More Quilts and Art Museum Trip

The Sixth Grade quilt for the school auction is finished, labeled and at the school.  Here are some of the pictures.  I quilted a starfish with seaweed radiating out of each dark blue cornerstone.

   

Here are two other quilts I have finished recently.  I saw a quilt similar to the scrap one at the Northwest Quilting Expo this past summer and loved it.  It still needs to be bound.  The second is a mystery quilt my friend gave me in a box for my birthday.  Both of these are quilted with pantographs.

  

Tomorrow is opening day for the new Art Show.  Students from all the local high schools have work entered.  It is my favorite show of the year!  Here is a sampling of what we saw today.

  

6th Grade Fish Quilt

Here is a sneak peek of the quilt I am finishing for the school auction.  My three children all had this teacher and even years after they graduated from the school, I’m still making her class quilts.  I just love to do these for her.  She is one of the best teachers.  My children all had her for fifth grade and she is “out of this world”.

Forest Park Hike

It’s Spring Break here in Oregon and my son and I wanted to hike today, so we got my running partner to tag along.  Since snow was expected we decided on Forest Park because we wouldn’t need to chain up or hike through thick snow and it’s only 30 minutes away.   It was fine when we started ~~ slick and muddy.

  

We turned around about four miles in and headed back.  The wind picked up, the sky darkened and…  snow…

       

Here are Andrew’s pants.  Mine are much cleaner. 

 

So, here we are back home and my husband is out for a run.  There is hail coming down in buckets.

Happy Spring!

Happy Easter

Alleluia!  I can have sweets again!  For over 20 years I have given up sweets for Lent along with different promises.

Here are a few of my favorite things.  The ceramic bunny to the left is from when I was a child.  The three little chicks are from the year my daughter was born (1987) and made by her godmother’s sister.  My sister gave me the Longaberger bunny basket.  There is a chocolate egg filled with more chocolates from The Candy Kitchen in Waynesboro, PA.  It is the oldest family owned store in town.  Despina Leos, passed away in her homeland of Greece this summer.  She was visiting at the age of 99.  We always thought she loved our family the best of everyone in town, but reading her obituary, we learned that everyone thought the same.  She was very special and I can hear her saying, “Oh, I so happy you here.  How is your mom?” in her thick Greek accent.  Have a blessed Easter!

Track Meet

Here is a cool picture from last night’s track meet.  It was about 46 degrees, but when the 300 hurdler race was going on, it was windy and the rain was coming down in sheets at a sidewards angle.  By this time, it had cleared up to just a drizzle.

High School Senior Project

Ana was back to work on her quilt today.  She is the high school gal I am mentoring for her senior project.  Here is her 30″ quilt that she is quilting on my Gammill longarm quilting machine.  She is micro-hearting and has half of the turquoise finished.  Saturday, she’ll be back to continue working on it.  I think she is doing a fabulous job!  It looks puffy because the backing is a fuzzy, soft polar fleece, but it will be fine when the quilt is finished.

 

Quilt for Sale

Yesterday, I finished another scrap quilt that is for sale.  It can be found at http://www.etsy.com/your_shop.php?rand=796395609  I just love these quilts because of the variety of fabrics.

Quilting Mentor

A friend who teaches at a nearby school called and asked if I was interested in mentoring a gal in her high school senior project.  Ana wants to make a quilt.  We met and she came up with a plan:  a 30″ quilt with a picture of her grandparents in the center.  Yesterday, we met for the second time and she cut and started sewing some of the pieces.  Wednesday is our next meeting.  This is a great opportunity for me and I am very happy to help her.

Here are two pictures from our St. Patrick’s Parade yesterday.  Since we live in downtown, it is less than a block from our home.

 

Another project…

The fall of 2006, Fons and Porter had a challenge titled “Quilting Together”.  The quilt had to incorporate 25 different 3″ blocks.  It was to celebrate their 25th anniversary and you had to make it with another person.  My friend and I were going to do it together, but at the last minute, decided to include our moms.  Pam’s mom has sewn her whole life, but never done a quilt and mine has quilted most of her adult life.  We decided to use batiks and handpieced four quilts.  We marked all the pieces and sent sets of four blocks to our moms (Pennsylvania and Nevada).  Pam’s brilliant idea was to use silver on the quilt for the 25th anniversary.  Well, we didn’t win, but each one of us ended up with a beautiful quilt!

 

We have decided to do another challenge among ourselves since we can’t find any on the Internet.  It has to be hand pieced and we will need to mark all the pieces for our moms.

Quilting projects

This is a project I need to begin, but it is daunting.  My husband and son picked it out for my Christmas gift.  Hopefully, I can get enough courage and uninterrupted time to begin soon.

At any given time, I have many projects in different stages.  Usually, there is something I can pick up and take with me, then several different piecing projects and the pile of quilt tops to be finished.  Here is my latest ETSY quilt.  It should be finished soon and up for sale.  This is probably the sixth similar one that I have made.  I saw something like it locally and loved it.  Somehow, I thought it had a ton of “people” prints in it, but when I returned to the shop, only found the nesting cup people like I am using for this quilt’s backing.  So, the quilts have all been titled, “Where did all the people go?”.  My quilting machine is in my lovely studio basement (not).  It is a regular, run of the mill basement, but in Oregon, I am lucky to have one!