Took a bit of a break from quilting last evening and went for a ride on my beloved Skippy!

I'M A WINNER!!!

|I participated in the "Think Christmas" blog hop and won 6 fat quarters AND the book Christmas Cats and Dogs from Linda Alexander of http://living4quilting.blogspot.com/!  How lucky can a quilter get???  There are 21 different patterns in this wonderful book and now I'm busy figuring out which project to make with my fabulous fat quarters!!!  Thank you so much, Linda - I love it all!!!!!

Home, finally

Home after being away for over 3 months, anxious to get back to work in my quilting loft to quilt all the lovely quilts I pieced while in Florida...and I have pneumonia (been sick for almost 4 weeks now) and I have no energy at all!  I still haven't unpacked my truck yet and I've been home for over a week!!!  Yes, my sewing machine and all my quilt tops are still out there and I just can't get the energy to bring them in the house!!  Hoping I will get up there soon to quilt the baby quilt for my niece who had a beautiful baby boy a month ago.

My daughter is finally settled in her new location!  For the next 3 years she will be a recruiter on the Olympic Peninsula!  Only a 6-7 hour drive from me, instead of a 5 day jaunt across the country.  I will miss the wonderful friends I made in Florida while house/pet sitting for my daughter while she was deployed to Afghanistan.  I will also miss the lovely warm of Florida, but my part of Washington is certainly warmer (right now) than the Peninsula!  Of course, winter is another story, but it is months away, so I won't worry about that right now!

Happy Birthday, Dad!  Wish I was there with you to celebrate you 91st birthday!!!

I'm currently in Florida while my daughter is finishing up her schooling to become a recruiter.  Weather is warm, humid and lovely!!  I have been piecing quilts, making a couple of appliqued wall-hangings and enjoying some wonderful Vit. F with my Sew What?! group.  I'll be missing them when I move my daughter from Tampa, Florida to the Port Angeles area of Washington next month.  It will be lovely to have my daughter only a 6 hour drive from me, but I will sorely miss my dear friends here in Florida.

This is what I have been working on.

Soldier Quilts

As my daughter was heading off to Afghanistan in March, she said that it would be cool if I could make RW&B quilts for everyone.  Lovely idea, but all my RW&B material was home in Washington and I was in Florida to house and pet sit for her while she was gone!  I asked members of the Yahoo group, Stashbusters, and members of the quiltingboard.com if they would donate a 12" block so I could make these quilts.  Well, 38 quilters from Maine to California, Washington to Florida, England and Australia sent me blocks, yardage, flimsies, and complete quilts!  My Sew What Bee group here in Florida helped me put the blocks together, quilt and hand bind the quilts.  Last week we delivered the quilts to 7 of the 9 service members deployed with my daughter (she is third from the left in the back row).

Will the Wolf Survive?

My guild's challenge this year was to quilt a song.  I knew I wanted to use the pattern by Toni Whitney, Winter Wolf, in my quilt.  I found the song, Will the Wolf Survive?, by Los Lobos and the whole quilt just came together in my head.  This is the first time my execution of a quilt matched the picture in my head.  Never made a round quilt before either, nor have I ever matched the binding around a quilt to the material on he quilt.  Everything was fused to the background and I used Texture Magic to create the bushes.  I quilted it on my Innova 18" using King Tut (13 colors) and Bottom Line threads from Superior Threads.