January 7th

This is my very first colorwash irish chain quilt. It is on the queen bed in my guest room and has always been one of my very favorites. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you can get a closer view of the fabrics.
Once the center was done, it sat for a year or more while I tried to decide what I wanted to do for the border. The piano key idea came to me one day and I had the quilt finished and to my friendly long arm quilter within a day!! Of all my quilts this is the one more asked for. And the one most likely to stay with me to the bitter end - LOL! I have done a few other colorwash quilts and have taught a class on it twice. Most fun of that was helping people choose the fabrics. They have all been so different and yet all come out so beautiful. The last one I did was a lap sized in raspberry and greens and I gifted it to a co-worker who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrigs disease. Sadly she died last November, two years after her diagnosis. Her husband kept a blog for the last year of their battle and took lots of photos, and it was lovely to see her putting that quilt to good use.
I'm heading south today to Federal Way/Olympia. My older brother is flying in from Atlanta to surprise my Mom for her 83rd birthday, which is tomorrow. I'm picking him up from the airport and presenting him to her door! Then I'm making dinner for all the family on Saturday at my other brothers house, and the highlight will be watching the DVD I am picking up at Costco today. I took in all our old family movies, plus some reels from the early 50's of my Dad and his family. We haven't seen these for at least 35 years, so it will be so great to see how it all came out. Unfortunately the 100's of slides I took in are not transferred yet, but that gives us something to look forward to sharing at my Dad's 83rd birthday at the end of the month!!
BUT - I will still be photographing a quilt a day while I'm gone!! I have a few at my sister's, where I will be staying, plus my Mom and Dad each have a quilt from me, and so does my brother. I don't think I'll have access to post them though until I return home on Sunday evening.
Isn't this just a beautiful sky???? This was the near sunset I noticed when I went out to get the mail yesterday afternoon, and I was so impressed I ran in, got my camera and shot this. I also took one from the back yard.










Amazing how the color changed just in the walking from the front to the back. I thought it might be fun to take sequential photos like these over the year. Thanks for bearing with me!!