Peek A Boo Quilt - DONE!!

I have indeed been so remiss in keeping up with my blog!  I realized that I hadn't seen a whole lotta green from my PAB quilt.  When I looked back; I realized that I indeed took the pictures but did not upload them.  So, here I am.  Not one post today but two!

I took a class with a friend here in Muscat.  Most of the ladies were filling the barn doors with kid-friendly pictures; suitable for a baby.  I decided since my baby is 13 and I ain't gavin' no mo', that I would put pictures of the four of us plus two kitties.

Of course, Uki had to help.

I was done quilting and in the process of trimming off the edges to put the binding on.

I extended the quilt out and Uki wasn't bothered.  She actually loved being covered.

Here she is trying to get out.

Or is she?  In all of these posts, you can peek at my quilting.

And this is where it got a bit hairy.

She loves this ruler!

She got under again.  I put the ruler and rotary away so as not to freak out anymore than I was.

She loved it and would not budge!

She made sure I wasn't cutting off this end of the quilt any time soon!

Ta Da!!  The finished quilt!

And a closer view...

Here is Peaches

Ali holding Uki the day we brought her home.

Waqar

Ali the day he was born.  His very first picture ever!

Amal on the day Ali was born!

Me as a little girl in St. Louis

Uki

My Mom, my sister, and I dancing at the St. Louis Zoo.

Amal two years ago with my pose!

Wow.  This was picture heavy!  I really like my looped quilting; hand quilted barns and the fact that I opened up the windows.  I also like my whimsical flowers in the borders and my hand covered buttons.

Thanks for stopping by!

I did it!

I finished a quilt top!  I can't quilt it until I quilt two others that have been sitting around for one and a half years!  I finished one of those!

FINALLY!

First of all, Ali hung my Peek A Boo quilt in my sewing room.  He also helped me hang his name so my wall isn't so one sided!

I was quilting his quilt here over the chair.

The quilting I chose to do was a basic criss cross using my walking foot.  It went pretty smoothly.

Here you see me quilting on the middle part.

Another sample of the quilting.  I was emphasizing the block which consisted of 25 squares. 

I chose this Cat Tail blue for the binding as the border was a squiggly as well.  Blue as it was for Ali and seemed the most appropriate for this quilt.

I zoomed out on this one.  Love the whole aesthetic!

I spent many hours sewing on the binding.  It actually started hurting my arm.  Uki knew this  you see, and stopped me!  She jumped on my lap late last night and then I realized that I was in pain and it was passed 1:30am.

I like to use these binding clips to hold my binding on as I work down towards my left.  I have a whole system.

I don't know why I took two pics here.  But I will talk about the dragon fabric.  I did not have enough so had to add yellow to it to piece the backing.  It is so Ali.  He told me the other day, in a way a sweet 13 year old boy would, that the front had, "Just  a little too much pink, Moooommmm!!!".  Hmmmm, bummer!

Ta da!  Here is the finished quilt!  I really like it and the simplicity of the quilting.

And here is the lucky boy.  Amal is on the other side holding it up.  I think he will sleep with it tonight!  It feels good to get this done!  I started on Amal's Scrap Quilt already too.  So pretty!

Here is the backing.  He likes this side more!

Thanks for stopping by.  I am determined to finish my daughter's quilt.  Then, I will be piecing together the left over batting from these two and basting my recent top.  I don't know if I will get that quilted before I go home to the UNITED STATES!!!

I'm coming home Mami!

Henna Hands...

I got henna!  In this picture, it had already started wearing off.  You can see where my watch rubbed it off!  I signed up to make a hand with henna on it for a group project.  I used my own hand as inspiration.

I traced my hand onto computer paper and then figured out the nails and started to draw a design by looking at my own hand.

I chose my fabrics.  I used a white background with golden dust on it.  I chose plain muslin for my hand as I am white but did not want it to blend with the background.  I cut out the shape of my hand and then used fusible web and did it right the first time (yay!) and satin stitched it in place.

Now this next picture is so darned yellow!  My editing skills!  This is the completed hand.

