DESIGN WALL

I've been busy quilting and piecing lately.  When I got the top of the unicorn pillow finished, I figured I might as well go ahead and finish it, so now I am ahead on my birthday gift for DGD Abby who will be 11 right after Christmas.  I decided to give her the pillow for her birthday so that her friends will be there when she opens it!

I wasn't sure how I was going to quilt it and just started by quilting around the unicorn head.  Sometimes when I don't know what I will do, it helps to just get started with something.  I thought that wiggly lines of quilting down the mane strips would work.

Here's a close up of the head.

 The backing fabric is by Tula Pink.  Can you see the unicorns in it?

A closer up picture of the unicorn in the fabric.  I quilted the back with cross hatching.

Then on Sunday I decided to get busy and start on this Christmas quilt and I cut out all the pieces.  This was a kit (by Maywood Studio) and I hardly ever buy quilt kits.  All the pieced blocks are done and the next step is to stitch around the appliqué pieces.  I'll use a blanket stitch on my machine.  The setting triangles aren't cut yet, but it's a gold fabric.  I will have to buy the backing fabric.

My married DGD has been in town this week and she went to my quilt guild meeting with me.  She really enjoyed it!  The program was presented by a special speaker from Quilts For Empowerment, a group that works with women in Kenya.  My DGD went on a mission trip for 2 weeks to the same area of Kenya and spent 7 years early in her life in Africa, so the program was of special interest to her.  She has also been helping me with some hand sewing.  I love having her here.

DH had a new pacemaker installed yesterday, so I spent all morning at the hospital.  It went well for him and I got some knitting done while there.  Today he is having quite a bit of pain, so I hope that will subside soon.

WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING?

We were out of town for about 10 days and I have gotten behind in my blog posting and reading.  But now we're back and we have recuperated from the long drive.  DH used to be a truck driver and he loves to drive, so we drove to Kansas City, Kansas area and back.  3 days each way.  It's about 1800 miles.  On the way, we drove through Sister, Oregon (and on the way back)  so I stopped to see if they had the Unicorn pattern that I had seen there last year.  I want to make the pillow for my DGD.

They did have it, and I bought it, but right now I don't know what I did with it!  I'm sure it must be here someplace and I will find it when I'm not looking for it.  As many of you know, it is the Stitchin' Post that started the outdoors quilt show in Sisters many years ago.  

I also bought some unicorn fabric by Tula Pink.

We went to Kansas to visit DS#3 and his family.  There are 2 boys, ages 8 and 10.  They are both on baseball teams and we saw 4 games that the 10 year old played in.  The picture below has him in it, but you can't really see what he looks like.  Out of the 4 games, they won one game.  But, they also won a game after we left and DGS pitched for part of it.

This is the decoration on my son & DIL's front door.

Three days there and three days home, we saw lots of mountains and in fact most of the trip we either could see mountains or we were traveling in them.  Some beautiful scenery such as the photo below, which was taken from the car with my cell phone.  You can't see it very clearly, but there are snow capped mountains in the distance.  We saw lots of snow capped peaks on the trip.

DH told me that I could fly if I wanted to, but I didn't see the point of spending more money to fly when he was driving.  I didn't mind most of the trip except the day that he drove over 1,000 miles (because we left late on the first day and we wanted to get there in time for a baseball game on the 3rd day).  We did make it in time, by the way.

Here are the 3 blocks for the Quirky Little Quilt Along.  I went to my HST collection, which I have divided into baggies for each different size and found some that I could use so all I had to do is sew them together.

Happy Easter!