The finished quilt

When we left for the beach, the quilt looked like this - quilted and binding machine-attached to the front and waiting to be hand-stitched to the back.After a lot of this (thanks Dad for the picture!)...The quilt now looks like this! We dropped it off at the post office on the way home from the beach, and my brother should have gotten it yesterday when he flew out to Utah for the start of his freshman year. It's only the fourth quilt I've ever made, and given it's size and the orneriness of my sewing machine, I'm pretty pleased with the final product. I think Mike is too. I'm already mulling over the next quilt, which will be much smaller and have less royal blue :)

The quilt is all quilted, the binding is sewn on the front, and all that remains is to hand-stitch the binding to the back. Yea! And Mike gets to see the almost finished product tonight. Hopefully he approves. Even if he doesn't, it's still his.

Why does Mike get to see it tonight? Well, it's that time of year again - my family beach week! We've been going to the beach every summer since 1982, and we're leaving as soon as the kids wake up from their naps. Nathan has been wearing his "swimming soups" since he woke up yesterday morning and can't wait to go splashing in the waves and play with his dump truck in the sand. Emily can't wait to eat sand. Chad can't wait for a few days off of work. And I can't wait to just go play at the beach with all my favorite people :) See you next week, and I promise pictures when we return!

Quilt update

The quilt is continuing to make progress, though it's been fairly slow for the past little while. The only room in the house that had room to spread it all out for sandwiching was the upstairs bedroom, so all movable furniture was out and the quilt came in.Now, it's all ready for quilting as soon as I finish up my mommy jobs for the day. Yea!

(Continuing) Progress

The bedspread continues to come along. The front only needs a blue border all the way around, and the piecing will be done. Hallelujah!The garden continues to produce as well. We picked all these tomatoes this morning.The zinnias are growing really well, considering I've done almost nothing to them this summer. I love volunteer plants :)Emily continues to make progress also. She said her first word last week, two days before hitting ten months. She loves her "Da-Da" and gets really excited when he comes home. She has also learned to move around, though I haven't seen her do it yet. So far, I've left her in one place several times and come back and she's moved halfway across the room. Sneaky little so-and-so. Lucky for her, she's super cute, so I think we'll keep her :)

Progress

We're making progress on a few projects around here -

The fabric is all picked out for Mike's bedspread, and the basic idea for the pattern/placement is coming together. It's still a work in progress, and after having cut out all those squares, I realized they needed to be bigger (off to Joann's tomorrow for more fabric and cutting blades), but you get the basic idea.The tomatoes are starting to kick into high gear and get producing. This year, Nathan finally understands that we only eat red tomatoes and that the green ones are yucky. Finally.
The zinnias are *just* starting to bloom. When there is more than just one half-opened flower, I'll post pictures.

Perhaps most importantly, Nathan wore his big-boy undies to church today, meaning he only wears diapers at night these days. Hooray! Let's hear it for being *almost* done with potty training! And my budget rejoices as well :)

Now off to my favorite Sunday project - naptime :)

My new obsession

My little (younger is probably more accurate since he's 6') brother graduated from high school this past weekend. Crazy!!! He was in kindergarten at my graduation, and it doesn't feel like it's been that long since I graduated. We were always such good buddies when he was little, and it seems really off that he's now a grown-up going to college this fall. But, he's an awesome kid who really has grown up quite nicely and is heading off to the Y this fall.

For his graduation present, I get to indulge in one of my current favorite activities. Now, I'm still working on getting good at it, but I really enjoy quilting. I love the math and the geometry of it all, and I love seeing it all come together. Plus, I've been reinvigorated by this blog - crazymomquilts. She is quite the quilter, and I'm feeling inspired to try out some new ideas over the next while. Chad, on the other hand, is not so excited about the ensuing mess and expense. He loves me, though, so hopefully all will go well. And hopefully Mike's quilt goes well also.