Dave and I recently spent a week in Lubec, Maine, with our friends Marge, Bob and Monica, a reprise of our trip in 2011.  We took advantage of the long ride north to stop on the way up to visit with my college roommate Peg in New Gloucester, and on the way south to visit with my cousin Carole in Camden and with friends and former neighbors Mary and Xavier in Boothbay Harbor.   We had perfect weather, lots of lobster and lots of laughter.  Here are some highlights:

Roomies!

   

The view from our window

A toast to morning in Maine!

On the ferry to Eastport

At the New Friendly Restaurant in Perry

Nobody does lobster rolls like the New Friendly!

Now this is how vegetable keepers should look!

Cigars on the last evening

"We happy few"

Blueberry Land!

Cousins!

Dave and I hadn't seen Mary and Xavier for years, and I FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES!   Oh, well.  there's always next year!

June: Celebrations and (of course) THE CHALLENGE!

The month of June is a busy one for our family. Emily's birthday is on the 16th, Dave's is on the 20th, Father's Day always falls around then, and Dave's and my wedding anniversary is on the 22nd.  Whew!  We buy a lot of cards and eat out much more often than usual.  All of these dates remind us of how quickly our lives spin past and how important it is to appreciate each and every day. 
 This year was one of those significant birthdays for Dave.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of him, taken when he taught at the Edinburgh Academy.  Except for gray hair and beard, he still looks the same (minus the kilt!)

Thirty-eight years ago, this was the scene......

 And twenty-five years ago, our sweet girl arrived.....

 

 Here she is being greeted by her grandmother, her Aunt Marce, and her cousin Drew.

 

Despite all this celebrating, I did manage to complete my Free Motion Challenge for June. The teacher for this month was Cindy Needham who does exquisite machine quilting on whole cloth quilts.  Her tutorial included several parts in which she explained her choices of tools, her method of beginning and ending and burying threads, and her method of dividing the quilting space and quilting differently in each section, much like the Zentagle doodle method.

For some of my practice pieces I used quilt sandwiches I had used to try some decorative threads for bobbin quilting.  Since those threads were white, I used YLI Rainbows thread so I could see the difference between the two.

After several practice sessions, my final attempt is here.   I have a Bernina  and I have done some of the challenges using the BSR, but I did all of this month's quilting without it, and I am happy with the result.  My stitches are more even than I had expected them to be, and I think Cindy's suggestion about letting the rhythm of your machine help you to keep your foot and hands in sync really worked for me.  This is one lesson I think I shall be trying again and again.

 

 

I quilted the name of the month and a heart in hand, too, and I think I will do this on all the challenges for the rest of the year.

 

 I hope that those of you who are celebrating this month and quilting this month have as much fun as I did!

May's Free Motion Challenge

Sew Cal Gal's Free Motion Challenge continues, this month with a pair of video lessons from Leah Day.  I have followed Leah's blog and her personal challenge of creating 365 filler designs for free motion quilting.  She is very talented and I was really looking forward to her lesson.  She did not disappoint.  She showed two "foundational" designs, designs which start with a foundation line that becomes the basis of your quilting. 
I got myself organized this month by making lots of 9" blocks of muslin and batting so that I would be ready to practice whenever I had a little time.  That strategy worked well for me and I'm going to do the same thing for the rest of the challenge. 


Here are a few of the practice blocks.

So here is the big reveal.  First up, the stipple-like curvy quilting:

 

 And the second pattern with angular sewing around the foundation line: (Leah calls this railroad ties)

I liked this exercise because it focused on filling the allotted space evenly.  I was not entirely successful, but I learned a lot from practicing.  I used Superior Threads Rainbow in the top and Superior's Bottom Line in the bobbin.

This was not the only quilty sewing that was done this month.  I made a small patchwork teddy bear and a matching quilt for a friend's baby shower.  (And forgot to take a picture!)  And I am finishing a little quilt for my guild's challenge.  That one is a secret until our June luncheon, so I'll post about that later.

Escape Velocity Achieved (Almost)

  My trip to Florida was short and sweet and busy!   It was thrilling to see Marce and my brother-in-law, Jack so happy and excited to have begun to fulfill their long held dream of sailing around the world.  They have named the boat Escape Velocity and are blogging about their experiences here.

The boat is beautiful and much more comfortable and roomy than I (the landlubber in the family) had expected.  The berths and heads are in the two hulls, and the living space is in the bridge deck that connects the two hulls.

Before my trip, I did a little crafty business and made t-shirts with the boat name and picture for each of us.  I think they were a hit.

When they sold their house, Marce and Jack pared down their possessions to things they thought they would want or need on the boat.  The moving truck arrived on Tuesday.  We sorted through the boxes to decide what could wait in the rented storage locker and what should go right onto the boat.   Things for the boat included pantry and kitchen and bath items, along with the all-important cases of wine.  We packed the rest into the storage locker without an inch of space to spare.  Marce is the all-time champion packer!

Back on board, we had lots of "stuff" to put away into not very much space.

The previous owners left lots of food that they had acquired during their cruising trip of almost 4 years.  We had fun "reading" labels from different countries.

During all this commotion, Izzy, the "Adventure Kitty," always found a spot for watching or napping.

 We did take time out for some fun.  We even took a ride up to Archie's Seabreeze in Ft. Pierce for dinner one night.

 When I left there was still lots of work to do to prepare for sailing away, but I came home knowing that Marce and Jack are beginning a wonderful new chapter of their life together, and that there's a berth with my name on it so that Dave, Emily and I can achieve Escape Velocity, too.

