Rainy Day!

Here in Central New York we are in the outskirts of Hurricane Irene.  It has been raining pretty heavily since sometime before we woke up this morning!  I am reading on Facebook of all of the flooding and power outages in our area, but we have been lucky so far!

Luckily, a rainy day is a great time to sew :)  I finally finished the top of Gracie's quilt (I think I will save pictures until I am completely done with it).  I also sewed up half of the back of the quilt.  I am going for a patchwork kind of look.  The quilt is so big that I would have had to piece fabrics together to cover the whole back, so I figured, why not do something fun!  I need to get some more fabric, and batting - but that will have to wait for hubby's payday later in the week. This new hobby of mine isn't free!

I took the most amazing class yesterday at Tiger Lily Quilt Shop on Free Motion Quilting.  This is something I really wanted to get into.  I think it gives a finished quilt such an interesting look.  I was very intimidated, but it turns out it is not really that hard!  It is just like drawing, except you're using your sewing machine!  The instructor, Luanne Corts, was so knowledgable and informative.  I really loved her attitude towards quilting!  Basically, to do what you love - it might not be perfect, but it will be yours and it will be beautiful :)  She brought some of her samples, and they were truly spectacular - hopefully with some practice someday I might be half as good as her!

Here are just a few pics of my first time free motion quilting!  Yes - I am going to go for it and free motion quilt Gracie's quilt.  Lu assured me it could be done!  I figured it will be good practice since it is such a huge quilt, and when I get around to the baby quilts I will be an old pro!

(sorry about the quality of the photos - they are from my iPhone)