Blogger's Quilt Festival

This year's entry for the Spring Quilt Blogger's Festival belongs to my Mother-in-law Linda...or at least it will eventually, the top has been finished for some time now, it was even sandwiched and pinned.  Then I tried to put it on my machine for quilting and it really was just too big and bulky to wedge in there without fighting it throughout the entire process.  Perhaps it is a candidate for hand quilting, that is when I gather my resolve and give it a whirl!  I'm just not sure if I should start on this one the first time out!
Anways, the story behind it goes something like this: Linda has had leukemia for about 14 years now and only just in the last 2 years has had to do any real chemo to treat it, I had bought Eleanor Burne's book Egg Money Quilts and saw the version that she made of this in yellows to depict sunflowers for a wedding quilt. Well, Linda happens to adore purple...and once I put it all together, the flowers reminded me of echinacea blossoms (which consequently is a supplement that is known to boost the immune system) how perfect!! I remember when we found out her diagnosis we were all full of gloom and doom and prepared for the worst, but not Linda...nope, she is a testament to will and inner strength, not to mention abiding faith in the Lord.  She told us all that she had too much to live for to succumb to her illness, she had gradchildren to see graduate and get married and great-grandbabies to love.  So now in 2 weeks, my oldest son, her second oldest grandchild, will graduate from high school and she will be here to celebrate with us, just as spunky as ever!!! And it is my prayer that she will see her goal through to the end and that I will kick myself into gear and get this quilted for her so it can infuse it's strengthening powers...Finally, thank you Amy for hosting this years festival...it's your hard work and determination that allows heartwarming stories and those things that inspire us to make the quilts that we do in the first place to be shared amongst us all

Do you ever...

Feel like voting yourself off the island? This week has been extremely emotionally draining...and I'm there, let me tell you...I never in a million years thought that something as simple as a couple of pieces of fabric missing off of a quilt could cause such discontent...well, I volunteered my time and pieced this quilt in conjunction w/some women at my workplace (none of which have ever completed a quilt themselves) and in the upper portion of the light blue, there was supposed to be appliqued two bears and 3 trees...and it just amazes me that the absence of those 5 items can ruin a couple of friendships...honestly it makes my heart sad...so vote me off the island if that's what you need to do...I give up, valuable lesson learned...

Marathon Quilting at it's finest/ Not quite a Friday Finish...

Woo Hoo!! I finally have a finished project to post!  It's been awhile since my last report, mostly because there just hasn't been anything to really show for my efforts.  I have started things and as per usual, lose my enthusiasm and move onto the next inspiration. There is nothing, however, like a deadline to inspire completion regardless of enthusiasm or lack thereof. Three weeks ago, a meeting was had to set the end date for this quilt (May 16 being the presentation of Susie's quilt day) and having plenty of time, or so I thought, I relaxed and waited for the quilting bug to hit me.  Well, I ended up in the ER last weekend, so no progress was made there, which left me a week to get the quilting and binding done.  Tuesday evening, I wound bobbins, cleaned the lint out of the bobbin case, installed a new needle and set to work with stippling...can you say yuck? The thread color was all wrong and my stippling was nothing less than uglieness...so out came the seam ripper and I tore those stitches out, a total waste of an evening.  Wednesday evening brought a new color of thread, new winding of the bobbins and loopy stippling, lots and lots of loopiness, about a third of the quilt in loopiness...being pleased with my progress, I took the quilt off the machine and laid it on the bed...and realized that the green thread that matched the backing fabric looked as if a child had scribbled  all over the light portions on the front of the quilt, again, ugliness and the arrival of the seam ripper. Thursday brought the realization that this quilt may not be presentable by Sunday. That, however, was not a scenario that could be entertained...so I caved and took 4 hours of precious vacation time on Friday to finish ripping out the offending stitches and to start anew.  By 1am Saturday morning, I could see light at the end of the tunnel and hope was renewed, so I went to bed.  Back to work by 9am, it was bound, washed, dried and photographed by 8pm that evening and delivered to a co-worker who was attending the Sunday morning party at Susie's house.  With nothing better to do now but to relax, I poured a glass of wine or three and celebrated the evening in the backyard on my newly laid sod with my DH and pups...BIG sigh of relief!!! Next on the agenda? Ummmm, well...get this house ready for graduation in 19 days...YIKES!!!

