end of June

As part of the Lovely Year if Finishes, my June project was to finish quilting my Swoon quilt.  I wasn't sure it would happen as it's huge!  But I spent several nights with no distractions other than Netflix and some snacks to tide me through.

So here it is all quilted and ready for binding.  I'm super thrilled to have gotten to this point and stopped into Hancock's of Paducah after work Friday to find the right piece for binding.  I knew I wanted to go more aqua/teal and love love love the Sketch prints by Timeless Treasures.  I didn't have this color in my stash of Sketch and was super glad to find it and buy some on the spot.  In keeping with my aquatic/ocean theme of the quilt (sea glass, sea foam quilting) the name of this particular color was Pool - a perfect match.  :)

I even managed to start the final step Saturday and will have to get some finished pictures this week to share.  I don't care that it's summer and 90 degrees - once this is complete I'll be sleeping under it!  
Linking up at Fiber of All Sorts for the June finish party.

Sunday Snapshot #22

Yesterday was a beautiful day and full of adventures.  It started off with an early wake-up call and I headed out to the airport for a 5K run.  That's right - we ran on the runway of the airport!  It was awesome - gorgeous day, no clouds in the sky, flat course and a lot of fun.  It helped support a local organization as well which is always a great way to go.  

watch out airplanes!

My main goal was to run the whole thing as I'm not a regular runner and I did just that!  I ended up 61st out of 117, with a time of 33:17.  Not too shabby, considering the main reason I signed up was because it was on the runway - when would I ever have that chance again, right?

Watercolor to Quilt Workshop

At the end of May I was able to take our first workshop of the year at work with Katie Pasquini Masopust.  Katie had us painting with watercolors and creating a variety of techniques and little 'sketches' using things like bubbles, india ink, straws, resists and color combo ideas.  This was a lot of fun and I would like to try it again with a little more time to experiment with all the different techniques.

straw-blown paint

We then looked through our paintings and found small cropped sections that we liked.  Nothing too big - mine were mostly 2"-3" x 3"-5" in size.  I chose a section of the sketch where I blew the paint around with a straw that had all the colors I had chosen: turquoise, purple, orange and yellowy-gold.  

This was  copied into a line drawing and enlarged to be about 36" in height.  One of my Junior Quilters, E, was also in the class, and we had a blast with the paintings!  We had a silly moment with the india ink and went all Doctor Who graffiti-style on one of our paint sketches.

Day 2 had us creating templates from the enlarged piece, cutting the shapes out of our fabrics and pinning them up to the wall on a copy of our enlarged designs.  Very cool to see the fabrics come together to look like the painting I'd made.  

I got all of my pieces cut that day and worked with fabrics exclusively from my stash - score!  E & I had lunch at Kirchoff's each day, with cookie of course, and ate down by the river.  Gorgeous weather and conversation was filled with quilt talk, Doctor Who, books and old movies.  :D

Day 3 I went about turning and pressing under all the raw edges.  Each piece was set in place and final changes on fabric or prints were made.  I managed to turn all the edges under before class ended.  After everyone else had packed up and headed home, E & I walked over to get ice cream cones to wrap up the workshop.  Yumm!  What a fun class and it was great to share it with E.  Katie is a fantastic teacher and she made each step of the process enjoyable.  She's very encouraging and I would definitely try this technique again in the future.

I managed to get my pieces all stitched down at home the following day so I now have a completed quilt top from this class.  Quilting it will have to wait until next month (or after I finish Swoon) but I'm looking forward to all the fun designs I can quilt into each of the colors and sections.

finished top!

Birthday Adventures Cont'd

Last month Snaps & I took our birthday trip and adventured through New York City!  I flew to B'more on a Thursday night and early Friday morning we caught the mega bus up to NYC - plenty of time to chat and plan that certainly beat driving ourselves up I-95.  The only thing we had set in stone was going to see Newsies on Broadway Saturday night so we had 2 full days to explore - and boy did we! 

overcast times square

We had a list of things we wanted to see/do if possible and added to it as we went.  As soon as we dropped luggage at our hotel we were out to Times Square and stopped in at all the best shops: M&Ms, Hershey's, Toys R Us, etc.  There's so much to see aside from navigating down the street and we kept pointing out different things to each other that caught our eye.  After that we headed up to Central Park and the Bethesda fountain that's featured in many films, like Enchanted.  [pretty much everything we saw was related to a movie!]  

