One Hour With Needle and Thread

It's time to report our success (or failure!) in Bonnie Hunter's One Hour With Needle and Thread challenge.  I have to confess that I didn't keep exact track of my time, but I did stitch for at least an hour a day.  I made quite a bit of progress on this quilt

It's easy to forget how time-consuming hand quilting is!  I quilted quite a bit on this house block, but I think it's done now and time to move on to another section.

I also did the blanket stitching on the Friendship Garden quilt that was started on the cruise.   The flowers, basket, leaves and stems are all wool, so they are blanket stitched down.  There is a cute kit of colored buttons that match this project that will go on the top part.  I'm trying to decide whether to machine or hand-quilt this.  It's a small wall hanging size, but that hand-quilting takes a lot of time!  Do you see those hexie flowers?  Pam Buda taught a class on English paper piecing that was great and very timely, as I'm seeing hexie flowers in every magazine lately!

The cruise mentioned above was the Great Girlfriend Getaway to Alaska that was held near the end of August.  It was a wonderful trip, with lots of time to sew and see the sights in Alaska.  The cruise left from Seattle and stopped in Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, and Victoria.  We had never been to Alaska before, so it was fun to see the sights and learn a little bit about Alaska.  The weather was fairly cloudy/rainy, which is pretty typical of August from what we heard, but most days cleared off enough to go sightseeing.  On the days we were at sea, we had our quilt classes.  The teachers were Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilts and Lynn Hagemeier of Kansas Troubles Quilters, both great teachers.  There were new Janome sewing machines to sew on, and the owners of the sewing machine store were with us to rethread our machines and refill our bobbins.  That was quilting heaven!

We started three new projects.  The first, Stillwater Creek, is a fairly large lap quilt made from Pam's new fabric line, Heart of the Prairie.

 

We also started the Friendship Garden quilt above, and another top called Spare Change from Kansas Troubles Quilters, which used a charm pack and the new Quilt Candy from Moda.  The teachers and travel consultant really spoiled us on this trip - every time we came to class, there were new treats like little kits, fat quarters and thread catchers.  They also had a door prize drawing for a new sewing machine, Go Cutter, and several other great prizes, none of which I won!

The best part of the trip was meeting the teachers and other quilters and getting to know them a little bit.  I got to meet two fellow bloggers, Lesley of The Cuddle Quilter and Gloria of Olde Green Cupboard Designs.

We took lots of pictures, so I'll show you a couple.  We climbed partway up a mountainside in Skagway and took this picture of our ship, the Norwegian Pearl.  There were always several cruise ships in the ports we stopped in.   The low-hanging fog/clouds were pretty typical of this trip!

 

Glacier Bay was beautiful.  The water was so still and green.  The ship got close enough to the glaciers that you can hear pieces of them breaking off and dropping into the water.

If you ever get a chance to go on a Quilter's Cruise, do it! 

This trip has inspired me to get out my Orca Bay blocks and start to put them together.  Now that I've seen whales in the ocean, I'm inspired to finish it!