A Little Progress Made

Friday morning dawned like any other...I got hubby off to work, (he wasn't happy to be awake) the kids didn't want to go to school...especially my youngest who is 13.   He doesn't ever want to go to bed at night and the "I have a stomach ache" excuse is used at least twice throughout the week.  Well, Thursday night he came into my room after lights out claiming he was nauseous...he was pretty convincing!  Clammy skin & goose-bumped, I administered the Pepto and sent him back to bed with a bowl, just in case.  He didn't say much in the morning, so I figured things had passed, to school we went, I dropped him off and told him to call me if he got pukey again, with the "hey, it's an early release day and a long weekend" pep talk, I drove home and finished my pre-work ritual.  I had no more than rounded the corner out of the neighborhood, when the school called me to come pick him up (big sigh).  I called my Sgt. to let her know I wouldn't be in and started planning my day at home. Here is what I came up with

I made 9 blocks with red before wondering if a less traditional color would be more to my liking...upon asking my husband which color he liked best, he wisely pondered the blocks on the wall before answering, "How many do you have done in red?"
Ohhhh, he is funny, funny boy!!! "That is NOT what I asked", said I.  "Okay, I like the green". I have to say that I agree with him! Heck, what would a quilt of mine be if I didn't have a moment of indecision I ask you??  On a slower note...I all but have the first row hand sewed together on my Grandmother's Flower Garden!! That makes me pretty excited to say the least.  Not much indecision there, I gotta say that I am pretty pleased with the color combinations on this one...and  with that, I will leave you.

Saturday Stress Relief

My internal clock must have gotten tweaked somehow.  I have NEVER been a morning person, I can't emphasize that enough...I really mean NEVER, not when I was a kid, not even when I had babies. I used to work graveyard in a potato processing plant as a QA tech while I was pregnant with both of my boys and like me, they are both nightowls. These days, I am a Monday-Friday 9-5 kinda girl. My DH, however, has been working 6am-4pm Thursday-Sunday for the last month or so (his days off vary from month to month) which means that when the alarm goes off around 4:45am... I hear it, he doesn't.  Several smacks to the snooze button  later, he finally decides that he really has to go to work, but alas, I am wide awake by then. This doesn't make a girl like me, who enjoys sleeping in until 10am on a Saturday very happy...but there it is just the same.  My body wants to cuddle up with my pillow and a dog or two and forget that an obnoxious noise ever disturbed my slumber, but my brain is on fire and sleep is but a fantasy!  So to take advantage of the opportunity,

I have been going into work for a little overtime these last past few Saturdays. I was all set to do the same...but not today...no today, I contemplated the paperwork that needed processing and just couldn't do it, nope! Instead, I remembered that I have a young man that we call B around the house who has been waiting 2 years (cringe) for this to be quilted...

and so it was laid out on the livingroom floor, layered, taped and pinned and then it hit the sewing machine...it was then that I quickly realized that my machine quilting skills are pretty rusty!!!

Having completed about a third of the quilt this afternoon, the thought of picking out all those stitches have kept me from deciding to fix the walking foot onto my machine to do some straight line quilting.  I am very happy with the back though, while searching my stash for the backing flannel (which happily had already been pieced to the needed 84x74) I located some leftover blocks that were quickly stiched into a medallion of sorts to add interest. With any luck, I'll have B's quilt nap-worthy by Monday...(keeping my fingers crossed that I don't run out of thread before payday)

Weekend Excursions and Swaps in Progress

I am proud to announce, that my no sew block swap squares are cut out, packaged and ready to mail.  "Louisiana" was the square that I finally chose and despite the fact that flying geese are not one of my favorites, I'd say that this endevour wasn't all that bad and am quite pleased at how it turned out...

Next on the agenda is the modern siggy swap...I've completed a third of the required 101 squares, but will definitely be working on the rest this long holiday weekend and will hopefully have them ready to mail along with the first swap!   Progress on these projects were only slightly interrupted by a little excursion with one of my best friends and her husband (Kathy was the maid of honor at my wedding almost 19 years ago) to the quaint little Bavarian village of Leavenworth. Honestly, the place looks like a postcard!

