For Peggy

This is a UFO that is at least 3 years old. I finally finished it! I had planned to give it to a child through Wrap Them in Love, but when I got it done, it spoke a different message to me. This quilt seems like a good size and good level of cuddliness to send to my cousin, Peggy, who recently discovered that she has cancer. It was completely unexpected and was discovered during routine surgery for something else. I think a quilt is in order in this case, don't you?

Be strong, Peggy, and when you're not, the quilt is a soft place to have a good cry.

Back to Tiny Quilts

... aka postcards.

I haven't made quilty postcards in a while. A friend on an online quilt group just had open heart surgery, so a bunch of us decided to send her some quilted postcards instead of plain old get well cards. This is the one I made.



It's to represent her being healthy again and splashing in the spring rain puddles.

May we all enjoy some nice, splashy moments this spring, in rain, preferably not in snow.

Last Minute Bag Lady

Here are 4 tote bags I made. I procrastinated until the very last minute. I really wanted to make quilted bags, but I put it off and put it off, then I ran out of time. So I just made simple tote bags with no lining.

Tomorrow I am doing a short volunteer stint at a transitional housing facility - helping the residents celebrate some birthdays and eat cake (sounds tough, doesn't it?) These bags and a few sundry items inside will be gifts for the 4 people who had birthdays in March. I've known about this project for a couple of months, but did I plan ahead and allow enough time to make the prettier, quilted bags? Of course, not.

My friend, Karen, says she needs some quilty motivation, so this is what I suggest: go to the Wrap Them in Love website, and look at the Galleries (scroll down to the bottom of the home page). The more recent galleries are more inspiring, I think. These are quilts people have donated for kids in orphanages worldwide. They are amazing, I think! It always inspires me to see these gallery pages. Oh, if you get super inspired, maybe you can whip up a quilt to donate to this wonderful place:

www.wraptheminlove.org

Challenge - guess how many of the 2007 quilts were made by me.
Even harder challenge - which ones are they?

(This is an informal challenge; your prize, should you win, is the satisfaction of knowing you are a good guesser.)

Happy Easter

I hope everyone had a happy Easter. We had a quiet, very good day. After church we had dinner with our daughter, who provided the lucsious chocolate cake you see here. Then while she and hubby took naps, I did more sewing.

Then later we had a brief visit with our son and his GF who just returned from their spring break trip. They were bummed to leave warm temperatures and come back to snow, but c'est la vie. Better studying weather, I guess!

I managed to mostly finish the top I made for Tonya's summer class. It's not even spring here yet (fresh snow on the ground, temps in the 30's F); I surprised myself by finishing this project very quickly. It turned out bigger than I intended, but I'm happy that I'll have my own personalized lap quilt. I plan to add borders before I quilt it. I hope to get this one done soon so I can use it right away.

The sign language represents my career (interpreter), and I included a lot of other life symbols and names. This is not at all how I had envisioned this project, but I'm happy with the result.

Back in the Ring

I guess it was easier than I realized to get the Mavericks ring code back, but I didn't know how... if anyone ever loses their ring code, this is how to get it back:

"you have the ability to do all this through
alt.webring yourself. Click on ANYONE's panel for
LIST...and log in with your user name and password"

I would have done this if I had known how, and my time away from the ring would have been brief. Anyway, I'm just happy to be back in the ring. Hopefully I'll have no more blog explosions.



Not long ago I was at the Mall of America. I enjoyed watching the kids play, while the moms stood around waiting patiently. Now that my kids are adults I like to watch scenes like this, thinking nostalgically about my kids when they were young. I didn't know how quickly the time would fly and how precious my time with them was. I'd have been a better mom back then if I had known how the days would fly away. I'm blessed with two wonderful adult children; mostly I love having adult children, but sometimes I miss those days of being Mommy and kissing the boo-boos.

Sewing While Waiting

Still waiting for my Mavericks ring code to be re-established; I'm still a Dead End if you're trying to travel the ring. I hope to have that fixed soon. Meanwhile I have been doing a fair amount of sewing. On National Quilting Day (last Saturday) a couple of my Yahoo groups had a virtual retreat. I managed to get two tops put together.

This one I had started a couple weeks before and then stalled. Once I got back to it, it completed itself quickly (to the flimsy stage only).



