Latest Sewing and Quilting

With Grandchild No.2 on the home stretch I've switched my focus on him.  I'm helping my daughter and her husband with some sewing for the nursery.  They got a great deal on Craigslist on a gently used glider rocker.  My SIL painted it white and I recovered the cushions in dark grey sued. Quite the bear putting that thick stuff through my Bernina but I managed and it turned out pretty well.

 The nursery colors are Navy, Aqua, and Gray and in a Nautical theme.  I also made a crib skirt and will eventually make a teething rail cover.
Of course I had to make his first quilt to go with the nursery color and theme.

Daddy wanted Crabs somewhere in the nursery so I found some adorable crab print in navy and with the anchor print my daughter found I did some fussy cutting for the small blocks. I think it came out an adorable mix of her colors and theme. I quilted it with an edge to edge Whale design.

I also had to make some accents and love the patterns by Rumpledquiltskins and used her pattern for Checkerboard and Tigerfish pattern.  The little flat fish I just made from the scraps and reduced the pattern size for its tail and fins.  It just has some batting in it so it can be grasped by little hands.

Once the Nursery is complete I'll share some pics

Onward to next project

My computer is getting ready to dump on me so I finally got a new laptop.  I feel so out of the loop when it comes to technology.  Problems for me are new 3.0 usb ports only in my laptop and windows 10 and are giving me a pain in the patoot.  My Family Tree Platinum software wont load; 2.0 thumb drives won't read either (works ok so far if I put it in before booting up laptop).  I'll get with it soon though :)

Just completed a great guild Quilt Show weekend at Southern Comforters of Bowie, Maryland.  There were many gorgeous quilts from our talented guild members and I'll post more here this week.  For now I'm going to share my exciting results with you.  My 2015 Block of the Month quilt from Craftsy and Jinny Beyer, I call Cesti di Fiori (Italian for Baskets of Flowers) won two Vendor's Choice ribbons, First place in XL pieced, and Members' Choice Ribbon (members only vote for their favorite quilt).  I'm so touched by reception this quilt received.

I had one more XL pieced quilt in the show.  Tuscany Tiles is a pattern from Bonnie Hunter and was her Mystery quilt for 2015.  No ribbons for this one but so proud to be completed and it showed nicely.  Sorry my pic isn't great as space didn't allow for me to get far enough away.

In the Medium Large Pieced category was my quilt Star Wars- May the Fourth (inch seam) be With You. Pattern is SueNami by Sue Tucker.   It also got a Vendor's Choice ribbon and First place ribbon in that category.

My last quilt for the show was Riverside Village. It took second place in the Applique Category.  I used technique and inspiration from Karen Eckmeier's book  Happy Villages.

Here's a close up....

To see what's going on with our Guild, see our website Southern Comforters of Bowie

To see the free pattern and instructions for Cesti di Fiori Craftsy 2015 Block of the Month

Jinny Beyer's wonderful quilts and fabric visit her blog at Jinny Beyer

To visit Karen Eckmeier's website Karen Eckmeier

Bonnie Hunter's amazing quilts and patterns at Bonnie Hunter "Quiltville"

Quilting on my Jinny Beyer Block of the Month.
Thought I'd try to upload a pic of what I'm working on currently..

 There's got to be an easier way to do all this crosshatching around the flowers. Backtracking and stop/starts... UGH!   I chose to only crosshatch the tops of blocks and feather the bottom to prevent blindness.

First Post- Jumping in!

My first post and have no idea what I'm doing here but gotta jump in sometime.


What to do while off work for six more weeks?  Guess I'm finishing up some quilts and starting some new ones.  Getting lots of practice on my longarm quilting skills.  Rebuilding those large upper body muscles to do the fine detail that's usually meant for fine muscles (like in your fingers) takes practice and control.  After two weeks, I'm feeling better about it. 
Also want to do more on my family history while my Ancestry.com subscription is still good.  Oh, and deep clean my house (translation.."throw stuff away!")
I've contacted some dental offices to temp while our office is being redone after a horrible flood.  Not much luck as of yet.  Plenty to do and I'm totally not bored yet. Guess it's a good sign that retirement will be a pleasure and I actually look forward to that day.


Quilts I'm currently working on:
Piecing - Allietare Mystery quilt. Bonnie Hunter's Winter Mystery for 2015.  Clues are all given but I'm behind.  Only on step 4 of 6.
Quilting - Jinny Beyer's BOM from Craftsy.com.  Loving this beautiful basket/flower quilt.  Great sashing and Jinny's lovely border fabrics.  I've got about 15 hours into quilting and about halfway there.  Crosshatching and lots of ditch work on a longarm.... not my favorite, but loving the way it's coming out.


Question....What would you do if you suddenly found out you were out of work for 8 weeks?


Wendy