work in progress

Greetings dear readers!  
   Here's an in-progress shot of my current quilt project and a story:

This is made from purple, pink, orange, yellow & teal fabrics that I had collected at quilt shows and it stayed all pretty & stacked in a box until I found the right project for it.  It uses the Yellow Brick Road pattern and some pre-printed panels with various Psalm verses on it.  The backing is a purple print - her favorite color and the border is pink with a teal binding.  I thought the colors and the Psalms would make a great quilt for my friend - runs with scissors - who is always cold!  After piecing the top together in January I thought I'd have enough time to finish it for her birthday in August as a surprise. 

The surprise was on me however, because I ended up switching jobs and moved several states away! So the quilt had to be packed up unfinished. :(  I had the quilt basted and partially quilted before I moved, but once I settled in & pulled it back out I decided I didn't like the quilting anymore and ripped. it. all. out.   

   The quilt sat, basted & ready to go *again* waiting for the right quilt pattern and time to work on it. Meanwhile, said friend went & got engaged (yay!) and the fact that I will see her next month gave me a deadline to get this finished.   It's quilted with meandering peacock-like feathers, loose threads are tied off, binding made & attached.  

Now all I need to do is trim the extra, finish the binding off by hand and create a label then pack it up and hand deliver it.  Did I say that's all?   It will end up being more of a wedding gift than a birthday gift but eventually make it's way home.  I hope the groom-to-be likes purple & pink! 

Sunday snapshot #6

Who said summer was over? Sure, the kids have been back in school for a couple weeks already, but does that mean we should just roll up the summer fun and store it away for next year? Of course not!  

 In order to keep a few parts of summery goodness a little longer I put together a peach pie. Well, more of a peachberry pie as I threw in some frozen berries that I had to liven it up a little. I found a great recipe on allrecipes.com that turned out to be fantastic!

So drool over this gorgeous pie all you want and imagine just how great it tastes!  Especially with a side of vanilla ice cream.  ;)

yummmmmm

a serious problem

I think I have a problem dear readers - a serious problem.  Right now, I'm currently in the middle of 3 books and ready to jump into another 2 or 3!  Ack! I find it amazing that the brain can keep track of all these story lines and characters and that it hasn't yet driven me crazy to keep slipping from one setting to the next.  Which books am I immersed in you ask?  


1. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater - number 2 in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series
         Now that book 3 has come out, I had to go back and start from the beginning again to remember what all what on in Shiver


2. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
       Yes, I'm 1 of hundreds reading this, & technically, I'm listening to this on CD as all the actual copies are on hold for forever.


3. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling of course!
        After watching the end of the movie series, I got the itch to re-read the books so I started at the beginning and am enjoying my way through *again*


**edit: since writing this I managed to read a 4th book from the library stack! seriously, I'm out of control here.... :)


This way I can read at home, at lunch as desired and in the car around town! I even have a couple other books from the library patiently waiting to be read before their deadlines.  As it happens, every time I have books on hold from the library - they all come in at the same time! - and then I have only 2 weeks to read them before they go back onto the shelf.


I also have a stack of books on long-term loan from mom that are also patiently waiting to be opened and read.  So as you can see, I've got a serious problem at the moment - too many books to read & not enough time or eyes to do it in! What's a girl to do? Cram in as much reading as she can until her eyes go blurry seems to be the best solution. Of course, that tends to be a problem once you factor in all those silly day to day things we do.

What's on your reading list? 

sampler style

I've finished up my 12 blocks for the Summer Sampler series.  It was my first quilt-a-long and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of putting these blocks together. The masterminds behind it chose some great blocks and I'm sure some of them will be showing up as Junior Quilter or Quilt Camp projects in the future!  I'm glad that my fabric choices held out since a couple of them were leftover pieces from other projects - that made choosing colors for some of the blocks complicated as I didn't always have enough of one print to work where I wanted.

12 of 12 blocks - done!

I love how they all work together and I'll be debating sashing colors, borders, quilting design etc. in order to finish this up.  I especially enjoyed the fact that I could do these blocks on my time and sit with them as long as I needed for color selection and techniques.  It was nice to not feel rushed to finish them in a specific time frame and wonderful to see all the blocks in the flickr pool.  I'll be on the lookout for the next quilt-a-long that strikes my fancy and working on some ongoing projects in the meantime!

un ano en la vida

Today's the day dear readers!  Today is my 1 year mark here in Paducah - can you believe it?!  There's a small part of me that feels like it popped up out of nowhere on me, but it's been a good year all around.  New friends, new city, new job, a friends' wedding, lots of quilting, sorting out my own apartment, exploring new places - it's been a year full of good adventures and local flavor!


 It'll be fun to know what's coming up at work now that I've experienced the events and projects over the year and start to branch out a bit with ideas and programs.  It'll also be good to keep venturing out to various places in the area and explore some more. (Maybe even get some friends to visit out here this year *hinthint*)


Highs:: i really love my job; i am closer to M&D to visit; getting to explore a different area


Lows:: it's far away from good friends; missing out on being part of the wedding planning of said good friends


I've celebrated with some ice cream at the newly opened Cold Stone (yumm), dinner & a movie with friends and the knowledge all day at work that today was my day - here's to the first year and the one to come!