Latest Update

Well, as usual, I've been busy. I am the Accounting Manager where I work, so this is my very busy time of year. Aside from that, class started a couple of weeks ago, so I've been busy with that as well. On Friday, I took an all day class from Jill Schumacher "Quiltmaker to the Queen" in machine quilting. I have always been very apprehensive about machine quilting, and my few attempts at free-motion have not gone well. I heard very good things about Jill and decided it was time to bite the bullet and take a class. I must say she is a very positive person and gives a lot of encouragement, which was much apprectiated. She does excellent work, and has won many national awards. In the end, my practice pieces are still pretty bad, but now I have the knowledge and all I need now is practice. She says three days a week for a half hour a day and we'll have it down. Below are a couple of my practice pieces, which are not very good, but better than I thought I could do for my first pieces. They are the backs of the practice blocks, because I used the blue water-soluable marking pen on the front and I haven't wet them down yet, so you can't see the stitches on the fronts in the pictures.


I also finally found some pirate fabric on-line so that I could make a special crayon roll for my nephew, Jackson. I made one for his brother, Maxwell for his birthday in December, but couldn't find just the right fabric for Jackson. The fabric for the front worked out really well because it was a stripe of pirates in a row that worked perfectly for this project. Below are the front and inside.


On to more projects next week. I've got a few things planned for the next class session that I've been working on, so that is exciting, but I don't want to spoil any surprises here! However, I just started work on a quilt that I drafted out last year and have been really excited about, and I just saw one with the same layout in a magazine that I got this week. Oh well. I hear that happens a lot. It is an old setting, but I hadn't seen it around in a long time and then, there it is. A little disappointing, but the colors and other things will make it very different.