I haven't blogged in a very long time - I have thought about it, does that count?

The summer flew by! It finished up with our second annual trip to Montana to see our youngest daughter, her husband and new baby girl. I fell in love with our baby girl! Being a grandma is second only to being a mom. I love it! We spent three weeks in Montana and worked really hard, if you can call helping to take care of a baby hard! We loved every minute of it and look forward to our next trip.

Of course a big part of getting ready for the trip was making a quilt.

Really bad picture of finished quilt

Much better picture of quilt top

I quilted it myself and did get the binding on before we got there but couldn't find the picture of it finished! The center section inside the small black border was a challenge at Manteca Quilt Guild. It is the answer to a sudoku puzzle done in fabric. I added the black, red and green borders to make it 'drag around' size for the baby. It is currently a 'tummy time' mat.

While we were there we visited the town of Whitefish - a touristy and cute town with a great quilt shop. Left the bag with the shop name at our daughter's - sorry but am sure I will be back there before too long. I had seen a quick quilt on one of the Missouri Star quilt Company's great tutorials and figured out a quicker way to make it. My version of a 'quilt as you go'.

I picked a line of Moda fabric including a pack of 2.25" precut squares, five 1/4 yard WF pieces, a yard and a half of backing (the orange and yellow piece) and instead of batting I used white cotton flannel. I sewed the quarter yards together along the WOF for the top, then the quilt sandwich along the top. I placed the precuts on point along the four seams and sewed them down along the pinked edges of the little squares from top of the quilt to bottom and back up the other side. when those were sewn on I sewed a big zig-zag line down the center of each color of fabric.

I used another color from the same Moda line for the bias binding. I made the binding using another tutorial on continuous bias binding from Missouri star. It was really slick! I got more that enough binding for the forty-four inch square quilt.

When I started this quilt I thought I would finish it in a couple of hours - HAH! I did get it done before we left and probably only spent about eight hours on it which really isn't much. and I think it turned out well. Our daughter liked it! So now the baby girl has two quilts.

Back on the home front I have been making basket blocks from the 'Buck-a-Block' club at Quilter's Quarters.  I realized that I was just fooling around as I had three quilt tops in the pipeline that really need to be finished. So here is a picture of the basket blocks and look for more to come on my adventures in quilting (as opposed to piecing).