Returning to Morocco

Today is officially the third day of my 10-day vacation.  Saturday I really didn't do much, just lazed around catching up on TV shows.  Yesterday I didn't do much either but we had a really awesome storm, including hail:

View from inside the house

Yep, it's coming up fast

yikes

Two pieces of hail that hit me!  About the size of small marbles. 

The yard was covered in hail bouncing around everywhere.  I was just keeping my fingers crossed that they didn't get bigger and damage the cars.  I can say the temperature dropped about 20 degrees from 102 down to 88 or so.  Felt really great outside after the storm passed.  Unfortunately, the lightening zapped the phone box down the road and half of the area has been without phone and internet service for 2 days now!  I was jonesing really bad for Facebook and my blog LOL  Finally they got it back on around 7 tonight.  



Today Mom and I went to Margie's Quilt Shop to try to find fabrics to make the purses we got the pattern for.  We had so much fun shopping and looking around!  See what we got:

 

Fairy Frost fabric and charm squares to make this bag for mom:

That was the bag that I wanted to make but I couldn't find any charm squares in the batik colors I wanted since I really wanted the bag exactly as it is shown in blues and greens so while I was browsing the fabrics I found...Dragonfly Summer jelly roll, the LAST one!!!! :)  For those who have read my blog the Dragonfly Summer fabric collection by Moda has been on my want list since I first found it online.  So needless to say this is the fabric I chose to get for my bag:

This bag has directions for charm squares, strips, or whole cloth.  Now I have never in my life ever made anything like this before!  I'm very nervous, especially with how much the fabric cost us, so no room for mistakes!  However, mom has made clothing and other things before so she has promised to help me make them :). 

So after we went fabric and then grocery shopping I came home and told my daughter Sydney that today was a mother/daughter craft day.  She was very excited about this so I pulled out a HUGE stack of charm squares that I have collected over the years through swaps and gifts etc along with some old off-white background fabric squares and taught her first how to separate them into light and dark stacks, starch and press the squares, then how to measure and square up all of the blocks to a 5x5 size with the rotary cutter.  She then got on the living room floor and began playing with the block layout.  She is just going to do a simple lap quilt for herself.  Here is her progress so far:

Sydney pressing charm squares

Sydney playing with block layout/design

The Singer machine mom loaned Sydney to learn on and her rows of blocks labeled and ready to sew

And since I'm showing sewing machines, here is my lovely Pfaff:



While I was at Margie's today I found a long-arm quilting machine (I think it was a Bernina, but could have been a Janome) I really, really want to get one one day!  But that will be when I am more experienced.  Margies has quilting classes and I am hoping to take their Beginner Quilting class and also take the SNIPS CATCH-IT & PINCUSHION class with Sydney.  The only problem with this class is it is on Wednesdays and I have to work.  The next one is on July 13th so we shall see if I can afford to take a couple hours off to take her and then go back to work.  Who knows. 

So anyway, while Sydney was working on her charm squares I finally broke down and made my Return to Morocco table runner and I think it turned out pretty darn good!  In hindsight, I would probably change my "medium" color since it blends a little too well but overall I LOVE LOVE LOVE it and the fabrics match so perfectly with my house decor.  So here we are from start to finish:

Three fabrics to start with and the instructions

All the pieces cut

HST (half square triangles) of light and dark fabrics

HST's added to other pieces

Cut in half ready to make flying geese

Flying geese left and right

Geese combined together

and now for the grand finale (sorry, got carried away and didn't take other pictures lol)

Return to Morocco table runner

pattern by Far-Flung Quilts Carolyn Griffin

Close up

So...what do you think?  I know, it blends in really REALLY well with my wall but I haven't quilted it or put on binding yet, that is for tomorrow. ;)  I'm very proud of myself, it's a great-looking table runner, especially for my first one and it only took me about 3 hours to make from start to finish, including helping Sydney out with hers.

Well, I suppose that is about all for tonight.  Maybe one day I will get some of these patterns and photos put on their own tabs.  Need to learn more about blogging first though lol.  Until next time, happy quilting!

Kerensa