First APQ Buddies Blocks

Okay, made a few of these backwards today but here are the completed blocks for the first month:

Now, who do you think the lucky winners will be?!

Great Horned Owl- "Hunter"

Yeah! The sun is finally out today so I can post the completed pictures of my owl!

Original Photo:


Finished 15" X 20" quilt:


Here's the back:


On to the next project!

By now you all know that we have this "family story" about chickens. So as a diversion from quilting, I thought I would tell you about my new mugs. My dinnerware is the Italian Countryside from Mikasa, which I love. I can mix and match it with everything. But I have always hated the coffee cups. My finger always gets hung up in the little handle and I am sure that if a man tried to use it that his finger wouldn't even fit in there...

So I have been looking for some mugs to use when I have a tea break. I was at Hobby Lobby the other day looking for a paint pen to use on one of my quilts when I ran across these mugs. Needless to say, I brought home more than the pen.

The Home Stretch....

Well, I just looked at the clock and I have been quilting almost 12 hours today... guess it is time to give it up. But I can see the end is near and I just can't wait to get this done...

When I was in college, there were a couple of Great Horned Owls that nested in the oasis of pine trees in the middle of campus. My school was located in the middle of farm country (for us that meant corn and beans) and there were thousands of black birds that must have come for miles to mob those poor parents. There were birds everywhere for weeks. So when I was considering what to put in the background of my owl, remembering that experience put me in mind of pine cones. The resulting background doesn't look anything like pine cones, as it turns out, but I guess it will have to do.

It is time for me to go soak my spasming muscles in the tub, I think. Here is the almost completed owl:

Dave's Owl

I'm tired tonight, so no long post but I thought I would brag on my brother. I told my brother Dave last summer that what I wanted for Christmas from him was a piece of his art work. I know he stayed up late Christmas Eve (you know procrastination runs in the family) to get it finished, but here is the colored pencil drawing he made for me:


By the way, it did not escape my notice that my mom did not blog today and has made no mention of the fact that it is her birthday today. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Valentine's Distraction

Update on quilting: I marked in the shape around the compass with an actual compass and a white Clover pen. Then I "echo" quilted around the shape. The border is marked in from a stencil, which I modified the corners on. The entire thing is quilted with a walking foot, which I think is worth its' weight in gold.

The Floral Compass was completed today. I finished the binding while watching Sunday Morning, lingered into Face the Nation and then partway through a movie to get done.... of course I was a little stiff and sore by then and took a break for lunch. I love the way the quilting turned out on this, now I'll spend the next couple of weeks convincing myself that I really want to donate it.


Here's the back:

And my supervisor was hard at work, you should be able to play the video:

Notice the ears in the bottom corner of the film? Caleb's still waiting for that squirrel to come back...

After lunch, I started back on my owl. The day has been so gloomy that the light was really bad so I decided I had to put it away. Always a good idea when you find yourself staring off into space.

Last Monday when I met with the Binding Friends, Maureen's show-n-tell was that she had won a raffle of a quilted jacket that was really cute:

I've been meaning to make one of those sweatshirt jackets for myself for some time and I really liked this. I don't have any of the printed quilter's fabric or any of the little sayings but it occurred to me that there had been some cute fabric I had received in a donation give away quite a while ago that might do the trick. So I declared Valentine's Day a play day and got to work-

Hopefully I'll get this done in time to wear to the quilt show!

It seems like forever since I have been out here- I had to switch the internet to my laptop from work and don't you know it's a difficult process to switch computers back and forth. The cable company tells me I need a different box if I want to run more than one computer... add another chore to the list. Hopefully all of you that are snowbound are quilting away!

Lots of snow this week for Texas- not compared to where I grew up in Illinois but definitely enough to get all of the Chicken Little's (The Sky is Falling!) out in traffic. Thursday there were four cars in the ditch by the time I got to the end of the road. Hmm. Guess they don't get snow enough to know that you don't want to slam on the brakes when it is icy...

I'm sure that you would all prefer some nice spring flowers, but here are my snow pics:

Not sure that you can see it, but the birdfeeder is out at the fenceline beyond the birch tree. Caleb has been in the house with his chin on the windowsill for our furry-tailed friend to come by for some food. I had to go out and rescue him yesterday- the snow-laden bushes were blocking his escape route. Caleb is now patiently waiting for him to come back...

Floral Compass

I have this rule about quilting after dark- I'm just not allowed to do it. The thing is, if I work on a project after the sun goes down I usually mess it up and end up spending the next night ripping it all out. So, no working on the owl in the evening.
The Dallas Quilt show is next month (anybody going on the weekend?) and I just found out this week that they are still looking for items for the mini-quilt auction. And Joanne's blog about getting her UFO's done just added to my decision... can't have all this stuff piling up now, right? (Yeah, right!)
I usually have some "test" blocks sitting around- typically I might make a sample before starting a whole project. So I pulled this out and decided I should quilt it and donate it. I should have taken the picture in daylight but hopefully you can see the start I have made on the quilting. After I got it started I remembered that there is some requirement about the size of the thing- guess I will have to track down the maximum size it is supposed to be. I might just be too big- I think it might have to be trimmed down an inch or two to meet the requirements. Guess I need to figure that out before I get to quilting the edges.

Nothing Else To Do

Yeah, right.... there's no quilting to be done here...

I got my last cabinet this past weekend and of course since I was organizing anyway I had to move all of the furniture around. So here are the final pics of the studio...