I'm So Excited!

The Dear Jane Christmas Swap Quilt top is done!!

I hope to load it on my frame tomorrow. I started with the borders last night and finished them this afternoon. I wanted to do something a little different with the borders but not real wild. I wanted to continue the diagonal line of the on point setting out into the borders, so I don't have square corners. It's a little wider than my design wall in the hall so you can't see the one border to well. I'm very happy with how it turned out.
I just realized I didn't buy my cream thread today for the alternate blocks. I'll have to do that after work on Monday. I guess I can quilt the top border tomorrow, since I have red, green & cream variegated thread. Dang that's what a get for not writing a to do list this morning.

Well have a good one & Take Care.

Quilting Update

Here is the progress I made this week on my DJ Christmas Swap quilt. I basically only have one more row of blocks and sashing to join together. Then I have to finish sewing all the rows together. I'm still trying to decide what to do with the borders and I might do something unusual but I'm not sure as to how unusual. I have been reading this book Smashing Sets by Margaret J. Miller and it is giving me lots of ideas. I did want this quilt to be more traditional so it won't be very exotic.



My other big last week was to purchase the pattern for the Christmas stocking I will be making my new son-in-law Will. It will match the others I have made for the family and will stay at my house until I die or am too old to care. This year he gets to see the pattern, fabric & threads, Won't he be thrilled with that. Next year he gets the finished stocking. They want it backed in red, so I had to change out one of the colors of the thread from rust to red. Hopefully I'll be able to find a nice velvet next year when it is all done. That took a lot of time to finds colors that would work, but I think I got it. The new colors still look good with the other colors in the stocking. It's funny how each kids is so different when I made Kierra's stocking in 1995 she wanted green, every one else has blue velvet backing. Even Krystal my daughter in law picked blue.
I think blue is the favorite color of about 90% of the world and we prove that in this family.

Well take care and be thankful!

Monday Quilting Update

Well I was working on my newest project last night and I was about ready to take my update picture but the battery in the camera was dead. Such timing?!?!? So it was not charged by bed time so I had to wait until tonight.







This is my newest project which is also one of my goals for this year. It is from a Dear Jane Christmas Swap from 2001. Yes, that long along. I had 35 blocks so I made one more to make it an even 36. I designed it in EQ5 the year after I did the swap and purchased the fabric. I made 4 different sets of 10. I'm planing on doing scalloped borders so I can have more practice as doing a scalloped binding.



Here is my progress to date. I did struggle over which I color I liked better for the sashing the red or the green with the opposite color as the corner stones. So after making about 15 versions of the quilt in EQ6, I finally decided to use both colors as sashing and to use my back ground as corner stones. I'm liking it. I really like the green next to my border fabric. So I wanted to save enough of that to use as a resting border and the binding. My spacing sure did get wider towards teh bottom.

Well have fun and take care!

Question

I'm really curious to know how many of you have participated in a block swap and what your feelings are about block swaps. I'm going to post some thoughts later but first I was curious to know what the general feelings were out there. So leave your comments and answer the following questions.

Have you ever participated in a block swap?

Was it an online block swap?

Was it a local group block swap?

Have you participated in more than one?

Do you want to participate in one if you never have?

Have you decided not to participate in one again and why?

I'll leave the questions here for a week then I will post my thoughts. If you leave a comment and post a comment on your blog about this question and link it back to my blog, I will enter you name in a give away. I'm planing to have a give away to celebrate my one year anniversary of being a blogger on Thanksgiving. So if you do this and enter the Anniversary give away you will have two chances to win. Be sure I have a way to reach you.

If you would like to leave a comment but don't have a blog you can also send me an email at mebowden(at)cox(dot)net.

Thanks for participating.

Video of the wedding

Quilting Update

I have declared it done!! My DJ Boo Swap Halloween quilt is done!!! I finished the binding while driving back and forth to Las Vegas and today I finished the quilting and the hanging sleeve. I even have it hanging on my quilt hanger in the living room. I decided it needed to be in the place of honor in my home for a few days even if Halloween is over.


Here are some close up of the Spider Web quilting I did in four areas. I used Iridescent Sulky thread to do these webs. I like how it looks different on each color. I just hate it when you pick all the threads off of your quilt then you see the picture magnified on your computer screen and low an behold there is a thread.

I still have some basting to pull out but I was tired of pulling out threads. I think I did a little too much basting but since it was the first time I had basted a quilt I thought more was better. I'm kicking myself now.

I really had to resist quilting every inch of it. I didn't put the fourth spider web in because the picture wasn't very good, but I'm sure you have the idea.

Kierra's & Will's Wedding

We have arrived home safe & sound! The wedding has occurred, the happy couple are now married. I have posted pictures on my webshots album. I'll post some here tomorrow but this will do for tonight. Kierra's & Will's Wedding.

I'm going to try a slide show here. It works, but you can't see my comments or captions for the pictures. Oh Well, if you want to see the captions, use the link above.


Kierra’s Wedding