Olive's Quilt

This past spring certainly was baby time.  This made a great opportunity to try some new quilting techniques and blocks. 
One new arrival was little Olive May Rose.

I decided to try the Quick Curve Ruler making a flower design.  After spending numerous months piecing a double wedding ring quilt this ruler made curves a breeze. 

It's always a joke with my quilting friends when I announce that I am making another baby quilt.  My baby quilt size is around 58 by 76.  Baby quilts and blankets I received when my children were born were beautiful, but only lasted a few month and they were outgrown.  My thought is that this child will be able to drag this quilt around until it gets worn out instead of packing it away for who knows what.

As one young mother, who received one of my quilts as a gift, wrote in her thank you card "she`ll be able to use it in college"

So here's little Olive's quilt.  Her brother Gibson, who was born a year earlier will not have to share the quilt I made him.

Welcome Fall

Today is the first day of fall.  Beautiful day - sun is shining and the temperature is in the mid 70s.  I can smell autumn in the air even though the leaves have not started to change yet.  Fall is always an exciting season.  Fall is the beginning of our quilting group - The Midnight Stitchers, after taking the summer off.  An appropriate name since we are the night owls - sewing at night after work.

We started up the Thursday night after Labor Day and will continue every Thursday, unless a holiday interferes, until next June when the days are long and hot and makes it hard to stay indoors. It was great to catch up with my quilting friends on their summer adventures and also to see what everyone is working on.  Meet some of the Stitchers:

Jodi has been busy working on a fund raiser golf outing in memory of her son Jason who passed tragically about a year and a half ago.  She is raising money to fund something good in his name -college scholarships.  Last year she made a quilt as part of the fund raiser, but evidently didn't finish one for this year. Announcing the first night of quilting that she didn't accomplish this mission Shelly stepped up to the plate and donated a beautiful blue quilt with red hearts for the fund raiser. Bless Shelly's heart - she is always so giving. The ladies agreed that we would make a quilt as a group for next year's golf outing.

Crystal lost her mother in August.  She has been busy using her mother's cotton dresses to make memory teddy bears for the grandchildren.

Eileen lost an infant grandson this past spring so she is working on small quilts (32" by 48") to donate to the hospital infant intensive care unit.   And of course we will be putting a few together to help that cause.

Not all of our missions stem from a loss. Shelly's granddaughter just started preschool and requested a quilt for her newly decorated bedroom.

Well my mission is to work on UFOs.  The first one I am going to finish is a bargello.  Stay tuned for this adventure there is 24 yards worth.

So the journey begins!

I love to sew.  Growing up in the 50s/60s my mother and Aunt Marie were always sewing clothes, pillows, curtains etc.,  My first recollection of me joining in was finding a needle and thread and a scrap of fabric and pulling the thread through it.  I remember spelling out my name with the thread.  Quickly I began sewing clothes for my dolls and of course making curtains and blankets for them.
My mother didn't pay too much attention to what I was doing, it was all trial and error on my part.  I was resourceful and would figure out how to make things work the way I wanted - to this day I love this same challenge.
I believe I can do anything I want to - I just have to want to do it (and I think I can do a pretty good job at it).