At any rate, what would a decent celebration be without PRESENTS?! Only of course the gifts are for YOU - my much-appreciated blog readers! To thank you for taking the time to stop by my blog and say hello, I am offering the following:
Thanks to all blog readers, blog lurkers and my fellow bloggers. I enjoy the quilt blogging community more than I can tell you, and I have met many wonderful people that I consider true friends.
I got 2 fabulous quilts back from the quilter last week, but our beautiful Seattle weather has turned to rain, so I will have to wait for a nicer day to get photos.
How about I share something that made me laugh? I was pressing some 4-patches and this one ended up on my ironing board. Yes, even seasoned quilters working on a basic pattern can have a "duh, what was I thinking?" moment. To be honest, I have them all the time!!
I hope to have more interesting and fun things to share with you soon. Stay tuned for my blogiversary coming up near the end of March. There will be a giveaway!
Little Missy's birthday is next weekend, so even though I have another weekend free from work, I will be busy with a slumber party, birthday celebration and a houseguest. This may have to be put on the back burner for a week.
The blocks will be set on point with one of my favorite blue prints from the collection as the alternate block and beautiful striped setting triangles around the outside.
I want to show you a fun surprise that arrived on my doorstep Wednesday. My friend Thelma and I shared some fabric for our Toulouse quilts. We both had a few leftover flying geese from the border, and I want to put them together somehow on the back of my quilt, so Thelma sent a box returning her leftover geese.
I absolutely adore this quilt and loved every day that I was sewing it on. I was lucky enough to get a bundle of Maison de Noel fabric at a local craft store's post Christmas sale in 2004(?) for 50% off. SCORE! I also acquired some of the plaids from the collection and some of the background, planning to make Toulouse, which featured the same fabric line.
A couple years ago, Nicole started this beauty. And a couple of months ago, I was reminded about the quilt by a comment Thelma posted to Nicole's blog. This led to a super-fun email exchange between me and Thelma, planning to make this quilt that we both loved. Problem was, this fabric was long gone from stores, especially the reds and whites. Thelma was able to find a few of the blues and greens, and I promised her that I would send her whatever leftover pieces I had to help fill in.
I wanted to use every piece of fabric I had to make the scrappy flying geese border. My favorite method for making geese uses Eleanor Burns' rulers, and with her method, you get 4 matching geese with each pair of squares. Using all the fabrics, I would end up with about twice as many geese as I needed for my border, so I offered to send my extra geese to Thelma to use for her border.
Thelma did me one better, and urged me to send her half the fabric squares and she would make half the geese and send half of her finished geese to me. So I did the same with mine. So fabric was mailed, geese were sewn and exchanged between Washington state and Illinois. We had a lot of fun and sent a lot of emails back and forth talking about this quilt. I also had 2 background fabrics from the Maison de Noel collection. One the icy blue on white twigs and the other the red on white twigs. I had enough of both fabrics to use either one for my quilt, but decided I liked the softness of the icy blue. I offered Thelma the red and she ended up using that for her background. Perfect for a lover of red! I know she had some doubts about how strong the red seemed, but I think her quilt turned out fabulous, don't you?
Nicole used her own collection of red and green fabrics from her stash, and it also makes a stunning version of Toulouse.
I know I've said this before and risk repeating myself, but if you have any hesitation about Miss Rosie's patterns, please put all that silliness out of your head. Yes, they are complex looking, but break it down into the simple components (9-patches! flying geese!) and the sheer genius of designer Carrie Nelson will reward you with the most beautiful masterpiece. Pieced borders that fit together perfectly. It's a feat of engineering, I tell ya!
This has been a fun project for me. As I said before, I loved every minute sewing on it, and that's what makes quilting fun for me. Thanks for stopping in and be sure you visit Nicole and Thelma to see my Toulouse's fraternal triplets!
Last fall I signed up for the Red and White Snowball Challenge and also the Year of Schnibbles. I realized pretty early on that I wasn't going to find the time to work on my snowball quilt. I love the pattern and have all the strips cut to make it someday (and a recipient - I'm making mine blue and white and my daughter is already in love with it). My first dropout.
I kept up with the first 3 Schnibbles quilts, and I really enjoyed making them. I skipped December's because I didn't have the Tuffets pattern, nor did I have the time to make any. When I saw that Madeline was the January Schnibbles, I was excited because I had everything to make it and I really love the pattern.
I've spent most of January working on Toulouse, which I absolutely love. Every step of the way, I have absolutely LOVED working on this quilt. And that feeling - that joyful feeling - is what quilting is all about for me. I work two jobs, have a husband and 3 kids and very limited time in which to sew. So I made the decision that I'm going to quilt for ME, not to be entered in a contest or to try and keep up with the other quilters in Blogland (do you ladies ever sleep???).
I will enjoy seeing everyone else work together and finish their amazing quilts, and will probably have more than a few pangs of envy that I didn't make each month's project, but for me to be happy and fulfilled, I need to work on projects of my choosing, so that's what I intend to do.
