Stitching

I think I would need a whole lot of beach time before I would be ready to spend a lot of time stitching or quilting at a resort like ours at Hilton Head last week. The pull of the beach, the ocean, the waves, the sunshine, the breeze -- all of it was too much for me to devote much time to my quilting projects. I took my little box of 2.5-inch squares, and did nothing with those. I also took my cheddar and crackers quilt in the frame, and only did minimal work on it.

I'm not entirely sure I am liking this "freehand" method of quilting, but I suppose I will keep on with it. It may look a bit primitive by the end, and maybe that will be okay. We shall see.

My vacation cohorts did do some more significant stitching than I did. You may remember seeing Kay hand quilting a gorgeous 9-patch quilt at quilt camp back in June. Well, she's still plugging away at it, and even though she feels like she will never get it finished, her steady work on it will surely get her to the end-of-the-year deadline she set for herself.

Sherrie took a cross stitch project to work on instead of a quilting project. She says this is the 4th of a 4-part design. The other three are made, and this one has been a long-time UFO. When she started the week, she just had little more than his head finished, so she did make some very significant progress toward finishing.

Sharon P. took a hand quilting project, and I'm sorry to say I never bothered to get a picture of it. She had taken leftover scraps from an old Aviary (or some similar beautiful Moda feminine line) project and just randomly sewed them together to make a mini-quilt. I suppose it could be either a table topper or a wall hanging. Anyway, she was using the big-stitch method of hand quilting, and was making very good progress on it. She said she would send a picture, so you might get a look at it soon.

One afternoon, when the weather forecast called for rain, we decided that we'd search out a quilt shop we'd heard about. It turns out that weather forecasts on Hilton Head Island are simply meaningless; we had great weather for the most part, even on days when there was an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms!

But I digress.

We did find Island Quilters, a small shop filled with modern fabrics and lots of shop samples and kits. I was remiss in taking pictures of the shop, but I did make a small purchase, and I took pics of 2 pillows that I thought would appeal to my younger daughter who just bought a new sofa for her apartment.

Bright, modern fabrics on nice big pillow forms. I think they'd look great in a college kid's apartment.

There was a little display of remnant fabrics tied into little rolls like you see above. These were marked way, way down, so I pulled out three that I thought I would use. If nothing else, I will cut them into 2.5-inch squares and use them in those endless 9-patch and 16-patch blocks I love to make!

That was all the stitching and related activity I can report from our vacation. Sherrie and Kay were very dedicated to their projects; Sharon did more each evening than I did; I think I am sure I was the least productive of the bunch. Oh well.

Happy Quilting, Friends!