FMQ Challenge, and a Trip to Florida

I'm flying to Florida tomorrow to help my sister and brother-in-law move onto their new home, a Manta 40 catamarran.  (I wrote about the last visit to their house in Pittsburgh here.)  We'll be busy cleaning and organizing and, I hope, hanging out together over coffee or wine.  Jack already posted a picture of their first dinner aboard, with Izzy the cat keeping watch.

But before departure, I quickly did the Free Motion Challenge lesson for April.  Don Linn is the teacher for April, and he demonstrated his method for marking quilting designs.  He uses tulle to make a "template" of a quilting design that you then trace onto fabric using your favorite marker.  Here are the supplies used to make the template.  You stretch the tulle in a quilting or embroidery hoop, place it over a paper copy of the design and trace the design using a permanent marker.  Then you place the tulle over your fabric and trace with your favorite temporary marking tool.  I use an air erasable marker.

 

Here is my completed quilting sample.  I used Superior Threads Rainbow with The Bottom Line in the bobbin.  Although the quilting isn't first rate, I really liked the marking procedure and will certainly try it again.

 

 I know I promised a post about one of the projects I took on our quilt retreat in March.  It's coming....after my trip!

Retreat: Sew. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Last weekend, my quilt guild held its annual retreat in Stroudsburg, PA, at the Shawnee Inn.  This was my first retreat, and I had a wonderful time and am ready to go again!  It was bliss to be able to sew and talk quilting and share quilting tips and get to know other members without having to worry about meals, laundry, cleaning and all the other daily responsibilities that impinge on sewing time.
The Shawnee is an old, venerable, classic hotel; when you walk down the halls, you see photographs of visitors like President Eisenhower, Mickey Mantle, Dizzy Gillespie and even the Lone Ranger!  (I don't know whether Tonto was there or not; I didn't see a picture.)  The Inn sits right on the Delaware River north of the Delaware River Gap; we were lucky to have unseasonably warm weather on Friday and Saturday, so two friends and I had a lovely walk on Saturday morning before we began our sewing marathon.

We also took some time out to visit Pocono Sew and Vac in Stroudsburg, too.  What a wonderful store!  It is family owned, and they sell just about every make of sewing machine as well as fabric and thread and notions.  I scored a Bendable Bright Light, and pair of Machingers Quilting Gloves and a few yards of fabric on sale.  (I did not even go to the part of the store where they sell vacuum cleaners!  This was a quilting retreat, after all.  If I ever go on a housecleaning retreat, I'll look at vacuums.)

The Inn provided us with a big meeting room where we could set up our machines and irons.  The room was available to us from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon.  Throughout the weekend, there was the hum of sewing machines punctuated with the voices of quilters complimenting, questioning, advising, reassuring, exclaiming about each others' projects.

I spent a lot of time before the retreat prepping for the projects I took with me.  Like some travelers, I over-packed projects because I wanted to be sure that I could choose what to work on depending on my mood.  One of the projects I worked on was my interpretation of a house block inspired by Jeanneke"s Building Houses from Scraps.

If you have seen the Building Houses from Scraps blog, you know that Jeanneke started a project to make 366 3" house blocks in 2012, one for each day of the year.  I decided that 3" blocks were way too small for me, and although I enjoy hand-piecing, finding the time and motivation to make one block a day for a year is not a commitment I could fulfill, so I drafted my own 6" house block and cut up lots of scraps to take on the retreat.
 
Here's the first house block that I used as a guide:

I cut up some charm squares and lots of scraps and a few jelly roll strips.  Except for choosing appropriate fabrics for the sky pieces, matching the pieces on either side of the door and window, I cut all the other fabrics into pieces without regard to color or scale.  After making a few blocks, I also decided to fussy cut some of the windows.

Here's a tip for organizing pieces for blocks that require lots of little pieces: use a cutlery tray!
Here's what my tray looked like before I started piecing:

And here are the blocks I made during the retreat.

Now that I am home and doing some other sewing, I'm using the house project as leaders and enders, much less pressure than making a house every day! (Oops!  I just realized that two of the blocks are not pieced correctly....too many distractions, I guess.)

Next up, another project that was in my retreat baggage, one of my favorite patterns and one of my bucket list quilts.

March FMQ: Doodling with Ann Fahl

Ann Fahl is the featured teacher for  this month's Free Motion Quilting Challenge organized by Sew Cal Gal.  I really enjoyed the "assignment!"  Ms. Fahl contributed a very comprehensive lesson with lots of information and advice about threads, needles, blocking and basting.  When I was at the AQS show in Lancaster I treated myself to some colorful threads at the Superior and Aurifil booths, and this month I had fun trying some of them out. 
So here's my final product for March.  I tried some of Ms. Fahl's suggested designs and added some doodles of my own.  The threads I used for this sample were Superior's Rainbows and The Bottom Line in the bobbin.  I was a little skeptical when I saw how fine these threads are, but I am really happy with the results!  I started in the upper right doing loops, moved down the right side adding stars and hearts.  Then in the lower right I tried some spirals and morphed them into daisies on the left, a few flower doodles, two heart-in-hands that look like clown hands, and finally loops again at the top left.

I took this photo with my iPhone using a camera app that I read about in the NY Times on Thursday.  It's called Camera Awesome and it has lots of cool features that help you take better pictures and edit them on the spot!  You can read about it here.
In my next post, I'll tell you about my guild's recent retreat and show you my secret to staying organized when piecing quilt blocks.