Happy Holidays

My son arrived home safely. I am so happy to have this time with him. The first thing he wanted to do was go out for wings as they don’t have anyplace to get them in the mountain area he lives in. We had not been home 20 minutes when his college roommate called to ask if he was home yet. Aaron was traveling home to Illinois from northern Indiana and was within 15 minutes of our house so he came over and spent the evening with us. It was just like old times.
Today the boys and I are headed out to finish my shopping up. On Sunday my husband and I will celebrate our 24th anniversary. I cannot believe it has been 24 years since we eloped. We plan on going to the movies with the kids and dinner afterwards as a family.
I am taking the next week and a half off from blogging. I plan on spending this time enjoying my family and friends. Maybe doing a little quilting, spending time with my cousin and throwing a whole lot of relaxation in that mix also.
Please have a wonderful holiday spending time with your family and friends and being thankful for all the blessings we enjoy!

Peppermint Swirl

Tomorrow is the big day. My son is flying in from Wyoming. I can’t wait! It will be so good to give him a hug. They are supposed to get dumped on with snow tonight so I hope he is able to get his flight out. Snow seems to be a normal thing there so they probably deal better with it then we do here in Indiana.
I am going to ask you all something, this is something I wouldn’t normally do but it is for someone very special. I have a cousin Rose who is not even 50 yet. She is losing her battle with cancer. Please keep her in your thoughts. She is a very special person who has committed her life to helping others. She is also a fellow quilter who has tremendous artistic abilities. She has remained upbeat and happy with life. Thank you!
Here is another quilt I made many, many, many years ago. I believe it was a Thimbleberries pattern called Peppermint Swirl or at least that is what I have the picture named and I can’t believe that I would have been that creative to come up with a cute name like that. I hung this outside at Christmas for many years so it is now showing extreme signs of wear.

A special quilt from a special friend!

Yesterday I received a most special gift. A few months ago 5 of us quilting friends got together for a weekend of sewing. We decided since we were all into the doll quilt rage that we would exchange doll quilts for Christmas. You would only need to make one. We put our names in a hat and drew to see whom we would be making one for. My very good friend Dawn picked my name out of the hat and the quilt she made me is just so very beautiful not only in how it looks but in thought. I love folk art quilts in browns and blacks and this one fits the bill. Dawn also handquilted it which I just love. Around the borders it is embroidered with - A friend is a present you give to yourself - LLH Friends DLD . Thank you so so much Dawn. This is just the most perfect little quilt!
Tonight my quilt girlfriends are all getting together for a little Christmas gathering. We have a nice sit down dinner and then we exchange ornaments. Everyone always brings extra little goodies to swap. It is a really good time and I can’t wait to see everyone. As I have said before, I am truly blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life.

Home and Mariah's age 11 Quilt

Just a quick post to let you all know we arrived safely back from our trip to Florida. Eight of us met up to quilt shop hop, eat, drink and be merry. We had a great time. I purchased some gorgeous fabrics and a couple of books and patterns. I also finished up some secret santa gifts I needed to buy for an exchange I am in that is quilting related.
I came home to an extremely heavy work load. I will be forever catching up. It looks like I have some weekend work ahead of me. With that said I am posting a picture of one of the finishes I did a few weekends ago, you remember the one where I actually accomplished some things. This is Mariah’s age 11 quilt top. I have had it in the “I have a crisis” pile for quite some time. I had a grand idea that I visualized but had trouble in actually getting it accomplished. I had made the center panel from a Country Threads pattern and added her calico cat Zoe’s name. Zoe has been her constant companion since Riah was 3 years old. I had a pile of rail fence blocks left from our guilds millennium challenge. We were to make a quilt top with 2000 fabrics. I was able to pull 2000 from my stash and made these rail fence blocks and then never did anything with them. I thought it would make a neat border for this block. My problem came in setting the center in. I just couldn’t get it centered and not loose fitting. I ripped it out I don’t know how many times. When I met up with Dawn recently I took it with me and she basted it in the center for me to hand appliqué. I still think it is kind of wavy but she thinks a longarmer will pull it tight enough that I shouldn’t have a problem. I think it will be my next one to the quilter just so I can find out!

