A Little Family Time

As I mentioned in my last post, I came home from StashBash to find these two young people waiting for me.  It was a super homecoming!  Arielle wrote a couple of fun posts on her blog here and here describing what we were up to...  Shopping was high on the list.  We hit the outlet mall and every discount store in town, I think.

We had record rains - rains that certainly fit the description "torrential" - while they were here.  Next time, I think they need to moderate their prayers for rain, as they were entirely too effective.  (Apparently there isn't much rainfall on their Caribbean island paradise, and they were kinda missing the wet stuff.)  I am grateful that our neighborhood didn't suffer any damage.  Sadly, many others weren't as fortunate.

My sweet daughter wanted a few items to make her rental condo seem a bit homier.  When I visited her in her island paradise last February, I took a few items that I thought might help make their space feel more like home.  But while I was making a last minute bee block, she saw this Soul Blossoms Peony fabric by Amy Butler in my stash and requested pillows.  She loves Peonies - so much so that she would have had them at her wedding if they had been available (sadly, they weren't - maybe this is the next best thing.)

So, while she and the mister were out running errands one day, I made these pillows - the churn dash one (above), this 9-patch...

and a pinwheel.  Classic blocks make great pillows, don't you think?

Hopefully they will look great on her couch and bring a touch of hominess to their space.

After all the rain earlier in the week, Saturday dawned sunny and beautiful, so we made a trip to the Farmer's Market.

I loved seeing all the flowers in bloom.  Such a perfect piece of springtime!

And I really loved this little planter made from a twin headboard, painted my {current} favorite color.  (I wonder if I can get the husband to make me one if I find a cute headboard at a garage sale or something???)

Their visit seemed all-too-short, and when I left them at the airport Saturday afternoon to make their almost-24-hour trip back to their island paradise the house seemed way too quiet.

Sure do miss them.

About April - a 14 in 2014 Update

If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know that my goal for 2014 was to finish 14 quilts from the WIP basket.  A couple of weeks ago, I noted that i had finished quilting my Modern Maples quilt (which has been sitting around since last summer sometime) and

my Faux String quilt, making a total of six quilts so far in 2014, so I'm doing pretty well.

I also made a couple of baby quilts.  It seems there is something of a baby boom around these parts lately.  This one was for Kai.

And I can't show all of this one because the pattern hasn't been released yet, but it is for a little girl that was born in the middle of the torrential rains we had this week. 

I had hoped I would get a lot done at StashBash (which will be the subject of a future post) and I did, but I didn't actually finish anything there due to one circumstance or another.  I was missing about an inch of sashing to finish one project, didn't take paper to trace the pattern onto for another...  Oops. 

And when I got home from StashBash, my sweet daughter and her husband were already here, just waiting for me to play with them.  We had such a fun time, despite the massive amounts of rain.  But finishing quilts just wasn't on the program for last week.

So, I'll push them all forward another month and hope for the best. 

Eight quilts in eight months isn't so much, is it?