This one is orphan blocks. I wasn't as thrilled with how this one ended up, but I guess it's OK. At least it's one-of-a-kind, and the kid in the next bed (at the orphanage, hospital, or wherever it ends up) won't have the exact same quilt! Interestingly, after I made this one, I just started randomly sewing together other orphan blocks and leftover pieces of things. I didn't plan a thing, just started sewing and putting in little spacers when they didn't fit properly, or whacking them off if they were too big. That one is still incomplete, but I am liking it better than the one I tried to plan! I'll get back to Total Random Quilt one of these days and then you can see what you think of it.



I'm working on Tonya's Summer 08 class... A Study in Repetition. This is what I have so far. I have a couple other ideas to include, too. I'm trying not to rush this one, because that's when I put in something I don't really like. Since I'm working with such an important word I need to be extra careful this time. (tee hee)



This morning it snowed. We're still a ways off from true Spring.

Mavericks Ring: Please Note --

I lost a lot of links and my Mavs ring last weekend. You won't be able to access the ring here at my blog until I get the code and re-install it. Sorry to be a Dead End in your ring travels. I hope to be back in the ring SOON! (I'm relieved I didn't lose my entire blog, which I thought had happened at first.)

My Quilts Came Home!

Our show came to an end, and I finally got to bring home my quilts. I had really missed them! I spent a lot of time taking off tags and temporary hanging sleeves so I could get them right back to where they belong. It felt so good! We're sleeping under our topsy turvy quilt again. Hooray!



This fox wanted to see the show but came a little late. Oh, too bad. Try again next year, foxie.




Only one of my two dollies was in the show, so they had a lot of catching up to do when they were reunited. They're happier now, too. (Yes, I am in my 50's. Quit laughing!)

OK, I knew I wouldn't get my new couch. Hubby just can't shop on an impulsive basis like I can. The sale came and went, and we're still in the discussion stage. Oh, well. I know we'll get one eventually.

Time for a new week, just a little thrown off by the time change, and looking ahead to a week with something to do every night! Arrrgggh! I am getting too old for a schedule like that.



Oh, by the way, I added bells to the bottom of this quilt. They symbolize doorbells for all the houses. I found a home for the quilt, too. It's in the landing area in our basement, right next to the little old school chair that is kid-sized. Seems perfect there. Can you spot the spider web in this picture? If so, please ignore it, like I am doing.... until I catch spidey creeping toward my quilt, then it's Lights Out.

Pin Cushion & Sofa

Blueberry Lane is giving away a free book. If you post a picture of the pin cushion you use most frequently, you'll get your name in the drawing. Here's mine. I can hardly live without it. I use all its features, and I take it with me to retreats and sew-ins. I got this when I was a new quilter (1999) and had used up my first frequent-buyer card at a quilt shop. This is what I treated myself to with my "free" money.


I like to have a pin cushion at my cutting board, too, but they tend to wander off. I just got this one recently. I hope it stays put, at least for a while.



On another topic, I'm lobbying my hubby to go with me on Saturday to buy a new sofa. We have only had a loveseat in our living room since moving in here a zillion years ago, and it's time for a full length sofa. The one I have spotted is on sale through Saturday. My hubby is not against re-doing some furniture. He just is NOT an impulse shopper like I am, so he needs a few days to digest the idea and decide it's OK. The big question: will he come to the correct decision before the sale comes to an end??? You can see how badly we need a longer sofa. Here's our poor daughter taking a nap on the shorty one we currently have. Tune in later to see how this plays out.

Reading and Sewing and Sewing and Reading

I'm not totally out of my sewing slump, but it's easy enough to sew pre-made crumb blocks to plain squares. I managed to make two tops using this mindless approach while listening to a book on tape: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith. It's number six in his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

A friend of mine has listened to several of this series on CDs. She raved about the great reader whose accent and pronunciation of the names and places just made it seem like the reader is sitting in Botswana listening to this story. So I thought I had to try it out since I had no idea how some of the names are properly pronounced. I lucked out when stopping at the library. They had two of the CD packs available: one for book 6 which is exactly what I needed. I do love hearing this book being read to me. Gives me another sense of the stories that I miss when reading it to myself.

I think I'll go back to just plain old reading when it's time for No. 7 in the series, but I'm glad I've listened to one for the unique audio experience. Of course, I am finding it very entertaining to listen while sewing... but it has to be mindless sewing to make this work. I'll see how my coming-out-of-slump process goes.