Age 12 Quilt

I had told you all on Monday how I had completed a lot of tops last weekend. Mariah’s age 12 Bible Quilt blocks was one of them. I didn’t like how plain the borders were so I have spent a couple of my evenings this week cutting out appliqués to fill it in. As you can tell I appliqué with the freezer paper on top. I now have them all pinned down and know what my winter appliqué project is going to be. The border has some symbolism in it that only she will know. It has 2 dogs a black one and a yellow one for the 2 that she has had. 3 cats for her kittys she now has, 2 horses a black one and a buckskin one to represent her great grandma’s horses. We have 2 boys for her brothers and one girl for herself, 2 hearts under the willow tree represent her dad and I. And Jesus rising from the grave above the Sun rising. It was a lot of fun and I will enjoy working on it.
The trip to see “The Shining” was a blast. The audience somewhat inter-acted with it. It reminded me of my late teen years and going to see the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It looks like I am going to have to spend my Saturday working. I leave for Florida next week and I have a lot of work still to get done. What we don’t do for a vacation! I will try to check in one more time before leaving.

Red Rum, Red Rum

Halloween Eve, the festivities begin in my house tonight! My daughter is Halloween crazy. She has been watching all the horror movies on tv for the past month. As I have written before I am not a scary movie fan and usually can’t sit through them. I did make it to the last 15 minutes of Halloween the other night which has to be a record for me. When I was growing up we would go on Saturday afternoons to the large movie house in the “city” and catch the show of the week. That movie theater closed years ago but recently re-opened to show old movies now and then. Tonight they are showing “The Shining”. I have seen parts of this on tv numerous times over the years. My daughter thinks it would be so fun to go to the old movie theater and see it in the dark on the big screen. So that is the plan for tonight. My son and a few of his friends have decided to join us so we should have a good time.
Since we never get any trick or treaters at our house we are heading to town on Halloween to pass treats out at my parent’s house. The live smack dab in the middle of town and get more then there share of little goblins. Riah took an old wedding dress she had bought at a garage sale and dyed it pink. She sewed pink and black trim on it and purchased some black net stockings and gloves and a mask. She is going as the bride of something or other. We wonder if she will ever grow out of this!

Dawn to the Rescue

I have a funny. As some of you know, every time I run into a quilting crisis I contact Dawn and she figures my problem out for me. She also gives me great color advice, etc. Last week Bonnie posted a fantastic string quilt. I loved it but immediately thought that I would want to avoid the set in seams. I thought about emailing Dawn to see if she knew how to make 8 pointed stars without set in seams but figured I had better give her a break, so I googled my question. Guess what, google led me to Dawn’s site where I got my answer. Now isn’t that crazy! So I ended up emailing Dawn anyway and she has instructed me on how to proceed. I figured before I was to start another project I need to finish some up. I have so many near the last stages and have just set them aside. This weekend was very productive for me. I finished 4 full size quilt tops, made my doll quilt swap top for my December swap and put together this little pumpkin quilt top. I also got all my little pieces sewed into blocks from my previous post and I am now in the process of tearing the paper off. That is definitely not a fun job!
Last week at Sossity’s she gifted me with this wonderful little embroidered pumpkin block. I just love it. It is so primitive looking. I fretted all week as to what I should do with it and decided that all it needed was a nice frame. It will be my next little hand quilting project.

Quilting with Dawn and Sossity

I had a great time sewing with Sossity and Dawn this weekend. Our friends Lanna and Heather were with us also. We all met up and had a slumber party of sorts at Sossity’s. She is such a sweetie and her home is just filled to the brim with quilts hanging. Her little boy Donovan is such a delight also. He is really mom’s big helper and loves playing with fabric. And I love getting together with Dawn. She is my quilting guru. She seems to know a little about all facets of quilting. I took all my “crisis projects” and she helped me through them. Thanks Dawn! I worked on making a couple of pillowcases for a Christmas exchange I am in and also some sawtooth stars in plaids, and a little wool pincushion that Dawn had given us a kit for. It felt good to actually sew again as I haven’t done much of anything lately. Sossity has a big, beautiful, organized sewing room. I haven’t seen anything like it. I took some pictures but they turned out dark. Her husband built her a large sewing center. It is just gorgeous. We set up in front of it with our little sewing tables. Lanna and Heather worked on hand projects. We also had a little doll quilt swap drawing. We are to have them done by Christmas. I already have my partners quilt planned out. Late Saturday afternoon we went to an antique mall and then onto dinner at a restaurant famous for its catfish. It was a really nice weekend. I feel ready to start being productive again!

Another Doll Quilt

I really don’t have much going on to write about! I have been dealing with aging parent issues and sick and injured kids. I didn’t even touch my sewing machine again this weekend. I have been doing handwork. I have all my pumpkins done and I am ready to move on to the black cats. I also completed another little doll quilt with scallops that doesn’t have a binding on it either. It was made from some leftover triangles from a mystery quilt I had done this summer. I moved on to a strippy doll quilt I had done a while back and it is half quilted.
We have been having record breaking temperatures. It has been in the 90’s for awhile now. It is really strange to have this type of weather at this time of year. I haven’t even thought about changing my summer clothes out yet for the winter ones. We are heading to Florida in less then a month so when I do change the clothes out I will just go ahead and pack my suitcase. This weather sure is making it easy on me!

