Growth, and Quilting, and Q. Books

I had a birthday recently. LAST year on my birthday, we bought a Linden tree and I want to see how much growth there has been. This photo is from 2010. The tree grew some, but so did the other subject!

Below are some of my favorite machine quilting books. I have many but these are the ones I like the most. Back - Hooked on Feathers by Sally Terry - a 'new', and far more sensible way of MQ'ing feathers. The next, Machine Quilting, another basic, start at the beginning book, although there more complicated designs included also. Next is Freehand Patterns, by Nan Moore, another basic showing a multitude of border patterns and more, and last is my favorite, favorite, by Kathy Sandbach, who has written several machine quilting books. You might recognize her name as she has quilted a BUNCH of quilts for other names in the quilt business. She is totally free-form (in this book), and I really LOVE her style. It is carefree, not to worry, don't fret, etc. Remember, all of these books require practice. All these books are about the LINES, and DESIGNS, with little mention of threads, or machine set-up.

If you pick just one idea from each book, you will find that in time, you will have a bunch of designs under your belt! This one turned our really nice and curvy although my photo is a bit washed-out. I have numerous side setting triangles on this Double Dutch, and could not stick to one pattern, so quilted them all differently. No focussing for me!

Birthday Tree and DONE K. Quilt for Luca

I had a birthday recently, and in addition to a nice gift certificate to a LQS, TOGETHER, we bought a small leafed Linden Tree to celebrate. This area is not kind to trees but we've noticed Linden Trees do well. I wanted to stand next to the tree each year to see how quickly or slowly it will grow.

Sentimental here ... we recently had the front porch railing fabricated and installed that you see behind me, and we put HEARTS in the railing! Is that cute or is that cute for two old fogies? The very talented iron man whipped them up along with the railing.

If you can stand any more Kaleidoscope photos ... here is the last border, in black. I wore myself out, thinking what would be suitable, and finally, with impatience, just started drawing/sewing lines, and this is how it turned out (Control + brings it up larger)-- mostly triangles (a few boxes which would have been great also) and I am very pleased! It is one continuous set of STRAIGHT lines, variegated bright thread - no curves - from start to finish. I will ditch stitch in blue thread between the blue and black border. Below is the back - I didn't have enough of anything, but definitely wanted to use the Bears. And I had a limited amount of another that would be kinda similar, but due to inability to count to 49 ( !!!!! ) ran out of that also, and had to find yet a third dotty fabric that is OK. These squares are cut at 10 1/2 inches and I like this method a LOT. A person could go through a lot of stash and just cut squares for backings.

Yes, there are the extra 4 blocks at the bottom I added to make 49.
DONE - and all quilted in swirls, all going clockwise. I really HATE to give this one away.