May Day, May Day!

Wow!  It is alarming at how much time has past without blogging, and also without out as much sewing as I would like.   I am finally feeling much better.  The long and the short of it is that I have discovered I am lactose intolerant and have celiac's disease.  Many things I can no longer eat, lot's of changes to my baking, but I feel so much better. Could be better, could be lots worse!   In spite of it
all I have gotten a few things done here and there, trying to get back at it!  First I sewed the snaps on this little needle keeper that was a little class at a guild meeting.     
 Also in March I made a March Table Topper.  I tried the pattern for March, but it was just coming out so wonky and since I wasn't in love with it, I used the fabric in the kit and redid February's pattern but used a fabric shamrock instead of a wool heart.  (no green wool).
 For April's table topper I revisited a pattern I created for a wall hanging called April Showers.   I enlarged the umbrella's a bit to fit in a larger block so that it would be close to the same size as the other table toppers, it's about 1 3/4" smaller.  I added the 16 patches and love how they pull it all together.   I am working from my scraps so I couldn't make the border as wide as I wanted, my largest pieces are fat quarters except for the solids. I have more of the table toppers started, one is also a Christmas project of the month, but I ran out of the solids and I had to order the fabric via mail and am waiting for it to arrive.

All that was done in March, in April I started out trying to catch up on my long arm work and I was doing pretty well, then my machine started acting up and I had to wait for the weekend for my DH to come home and look at it, and then it needed parts so we're waiting for those.  It will be nice if they come before this weekend, otherwise it will be another week until he can install said parts.  In the meantime, my DH had two birthday parties to attend, and wanted purses for gifts.  She chose the fabrics, styles and the sizes.  I had to machine quilt them on my Janome, at first I was aghast at how wonky it was, but I used variegated threads and quilted heavily and now I love how they turned out.  So does she, and most importantly - her friends were thrilled ! 

 

 It was my turn to host the Quilting Sister's Bee and since many of the ladies were off and about we had a pretty small group.  Since I have a pretty small house it was perfect for doing a small project with sewing machines, normally I don't have enough room to set up everyone's sewing machine so the small numbers worked well.   I taught the ladies the quilt as you go reversible strip purse, I finished two that were WISP's and I have one more waiting in the wings.  Instead of using purchased handles, I made my own handles from coordinating fabric this time.  Well, that's it for me so far - some neat projects coming up, just need to finish up some things so I can start on some fun stuff!  Now I'm off to check to see if the mailman has brought me anything good today.   Happy Quilting!