Daring Adventures in Paint

My friend, Tori, encouraged me to take an online painting class with her by an artist named Mati Rose. The class is called "Daring Adventures in Paint" and it's really well organized - a daily email comes to your inbox, encouraging you to try a new technique, read about an artist, watch a video.
Honestly, I've fallen way behind with the core material, but it has motivated me to get the canvases and brushes out and just do some art.
These are all pics of some mid-progress work, none that I absolutely love quite yet, but we are getting there....

Fwd: LAMQG orphan block swap - what Hollie made me

(Ugh! I thought I'd posted this months ago and just found the half written blog post...) oops! Sorry, Hollie!

Here's what I got from Hollie in our LAMQG swap... A table runner! Yippee!

She took my lonely little hexagon block and turned it into this
wonderful piece. And when she realized that she'd made the whole thing for me and it had no red, she added some into the binding. ;) (my kids love that)
I had to move the huge bowl of lemons off the runner to take a pic just now, so pardon the circle indentation in the last photo... As you can see, it's getting a lot of use. In fact, today, I even hosted Hollie here for lunch and we had soup at the table and enjoyed her gift together.

Finishing quilts - baby quilt WIP done

Last year, my buddy Ramona gave me a few awesome pieces of Robert Kaufman's modern cheater prints. I was really inspired, started 2 quilts with it and then left them unfinished for a year. Z's bed sized quilt is finished now, but this second baby quilt was still languishing.
I'm super motivated to get through these WIPs, and also motivated to work on my free-motion quilting. It's a skill you can only learn by lots of practice, so lately everything has been a quilt to practice on. This one I tried a new (to me) pattern of interlinking boxes.
I could definitely point out lots of flaws, but overall, it was a great first try.
I backed it in pinstriped flannel and now have it in the happy pile of quilts to give.

Preparing for fun!

After a long and busy spring, we are finally seeing Jay's schedule free up as he gets closer and closer to his annual hiatus (aka - Summer Break, which doesn't quite align with the kids' schedule).
He's stopped working on the weekends and has been home in time to tuck the kids in bed for over a week now. (Yay!)
This pic is from a weekend trek to Malibu a few weeks ago where we camped out at El Matador beach for the day.
The kids ran around in the caves and waves and we took turns reading from a guide book for our upcoming trip to Paris and London (we leave THIS Saturday!). It hit me as I was sitting in the sun and reading the book that life is pretty sweet right now.

I've been trying to spend a lot of time cranking through current works in progress that I've had on my plate for a while, and I keep forgetting to blog about them, but will try to do a little before my trip. There are so many logistics to take care of with leaving the house, pets, and kids!!! Fortunately we've got a stellar housesitter and rockin grandparents who are hosting M&Z....

LAMQG Swap - Melissa's orphan block

So we have swaps at our guild meetings every few months. I enjoy participating in them and have really lucked out on the receiving end every time. Here's what I made for our fearless swap leader, Melissa. (I sure hope she likes it! She wasn't there to receive it last meeting.)
Melissa stipulated with this swap that we would be getting someone's "orphan" block and making something for them from it. Seeing as how I've been a bit obsessed with table runners lately, I was thinking that her block (the navy corners at the side ends and excluding the red strip at the top and bottom) might make a cool table runner. But not everyone is into table runners and once I tried the idea out as a journal cover, there was no going back.
I'm hoping that she gets excited about this orphan becoming something she can use daily.