9 Patch Quilts

Eee gads it is Tuesday and I am still sick! I can’t believe that I can’t get over this cold. I am still hacking away nightly and not getting much sleep. Even the Nyquil doesn’t work. I will be glad to get back to normal. I still haven’t put my camp stuff away and that has now been over a week ago. I have been hand quilting on a small doll quilt and watching Season 2 of All Creatures Great and Small. A BBC series from the late 70’s early 80’s. And of course working. Over the weekend I watched my Notre Dame Irish get beat up horribly again. But the Browns and Colts came out winners so that made me happy. Tonight I am going to our guild meeting. It is time to get out amongst the living again.

I have to show the 9 patch quilt a guy at work brought in to show. He recently had a daughter. He is one of 4 sons (no daughters) and the first 5 grandchildren were boys. So his daughter was gifted with the family quilt. He has a picture of the great great grandmother that made it and all the history. I just love it. The colors are still really vibrant. I did a search on 9 patch quilts and came up with a couple of free patterns I like at http://www.quiltmag.com .

Turkey stories

I should have come home from my Quilt retreat all enthusiastic and ready to go again but instead I came home with a cold and things have gone down hill from there. I have just been trying to survive the week knowing I have a free weekend and plenty of time to rest up. I don’t remember having been this sick for a long while. So with that said I still have no pictures of items I made at the retreat. I do have a picture of a fantastic little wool turkey that Dawn made me. I love it! She knows I am a turkey lover. I have written before about our pet turkey Wilbur. At one time we had many turkeys, for no apparent reason other then I just loved having them around. If you don’t like sad but strange endings I guess now is the time to stop reading. Okay, another turkey story. I first must mention that I am a dog lover. Those who know me know that I am crazy about our dog Bullvye and that he is treated as well as the children. I have always been a dog lover. Our neighbors at our old farm had a dog. I felt sorry for him in that he wasn’t well treated, they didn’t pay attention to him, he was always outdoors and would be gone for days then come home. He also wasn’t a very nice dog. He liked to visit our turkeys on his rambles. Most times he would maime or kill one. We kept building our fence up and eventually put barbed wire across the top in our efforts to keep him out. We had talked to our neighbors about it but they didn’t feel the need to do anything. One morning we heard a yelping. Low and behold the dog was caught up on the barbed wire. He had made it inside the pen but was not able to make it out. We hurriedly called the neighbors and headed out to get him. Our poor Esmeralda was dead. Neighbor arrived to retrieve his dog and made a strange suggestion to us. It seems that in olden days if a dog was killing chickens they would tie the dead chicken around the dog’s neck and lock him up. Eventually the smell of the chicken would stop him from wanting to kill them again. I don’t know if this is myth or not but he asked if he could take Esmeralda with him to give this a try. I regret that we said yes, but we did. The next day we received a phone call from him, it seems that in the night hours the dog had tried to jump the fence that was keeping him in the barn. In the process Esmeralda got caught up in it and in his effort to get away Esmeralda had choked him and he had died. I guess even in her death she got her revenge, not only for herself but for the others. Sad story but true! Okay, one more turkey story then I will end. Said dog had made a visit to our brood early one week. No deaths but 2 were messed up pretty bad. My husband had some spray that our country vet had given us to keep infection away. That Friday afternoon we came home from work to check on them and they had maggots on them. My husband immediately called our vet, he told him the situation and asked what he could do for them over the weekend, that we didn’t expect him to come out on a Friday evening. Our vet an older gentleman answered him like this, “Jeff, if you had maggots on your ass would you want to wait until Monday morning?” Point well taken, he came that night.
See you Monday!

Liberated Doll Quilt

My husband and oldest son are really close. They are both outdoor adventurer types and have spent a lot of time together doing outdoorsy things. When Jess moved to Wyoming my husband was lost. All of a sudden he started doing this stuff with a guy he works with who is 20 years younger then him. Kayaking, climbing, you name it they spend there weekends doing this kind of stuff. My middle son who is not interested in any of it started calling this man “Replacement friend”. He hit the nail on the head. My husband was missing my son so much that he just replaced him with a new one. Well “Replacement friend” and my husband have headed West for a couple of weeks. They are going to spend it with my son in Wyoming. He is taking a few days off work to climb one of the Teton Mountains with them. They will then climb others on there own. It struck me as they were pulling out of the drive that we hadn’t even gotten “Replacement friends” full name. So here I run chasing the SUV to get his name and next of kin in case something would happen. I hope they all get along.
This has left us at home with a whole bunch of time on our hands. Mariah and I had a semi-stay home weekend. Our original plan was to be home all weekend, but you know how things never go as planned. First my car broke down so we got that into the garage to get fixed and I drove my oldest son’s car that he had in college and didn’t take with him when he moved. Well it broke down so I spent part of my weekend dealing with vehicles getting fixed. Then my middle boy’s football game was called because of storms on Friday night so we ended up traveling to the makeup game on Saturday. Lucky for us his car was still running. I was able to get the binding on this little doll quilt that I have been working on. It is made from the leftover scraps of a liberated string pieced quilt I had done. I used Tonya’s free hand fans with no hoop to quilt it. These were a little more difficult then the first one I had done because of all the seams involved in this little piece. But it was fun. I love using her fan method on these little quilts. I plan on working on something a little larger next time I try them.