Now I started eyeballing the design.  I couldn't judge well enough for the placement so I drew in the nails.  There are two types of henna here in the Middle East.  We have RED henna as in my picture.  There is also what they call SUDANESE henna.  This is black henna for the darker skinned people here.  I love the contrast of the black henna on my white skin.  I even mix the two!  So, for this project, I chose black floss. 

Here is a view of two fingers.

With nails...and yellow

The whole hand.  I had half a nail on the thumb but it looked funky.  So I colored it in more.  Still funky.  Filled it in all the way.  FUNKY.  Oh well.  It works!!  I used Sharpies.

The gal in charge of the project was very pleased.  I am very pleased.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tea Corner Snack

About three weeks ago the Tuesday Quilting group got together at Jo's house.  This is the day that Jo and Meg brought out their stashes and let me at it!  At some point in the morning; it started to rain!  Yes!  It does not rain too often here!  So, we left Jo's and Alice suggested this new place around the corner that we should try for Arabic Fatayer's (flat bread stuffed with either sweet things like honey and cheese or just cheese or savory items like different meats).  Well, this place was not open yet for business.  But next door was another little Arab snack place called Tea Corner.

We walked in and I recognized it from another branch.  We went in and looked at the menu and I started to talk to the guys working.  They were intrigued by me.  They kept asking me questions.  Typical questions like where am I from, am I a Muslim....

I was respectful but curt.  I thought I was rude but they did not.  Cultures!

Anyway, enjoy the few pics we took.  It was a really cool day!

Here I am driving behind Alice (you can not see her) and Meg in front of me.  The rain is such a welcome change in the weather.  It was really grey and cloudy.

Here are the two little guys, probably Indian, that were making our orders.

Here is Meg on the left and Alice on the right.  It was so very, very nice being around Americans for a change!  I miss us!!  The gals got this thin, thin Arabic bread with cream cheese spread in it.  It's quite filling.

Here are Alice and me standing outside.  We just could not get the guys to get a good pic of the three of us so Meg became the photographer for me! 

Then I asked Meg to get the name of the shop in the shot.  We are all quilters as well as scrapbookers!

I feel so short!

Thanks for stopping by.  

Charity Quilts 2012

At last month's quilt guild meeting; we needed some volunteers to finish off some charity quilts.  I took two...

This one was quilted and just needed a binding.  I was provided with that too.  I meant to try a machine binding technique but ended up following my own tutorial and doing a lovely and snug binding.  My mitered corners were good too!

Here Uki laid on it as soon as I put it on the floor for admiring purposes.  She looks so very pretty amongst the little dinosaurs!

Here I laid the second quilt on top of the first one.  This one was handed to me with the top, which is lovely; but just a panel and a piece of batting.  I donated the backing which was a yellowish rose and did the quilting and binding.

Here Peaches came for the party.  They are so funny these two! 

I bought a bunch of stuff and it all came home in this ginormous bag.  Uki decided to sleep on it.

Peachy got comfy and Uki found her spot!

I did large loops.  There is something to be said about doing charity quilts.  For me, the joy of giving a child a little bit of comfort and happiness warms my ticker!  What also warms the ticker is trying some new quilting and/or some sort of technique.  Which is exactly what I did!!

Here is the second quilt.  There really is no difference except the binding is on.  I love my tutorial.  You should try it out and if so, let me know how you fared!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Hexagon update 412

People, it has been a while.  So much has happened.  I take all my photos with the intent of putting them on my blog.  But....my computer died and I lost all, ALL, a.l.l., A L L my photos and tunes!  I got a new computer after a week of waiting and retrieved what I could which was not much and so here I am.  I'm still learning how to use my new MacBook Pro!

Two weeks ago, Jo and Meg shared their stashes with me for the hexagon project.  It was tremendously generous and I came home and immediately made up the hexes.  Here is my process.  Thank you guys!  Oh, I must mention that I laid out all the hexes and the darned thing was so small; that is why they pitched in to help me.  

I roughly cut out 2 1/2" squares from various fabrics that were presented to me.  

I have a LOT of freezer paper hexagons so was able to iron them on when I got home.

I'm trying to fan my stash!

I saved all the snippets as I will be making a quilt using them soon.

Here they are all ready to be basted and added to the stash.

I'm trying to retrieve more photos.  See you soon.