Oh, and to help the slump-ending process along (or hinder it???) I joined Tonya's Summer 2008 class. I'm glad she called it Summer rather than Spring. That gives me plenty of time to try to come up with an idea and to work it out. Right now I am free of ideas. (It sounds better worded this way, don't you think? Lots better than saying I'm stuck and empty-brained!)

I managed to make two blocks for the Lotto group I'm in. Had hoped I could churn out more than two, but it wasn't to be.



Hugs to my pal, Karen, whose mother died this week.

What's a Sewing Machine?

I haven't done any sewing for several days. I'm almost forgetting how! Today I finally went back to my machine to make some blocks, and I actually had to stop and think for a minute how I do my HSTs. I mean, those should almost be automatic, like I could do them in my sleep!

It came back to me in a hurry, and I managed to make two blocks. Then I got tired of sewing again, and went back to reading. I'm on a reading blitz these days. I am feeling a little burned out on sewing after getting ready for the show, and I burned through my inspiration that came from the show. Now reading is my focus until I get bitten by the sewing bug again.

In the last week I've read the following books:
Good Grief by Lolly Winton
From Baghdad, With Love by Jay Kopelman and M. Roth
The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs is in progress (funny book!)





I went to visit my mom over the weekend. Her 87th birthday is this week! I had a nice visit with her. I'm so happy she is still pretty healthy and spry. I hope I age that well. (All that smoke is from only 12 candles!)



Remember back when we were challenged to post pictures of our laundry rooms without cleaning them up first? Here's how mine looked a few days ago. The dryer quit working, and my hubby pulled it all apart to see what was wrong. He replaced the motor, and now it works better than ever. It's so quiet that we can hardly tell it's running, whereas we used to be able to hear it easily from one floor above.



Heather tagged me with a new kind of tag that I haven't seen before:

You're supposed to reach for the nearest book,
turn to page 123,
and type sentences 5, 6, and 7 into your blog.

My nearest book is __Neither Wolf Nor Dog__ by Kent Nerburn (a book I highly recommend, by the way). It's on the shelf right above my computer. Here are sentences 5-7 on page 123:
I marveled at the sense of well-being that this vast landscape induced in me. There were no jagged edges, no fragments of meaning. All was massive, singular, and soft under the prayerful canopy of the sky.

So let's see... for this one I want to tag some people who I know love to read. So I will tag Mary and Sharon.

Let's see what books they have close at hand, especially Mary who has several in her Kindle. How will she choose??

12 Hours Later

Hmm.. I posted this morning at 10 AM. Now it's nearly 10 PM and I'm back here again. Can't believe the weekend has already come to an end. Weekend time flies way too fast!

I finished my mystery quilt. Here it is! I might add a few small embellishments, but all the regular stuff is done, even a label.



These two quilts are for Wrap a Smile. The blue/red one I made when Terry H. was having her heart surgery. I quickly made this one in her honor, but then it took me a long time to get it quilted. The crumbs/Peanuts quilt is made with some high-loft polyester batting which I don't like, but it looks way better after getting washed and dried. Maybe I shouldn't write that batting off as useless. The Peanuts fabric was donated by Katie Q.





And here is the view out my kitchen window! Tonya and a few others were showing this on their blogs. We used to see deer in our back yard until they extended our street and built more houses in the woods. Now we only see deer once or twice a year, if we're lucky. I miss them! When the leaves are fully out, we can't see the neighbor back there at all.



Have a great week, everyone.

Tag! You're It!

I'm "It" - tagged by Darcie. OK. I'll try... here goes:

THE RULES:

1). Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.

2). Post THE RULES on your blog.

3). Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.

4). Tag 7 people and link to them.

5). Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.
-------

Odd facts about me:
1) I'm impulsive. I sometimes blurt out things that sound way more critical or crude than I mean them to be. That drives me nuts about myself.

2) It bothers me when I have to machine quilt over the face of a fabric animal or person like this (ouch!):


3) I have a terrible, incurable Sweet Tooth. (terrible but fun - chocolate rules the universe)

4) When I'm home alone I hook the screen door shut to "keep out the ax murderers."

5) I can't stand watching fights on TV and in movies. When a fight comes on the screen I always cover my face and ask hubby to tell me when it's over.

6) When I was a kid I used to dip potato chips in my koolaid.

7) I don't mind wearing mis-matched socks. The freedom to be weird when one gets older is a true pleasure.

