My visit to North Carolina

Here is a page that will be put into the 2011 monthly album book of events or things I've done each month. The only outstanding thing that happened in October was my visit to North Carolina to visit my sister, Vicki, and her husband, Jim. We had fun.  My brother, Ron, and I left early Thursday, October 20 and came home on the 25th. We had to take a plane to Charlotte, N C. Ron went stand-by since he worked for US Airways and he was very lucky and made it on all the flights we had to take. Once in North Carolina we had a 2 hour layover and then took a bumper plane to Tri Cities airport in Tennessee. Vicki and Jim picked us up there and then we went to their home outside of Boone, North Carolina. It was a little over an hour drive. North Carolina is beautiful. The Fall colors came early this year and the leaves had already started to drop. Most of the deep red was gone but we still got to see plenty of color. We drove around and saw the most fanatic scenery.

Quilting the Civil War Bride Quilt

Now that I have the 20 blocks and borders sewn together, I have started quilting. I use a round quilt hoop frame. I'm only going to outline quilt around the appliques. My fingers really get sore so have to get back into the groove and figure out a way to do this easier. I'll resort to using two thimbles, one under the quilt so I can still feel the stitch coming through all the layers of fabric and one on top to push the needle through. I'm hoping to get finished by the end of October. That is two to three blocks per week. Don't know if I can keep up that pace or not with all the other things life requires to be done.

Civil War Bride Blocks Finished

I havn't been counting when I started these blocks but the 20 blocks for the Civil War Bride Quilt are done and put together. Here are the remaining blocks.

Block 14

And now for all 20 blocks put together to make the center of the quilt.

The left border is almost finished, just need the birds feet and flower centers. But the quilt is coming along.

More scrapbooking

 The scrapbooking class is over and I learned a lot. Wow, I can't believe I know a little more about layers. Linda Sattgast was an excellent teacher and made wonderful videos and tutorials. Now if only I can remember everything she taught. I have two notebooks full of all her instructions.

Per the gallery's comments and help I redid Molly. I got rid of the border around the picture of Molly and changed the letters by doing them horizontally and turning them vertically. The object of this lesson was background placement and I did a quilt sort of background.  I believe it all looks better.

I got many good comments about my high school reunion. They couldn't believe I look so young after 50 years. That made me feel good. It must be the Mary Kay. Ha!

The only change comment I got was to paint out the white lamp and I should do that but haven't yet. They liked the shadows on the ribbon and the clock in the background.

I have joined the 12 month club and vow to do at least one layout a month so that at the end at the end of the year I can make a book with all I've done this year. Here is the February layout. I even got picked  for one of the good layouts for February. That is hard to believe. 

Here is a layout showing the ladies I have class with. The hard part of this was taking one section of what should have been eight pictures. I had to take out the eightn section and still be able to put shadows in. I got it done. It was suggested that I put thread on the buttons to make them look sewn on.  And at first the formum thought more shadows should appear on the needle and thread. I think I got that OK.  

Well these classes have been fun but have taken a lot of time. It's hard to decide what elements to use for each layout.             

Photoshop Elements Class

I am continuing with the online Photoshop elements classes. They are really great. Since I got in on the very beginning of the offering by Digital Scrapper, I am also included in the Easy Page Design. This is a 5 week class. The first week was learning about the ABC's of Page Design which are: arrangement, background, color, distribution, elements and find your favorite style.
This is the second week and we had to choose one photo and use it in three different background settings. I choose a picture of Molly, our Cocker Spaniel and then used photo background, section background and blended background. There were several others to choose from also. It took some time to do but am showing what I accomplished this week. Tell me which one you like the best. I favor neutral and tan colors the most but tried to add some pink to the second one. The background papers and elements were supplied for this weeks class. It was hard to choose what elements I wanted.

More Civil War Blocks Finished

I have been a little lazy posting my progress on the Civil War Quilt. I now have 3 more blocks finished. That makes 13 blocks done and 7 more to go and then the border. Christmas brought a loop into getting any sewing done. Part of the leaf on the right will be sewn to the block next to it. That is why you see a white line.
Here is block 11.

For block 12, I tried to make it a little cheerful with the pink fabric petals. I have a small selection of 5x7 fabrics that have strips or borders running through it, so chose one for the vase. Also did the same for block 13.

Here is block 12

For block 13 I chose another vase type fabric. It was fun to do something different than leaves and flowers so this block has a table with a table cloth. The fringe was done using a ghiordes knot embroidery stitch. I had to look that up on the Internet to know how to do it. That added a little pizazz to the table.

Here is block 13.