A Big Birthday

Today was another one of those milestone birthdays, the big 8 - 0. It was a family day and my kids, grand kids, and great grand kids were all here with the exception of one grandson who lives out of town.  It was a nice day and though I have been unseated as the family Scrabble champion I had a great time.
We got a four generation picture of women in the family me, my daughter and her daughter, and my grandsons daughter. We missed my daughters other daughter who had to leave early and we didn't get my daughter in law in the photo. We  didn't get  photos of any of the men. Maybe we will do better Christmas Eve.





W e did get a shot of me with the great grand kids and the birthday cake; their ages are from 8 -12. It is not easy to get a picture with everyone looking good but this one turned out pretty good.
That is the celebration tablecloth on the table. I had dyed fabric at a guild workshop 20 + years ago and I was going to throw it away recently because it ran when I washed it. However, I fished it out of the waste basket and made 16 patch checkerboard blocks and added a  bright border. I thought if the colors  ran "so what". Some of them did run when it was washed and you can see it on the solid yellow back but the front looks OK and it think it makes a nice family tradition to put it on the cake table.

Two finishes

I am taking credit for 2 finishes but one was a baby quilt I finished up but didn't start.  Elaine, from our group at church made the flimsy and layered it up and pinned it. She brought it to me to quilt and after I quilted it I added the binding. Elaine hand quilts a lot of her things and doesn't do much machine quilting and asked if anyone would be willing to machine quilt a baby quit if she pieced it. She used fabric from our quilt closet at the church and pieced a Disappearing 9 Patch.


Binding front and back of baby quilt

 
I quilted it in the ditch around all the blocks  with off white thread using a straight stitch. Then I quilted a grid across all the blocks with blue thread and I used the #4 stitch on my Bernina. I used the same thread and stitch on the binding.

Birthday Party/Celebration tablecloth/quilt

I finished  the Birthday Party tablecloth too.  I used primary colored variegated thread using the #4 Bernina stitch and quilted a grid that crossed through each of the blocks in one direction only.



Binding and grid quilting from the back

close up of quilting

I used the blue for the binding because I didn't want this to look too girly. I plan to use it for birthday parties and maybe other celebrations. Maybe I will write on the back inside of the grid squares what the celebrations are as the quilt is used. At some point I will pass this on to my daughter; most of our family parties take place at her house.