We spend a lot of weekday hours away from the house.  Both of us have about an hour long commute.  So the two furry kids have a dog walker who comes over mid day to spend time with them and let them out and walk them.  She is the best and when she asked me to make a quilt for their beach house I knew I had to come up with something fun.

The only thing she asked for was beachy colors.  I know she would have loved to have some flip flop fabrics worked in, but that will have to wait for a smaller wall hanging piece.  Given the liberty of using predominantly blues I was ready to go.

Next was figuring out where to go.  After going through various books and patterns, I decided I really wanted to do Elizabeth Dackson’s Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend from her awesome book ‘Becoming a Confident Quilter’.  Check out her site at http://www.dontcallmebetsy.com/.

Before I started to work on the piece, I again experimented with the Simple Curves ruler from Cheryl Phillips.  I have another piece I had played with and am now enthralled with the possibilities of adding curves.  Everywhere.

So I took some of the fabric I had purchased for this project and created this.

And then I thought I would use this and then do the diamonds pattern and it just kept going from there. I did eliminate the spacers in the original so the diamonds all touch.  I quilted it using a blue variegated thread and followed the curves.

I did the back using the fabrics from the front and kept it very simple.  I figured if she doesn’t really dig the front, she’s bound to like the back!

I finally gave up any hope of getting my old Electric Quilt 6 downloaded to a new computer.  I had it for years and enjoyed using it and the results were always phenomenal.  Once the desktop that had it expired, I couldn’t get the software to load to the new machine.

So I bought EQ7!  Easiest and least frustrating way to get back to EQ.  And I am again amazed at the software.  There have been some great upgrades since the last version.  So happy birthday early xmas to me!

One of the first adventures was to explore paper piecing.  And here are the results.  I used some Alexander Henry I had recently found, along with Denyse Schmidt.  I also used two new favorites – Michael Miller Painters Canvas and Timeless Treasures Rain.  I then quilted in the ditches of the points.  I am very happy with the results!

It has been far too long since I fired up the laptop and posted anything.  I had promised myself that I would spend time delving into the world of blogging and try to learn the ins and outs of how these things work.  Still finding this a little challenging and I see other people’s sites and think, Wow, wish I could figure out how to do that.

Today’s post is dedicated to my godson, Michael.  His mother and I are cousins, born three days apart.  She and I have always been close and when she learned she was pregnant and soon to be a ‘single mom’ I was supportive and knew she would be great at it.

I could go into lots of details on his wonderful life, the adventures he took working at Disney in Florida, going to culinary school, and enjoying life.  I will miss him immensely.  He was a special part of my life from the day he was born until the day he passed away.  The day after my birthday, December 4th.  I have cried a lot since then.

As has been the case on many occasions  where I need an emotion release, I turned to quilting.  I created a piece I called Wild Geese, representing his soaring spirit and my hope that he continue to soar.  Ohana my friend.

Welcome to the Quilting Adventures of Evildemondevildog on WordPress!   I hope to keep you up to date at least weekly with some new fun.