Thursday, February 21, 2013

A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens

Daffodils in bloom.


To celebrate 30 years of marriage, the hubby and I decided to enjoy some local scenic spots. Among those selected for our special "staycation" site seeing was this gem. We thoroughly enjoyed walking the grounds of the Dallas Arboretum.

There were plenty of benches like the one above where we could rest and just soak in the beauty of our surroundings.

The cherry trees were in bloom and created a wonderful profusion of pink blossoms.


 
Our trip included a tour of the DeGolyer home, where we were led on a wonderful (private) tour by a very engaging docent. Over 18,000 books were in the DeGolyer collection.

Crape Myrtle Allee

I can't wait to get back to the Arboretum when these trees are lush with foliage. I guess it's a good thing we decided to purchase the annual pass.


Saturday, February 16, 2013

Hand-Me-Down Batik Beauty


I dug this baby out of the closet. It was in a trunkload of stuff I received from a fellow quilter who was cleaning out her sewing room. I was happy to take these "leftovers" off her hands. When I say trunkload I mean that back of her car was packed full of garbage bags full of stuff. This was just one of the UFOs that was there.

At the quilt shop where I work one of the teachers teaches this quilt. She calls it Batik Beauty. I've overheard her say tons of times that squaring up the blocks is key to getting this quilt together, so I spent some time and squared up all 120 blocks. Now...this is going to become my new Leaders and Enders project for the next month or so. I'm hoping to get this together by the end of April. We'll see.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Snowballs in Progress


To demonstrate how to make bonus triangles (Bonnie Hunter style) for Scrap Happy Club, I made some snowball blocks. Not wanting them to go to waste I decided that they really could become a baby quilt, which was their hypothetical purpose in life. Now that they have sashing strips and one inner border they are on their way to becoming a quilt.  Hopefully tomorrow they will get borders 2-4. Then I'll have to face the challenge: finding an outer border. For now...I'm happy with the progress I've made.