Announcing a Big Finish

I am so excited to announce that I have finally finished Chunky Churndash!  Last night it brought sweet dreams. Thanks to the beautiful longarm stitching of Cindy Carey from North Star Longarm Quilting, the quilt I began two years ago is now done. The quilt is 85 x 105, definitely the largest I've ever made. The middle blocks are surrounded by a hunter green floral and beige tone-on-tone. The borders are a deep red and a hunter green fabric different from the center's print.  The backing is from Connecting Threads, one of their 104-inch fabrics no longer available. Bonnie Hunter fans will recognize the easy pattern, which is free on her website at http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/chunky-churn-dash.html.

Catching Up

Sorry it's been a few weeks since I last posted. Like you, I've been busy with work and various projects. You may recall I have been working on two complex, time-consuming quilts - Blueberry Hill (Jamestown Landing) and the king-sizing of Celtic Solstice. I tend to get bored easily and decided to take a break and do something different. I started TWO quilts!  I know, I know. My UFO list is extensive, but I just HAD to begin a new project (or two).

The first one is an easy pattern that I have had in mind for a while. This is a Kim Brackett design called "Mocha Swirl".  I think chocolate and caramel when I see this quilt. Chocolate is one of my basic food groups, so this definitely spoke to me!  I already have one third of the blocks done and plenty cut for the remainder. Do you have any suggestions for the border?

The next quilt is from this month's issue of Quiltmaker magazine. It just called to me. And I hate orange! Go figure. I bought fabric from Connecting Threads during their recent Basics sale and have begun cutting.

Exciting news arrived this morning. My Chunky Churndash quilt is ready for pickup from the longarmer! I will post pictures once I have it home and bound. [Jumping up and down excitedly in my mind].  So I am seizing on this as my justification for starting a new quilt. When the longarmer finishes my Bittersweet Beauty, I can justify the fox quilt, too. I will probably drop off Royal Flush with her, so I might actually reach my goal for reducing my UFO list.

On a higher note, I put in nearly three hours of flying this past weekend. I got in some short-field landing practice Friday night, then flew to a friend's home strip off the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland on Sunday. It was nice to 'leave the bounds of earth' for a while and watch the sailboats from above.

Memorial Day Weekend UFO Progress

There's nothing like a sunny Spring day to lighten your spirits.  That, and taking a day off work.

I can finally report some progress on my UFO list! I dropped off two quilts this morning to be longarm quilted. The two quilts were my Chunky Churndash bedspread and Bittersweet Beauty. In a few weeks I will be binding, labeling and calling 'em done!

This afternoon I started FMQ on the Red Cross quilt. Royal Flush is waiting to go next.

I also pulled out the Colorado Sunshine (Floribunda) blocks to count and confirm how many more I need to finish. Okay, and also to get a better picture for this blog.  22 more blocks to go if I want to make this 8 x 9.

I plan to add a medium green inner border between the Jacob's Ladder blocks and the checkerboard border.  Debra at 52quilts.com used a dark green which seemed to give definition to the design (see below), but I want to soften it a bit. What do you think?



On an even lighter note, I am looking forward to flying this weekend. Did you read about my destination bucket list?  I am considering the San Juan Islands in Washington state. Funny story. A telemarketer called to sell vacation packages and I tried to be clever by smugly telling her that my vacations must be at places I can fly myself. Before I could hang up, she immediately dropped her script and started telling me about the islands around Seattle where she once lived. Evidently she has friends who fly. We ended up talking quite a bit. Hopefully she didn't get in trouble with her telemarketing firm.

So what are your plans for Memorial Day weekend? Sewing? Traveling? Both?

Slow going

The weather has been so beautiful lately, beckoning me to enjoy the sunshine and spring flowers. And that means little progress on my projects.  

I gave the brown and blue tote bag to my mother for Mother's Day. I finished two more rows of Blueberry Hill / Jamestown Landing.  I sewed 8 blocks for Celtic Solstice. Slow and steady wins the race, right?  The best thing is that I resisted the urge to embark on a new quilting project, opting for quickie bags to get my fix. So while my list of projects did not diminish, it didn't get any longer. I'll take that as success.