Ode To My Dog

Some of you may remember my “Ode To My Dog” quilt. My good friend Carol got it all quilted for me and I absolutely love it. She did such a fantastic job. If I want the perfect finish for my quilt I just have to give it to Carol as she always does perfection. On top of doing such beautiful quilting she also is a beautiful person. She leads a quilt ministry with her church. You should see the quilts she makes and then donates. I am not talking about sewing some quick quilts up with donated scraps. She is making one of a kind quilts using top of the line fabrics. She even hand appliqués some of them. They are just unbelievable and then she is willing to give them to someone that she has never met before. She is also very active in the Quilts of Valor project donating batting and her beautiful quilting to many quilts. I am in awe of all that she is able to accomplish, of her giving spirit and that she is also able to fit me in to her special place in this world and do beautiful quilting for me. Thank you Carol, I feel lucky to call you friend!
Now a little recap, the quilt is about my yellow lab Bullvye. We almost lost him late last summer to a freak accident. At that time I felt we needed to make record of him in our lives so I made this quilt. It includes 2 kitty’s on the front as he shares our home with Maggie and Zoe. The kitty I am showing is the one I placed on the back of the quilt as his best buddy is our outdoor cat Annabelle. She leads him on a merry chase most days and if he does catch up to her he will just roll her on her back and wait for her to get up and go again. The quilt is made using techniques that Tonya shares on Bonnie’s site.

C'mon Get Happy

Last night I was able to cross another thing off my list of have to do’s. I saw David Cassidy in concert! I absolutely loved him as a kid. I actually sported a pair of David Cassidy jeans and collected every Tiger Beat magazine with his picture on the front.
When I heard he was going to be at our State Fair I told my sister that we had to go. Of course we were about 35 years late but that didn’t matter. My daughter tagged along also as we promised her that we would take her to the Bucky Covington concert first. He is a country music singer that got his start on American Idol. He was really good. After his show finished we raced over to the Grandstand in anticipation of David. He was fantastic. He knew who was there to see him, Old Partridge Family fans and women of my age and he didn’t disappoint. He sang all of his old hits and all the songs that were hits for the Partridge Family. It sure was a goodtime!

Doll Quilt 2 Swap

I want to show my little doll quilt I made for the Doll Quilt 2 Swap. I had so much fun with this and hope the recipient likes it. I am calling it Summer Solstice as I received my partner’s information on June 21st and designed the quilt that day. I was told that my swap partner loves cats and dogs and animals in general. She likes cutesy type flowers. Purple and blue are her favorite colors but her house is done in sage green and brown. I tried to incorporate a little of all her loves. I hand appliquéd and hand quilted it. I had such a good time with this swap, I will certainly do it again if they have another one and I haven’t even received my quilt yet. The fun is definitely in the giving!

My Day With Gwen!

I have to tell you about my wonderful, fantastic, over the top, most excellent day. I traveled to Marion, Indiana yesterday to take my 2 classes with Gwen Marston. She is a truly lovely lady, very funny and well spoken. I enjoyed my day immensely. My first class was a little flower pot quilt. This was a 3 hour class and by the end of that class we had listened to Gwen talk about little flower quilts. We had learned her methods of cutting her shapes directly from the fabric and had cut our own shapes from our chosen fabrics, we learned her methods for bias stems and made our own bias stems sharing one sewing machine between us and had designed our own quilt and had it laid out and it was ready to appliqué before we left. I couldn’t believe all that we accomplished in such a short time. Here is a picture of my bright little flower pot quilt.
The second class was on Liberated stars. They were a little more difficult then what I thought. Here is a picture of my samples. I need to work on the points areas. I think I am now ready to actually make some for a quilt top. They are a lot of fun.
I talked to her a bit about her Liberated Quilt book and she told me that AQS will not reprint it. She offered to do a Liberated Quilt book II and they were not interested in that either. So she said that her Collaborative Quilt book with Freddy Moran is her answer to a follow up to Liberated Quilting. She also said that she has seen and has a copy of Tonya’s “wonderful liberated letters”.
It was a very rewarding day. I have always worked in a primitive style with my appliqué and she promotes working that way. She said it distresses her to see all the pain people put into their appliqué quilts these days. They have made it so that perfection is what is most important and that when you look at the antique quilts the things you love most about them is the little imperfections that you find. Can you tell I am still on my “Gwenny high.” Too bad I have so much to do to get ready for this trip coming up that I won’t be able to sit at my machine for at least 3 weeks. In the meantime I have been doodling on my post it notes fast and furiously.

