RED Cars, WHITE Clouds, & BLUE Sky (Blaine, WA)

How was everyone's 4th of July celebration?  Lots of eating, visiting, and viewing fireworks?

Not a rain cloud in the sky!

Us?  Well, the rain stopped and the sun came out!  Talk about good timing!  We went to Blaine to see the street festival and the classic car show.  We were not expecting it to be so busy!  Wow, where did all of the people come from?   The classic car show was spread out over quite a few blocks so it was easy to view most of the cars.

Classic Car Show

It wasn't so easy to view the vendors.  The area was so packed with people that we gave up on seeing what was good to eat or for sale.

I managed to get a couple of candid shots of people enjoying their day...

Cute!  Eagle kissing? the young lady...

A young patriot

Even the dogs were looking patriotic!

We were too tired to go watch fireworks and I really regret not going down to the bay.  Between the commercial fireworks and home-bought fireworks, it sounded like quite a joyful celebration...that went on until after midnight.  I finally fell asleep around 1 pm surrounded by two scared cats.  Poor guys did not know what to think of all that booming.  Not to worry - they are back to their old selves - begging to go outside, getting into things, and the list goes on....

Me?  I plan to go to bed early again tonight.   yawn!

On the Cutting Board

I finished the last of the sashing on Vi's quilt.  Oh, I can hear your thoughts...what?  She's still working on that quilt?  Yep, shameful.  I know!  I don't know why I am having such a hard time finishing this quilt.  Maybe, part of the reason is the large areas of sashing and borders.  Or maybe, it is all the other distractions that I keep creating for myself.  Oh well, there's no one reason, but I do plan to keep working on the quilt until it is done.

Now, I'm faced with how to mark the floral border.  I have always struggled with this part of quilting - how to transfer a pattern to a top for quilting.  Since I am quilting by hand in a hoop, I cannot use chalk.  I usually use fabric marking pens, but I need to mark as I quilt so there is no marking ahead of time.

I decided to use a simple design for the floral border since it is already very busy and my poor eyes will get quite a workout.  An easy basket weave came to mind and I drew it out on paper.  I thought of using painter's blue tape, but that means constantly measuring and re-adjusting the tape.  I saw this Mesh Transfer sheet by Clover and decided to give it a try.

To transfer the pattern from paper to the mesh sheet, I used a permanent marker.  I was hoping to use an easy-eraser marker, but the marks were smearing when I tried to mark the quilt.

I only marked a small area of this mesh with hopes of using it again for a different quilt.  Although, I might stick to simple designs and stitching in the ditch with echoing as a filler from now on!

Anyway, I positioned the mesh onto the border without removing the quilt from my hoop.  I was a little worried about the ink making it through the tiny mesh to the fabric and being able to see the markings as well.

After several tries with different fabric markers, I found this blue one worked the best because of its softer tip.  Since the markings are a little messy, I have been going over them again using just a ruler and the pen.  It is double the work, but at least I don't have to measure each time I need to mark a new section.

Anyone have any suggestions?  I would love to hear them because this has always been a dilemma for me!

Happy Quilting!