Today was our daughter’s birthday.
When the kids were small, the tradition was that the birthday gal or guy got to pick the menu on the day of their birthday. Even though our daughter is married and has a home of her own, she still enjoys the tradition of coming home to celebrate her birthday supper. This year, it was chicken for supper and cheesecake for a birthday cake.
Happy Birthday DD!
Here’s to many more birthday suppers in celebrations of the birthday gal!
In the last couple of weeks I have been making some progress on my oldest UFO. I have not worked on this project since 2006. This project is an English Paper Pieced project so the work has all been done by hand–no machine. This makes for very slow progress!
For history on this project…please refer to a post I wrote on March 10, 2006.
I still plan to give this quilt to my son when it is finished–I am just not sure when that will be. My son graduated with his certificate since my post in 2006 and is now due to graduate from university with his Bachelor’s degree on June 13, 2014. Given that I have only added two rows to this project since 2006, it is doubtful that I will have this finished by June. However, I continue to pull this project out to work on it in the evenings. I smile as I stitch, lost in memories invoked by the fabrics–no flowers or “girlie” stuff by request of my son.
In time this quilt will be finished…but the time has just not come yet. 🙂
This past Friday, a friend and I attended the Creative Stitches and Crafting Alive Show.
This year, the show featured Modern Quilting. The Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild had an excellent display of Modern quilts. The members of this guild are full of enthusiasm and were on site to share their knowledge of the Modern Quilting movement. Giveaways at the FVMQC booth included packs of 2.5″ squares of Modern fabrics like this and some cute buttons. The button I picked says, I’m here for S.E.X. Stash Enhancing eXperience. Apparently, this was their most popular button.
Many of the vendors at the show were featuring the Modern Quilt movement in the products that they were featuring for sale. I believe I have been bitten by the Modern Quilt bug because this tower of 23 fat quarters–Dots by Riley Blake Designs–was calling to me. The stack of fat quarters on the right is from Thimbleberries’ Flashback line. These fabrics will be added to a project that I have been collecting fabrics for–a log cabin quilt featuring Thimbleberries Vintage Stitches line. The yellow/orage batik will be added to the collection of fabrics I have collected to make a landscape quilt featuring Arches National Park.
I also picked up some spools of thread for my long arm, some threads for a redwork project that I want to start and some fusible webbing for my Sashiko project. That metal tin with the clear top is for holding your ball of perle cotton to keep it from rolling away on you when working on your redwork project.
These are fabric purchases from another vendor. The ruler was on sale for $1.99–which is a great score since it was regularly priced $19.99! The black and white fat quarters will be added to the black and white stash awaiting a future black and white quilt. The stack of fabrics on the right–are 1/2 yard each of Road 15 by Sweetwater for Moda (Main Street and City Park Pickle) plus a 1/2 yard of Kona cream, and 3 fat quarters of coordinating Kona solids and a fat quarter of Road 15 coordinate–Vine Street Pickle. This pack was a great value at $19.99 and will be the beginning of another Modern Quilt. The brown batiks in the front are for that Arches National Park landscape project.
So once I get some of my UFO’s under control, I can dabble a bit in the Modern Quilt movement!
I have been slowly working on a stack of UFO’s that need to be quilted. This weekend’s finish was this Easter table runner. The pattern is a Terry Atkinson design called, Fast Food. The pattern is very simple–making use of a stripe that does all the work.
This table topper has been sitting for at least 2 years waiting for me to have the opportunity to quilt it. The Quilt Show was broadcasting their shows for free this weekend. So while Ricky and Alex talked; I quilted.
This is a close up of the fabrics and the quilting. I quilted in the ditch around the blocks and then went up and down each yellow stripe. I love the dense quilting!
This morning, Quilters Newsletter Magazine’s Facebook post stated that, “March is National Quilt Month! It’s the perfect time to start a new project, or maybe finish one of those UFOs (or PIGS – Projects in Grocery Sacks – as Lori would call them).”
So in keeping with National Quilt Month, I did start a new project yesterday. The pattern is called Random Reflections and is by KarrieLyne from Freckled Whimsy. The pattern is available on the Moda Bake Shop site and is free for the downloading. This quilt should finish approximately 60″ x 60″ and will be perfect as a lap quilt.
I picked this pattern because the darker strips resemble books on a shelf. This quilt is for someone who loves to read and who has included books as decorations in her wedding planned for later this year.
All fabrics in this quilt are from my stash. So although I promised myself I wasn’t going to start anything new until my stack of flimsies was done, I can rationalize starting this new project because at least I was not out there buying new fabric to add to the stash. …somewhat of a compromise. 🙂