Friday, July 31, 2009

Unexpected Gifts

If you know me, or have been visiting here for a while, you know that I have a thing for butterflies, particularly Monarchs. Well, last year I also had Swallowtail caterpillars visit my parsley, so I decided we'd put one in the bug box and watch it do its thing. Within a couple of days it had gone into the chrysalis stage and we expected to see it come out a few weeks later, just as the Monarchs do. But we waited... and waited...and waited, and it didn't happen. I figured that something had gone wrong, and I really intended to clean out the box, but somewhere in the chaos of life the box got pushed into a corner and lost behind some other stuff.


A couple of weeks ago I came across the box and thought "Ugh! I never cleaned that out!" but again, something else got my attention and I didn't do it. Imagine my surprise a few hours later when I went back to the task and found THIS!




We took it outside, hoping to take some close up shots as we took it out of the box, but it was ready to go and off it went. Pretty amazing.

Isn't that how life works sometimes? You're sure something is going to happen and you wait... anticipation fueling your excitement, only to feel disappointment when what you thought would happen seems destined to never be. But then, WOW! The unexpected happens and you realize that some things are just out of your hands, they happen when the time is right for them to be. The simplest things can teach us so much.

The other cool thing came to me one morning recently when I came into the kitchen WAY earlier than I had planned. The dogs wanted out, and they wanted out NOW...didn't matter that I was sleeping. But again, what an unexpected gift:

Rainbows on my table! If I had been even 10 minutes later I would have missed it.


I love surprises...

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Traditional

A couple of weekends ago my "traditional" quilting buddies gathered for another one of our in-town day retreats. It is always a lot of fun! The last few times we've done this I've worked on art quilts, trying to meet deadlines for shows. This time I opted to work on my batik BOM blocks (from last year!) and this quilt will be for me! YAY! This same group goes on a couple of out-of-town weekend retreats a year and everyone brings a quilt from home to put on their bed. Other than the queen size quilt I sleep under - and I can't take that one...hubs would be left at home uncovered -the only other ones I have are the construction tractor quilts I made my boys when they were younger. Now, granted, I do love construction and all (ties to my day job) but I have felt a little silly with that on retreat! So, if I can keep working on this new one I will have something that is "me" to travel with. It looks a little muted in these pictures, but it is really BRIGHT!

Here's where I started the day...auditioning setting fabrics and cutting sashing...

And by the end of the day I had an almost completed top. I still need to add borders, which I'm still contemplating. Hopefully I won't take forever to decide....

These are 12" blocks and yes, there are only 11 in the quilt. I did do all 12, but I thought one of them just didn't fit with the rest. It has a future as a Christmas pillow. :-) I have to give a shout out to my friend who helped me do the math on the setting triangles to keep the bias in the right place. Thanks Lisa!!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Honored

It was thrilling enough just to have been juried in...now this (scroll down the page on the link, you'll see what I mean). I'm speechless!

:-)