The Merry, Merry month of May

My goodness, April went fast! Of course, it was visit, visit, visit for 3 weeks - and do wash, unpack and pack again for the 4th week! Besides spending 10 days with my mom for her birthday, a visit with Miss P and Mr M [pictured here in a rare appearance without his sister!],



and we 'accepted delivery' of our new grandson,Mr D!! Two visits to meet and play with him! Here he is 2 weeks old.



I also had a 5-day retreat with the Bayshore Quilters from Newport. What fun that was!Good company and great sunsets!!


Picture 19 crazy quilters meeting in both sides of a duplex in Bandon. Lucky for me, Bandon is pretty much 1/2 way between Brookings and Newport. Although the Newport gals DID leave about 8 am to get there! 4 quilt shops on the way, don't cha know!! I left at 1 pm and we all got there about the same time - 4 pm on monday. Bags were hauled in, sewing machines were set up and let the party begin!!

The projects everyone was working on were awesome. For example, I'd never seen or heard of Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses. Oh dear, a new category of fabrics to look for!! It's fabulous! A woven log cabin, many sewing kits in an exchange, lots of eye candy - both worked on and brought in from shopping trips!

Tuesday, some of the gals took a crumb quilt class from Nancy Chong of the Pacific Rim Quilting Company. This was the 4th year they arranged a class by her. The renegades - including me - sat at home and worked on our own projects. It was a great sewing day 'while the kids were at school!'

Tuesday, I worked on 'Pies and Tarts' antique reproduction quilt. Instead of English paper piecing, I'm paper-less paper piecing by machine and got several pies and a few tarts pieced and ready for applique that day.

Wednesday was spent working on Sliced Bread - an asymetrical log cabin-ish pattern from Wilmington Fabrics. The link takes you to the index, patterns are in alphabetical order. This was a March Madness workshop we had in Brookings. It's pretty wild, so I'm looking for a 4th 'log' to mute it down a bit. Hmmm, navy? brick red? tone on tones? but 48 blocks later ... it was a very productive day.

Thursday I put my machine away and worked on the Sue Spargo wool applique project from Lincoln's class. And then when I ran out of thread colors I needed, I switched to quilting on "Birds of a Feather." Each year I drag it out of it's corner, I love it, everyone else oohs and ahhs over it and I'm dedicated to finishing it by ... until I get distracted by something else!! Poor UFO! But it's at the head of the list again. [or is it? a shoulder injury from carrying furniture sidelined me this week from any sewing!]

Friday was time to head back home again - with a short stop at Port Orford to pick up some of those missing colors of thread.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. Hope yours includes some leisure time, a favorite activity and a wee bit of dessert!!