Weekend Update...

Quote for the Day:

                          "Always strive to excel, but only on weekends."
                                                       ~Richard Rorty

It's Sunday evening and we've had a full and productive weekend.  :)  The weather has been sunny and in the 78 degree range...very nice!  It feels like Spring is here, but I'm afraid that just as soon as we let our guard down, we'll be ambushed by cold again.

There is a group in Grafton called LEFA (Loose Ends Fiber Artists) that meets at the local coffee shop the third Saturday of every month.  Most of the women are knitters, crocheters and spinners, but the group is for anyone who enjoys working with fiber of any kind.  It is an informal group, no dues or organized meeting agenda.  The "meeting" runs from 10 AM till 3:30ish.  People come and stay for however long they want/can.  We bring items to work on while we are there and finished items or tools to show.  There is always interesting conversation and an informal exchange of ideas.  I forgot to take my camera so there are not pictures of that to share with you.  :(

However, when I got home from the meeting, there was a package waiting for me from my two nieces, Tina and Kristin!  Back in October I blogged here about going to Kristin's wedding and how she made all her decorations, bouquets, etc., for the wedding and even shared some pictures of her neat creations.  She had told me that since she had no need for the fabric that she had used, that after the wedding she would give it to me.  Now how nice is that???  So on Saturday the fabric finally arrived, along with one of the reception table decorations (a ceramic bird), and a flat sheet from Tina for me to use as a quilt backing!  

Look at all of this beautiful fabric!  

Here it is all folded on my ironing board.   Such beautiful florals!   The green bundle on the right is the sheet., which seems to go very well with the colors in the fabrics! 

Thank you, Kristin & Tina, for blessing me with these pretties!  :)

On Saturday, March 31, I'm going to be teaching a beginner's hand quilting class at Classic Quilt Shop in Clarksburg.  It is my first time teaching other than the one-on-one teaching I've done with my daughter-in-law, Trinity, and my friend, Pat....both whom I've taught to hand quilt as well as machine piece.  

I'm having each student bring a preprinted quilt panel of their choice and we will be sandwiching them there and learning the "rocking" hand quilting stitch.  I needed a small project to take along with me to demonstrate on so I took a kit that I had purchased at the estate auction last summer that included a panel in it.  It's called "Pumpkin & Spice and Everything Nice." 

I looked at the picture that was included with the kit as well as the book that was included and decided that I didn't like any of those ideas.  Then I proceeded to come up with my own concoction.  :)



I am not a "kit" or "matchy-matchy" person when it comes to my quilting.  I rarely buy more than two fabrics from any one line to use in the same quilt.  All of the above fabrics were from the same "line", designed to go together for people who want all of the fabric decisions made for them and like to work from a preplanned kit.  The center is the preprinted panel and I added 3 borders around it...the inner thin green border, the cream-colored middle border, and the outer sage green border.  This currently measures about 44" X 61" and will make a nice couch quilt.  :)


BUT...what is a scrap quilter supposed to do to make this quilt truly her own???  PIECE THE BACKING!  :)  

I decided to use up the leftover fabric from this "kit" by piecing it together for the backing.  However...I was a little short...so I added the leftover sunflower fabric used as the focal fabric in this quilt across the top to make it long enough for the quilt.  I like the way it turned out!

Now this quilt is all sandwiched and ready for quilting at the class in 2 weeks and everything used in this quilt came totally from my stash.  I even used pieced batting in the quilt!  Pieced batting is where you take fairly good size pieces of leftover batting trimmed off of other projects and then join them together until you get a piece large enough to use in another project...like this one!  :)   ( I use the serpentine stitch on my sewing machine to join them together.)

Tonight I watched "Frozen Planet" on Discovery and worked on mending the bargello quilt that we use on our bed.  

There are several places where the stitches have "popped" from use, so I decided to restitch those areas using my portable 17" PVC lap frame.

You can see some of the areas where the stitches are missing in this photo...

What I do is start stitching about 5-6 stitches before the area, matching my stitches on top of the old ones, through the area of missing stitches, and continue stitching about 5-6 stitches past the area.

Thanks for stopping by and have a GREAT week!  :)


Loretta