While wandering the park we heard a bagpiper, watched a couple try to make large bubbles for an engagement shoot and had a celebrity sighting!  Whom did we see you ask?  None other than Sarah Jessica Parker!  She was shooting a commercial and a still photo is in People magazine about it.  We wandered and stopped often for photos of street signs, buildings, neon signs and just to look around.  Dinner at the Pig & Whistle pub was followed by cannolis from the Cake Boss cafe - delish.

Saturday morning we wandered by the public library and Bryant Park.  Then onwards to Fifth avenue so we could stop into Tiffany's.  Seriously wow.  Every employee wore some sort of accessory in their signature blue and we looked at all the sparkle in the store from mugs and pens to necklaces, pearls and engagement rings.

Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral, which unfortunately for pictures, is undergoing major restorations and is covered in scaffolding both inside & out.  That didn't matter too much though because I was able to meet up with Sr. Ann Catherine face to face for the first time in several years.  So great to see SAC and explore a little bit of NY together.

Sr. Ann Catherine & me!

Our hotel concierge was fantastic and she directed us to John's pizzeria for a late lunch - yumm.  Excellent pizza and definitely hit the spot.  We walked down to see Macy's on 34th street, got caught in a downpour on the way to see the Flatiron building and walked by Herald Square before heading back to get ready for the show.

This was my first show on Broadway.  Ever since I stumbled across the movie Newsies back in middle school I've been (just a little bit) obsessed with it - the dancing, the story, the songs and it stars Christian Bale & Bill Pullman!  How could it not be awesome?  Needless to say, I was super excited to see the stage version, as was Snaps.  Well it was phenomenal and everything I could want and more.  The songs were great, the dancing was amazing and I didn't stop smiling through the whole show it was that good.  Afterwards I stood outside to get my playbill signed by the cast as it seemed to be the NY thing to do.  It'll probably be framed for my wall soon.  [I may already be planning to go see it when it comes to the Louisville/Nashville arenas]  Then we stopped at Junior's (on the recommend of our concierge) for some amazing cheesecake to top off the night.

top of the rock

had no idea this image was from this building!

Sunday morning dawned sunny and warm after all the clouds and I headed to Mass at St. Patrick's, with a short detour by the Today show for a photo op.  Then we ventured to Rockefeller center and took our trip to the Top of the Rock observation deck.  3 levels of decks offered some amazing panorama views of the city and we also got to have the Empire State Building in our photos.  :)  This is the rooftop from the end of the movie Adjustment Bureau and is also the building being constructed in this historic image. 

today show selfie

Then we took the subway down to City Hall to see the Horace Greeley statue from Newsies and walked halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge.  I wish we'd had the time to go all the way across, but maybe next time.  We took lots of pictures and I crossed off a bucket list item - screaming off the Bridge.  :)   We took the subway back uptown to Grand Central Station for a brief walk through & lunch before heading back to the hotel and departing for home.  

wahoooo!

An excellent way to celebrate 30 in an awesome city with one of the bestest friends I could ever want!  Happy Birthday to us Snaps!

Project June

It's seriously June and after having taken a bit of a project break in May I'm ready to get back to the machine.  This month my goal is to finish the quilting on my Swoon quilt.  

It sat in the sewing room since before Quilt Show (way back in April) and I'm ready to get back into this one.  I've got it maybe half quilted at this point so it seems manageable for the month.  :)

That being said this month is fairly busy at work as I have all of next week to prep for Quilt Camp before the kiddos arrive on the 17th!  Right now I've got about 50 kids out of a possible 64 signed up for our 4 sessions so it'll be the best kind of chaos - kids, quilting, fabric galore and my favorite work days of the year.  :D  I'm also going to sign up for a 5K that will be held on the runway of our local airport - sounds pretty cool to me.  

Linking up at Fiber of All Sorts and wishing everyone good luck in getting their projects finished this month.