First blog

Ok, here goes... my first entry in my first attempt at blogging.  I know many others have cleared the way for me, but I'm still a little timid about this new-to-me adventure.  My name is Carol, but I've been called Sunshine off and on since my senior year of high school MANY decades ago.  I have four adult children  along with 8 grandsons and 1 granddaughter plus one great granddaughter & one great grandson... along with two adult step-children, 4 step-grands and 4 step-great grands. Plenty of family members to make quilts for :).
The first quilt I ever made was for my mom... flannel squares stitched together to make a full size quilt... I have a feeling that I didn't quilt it very well and it didn't last.  The next one I made for my youngest daughter before she was born almost 35 years ago.  I don't have a  picture of it right now, but I used blue and white small checked fabric for the backing if I remember right.  Then I took some fabric that was left over from an outfit I had made for one of my older kids and cut out around the motifs and stitched the motifs onto blocks of white cotton.  I think there was some left over white rickrack laying around and I used that to 'quilt'... stitching the rick rack from one side/corner to another several times.... daughter says that the quilt is in storage and I've asked to borrow it (for guild show n tell and to take pics) when she can get to it.  I'll tell you about more of past quilts as time  goes by.... here are a couple fairly recent quilts I've done.

This is one of my favorite quilts that I've made.- quilted on my Janome domestic.  It went to one of my grandsons for Christmas 2012; it makes #4 for him so he won't be getting another one for awhile- at least until he gets married :)

 This one I made for a granddaughter using her college sorority t-shirts - sent to her for Christmas 2013.  I love doing t-shirt quilts, but this one was a little too much of a challenge with all the lattice on the sashing and borders, especially when I quilted the entire thing on my newly acquired mid arm.  It's not perfect but she loves it.

Right now, I'm working on ( or SHOULD be working on) three BOMs (Block of the Month) projects.  I've been in one of those 'I should be quilting but just don't feel like it' moods for the past month- partly because of leg pain and partly because of other distractions ( like flying down to Tx to spend Mother's Day with my three kids, four of my grandsons and my two great grandkids and coming home to supervise needed roof repair). 

 I AM getting closer to the end of quilting the barnyard animal quilt that's on my mid-arm - just one more row and then the borders;- haven't been in a real rush partly because I'm not sure how I want to quilt the THREE borders - Do I do them as individual, or as two medium size borders or as just one large border- decisions, decisions -- and partly because of  the reasons listed above (trip, leg pain, etc).

 Because I'm still a fairly new longarmer ( I've had my machine for 8 months) and I either free motion or use acrylic templates/rulers, I've still got a lot to learn as to what pattern would look good here and what would look better somewhere else.  I hope to be ready to start on the borders by this coming weekend.  Really need to get this quilted so I can get it off the frame and put some practice fabric on for some fun before I load a quilt for the guild's charity.

Ok, I think this is enough for my first attempt at blogging.  I don't know if anyone else will read it, but it's out there if someone wants to.