A new venture

While I still have hopes of eventually getting back to sharing craft projects here, raising kids and business ventures have been keeping me plenty busy.

I’m excited to share my newest project - I’ve created a practical guide about AI to help lawyers navigate their changing reality and stay competent in the practice of law.

As generative AI news headlines became impossible to ignore, I realized that if I were still practicing law I would be aware that a massive technological shift was underway and overwhelmed about how to get AI figured out on top of all of my other day-to-day professional and personal responsibilities. I would have been worried about the risk of taking a misstep with AI and having my name in the news for one of the worst possible reasons. And at the same time, I would have recognized that some lawyers were figuring out how to use AI to create a competitive advantage, and I would have wondered if I could do that in my practice too.

AI is not going away, and lawyers are going to need to develop AI competency in order to comply with their professional responsibilities and remain competitive. I decided to create the AI guide that I would have needed as a lawyer who did not have the extra time to research AI from top to bottom in addition to all of my other responsibilities.

A Lawyer’s Practical Guide to AI is now available to help you get up to speed faster on AI and it can also help you explore whether there is an AI tool that is right for your practice.  With the information you learn from A Lawyer’s Practical Guide to AI you will be better positioned to recognize and confidently navigate AI’s pitfalls and seize any worthwhile opportunities that align with your practice.

A Lawyer’s Practical Guide to AI includes:

• An introduction to generative AI

• The AI issues and pitfalls most likely to impact lawyers (there’s more than just hallucinations)

• AI-related professional responsibility considerations for lawyers

• Summaries of AI-related alleged lawyer misconduct cases

• Resources for identifying and tracking government actions on AI

• Summaries of over 50 AI court cases in the news

• An actionable step-by-step process to evaluate whether there are any AI tools that meet your needs, and if so, how to implement them, and

• A directory of over 150 AI tools developed specifically for lawyers, organized by capability, practice type, and integrations with other tools, so that you can quickly focus on the tools most likely to be useful in your practice.

You can find the guide here. I would be so appreciative if you shared this link with the lawyers in your life. Thank you!

Four More Quilt Finishes for 2016

Hello friends! I thought I'd wrap up 2016 with a big post on my quilt finishes from 2016 that I never got around to blogging about. First up, back in the Spring I participated in Kate Basti's rainbow mini quilt swap on Instagram. You can see all the quilts at #rainbowminiswapr2.

I started by taping four pieces of graph paper together and paper piecing stripes to the graph paper. 

After I removed the paper I sewed the stripey fabric into a tube, and then cut strips and split two of them at the red square, two at the orange square, and so on for every color variation, and sewed them back together separated by gray crosshatch strips.

I quilted in a crosshatch pattern to mimic Carolyn Friedlander's gray crosshatch fabric.

And here's the lovely quilt I received in return from @just_anne_marie! 

Next, in October I finished a quilt for my dear friends Grayce's new baby E. Grayce and I both love the Cathedral Windows quilt pattern and rainbow quilts so I tried to give it a try. I followed the Missouri Quilt Company's Cathedral Windows method, which was the simplest method I could find. This quilt required a shocking amount of fabric: 61 rainbow five-inch charm squares, 144 white five-inch charm squares, and 288 gray five-inch charm squares. It made for a surprisingly heavy quilt!

I spent a lot of time noodling around with the color layout. Here's one of the layouts I toyed with. I ended up using most but not all of my colored charm square options. 

Here was my final layout, right before I pinned all of the colored squares down and started sewing the cathedral windows.

Next up, I finished a quilt for dear friend Heidi's new baby L. Heidi and her guy are California-cool, minimalist no-fuss types. I was inspired by this album cover and this quilt for my design. I was going for an abstract sunset over the Pacific mixed with a sailboat sail. 

First I cut strips and sewed them together, and then layered the striped fabric with a piece of white Kona cotton of the same dimensions. I cut them both diagonally, and sewed each striped piece to a white piece, and all of a sudden I had two quilt tops! 

I hand-quilted this one for baby L. I was incredibly happy with how it turned out. This quilt solidified my love for hand quilting - both the act and the look of the finished product. I think there's a good chance that this one will have a serious influence on quilts I design in the future. 

Last but not least, I made a quilt for one of my oldest friends Katie's baby girl L. Baby L's nursery was going to be purple and green, which were my favorite colors as a little girl. Katie loves dahlias so I decided to make a giant dahlia quilt for baby L. 

I used this tutorial, which was very helpful. Each of the color arcs is glued together before they are sewed together. 

I did my first free-motion quilting in the center, meant to look like petals at the center of a dahlia. 

I wish you all peace and happiness in 2017! - j

Squash Blossom Wedding Quilt

I'm so happy to be back to share this quilt. This is a special one for a great friend, Karen. Karen was my first friend in law school. We bonded over our shared loves of swimming and quilting, and then as luck would have it, we ended up in the same orientation group. That was it, friends for life. This ombre squash blossom quilt was my wedding gift to Karen and her lovely husband Paul. 

I went with a mostly blue fabric stack because Karen's wedding color was blue. I also used Violet Craft's gold birds print because I knew Karen loved the birds as we used that print in a quilt we made together for another friend's wedding. 

Here's a detail shot of the quilting. I did straight lines at random intervals. 

And here's my slightly wonky patch on the back. I love using a smaller version of the gemology quilt block on wedding quilts. 

The quilt finished at 90 by 72 inches. I hope it keeps Karen and Paul warm for many years to come.

This quilt is my entry in the large quilt category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival, one of my favorite places to find fresh inspiration. 

Hooray For Exciting New Beginnings!

Greetings, friends! And apologies for a very long absence. Back in February, I started a law firm with my friend and former colleague, Amanda Anderson. Amanda and I started at the same larger firm when we were both fresh out of law school, and it didn't take long for us to figure out that we enjoyed collaborating and had similar perspectives on the practice of law. Amanda is a terrific lawyer and I couldn't ask for a better business partner. 

One of the reasons I decided to go to law school was because I dreamed of practicing in the area of adoption law. I am so proud to tell you that our firm, Anderson Ballard LLC, represents prospective adoptive parents as well as birth parents involved in the adoption process. We also serve as general counsel to local community associations. Oh, and we blog on topics related to those areas of law right here. It feels so good to be building our dream business, and I am thankful and happy every day that we decided to take this leap. 

Of course, starting a business takes more work than you can ever anticipate! 2016 has kept me very busy. I've managed to sneak in some sewing here and there, but struggled during these last few months to find time to share those projects on Hooray for Rain. While there's never a shortage of things to do, I'm happy to say that life is beginning to normalize and I anticipate that I will be able to start posting my recent quilting projects here again.  Hooray! I'll see you back here soon.

Valentine Swap

Hello friends! Happy February!

I spent part of my weekend whipping up a batch of these amazing chocolate chip cookies, and making valentines for the Aunt Peaches annual Valentine Swap. Last year, I received incredible valentines from across the country and world!

I was so impressed by all the work of the participants last year that I had a hard time getting inspired for this year's swap. What better way to get excited about making valentines, then to pull out every pink, red, glittery, sparkly, heart-shaped item in your craft closet?

I decided on making a hot air balloon carrying a multitude of hearts in different shapes and patterns. I cut up bamboo skewers for the basket and got into a major fight with my glue gun. It won, but I'll get it next time.

I went for a rainy theme for my note insert since there's nothing better to represent Seattle!

My valentines are heading off to California, Florida, and Sweden. The message on the middle envelope says "Happy Valentine's Day" in Swedish. At least I hope it does...

Wishing you a very Happy Valentine's Day!!!