Tuh-Duh!

Yay!  I'm so excited about this finish!  I even have 3 days to spare until the baby shower.  The pattern is Marmalade Squares (Two!).  This is a complete change of topic, but I was amazed at how much glare the snow produced in these pictures even after taking the pictures in the shade without a flash.

 I did rather wide lines (3.5" apart) for the basic quilting.  I like my quilting to be sparse on baby quilts - I prefer cuddly to decorated, but that's just my own personal thoughts on the matter.  Having said that, I couldn't resist one fun design in the squares.  I quilted Heart Ripples which is essentially just echoed hearts with stipling in between them.  I faded out the color in the picture so you could see the quilting a bit better:

I used the rest of my strips for the back of the quilt.  I like that the front and back coordinate. It's my matchy matchy nerdy tendency coming out.  :)

Quilt Top Joy

I'm so excited about this quilt top.  I probably say that about most of them, but I really do mean it.  :)

It's bigger than I normally like baby quilts, but that's quite alright.  She'll grow into the quilt.  Kiddos have a habit of doing that rather too quickly.  I've got a week to finish it, so I need to put together the back quickly and layer it. 

Fat Quarter Goodness

I won a gift certificate for Christa Quilts from my participation in TGIFF a couple of months ago and I was so excited to get these beauties in the mail:

Bohemian Blue and Purely Purple Fat Quarter Bundles!

I've been waiting for the perfect project to use them.  I found the Marmalade Squares (Two!) quilt pattern and knew it would work perfectly for a baby girl quilt.  I've got the 5" square section completed and now it's time to work on outside rows.

This week has actually been slightly on the productive side with a completion of another quilt top (see here for details):

Other projects

Building Blocks Quilt Along: I need to quilt 2 of my blocks

do.Good Stitches- up to date

Sisters BOM- waiting for some inspiration on how to quilt it

Christmas quilt - ya, it still hasn't been touched...

Upcoming projects

1 more Baby Girl Quilt & 1 Baby Boy Quilt
Madrid Temple Wholecloth Quilt

Stats for the Week:
New projects - 2
Completed projects - 0
WIP- 6

Linkin' up to WIP Wednesday.

Book Club

I was at Book club last week and it occurred to me that I hadn't written about the books we've been reading for some time now.  They've been all quite different from each other.  Here are the last 4 we've done:

These is my Words by Sarah Agnes:

Inspired by the author's original family memoirs, this absorbing story introduces us to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and prevail in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s. 

It took me a little while to be completely invested in the book, but I ended up absolutely loving it.  Sarah Prine is such a loveable character and I loved Captain Jack Elliot even more.  It was a beautiful, heartbreaking story about the struggles in the Wild West.  PS- I bawled like a baby at the end of this book.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The story of 17-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle" — and the heart of the reader — in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.  

I had heard such wonderful things about this book, but I was really disappointed.  It was painful reading about each of the characters making poor choices throughout the entire book.  I kept waiting for something to turn around, but there wasn't any real resolution and none of the characters ended up happy.  It was a really unsatisfying book.  Meh.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia by Loung Ung

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

It sounds wrong to say I enjoyed this book or liked it.  Do you know what I mean?  It is pretty vivid in its detail and horror.  It's even more heart wrenching that I know it's a true story.  I find it so sad that people can so quickly turn inhumane and commit such atrocities.  I thought it was particularly poignant being told from the eyes of a child.   I read the sequel and didn't like it anywhere near as much.  Another really good book that I read that also takes place in Cambodia is The Rent Collector by Camron Wright.  It's fiction, but based on real people.  I highly recommend it.

Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson

At eighteen, Kate Worthington knows she should be getting serious about marriage, but her restless heart won't let her settle down. To escape her mother's meddlesome influence, she dreams of traveling with her spinster aunt to exotic India. But when the opportunity arises, Kate finds herself making a bargain with her mother: she will be allowed to go only if she spends a season at the family's wealthy estate, Blackmoore, where she must secure and reject three marriage proposals. Enlisting the help of her dearest childhood friend, Henry Delafield, Kate sets out to collect her proposals so she can be on her way. But Henry's decision to help threatens to destroy both of their dreams in ways they could never imagine. Set in Northern England in 1820, Blackmoore is a regency romance that tells the story of a young woman struggling to learn how to listen to her heart.

I absolutely loved Donaldson's first book (Edenbrooke), so I was a bit nervous that I would have too high of expectations for her second book.  I don't know how it's possible, but I thought this book was even better than her first.  I loved it!  Donaldson has a beautiful ability to really make relationships come alive and let us see into the hearts of these characters with their natural insecurities without it feeling one dimensional or forced.  I should clarify that if you're looking for the deeper meanings of life, this may not be the book for you, but it's a great (clean) regency romance.

Ok, now I'm all caught up.  Have you read anything really good lately?

Stars and Winter Winds

Things finally calmed down around here enough for me to finish a baby girl quilt top.  The quilt pattern is Candy-Stars from Chrissy Lux.  I love wonky stars and I love using my plethora of scraps, so this quilt is a win-win.  Now if only I could get a decent picture of the thing.  The cold wind was not cooperating.

Nope.

Nope.

Almost...

Not even close

For the Love!

Seriously?

E for Effort

I was starting to lose feeling in my fingers and about to give up, when the wind decided to cooperate for 5 seconds. 

(I hear the Hallelujah Chorus, do you?)  :)

Building Blocks Beginning

I officially started the Building Blocks Quilt Along yesterday.  It was just 3 four-patch blocks.  You don't get much easier than that.  The interest will come with the quilting. 

Leah recommends just using 2 solids for the entire quilt, but I wanted a bit more variety.  My background is Kona Gray, but for the other fabric I pulled all of my blues from my stash.  It will mostly still be solids, but I'll have a stripe and dot or two in there as well. 

While I'm working on this I have 3 baby girl quilts to get done.  They're all due in early March, so I've got a little time to get them together. 

Simplifying

Life got a little too busy during the holidays and I set the Sisters Ten BOM blocks aside.  I was finally able to get the quilt top put together last week during the nights my husband was on call.  (The poor guy had 5 days of 24 hour call, working a total of 112 hours last week- Ouch.)

I'm not quite hard core enough to go outside in the negative wind chill to take a pretty picture, so this is what we're left with for a picture of the quilt top.  I had to go grocery shopping last night, and I thought I had frozen my eye brows off.  It was so cold the latch on the trunk of my car wouldn't work after I had opened it to put in the groceries.  It kept popping open.  Crazy.  I just wasn't willing to brave that type of cold again for a picture. 

Last year I was part of 2 virtual sewing bees and 2 quilt-a-longs, but it was a little more than I could handle.  I committed to all of them before I added on church responsibilities and another child, so this year I've decided to pick just one quilt a-long, and only stay in one of my sewing bees. I'm trying to take my own advice and simplify!

I will continue on with the Wish Sewing Bee Circle of do.Good Stitches, and I've chosen to do Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along, because it works on piecing and quilting.  I've got my fabrics all pulled and ready to start for the quilt along, so I'm excited.  My goal this year with this quilt along is to really master the hand and foot coordination with my pedal as I quilt.  I use my auto speed a ton just because I'm so lousy with the pedal, but it hinders accuracy with intricate designs, so I really do want to conquer this hurdle. 

Other projects

do.Good Stitches- up to date

Christmas quilt - ya, it still hasn't been touched...

Upcoming projects

3 Baby Girl Quilts
Madrid Temple Wholecloth Quilt

Stats for the Week:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 0
WIP- 3

Linkin' up to WIP Wednesday.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

If you were in the path of this big storm, I hope you fared better than Frosty last night.  The wind and ice were not kind to him.  Stay safe and warm, folks!