HOUSTON QUILT FESTIVAL AND A VISIT WITH NANA GIRL

 I think I told you before about my Civil War quilt being sent to hang at the Houston Quilt Festival.  Since I wasn't able to go to it, I had a friend take a picture for me so I would have proof that it was actually there.  I feel very honored to have had my quilt hanging there.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted lately.  If you read my last post, you know we were in Virginia.  After Virginia, we traveled to Florida where I was able to visit with Karen of NanaGirlQuilts.  She graciously showed me many of her quilts and I especially enjoyed seeing her Jubilee quilt.  Her hand quilting is amazing!  I hope you'll go over to her blog and check it out if you haven't done so already. I would love to take one of her classes or visit the guild she belongs to some time.

Thanks to all who voted for my Baskets of Blue quilt in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival and for your lovely comments!  I didn't win anything, but it was fun and I visited a lot of other quilters' blogs and saw some lovely quilts.  I continue to be amazed that there are so many quilting blogs out there - and so many talented quilters!

I have been quilting on this scrappy rail fence Christmas quilt and it is about half way quilted.  It's going to be a donation quilt.

I'm gradually getting back to a routine and am especially happy to be able to spend the holidays with our oldest son, whose birthday is today, BTW.  We're going to fix supper for him and I think this is the first time in many years that we have been able to be with him on his birthday.

USING DESIGN WALL!!

Since the design wall was up, I thought I would put up some blocks.  Last Christmas, the president of my guild in Texas gave us some 2 1/2" strips of fabric.  I didn't know what to do with them, so I just sewed them together and cut them into 6 1/2" rail fence blocks.  Well, I didn't have enough for a whole quilt, so I dug out my box of Christmas fabric to see what I could come up with.  I wanted to use fabric from stash.  I used white, plain or white on white, for the middle strip and used up some small pieces of white.  Then I had quite a bit of some different yardages, which I put together with white and pretty soon my design wall was full!

This is what got me going - the blue and white from my guild president.

I almost have the top together and will figure out something for borders, but there are 12 rows of 10 blocks each, which will measure 72" x 60".

As "leader/enders" I have started another quilt by Bonnie Hunter called Bow-Dacious.  I have am making some progress too.  The block below measures 9 1/2" square.  If I follow Bonnie's directions, I would need 49 of these blocks.  Along with the border, the quilt would measure 84" x 84".  I don't know how big I will make it.  I'm using all scraps for this so far.

These little parts of the larger block measure 4 1/2" square.

It doesn't seem like I'm spending any time at all on it using the leader/ender method.

What are you working on?  I still need to do more organizing, though, so I can't do too much sewing. I thought that while the blocks are up, I might as well sew them together, right?