Bluebird is ready to fly...or at least to quilt!

 I sewed the borders on Bluebird last night and love how it looks with the quilt. I used the same fabric as I had used on the triangles that straighten it up top and bottom. As you can see, it's Conrad approved.

 Smokey is still deciding.

I love this teal batik and pieced a back out of it for the quilt. I can't wait to get it quilted. 

I will get some cat less pictures later. He really didn't want to get off!

Bluebird

 I've been working on the Bluebird quilt from the Marci Baker book, Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin and it's ready for the borders. I love it and hope to get them sewn on and the backing made today, so hopefully more pix tomorrow! You can see by the pictures that you sew this quilt together in vertical rows, then sew the rows together. It really goes pretty quickly once you get the pieces cut. I love it because I could use lots and lots of batiks! It is a great one for using up stash in lights, mediums and darks.

 When I teach the class in Feb. it will be taught in a mini retreat style class...we will meet on Friday night for several hours to get some of the cutting out of the way, and then come back on Saturday all set up and ready to sew. I think it will be fun and everyone will get lots accomplished.

Ignore the orphan block laying in the lower left corner. That block lives on the design wall...it didn't make the cut on one of the samplers and has no home.

I received my Quilting the Blues 2016 Challenge quilt back from the quilter last weekend. She really listened to my vision for the quilting, added some ideas of her own and it turned out great. I spent some time this week deciding on the binding and sewed it on yesterday morning before class. Now for the task of hand-sewing it down. If the quilt is chosen as a finalist, I will have to put a hanging sleeve on it before I can send it, so I am debating whether or not I should do it now so that I could sew one end of  it into the binding. But that might jinx it. Still haven't decided. I have to have it entered by Dec. 1, so I need to get it finished soon so I can take some pictures.

Swag Bag class

I had a lot of fun working with ladies making their own Swag Bags, by Square Rose. Lots of pretty fabrics and the bags were almost finished at the end of class.

They learned how to make this cute side pocket.

There were roomy inner pockets on both sides.

Most of the students still needed to attach the straps, so we went through the final directions. Time allotted for class is always hard to determine. We could've used an extra 30 - 60 min for everyone to finish. I will be getting together another time with any of them that want to.

Now I can finish my class model...it's so pretty too!

I have the Circle and Spin to the Moon class coming up on Saturday at Log Cabin Quilting in Exira, so if you want to make this fun and graphic quilt, let me know or call Robin at the shop. There are still spots open!

Bluebirds...or birds of any color

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Block A

I started working on a new quilt the other day, Bluebirds by Marci Baker. I love the ease of putting these blocks together after precutting the logs. All of the Block Bs are made  (below) and about a third of Block As.

Block B

I have been collecting lighter batiks for awhile. I don't use them as much as the more color saturated batiks, but I think they are working well as the lights in this quilt. I can't wait to get it finished!

Blocks A and B mixed