In the meantime, I keep finding lots of different places I want to fly. Here's my wish list:

1. Bar Harbor / Acadia National Park in Maine  

2. Creve Coeur Airport in St. Louis, Missouri (will go there this summer!)

3. Oklahoma to visit my family (planning to go this summer)

4. Corning, New York area to visit the Glenn Curtiss Museum (Curtiss is the real aviation genius)

5. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (been there, but want to return with my family)

6. Ozarks in Arkansas (again, been there but want to return with family)

7. Lake Tahoe (original goal for when I get my instrument rating)

Do you have any other suggestions for fly-in vacation spots?  I've been to Williamsburg many times, so need to visit other places. Remember I live on the east coast, so Lake Tahoe is quite a hike. It would be really cool to fly to Alaska (yeah, I intended the joke). Last summer during our trip to Kentucky, I met a guy who flew all the way from Alaska in his Cessna 170. That's a LONG haul!

Spring Break flight

Last week was Spring Break for my daughter, so we flew to Indiana to visit my brother, his wife and THE CUTEST BABY IN THE WORLD!  It was fun to play with my nephew and do my best to spoil him rotten.

The flight itself was a nice milestone. This is the first time I flew a long cross-country flight without another pilot next to me. The air was a bit bumpy but I managed it and arranged "VFR flight following" (voice contact with air traffic controllers who watch out for me) nearly the entire 5 hour journey coming and going. Wow, I flew 10.5 hours this week!

Tip to other pilots:  Do NOT fly with a hungry teenager. He/she will hound you to land at the closest airport with a restaurant or fill your cockpit with snack wrappers from the last airport's vending machines.

 Views from the air:

We actually had to delay our return flight one day after waking up to a freak snow shower when a cool front went through.

As for sewing, I returned to working on Celtic Solstice King and found myself needing to take a quick break to finish something---anything!  So I put together a Connecting Threads tote bag kit. I substituted the orangey floral middle section with a soft blue which is my favorite color. The bag is bigger than it looks and has pockets sewn to the lining. See the 2014 Quilts tab for that view.

April Activities

Sometimes you have to take a break and sew some small projects. I made another lunch bag as a gift for my sweet sister-in-law.  I expanded the size a bit and had to wing-it (hah!) with the Soft & Stable and cover. It turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself!

Then I started sewing a small kit from Connecting Threads -- but I can't show it yet because it's gift.

Finally I returned to quilting. The Red Cross quilt is sandwiched and ready for quilting. I also added two and a half rows to Jamestown Landing / Blueberry Hill. Seven and a half more rows to go, then it will be time to work on the blue string border. [Will this ever get finished???]

The weather is improving! Spring has finally arrived! A few hours were dedicated to preparing the raised beds in my garden then planting peas and lettuce. Next week the broccoli and cabbage plants can be added. Another week later it will time to put in more seeds and tomato plants. The rhubarb is already starting to show. We should see some asparagus spears in the next couple weeks, too.

And more importantly...I got in some fun flying time, just a few takeoffs and landing for practice and 'currency'.  I need three takeoffs and landings every 90 days to be deemed proficient enough to carry passengers, but I like to keep the interval to 30 days or less to keep my skills fresh. Plus my airplane engine needs the exercise (or at least a splash of oil across the cylinders). And it puts a big smile on my face and a spring in my step after being up in the air.

This week I had a couple incidents which caused me to reflect a bit on the Vietnam War. At the EAA meeting this week, our guest speaker was a guy who talked about flying helicopters in the war. He had lots of funny stories but also shared the sobering fact that half of his flight class died in the war. He also compared his opinion about why that war was 'lost' and how history seems to be repeating itself in Afghanistan and Iraq. [So true!]  Tonight I read an article in Sport Aviation about a pilot who spent 8 years as a POW. Recalling his vivid description about his captivity, final release and the trepidation he felt in rebuilding his life is still bringing tears to my eyes as I type. He eventually continued his career flying for a major airline and organizing a group of guys to honor fallen or returned soldiers with formation flights. What an amazing man! I wish I could have met him before he passed away recently.

Oh to be 17

Happy Birthday to my dear daughter!