What I have been working on this week

I picked up the "Sparkle Plenty" pattern by Loft Creations in June at the City Quilter shop in NYC. I think this is a record for me - I don't usually make quilt tops very quickly after getting a pattern (I tend to mull my fabric choices quite a while). But I really liked the colors on the sample picture of the pattern so I went with very similar colors. The black was taken from my stash. About half of the colors are from a package of Kaffe 5 inch squares I bought at the Vermont Quilt Festival at the end of June and the rest came from my 5 inch square collection. 
It is more of a large wall hanging size, so I am contemplating either adding borders, just keep expanding the pattern, or a combination of the two. 

Another Quilt Finished!

At the same time I picked up my summer quilt from the long-arm quilter's I also picked up this one. I finished putting on the binding last week.
All of the material for this quilt, except the outside border, was from my stash of fabrics. The main part of the quilt is primarily reproduction fabrics that I inherited from Cheryl Patch.  

The pattern for this quilt is called "Value Dance"  and the Quilt Tutorial can be found on the Stitched in Color blog by Rachel Hauser. 

When Gina and I started quilting together 10 years ago we would pick a pattern and each do our own version of the quilt. Over the years we moved away from doing that as we got busy with making gifts and other individual patterns we were interested in. This past January Gina suggested we work on the same pattern again. I had found this pattern in my quilt blog roaming and we both liked the the simplicity (it uses only 2 different quilt blocks) and how the look of the quilt could be very different based on color and placement.

My New Summer Quilt

 I bought the batik fabrics for this quilt as a kit in Paducah,KY at the AQS show two years ago. I pieced most of it at a retreat last fall. Because of the bright colors I decided to make it a warm weather quilt. It is backed with flannel, but it does not have any batting. I got it back from the long-arm quilter yesterday and instead of doing a traditional binding I trimmed the back an inch longer than the quilt top and just double folded the back edges over to the front of the quilt and stitched it down using a machine blanket stitch.

Report from Toledo

 So far I have gone walking at one of the Metro-Parks every morning during this vacation. We came across these deer at Swan Creek a couple of days ago. Unfortunately the mosquitoes were watching and waiting for me - I am up to 3 bites so far.

Today was a new first - Tammy and I went to have our nails done. This was my first ever manicure. The picture is not great, but I picked a nice pink color. Now I am very conscience of nicking or damaging the polish. I also realized that I do not own any nail polish remover so in a week or so when I get home and need to take it off I have to go out and buy some.

Off to Ann Arbor on Wed and in Columbus for the Quilt Show on Thurs.

 

 

Ska Last Weekend

Still catching up after last weekend. Damon and I took off for NYC for the Apple Stomp concert. Had a blast! The bands were great. Can't remember the last time we went to a ska concert together.

It was actually 90+degrees in NYC and now here I am back in the Adirondacks where it is in the low 60s and rainy.

Memorial Day 2013

I have spent the last month or so scanning the old family photos. Today I got to some of Grandpa Toth's Army photos. The first is a group portrait at Lourdes in France. I spent some time trying to find him in the photo and I think I spotted him in the upper left-hand corner of the group. This photo was taken in 1945.

In not so historical news, the rain has stopped, which is a relief as the flood plains were really filling up and the closest road over the Saranac River was closed yesterday due to flooding. The High Peaks in the Adirondacks are reported to have gotten 3 feet of snow in the last day, but we lucked out and didn't even have a frost - thank goodness, as I had already planted my tomato plants.

A busy May

Last weekend I took a workshop on Ribbon Embroidery. Pictured are the few flowers I made in class. We learned four different types of flowers and one type of leaf. Obviously there are lots of other possibilities but this was a good way to get introduced to the process and learn the basic knots and how to work with silk ribbons.   

Then this past week I did a road trip to Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada for the WILU conference. As you can see from the photo there was still some snow on the peaks in New England on Tuesday. The conference was great - funny, entertaining and full of great content, tips and ideas.