Well Eva, We've Done Some Excellent Work Here....

If you are a fan of the tv show Friends, like I am, you might recall a show in the first season called "The One With the Butt" where Joey portrays Dr. Sigmund Freud in a musical play called Freud!  I have all the seasons of Friends on DVD and I play them next to my Pfaff while I sew.  I've watched them so many times over, I can pretty much recite every line before the actors do.

I recently watched the first season again, so I thought I would share my latest photo of the Eva quilt and quote one of Joey's lines from that show.

I like the pink setting fabric (thanks for the advice, Carrie!) from Basic Grey's previous Moda collection, Sultry.  It coordinates well with Eva, and I think makes a nice frame around the Jacob's Ladder Jewel Box blocks.  There will be a piano key strip-pieced border added next.

The pattern is Sweet Escape, another great (and very fast!) quilt design from Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.  It uses just 2 layer cakes and 3/4 yard of one print for the setting triangles.  So if you have layer cakes that you don't know what to do with, you might want to consider making this quilt!

Million Dollar Smile!

Orthodontia Phase One is complete and my beautiful daughter got her braces off yesterday - isn't that a gorgeous smile?  Now she'll wear a retainer and her headgear for a while (I'm guessing until all her permanent teeth are done emerging) and then - well, I don't even want to think about Phase Two ($$$$$).  But seeing her teeth, it's so totally worth it!

My First Quilt

Carrie at LaVieEnRoise and Camille at Simplify have challenged readers to show their first quilt along with their most recent quilt.  I've shown this once before, but here again is my very first quilt, in all it's mismatched points' glory.

I started making this quilt in 1993.  It was a pattern from Quiltmaker magazine called Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod.  From this project I learned that templates are not for beginners, and that cardboard does not make a suitable template for rotary cutting.  What difference does it make if you slice off a little sliver of cardboard with each cut?  A lot, apparently!

Notice, if you will, the intersections of the pinwheel blocks in my second photo that don't come anywhere close to meeting!  Click the photo to get a closer look.  Go ahead.  I guarantee it will make anyone feel better about their piecing skills!  (and you can probably see my wonky attempt at machine quilting as well)

My quilt guild did a "Then and Now" feature at their show in 2008 and my first quilt was displayed along with a sampler quilt that I finished in 2007.  Yes, I do feel like I have grown a great deal in my technique since 1993.

For this blog post, I'm going to show another picture of my most recent finish - the Paisley Parade top designed by Laurie Simpson that was on the cover of Quilt Sampler magazine last summer.

Införa Eva

In case you don't speak Swedish, that translates to "Introducing Eva."   This is my new quilt project using Carrie Nelson's pattern Sweet Escape and the 2 Eva layer cakes that Carrie sent me from Spring Market.  The fabric designer is Basic Grey, who designs scrapbook papers and now also designs beautiful fabrics for Moda.

A couple of things - I know these blocks look very unbalanced.  This is just over half of them completed, and I will work on a more pleasing color arrangement after they are all done.  Also - the white fabric around my squares is the flannel on my design wall - I'm still trying to find a suitable fabric for the setting triangles (and pink was not a good choice!).

A little side note - when I was in high school we had 4 choices of foreign language study - French, German, Spanish and Swedish.  While my parents tried to discourage me from taking Swedish (so impractical!), I signed up anyway (it's that stubborn Taurus thing).  We had a great teacher - Frau Johnson - and boy was it ever fun, but sadly the program was dropped and I was only able to take 2 years of high school Swedish.  Even sadder, I have retained NONE of it.  The funny thing is, I remembered as I started this blog post that the Swedish name I chose for myself in class was Eva.  I think this fabric was somehow meant to be mine.  Thanks again, Carrie!

8 Tiny Reindeer

I finished the second shop sample using the top portion of the Crazy Eight panel.  Just a couple of pieced borders and you have a cute holiday wallhanging!

My baby boys graduated from elementary school last week.  No photos to share - I definitely need to look into a new digital camera that actually WORKS in low lighting situations like the school gymnasium.

We're Number 2!

My daughter's basketball team won just 2 of their regular season games, but they did well enough in the end of season tournament to bring home the second place trophy.  Way to go girls!

Christmas Windows

I finished this sample for the shop using the adorable Crazy Eight panel designed by Sandy Gervais.  Nobody makes panels as cute as Sandy, and this one is no exception.  The pattern is called Christmas Windows and is a quick and easy Churn Dash.  Look how cute the little ornament man is!

I'm making another quickie sample with the top part of the Crazy Eight panel and I'll show you that one soon.