Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am excited to participate in Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I certainly had a lot of fun last time looking at such a wonderful collection of quilts.

It is difficult to decide which quilt is my "favorite".  In the end, I chose "A New View" because I haven't talked about it before and it still makes me smile when I look at it.

I finished this quilt almost two years ago now.  I happen to remember because I wanted to put it in our guild's quilt show and worked really hard to finish the quilting in time.  The things I love about this quilt:

• That it is scrappy, but not multicolored.
• The transparency of the blue windows.
• The asymmetry of the design.
• The quilting.  I quilted a squared spiral design in the brown blocks, a diagonal design in the blue blocks and a triangle design in the sashing.
• The brown - it is much richer in real life.
• The process of finding all the browns (I did use a lot of scraps from my stash, but I had to buy some new ones too).

I do love working with scraps in a limited color range (another favorite example here).  I haven't been doing much of that lately, but I am not finished with the idea and I know I have more quilts of this type in my future.

I hope you enjoy Amy's Quilt Festival!  I plan to set aside some time tomorrow to indulge my need for quilt beauty!

These birds are too cute!

I am working on a quilt and need some birds in an accent fabric.  These are the ones I have tried out this evening.

The white didn't work at all; it just blended into the background.  I wasn't really surprised, but I thought I would give it a try.

The Fairy Frost in red and purple (top row) didn't really work with the other fabrics either.  Instead of the frost looking like an accent, it just looked out of place.

So, it is down to the middle row.  I love the movement in the purple stripey one on the right, but the color just isn't doing anything for the quilt.  The bright red one on the left would be a subtle accent.  I'm not sure most people would notice that it was an accent!  That may be OK though.

I think I'll sleep on it and look at them again tomorrow.  This quilt is not a quick project - it will finish at 80" x 90"!  I'll be sure to post it when I'm done but I'm thinking that will be July if I'm lucky!

What have I been up to?

Boxes, boxes and more boxes! My Mom is having an estate sale this weekend to help downsize before she moves all her stuff to our house. We have been sorting and packing and sorting and packing and sorting and packing some more! These boxes were full of food from her pantry and are now unloaded into my house.

We have been working hard at this for several weeks, but have really kicked it into gear since I got home from my retreat. Every time I think we are making really good progress, I remember what we haven't done. Sometimes it feels like it will never end! But it has to - the sale is Saturday and Sunday. It is hard, but my Mom is doing really well at letting go of her stuff. Of course, she is keeping quite a bit, but there is a lot of stuff that has some sentimental value that will just have to go. I have also been resisting the temptation to take all the things I am fond of. We have a pretty good sized house, but there just isn't room for all of it!

The addition is not quite finished, but they are coming to measure for the carpet today. It should be soon! I'm really looking forward to getting back to some serious sewing!

April Bees Knees blocks

Here are my blocks for Margaret for the April Bees Knees bee. They are the first paper piecing I have done! Margaret's great directions made it easy.

As I write this, I am distracted by all the helicopters flying over my house ferrying President Obama to speak at the University of Michigan's commencement ceremonies this morning. It is held outdoors in Michigan Stadium. We had a thunderstorm this morning about 6:30, but no rain since then. I hope all the graduates are off to wonderful careers!