Friday, February 21, 2014

Hawaii!

Hawaii was right! (The first picture was of Kona Joe Coffee plantation! - Those were coffee trees instead of grapes!).  I was at "Quilting on the Beach" in Kona, Hawaii taking classes and relaxing.  This photo is of the 9 blocks we got from the various quilt shops we visited on a shop hop tour of the big island.  This was just one shop's way of setting the blocks.  This was sponsored by the Quilt Passions Quilt Shop in Kona.  Lots of fun, met some fabulous people, took a couple of applique classes by Nancy Chong, ate a lot, took a Pearl Harbor tour one day to see the Arizona memorial, and generally left the stress behind!

Came home to a furnace that died (whoopee, got to replace the furnace first day back!), and the contractor had the walls up in the basement.  Should only be a couple of more weeks and the basement will be finished.  They also put in another base cabinet in my kitchen with more counter space -- yay!  Almost makes me feel like cooking now!  I'll post pictures next time!

It was a wonderful, once in a lifetime trip, and although I had to come back to more snowstorms and below freezing weather, I'm glad to be home too!
Until next time...blessings.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Another Clue

California is not right!  So here's another clue!
Until next time...blessings!

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

I'm Baaacck!

You didn't even know I was gone, I know!  So, guess where I was - here's a clue:

Notice there is no snow, no cold!  I got home Monday morning to a furnace that had died.  So, Tuesday I had a new furnace installed -- not exactly what I had planned, but I knew eventually I'd have to replace it -- it was 20 years old.

Anyway -- I'll post another clue next time!  I am happy to be home and the basement work is progressing.

Until next time, blessings....

Saturday, February 01, 2014

Ideas

So, until the basement is finished, and I've gotten everything unpacked and put away, there's not a lot of quilting going on around here!
Before I covered the longarm in anticipation of the work being done in the basement, I was quilting a few quilts for the homeless.  My church has taken on the project of making quilts for the homeless in our area - and it's sad to say there are plenty in need and this has been a particularly cold, snowy winter besides.  There are a few quilters in the church, and the congregation has been donating fabrics as well as the quilters themselves and some of the quilt shops too.  I have a large collection of backing fabrics too that were donated.  I did manage to get 9 quilts quilted before the basement was started.  After that, I have managed to piece two more and I think the quilters have another 6 waiting for me to quilt them.

I also have (somewhere!), a lot of scraps that I intend to put to good use in making more quilts for the homeless.  With that in mind, I was playing a bit in EQ7 today and came up with a simple design for a 12" square block.  I have some jelly rolls which are 2-1/2" strips and I intend to use them to make these scrappy blocks: 
And a possible setting would be this one:  Although -- I didn't recolor the block, I would make the quilt much more scrappy -- the rail fence look of the sashing would probably get lost in the actual quilt.  I think this would be a good leader/ender project as well.
Can you tell I'm itching to get stitching?

Until next time....blessings.