Butterfly Galaxy!

Butterfly Galaxy belongs to my daughter, Genevieve - here she is, showing it off over the railing at her cute apartment.  Gen requested blue, purple and gray as a color scheme, so I started collecting fabrics.  I had seen a similar quilt on pinterest (see below, sorry I know little about its maker or origin):

Inspiration! Nice large pieces of gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics, with narrow sashing and tiny cornerstones.  I bought various types of fabrics, and in different cities, also used some from my stash.  Gen helped with the block arrangement, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

I arranged the blocks on my design wall, auditioning my feature fabric as a possible sashing, and hoping to use the blue cotton lawn bird print as the edge/setting triangles.

Feature fabric (Gen named the quilt Butterfly Galaxy after seeing this fabric).  Initially, I planned to used the aqua flying geese "stripes" as the piping (fussy cut) but it was too intense.  I cross-cut strips instead, and the appearance was more fun and random.

Blocks with sashing inserted.

Blocks sewn into diagonal strips, marked and ready for assembly.

After the stunning machine quilting by Sue Pawlowski, I like to add a piping before the binding.  You can see the gorgeous feather quilting by Sue on that pretty cotton lawn.

Finished join seam of the binding.  I leave long pieces at the beginning and end of the binding application, so I can sew them together rather than overlap them. 

Close-up of the quilting, and the binding and piping.

Quilt at home in Gen's apartment.

I think that Buddy approves!

The best part? Genevieve loves it! 

Nearly Wordless Wednesday!

It's officially fall, but there are still glorious colors to be found in my garden, even one last hydrangea that still thinks it's summer!

Sweet Dreams Marylin!

Sweet baby Marylin! Daughter of our dear friends, Mark and Kristine, modeling on the quilt I made for her.  Hourglass quilt pattern by Sujata Shaw in her book, Cultural Fusion Quilts. 

Hand-dyed fabrics (received as a gift), quilted with a simple meander stitch.

Added a warm gold for the border, and a lime green for binding and backing.

Sweet Marylin!

She is even more darling in person! Such a charmer!

Photo challenge - love my spouse!

Our daughters - Hannah (25), Emily (30), and Genevieve (29). 

So - if you are on facebook, you might have seen a recent "challenge", where people challenge their happily married friends to post 7 days of photos about how you love your spouse.  When Scott and I were challenged to do so, I jumped at the chance.  My husband it the best! What follows is my fb post, and some of the photos I included in the post. 

Scott and Emily

Day 5 - Love Your Spouse Photo Challenge! Anyone who has met Scott Hudson knows that he has 3 daughters, and that he is crazy about them! He is the best possible father to our lovely daughters Emily Hudson, Hannah Hudson, and Geneviève García. 

Scott and Emily, dancing on Emily's wedding day.  What a joyous occasion! 

Genevieve, Hannah, and Scott at Emily's wedding.  Gorgeous bridesmaids, handsome father of the bride! :)

Our happy family!

Newest member of the family - Scott and our son-in-law, Matt! 

He has taught them - just by being who he is - what's important in life: the importance of being honest, and trustworthy, and working hard, and loving each other. It has been said that we don't have to like everyone, but we do have to love everyone - and Scott Hudson does that. Thank you, Scott Hudson, for all you have done, and continue to do, to be such a wonderful dad to our girls. Love you dear!

"Fun" Pillow!

We took a car trip to Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend, and I wanted a hand-sewing project to work on in the car.  What to do? While I enjoy hand work, I just don't do it that often - so I had to dream up a "fun" (you'll get the meaning later) project.

I ended up with this charming pillow, inspired by two wonderful bloggers.  

This fabulous quilt, Spring Shoots, is by the creative and talented quilter, Lou Ann at Nifty Quilts.  If you have never visited her blog, you really should!  Her quilts boost scrap quilts to an art form.  And this quilt has been up on my inspiration board for a while!

Then this lovely bounty of scraps landed in my lap from another quiltland blogger, Barb of Fun with Barb (hence the "fun" reference).  Hers is another great blog, not to be missed! Barb has excellent workmanship as well as design, creating some knockout handcrafted beauties. 

