Lighting Up My Life

It was an easygoing Saturday.  Most days are around here.  Matthew came over to work on his poi ball project.  If that confuses you, you can read about it right here.  Here's what he has so far:

Now check out the lights it makes!

Cool!!  The fact that it's working had us all popping champagne corks.  It's just the beginning, but a very good beginning.

As for me, I've been sewing.  I'm so glad to have old Bessie back.  If I keep calling her old Bessie, she'll end up with Bessie for a name.  Maybe it's too late already.  What do you think?

Yesterday I made the heart blocks for my hearts table runner.  There are ten of these:

Pretty clever piecing for this pattern, I think.  And that's about all I'm going to do on this one for now.  With Valentine's Day almost exactly a whole year away, I guess there's no rush to finish it at this point.  I wanted to make my little purple ladies for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

If you'll recall, these ladies were originally dressed in pink.

Today, I changed their dresses and their shoes and dressed them in purple.  And with my nifty new paper-piecing templates, their dresses fit perfectly!

Here are the two blocks I have for this challenge so far.

And I'll be linking up to ScrapHappy Saturday today.

Then I got old Bessie set up for free motion quilting.  I think she's glad to be back in the saddle.

Today I started quilting my Two Grandmothers quilt.  I've kind of decided to outline each block and then use a motif to fit the nursery rhyme.  I started dead center in the middle of the quilt with Peter's Wife.  If you'll remember the nursery rhyme, it goes like this:

Peter Peter pumpkin eater

Had a wife and couldn't keep her

He put her in a pumpkin shell

And there he kept her very well.

This one was fairly easy.

I just quilted a pumpkin vine

and also some ribs on the embroidered pumpkin.

The next one was pretty easy too.

Rain, rain go away

Come again some other day.

So, I made it rain

And I quilted ribs in the umbrella,

And puddles around her boots.

This one was a little harder.  Do you remember this nursery rhyme?

How about now?

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn't that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

The king was in his counting house,

Counting out his money;

The queen was in the parlour,

Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes;

When down came a blackbird

And pecked off her nose.

With so much talk of birds, I decided to quilt some birds across the top.

I hope you can see them.  There is a cloud over their head and then the cloud gradually becomes a bird.  As I quilted out of its wing, I went to the next cloud.  I'm pretty limited in space on these blocks, and so I only did the birds across the top, then stippled the rest.  This bird design is inspired by Laura Lee Fritz's book, Mindful Meandering.

And that's as far as I got with it today.  It's been fun! I'm looking forward to moving on.  The next block is for the nursery rhyme, Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross.  It goes like this:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

Hm.  What would you do?

I'll be linking this post to: