Ketchup

What a whirlwind week and a half! To begin with, I went from driving this.....


To driving this......

Yup. I got a new car - a Honda Element! I purchased the Ford Excursion right after opening my business as a tax break and also because we thought we might be doing a number of quilt shows. But, at this point, quilt shows are more trouble than they're worth and the price of gas was killing me. I've been thinking about getting a more gas-efficient car for a couple of months now - and once I started test driving there was no turning back. I LOOOOOOOVE this car - it handles so nicely and I can pull directly into any parking space I want! And it's such a cool color (kiwi green). I am no longer driving a bus and it's a good thing! We're going to take it on a trip to the Texas coast next week, so we'll see how it handles on a long-distance adventure.


This is a picture of my finished block from Becky Goldsmith's workshop last week. I took this workshop for a couple of reasons:
1) Becky is a friend of mine and I thought it would be fun.
2) I really wanted to learn how she pieces curves together that have been paper pieced.

The first day of the workshop concentrated on the paper pieceing of the arcs. I have paper pieced before, but Becky's method was easier and made more sense. At the beginning of the day, she stated that we would probably only get a quarter of the block done - not the whole thing. Diane and I looked at each other and thought - "Alrighty then. A gauntlet's been thrown down!". We pieced furiously and I had mine ALMOST finished by 4:00. I came home Wednesday night and put the finishing touches on it. The center circle in the photo was an audition fabric - I have since put a salmon pink circle on the block.



The second day was dedicated to learning applique the "Piece O' Cake way". This was going to be an old dog, new tricks kinds of day. I've been appliqueing fairly successfully for several years and I've seen their DVD on applique and I was skeptical that I could change my ways. But I was determined to have an open mind and at least try their way for the day. And you know what? I learned a thing or two! I will probably incorporate some of their techinques into my applique repetoire. I was really pleased that my outer circle actually looks like a circle without any flat spots or points. If nothing else, I am no longer reluctant to applique circles.

I spent today piecing my Lady of the Lake blocks into a quilt top. I even dug around in the closet for backing fabric, but I ran out of steam before loading the quilt on the machine.

I'll leave you with a garden photo. This is an Angel's Trumpet that I planted as a baby plant this spring. Isn't it wonderful! The white thing hanging in the window is my flannel design sheet....

Have a great week!
Susan