4 weeks ....

Well all! I have my official summer vacation starting - well, I'm a 1/4 of the way into it!

I took 4 weeks off work ... ME! I have never done that. I've been sick and "had" to stay home - which is totally different than this. It's been great!

I've managed to read a few books ... yahoo to Kobo and instant downloading! (poor Visa hates me - but whatever!!!) - I'm addicted to trashy series romance books right now. Something I can just read and get lost in. It's heavenly!!!!!

I've learned that I *love* hand quilting - with no hoop .... LOVE IT! My poor fingers are shot! But I'm seriously loving this!!!!!! The last time I spent time "hand quilting" was when I made my Cathedral-Window wall hanging - and paid the same price - my fingers hurt!

My quilting Bee made my lovely heard snapped squares - THANK YOU NITA for organizing the girls to making the same block! I made it into a little lap blanket. :) So now I have 2 blankets .... My Trifle quilt and I sleep together ..... on really cold evenings and morning we snuggle together. She's turned out to be the perfect weight! I love her.

My Looooooooove quilt sits in the living room - adding a wonderful pop of color. :) I wanted something that was truly me .... something that I liked. I didn't care about what any one else would have thought about this quilt. So - hearts it was! :) And since it was really my first time doing this level of hand quilting - I thought hearts might be easier - and they weren't too too bad. :) The scalloped border was even fun to make! LOVED IT!

This got me wanting to do another quilt - So the recipient of this "blankie" hopefully hasn't figured out I have a blog - and reads this! :) We have an long standing joke about our blankets - she's been through a rather rough year - and I thought needed something of her own to snuggle with on crappy days. The fabric line is called "Into the Woods" - so my hopes she takes this camping with her. I went with a tutorial found .... https://youtu.be/1jF_shFK2nQ Very easy to follow! I made all the blocks - but reserved 12 of them to put onto the backing - which was 2 yards - plus the 12 blocks and a 3inch border - I'll take a real good picture of this quilt when it's done. :) But beautiful!!!

The hand quilting is going by the big diamond shape - and adding 2 smaller ones in the middle of the shape. I'm going to be extended the 2 smaller shapes into the border to add some more stability. It's going great so far. I'm really hoping she likes it!!!

Now - all this hand quilting means less time actually SEWING! So my poor bee ladies I owe you some blocks! :) My goal is to have my blocks shipped this week! :)

Lets see what I can get done in this week of days off :)