I feel summer in the air....

Here in Cali it is already quite hot. Yesterday it got to a smoldering 95 degrees. Everything is jumping into summer mode around here. My girls are in the last week of school and I'm in the last week of classes at the community college...finals this week! Anyway, I've been out in the garden all morning, admiring the growth. Everything is looking really good so far, but it is only May and we have a long summer ahead of us, but I'm optimistic. Everything is in a lovely bloom in the yard and I am enjoying strolling around admiring it.

A couple of weeks ago I finished up this 'bow tie' quilt using some oldie but goodie 'Hometown' fabric by Sweetwater. I love this line of fabric so much, any fabric line with typography is a win for me. The white on white fabric is a bargain fabric I found at a discount fabric store years ago. There is a super simple pattern found here at Craftsy.

I backed it with a simple small cotton pin stripe in a barn red. I machine quilted it in a criss-cross pattern. It looks really good in my family room, it's nice and bright.

Welcome and Hello

Well hi there. Today is my first post and I am so excited and a little nervous to embark on this new adventure. This blog will be a place for me to share my quilts, my fabric obsession and maybe a little of my painting and designing. I live in sunny California out in the south-west desert. It's hot here, especially in the dead of summer (ugh, I dread it), but I just lock myself in the house and play (sew, paint, craft), sounds good right? Anyway I love to garden, nothing too impressive, but I love to be outside and piddle around. I  love to read, and right now I'm reading through the The Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, a good fun easy read. As I said, I am a quilter, my mom taught me to quilt when I was about 16 years old. I was one of those kids that loved to be home locked in my room with a good book or just home with my mom and watching her sew.

Anyway, this quilt in the photos is one that I whipped out in January of this year. I had just put all the Christmas stuff away and my house looked bare, so I dragged out a bunch of fabrics that reminded me of January and February and I got to work. I just started slicing fabric into strips and sewing them together and I love result. I backed it with a soft flannel for extra coziness and bound it in a red cotton floral. I had a hard time putting it away when the warmer weather came around. I just couldn't wait to show it here on my blog.