Memorial Day

We've just returned from a week at Myrtle Beach - the ultimate tourist trap. It was a fun trip and of course we encountered "interesting" people during the week - including the woman on the beach who had a monitoring ankle bracelet because she had just been released from County (her words). She was visiting the beach with her pet parrot.

We missed seeing the kids while we were away but got some kid time today. They brought our new granddog Nicholas with them and he sure is cute. (click photos for larger view)



He's a lab/corgi mix and looks like a lab but has the short corgi legs. It's a really funny combination.

He's very calm and allows the kids to love on him without complaint.


The kids were being silly. Don't you just love Noah's freckles?


Noah kept trying to stick his face in the way of the camera so I fixed him and took an extreme closeup. You can really see the freckles here!


Hayden got upset that she wasn't getting some extreme closeups.



She got her smile back when I stuck the camera in her face.



They liked just hanging out on the back porch.

Settings revisited

Since my design boards are not big enough for this log cabin quilt I put two of them together to give me enough room to try a couple of layouts. My design walls are actually sheets of insulation and you can see a blue strip of one of the boards peeking out between the blocks.

I think I like the first 2 settings best, but will have to decide between the two. All comments welcomed. (click photos for larger view)

Curved Log Cabin settings?

I finally finished piecing all the blocks for my curved log cabin quilt. Now I have to decide how to set the blocks. This will be a bigger quilt than I usually make and turns out I don't have a design wall big enough to try layout possibilities. I tried 2 different layouts on my living room floor but really need to try a couple more before making a decision.

Which layout do you like better? I think I like the 2nd one. (click photos for larger view)

Camp Happy Days

My guild, Cobblestone Quilters, has adopted Camp Happy Days as its community project this year. The camp is for "kids kickin' cancer." Our goal is to make 92 quilts by September when they hold family camp so that each person in attendance will have a quilt on his/her bed when they arrive.

My splinter group, the Duck Ditch Quilters, has been busy making quilts for this good cause. We've already turned in about 20 quilts and are working hard on more. Yesterday we had a sew-in and worked on several tops.

(click photos for larger view)



Sheila assembled this top which started with the preprinted panel. There was a lot of discussion about this one. It took a while before the group could agree on exactly which yellow fabric should be used as the inner border. In the end, even those that didn't think this particular fabric was the best choice agreed that it worked.



These green blocks started out as block of the month at guild a year or so ago. Betsy won them and decided to donate the blocks for charity quilts. There are still a lot of kits left to make more blocks so I expect we'll see more quilts like this before we're done. Pat and Melissa worked on this one.




Cindy and Janice cut big blocks out of these fun bright fabrics. This is going to be a really happy quilt when it's done. (I suspect that I especially like this one because all of the fabrics came out of my stash!)



Betsy made this pretty purple top which looks more complicated than it is.



Janice and Crystal worked on this one - assembling it from bits and pieces left over from previous quilts. They added a couple more rows after I took this photo.



Frances and Joanne worked on this one.

Somehow I missed getting photos of one or 2 more that were worked on.

Next month we're going to try to quilt some of these!