Old Friends

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! We had a wonderful time. We had no drama getting to and from the airport this year (last year was tons of snow and ice and much drama). Went out to a wonderful Chinese restaurant for Christmas Eve, and discovered some new yummy dishes we'd never tried.

Christmas Day we went to DS's house for the day. Had a beautiful turkey dinner prepared by my DIL and a great 3-layer chocolate cake that she made for the first time! Got to play a little with the granddaughters and their new Wii game, and did OK. (I could play for hours with that! I want one now - it was so much fun.)

After dinner, DS, DH, FIL and I went out to see the movie Avatar in 3D. It was awesome! The 3D was the best I'd ever experienced. And the special effects were incredible - and seamless. On the way home from the movie, I had a good chat with my sister. It was a wonderful day.

I managed to get into the quilt studio for a little while the other day. I'm starting a new project, but no photos yet. It's still in too many pieces! But soon....

In the meantime, here's some "old friends" that I got to revisit on my recent trip to Oregon.


Here is a challenge quilt from quite awhile ago. It lives with my friend Karen at her home in Oregon. This was a project that we collaborated on.

The challenge was posed by our quilt guild in California, probably in the late 80's or early 90's. (I'm not entirely sure anymore!) We were given a set of 5 fabrics to work with. Those are the fabrics in the top, middle and bottom trees plus the two trees that are both touching the top and middle trees, if my memory serves. They were very traditional fabrics and who would've thought that the tropical fabric in the border worked the best with them! But the colors were perfect, so that's what we went with. It sure was out of our comfort zone at that time!

We also had to figure out this pattern by ourselves. We saw a quilt done with these trees at the local quilt store, but the store was all out of that particular pattern. So we did a quick sketch, then went home and figured it out. We also discovered that even though we had the same sewing machine and the same 1/4 inch foot, we had different-sized seam allowances! Another challenge. But in the end, it came out pretty well.

Karen did all the quilting by hand, because that's her favorite part. She didn't do tons of quilting, because we had a time deadline, and we were running out of time. Of course!

Here's another "old friend" that lives with Karen in Oregon. This was a Debbie Mumm pattern that I made for Karen for her birthday one year. It's all done with fusible, and I was inspired by the veggie fabric in the border and that Karen likes to garden. It's held up pretty well - only one fabric faded enough to notice. I still like this one!

If you like antique quilts, Laura at Pine Ridge Quilter, has been showing some wonderful antique red and green quilts on her blog. They're beautiful - go check them out!

I hope to spend a little more time in the quilt studio this week, inbetween the putting away of Christmas and getting ready for my trip to Nevada this weekend. I haven't had enough sewing time this month, and I need my fix!