sweetwater

To date, I think this is my favorite quilt. I made it for my son's birthday last year. It was also my first quilt using my new Brother PQ1500S. It took me about a month of weekends to complete it, including the quilting.

I love the colors. When I picked out the fabrics, I thought of circuity colors. My son is a fellow technology geek and likes the color black. I choose the green to compliment it. I really like the black with the words written on it. It's just random words in different languages. I found it at Joann Fabric.

I choose the pattern sweetwater listed in the quilt pattern book by Fons and Porter. The pattern was designed by Debbie Outlaw who works for Moda Fabric, and it was easy to follow along.

I always embroider the name of the person the quilt was meant for.

I completed the quilt well before his birthday and thought I would paint something to go with it.

So I choose a misty forest type of scene. Acrylics painting - Green and black. If you look close, you'll see slender man behind one of the trees. Also, is the heart of some poor animal hanging from a branch. Holly and Jason talked me into doing that.

I also had enough scraps left over so I made the little throw pillow to match. It's zippered so it can be removed and washed.

I think you can see the quilting here. I just did loops. The quilting alone took me about a weekend. It was fun doing free motion quilting for the first time. Getting used to the movement of the needle. I was able to do a Queen size quilt on my Brother with no trouble.

Happy 24th birthday son!

sometimes .... it's just not good.

So with Julia coming, I began to look at the bathroom she would be using. It's the shared bathroom upstairs and I really never did anything with it when we moved it. It's very plain and absent of color.

I was browsing Etsy looking at wall decals, personalized ones and discovered some big tree decals that were pretty cool - but $100? I've got paint. I'm an OK artist - not great. The light bulb in my head started to flicker and then hit full blown flood light. I'll just paint the tree on the wall.

I found my target. This corner of my bathroom.

I started marking out the design on the wall and filling it in with brown paint. To be truthful, I think this is the best it looked.

And then I started adding leaves to the tree. Still not bad, but then things started to go bad. I began working on the birds and ....I really botched them.

LOL! The wings on the birds were soooooooooo bad! If this was a canvas I would just paint over it. But with the wall, you really can't. Unless you have spare paint the same as your walls, which I don't. Love the way the owl turned out even though it could get uncomfortable with a wide eyed owl staring you down as you get out of the shower. Notice the birds on the toilet? Oh boy ...

Well ... at least I don't have to use this bathroom. Sometimes, it's just not good. On the flip side, I found another way to NOT paint birds. Lesson learned.

Maybe my changes to the window will pull it together. Stay tuned for that! I love fabric shades, and I think this bathroom is due.