Storm at Sea quilt top

Today I attached borders to my Storm at Sea class project.  (Wendy Mathson, May 28)  I decided to practice my skills by adding a pieced border.  It was a good review of the technique learned from Wendy.  If you look in the corners, I added extra squares in the corners to get the border the size I needed.  My first attempt was too small and not enough of the white showed.  I wanted the interior section to "float".  Now I have to decide how to quilt all that white space.  FUN!!

The white fabric pieced into the border is
different than the background fabric.

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Soroptimist Convention, Vancouver

This post is not about quilting.

I just returned from 5 days at the Soroptimist International of the Americas convention in Vancouver.  It was a great time of learning and visiting with Soroptimists from US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.  Even though we're only 1/4 of the federations that make up Soroptimist International, I always feel like I'm attending an international convention because of the language differences

This was in the lobby of the hotel connected to the convention center.

Soroptimist is an organization whose mission is: improving the lives of women and girls through programs leading to social and economic empowerment.  We had some very moving moments.  It's very obvious that situations for women and girls need to be improved world wide.  One speaker brought out the idea that to improve the world situation we need to educate girls.  Her film about 9 girls from around the world was impressive, "Girl Rising".

 

 

Saturday evening after the convention I walked a path that followed the

shore line.  The views were beautiful.  From the hotel to Stanley Park and

back was about 5 miles.  After all the sitting it felt good and added a

lot of steps to my Fitbit!

While the convention was educational and fun, the excitement was my trip going and returning.  I were held up on the first leg of the flight because President Obama was in San Francisco and we couldn't get in to land.  Once I arrived in Vancouver I took public transportation to the hotel.  Sounds great, but when I come up above ground I had no idea were I was.  So pulling my two suitcases piggy-backed together, I walked the streets stopping often to enter a store/business and say "how do I get to ___".  I eventually arrived.  It was much easier to take public transportation to return to the airport because I knew where to go.  however, the last leg of my flight was CANCELLED.  Not late, just not even going.  So once in SF I wildly went to United and begged them to get me anywhere close.  For those of you who know me personally, I got to Bakersfield.  And family to the rescue . . . they picked me up and I met other family half way to complete the trip.  We were a tag team.  My family is wonderful!!  If one of us needs help, we all help out.  One sister, actually on her way to Las Vegas, was also involved as a middle person to keep us all connected.

 

Oh yes.  My luggage had no idea where I ended up!  It arrived in Bakersfield this morning.  They're sending it to my original airport, so hopefully I'll get it tomorrow.

It was a great 5 days!!!

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I'm back.

For the past couple of weeks I have done almost no sewing.  Yesterday I needed to get back in the swing . . . sew . . .  I worked on block of the month for two of my guilds.

One guild makes quilts for "Quilts of Valor".
This will be part of a group quilt.

BOM for one guild has a theme of half-square
triangles for the year.  This is the pattern
for the July meeting.





This was the second month in a row I won the BOM blocks.
I'm pleased with the result. This will be quilted and donated
for the guild's sale September 26.

While pulling fabric for BOM I found two tops I had started in a class with the same guild.  I added borders to one.  This one is ready to quilt - I even have the backing ready.



This was a class with Jan Krentz.  I used a stripe and
it was all fussy cut.  I'm not as pleased with the final
result, but I did learn a new technique in class.

Close up of the top.  Can you see the block?  Visualize this as 5 across and 2 down.

This was the original fabric.  I started out trying to match the pattern,
but the fabric is so busy it was a lot of work and didn't look any
different when I just cut to best use the fabric.  Lots of bias edges!

It felt good to get back in front of the sewing machine.  I throughly enjoyed the day!

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Fall BOM Applique update

I now have the perfect example of things getting done if you just keep working on them.  My attention span is very short, so I was dreading stitching around the edges of the applique center.  I kept working a few pieces here, a few pieces there, and . .  tah dah . . . the edge stitching is finished!  Now comes the fun part - putting it all together.  I haven't even thought about what I'll use for sashing and borders. 

It's amazing how the eggplant changes color in the photo. 
The fabric is a very deep purple not blue.

Close up of the blanket stitch.  I actually zig-zag around the stem of the
acorn.  It was just too small.  I had a hard enough time with the larger stems.

I used 3 different threads for the grapes.  I'm not sure about the lightest,
but maybe I can tone it down when I quilt it, or add a little paint?  It
doesn't look to bad in the photo but it's pretty shiny in real life.

There will be curly cues connecting the leaves.  I'll probablly use thick threads.

The sunflowers are not my thing, but they were part of the pattern so I included them.

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