OMMother's Day - and Monday!

Mother's Day was the last day of the retreat. We had a great time, were feed a "brunch" before we left. We could stay till 2 pm but I wanted to get home. It had rained the first two days, and the LAST day we had sun!! Never fails.

So, while I was there, I completed a quilt top - keep in mind I had hand pieced the stars.

When I brought it home and put it on the bed - ugh - I needed to add more to the sides. It was long enough on the bed, but it was short on the sides. SO, Patrick suggested I add more black to the sides. Which I did do on Monday! I added 7" to both sides, which turned out a lot better than I thought it would! I'm happy with it. I also worked on the binding fabric, which is in the same idea of the border with colors.

My Mother's Day gift from my son and daughter-in-law was this beautiful counted cross stitch. It will be my next cross stitch project!

My daughter sent a basket of flowers to me! They are AWESOME on the deck. I'll take a photo of them later. Plus Patrick gave me a hanging basket of flowers as well. Woo Hoo!!

I was lucky enough to have the strip of fabric left over from making the borders at the retreat. I was so excited to find it was big enough to put on the sides! I almost jumped for joy, and then thought I better not. Good thing no  one was home! lol

If you look really close to this photo, you will see I pinned the border to the back of the quilt and not the front! So, I had to re-pin it to be able to sew it on the right side.

It was easy to sew!

Put it on the bed downstairs to see how it would look on the sides. I'm happy and it looks a lot better than I thought! Can't wait to quilt it, so I can have fun quilting on it!

The lilacs are AWESOME this year.

I saw this Rhode out in the yard from my window while I sewed the sides up. I just had to go out and take a photo!

So, while I was looking and photographing this one, I found my favorite (one of) flowers starting to bloom!!

This is the plant that I used to make my Hawaiian quilt! I just love these plants!

Okay, back to what I worked on. I brought the Honey Bee blocks back from retreat without working on them. The design wall and the lighting in the gym made it look way too dark. Other quilters were trying to help me with getting it lighter in color. I pulled them out last night (Sunday) and showed Patrick and my mother. They both agreed that I just need to make it for my mother-in-law and not worry about the color - which looked a lot better in my house then it did in the gym. A lot of the color came out in my house - more than the gym. SO, Note to self: Take the design wall outside when at a retreat to get the TRUE color.

Mom called today to say if I help her with her quilt (quilting) than she will help me with my mother-in-laws quilt. I took her up on it! I still need to do the bees on this, but I think it will work. We also decided to add the black fabric between blocks for the sashing.

So, the good news is that the retreat re-energized me! I'm working on more blocks. Got one block done last night, and will try to get two done today. I have been having to mark the blocks for hand piecing but that isn't too much work! I'm thrilled to say I'm Happy Quilting!