exploding B&B cabins

I finally finished my Mom's birthday present. It's a lap sized quilt. I bought the log cabin pieces precut from eBay. I sewed them together and figured out the placement. Then my favorite thing; a trip to the fabric store to get fabric for the borders. These came from JoAnn's Fabric.
All machine pieced and quilted. It didn't take too long just a couple of weekends.

I've bought a couple of these precut log cabin kits from the same store on eBay. I've been really happy with all of them. Jordans of Oregon is the store. Cutting is my least favorite part of quilting, so this is one shortcut I love!

Here is another of her kits that I'm working on:
That one is for me, and it's been up on the design wall for about a year. I've got 12 more blocks to make, then I have to audition fabric for borders and backing. I've seen some really nice asymmetrical pieced backings lately. I think I'm going to try that with this one. I want it for my Queen sized bed. I keep stopping work on this and doing quilts for other people. oh well.

I'm thinking of lots of purple for the borders. It's my favorite color so that will dominate with just a little of the pale green. Maybe some Flying Geese, I just got a new Flying Geese Ruler and I want to try it out.

The squares lined up under the log cabins have been up there even longer. Guess I'll finish it someday. I kind of like knowing I've got things to work on if I get bored or broke.

I've got one more of her kits set aside in beautiful shades of teal and turquoise for my son. I can't wait to work on that one.

Then I want to do some Sunflower Place mats for my sister in law. I've been searching for the right fabric but haven't seen it yet. If I don't I've got some other ideas for her. She is going through and extremely tough time, just got diagnosed with MS along with Chiari and may need to have surgery. Maybe I'll make her a nice snuggle quilt instead of the place mats. She could use a hug I think.

Here's another look at the one I just finished, with Lilly giving it her seal of approval.

Rainy days are gone, and the weekend is now

Baby tomato! This is Mr Stripey. When he grows up he is supposed to be red and chocolate striped. I've never grown this one before, so we shall see.

We got a ton of rain this week, officially 3.99 inches yesterday. My yard was a swamp and my driveway a river. The veggies loved it, the tomato plants look like they grew a couple of inches. The roses lost all their petals but overall look ok, but the impatients got all beat up.

I planted a Honeysuckle against the fence on the side yard; and strung up garden twine to give it something to cling to. It grows so fast I think if I stand there long enough I'll see it move.

On the crafty side:
I bought the equipment to make lampwork beads. Very fun! I get to use a torch!! woo-hoo!
so I've only tried it once so far and was not as difficult as I imagined. I did do one thing wrong: I set everything up outside. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, breezy and I was playing with fire.... so I set everything up on the table in the back yard. The blue part of the flame is the hottest so that's where you have to hold the glass. Well, in the sunlight or dappled shade you can't see the flame at all. All I could see was the wavy distortion in the air.
Problem two: nice and breezy. While that felt fantastic, you really don't want the wind blowing the flame around; it needs to be nice and steady.
In spite of that I made 5 beads. Not too bad for a first time:







I know that with practice I will get better, but now just to find the time to do it.
quilt
I have so many things I want to do this year.

I have 3 quilts in the planning stage and 1 a little less than half pieced.
I want to make the baby some clothes.
I want to work on layering in my art journal.
I want to go to the beach once per month.
I want to dance.
I want to continue to lose body mass.
I want to creatively landscape my yard and make it so nice we love to sit out there.

Here's one last pic:

Valentine's Art Swap

I joined in on a Valentine Swap that Lemoncholy offered at her blog: Lemoncholy's flight of fancy.
She's a wonderful artist and I love the blog, go visit.

Here is my contribution; water color and markers.





And here is what she sent me!! I love, love, love it. There is nothing like coming home on a dreary, rainy day after a hard day at the insurance mine to find lovely lovely decorated mail in the box.

It's about 8 inches long, and quilted and puffy. I'm taking it to work to hang on my cubbie wall where I can admire it all day.

I'm working on a card for the significant other, but you will have to wait till after I give it to him for the picture.

Little Blue Quilt

I finally finished the Blue Lap Quilt. This is the one I started for the baby, but my friend didn't like the colors so I put it aside and did the Pink and Green one. Above is a close up of the hand quilting.

Three quarters of the quilt is hand quilted and one quarter machine quilted. I had to go to the machine because I ran out of time. I was sewing the binding on, on Christmas Eve. I finished about 10pm.

We gave it to Miss Viola on Christmas. She pronounced it much warmer than the lap robe she had been using, and just the right size.

A couple of blocks got chopped, so not exactly symmetrical, but thats the Homemade Goodness showing.