NEXT! I'm tagging --
Heather
Pat
Elaine
and that's all.
You're IT, ladies.

Here's My Kaleidoscope

This pattern is Kaleidoscope by Cranberry Cupboards. I made this several years ago for my friend. That's me on the right and my friend on the left. Check out the pretty one Malagueta made for her own Domino challenge. I'm not going to do a Domino challenge, but thought I'd post a picture of my Kaleidoscope. Hers is WAY different.. go check it out!

Sewing Machine is Smoking!

Lately I have been sewing like a mad woman! Last Saturday I took a mystery class, finished it during the next two days, and now I'm working on the binding. I'll post a picture here when I get it done. I also made a couple more Christmas gift bags, and I have some tote bags cut out and ready to sew.



This quilt is one I made for To The Top Project which is a Yahoo group. We make quilts for veterans who live in various vet residences in New England. This will be quilted by one of our members who does almost all the quilting for this group. She's a gem! I like making quilts for this project, because the quilts go to the "forgotten" vets who are from Viet Nam and even from WWII, and also now a few from the Gulf Wars are starting to show up.

I've been feeling so inspired to sew a lot lately, and frustrated that I have to work and can't sew as often as I want. I almost wish I would enter one of my less-inspired moods so I could give my poor sewing machine a rest! How much do you bet that when I have spring break in a few weeks I'll have the time to sew but not the inspiration?!

Quilts for Panama

These two quilts are going to be hand carried to Panama! I am hoping they can be donated to two little kids in the hospital where I was born 55 years ago! (I don't even know if the hospital is still in existence.) Remember voting on the setting for the quilt on the left? This setting got a lot of votes, and I decided to go with it. I am *hoping hoping hoping* that I will be lucky enough to get pictures of the little kids who receive these quilts. If not, that's OK, too... but if I do, I will be thrilled, and will share the pictures with you here.

A House for Bonnie

Tonya suggested a house warming gift for Bonnie, including a house block and some other stuff... here's what I came up with:

First is my signature block. I used all orientals.



Here's my house block with the required red background:



And here's my Ugly along with a crumb block. My ugly isn't all that bad; it's just kind of too gross in its attempt to look like a cool hand-dyed piece.



I hope Bonnie enjoys her new North Carolina home!

The Show Kick-Off

Tonight we had our official opening of the quilt show, a reception, and a speaker (Heather Mulder Peterson of Anka's Treasures). I was so pleased that several friends and relatives came to the show and to see me in my featured quilter debut. I had a great time.

Another pleasant surprise was that two of my quilts were chosen by the show committee or museum staff members as Best of Show! They get to put ribbons on their favorites. I didn't expect any, and I got two! My friend, Sally, the other featured quilter, also got one. I thought that was so nice!





Heather Mulder Peterson's quilts are beautiful, and I love her patterns and her philosophy... she likes to make her patterns simple but look more complex than they really are. My cousin won a door prize which was one of Heather's books, and she also bought a pattern which we agreed to share. My daughter sat there enthralled and decided she needs to learn how to quilt! Husband and brother-in-law even came to the show and stayed way longer than I expected. What a nice surprise!



All in all it was a fun evening and successful event.

Is This a Quilt or a Poster?

This quilt is never-ending. I made it out of blocks that were given to me as gifts over a period of a few years. I was a Lotto coordinator, and people sometimes sent me a gift block when they sent in their monthly Lotto blocks. Wasn't that nice?? I saved them all, and this is the quilt that resulted.

I ran out of the fabric I was using for sashing and border. It sat unfinished for a long time until I finally bought more fabric that sort of has the colors of the first border. However, it is much darker. When I stepped back and took a careful look, the border was just too dark to leave alone. And the middle row of red hearts was too white. (I bordered them to enlarge them... why didn't I use some nice color there??)

So I began to add words. I think I might still add a few hearts in the upper left area... but for the most part I'm done adding border embellishments. I told my husband that with all those words I was turning my quilt into a poster.

I like it better without such a stark and stunningly dark border. And I'm happy to say that this looks close to being ready for the quilter! It took a while, but when it's finally done, I think I'm going to love this quilt.

Oh... a Fat Quarter goes to the first person who can correctly identify the person whose quote I have in the hearts row. Who said "do all the good you can?"

More Quilts

Here are some more quilts from our local quilt show.