With a chick chick here...

I haven't done any embroidery for years and years, but when I saw these Buttermilk Basin Chickens thru the Year patterns, I just had to have them.  I will be piecing these stitcheries into a quilt in some manner.  I'm waiting on the teeny black buttons I ordered to use for the chicken eyes, but here is my first stitched block!

So you don't lose all interest...

We've all been working on a family project for school with my two 6th graders, so not a lot of quilting has been accomplished here this month.  I did, however, receive this beauty back from the quilter and wanted to share some pictures, although my pictures really do not do the quilt justice.

It's made with one layer cake, background and borders from the Simplicity collection, and the pattern is called Star Cakes.  It makes a huge (85x85) quilt with almost no effort.

I will always have fond memories of this quilt because I started it in April when I made my first trip to California to visit my dear friend Nicole.  In fact, I think I might call it California Dreaming.

I absolutely adore the beautiful free-form feathers that my quilter did on it.  It's certainly a breath of spring on a cold fall day!

Here's wishing everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry to disappear!

I was so busy getting ready to leave for retreat, I didn't even get a chance to blog that I was going!  I just spent the last 5 days at my guild's fall quilt retreat - food, companionship and lots of time to sew, uninterrupted by family demands.  Heaven on Earth, I must say.  Our guild is large, and this retreat hosted 85 quilters.

I feel like I got a lot accomplished - I bound a quilt that I just got back from my longarm quilter, pieced the backs for 2 quilts to get them ready to send out for quilting, and then I completely pieced 15 of the 30 blocks needed for my Starring Repros quilt, and got the second 15 blocks about halfway done.  Now that I'm home I can arrange and rearrange them on my design wall, which is hard to do at retreat because design wall space is very limited.

Since I don't have any photos of my own to show, let me share with you something that inspired me at retreat.  One quilter, Pam, was working on this Midnight Silhouette quilt, and another retreater had the finished top displayed on the wall in her room.  This beautiful quilt by Blackbird Designs is definitely going in my "future projects" file.  The first photo shows how Pam reduced the size of the quilt by 25% and added extra pieced stars, which I think I would like to do when I make the quilt as well.  Beautiful, aren't they?  Now, if I could only master applique!