Reach for the stars...

Well, "Orbits" has finally been gifted, and it's about time! It took his mom and me a little while to get together --  the "baby" boy is getting his first tooth and doing the coffee table walk already!

I'm just glad I got it to her before he started kindergarten.

This one was totally inspired by this quilt. I fell in love with Marit's stars on that deep blue field. Initially, I wanted to do spiral quilting on it, but decided to put the stars into "orbits." The thread on the left is blue, the right orbits are green, and the filler ones are yellow, doubled up for a little different texture. I think I actually had TOO much sun in the living room for this picture -- a rare day left the pictures a little washed out.

The background is an old Makower tone-on-tone with stippling throughout. It looks kind of dark here -- it's not quite as royal are the picture above, and not as black as the one below.

And of course, there was a present for big sister, too!

This doll quilt was made from leftovers of her "Welcome to the World" quilt, made two and a half years ago (which, much to my relief, is getting some use and holding up pretty well. I have this irrational fear that all my stuff just falls apart as soon as it leaves my house). Little Miss Piper was diggin' the pillow (not the case, mind you -- the pillow itself), and her babies were diggin' the blanket.

It's always a good feeling to give things to people (and stuffed rabbits) who you know will appreciate them!

Thinking spring!

It's only 35 degrees here, with winter hanging on stubbornly, and no real signs of letting us go. I was rummaging through the stash this weekend looking for kid-friendly fabrics to finish up another Quilts for Kids quilt and came across this great fishy fat quarter. Those colors got me thinking about (and wishing for -- holy smokes! this time last year, it was in the 80's!) warmer temps and the tulips in my parkway garden. I'm looking forward to seeing them again...whenever that may be.

Diving back into the stash, I came up with these coordinates:

I'm having some very random fun with this one. It won't be finished by Easter, but I'm making progress!

Pennants as penance...

It's that time of year again! 

Lent has arrived, and while I don't have nearly the ambition of a few years ago for my annual Quilts for Kids project, this one's a start.

I became a fan of triangles when I made this quilt. I loved the way they looked on a uniform background, and when I looked at the rows upside down, they reminded me of pennants. It planted a seed of an idea, one that had been growing for a few months.

Last Sunday turned out to be harvest day.

Bored with sewing bindings on by hand (which aggravates my carpal tunnel, anyway, so I can't do it for very long), I pulled out my Tri-Recs ruler and started cutting. And sewing. And quilting. And by yesterday, I was done.

Do you know how rare it is for unfocused ADD-prone me to start and complete a quilt in a week without bouncing off to another project (or two, or three) halfway through? It's a Lenten miracle!

Where I have been...

Well, hello there! It's been a while, hasn't it?

February was a blur. My 90-year old mother tripped and fell in the house at the end of January, jamming her right shoulder and breaking her arm high up near the joint, in a place they couldn't cast it. The good news was the break was clean and set exactly where it should be; the bad news was she wasn't a candidate for surgery so the shoulder is what it is, and the break needed to be immobilized in a sling. She's right handed, which meant she was very limited in what she could do on her own.

My father has never been one to cook anything other than microwave hot dogs, or vacuum or do laundry, so I went home to help out. I was chief cook, laundress, housekeeper, hairdresser, snow removal specialist, chauffeur, and cat referee for a good part of the month. I stuck around long enough to see the sling come off (bone is healing well! hooray!) and take Mom to her first physical therapy appointment (this is going to be the big challenge), then left both of them in the care of my other more local siblings.

This is Sugar, the neighbor's cat who adopted my parents this fall and now rules the house.

She looks very cute and sweet but ambushed poor Archie every chance she got

I arrived back in Chicago exhausted, but in anticipation of being in Michigan for an extended period of time had taken some binding projects with me, so I'm happy to say I returned with some finishes. Can't show the finished products just yet, so here's a peek:

I'm happy to be back home with my machine, and my own big bed (nothing like a month in your childhood bed to send your back into a whole new realm of muscle spasms), and at the same time stressed out to be so far away from Mom & Dad. I don't suppose this is going to get any easier, is it?