Cats, horses, and patriotic fun

This charity quilt is simply constructed from alternating strips of cat fabric (black and white) and some rich blue patterns. I sandwiched the black strip in the middle and used one of those fancy stitches on my sewing machine to secure the layers. I pinned the next two strips to the top of the sandwich and two backing strips to the back of the sandwich and sewed them on. Next, I added a batting strip between the back and front and used the fancy stitch to secure. Repeat four more times and a charity quilt was born!

What rich colors for the horses! I must admit that I would never have used these colors together in a quilt of my own, but they go together great! Some child is going to cherish this charity quilt made out of donated horse fabric strips.

A donated UFO (the center block including the green strip) was the foundation for this charity quilt. I added a border and practiced quilting circles in the blue strips!

A few charity quilts...

I strengthen my quilting skills through charity quilts. Here are a few of the charity quilts I put together in the past two weeks. Some are simply panels donated to our guild (www.friendshipstar.org/service). Others are (unfinished objects) UFOs also donated. I love the challenge of deciding how best to quilt a panel or transform UFOs into finished charity quilts.

While I was being entertained by Ricky Tims...

Who's Ricky Tims? He's a nationally known quilt artist http://www.rickytims.com/seminars.html. To anyone who love's quilting, this seminar is worth every penny....you will laugh for 3 days (woohoo!) and learn lots.

I digress....while I was being entertained by Ricky Tims... my husband and son went fishing on the Chesapeake Bay (Friday, May 1, 2009). Now, I know people who fish love to tell "fish stories". But, I think this photo says it all!

Cloth Creativity

Here I am, a year into retirement ... worried like everyone else whether I can afford to remain retired ... but believing in an optimistic future. The purpose of this blog is to document my quilting journey. Here are a few of my recent quilts.

This quilt is named Florida: Gateway to Space. It was completed in response to a guild challenge to represent a state and use the colors red, white, and blue. I based the design on my guild's http://www.friendshipstar.org/ 2009 raffle quilt. A mini group named Loose Lillies designed the border. The Florida patchwork was constructed by taking a picture of the raffle quilt and printing blocks which were assembled and cut out in the shape of Florida. The images of Florida from space and the space shuttle were obtained from http://www.nasa.gov/

The quilt to the left is my sister's wedding quilt. She married a Montgomery so I duplicated the clan's seal. The wedding invitation is in the lower two corners and the thistle symbol on the invitation is in the upper two corners.

For a little levity, I put my sister's picture on the face of the lady and her husband's picture on the head she's holding. The quilt was a hit at the wedding.

That's it for my first blog.