I won the fabrics from a feature on her blog, and after spreading them out to admire them, I started wondering what I would use them for...until I got the idea to make a pillow, inspired by Lee Ann's quilt!

I brought along a picture of the quilt to inspire me, plus some hand drawn leaf patterns to use for patterns, and went to town creating leaf after lovely leaf.  I cut out the leaf patterns from paper, and then wrapped the fabric over the edges and hand sewed to secure. 

This was a perfect passenger seat, or hotel room at night, project.  I even had the idea I would continue the hand work and actually hand-applique the leaves onto the background after we got back home.

Then the reality of my busy life, and other quilting projects in the queue, suggested that I use machine applique.  And voila! I guess I should call it a fun & nifty pillow! 

Nothing like old friends!

There is nothing like old friends! People who already know your "back story" - even after long absences, you can just jump right in and resume your relationship, as though no time has passed.  

We recently spent a weekend hosting our dear friends, Dave and Denise, from Indianapolis.  Scott and Dave were high school  friends.  Dave stood up for Scott at our wedding, and Scott sang at their wedding.  We were all married in 1978, they in June, and Scott and I in September.  Still going strong!

Scott and Dave - the hombres! 

Denise and myself.  We were about to head into Chicago for a day full of sightseeing and fun activities - and eating and drinking, of course! I told them to wear comfortable shoes! We had breakfast at home, and then we headed out!

This is our reflection in a VERY large artwork in Millenium Park, called Cloudgate - but lovingly referred to by nearly everyone as "the bean".  It's a fun gathering spot for tourists and locals alike.  I love hearing all the different languages spoken here.

Here you see one of the amazing fountains in the park.  There are multiple images projected from inside the fountain, and the images move, too! There is a splash pool down below - very popular on warm Chicago days.

This is "the bean" - not my photo, but you get the idea - this is huge!

While at Millenium Park, we toured the fountains, gardens, artwork, and the fantastic Pritzker Pavillion, shown here.  There are dozens of free, outdoor concerts here every summer, which we love to attend.

Then we toured the Chicago Cultural Center - originally, the Chicago Public Library.  It is a stunning architectural example in Chicago, full of amazing Tiffany glass mosaics.  

You can see all of the Tiffany glass work on the wall and ceilings  everywhere in this ballroom!  There were setting up for an event.  This is one of  the most sought-after locations for weddings in Chicago.

After a stop for a snack, we headed to Chicago Distilling Company.  We got to see how they create spirits, like gin and bourbon, and they gave out samples! We each tried one of their cocktail creations, too.

We finished the day with dinner at my favorite spot, Tre Kronor, in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago.  Chicago is a city of neighborhoods - over 200, I think - and we drove through lots of them on our little tour of the city.  Cheers to old friends!

New beginnings!

Design wall progress - hourglass blocks from "Cultural Fusion Quilts" (book by Sujata Shaw, see her blog here) + hand-dyed fabrics by Vicki Welsh (see her etsy shop here) = fun baby quilt! Fabrics on the right side are being auditioned for border and binding/backing. 

Spring piano recital was awesome!  I had a movie theme - all the students performed music taken from the movies, from Harry Potter to Mission Impossible to Star Wars! They all got fresh popcorn from our local theater to take home and enjoy.

It was a cold and windy Saturday, but we were all glowing inside with happiness over Danny's (my daughter, Hannah's boyfriend) graduation from Illinois Benedictine University!  He got a degree in Business Administration/Accounting WITH HONORS.  He finished his degree in night school while working full time.  So proud of this boy! 

Speaking of proud, I am so proud of Hannah, buying her first house (with Danny) at the age of 25!  They found a cute 3-bedroom house just 15 minutes from our house, which is great!  So excited for them as they make this house their home!

Emily and Matthew were here over Mother's Day (yay!), so we went over and walked the property of Hannah's house (we couldn't go inside, they haven't closed on it yet).  Such a cute house, and it's all landscaped!  All she has to do it hang up her American flag and move in!

I LOVE spring! Bought all of my annuals for my pots and window boxes, potting soil, a new clematis, and a hydrangea for Hannah and Danny's house.  Happy spring!