The babies are here

My niece, Sarah, had her twins Sunday, the 25th. They were 2 months early but healthy. Two girls, Evelyn Ruth and Eileen Frances. Sarah, who lives near Huntsville, AL was visiting in the Mobile, AL area to attend a baby shower when her water broke Sunday morning. Brandon, the Dad didn't quite make it in time to see both babies born but Sarah had other family there so it wasn't a total disaster. It isn't clear at this time, how long the babies will have to stay in the hospital and of course, being out of town won't make it easy but if anyone can handle it, it is Sarah.
However, that means the babies came before I had their gifts ready. I rushed to finish the quilt and here it is:
I'm not real happy with the way the binding went on and don't look too close at the quilting. I should have known better than to try something with curves. But overall, it came out nice. Here is a closeup of the label:

The crochet baby blanket I'm making for her will still take a couple of weeks to finish. I'll send this along with another quilt I made from a kit today and send the blanket later.

Finished the bed quilt

I finally finished the quilt I started in the quilt class I took a Jo-Anns last fall. I had procrastinated finishing it because I was afraid that the quilting and binding will be long and tedious but it turns out not to be that hard. The quilting took about a week or so, working a little bit every day. The secret is to take frequent breaks. Hand finishing the binding took 4 evenings and is easily done while watching TV. I think it turned out great. I'm very please with it.

Placemats

I want to post the pictures of my second quilt project. I made four placemats from my own pattern. The fabric is some that my friend, Pat Borders, gave to me before Christmas. While it's not fabric I would have chosen it worked great for what I needed it for which was to practice making a quilt from start (coming up with a design) to finish (hand stitching the binding). I mis-calculated a few things and mis-cut a few things but I managed to get it done and it was great practice for my bed quilt. I hope to be posting pictures of that soon. I just have to finish hand stitching the binding and it is going faster than I expected. Yeah. I plan to start on another baby quilt today.

It has finally gotten hot. The garden has needed watering already. Hard to believe that 2 weeks ago we were still complaining about the cold and the rain.

Jolie is going great. With just a few weeks work, I feel that she is almost where we left off last fall.