WINTER QUILT SWAP

Saturday's mail brought this lovely quilt for me made by
Carole for the Winter Quilt Swap, the Four Seasons Swap.

The quilt is beautifully made and quilted, and I love it.
She couldn't have suited my tastes any better. It will be a treasured one of my winter quilts.

Thank you Carole, you really made my day!














She even embroidered the label. I am going to have to start doing this with my embroidery machine too, I love the way it looks!

Thanks again Carole!

FINISHED!

I finished my little Father Christmas for the Winter Quilt Swap and got it in the mail today. I hope my recipient likes it. I had a lot of fun working on it, and now am ready to do one of my own, maybe a bit bigger.

I came across Quilter's Blessings block of the month hosted by Bea at Capricorn Quilts. The blocks are embroidery and January is up. They are free and easy to download. I am going to slip this project into my things to do list, as I love the first block.

This afternoon I am going to work on finishing up a CQ surprise for daughter Kristen's 30th birthday. I was in a RR with some friends, and sent this around 2 rounds. Not much to do on it, and hope to have it finished by this Friday. Hope to post a picture later in the week after I finish.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

I have a lot of works in progress going on right now. This is a pretty old one. I made these vest fronts probably 6 or 7 years ago. I taught a crazy quilting vest class, and I had this as a sample of how to start, along with a finished vest. Well after the class, this is as far as this project got. I am in an ongoing RR with a group of friends: Susan, Candi, Moira and Gail. This time, instead of making a new block, I decided to ask my friends to help embellish my vest fronts. Then when I get it back, I can finish it up once and for all. I have a tendency of keep putting this away and working on things for family and friends instead.





My second work in progress is my Take It Further Challenge project. This is going to be a small picture I plan to give my gardening friend Barbara of "Barbara's flower garden". I hand-painted the background and pieced a foreground to put silk ribbon flowers on. This was my progress this week, hampered by my pinkie cut but hope to get working on this more this weekend.








On the Winter Quilt Swap WIP, I finished hand quilting this this week, got the binding sewn on and just need to sew it down and make a label. I will post pictures after the binding is done.


Lastly, Grandma Whitey asked about the picture in the left hand corner of my blog. This is mine design. I took a class at Asilomar 2 years ago, one of the Empty Spools classes. I took a class with Judith Baker Montano. The class was landscape crazy quilting. We were asked to bring a picture of something we wanted to do, and I chose a picture of the Pigeon Point lighthouse. Then we designed our landscapes looking at our pictures. I am still not finished with this, and have not worked on it since the class. Life got in the way. I still need to embellish the foreground
and do stitches in the ocean.





This was at the end of the class. My hair looks pretty ragged from my morning's walk near the ocean.

New Year, New Challenges

I awaited eagerly Sharon B's announcement of the concept and color choice for the Take It Further Challenge. Sharon's theme for January is "the feeling of admiration for another". At first this made me a little anxious, because I wondered how I was going to come up with something for that concept, and thought I would just do something with the color choices. But the more I looked at the color choices, it suddenly dawned on me that those colors were the favorites of my friend Barbara. And Barbara is someone I really admire in her gardening skills.
Barbara is retired, so she has the time I don't have, to constantly be working in her garden, and she always has the most amazing gardens. When she lived in Sacramento, she was really close to the American River, and her soil was amazingly rich, as was her garden. A number of years ago, she moved to a retirement community in Rocklin, CA, and Rocklin I think was named for its soil composition. Barbara had a new challenge, the type of soil composition I have to contend with in my area. But Barbara began growing things in containers, and she still has an amazing garden, and she gives me samples when her garden overgrows!

So my January TIF challenge will be making a garden block, dedicated to Barbara, using the color scheme Sharon gave us, as these are Barbara's favorite colors. I think I will frame this when I finish and give it to my friend Barbara.

On the Winter Quilt Swap front, I have it probably 50% quilted. Hope to get some more done on this today, but not sure at this point.

I do medical transcription on the internet for a children's hospital in Florida. Usually I get up really early and get started (2 a.m.) and there is work to do when I get up. I have been up almost 3 hours now, and there has been no dictation. Since I transcribe 1000 lines a day, it looks like I am going to be sitting here all day. Recently I have had my work done by 9:30 to 10 and I have the rest of the day to play... And then this afternoon, I have an appointment with the dentist to get a crown on my tooth. A hunk of it broke off the day before my birthday in
October, but I had used up all my dental insurance for the year, so they put a temporary on, and I have had this temporary on since October. Well due to it being the new year, I have my allotment for dental available again, so today is the first step in getting this dumb tooth fixed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EARLY

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year a little early. Hope 2008 is the best one yet for everyone.

I have grandchildren Kyleigh and Jaeger coming over this afternoon, and spending the night tonight. Kristen and Jeff are having a party tonight, so the John and I and the kids get to have our own fun.

I also wanted to post my progress on the Winter Quilt Swap.

I have been appliquing the past couple of days, and last night I started quilting it. My recipient wanted a primitive Christmas quilt, and I had this pattern by Jan Patek for Father Christmas. I had to modify it a bit to make it work for the size requirements for this swap. I have had fun digging through my cupboard of homespuns again, and working on this while watching TV. I think when I finish this one, I need to start one for myself.