No quilting for me today. I went to work and on the way home, I stopped at Craft Night at In-SHUCK-ch. I didn’t take any projects to work on because I knew I would be busy visiting. I was right. Lots of yaking and and laughing–not too much in the way of completion of projects! It was good to see everyone again.

When I got home, I decided to check Bloglines to see if any of the blogs I regularly read had been updated. As I was reading through my favorites, my daughter shouts from the living room, “Dad is home! And he has a fish!” I called back to my husband, what is it? (Meaning what type of Salmon.) And he calls back, “Blog material!” So you heard it, it is a Salmon of the Blog Material variety, also known as a Spring Salmon.

Finally! Here it is–my Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt–completed to the flimsy stage. Now it is ready for quilting.

I stayed up until 11:30 last night putting the borders on. I was afraid if I stopped, I might not finish it the next day. When you are on a role sometimes you need to keep pushing forward.

Today, I had two quilt holders. This quilt is large, 87″ x 107″. However, my helpers are different heights so one corner is folded over at the top. This quilt top is square, it is just too large and cumbersome to get a good picture of it at this stage.

I have seen two different Road to Ireland quilts on other blogs lately. Take a look at Eileen‘s blog to see her beautiful blue version, and take a look at Linda_J‘s blog to see her friend’s pastel version. Both of these quilts are beautiful!

Now take a look at my version:

I know, what happened; right? My version isn’t quite in the same category as Eileen and Linda_J’s.

M’Liss Rae Hawley’s instructions in her book, “Fat Quarter Quilts”, says the following:

“One of my favorite fat-quarter quilts, Road to Ireland was a happy mistake. The blocks came out the way I planned, but not the setting. (My planning consists of marks on napkins, ferry schedules, and the like.) So I rearranged my blocks, and I love the result.

The Road to Ireland setting looks best when there is high contrast between the road fabric and the six fat quarters.”

This seems fairly common sense to me and yet as you can see, I have missed the “high contrast” part. Perhaps I concentrated too much on the planning stage of making marks on napkins and too little time on the choice of my contrast fabric.

The good thing about this quilt is that it was made entirely from my stash–that part of the plan worked. However, if I had even switched the placement of the red and green fabrics I think the design would have shown up better.

This quilt stalled at the unfinished top stage for years and I finally quilted it up in November 2005 as a practice piece on my long arm.

However, all is not lost. This quilt is currently in my mother’s quilt collection. My mother is willing to adopt any of the quilts that I make–especially those that I don’t particularly like. In fact, she watches this blog on a regular basis to scope out quilts that can be nabbed in the future!

I have a quilt hanger in the entrance to my house. I like to change the quilt that hangs there on a regular basis. Right now this is the quilt that hangs in that location.

This quilt is Night Flight. My friend Colette and I renamed this quilt, Nightmare. This quilt was made in 1998 when I had only been quilting one year. All the flying geese and triangles presented many challenges for a beginner quilter – hence the name, Nightmare!

This quilt was the second project that I participated in during the “Annual Pre-Christmas Quilt Weekend” on December 6, 1998.

The pictures below were taken that weekend and show Cyndi, Veryan, Colette, Teresa and myself with our projects. Veryan made her blocks into a table runner and had most of the quilting completed by the time the weekend was over. As you can see, Colette’s piece was still at the block stage and she couldn’t hold it up for the picture. I had some of my blocks together but the border was not yet together.

The top may have been finished in 1998, but it too k until 2002 to get it quilted.

July is a month of celebrations.

July 7 – Miranda’s birthday (Miranda is my son’s girlfriend)

July 8 – Harold’s birthday (Harold is my husband)

The picture above was taken last Sunday on our deck as we celebrated Harold and Miranda’s birthdays.

July 8 – Brenda’s birthday (Brenda is my husband’s sister. No, they aren’t twins. They were born on the same date–not the same day. There are 6 years between them.)

July 8 – Colette’s birthday (Colette is one of my good friends who has moved south to Arizona. She has her own blog that can be found at: http://www.lapagedecolette.blogspot.com/ (Happy belated birthday, Colette. Colette is the only person that I know that can have birthdays year after year and not age a year!)

July 9 – My parents’ anniversary. (Usually we celebrate their anniversary at the same time as Harold and Miranda’s birthdays but this year they had to travel two provinces away to attend a funeral at the time of their anniversary. We missed them at this year’s barbecue celebration.)