Needles and Pens

Officially en route to the birthday boy today, and therefore really and truly finished... ( Thanks to Austin's grandma and grandpa, for the extra-special delivery service! ) ... for my great-nephew, Austin, who turned thirteen last week. Since he was born before I really started quilting, he's waited a very long time for his quilt. On the plus side, his is a lot bigger than the baby quilts his younger cousins have received! The inspiration for this quilt came over a year ago, when I joined an online quilting bee to make blocks for Margaret's Hope Chest . One of the requested blocks was a very simple, sports themed hourglass block. If you look closely at the finished quilt for Joshua , you'll see a couple of familiar blocks in there... ... 9-1/2" squares of the sports print and black Kona cotton, cut diagonally both ways, sewn back together and trimmed down to 8-1/2" blocks. Here are all of the blocks sewn together for Austin's quilt, before ...

So... remember all those bright pink blocks from a couple months back? Well as of today, they are officially a finished quilt! (I had a hard time getting accurate color in this picture, but the border actually blends really well with the blocks in real life. Really.) The quilt finished at approximately 60" square. And this is the yummy tone-on-tone hot pink flannel backing I "just happened to have" in my stash (due to a few splurges while working at the fabric store -- shhhhh...) Again, my photography leaves something to be desired. Turns out there's a seam right in the middle of the shot, thus the noticeable color variation. (It also looks better in real life. Really.) I have in mind a special someone to receive this quilt, so I just need to make a label and it'll be on it's way to ? (Shhh... it's a secret.) So after that big accomplishment today, I felt like I was on a roll and found out that my May "Get 'Er Done" challenge panel...

Just when I felt like I was really getting things accomplished... life threw me a curve ball. I've been laid up for the past 3-4 weeks with a combination of back problems and never ending bronchitis/sinus/inner-ear crud. Suddenly I'm not only behind in all of my sewing projects, but completely bewildered by everything else that needs to be done in the coming weeks. In the midst of all my health problems, I decided to give up my job at the fabric store, which has relieved a lot of stress and may be the key to finally feeling a little better now. I'm not fully recovered yet. Still on antibiotics, still waiting for my ears to unplug, still visiting my chiropractor almost daily and hoping for a breakthrough that will relieve the shooting pain in my shoulder and arm. But there are signs of improvement. Here I am, sitting at the computer after all. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. One thing I have managed to get done this week was a trip to the post office. I...

... there was lots of working, and sewing, and keeping the household afloat between bouts of summer partying, graduations, birthdays, anniversaries, the end of one school year and the beginning of another, halloween... ...and now it's November once again. Wow. It's official. I am the world's worst blogger. Yet somehow I can't quite give it up. And as usual, I have a hard time deciding how to pick up where I left off. Which would be... June. Oddly enough, it was my biggest June quilting project that brought me back to my blog tonight, so I guess that's a good place to start. I recently received an email from the Wrapped in Hope project, and stopped by to add their link to my sadly neglected blog list, and here I am. :o) So, a little about Wrapped in Hope: One of the various projects of Margaret's Hope Chest (which has, to date, donated 722 quilts to people in need), Wrapped in Hope provides birthday quilts "to bring HOPE and comfort" to children who a...