 This weekend was the Ice Festival, though we really chose to go because of the long holiday weekend. Saturday afternoon was absolutely beautiful once the fog wore off, we wandered amongst the shops, snapped photos of the architecture and the scenery of the park along the Wenatchee River and slogged through the snow enjoying the brisk 35+ degree weather. Though I have spent many summers camping in the mountains along the Icicle creek just outside of town, I have never made a visit during the winter months and now know what I have been missing!   The boys could only take so much of the retail experience so it was decided that a field trip was in order. Kathy, John, my husband and I piled in the car for a drive along the Chumstick highway which winds its way through the mountains and farmland, finally descending on the tiny town of Plain (which is fairly close to Fish Lake and Lake Wenatchee)

As my DH drove, we enjoyed the scenery and even convinced my DH on occasion to stop (on only a couple of blind curves) so that Kathy and I could quickly jump out of the car to snap pictures of the awesome views...he is very indulgent of my impromptu photo opportunities! This was not always the case earlier in our marriage... We awoke to 3" of new snow Sunday morning, which made all the kids happy...the local sledding hill hadn't seen anything fresh in awhile, so the heavy wet accumulation was more than welcome for snow sculptures and more importantly for padding their landings!  

All stitching progress was not lost because I was enjoying a road trip. I took the opportunity to work on my GFG hexies in the car and in the hotel room...even more fun was had by visiting the Craft Warehouse in Wenatchee and Quilter's Heaven in Leavenworth who were both having a sale...much to my enjoyment, I came home with some Kaffe at way less than regular price!  It was good to come home though, even better to find the house in one piece after leaving the kids to fend for themselves overnight.  They were each busy though, the Son #1 ventured out goose hunting in the VERY early am, (he and his cousin got skunked) then  ran home to catch some quick z's before he was due at school to manage a doubleheader for the varsity girl's basketball game later in the early evening. Son #2 spent his day tearing up the ski hill at Bluewood outside of  Dayton, snowboarding with a friend and his family. He called midday to report that the snow was rock hard!  He found this out when he took a hard fall and bruised his tailbone a bit, but thankfully, it was nothing that a dose of ibuprofen couldn't manage, oh to 13 again!!

With the New Year Comes Ambition....yikes!!

Has it really been almost a month since I wrote a post, with projects included?  Wow! I guess time really does fly at the blink of an eye!  Anyhoo, with the New Year came not resolutions per se, more like an itching to do something, perhaps a bit or guilt after reading about everything you all accomplished over the holidays, or maybe at the very least I wanted to make some progress on a UFO.  While I haven't exactly gotten anything finished in that time, I have made a bit of progress on my hexagons. Ahem...okay, okay, this is where I fess up and tell everyone that I lost/misplaced the pale yellow background fabric and was actually (more than) a bit distressed to think that it was gone forever. 

My adventure begins a few months ago, when I bought a yard or so of this pale yellow dotted loveliness to audition for the light outer border of my GFG and decided that I liked it, went back to JoAnn's to get the yardage I needed only to discover that another someone liked it almost as much as I did and there was only two and a half yards left on the bolt...that was October 24th.  Completely typical of me, I usually either throw my bags in the back seat of the car or bring it in the house and toss it on my sewing table or on a pile of something in my bedroom and figure that I will deal with it later. (No, there will NOT be a photo montage of my sewing table OR the pile of something in the bedroom, believe me you really don't want to go there)
While I was waiting for later to come along, my husband got the cleaning bug (yes...lol, I will freely admit how VERY lucky I am and will even more freely admit that he can clean house like nobody's business!) somewhere in the fray, he tossed the bag (without looking in it, I'n sure) in a box destined for garbage day. I can't really say what happened next, but normally he NEVER would throw away my precious fabric!  I am thanking my lucky stars that it wasn't Tuesday night! ...now 3 months later I go to find it and it's nowhere to be found, I get frantic and enlisted his help, saying more than once with total confidence, "well, we know that you wouldn't throw it away..." Anyways, I love a happy ending!!
You may have noticed that there are some new buttons on my sidebar, thus we come to the abitious portion of the New Year...I have joined 2 new swaps!! The no sew block swap with Welcome to my World and the modern siggy swap with P.S. I quilt, this is in addition to the swaps that I normally participate in on swap-bot...cringe...sigh...oh well, looks like I am going to be really busy this next month!!

Oh, and did I also mention that while I was waiting for my lost fabric to reappear, that a thunderbolt of inspiration hit me in the form of crochet? Attic24 has a wonderful tutorial on crocheted hexagons...no really, go ahead and check it out, I'll wait while you do...Isn't her blog just lovely?? I am totally loving her use of colors, in fact, I haven't been inspired to crochet in years!! She used Rowan cotton yarn while I purchased the ever-dependable redheart supersaver skeins @ $2.28 and let me tell you, those puppies are huge!  I will be crocheting my little heart out...or as long as my wrists hold out...