Sewing By Lottery: Hello Friends! Hello Spring!

So let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

I've been gone awhile. With the new baby I thought I might be out of commission from the blog for three months-well, she's almost eight months old now and I'm just starting to feel as though I can get back into crafting and blogging. Heck, I'm just now feeling as though I can do more than get dressed and put food on the table! That has been my goal for the last eight months.

Adding a third child has been terrific-My Sweet Baboo is just the sweetest, best behaved baby-but I went through some postpartum depression for awhile and it prevented me from being able to do much of anything. But on clear headed days I was busy! I made bunting to hang on my mantle for Valentine's Day. I glittered up some X's and O's to place on my hutch. I threw a baptism party for my daughter.

And I've been quilting.

I finished my niece's quilt (finally!) back in December. I vowed I would not go into 2014 with that hanging over my head, so sometime in the last week of December I finished it. However, I don't think I took any pictures of it before I sent it down to her.

The next pick in the lottery was #30: Finish my sister Connie's quilt. I've been working on this one since the beginning of the year. The top was pieced together-I just had to quilt it. I used my regular sewing machine and quilted the middle part and now I am hand quilting the outermost border.

Everything in place to hand quilt

Simple diagonal lines for the quilting. You can see the green markings I made

I checked today and it looks as though I am more than three-quarteres done with the border. I should probably start thinking about what fabric I am going to use to bind it.

Hopefully it's Spring where you are. It's raining right now but the last week was pretty glorious here with the warmer weather and glorious sunshine! I snapped a few photos of what's blooming in my garden.