Here's one of her new toys. It's a castle slide, just right for a little princess with an imagination and lots of energy. Baxter, the dog, enjoys watching her play on it, especially because it means she plays outdoors longer. Her little brother is thriving, and I hope to have more photos next week.
Also on the grandchild front, I finished the diaper bag for BS, the grandson we're still expecting. It's the Montana Eco Tote by Tahki Stacy Charles.
I used Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes Bulky in Porcini and Navy. I used Pellon interfacing to give it some body, and a colorful dinosaur fabric for lining and pockets.
The expected new baby is also getting a quilt, of course! Here are the fabrics I selected to go with the dragon appliqué I improvised from an image I found online.
All of the fabrics to the right of the dragon appliqué block are from Connecting Threads, where I found a great sale on batiks. The others were from my stash. Here's a closeup of the dragon's face:
I used reverse-appliqué on the eyes and nostrils. The irises were tricky. They are tiny circles, and it was difficult to get them round. It would have been much worse without my clip-on magnifiers!
Here's the dragon quilt top finished. Julie, of Mountaintop Quilting (thorum@xmission.com) will quilt it for me.
The block design came from Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott. It's their "Log Cabin Hidden Stars." I used the blocks that worked to give a starburst effect around the dragon. I'm a fan of Anne MacCaffrey's Pern sci-fi/fantasy novels, which involve both dragons and stars, to it seemed fitting. The backing I found also has stars on it. I'll show that off when the quilt is done. I should mention that both BS and his daddy are from the year of the dragon, and Daddy is a big fan of dragons.
My quilting mini group, Vintage Stitchers, took place at Rebecca's last week. Rebecca had a bunch of fabric she wanted to get rid of. Julie sat down and organized the fabrics after the rest of us had gone through it. She used to own a quilt shop, so she loves to handle fabric.
Brenda brought her finished quilt top, which she embroidered by machine. This has been a long project, but it's beautiful!
During this meeting I CO another Baby Surprise Jacket (BSJ, you will have to scroll down) for BS. I'm using KP's Swish DK, so it will be a little larger than the previous one I made for him. I also have some Comfy Worsted for a third BSJ, which will be larger yet.
The snow is finally gone at our elevation, but there is still some higher up. (I say "finally" not because it has lasted longer this year, but because our trip to Wisconsin and Indiana gave me a taste for spring, and it was difficult to come back to late winter and "mud season.") We had nice hikes on Monday with some friends and Saturday just the four of us. Here are my constant hiking buddies:
The tulips in our front yard bloomed just in time for Mothers' Day!
Speaking of Mother's Day, hope everyone had a great one!
What's on my needles: Dogwood Blossoms, Fiji socks and another BSJ for BS.
What's on my iPad: Finished A Single Thread by Marie Boswick and am now finishing Death Comes to Pemberly by P. D. James, both from Audible.com. Also reading The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, a free eBook in the iPad library. (If you want an audiobook, the free one is available from Librivox.org, read by Karen Savage.)
What's my app of the week: Pages, which I used to design the quilt top. I took a screen shot of the blocks from the book, which is on my iPad, cropped the individual blocks and then transferred them to a document in Pages. It worked great!
What's in my wine glass: Roccalta Sangiovese 2010. Great with the Italian no-boil lasagna recipe we're having tonight!
Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook. I used the iPad for the photos with links. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.
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