April Showers....

Well it's official, my beloved machine is broken! I have been without a machine for 3 weeks now and I've got one more to go! The bar that holds the needle and goes up and down is worn out and has to be replaced. Things are bound to wear out, so I really can't complain, and considering I've had it 11 years and I sew about 5 days a week, I've probably been lucky it's made it this far without needing major repair.

In the meantime I've been talked into joining the Shake Your Pom Poms blog hop at the end of this month by Thearica. I debated it for a while, because I couldn't come up with a project that included pom poms that the dogs wouldn't eat. Koda has been systematically redecorating my reading room curtains by plucking the pom poms off the trim. He chews them, decides they don't taste all that good and leaves spitty fringe all over the room for me to clean up.

Then it hit me. I bought the Laundry Basket Quilts "Dancing Umbrellas" pattern a couple of weeks back when my friend Pattie and I stopped at a local quilt shop:

As I totally love cute umbrellas, my first thought was "oooo, wouldn't this be cute in bright, happy fabrics!"
As I only have my small travel machine, which is fine for piecing but not heavy duty quilting, I decided I could at least get the blocks together fairly quickly. Then I realized it was Watchathon week and Comcast has all of the seasons of Downton Abbey for free. So I sat on my hiney most of the week and watched and watched. I did try to be somewhat productive though. I have 14 umbrellas together, not bad for the weekend, don't you think?
Here are my first two blocks: 

They aren't appliqued down yet, I just posed them because I was excited to see them all together.

I've mostly used Tanya Whelan's fabrics (who has a gorgeous new shabby chic line coming out that I'm sure I will need to have some of). I did through in a couple of Sarah Jane's Out to Sea line because I totally would love a real life Narwhal umbrella! The background is Kaufman's Mix Master Fizz by Patrick Loose.

Well that's all for today. I think I'll post the rest of my vacation while waiting for my machine to be fixed. I can't possibly forget to share the time I spent with the lovely quilting ladies at Borderland Fabrics in Jedburgh!

Happy Quilting,

Vicki