I doubt anyone is even checking my blog these days because it has been so long since I posted anything. I have been doing some quilting, but I'll have to admit much of my time between November and February was been spent online house-hunting. My husband announced his retirement in January. He is a librarian at Washington and Lee University and will be retiring at the end of June. This has been in the works for awhile, though pretty much in secret. We plan to move to McDonough, GA, where one of our daughters and her family live. That means we will also be much closer to my daughter and her family in Marietta, GA, and to my son and his family in Athens, GA. We were in GA for Thanksgiving and Christmas and looked at houses both trips. After Christmas we even went with a real estate agent to see 9 different houses. We were back there in February, looked at about 9 more houses, and a few days later made an offer on our favorite one that we looked at for the first time in December. The owners accepted our first offer, and we closed on the house April 30. We've already moved some stuff in, and will be taking more there in a couple of weeks, and will officially move in June 26. Exciting times, and sad too, because we are moving from a town we've lived in, except for 2 years, since 1983. 
Quilting-wise, I have finished the hand-quilting on Reilly's quilt and gave it to her in February. Here I am marking some of the designs I handquilted on it. 
Here you can see some of the hand quilting 
and here is a close-up of one of the corners of it. 
and Miss Reilly in her crib on her new quilt. 
My Christmas projects included another tablerunner, so I was able to give each of our 3 GA kids a tablerunner. Then I made 8 napkins to go with each of the 3 tablerunners. Here is the latest runner and napkins - 
I also made bags with ties attached for each of the grandkids for Christmas. 
The boys' bags with drawstrings are in the front, and the 3 girls' ones are in the back with ribbons that can be tied into bows stitched to the bags.
For Easter I made each of them an Easter basket, similar to the ones I made for our girls when they were little, probably 25 years or so ago. This one is Reilly's 
and this one is for Atticus. 
Here are Reba, Jack and Lillian with their baskets. Reba's is the same fabric as Reilly's, but purple, Jack's is the same fabric as Atticus' but green and yellow, and Lillian's is a red print. 
Reba stuffed hers full with more eggs. 
One of our recent guild workshops was called "Nickelmania" - here is the beginning of my version of that idea. 
I doubt that it will be any more finished by the time I move, but I will have a room just for quilting in my new house so hope to get back into serious quilting then.
For 3 years now I have contributed a few blocks to the quilts that a group of library-related quilters make to be raffled or auctioned at the American Library Association meeting. Here are the blocks for this year's quilts. This one is Carol Doak's Connecticut Star, 
and these are 3 Wonky Log Cabin blocks. 
You can see that these quilts will be quite different! The third quilt for the raffle is a bookcase - a pattern that I definitely want to do sometime.
My main goal quilt-wise before I leave here is to finish my second comfort quilt. It was started in July of last year when we had a workshop to get some more started. This is the front 
and the back of it. 
Just need to pin-baste it and quilt it. I will be doing it on my machine - probably just some diagonal lines in each section. VesuviusMama will recognize some of the backing fabrics! And she will be surprised that I have actually posted on my blog after all this time.
Reilly's quilt is one of my pink and brown quilts, but I have recently finished another one that I haven't mentioned here. Awhile back the Senior Center quilting group that I lead started making some lap-size quilts using strips and the quilt-as-you-go technique. It took me longer to finish mine than it did the rest of the ladies, but I finally got mine finished and gave it to the Center to put in their shop to sell. Here it is finished 
and here is a close-up of one corner 
Here is photo of the back of the quilt 
. It is always good to learn at least one thing with each project - one of the things I learned with this one is how to make rounded corners. That required me to review how to do a continuous bias binding. I especially like the way a stripe fabric looks in a bias binding, so was pleased with the way this turned out. I cut many more strips than needed however, so could probably make another one without cutting any more fabric. Instead I will just add them to my collection of strips of different widths for another project. This was the same process that we used for the table runners we were taught at Retreat this year, just a different size, and with sashing added. I really like it as a quick to do quilt.
Working on this project also prompted me to investigate walking feet. I have never been happy with the one that came with my Brother CS6000i, so just didn't use it much, but these seams were pretty thick so I contacted a Brother dealer to see if there was a different foot I could get. He said that if my foot did not say "Brother" on it then it probably wasn't a Brother one, and my original one did not, so I ordered one from him, and it seems to be doing much better.
Yesterday I started quilting Reilly's quilt - my first pink and brown quilt. Here are the 4 blocks I've done so far.
On the right you can still see the marking pen I use to trace the stencil design, but I will spray it tonight with some water and it will go away. I am outlining the individual sections of the pink and brown sections, and will be alternating the two stencil designs for the cream sections.
I am GA still tonight - I'll be driving back home from McDonough tomorrow - about 9 hours if I don't make any wrong turns!! Tonight Kristi and Micheal and I decided that we like the one border on Reilly's quilt 
I brought several possible fabrics, including the one they thought they wanted as the outside border, but when I laid it out in Reilly's room we all agreed on this - just one wide border of the brown polka dots; I'll use that as the backing too. I also had some stencils for the cream sections that I showed Kristi, she is leaving it up to me to pick between 4 of the 7 I showed her. Knowing me, I will probably practice with a couple of them at least before I decide. I think in the pink/brown areas I will just outline the sections. I did more of a quilting design in Lillian's but you can't really tell what it is, so I think I will do something more simple for this one.
I have had a great time visiting with all our GA kids and all of our grandkids. I left home last Wednesday afternoon, went to Johnson City, TN to stay with my mom that night, then on to McDonough on Thursday. Friday afternoon I went to Marietta, stayed there Friday and Saturday nights, then Sunday afternoon came back to McDonough. I really miss hubby though, and hope that he can come with me on my next visit here. We'll be here for Christmas, but I hope we'll be back before then.