50th Birthday Party

I am going to take a break from showing doll quilts to tell you about my fun evening last night. My fantastic, funny friend is about to celebrate her 50th birthday so we had a surprise party on her last night. Now this was not an easy task since she lives in Cleveland, Ohio and we live in Western Indiana. She had let us know that she was coming to town for a charity event so we got busy and started the planning. Let’s just say she did not have a clue and was totally surprised. We had so much fun. Drinks, then dinner and then out came the birthday cake. It didn’t stop there. We had planned to give her 50 gifts, but everyone had so much fun buying these gifts that she probably had closer to a hundred. Some were small and some were big. She is so witty and her comments after each one kept us all laughing. We ended with the last gift being a quilt we had made her. We were each to make blocks depicting us as a quilt maker. What was so amazing was that she guessed who made each block correctly. I had made her the folk art chicken block I showed awhile back here on my blog. Linda made the teapot block as she has a collection of teapots and Dawn made the feathered star block. We also had decided on a theme for the party of “Fifty, that was easy”. She entertained us all at quilt camp last year with one of those “easy buttons” that she would press at just the right time to get us all laughing. I made the 50 that was easy block using Tonya’s freestyle letters. The quilt turned out better then we could have ever expected. We had no rules. The colors all came together perfectly. We spent a day laying out the blocks and coming up with our layout. Linda then did the math for us so that we could make it all work, after a bit of fudging here and there and adding a few filler blocks it all worked out. So, A very Happy Birthday to my dear friend Linda G, may you have many, many more!

And Even More Doll Quilts

Can you tell that I am a little over the moon for doll quilts at the moment? I am having a lot of fun with this swap. I had my little quilt all planned out and the fabrics pulled but I hesitated to start cutting until I received my partners information. I had put Quilters Choice on mine as I would love to receive just about anything. My partner has specific tastes in colors that she would love to have. That is going to make this all the more fun! My original plan is not going to work but I have drawn up a new one and can’t wait to get started. I spent a few minutes before work this morning pulling out fabrics.
So much is happening here on the home front. Our daughter has been gone most of this month to Grandma’s and her Aunt’s homes. She is definitely enjoying her summer vacation but I sure miss having her around. My middle son is working at my office this summer. He is our social one and is never home so this has been a nice change for us. I am actually getting to spend some quality time with him and at the same time he is earning dollars for gas, movies and Taco Bell that I will no longer have to give him.
Our oldest son called last night and is still very happy with his job and home in Wyoming. The word “happy” makes it so much easier on mom!
One more little Lori Smith quilt that I have done.

More doll quilts

I am anxiously awaiting my assignment for the doll quilt challenge. It should come any day now. Thanks for all the comments on my little quilt in the previous post. It is 16 x 20 and is a Lori Smith pattern. I have done a lot of her little quilts. I enjoy hand quilting and they are the perfect size. The one shown today is also one of her patterns.
Lucy has the picture of the walls of little quilts on her blog. I have seen this numerous times before and fall in love again each time I see it. I don’t have an area that this would work in but it would sure be fun to do.
Guild meeting tonight and dinner with the girls. That is the best part of each week!

Doll Quilts

I joined the doll quilt swap. I am so excited. I love little quilts and have been making them for years. I can’t wait to see who I am paired up with. I have a design planned out but will wait to see who my partner is and if she has any particular wants in her little quilt. I hope to be able to use both wool and cotton as my idea has appliqué in it and with the deadline to ship the middle of July it only gives us about a month to get this done.
My Aunt and Uncle celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this past weekend. They had a small party at there home which is about 60 miles away. They live in a town of about 1200 people. When I was a girl growing up I got to spend 1 week each summer with them. I have such fond memories of those times. Shopping at the 5 and Dime, eating Life cereal (that is what they always had), walking up to the schoolhouse which housed grades 1 -12 to play on the playground. If only things were so simple and laid back now days. And what a milestone, 60 years together, they have been blessed!

