Always Learning

The picture above features two quilts that have a romantic, floral, shabby chic look to them. The quilt on the bottom I hand-pieced about 6 years ago. To make it even more special, it was hand-quilted by my grandmother. The pattern is called "English Elegance," and was the cover of a 1999 BH&G American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. I made it entirely from my stash, with no special purchases except for the backing. The quilt folded on top is called "Tag Sale" by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie Quilts. I saw it on display at a nearby quilt shop, bought the pattern, and used a fat-pack I had on hand. I machine-pieced and hand-quilted it. Both quilts were long, drawn out projects, but I am so glad that I finished them. They reside in my guest room.
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It just seems natural that a retired teacher would be interested in learning. In thinking of all the the things I want to do in my retirement, learning stuff takes a major role. Learning to blog effectively is one of the items on my list of things to learn, and since my first post on Wednesday I have done quite a bit of self-directed study of the ins and outs of Blogspot. I am confident that I have the blogging part down; the daunting aspect of this is the photography. So, with the help of daughter Erin, an artist with the "eye" I lack, we have taken several dozen pictures and she has provided pointers for what she considers necessary for the most pleasing pictures. However, there are two schools of thought at play here: her desire for artistically placed quilts and my desire to see the whole quilt from a quiltmaker's standpoint. So, the pics we took today are all to Erin's liking, i.e. they are artistically pleasing. And while I like them, they do not offer the quilter a good full view of the quilts with borders. So there are still things to learn.

Here is an update on my quilting activity since the previous post. On Thursday, I did little more than dig out a project to take with me on Friday morning to my quilt group. It was fun digging through some long-forgotten UFOs, and I have a bit of renewed interest in finishing a few!

So Friday morning, off to quilt group. I took the "row-a-month" project (begun in 1998!), of which all that remains to be done is the applique row. I have decided that my method will be needle-turn applique, and in the 3 hours we worked, I got one bird done. (Note to self: take a picture of this progress to post here.)

Once back home, I pulled out the batik circle quilt. The top was finished except for the borders, for heaven's sake! So down to work! I finished up those borders and now have a lovely, cheery bright quilt top for a twin bed ready to take to my long-arm lady.

As the evening wore on, I wanted to watch a couple of shows with my daughter, so I set up the quilting frame and Ott Lite. I managed to finish 3 blocks on the baby quilt, bringing the total completed blocks to 18. My fingers are just so sore, it is hard to do more.