Spring!

This is from my backyard right now.  I love Spring here!

Sweet Asha

In mid-February, our dear friends Emily and Jonathan were chosen by a birth mother to be adoptive parents.  Such exciting wonderful news for some amazing people!  I was honored when Emily asked me to help her with a quilt to give to the birth mother as part of a "Celebration of Women" gift basket.  Emily chose a pattern for the quilt top*, we did some fabric shopping, and then we got together several evenings to work on it.  Now, Emily will downplay the part she played and say all she did was iron things while I did all the real work.  But that's not true (I'm not calling her a liar or anything, she just did a lot more than she'll claim).  The one part that I told Emily I would just take care of is the binding.

Top: birth mother quilt; Bottom: Asha's quilt

Once I finished that up, I took the quilt over to Emily and Jonathan's place where Jonathan tied the final yarn in place and it was done.  Just in time too--the very next day Emily and Jonathan were on a flight to meet their new baby--Asha Scout Wade--who was about 10 days early.

While they were out of town, I worked on the next part of the project--the coordinating quilt for Asha.  The family of three came home to Raleigh yesterday, and we were lucky enough to meet sweet Asha (and visit with her parents) tonight.  I love that baby--I could just gobble her up.  (Sorry I have no pictures of Asha, I was too distracted by holding her to think of that. )

*She decided to use the same pattern as this quilt.

Weekend Quilting

*Side note: I posted this last night, but then I discovered that there was a problem with the pictures in it.  So here's hoping this works.

Over the past few years I've enjoyed listening to General Conference while doing some sort of crafting, often quilting.  This year I didn't have a specific project to work on when the Saturday morning session started, so I went to my stash to get things a little organized.  In doing this I found a project that I'd been planning but hadn't gotten around to yet....

Several years ago when Mom was sharing fabric from Aunt Betty's collection, I became enamored with 5 blocks that Aunt Betty had used for practicing machine quilting. I thought about place mats or otherwise individually finishing them.  I also considered trying to incorporate them into a quilt, but since they were already quilted, I wasn't sure how that was going to work.  That's where this project got stuck for the past couple years...there and in the back of my fabric closet.  Also in the back of the fabric closet were two pairs of old ripped up jeans.  I realized that the heavy weight of the denim would balance the weight of the quilted squares.  By the end of the morning session I had the quilt top assembled.

Between sessions Marty helped me pick out (from my stash) the fabric to use for the quilt back (the same fabric as on the binding).  I also happened to have a perfectly sized piece of batting.  During the afternoon session, I tied and finished the quilt up.  It's not a very big quilt, only about 1 yd x 1 yd., but I love the way it turned out.  I love the artwork of Aunt Betty's quilting.  I love the mix of colors and designs.  I love the contrast with the denim.  I'm not sure what I'll *do* with this quilt other than add it to the other quilts in the house--and, of course, treasure it.