Books and Gwen Marston

I haven’t been able to make guild all winter and spring due to my children’s conflicting sports schedule. So it was a really nice surprise to attend Tuesday evening and find that they were having a book sale from our guild library. We all were able to go to the table and choose one book then sit down. After everyone had a book we did this again 2 more times. After the third time you could get as many books as you liked. I was thrilled to be able to add the Florida Quilts and Wrapped in Glory to my own personal library, along with a couple others. It was a good night!
I am also excited to say that Gwen Marston is coming to the Quilters Hall of Fame celebration in Marion, IN this summer and teaching 2 classes. I was able to get into both, Little Flower Pot Appliqué Quilts and Liberated Stars. I have always wanted to attend her quilt retreat that used to be on Beaver Island, MI but is now on the mainland. This is the next best thing.
I am looking forward to the weekend! We have just a couple of graduation party’s and 2 baseball games to attend. I am working on a mystery quilt and a few friends are following along so I need to keep ahead to make sure all my clues are correct. I hope to get it all sewed together this weekend.

A Fun Little Quilt

I have a wonderful friend that is so much fun. I wanted to make her a little gift. One that she could call all hers and the little art quilt above is it! As most of you know I am definitely not an art quilter. Never have been, never will be! But with that said the more I thought about the little quilt I would be creating for her the more I thought it had to be a one of a kind. One that read: crazy, and just a little out of whack. Terms we could use for each other. It is not perfect, my machine quilting is just awful, but I had fun and I know she will appreciate it. She is a quilter too and would never expect this from me.
I had a pretty productive Sunday. I also was able to get the binding machine stitched onto my maple leaf quilt. Now to stitch it down by hand then I will get a picture. I am off to the baseball field. This week is our sectional showdown. My husband’s high school team could possibly meet up with our son’s high school team at some point. It makes for a lot of fun at home.
And one more note, I heard from my oldest son last night and he has already seen moose, bison, eagles and a mother bear with her cubs. He sounded happy!
A salute to all that are serving our country and to those whom have already served!

More Sailboats

I have been swamped this week with baseball and travel for work. This holiday weekend coming up doesn’t look any better for me. I was sure hoping to get to my sewing machine but that doesn’t look like it is going to happen. To make myself feel a little better I bought myself a couple books and some fabric to make a mystery quilt. I always love a good mystery. I also picked up a couple of the new magazines that were out. In the new Fons and Porter magazine I saw this Amish sailboat quilt. I thought it fit right in with my sailboat quilts I have been talking about lately. I love the colors she used in this. It says that it was made in Indiana mid twentieth century. That is where I am at. I wonder if the sailboat pattern was just popular to the Midwest.
Thanks for the nice comments concerning my son. He is settled in his new home and loves walking out his door each morning and seeing the snowcapped Tetons.

Blooming Stars

This past weekend I was able to complete a leader ender project I had going this winter. It is from Bonnie’s site and is called Boxy Stars. I decided to call it Blooming Stars as I used all greens for my stars and for the boxes around them I used all florals. It was such an easy project and I must admit I love using up fabrics from my stash. This really put the stash to good use as even the backing fabric came from it. I had quite a bit of yardage of the green Robin Pandolph fabric that I used for the border. I have no idea why I would have purchased that as it is not a style of fabric I would normally use. It worked perfectly for the border as it has yellow flowers on it and the sashing fabric is the same shade of yellow. I have to say it was nice to complete a project without really thinking about it. I spent a Sunday afternoon in January pulling the fabrics and cutting the blocks and sashing strips then I placed them in a basket next to my machine and sewed them only as Leader, Enders. It was fun to see it come together. I have moved my liberated bars over to that basket so hopefully it will be my next finish.

Grandma's quilt

I said I would post some pictures of my Grandma’s sailboat quilt so here goes. This was a friendship quilt that her and her friends worked on before she moved from Stewardson, IL to Frankfort, IN. My Grandpa worked for the RR and they moved around a lot. One of the blocks has the year 1932 embroidered on it. She made many sailboat quilts over the years, I am sure using those same cardboard templates that I used. The remainder of sailboat quilts that I have seen from her ( I have another myself) have all been tied and not quilted. I feel so blessed to have a quilt that my Grandma made.
I want to thank everyone who comments. Those comments make my day and I thank you for taking the time to do so. With that said, I have to be the worst when it comes to leaving comments. Let me explain myself. We live very rural and at this time have no other options then dial up. You can’t imagine how long it takes for a blog page to load. I decided a long time ago that I want to visit each and everyone of your blog’s regularly. In order to do so I have to spend my computer time reading instead of commenting. It takes too long for the comments page to load. So that is my excuse and I am sticking to it! Do know that even if I don’t leave a comment I am out there surfing around gaining inspiration from each and everyone of you!

