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Excuses, excuses. Or should I say, Reasons, reasons. I have been too busy to sew lately let alone blog about it! I guess I should have just been blogging instead about my crazy life, at least then you would know why I'm not sewing.
The last sewing I did was at the June retreat I told you about. Here are a few of the things that have kept me busy the last several months.
Two of my sisters, Barb and Dee, came to see me for a weekend.
My sister, Debbie and her girls, Natalie, Carrie and Emily, came to see me for a weekend.
Hubby and I took our grands to Seattle for a week to visit our son, Aaron, and see the sights.
We spent a week in Destin, Florida with our son, Adam and his family.
I celebrated a birthday!
This is what my sewing room has looked like for over a month. It was turned into an extra guest room and it has stayed that way. Hard to sew like that!
The one thing I did manage to finish was the NewFo I started in May. It was a completed top so it only needed hand-quilting and binding. That's not work, though. That's therapy!
And here's the reason I managed to get this one quilt completed at all. Little Gracee Mae-Rose, our newest great-niece. After all, every new baby needs a quilt!
This has been a whirlwind summer. One last thing will keep me from sewing this week - the AQS Quilt Show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm going with my sweet friend, Faye, where I know I will be inspired and motivated to get sewing again. I feel pretty certain that I'll be in my sewing room when I get home from that.
Since Mimi accused me of teasing by only showing the backs of quilts last time, this is just for her. Quilt Fronts!!! Actually, I was going to show them to you eventually, I just didn't want to share everything in one long blog. You might have become distracted and not seen it through to the end, and that would have been awful.
First though, I have to tell you that I'm saving the quilt with the gold colored stripe across the back for another time. No, I am not teasing. I just want to tell you sometime about the ribbons I have won. (Believe me, it will be a short story!)
The blue backing I showed you was for the back of my niece Natalie's quilt. Her quilt is a scrappy version of "Four Patch Plaid" from the book "Nickel Quilts" by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode.
The first purple backing shown in the post is the backing for my niece Carrie's quilt. Her quilt is just something I made up on my own by alternating scrappy 16-patch blocks and white blocks with appliqued hearts. A perfect little girl quilt.
Here's Carrie with her quilt:
The next purple backing was for my niece Emily's quilt. It's a scrappy version of "Apron Strings" from the April 2000 issue of McCall's Quilting magazine. By the way, this quilt has 1,820 pieces in it. (Can you tell I was wanting to use up scraps in these three quilts?)
Here's Emily with her quilt:
I had made each of the girls a baby quilt when they were born and a doll quilt when they were little. When I found out that they loved their quilts so much that they were still sleeping with them, I knew that new quilts must be made, and quickly! I made all three of these quilts in about two months. But love them, they did!
Since I made these quilts for the girls in 2005 here is a more recent photo of them with me, getting ready to leave for one of our fun "Niece Outings."
One more from the last blog. The backing I made from grays and blacks was for a charity quilt I made for teenagers in foster care. The pattern is from the book "Easy Pieces" by Margaret J. Miller. I could just see some teenage boy, between foster families, loving this quilt of his own.
So that's it for today's installment of "Fun with Quilts." Both backings and fronts. But, guess what? I have a lot more nieces.........
