Quilts!

I was able to mostly clean up the iron smear on this little quilt, and I finished it last night. I think this one is kinda cute!! I might buy it back from myself at our small quilt auction! LOL.

Yesterday I finished these two quilts which are community service quilts for/from my local guild:

The next pictures are also community service quilts, completed by several different people in our guild. Please pardon all the excessive photographing... it was a beautiful day, and I was having fun posing the quilts all over the place. (Of course, I hope you enjoy looking at the photos.)

showing some of the quilt backs

Below, this grave marker was for a young woman who died at age 23 in 1898. I thought she might appreciate having a couple of quilts for comfort.

"Meow. Thanks for visiting my grandma's blog."

Winter Beauty .. and Endless Illness

Recently I had a day for running a million errands. One of those errands was to photograph quilts at this fence which is at a historical setting near my neighborhood. It was a beautiful day, but the temperature was about 25 degrees F, so my hands got VERY cold. However, it was fun, because the quilts looked so pretty on this fence, against the snow, stone building, and blue sky. Lately we've had a couple of days in the low 40s! So nice! But I didn't have quilts to photograph then and probably won't until it gets cold again. C'est la vie.

Here are some close-ups. Of the first three, these were all made by other people, but I quilted the one on the left. I made and quilted all the others (some of the blocks were made by my guild members).

The middle three will be sent to the two Sunshine projects (Wrap a Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders), and the last two will go to Wrap Them in Love.

I've had a cold for three weeks now, and I'm still sniffling and coughing. What a nuisance! It's the Winter of the Endless Illness. Well, luckily I feel fairly OK, but I get tired easily due to this stupid cold. I hope I haven't infected a zillion other people. I was careful not to shake hands with anyone today at church. (Though I would hope I long ago passed the point of being contagious, but who really knows?!)

Pictures of This and That

I found the pieces I needed to upload photos, so here you go: a good mish-mash of this and that.

Look at this.. playing Words With Friends. I had a great word, but no place on the board to make it. None that I could figure out, anyway. There are places for some good scoring words, but no place to use all seven letters. I just had to take a picture of it to remember the great word.

The next photo is J, from church, modeling the beautiful prayer shawl she made. The yarn is beautiful; the picture doesn't do it justice. The shawl is in a triangle shape and drapes so nicely. It's really a pretty one. She has been perfecting her crocheting skills over time.

This is my daughter in her bedroom. They just moved, and I was getting a tour. I was happy to see the quilt I made for them on their bed. (I had been told it was too small.)

a pretty quilt being shown at my guild meeting

I had fun driving around and trying to get decent pictures of Christmas lights.

I was given a big pile of fabric; lots of it was scraps, so I filled five more pet beds. After I made these I was given one more garbage bag full of scraps. There are going to be some happy animals around here.

Why Must I Read the Directions?? and My Camera is MIA

My camera is missing in action, and I'm getting frustrated. Photos on my phone are not satisfying! I'm 99% sure that the camera is somewhere in this house. I must have put it somewhere stupid. I do that sometimes. Last week, for example, I was at my guild meeting, showing a purse I'm working on. It's all done except the handles. While showing the purse, I opened it up and said, "Oh! There's my phone!" I had plopped it inside there while organizing stuff to go to the meeting, and then forgot and couldn't find my phone. I must have done a similar dumb thing with my camera some time in the last ten days or so.

Jay Cooke State Park, photo from MN State Parks Facebook page

It's a bad time of year to be without my camera, because I am wanting to snap decent pictures of the gorgeous fall colors. So far I've only had the pleasure of doing so on my phone. Well, I do admit I still have my previous camera - that I used faithfully just before buying the smaller size for last year's trip to Europe. I'm afraid if I pull it out I'll have to relearn the differences between that and my more current one. Plus, I'm sure the battery is long dead. Too much work!

Lake Maria State Park, photo from MN State Parks Facebook page

Yesterday I was sewing along, using my new sewing machine, when it came time to re-thread it. The first couple of times I threaded it, I just used the little diagrams on the top of the machine, and it worked fine. Yesterday I couldn't get it right. I needed to either pull out the book of directions, or watch the sewing machine DVD how-to. Both too much work, so I swapped for my older machine with its quirks. At least I'm familiar with it and can continue to sew without stopping to learn how.

Our church bazaar is this week, Wednesday. I'm trying to finish up some stuff to have there for sale. Last night I gathered it all together and was surprised that I had as much as I did. I still want to make more, however. There are always more ideas pushing around inside my head, wanting to come out!

My mom is back in the hospital. I am too tired to do another long drive today, so I'm going to wait and go see her tomorrow. Depending on how she is doing, I may or may not be able to attend our church bazaar and turkey dinner. At least I will have made a contribution of some STUFF to sell. I hope it sells.

Quilt Photography Here and There

Today I convened a Study in Quilts: Photographing Quilts in Nature.

Well.. it wasn't much of a study, and it was only one quilt. Husband and I drove around to some random spots not far from home, looking for fun places to photograph my quilt. This was inspired by Quiltdivajulie who recently photographed quilts of hers in some very unique places. I thought that was a great idea. Since we live not far from the Mississippi River, I decided to go in that direction and see what we could find.

Quilt at Home

Quilt on Fence (historic community near our home)

Quilt on Hammock, Quilt on Swing

Quilt on Old House - Edition 1,2,3,4 (doesn't this sound fancy??) haha.. these are historic buildings from the 1830s - before Minnesota was a state)

Quilt on Balcony (do you see the Fair Maiden?)

The Quilt Princess

Quilt at River

Quilt at Jail (it's an old one-room jail built in 1915)

Quilt on Dock

Quilt Under Willow Tree

This is the most-photographed quilt I own! (Its design was inspired by a crossword puzzle in the newspaper.)

Oh, look -- a spider web!