vacation quiltings

I went home for a week of vacation recently and it was fantastic!  A much needed long break from work and you can't beat being home.  Especially when this is what awaits you after a long drive!

personalized parking spot!

Momm and I had a couple days to quilt and I brought Gilbert up with me to play - so fun!  I worked on the strippy table runner pieces and turned it into a finished piece that now lives in their kitchen.  This was a fun project and quick to pull together. Linking up this finish at crazymomquilts Finish it up Friday.

This is my Quarter 3 finish #1 at the Finish A Long over on She Can Quilt's blog.  It was nice to start out with a quicker finish and even better to gift it to M&D!  My original Q3 list post can be found here.

finished runner!

We talked quilty talk and made huge progress on some lingering WIPs which was awesome.  Our main focus were our challenge quilts from about 6 years ago with our mini group.  We each picked a theme, made a strip and passed it to the next person who then made a strip with our fabrics that coordinated with the theme and so on.  My theme was the Outdoors and I made the strip with the tent and campfire on it.  Now my job was putting all the strips together into one quilt - a very difficult one.  We spent a good couple of hours trying out various layouts and I've decided on this one.  It's really cool how the strips create a landscape all together while still being individual pieces.  I'm planning to add in a Bear's Paw and Flying Geese block as fillers.

Momm's theme was travel and we spent some hours on figuring our her layout too and it was great to have more floor space to layout all these projects.  True confession - I hadn't made my strip for Momm's quilt until about 3 weeks ago - sorry Momm!   When I finally got my act together I made this fun strip of postcards showcasing places we've visited.  I'm glad to get this finished so it doesn't lurk on my to-do list anymore.

We didn't go out to any fabric stores this trip, instead the fabric mobile came to us!  A friend of Momm's runs a fabric shop on wheels and we had a fun time shopping.  I added a Honeycomb of Happy go Lucky to my project list and can't wait to start sewing with these fun hexagons.

My visit also included watching the end of the 100th Tour de France which was epic!  Always a good summer race to watch.  We went biking and Dad & I raced a train that ran alongside part of the trail - the train was definitely faster!  Delicious home cooked food was abundant of course.  We also went to the Art Institute which was amazing.  So many great exhibits and works that I'd only seen in books before.  I love seeing them up close!  Highlights included: American Gothic, A Sunday on the la Grande Jatte, a partial view The Wave and the lions of course!  We made a brief stop at the Bean too to complete the experience.

A fantastic visit and I've got lots of quilt progress to continue making so I'll sign off here dear readers.  Enjoy the rest of July!