Friday, May 13, 2011

Busy as a Bee - Quilting


Great Blue Heron
I really let time get away from me!  We spent all of April at Patrick AFB near Melbourne, FL.  We had a wonderful view of the Banana River with many sightings of dolphins, ospreys, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, and Great Blue Herons.  We did a lot of walking along the beach and I finished another quilt while sitting outdoors in the screen house.  Once that was finished, I had to give up sitting outdoors.  Either it was too windy or too hot.  Not to mention, very noisy.  We decided we could never spend a winter at Patrick’s FamCamp.  Our Key West relaxed attitude was becoming a little frazzled.  Noise from the base terminal, gun fire from the firing range, and low flying helicopters were just a few of the noises we heard though out the week.  It took the cats a few days to get use to it, but we have discovered that nothing will come between them and exploring the great outdoors.

So, I moved my sewing machine indoors and finished two more tops using a block suggested in Emilie Richards book “Sister’s Choice”.  The blocks name?  Sister’s Choice, of course.  One of the characters said the block made a great baby quilt.  I had to agree once I looked up the block.  Now that the tops are done, I’m trying to decide what to applique on each one.

Sister's Choice blocks
Below is the quilt I was working on at Patrick AFB.  I call this quilt Purple Lotus.  I went outside my comfort zone on this one.  I love bright colors, but I was a little unsure about the purple and lime green fabric.  I have had this material for a while and I found myself wondering “what were you thinking when you bought this?”  I have to admit I am quite pleased with the end result.  Oh!  And would you believe I found the perfect backing?  Purple with tiny specks of lime green! 
Purple Lotus

I found the material while visiting a wonderful and very friendly quilt shop called “The Quilt Place” in Rockledge, FL.    Their store ad boasted of having 8,000 sq. ft.  Oh it was!  It was 8,000 sq. ft. of quilters’ heaven.  It was jam packed full of bolts (10,000 or so), all the items a quilter needs or wants, a class room, and four long arms.  Sigh!  Dan had to run an errand and said he might be a while when he dropped me off.  “Take your time” was my answer!  After six plus months of no quilt shops, I needed a big quilt shop fix!  Oh yea!  I got it!
I was also a little sidetracked with my new camera.  I got a Nikon D7000I wanted to spend time reading up on all the new functions it offered and taking photos before we spent a week at Disney World.

Magic Kingdom
 On 1 May, we moved to Disney World’s Fort Wilderness camp for a fun filled week at the theme parks. We would leave early, get back late, apologize to our accusing cats, and spend the rest of the evening recuperating. Ah, the colors, the imagination, and the energy had me thinking about new quilts to make. Very inspiring. We had a lot of fun, did miles of walking, ate lots of good food, and I took too many pictures.


Now I am trying to get caught up on e-mails, blogs, and photos while we spend a few weeks in Clermont, FL just west of Orlando. Winter season is over and the campground is very quiet. I am hoping to get some more quilting done as well.

Welcome Neighbor! Got any food?


2 comments:

  1. You've been quite productive. The purple may be a bright quilt but it works. I wonder how much I might get done with all that good birding. As to base noise ... once I had to teach classes at Scout camp on a base and after planning all the class time so carefully, I found I had to stop the instructions all the time because it was impossible to hear over the noise and there wasn't enough time to do the project at the end.

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  2. Oh no! I hope the Scouts were able to finally finish their project.
    The wildlife is quite a distraction, but they make for wonderful breaks from my quilting.
    A lot of the tops have been sitting in my UFO box for a while except for the Sister's Choice quilts. I'm starting to see the bottom! WooHoo! And I am still working on my granddaughter's quilt by hand. Sandy

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