Confetti Log Cabin

My oldest niece is having her first baby in the fall, so that calls for a quilt!! I've been watching for just the right pattern for inspiration and finally found it! You just can't beat a log cabin pattern, IMHO!! But you can make it more fun!! This easy pattern uses four-patch squares as part of the log cabin design. I love the way it turned out. If you want to find this pattern, it's in the Quiltmaker Magazine, March/April '07.

A Quilt for a Princess

This quilt is for my oldest grand-niece, Avery... she's 5 years old, and quite the "girly-girl"... She has a "princess room" at her grandparents' house, so I thought this would be PERFECT for her!

Quilting Retreat at Okuma

Barb, Rebecca, and I spent the weekend at Okuma with about 30 other quilters.

Here's pictures of the quilts we made while we were there. For pictures of quilts by other members, check out the OIPG Blog

A Quilt for Jeff and Marie!

I completed this quilt top when we were stuck in the house during a typhoon this summer. Then it went into my UFO stack waiting for that "urge" to go farther with it... finding the right backing fabric, making the quilt "sandwich," quilting it -- and then hand-sewing the binding. That last part always keeps them in the UFO stack for awhile!! :)



But it's finally done -- and I really LIKE it!!



Let me tell you a bit about this quilt... I found the fabric while I was visiting my Mom in Bloomington, IN this summer. Jeff and Marie had hosted our family for a GREAT family reunion, and we'd spent lots of wonderful family time on their fabulous front porch. This front porch is really amazing -- more like a casual living room, complete with a stone fireplace. I know that Jeff and Marie and their friends spend a lot of time out there, and I just thought that they needed a quilt for their sofa. Marie had recently recovered the cushions on the sofa, so I "borrowed" a piece of that fabric and took it with me the next time I went fabric shopping. I found the two yellow prints that just seemed to want to be together... the paisley and the floral blend together in the quilt until you look closely... then the dark blue print just seemed like the perfect fabric to pull it all together! I found the backing fabric here in Okinawa... the colors were perfect and it just seemed like a fun fabric for a "porch quilt"! Now that I had the fabric, I had to figure out what pattern to use... I pored through books... turning down pages... searched internet pages and found lots of possibilities... and then I ran across http://www.quiltswithstyle.com and found this pattern called Folkloristisch. The pattern was inspired by traditional Dutch dance steps. I made a few pattern modifications so that I could strip-piece it (this was the my first attempt at doing that with a pattern all on my own!!)



Since you're reading about this quilt for my brother, you might be interested in Jeff's website

Amy's quilt is finished!!

I finally finished the last bit of handsewing on Amy's quilt and cleaned up all the straggling threads!! This is a simple rail fence pattern -- really easy to put together!! As you can see, I decided to use two of the purples to form the wide border -- I really like the way that worked out!

It's quilted by stitch-in-the-ditch outlining the dark purple fence rail.... then the sections between those dark fence rails are quilted in free-motion that include some stars...



The "label on the back documents that the quilt is for Amy and her husband for Christmas 2006, and that it was made by me in Okinawa, Japan

Off topic again -- Nathan is 20!

My youngest child is 20 years old today!!

It's hard to believe that so much time has past since I held that bundle in my arms for the first time... Nathan is the youngest of four children and arrived only 6 months after his oldest sister arrived in our family... (I guess that's a story for another post -- or even another whole blog!)

Nathan is a sophomore at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California. After going through high school convinced that he wanted to go into computer engineering, he has made a pretty major turnaround -- and is majoring in kinesiology.

Nathan and Grandpa, June 2006

We moved overseas when Nathan was not quite 2 years old.... and he moved back when he started college. So that was quite a culture shock for him! He grew up in Germany, South Korea, Guam and Okinawa. His real passion as a teenager was soccer. He lived and breathed soccer! Now, he's really in to working out -- and told me today that he can bench press 250 lb!!
He'll be coming home for Christmas! We'll be glad to spend some time with him!

Happy Birthday, Nathan!!