Hand Quilting during Storm Sandy

 As Hurricane Sandy approaches my hand quilting projects are ready

Just incase power is lost!

In the process of making a Hawaiian Bread fruit design pillow for a future class

All my tools fit neatly into this little blue contact case!!!

The essentials:

Quilting hoop - love the lap hoop 

Clover Gold Eye Quilting Needles Between (No.12)

Needle threader and cutter combo tool

Thread Heaven

Thimble of choice

Thread on bobbins (beat lugging the big spools)

 a little rubber needle pull thingy!

Minin battery operated OttLite (with spare batteries!)

OH ... Glasses 2.75 magnification! for those over 50 eyes!!

That's is I'm ready for any power outage! 

I can hand quilt for days!!

New Project!

Dare I say it .... I'm starting a new project!

After spending the past 3 months working only on UFOs this is a  ...

breath of fresh creative air!

I have a love for the simplicity of Hawaiian Quilts.

Two (sometimes three) colors, the repetitive echo quilting

I just LOVE it!

It is a time consuming labor of love...

but all good things are worth it ...Yes?

the bread fruit motifs are cut out and the basting has begun!

bread fruit half way basted onto background

(Gotta love this blue and white!)

here we are all needle turn appliqued down

next will be more basting

and then the fun part...

hand quilting.

but that's for another post!

Summer Vacation and Quilting

I've taken some time away from my blog to enjoy the summer (and quilt)!

This summer we spent 2 weeks in Chatham - very relaxing. 

I love the beach ... I love walking the beach, watching the waves and collecting shells.

Stephen and I saw the whales and seals off shore - no sharks.

This is a photo of three seals swimming next to each other off of

Light House Beach in Chatham.

All though my son Matt, caught a 12 inch baby sand shark while fishing off the beach!

Yes - we had been swimming there earlier!

And I thought it was a crab that was nibbling at my toe!

Victoria and I had a wonderful day on Nantucket

With vacation over the rest of the summer has been spent getting quilts

ready for the Sliver City Quilt Guild show in September.

I'm working on a hand quilted Hawaiian quilt my "Blue Hawaiian"

I'm down to the very edge and almost done - then it will be time to block and bind!

This has been a two year project and I've loved every minute of it!

I love the ease of applique and hand quilting - no machines ... just me and the fabric!

OH ... and cheater glasses and a good light!

Then machine quilting my "Fiesta" quilt which is made up of mostly all
New York Beauty blocks - which I of course had to machine quilt myself!

Unfortunately my Bernina's BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator) and I are not getting along!

After many attempts and many skipped stitched I took it off my machine and

threw it across the sewing room - well in my mind I did!

Anyway it's off and I'm trying to get into a quilting groove....
I think my stitches are coming out OK.

Here is one of the blocks .... What do you think?

This block is my favorite it looks like little Christmas trees!!

Only a few more blocks to go!!!

But I have time ... 3 weeks!

No problem ... I just wont sleep!

Oh I just realized this is my 50th blog post!

Whoo-Hoo!!

Hope you all have enjoyed them.

Happy Quilting!



My Latest Project

In my first post I mentioned I would post a picture of my latest project - this pattern is Hibiscus from Pacific Rim Quilt Company - I'm trying to line it up to baste before I needle turn applique all the edges. I started this mid July and as of today I have almost all of the needle turn applique done! Then it will be onto more basting and lots of hand quilting!

Blue Hibiscus