Sailboats

I am sure having fun with these fans. I was trying to remember if I had quilted anything with Baptist fans before and lo and behold I dug through my quilts and found an older sailboat quilt that I had handquilted with fans. I want to tell you the story of this quilt. My cousin Bevie was older than me, she actually had a daughter a year older then I but we were really close. We shared a lot of the same ideas and a love for everything and anything that related to fiber. When Bevie passed away from cancer her husband gave me a bunch of boxes that contained crochet and tatting samples, cardboard quilt templates, patterns, etc. After going through them I found that they had originally belonged to my Grandmother. I had inherited a sailboat friendship quilt from Grandma (I will get it out this weekend and get a picture of it) and the templates she had used were in this box. I was so excited. I decided I would re-create Grandma’s quilt using her templates but putting my own twist on it. This was the result. I once wrote some thoughts on my cousin Bevie and our relationship through quilting and they were published in a book by Ruth McHaney Danner. While I was in Paducah I saw that the book is out and about again in a smaller paperback format. It is titled What I Learned from God while Quilting. It is a nice little book full of inspirational quilting stories. Find it on Amazon.

Free Hand Fans

I am in love with fans! Thanks to Tonya and her free hand fans I feel like I can actually get some tops finished now. After getting home from Paducah I felt really motivated to accomplish something but after looking at my kid’s schedules I didn’t know when I was going to be able to fit quilting in. It would have to be a project I could carry around with me. I had wanted to try Tonya’s fans for quite awhile, plus her no hoop handquilting. I had a small valentine top that I had made my daughter a few years ago. So I pulled it out and basted it really good with thread and just started marking the fans free hand with my new Generals brand sketch and wash charcoal pencil (that I love). It was so easy and since I am definitely a primitive girl I didn’t have any problems with things not being exact. I did echo quilting in the center first and then moved to the bottom right corner and started the fans from there. Since the project was small I had no problems quilting without a hoop. I have already started a second small project and once it is complete I hope to move on to something a bit larger to see if I am still comfortable quilting without the hoop. Bonnie has a great tutorial on her site. This is so easy, if you haven’t given it a try you definitely should! Thanks Tonya!

Crazy Spider Quilt

I find that even after viewing all the gorgeous quilts in Paducah that I am still drawn to the same styles. There was nothing new that grabbed my eye that I thought, “Whoa, I have to try that”. I think my favorite display was at the Museum. They had a selection of Rose quilts and they were awesome. You could get right up on them and look at the appliqué and quilting. So inspirational! I have come home to a job all day and running kids in the evenings so my time has been extremely limited but I did find the time to pull one of my favorite books off the shelf, Minnesota Quilts, my plan was to peruse the pages looking for a great rose quilt. That ended when I got to the page with this crazy quilt on it. Isn’t it wonderful! I love how half the blocks are crazy quilted and the other half are spider web blocks. It amazes me that when looking at the old quilts we see what artists these ladies were. Here I have to see the old quilts or go through books to get inspired to do something different and these ladies didn’t have these options and were creating such masterpieces. I can’t help but look at the antique quilts and the pictures of old quilts and compare them to the quilts I see in the shows today and feel that they were way ahead of us when it came to creativity and design.

More Track Meet Quotes

Some fun new track meet quotes:

1. After running the 100 meter dash, “If I had known it was that short a race I would have ran faster”.
2. After having run in a 200 meter dash, “I gave 95% tonight and my coach told me it was my best effort”. When I asked her why she didn’t give 100% she stated, “If I gave 100% I would have been tired”.
3. After having ran in the 200 meter dash and placing 3rd!, “Wow, it must have been the shoes”.
4. After practice she came home and said, “Wow, I am really tired, all they make you do is run”.

Can you tell I am loving this track meet life. After living with the competitive spirits of my boys this is total fun!

Update: Mariah must have given 100% last night as she received a first place in the 400 meter dash!!! Can you tell I am one proud mom!

