Whirlwinds and change

  
 A lot of my time lately has been spent getting my daughter ready for dorm life.  Shopping and more shopping have been taking more and more of my time and money this past month getting her ready to transition into her last year of college and her first year of living on campus.  This last weekend we moved her into her new digs and before we could even get half way home she text us she was homesick.  My it has been hard on us, too.  Change is never easy.  The last week was a whirlwind of hemming all her new pants including her new pj pants and adding the following touches to her towels. This week has been a whirlwind of dealing with my parents declining health and still adjusting to Ashley's absence at home.  I have so many July and August BOMs to catch up on, my dad's impending move and health issues, a grandchild quickly approaching and it just seems like life will continue to be a blur of whirlwinds for the rest of summer. At this pace, I will welcome the change to Fall and Winter if it brings with it tranquility.  In the meantime.....

I am sure I will be busy creating Ashley little projects to send off to her and try to bring a smile to her day to lift her spirits the best I can from such a distance.  Hopefully these towels I embellished will be a reminder of how much her mom loves her and of course a dose of Cougar Pride. 

While on campus, we spent some time trying to help her put her space together and she enjoyed making us some coffee in her new coffee pot.  I am sure by the time we see her next it will be much improved as that first try was way too weak, but I enjoyed every drop since she made it with love.

Speaking of whirlwinds, I was able to get my Forest QAL quilt top off to the long arm last week and look forward to being able to pick it up next week and quickly binding it so I can Link it to the QAL finishes.  Here is what the queen size top looked like before I sent it off to Cheran at Fiddlesticks Quilt Shop.  Cheran spent some time with me picking out the quilt pattern for it and I finally settled on retro leaves and can't wait to see the finished result.

I just lumped all of the Forest QAL blocks into the center and decided to build a forest around them.  To do this I drew a rough draft of what I wanted onto paper.

Since each block in the QAL was a 12 inch finished block I wanted to make it easy on myself and make each of the surrounding blocks to be of the same dimensions.  I bought a large sketch pad of  18x24 inches and cut them down to 12x24 inches and just laid them out all side by side and drew this pattern onto them and then paper pieced my fabric onto the large blocks to create my forest.  I started to run out of fabric for the sky so I last minute improvised and decided to throw in a sunset.  For some reason I have since decided it is a sunrise. The little bunny is a pattern from Ruthie Quilts from the Spring Fling and I just had to work it in and love the fabric I made him from.  I love Ruth's pattern for him, he is just the cutest bunny.  He was a very important detail in my happiness with the top but he may actually be hardly visible when the quilt is tucked into my bed.  Nevertheless I will always know of the little bunny hiding at the edge of my forest a safe distance away from the whirlwind.