Quilting Along

I went to a three day quilting retreat last week with my bee and it was lots of fun! Of course I don't have any pictures, but take my word for it, it was fabulous! Fabulous food, friends and fun!  Here is a little corner of my studio with a pile of quilts I'm working on and a few I need to quilt:

 Here are some more cute pics from our Florida trip - and some cute people from Florida:

 We went to Disney World - our first time, we went to Epcot, a beautiful, not too hot day for it:

 We are off to St. George next week for a day to do a walk through of a house we are building down there, it is exciting, even though we are just going to rent it out for awhile, it may be our retirement home in a few years. I've always been afraid to build a new house, too many decisions. There are so many decisions when we do all of our remodeling, I thought I wouldn't be able to take all of the choices for a WHOLE HOUSE! (I also thought maybe my marriage couldn't take it!). I think now, it would be fun to build a house to live in now.  I shared this new attitude with my son, Shane, and he said, "Mom, it's taken you 50 years to figure this out? You didn't need to live through all these remodels and live in the ghetto!" That boy is funny.

Off to quilt today as I have realized that my next sister-in-law birthday is TUESDAY! Yikes!

Back in the Saddle

We are back from our two week trip to Florida and on a cruise for our 36th anniversary!

 We had a great time, although I was getting over a little cold when we left and I ended up with laryngitis for the first 3-4 days of the cruise!!! This presented a problem when we were having dinner with our table mates! The first night, we all smile at each other and one gentleman says, "Hi, I'm Mike, this is Ann" the other couple chimes in with their names, and then from our side of the table, DEAD SILENCE! Finally Mike turns to us and says, "I'm sorry, I didn't get your names" - ack! Mr. Handsome said later that he was waiting for a break in the conversation to introduce us, that man is a "slow talker", there was plenty of time! It was very hard for me to let him carry the conversation for both of us, as I am very chatty! (Several men, when they learned I had laryngitis, said he was "lucky" - HA) We had a great time, swimming, tubing, and just relaxing. We also got to visit our wonderful "Florida kids" and grandchildren. 

 This star quilt is a project I will be working on, hopefully sometime soonish...(That sounds VERY uncommitted, doesn't it?) We had a block exchange in one of my bees and we did different sized stars in Civil War colors, It's going to be a challenge to put together for sure! I even took a class on it at Quilt Fest last September, to get ideas for putting together different sized blocks - we'll see...

 Here is another class I took, from the wonderful, entertaining and talented Melissa Corry! It's an Irish Chain and I used a jelly roll and some fun newsprint for the back ground. I am also hand quilting it in a "big stitch" with Perle cotton - another class I took, lots of fun! It has a minky back, so it is a bit of a challenge to get that needle through! Hoping to finish it this summer for a daughter's birthday.

 This little table topper is from another block exchange, we did 6" "Fall Blocks" and I needed a Thanksgiving topper, so this fits the bill perfectly!

Here is a scrappy around the world I finished, I actually made three of them with scraps, I'd been making blocks for a LONG TIME, I finally made 3 throw sized quilts and gave them all away.

This is the latest, on the design wall, super cute, it's called a "Charm Pack Mashup", made with lots of charm squares - and I certainly have a boatload of those! I am doing it with a dark background, which I will either love or hate, it has LOTS of bitty pieces and is turning out quite tricky to put together, since the stars kind of interlock. I may enter it in a quilt show, but we'll see if my ego can take it - I am NOT a very precise quilter (I prefer quantity over quality, unfortunately) so I cringe when I read the "critiques" of my quilts when I enter them in a show...

Here is another Farm Girl Vintage 6" block to end with - happy quilting!!!