Broody girl and a new quilt top

This poor hen just wants to be a momma so desperately! She sits on eggs all afternoon and when I go to collect the eggs after work, she gets all fluffed up and annoyed with me. She is sitting on nothing right now, but will sit there all night. Since we no longer have a rooster (I might be wrong about that because one of my "girls" is crowing and mounting the hens --this can happen with a female when there are no males, but it's a little too convincing), the eggs are not fertile, so she sits for nothing. Right here, she is giving me the evil eye for taking her eggs. At Pieceful Quilting in Riverhead, this was a mystery quilt back in 2009 sometime. I was not sure if I liked it, but decided that I do. It was super easy and this past week I cut the borders and then this afternoon I attached them.

The design was called Mexican tiles. I have two more that have to be finished before I take another mystery class (scheduled for the end of June). Both of those are almost done too. Maybe this weekend I will spend some of my three days off working on them. This coming week I am in a class that uses tons of scraps!! It will be so much fun!!

Hand embroidered project for 2010

Every year I like to work on a few hand embroidered projects. This year I am working on a stories from the Bible quilt. There are 20 blocks all together, and so far I have nine done. I should have ironed them since I store them in a basket, but you get the idea.

The story of Ruth is one of my favorites!! I enjoyed this piece a lot. The fun part of this quilt is that I try to read each story as I work on the embroidery. For the most part, I only work on this project at night when I am watching tv or listening to the radio, so sometimes I just don't get to it (like when I am so tired that just watching tv is enough to do!).

I got these patterns at the quilt show in Lancaster last spring (2009). There were two that were related to the Bible, so I thought I would work on this one for this year and the other one, which is mostly verses with symbolic pictures, would be my 2011 project. Someday, they will go to grandchildren when I have some.

Circles and twists

Last week there was a mystery table runner class and this is what it looked like when we were done. (Of course it needs ironing!) The cool thing about table runner classes is that you are done when you leave and all you have to do is quilt it. I might just put a backing on it and not quilt it at all. I am thinking about that. Two Christmases ago, Kenny got me a magazine with the circles quilt in it. I made it that same weekend and love, love it!! Finally I got it quilted by a professional quilter who lives right by me. She does the most glorious work in the world, so I tell her to do whatever she wants with my quilts. In each white center, she quilted a flower. She stippled the alternate blocks.

Look at this feathering she does freehand!! I just about squealed when I saw it. It is perfect on this quilt.

She did a straight line across the blocks going around the entire quilt. I love the effect of that as a border.

I just love this quilt. I knew the minute I saw it that it would be one of my favorites and now it is all ready to be bound (I actually had binding ready for it and will put it on tonight!!) Anyway, the girl who does this quilting is named Deb and her company name is Divine Quilting. Obviously, she has a huge following, so the waiting time is very long. Totally worth every little nanosecond you have to wait though.