Vacation Part 5 - Newport

It will take me a while to get all of the vacation posts done.

I'm going to make posts as soon as I can when I get to them.

;)

After our hike in Cumberland Falls Park, we drove to our friend's house in Newport, Tennessee.

These dear folks are awesome and we can't thank them enough for their hospitality.

We love y'all!

So our friends have this really cool basement that's all set up as a ministry center.

It's mainly for pastor's and their families to use as a retreat.

There are picnic tables and a grill.

Not to mention the awesome view.

This is the main room.

It has a hideaway bed and a kitchenette.

This room has a sliding glass door with the view in the above photo.

There are also two other bedrooms.

I somehow forgot to take a photo of the other one.

This bedroom also has it's own sliding glass door to the same porch.

Of course we also had to spend time upstairs with them on their screened in porch.

I did some quilting

This view never gets old.

We even played a family game.

We loved our time in Newport.

We had a few adventures in Gatlinburg, did go-carts again,

and I went to my favorite quilt shop.

Stay tuned for more vacation posts.

Made for Maggie

My cousin had a baby a couple of months ago.

I really wanted to make a quilt to celebrate this new little one.

However, I was in the middle of trying to finish Alec's graduation quilt.

After I finished that quilt we went on vacation.

When we got back I could not stop thinking about a baby quilt.

I wanted to make a quilt similar to the one pictured.

It was made by my great grandmother.

Knowing I didn't have a lot of extra time to spend making it, I compromised.

I made one block but made it large enough to make a quilt.

I've seen other quilters do this for baby quilts, which I also wanted to try.

So I accomplished both goals in one quilt.

:)

I already had the block in my quilting software.

All I did was enlarge it and print my fabric needs.

This was a simple quilt that only took a week to make.

The pinwheel center is set "on point".

AKA it's diagonal.

I had never done that before.

It was easy but I need more practice as I lost a couple of points in the process.

In the quilting world there's a saying, "Done is better than perfect."

There's another saying that's called the 20/20 rule.

If it looks good from 20 feet away going 20 mph, then it's good.

Works for me. I'm still learning.

I loved how fast this quilt came together.

I pieced together some left over fabric for the backing.

I used my new walking foot for some simple straight line quilting.

Since I got the idea for the quilt from great grandma I threw her name on the label too.

 Quilt stats:

39" x 39"

machine pieced & quilted




Maggie on her quilt!
:)

Vacation Part 4 - Travelling

After we exhausted ourselves on the Eagle Falls hike we drove several hours to our friends house.

We're always excited to start seeing the mountains.

:)

It was a beautiful day for driving.

We made our annual stop at Clinch Mountain.

It's fun to see the elevation.

That's a lot higher than the 666 feet of Rensselaer.

 We walked around for a short bit and then it was time to hit the road again.

Seeing the mountain range on the horizon never gets old.