Revisting the Past

After sharing an older piece yesterday, I thought I'd share another "old" quilt today. This is "Spring Break," featuring Daughter 1 and Prince floating at the lake.
This quilt was juried into the International Quilt Festival in their "Celebrate Spring" exhibit a few years ago. I remember how labor intensive this piece was - it's made almost entirely from tiny (1/4 inch wide) strips of fused fabric.

As usual, click on the pictures a couple of times to see them closer.

For the next 10 days or so I'm going to be uber busy helping kids move from point A to point B and then from point B to point C. Two kids. Three moves. It's all good though! Happy days ahead! Meanwhile, I'm having a show and tell here, sharing some oldies but goodies until I can get back to quilting.

Remember this quilt?

I made this for a guild challenge last year. The challenge was to include a flying geese unit and a bit of red in your quilt. Instead of making a pieced traditional flying geese unit, of course I had to step outside the box and make these flying geese:
I called it, "Happiness is... A Gaggle of Geese. It was one of the winners at the guild level, and was then entered (along with the other winning quilts) into the Ultimate Guild Challenge at the recent Knoxville AQS show. Our quilts were juried into the show. I wasn't able to get up to Knoxville to see it hanging, but I do know it's back in Birmingham now. I'm picking it up Thursday. No, we didn't win ribbons at Knoxville, but it was great to have our guild represented there.
Whenever I have a quilt juried into a national show, I always take advantage of the appraisal that is offered. I love all my quilts no matter the monetary value. But it is nice to get the appraisal feedback when I can.

I got the appraisal in the mail yesterday. Yes, it made me happy! $1900! That's not as much as my large portrait quilts are usually appraised, but I'm definitely pleased with the amount.

Playing with Fabric

I finally got around to opening the box of fabric I bought from Melody Johnson. Squeal!!! Look at all these delicious stripes! I'm drooling, but I can't get too excited yet. I'm in over my head with so many projects at the moment.
Here are the pre-cut strips she sent along.
I've also been picking out fabric for another project.

Lake Dogs

Hubby got a bee in his bonnet. He wanted to go back to the lake yesterday. Though I'm still recovering from the last trip, I agreed. So hubby, Daughter 1, and I (along with the doxies) hit the road for the land of the wet and wild. We took the boat to a small island where the dogs could run free and explore.
Prince did some swimming.
Prince did some heavy duty rock rescuing, on his lifelong mission to rid the lake of rocks.
Mickey was happy to sit in the shallow water, watching Prince do his thing. It was a good day. Now back to the quilting life.
Look what the mailman had brought while we were gone! Yummy! Melody Johnson mentioned on her blog a couple of days ago that she wanted to sell her stash of Kaffe Fassett stripes. I e-mailed her quickly! I was the first to respond, so I got the honor of buying them. It's over 6 yards of fabric (a really nice variety), plus she threw in some pre-cut strips. It was a real bargain! I'm in stripey heaven! It will be some time before I can use them - too many irons in the fire currently - but I do have big plans for them.

Pinterest!

No pictures today. Hubby and I hosted a big party at the lake yesterday, so we've been gone 2 days. We got home late last night and today (for me) has been a day of rest. I haven't had the energy to make it upstairs to the studio, or even to unload the car. It will all still be there tomorrow when I'm more rested.

So today I want to share my love for Pinterest! Do you Pinterest? Have you even heard of it? I'd been hearing about it, but until I joined in I didn't know how fabulous and fun it can be!

Pinterest gives you a place to create on-line bulletin boards of inspirational photos, recipes, ANYTHING you see on the internet. See a cool quilt you love - pin it to your board. Want to save that fab picture of someone's redone furniture - pin it to your board. You can create multiple boards, each with a different subject matter. You can follow others' boards, and they can follow yours.

I urge you to try it - it's way addictive! Check out my pins here. Follow me if you'd like.

Quilting and Computing

It only took minutes to quilt the top section and square it up. If you're wondering how big it is at this point, it's about 32" across by 44" in length. I've been planning all along for it to be a lap quilt, but now I'm thinking it might be better as a wall quilt - a piece of art. Hmmm. Not sure. I don't have a great deal of fabric left from my swap, so I'd need to buy some to make it significantly bigger. Not a real problem. I know I want to add at least one more vertical row - it's too skinny for me now. I do have enough fabric for that. Decisions, decisions. I'll have to think on it.
Mickey was my assistant while I did the tutorial on Quilt-Pro. It went very well. I think I'm going to love this new software and all it can do. Beats the heck out of coloring in little squares by hand!

Slowly, But Surely

I finished the wide row I started yesterday. I sewed it to the quilt, along with it's backing and some batting. Now it's ready to be quilted and that's where I stopped this afternoon. Here it is, ready for some attention tomorrow from my Handi Quilter - love this machine!
I've been wanting to buy some computer software for designing quilts; it's getting tiring using colored pencils and graph paper! Much to my surprise, they do not make a version of EQ for Macs. How can that be? You can make EQ work on a Mac if you have this and that and the other, non of which I have on mine.

After more research, I found Quilt-Pro. Yes, they have a version for Mac! I got it in the mail yesterday, and installed it this afternoon. The instruction manual is great; I need to go through the tutorial included in the manual before I dive in head first. That's on my list for tomorrow (along with quilting the row on the cross quilt).