Back Home and Quilt Talk

I came back home from the quilting retreat yesterday in time to enjoy a beautiful afternoon of eighty degrees and sunny skies.  

It was so nice that we decided to grill dinner and eat out on the deck.  Today will also be warm but by tomorrow we'll have a twenty degree drop in the temperature.  Everyone is enjoying the warmth while it is here.  Sandals, shorts, and sports bras have suddenly reappeared and the streets and trails are full of people hiking and biking.   When Ben wasn't grilling he snapped this photo of me and our friend, Lotus. 

I've gotten myself unpacked and am pleased with what I accomplished over the weekend.

I made the top for a kid's charity quilt kit that I picked up at the quilt guild meeting last week and got it basted together....

....and put together the top of the Christmas quilt kit I bought in December.   I loved working with these festive colors.

I also worked on some original designs I've had underway.  

This little circle piece grew out of a  Stitch and Slash workshop by Carol Ann Waugh which I took last month.  During the retreat I added the lines of ribbons and the peach and green wooden discs.  That doesn't sound like much but took forever to place, especially since everyone who walked by the design wall gave me their opinion about what would look good!  Gotta love that about a retreat, though in the end it's you who make the design decisions.   

And I brought along this work which I starting piecing ages ago and finished the top up recently.  

After seeing Carol Ann Waugh's "Stupendous Stitching" work I decide to use it as a background for a lot of couching and decorative machine stitching and got that underway at the retreat.  I'm pretty excited about working on this one now and hope to add a line or two of stitching this week.  

It's a lot harder to get this kind of work done at home since there are so many distractions.  Walking, hiking, cooking, visiting with friends, reading, taking photos -- so many fun things to do along with making things from fabric. 

Ben (who is slaving over the taxes)  just called out that the color is being added to the stucco work that our neighbor is having done to his house.  We've been looking at the grey undercoat for a week or so now, wondering what the final color will be.   It appears that the walls will be a terra cotta color with a rough finish and the window frames a brick red.  I think we'll like it, which is good since this side of the house is right next to our deck!