Moon Morning Glory

Today was a beautiful Florida day. The temperature was in the 70′s with blue skies and fluffy white clouds. What a perfect day to take a walk on the boardwalk of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The tranquil area is home to many birds, flowers and of course alligators!

The moon flower, moon morning glory, opens in the early evening that disappears by morning.

Little Blue Heron

This little blue heron was a bit camera shy, but was able to get decent shot of him anyway.

I caught the white ibis as they took a break from foraging for their dinner.

While my husband, Tom, is taking photos,
I walk; find a pituresque spot and take out some handwork

I am working on a wool wall hanging to be appliquéd with a buttonhole stitch.

When Tom meets up with me, we sit for a bit and then start walking agian.

Happy quilting!

Currently I am working on the next two projects that I want to complete on this trip: the Seasons wall hanging and a table topper, Autumn Pennies by Kim Diehl. The monthly blocks for the Seasons wall hanging are almost done – only one to go. The next step is to add the Churn and Dash borders to each block. I brought along fabric from my stash and wanted to make sure that I had enough to frame the blocks alike. The pattern calls for 1/8yd. dark cuts from 12 different fabrics.

So to the Internet I went… I found two sites that I am sure will prove very helpful; now and in the future. The first is Quilt Yardage Calculator. This calculator will determine the yardage needed for specific number and types of blocks (i.e. square, rectangle, half-square triangle etc). The other, Quilt Fabric Calculator will calculate the yardage for an entire quilt.

Using the flash quilt version of Quilt Yardage Calculator confirmed that I had the amount of fabric needed. It also showed me the number of strips to cut.

I took a class from Kim Diehl on her invisible machine appliqué technique at Material Rewards in Dansville, NY last summer. Her pattern for Autumn Pennies is reminiscent of a penny rug. It combines quarter-square-triangle blocks alternately with penny blocks. My favorite time of the year is Fall and the colors in this quilt remind me of Fall. The blocks are completed and just have to be joined together.

Happy quilting.

I just recently retired, making it possible for my husband, Tom, and I to finally to do some wintertime RV’ing. Our first destination is the Florida Everglades where he will be able to add to his library of nature photos and I’ll be able to spend much of the time quilting!

We left Syracuse, NY (snow country) on December 27 and logged more than 30 hours of drive time by January 5. This translates into 30 plus hours for me to quilt on hand projects while traveling. My first completed project is a wool candle mat finished with the buttonhole stitch. (See detail of sttching below.)

While traveling, I organized floss, scissors, pattern and loose thread clippings (that always seem to get away from me) by using my 12″ square Quilt ‘n Press.

In addition I am working on a Seasons wall hanging that I had started last year. It is made up of 12 monthly blocks surrounding a 4-season block. Each of these blocks becomes the center of a churn dash block. The borders have 4 embroidered corner-stone blocks (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall). I have only two of the corner border blocks left to embroider and then will be able to begin assembling the churn dash blocks.

Of course I brought along more projects than I can possibly finish in the month we will be here – but I couldn’t take a chance of running out. I am hoping to complete some of my unfinished projects (UFOs!) and certainly will have to visit the quilt stores in South Florida to find some new projects to replace them.

Happy Quilting!