Trip Pictures

I've uploaded most of our trip pictures from our trip to New England and Niagara Falls to Webshots. There is a permanent link to my albums over in the side bar, but here is a link to the new album. Here are just a few to get you started. Enjoy.

American Falls at Niagara

Nubble Lighthouse

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse

Getting ready for a trip

We will soon be leaving for our annual summer trip to visit my mother-in-law in New Jersey. Luckily this time we are extending the trip to include a family vacation up to New England and Maine's Acadia National Park. So anyway, I always like to take some hand sewing when I go on long car trips to give me something to do.

This time I'm planning some applique and possibly some hand piecing. I've gotten some fabric ready for an appliqued Little Mittens quilt from an old issue of Quiltmaker (Nov/Dec '00 I believe). I'm thinking I'll use it as my project Linus quilt for next year.

I'm also thinking about taking some fabric along for the Captive Beauty quilt that is in that same issue of Quiltmaker. It has a lot of set in pieces so I thought it would be a good hand piecing project. If I get all the mittens appliqued then I'll move on to the hand piecing. We'll see how it goes.

Fluttering Free

This is my latest finished project.



It is a baby quilt that I made for one of my husband's colleagues who just had a baby. It was her first. She decided to decorate the nursery in pinks and browns. At first I wasn't sure how to approach a pink a brown quilt, but with a lot of help from Melanie at the Front Porch Quilt Shoppe, we came up with a pattern and some great fabrics. After I finished sewing the pieced part of the quilt I thought that it needed a little something more, so I decided to add the butterfly applique.

I was having trouble deciding how to quilt it once the top was all finished. My husband suggested the diamond pattern and I thought that would be just perfect. I didn't quilt the straight lines through the butterfly, though. I quilted up to the butterfly and then quilted all the way around it. The quilting really shows up well in the picture, too.

I hope the new mom likes it.

Patriotic Mini Quilt

This is a little patriotic mini quilt that I finished a couple of days ago. I gave it the very unimaginative name of "54-40 or fight". But it seemed appropriate because it is, of course, the name of the block that it is made from, and that was an old presidential campaign slogan back in the day so it seemed patriotic. It is yet another UFO that I've brought out of storage to finish lately. It is a 54-40 or fight block that I added a couple of borders to and quilted. It is machine pieced and hand quilted. It's finished size is about 20 inches square.

The quilt's in the mail

I finally got around to mailing my little quilt (for the quilt swap - see pictures in the post below). I finished it a little while ago, but I was so busy with my son's graduation and college orientation that I just finally made it to the post office to send it.

So anyway, it is in the mail and out of my hands. I hope my partner likes it.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

This is my finished mini quilt for the Spring Blooms Mini Quilt Swap. (The color in the photo doesn't seem quite true, but it was the best I could get.)

The quilting was somewhat improvisational (my husband calls it "jazz quilting"). I couldn't decide on a quilting pattern ahead of time so I just put it in the frame and started quilting. First I quilted the diagonal lines from corner to corner. Then I decided to quilt the center cross. Then I quilted around the inside and outside of the blue inner border. Next I thought that the green strips needed some quilting so I quilted the outside of the strips. Then I thought that the inside needed quilting, too. Then I just kind of echoed the lines of the quilting into the border of the quilt. I think it worked out pretty well.

I hope my partner likes it.

Finished Mini Quilt Top

I have my quilt top finished for the Spring Blooms Mini Quilt Swap, but I haven't decided how I want to quilt it yet. I'm a hand quilter, so I need to decide soon so I'll have time to get it done by the June 21st deadline.