Bright, Cheerful, Piecing, Hand Quilting...

Hand quilting in progress...

Backing is turquoise.....

How fun is this?

I just had to show you this, so exciting!

This bright and cheerful quilt was designed and pieced by my daughter for my 'full of fun' five year old grand daughter! Miss 'full of fun' is a perfect match for this lovely quilt. 

Also visit Jennifer Paganelli's blog for more colorful inspiration.

May all your best dreams come true!

Hand Quilting and getting into the Spirit....

Hand quilting progresses, I've quilted the grey border since I photographed this.

Merry Christmas cross stitch pattern by Blackbird Designs.

Virgin and Child by G. B. Salvi, Christmas cards by Galison NY

Hand quilting, getting Christmas cards ready and maybe starting a new cross stitch project.

That's what I'm up to this Friday.

Stay tuned, soon I'll post my daughter's quilt in progress, her design and colors and she's hand quilting it, the best.

As Mary said to the angel, 'May it be to me as you have said.'

Getting in the Spirit.

Maintaining my Own Garden...art notebook...

Quote from Rachel Ashwell's book, Shabby Chic Interiors.

Doodles from my notebook.

More ideas from my notebook.

Page ripped from Elle Decor Magazine, stapled in my notebook.

My butterfly calendar, note the colors.

My copy of Rachel's book full of classic inspiration.

Why keep an art notebook? I keep a note book to catalog inspiration and my doodles. Ideas and inspiration have a tendency to fly out the window and get lost as fast as they came. I document ideas from other sources carefully giving credit where credit is due because it's never cool to plagiarize.

This morning I took 15 min.s for 'play time', as in Victoria Findlay Wolf's book, 15 Minutes of Play, Improvisational Quilts.

I got out my notebook and reviewed ideas and got out some scraps and worked out a few things. 

The stage must be set. 

Use what you have, where you are and some really amazing things can happen. 

Art Quilt 'Liberated' Style, design process...

Last night I sewed the outer borders together and decided on black for the corner blocks. After Thanksgiving I'll get the borders and corner blocks sewn on.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, we have so much to be thankful for don't we?

Pam, my blogger friend at Hokkaido Kudasai.blogspot.com , has finished her wonderful, hand pieced and quilted, blue hexi quilt. If you enjoy and appreciate hexi quilts then you must see this one. Pam puts a lot of care and attention to detail in her projects. Congratulations, Pam!

Remember to look in on the continuing projects at Ad Hoc Improv Quilters #3 . 

There's a lot of interesting quilts being made.

See you after the holiday!

Hand Quilting with Embroidery Thread and Four Patch Piecing.

Hand quilting progress on Citrus Rose #2.

Close up...

Piecing four patch blocks

I'm ready to start hand quilting the borders of my art quilt, Citrus Rose #2. The turquoise embroidery thread really works with the whole quilt. Progress is being made.

Four Patch blocks are fun to piece, simple but lots of possibilities. I'm making a variety of blocks for a sampler of 'liberated' blocks as in Gwen Marston's book, Liberated Quiltmaking II . 

Happy Stitching!!

Hand Quilting, Citrus Rose 2, Liberated Log Cabin

Oranges on my orange tree are almost ripe.

Hand quilting Citrus Rose 2 with three strands embroidery thread.

Coffee and black berry coffee cake anyone? Come on over!

Happy Friday! Share a smile!

Celebrating Rain, Green and Beading..

The colors were clear and bright this morning after a couple days of rain.

The mix of greens, yellow greens, reds into oranges is delightful.

See the rain drops? Lovely.

Shrub with berries.

Blue Gum Eucalyptus does its flower thing.

Beading  accomplished here.

It's rained here the last couple of days, it was fairly respectable too. This morning the sun was out

shining and the air was clear and clean. I had to get some photos of the colors to share. So thrilling.

I got some beading done. My needle threader broke, my beading needles are almost impossible to thread without them. I had three more beads to sew down and needed more thread on my needle and the threader wire broke, oh no! So tediously I worked and fiddled and finally got the beading needle threaded by eye and hand. I sure didn't want to run to the store so late just to get a threader!

That's what I've been up to today. I also made dinner and it's on the stove, home made pea soup with lots of veggies and left over roast beef.

Have a great day!