finished top-at long last

This is the completed top of the Riley Blake fabrics I picked up from my guild earlier this year.  I missed their deadline for turning in a quilt, but, as you can see I came up with my own block ideas and enjoyed using up all of the focus fabrics.  A few extremely narrow strips may show up from the scrap heap, but, truly not many.  This top will become a donation quilt for WrapThemInLove - the children's charity I quilt for the most.
Today I spent much of the day with my friend Claire enjoying a mini quilt shop hop.  She wanted to visit two shops that carry All American Brand cotton fabrics, and I added in another 2 shops just for fun.  We had a fabulous time and helped the local economy too.  In case you need to know which shops they were,
A Common Thread, The Pine Needle, Let's Quilt, and Holly Hill.  All different, all with a good variety of styles and plenty of wonderful quilts to admire as well.
I splurged and bought two different lines of  Moda  precut 2.5 inch squares of Wishes and Bartholo-meow's Reef.  They will end up eventually in donation quilts or maybe for one of the grands.
I also picked up more solids, polka dots, and a bit more what I call textured solids to freshen up the stash and some current quilt ideas. Six cuts of fabric will end up as a quilt for myself.  I don't know which quilt idea I want to use yet, but, it will be on my list of quilts to finish this year.

In a month I leave for Texas and a wonderful visit with my younger son, his wife and my only grandson, Max.   I have a lot to get done before that deadline.
We went and saw the movie, The Hundred Foot Journey tonight.  It was wonderful and a lovely date night movie to see.
 Between coming home from the shop hop and the movie, I stitched the last seam in this top.  After the movie I pressed and took the photo, fitting  this post in before heading to bed.
Tomorrow we have lots going on, I am pretty sure there won't be any cutting of new fabrics yet.  However, I think I may lay it all out and take a photo or two.  Nothing is prettier than new fabrics!

it's been a long long time...

I was sidetracked so long, blogger changed and I have had a heck of a time regaining access to my own blog in order to post.

So, while I have now figured out how to gain access I am posting a short message to say yes, I am quilting, and yes..life has indeed been quite busy.

I just finished reading Gwen Marston's book, Minimal Quiltmaking.  I am a huge fan of Gwen and it was another inspiring and delightful book.


Gwen talks about sketching out with pencil a rough design/layout ...what a terrific idea that would have served me well, before I dived into making blocks from 3 challenge fabrics I picked up from my local guild.

 I missed their deadline for turning in a quilt using the fabrics, but I did make many blocks.  Last Sunday, I was inspired to make more and today when I looked at the row I had sewn together, I noticed I had put it in the wrong order.  I have now taken the one seam apart and will insert the block that needs to be there and it will be much better.
  I may stop and consider drawing up the rest of my block ideas to go with the two rows I have and save myself from making any more design errors. I am playing with a variety of different color values and placements of the challenge fabrics and finding 3 to be fairly difficult to achieve the effect I "see" in my mind.

This quilt will end up going to my favorite children's charity group so I won't have to live with it.
Time to get off the computer and on to the sewing part of the day!

peace be with you, Cher