Happy Village

My mom was visiting me for the last week.  I got to have her for Mother's Day and that was really special.  

We went to our guild challenge presentation on Monday night.   The challenge was called a history lesson and I was on the committee.  It was a huge success.  Take a look, mine's in there!  http://www.flying-geese.org/SlideShows/may_challenge.pdf  This was a judged showed and really a great success.  I won best Title Sacajawea's iPhone, and got some excellent feedback from the judge.  My mom, Jane St.Pierre, had a quilt in the show as well, its 54-40 or fight!

So during the week, I had a bad cold and lots of work so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with mom, but last night after I said lets make something new!  She looked at me with one eyebrow raised and said O...K?

I pulled out my Happy Village book I picked up when Karen Eckmeier presented at our guild.  I have been wanting to make one and I thought it would be fun and quick.  Well I was right!

We did this in about 3 hours, which is great considering we were loopy and tired.  The pieces are temporary glued in and there is tule over the top.  Now I'll machine quilt it with monopoly.  In the future we will probably listen to the recommendation that you don't use prints, but adding a touch of black helped calm our crazy little village down.  Very fun, I'll definitely do it again.

Well I'm off to Las Vegas.  Today is our 10th Anniversary!  10 years is Tin so my Tin Lizzie is very fitting.  We are going to a gun range in Vegas so maybe there is some tin or aluminum in there somewhere, lol.  I'm a horrible wife, not really ;]

I hope you all get a chance to sew this weekend!

Love Aunti Nicole

4 Patch Posie - Hawaiin Style

At Road to California this year, I picked up this beautiful  fabric from Beyond the Reef.  What to do, what to do?  

I was at an EZQ meeting last month and my friend Sharon did a 4-patch posie and convinced me that it was much easier than stack and whack.  

and she was right!  The blocks only took me a couple of hours.  The setting again a couple of hours.  

It so fun to see how different each block turns out.





I a making this one for my Aunt Debbie.  Will probably quilt it with lt blue and grey thread.

That's all for now!
Hope you get to sew this week!

Love
Aunti Nicole

Summertime - Living is Easy

 A few years ago I picked up some bright colorful fabric from Orange Quilt Bee.  I started making my own version of Turning 20 (it was late and I couldn't run to the store) and when I finished I realized I had a space in each of my blocks.  I added a little white square in each.  Then I got the hair brained idea to embroider in each of the squares.  That the part that took me so long.  It was fun though!

So here are a couple of the embroidery pieces. 

I machine quilted it on my Tin Lizzie, experimenting with different quilting designs.  Each block is a different pattern.  I am having trouble photographing it well, I want capture all the different patterns I did before I give the quilt away.

Yes, Im giving it away to my Hair Stylist Colleen.  She likes to wear black but she is always so sunny on the inside.  These bright colors make me think of her.  So on the back I found the perfect fabric, Tula Pink - Parisville.  I have this fabric for a while, but did not want to cut it up.  It must have been waiting for this quilt to be finished ;]   Incidentally, Colleen used to do stuff like this to her daughter's hair on crazy hair day.  She once told me about the time she made a birdcage out of her hair, with birds and all.  

Today I am helping out with the judging for our quilt guild challenge A History Lesson.  I am so looking forward to the reveal next Monday.  I'll share my favs with you next week.

Monday I leave for the week to Texas for a work conference and Friday night my mom is arriving to spend Mother's Day here.  Yeah!

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you get a chance to sew this week!
Love Aunti Nic