Liberty Worth shared an Instagram photo with you

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Liberty Worth just shared an Instagram photo with you:

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"Just sitting on the back porch, sewing..."

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Bee-hind in my bee squares - catching up with Nicole

Miss April in my bee (Nicole) was neglected for months as I packed and moved. I'm glad we are a close knit bunch, all fully aware of each others' lives... No one has yet expressed any anger at my bee-ing months bee-hind. (ok, no more puns)
Tonight, however, was the first day of being able to use my studio. Our open house was yesterday and here was my chance.... I spent the night playing with Nicole's great palette of shot cottons and striped linens to deliver her a huge Gee's Bend inspired blocks.
Nicole and I started quilting together about 4 years ago - so I think she especially will appreciate how far I've come. :) and for her part, I know the quilts of Gee's Bend are what inspired her to start quilting, so her quilt is going to be phenomenal.
As she requested, all of the scraps went back to her, but those tiniest "unusable" ones are the ones I always try to play with at the end... I added this funny crooked strip to some Essex Linen and made a little project bag to go with.
...a great first night, indeed!...
(this bodes well)

Amy's baby quilt

I had such a great time making this quilt for Amy's baby girl.... I made the top a few months ago before I had to pack the sewing machines up for the move... Which meant I had to hand quilt it finding random moments during the move. (as if I minded!)
It was so fun to give this to Amy. She and her husband are world travelers and she and I giggled as we realized that most of the places on the fabric were places that we had been together over our 15 years of being friends.
I love that her baby in all her world travels will get to have this little token of love to begin her life!

Hosting a baby shower in the new house.

My BFF lives in Thailand. Ironically, I see her more than most of my friends who live out of state. It's a luxury to live in LA, which everyone seems to pass through at some point or another.
A few years ago I posted about Amy's wedding... I showed you all the fun pics Jay took and all the wild creative projects she put me in charge of... Forest photo booth, flowers, after party outfit.... it was a fun chance for me to be a part of a DIY wedding - mine wasn't too DIY... It was a mega- 400 person wedding, 12 years ago, before I had a lot of the skills I have now. So I got to get my kicks out with hers.
Well, now Amy is having a baby and she was passing through LA on her way home to Oregon to have her baby, so I got to throw her a shower as she passed through town. That was some big incentive to get the house presentable ASAP!
The shower was small and casual, and I had a lot of fun dragging out my hostess stuff... It had been a while since we've hosted parties... Fostering and anxiety took out a lot of our energy for hosting.
So we inaugurated the house. And had a great time doing it.

Tea Party

Mimi and I went to a tea party today with Meema (my mom) at her church. It was so fun to dress up and wear hats and eat fancy foods. We already drink a lot of tea around here from fancy teacups, now we've decided there need to be more fancy tea parties in our life.

Pic for the day

Guess whose house is nearly unpacked? (expect blog posts to start up again)
In the meantime, I love this street artist - Morley - every time I see one of his posters, I stop to take photos of his work. I debated tearing this poster down today to take home, I must admit. But then I realized someone else may need to read this and a picture will do just fine. This photo will likely end up framed in my house.

Liberty Worth shared an Instagram photo with you

Hi there,

Liberty Worth just shared an Instagram photo with you:

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"The new couches are in the house and the patchwork one heads to the garage. First stop: driveway. Makes me think of my college days where we would move my couches to the deck with my roommates to stare at the stars."

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Mod Mood Workshop in OC

 I haven't posted in so long I feel like I am going through blog withdrawals... not really that I'm addicted to blogging. And during these past two quiet months, while moving, remodeling and dealing with many other crazy things - I've also gone off coffee (one of my top ten loves and definitely an addiction!) in the interest of seeking more balance to my days. I miss the coffee a lot, but I feel a lot better and wake up much happier too...
Anyhow - During the chaos, I was able recently to take one weekend off. I went down to Orange County to take a class with a few of my LAMQG gal pals and our guild sisters in the OCMQG. It was something that Yolanda had arranged a while back and though her health kept her from being a part of the class, we did get a visit from her and I was able to spend my evening Saturday night hanging out and talking projects with her.
Yolanda had really loved Sherri Lynn Wood's mod mood quilt and asked her if she'd come teach a 2 day class for her guild. I think it must have been about 7 or 8 months ago when we all arranged it, this has been much anticipated. I even got myself a hotel room and didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night for anyone.
Sherri is a really nice person. She opened each day with a centering (but not religious) guided meditation where we focused and calmed down. Artistically, I found this to be a great practice. I've done it to a small extent with some of my collage sessions before, but never with quilting. When we opened our eyes, we were to select colors from our piles based on how we felt.
Given all the chaos I've been dealing with these past few years, it was no wonder to me that I had this colorful, but quite subdued and controlled color pallette. I need order, not self-expressive chaos, these days.
Sheri showed us her process for making improv'd wedges and how she puts them together to make these grand (and small) sweeping curves - this, of course, appealed to me.
The second day was spent figuring out how to put our work together - using all sorts of techniques in our tool boxes to get these to look the way we wanted them to. It was really challenging - but fun.
It was good that SEWING PARTY - the store we were meeting in, has such amazing huge design walls in their classroom. (Everything is bigger in Orange County, I've learned)

Sherri, in the white shirt, talking to all of us about layout options.

LAMQG friend, and Sew Modern owner, Lauren showing me how much fun she was having.

What it looked like when Lauren, Liz and myself combined our work together,  it looks much better in this photo than it did in person.

my piece at the end of the weekend.

I still wasn't able to finish my piece, but I am happy with what I ended up with. It was a great experience that included a lot of laughing with friends.  I do intend to finish the piece when I get a chance to finally get my studio sorted out, unpacked and up and running. That's a few weeks away - because of all of the setup I still have to do ((((SIGH)))) - but I'll keep you posted.

oh - and while making this post, I found the following pics on the OCMQG blog and also Sherri's blog.... you can see me and my dear sweet friend, Latifah, getting our mod moods on...