I've been taking the easy living of summer a little toooo easy around here lately. I spend my days hanging out with the coolest 2 & 3 year old that I know personally.(I've read about some mighty awesome youngins through some blogs I haunt, but hey, I don't know them personally. I get to hang out with these awesome boys!) We go to the park, have picnic lunches, snuggle on the couch and talk for rest time, watch jets fly overhead, have tickle wars, say our letters & numbers, sing silly songs, drink out of fancy reusable water bottles, potty train, walk over speed bumps across the road, eat cookies & cucumbers at local farmer's markets, and ride with the wind in our hair. What I wouldn't give to live like this EVERY day!

When I get home in the afternoon I've been walking and quilting. I haven't gotten many projects actually completed due to the extremely nice weather. (NO humidity in VA in July = HEAVEN!) But I wanted to share my latest completed project... there are MANY more in the works.

It's just a simple strips quilt. I actually started the whole thing based on the backing fabric. Which can also be seen as the flower strip at the top of the front. I loved the pink, green & yellow combination and wanted to really highlight the colors. The quilting is a grid pattern with each line 3inches apart. It was great practice for me since I'm still so new at quilting, but it didn't turn out as perfect as I'd been hoping for. There are two puckers on the back, the DARK pink fabric I used for the binding ended up bleeding through in 2 places, and in attempting to square up the quilt I ended up making it long and skinny - it's an awkward size. So even though I had plans to give this away, it's sitting on my sofa right now and I've got new projects in the making to give to that friend. I don't want her to have my practice mistake quilt. But it still works great for me to cuddle up with on those days when I take a nap after Aaron goes to work.

Here's the back. Using a solid piece of backing fabric made the back a snap, but it also attributed to why my quilt ended up being long and skinny. I really liked quilting in the grid pattern, but next time I do it, I'm going to put the lines just a little closer to each other - hopefully that will make it a little more crinkly. This one did end up getting crinkly, but I took these pictures before I washed it because I had a feeling the binding fabric would bleed through. The two places that it did bleed are not that noticeable. It just looks like somebody spilled some fruit punch juice on it and then it didn't come all the way out in the wash.

Taking quilt pictures outside is SOO much better than the ones I got inside! I'll take them all outside from now on. In fact, I might go back and re-take a few of the other quilts I've done.