Happy 2nd Birthday "FAT"

I belong to FiberArtTraders, which is a yahoo group. The 23rd was the groups 2nd birthday. I small group of us got together and created a book of Quilted Journal Pages for listmom Normajean. She is the best Listmom ever. I know, I'm biased in this opinion. She keeps things creative and inspiring and feeling like family.

This is the page I made. The hearts are recyled from another project and the machine buttonhole stitch is one of NJ's favorite elements. I wrote "You are the inspiration that fuels us, you are the glue that holds us together, and you are the support that keeps us going. I turned it over to decide on a backing and liked the look of the chocolate stitching against the white felt so I left is unbacked.

This page came together very quckly and naturally once inspiration struck. I am very happy with the results.

Hulkette and Hulk Jr.

This is currently my favorite picture and is the wallpaper on my computer so that I can look at it several times a day. It represents my kids, 15 & 9, getting along. No bickering or tantrums or accusations all weekend. It was soooo nice! Now that I know a trip to the mountains and physical exercise are the keys to family harmony, I will be volunteering them more often to rake pine needles,

and to shove piles of pine needles into bigger piles.

We went with our church to the camp clean up day at Jenness Park up in the Sierra mountains. It is beautiful and serene and uplifting there. Our kids go to camp in the summer there and every year the camp hosts a clean up day. The camp feeds us Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast and lunch in exchange for us raking pine needles from around the cabins and public areas of the camp for fire breaks.

Oh, and we also get to have mid-morning snack with camp staff. :)

The two on the outside are the daughters of our youth leaders and they did their fair share of raking and earned their snack with the daughter of a staffer.

Twisted Threads Round Robin

I belong to a small quilt group by the name of Twisted Threads. Every year we do a friendship type quilt and a charitable effort. This year we have been doing row friendship quilts. For this past months row I attempted to make waves, literally. When M unveiled her theme back in August, I immediately knew what I wanted to do and hoped that no one else would decide to do it. Her theme is Marine and I wanted to do a row of waves in a snail's trail block. I finally accomplished it on the third attempt.

This is the first try. The piecing looks great. The block is how it's supposed to look but it is about a half inch too small. Not gonna work. Thank goodness I tested it first.

The sizing is from the book "Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts" by Judy Martin. It you haven't seen this book yet, I highly! recommend it. This book is fantastic. I will post about it in depth later.

I test all my iffy piecing in red, white, and blue fabrics. That way I don't waste fabric needed for the project and someday I will have enough blocks in that color scheme to make an Americana quilt.

The next attempt was even worse.

I printed out a "Monkey Wrench"? block from EQ4. I measured the printed templates and cut and pieced.

UGH. The whole block was just way off. You can see where the points don't match and they stick out all funky. I think I forgot to adjust the print settings so it printed out all wrong. Oh well. Another one for the Americana Quilt.

The final blocks were done with freezer paper foundation piecing. This time I actually enjoyed foundation piecing. And I drafted the block myself. Although I usually reverse things wrong or forget to reverse them until after the first round of ribbet stitches. :) I used dark blue, light blue, grey and white so that they looked like crashing waves. I am quite proud of the (pictureless) results.

I will be meeting with them again in the next few weeks and will get a pic then. This concept of having a digital camera is still new to me. :)