Back Home

Wow, I feel so overwhelmed from my trip to Paducah. I absolutely had the best time ever! It was so fun to meet up with Lucy and Bonnie. They are both so wonderful and I swear if you didn’t know them you would think they were sisters. Lucy had some great goodies to take back to the Netherlands with her. She also brought all of us some wonderful gifts. I will treasure each and every one of them. Dawn has shown them on her blog and given excellent descriptions.
I did soooo good on holding back this year. I bought a few fat quarters, a couple of good books at the AQS $5 booth and some yardage for Mariah a couple of lap quilts and that is about it. A few stencils and patterns and I was done. I did get this cute little tea towel which is definitely going into a quilt. I had seen it and thought it was cute but passed it up. About 15 minutes later my friend Linda G. came running to find me and said she had found a tea towel that fit me perfectly. I told her I knew exactly the one and we headed back to get it. Dawn bought me a pillowcase kit with muscle bound construction workers on the fabric. I am known for buying up silly fabric like that.
I came home to a nice surprise. My husband had our contractor (isn’t that awful that we have so much work done that I call our contractor all ours!) put a french door on the west side of my kitchen. After baseball is over Jeff is going to build a deck off of it. I can’t believe how much it opens our kitchen up and it is now so full of light. I love it. But he didn’t think to cover anything and he also didn’t clean anything up so I spent Sunday evening washing every dish and scrubbing things down. I am glad he did this while I was gone or I probably would have panicked seeing a hole cut in the side of my house.
Yesterday it was back to normal. My oldest son that attends college in Illinois called to say his car had broken down. A couple of hours later my husband called to say his Jeep had broken down and he was waiting on a tow truck. Nothing like getting back to the reality of my life after 5 days of quilted bliss.

Paducah

I am off to Paducah with Dawn and Linda and gang. We are going to meet up with Lucy and Bonnie so I can’t wait! I really don’t have a large list of things to look for as I definitely have plenty already. So I hope to practice some control with the vendors. I am taking along my little inspiration book as I call it. It has different sections to it. A few are fiber and home. I cut pictures out of magazines and paste those in that reflect my interests. The fiber page should help me with unique color arrangements that I like, etc when I am choosing fabric. I will check in next Monday hopefully with a lot of great pictures.

Chicken Block

I have been working on some challenge and group blocks that I need to get done. One of them was to be whimsical. So here is my whimsical rooster. It is a Gwen Marston rooster carrying a balloon that reads “If a chicken had lips could it whistle”? I have wanted to use that Louis Stevens quote for awhile and it worked with this block. We are finally getting a break from the bad weather and have had a couple of sunny days, which means baseball for us. We have a lot of catching up to do with cancellations so we are running just about every night.
My daughter is also running track this year for her Junior High team. Let’s just say that she is not the most competitive person. Here are some of the facts from her first track meet. She ran the 400 meter race (once around the track) and the first leg of the 400 x 4 meter relay.
1. She was the only child I saw that waved at her mother as she was sprinting around the track.
2. She commented on the way home that it didn’t seem fair that during her 400 meter race they gave everyone else a head start. She had to run faster at first to catch up. (She was in lane 1 and they stagger everyone to make it fair)
3. She didn’t feel as bad about them doing this when she ran the relay as she was in lane 6 and they gave her the head start this time around.
4. She was actually getting second place in the 400 meter race but was passed at the last minute. She said the girl behind her yelled PASS, so she slowed down to let her go.
5. She wore a pair of her brother’s basketball shorts that went to below her knees as the track shorts the school supplied her were way to short for her. And I thought this girl was all about fashion!

It is actually refreshing to watch someone who is there to just have fun, the heck with winning and losing.

Doodles

Some of you had commented on my Polka Dot Garden design. I confess; I am a doodler. I get a thought in my head and immediately have to scratch it out on paper somewhere.
I have zero artistic ability so it is hard for the normal person to decipher my ideas. If I wait too long I can lose it in translation myself. Polka Dot Garden came about a few years ago when I heard the quote from Grandma Moses – Life is what you make it always has been always will be. I immediately thought that if I had to choose my life would be one big happy polka dot garden and then I put it on paper. That is as far as it has gotten. Another recent doodle comes from that silly show “Even Stevens” on the Disney Channel. Louis Stevens said “If a chicken had lips could it whistle”? I could not get that out of my mind. So my interpretation was doodled out on paper. Not showing this one as you couldn’t tell my chicken from an apple. Our guild has a challenge every other year. Our challenge for the year 2008 is to make a house quilt. I really didn’t plan on participating but a few weeks ago I saw a sign in a shop that read “home is where your story begins”. I jotted it down and within minutes had my challenge quilt scribbled out on an index card I had in my purse. Of course these are just working ideas, but I thought I would show you how my mind works. I think it would be funny to have one “big” Tonya style wonky house with the saying above it. Then my family’s names, etc. ending with and they lived happily ever after.
I have a whole book of doodles. Sometimes I try to re-draw them into bigger doodles, other times I just tape the post –it or checkbook deposit slip that has been drawn on right into the book.
I have always been a lover of words. As a young girl I would check poetry books out of the library and the write my favorite poems down into notebooks then I would carry them around with me and read the poems over and over. I then moved on and started buying books, my favorite at the time was poet Rod McKuen. I know this sounds silly, but I always have had a fascination with words. I am finding that the majority of quilt designs I doodle out are based upon a saying I have heard or a song I have heard. Okay I will stop here as I am sure this is more then you ever wanted to know about my little doodles.