Sunday Success

My goal for today was to finish the last appliqué block for Heirloom Stitches and finish putting the top together. Success! I finished just a few minutes ago. Because the border on this quilt involves so much appliqué I'm putting it away for awhile. (Here is a link to the pattern in case anyone wants to see what the border looks like.) There are other projects that need to be a higher priority than this right now.

I have several charity quilts to quilt, as well as three customer quilts. I need to get going on Joseph's quilt. I'm going to do machine appliqué on that one because I want it to wear as long as possible.

My take along hand appliqué project will be blocks for my mid-century medallion.

If I want a break from that I'll do the border appliqué on It's a Wonderful Life. I've waited long enough to finish it. I didn't particularly care for the appliqué in the pattern so I'm going to design something of my own. It's time to swallow my fear of designing and just do it! I guess I've never posted a picture of that almost finished top - I could find one anyway - so here it is. The borders are sewn on - I just need to do some appliqué on them.

Finally I need to finish at least one UFO so I don't have to pay a fat quarter penalty at guild on May 4th - not to mention avoiding becoming UFO queen on the Stashbusters list. (In this case queen is NOT a good thing to be!) One of my charity quilts is also on my UFO list, so I can accomplish a two-for-one if I just get that one quilted, bound and labeled.

We had a wonderful visit with Jeremy, Chelsea and Sophie yesterday afternoon. This is the first time she's been awake during our entire visit. Apparently she is already sleeping almost 8 hours at night - amazing! Neither of our kids slept through the night until they were at least 8-9 months old. Yesterday she'd been awake since 9 a.m. and was still awake when we left at 6:00 p.m. She's definitely taking after her dad - he didn't sleep much as a baby and gave up naps entirely before he was two years old! Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera!

Friday night I spent a great evening with Cher at the artist's reception for her quilt guild. The featured artist was Judy Hopkins. I always thought Judy lived in Alaska year round, but apparently she lives in Oregon for four months every winter and belongs to the same guild as Cher. Judy has written 16 quilt books that feature rotary cut quilts and clear, easy-to-follow directions. The books she hopes will be her major legacy are her three block books - Around the Block, Around the Block Again, and Once More Around the Block. Each block features 200 traditional blocks with rotary cutting instructions for making them in 6 different sizes. Whenever I need to make a pieced block for a swap I grab one of these books. Judy is also the creater of the Scrapmaster ruler which for years has been a marvelous tool for cutting up my scraps. There were quite a few of Judy's quilts hanging on display, and we received a guided tour from Judy in which we learned the story behind each quilt. It was a delightful evening - made even more wonderful by the wine and great food available to everyone.