daddy loves you, grandma loves you, poppa loves you," and a bunch of other loves you. It was so cute. So I put it all together and made a second quilt for my second grandson. Then later I found out the designer of this fabric is the same designer of the fabric I made for my first grandson's first quilt. How cool is that? Hope he likes it.

I started a quilt for my newest grandson in March. Had anticipated getting it done by April. Well I just finished it this weekend. My daughter bought most of the fabric and we picked out the design together. Luke's room is blue and brown with lots of circles all over the walls and linens. This should go perfectly with his room. His big brother, Lliam, and mommy LOVE the Disney movie, Cars, so it should be loved by all. I was pretty happy with the quilting job around the border this time. That's usually the hardest part for me.

Class-to-be

I'm going to be teaching my first paper piecing class. My guild offers a class once a month and they asked if I would do one. It's scheduled for May 4. They asked me to make some samples to show people what we'll be making. I made four and I tried to make them very different color combinations so one is two-color, one has a black background, one a white background and one a print background. I still have to make step-by-step samples. That's next on the list. I hope it goes well. Carol Doak offers the pattern free on her web site as long as you use it to train others. She loves to share the joy of paper piecing. Me too. I hope we get a lot of participation.

More F8 Blocks

I finished the last two F8 groups. I had fun with this one. Most of the fabric was in colors I would never use. But luckily I had fabric to match in my stash. I can't decide which is my favorite -- I kind of like them all. I hate to have to send the blocks home.
This has been a really slow swap. By the time the deadline came and all the blocks should have been going home, I only had one group finished. The blocks have been coming in slowly. But hopefully I'll have them all by the end of the month.

F8 Swap Blocks

I ended up joining four groups for the Fat Eighth Swap on my favorite online group - 16 blocks. I finished two groups so far, so I'm half done. Here's what the second group looked like. I have until April 15 to finish the other two. Should be no problem. Then I'll get back 16 blocks from my swap mates. The two blocks on the left were ones I had never completed. The top one was free on the site -- 4500 Member Celebration Block and the bottom left was the Spain block from the Carol Doak Mariner's Compass Stars Book. The two on the right are from the Carol Doak Simply Sensational 9 Patch Stars Book. This is my favorite swap. It's so much fun to try new blocks and new color combinations. Just hard to find the time since I have my daughter and two grandsons (under 2) visiting. But I'll keep working on that.

Oops, missed my anniversary

I started this blog in January 2008 to record my quilting journey. I just took a look over the year and it's fun to see what I've done. But I realized I missed quite a few too. Like the quilt I actually made at Hershey in July isn't in here and none of my potted posies are in here and a few other BOMs are missing. If I can find the time I'll search them out and load them so we can all see what I reallly did last year. 2008 was GREAT!

But it's a new year and I need to get busy. I have plans to make a quilt for my grandson Lliam (Sponge Bob Square Pants) and for my grandson Luke (Mater from Cars) and for my friend Barb and her fiance Eddie (Fireman stuff) and still need to finish my son Ben's quilt (red white and black) and I have plans for at least 3 Hawaiian Table toppers. I have a ton more projects I've planned, just got to get busy and get them done. 2009 will be FINE!

No time

My daughter and grandson are visiting while we wait for Grandson #2 to make his arrival, so not a lot of time on my hands. Llliam is 18 months old and wears us all out. But I do spend a lot of time laughing. I've been very busy at my job as well. We're short two people. The boss found another job and one of my coworkers had some unexpected surgery. They sent me to Hawaii for a little work that ended up being a great 3 day mini vacation and I bought TONS of fabric (Hawaiian prints) while I was there. I have been doing a little bit of sewing to keep up with swaps on my favorite online group. I've made a bunch of little potted posies for one swap and I'm working on a Fat Eighth swap now. You get fabric from four other people and you make each one of them a block using their fabric and yours. You get back four blocks from four different people all with your same fabric in it somewhere. This year I was pretty specific about the block and where I wanted my fabric to be. It should be a pretty quilt when all is said and done. It doesn't end until April 15, so it'll be a while until I can show my blocks. Here's some of the blocks I've made for others. I stuck with very similar designed blocks. I wanted to get done quickly and all these swappers left it quilters choice. They weren't as picky as I was. Not sure how much time I'll have once Luke is born to sew, so I need to finish up the rest of these soon. This is one group -- I'm in four groups, so 12 more to come.