It's been a while...

 Summer has been crazy busy - regular summer busy and our new retirement busy - which includes travel! 

In my last post, I showed the quilt I made for a wedding gift to a very special couple. We have known the bride since she was born and her parents even longer! I asked for help naming the quilt as I was having difficulty coming up with a name that worked for me. After reading many suggestions, both here and social media, as well as asking my daughters, I came up with the perfect name (in my opinion). I finally named it 'Love Grows'! Here is a picture taken on top of Mt Washington!

It was so windy! This is the best of several attempts but it was fun trying! 

(more pictures here.)

The finished size is 63" x 73". 

Also in previous posts, I showed you the process of designing and piecing a baby quilt for another special couple. I have also know mama since birth and her parents longer. Our youngest daughter was raised with these 2 girls! Since I was going to miss the baby shower (due to retirement travel), I desperately tried to get this finished before leaving. I managed to finished everything except hand stitching the binding so it came with so I could finish during the car ride. Here are pictures taken on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. 

I quilted this with several different thread colors. I stitched spirals in the sun and straight line rays. The mountains have straight lines following the peaks and the trees are quilted with triangles. The finished size is 36" x 42". 

I'm linking to Off the Wall Friday @ Creations-Quilts, Art, Whatever, Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Wednesday Wait Loss @the inquiring quilter

I also brought some EPP tumblers on our car trip and I managed to finish the last 36 as well as start randomly sewing them together in rows of 10. 

I'm not sure what the layout will be but at least I got a start on some rows. I can always make them longer. I have 300 tumblers.

My final project for the car ride was to work on an old UFO from my cross stitch days. I was inspired to pull this project out when I saw Annie's @Annie's Musings, cross stitch project that she recently started again. I drew up this pattern from a picture I took after we put on the addition to our house! I got bored with it while filling in the sky/background and I haven't worked on it in years!

This is what it looked/looks like!

Before

After

I have put in a few more rows since being home! Maybe this will get finished after all! I still have all the details/outlines to do after the background is done!

PROGRESS!

I will leave the rest of the updates for another post as this has gotten quite long. if you are interested in my vacation pictures you can see them on my instagram or facebook accounts.  Thanks if you have read to the end! 

Progress!

Last year I participated in a QAL called Oh Say Can You Sew. Clue 5 ask you to make 128 blocks which were made from 9- 1" HST. That meant I needed to make 1152 - 1 1/2" unfinished HST! That is a LOT of very small HSTs! 

After making 80, I put the project aside and forgot about it. Well sort of...it was in one of my project boxes just looking at me...reminding me that this UFO needed attention. So this week while I waited for the backing fabric I ordered for the mountain adventure quilt, I picked it up and took some time to figure out where I left off. Instead of making more HSTs right away, I decided to make the ones already completed into 9-patch blocks. Here is my progress.

I also cut more tumbler blocks for my EPP project so they would be ready to come on vacation with me.

I finished the binding on the quilt I made for a wedding gift! I love how it turned out! Shh! It is a surprise but I don't think anyone involved reads my blog. 

The bride wanted muted greens and my daughter picked the pattern. I did make slight changes in the pattern. I haven't yet found a name for it. A couple ideas are 'Agave You' (I love you) or just 'Agave'. My daughter thought the quilt reminded her of an agave plant hence the names.  Any suggestions are welcome! Help me decide!

The backing is all one piece.

Linking to Monday Musing @Songbird Designs, To-Do Tuesday @For the Love of Fabric, Design Wall Monday @Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Sew & Tell @Melva Loves Scraps

I also finished piecing this little baby quilt and I now received the backing I order so I need to get started on sandwiching and quilting!

Hopefully I will get started on this soon!

Friday Night Sew-In & a dilemma

Tomorrow is Friday Night Sew-In and I hope you are ready!  It really is a good time to reward yourself with some sewing time.  What will you be working on?  

I had a dilemma.  A couple of posts back, I talked about 2 quilts that I was making.  One I finished piecing the top and the other the blocks were finished.  As the finished one hung on my design wall while I was just too busy to get much sewing done, I grew increasingly dissatisfied with it.  I knew that if I didn't take drastic measures, it would become a permanent UFO.  So after looking at several blogs and other web sites for ideas, I took out a clean sheet of graph paper and started over.  Of coarse that meant that I needed to rip out the entire quilt top.  I recut some pieces and added new some fabric.  It is now, once again, a work in process.  I still need to rip out the stitching on all the blocks for the second quilt and recut but I have a renewed interest in these quilts.  I saved them from becoming UFO's!    [Sorry I never took before pictures.]      Has this ever happened to you?  How did you handle your situation?    I'd love to hear! 

Will be back on Saturday for the results of my Friday Night Sew-In!