Quilting Weekends and Happy Birthdays!

What's it like to spend your birthday on retreat?

Fantastic of course!  All of your best quilty mates around you to help celebrate, and eat your cake.

And yes, there was ice cream as well.

I love to spend my own birthday doing something I love (In somewhere far away from here) and it tickles me that folks will plan their retreats around their birthday month so they can continue to celebrate all month long.

And you just have to know that any gifts are also quilty, right?

Blow out the candles!

Here's to another year around the sun!

The quilting continued through the weekend -

Bigger projects taking over design floor space.

Diving into some small pixel projects -

cute cute cute!

And here's another -

The great thing about these little kits is that you can try on a small project before you decide if a large project is what you really want to do.

Pushing up Daisies is coming along!

This is a sample of different smocking techniques.

Fun textures!

Extra Lupine & Laughter blocks are becoming a small lap-sized quilt.

And you've just got to love a very rainy Lazy Sunday afternoon where you can step away from the machines and set up for Mahjong in the foyer *game room!*

It was also a great weekend to get this little piece quilted up.

I chose Heart to Heart by Patricia E. Ritter and OESD. as the pantograph, and used a taupe thread.

The texture turned out so great -

And yes, I march it straight over the embroidery.  It doesn't interfere with anything.

I repeated the black stripe for binding.

Now waiting for some hand-stitching down time.

And yes - more of this "It's gotta go!" fabric used in the hanging sleeve. I know the stripe may make folk's eyes go wonky, but at least it's not sitting in a bin anymore.
For those of you interested in the cat activity at home:

It's pretty much this on a daily basis.
It's worse between Tula and Lola because Lola is a prowler and sneaks up and attacks with much hissing and spitting -
This is Ivy going out in the morning, and the two of them box through the sliding glass doors.
I keep telling Lola to hold her breath, that Tula is going to outlive her by years and it just isn't worth it.
But Lola is going to do what Lola is going to do as queen bee.
Today - It's the last day for the Pieceful Hearts retreat.  Rain continued through the night and we are so grateful.  More sewing, more porch time, more finishing up of that birthday cake!

And you'll find me at my desk putting the finishing touches on Hello Gretchen which releases on Thursday!
Here's to hoping the rain holds off enough that I can get some decent cover photos -
How was your weekend?  Did you start anything? Finish anything? Make progress on anything?

Quiltville Quote of the Day -

Monday is starting as Monday is often do.

Did anyone see where I put my...