starts and finishes

The kids were home on spring break last week, so we filled our days with fun activities and day trips. However, I have managed to finish a few things over the past few weeks. The Bits of Washington quilt is quilted and bound ... just simple swirls, but I love how it turned out. I used a scrappy green binding to match the scrappy trees for the evergreen state. Each block makes me think about something special in my home state.



I also finished binding the grandmother's flower garden for my mom. The quilting is loose and loopy so I didn't add any puckers. Then I gently curved the binding rather than following each hexagon. The edges were a bit frayed from it's many years being stored wherever it was stored. It would be so fun to know the story of who made this quilt and how many places it has lived. It is now on its way to my mom for her to enjoy and use.

Judy Niemeyer visited our guild this month and taught 2 great workshops. Her presentation and trunk show were wonderful - what an amazing collection of quilts and an amazing number of paper pieced stars! I took the half-day One For All Seasons table runner workshop and have now finished 74 of the 120 spiky points for the three circles of the runner. Picture to follow soon.

I sewed like mad!

Our retreat was great fun ... in a hotel that we had not stayed in before. They put out tons of wonderful snacks all day long, both healthy and not-so-healthy. We really didn't need to go out for dinner, but we did anyway. Lots of sewing, lots of laughter and great to see what everyone was working on. I made great progress on my Washington State swap blocks. It's all together in a top, with wonky tress and free-pieced letters to tie together the assorted blocks about WA state (where I grew up). I really like how it turned out, although it's quite a bit bigger than I thought it would be!

I also mostly finished the scalloped binding on the grandmother's flower garden quilt (lots of easing of puckers in that binding!) and a simple charity top. Now I'm working on some cushion covers for my brother ... he choose black duck cloth, so it's not a very exciting project, but they will be well used an appreciated. Hope to get those done soon so I can get to finishing my WA quilt.