Yearly Archives: 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick post to wish everyone in the US a very Happy Thanksgiving. For those that don’t celebrate the holiday, I wish you all the best as well.

So, who is cooking and who is not? This year I will be cooking, along with my husband. I have a 20 pound monster of a turkey in the fridge and all of the ingredients for everything else. At least I am fairly sure I do. After seeing the craziness in the market yesterday, I can say for certain that if I don’t have it by now, it won’t make its way to the table.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. We have so much to be thankful for and it is wonderful to have a day to enjoy family and just be grateful. For us, the day tends to be centered around food and family which are two of my favorite things!

About two weeks ago I was browsing Pinterest looking for ideas for the table this year. I found this simple wooden box filled with candles and small, decorative pumpkins. I showed the picture to Ray and asked if he might have time to make one for me.

The following weekend he came through with his version and it far surpassed the picture I had shown him.

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The wood is the most gorgeous walnut. He had a number of scraps left over from a table he was commissioned to make for my sister last year. I am so happy with it. I love it with these autumn colors.

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Ray really loves looking for pieces of wood with exceptional grain and this was no exception.  He was sorting through his ‘stash’ looking for just the right pieces. (You know how we are in a fabric shop… wandering, thinking of possibilities, feeling fabric to see what the hand is like? That is Ray in a hardwoods shop. He goes a little nuts with all of the wood and all of the inherent possibilities contained within. And I totally get this.)

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I look forward to using this piece over the years. It is like a blank slate and can be decorated for any holiday. It is pretty awesome having a creative guy and it is fun to have this in common with him.

I hope each of you are able to spend time with your friends or family and celebrate all that we have to be grateful for. Thank you for your virtual friendship – I so enjoy our community.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Linking with Ladybug Blessings, a link up for handmade craft.

Sunday Stash Update

It has been a long while since I have purchased a set of precuts from one fabric line. Usually, I am too frugal to just buy fabric without having an intended project already in mind. Knowing me well, two of my kiddos recently gave me a great birthday gift; a three month membership to one of Pink Castle’s monthly fabric clubs. It is pretty amazing that a 25 and 28 year old guy when hunting for a gift for their fabric obsessed mother were fortunate enough to stumble upon Pink Castle’s fabric club options during a Google search. Actually I should say it was fortunate for me, huh? (Last year for my birthday, my three boys gave me a great gift of fabric. You can read about that one here.)

The boys selected the club featuring Art Gallery fabric. Although with the options offered at Pink Castle, they couldn’t go wrong. I would have been happy with any of them. Last week I received my first set. It is gorgeous.

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This is a line called “Dare” and was designed by Pat Bravo. It is modern and bold. The navy and dark pink are great together, especially mixed with the other shades of blue, pink and mustard yellow. I love it.

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So pretty!

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I am thinking about how best to use these. The pieces are fat eighths so not terribly large. My current idea is to make some sort of plus quilt design where the pattern of pluses (is that a word?) is surrounded by a coordinating solid, probably gray or yellow. I haven’t made a plus quilt yet and love them. I kind of see it where the pluses are clustered up in the right corner, working their way down to the below the midline and then a solid fabric surrounding them. It would be a great piece of negative space to practice some quilting.  We’ll see, I need to play around with it a bit more.

This is the perfect gift for me. I think the three month subscription is just the right amount. It will give me three new projects, which will take me well into the new year (and that’s just around the corner!!)

Hope you are all enjoying your Sunday. Yesterday I worked on a holiday project and it is coming along well. I’ll post pictures sometime next week.

Linking to Molly Sparkle’s Sunday Stash.

Tokyo Subway Map – Glitzed Up

I can now say I have my first fabric challenge under my belt. This was a fun, though somewhat intimidating project and it feels good to have finished it. Overall, I am very pleased with the result. Remember I used a portion of a pattern I purchased from Oh Fransson (ElizaTbeth Hartman) called Tokyo Subway Map. You can read more about this project here. What do you think? I love the red with the Michael Miller Glitz fabric. It makes for a bold and festive quilt.

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The spiral quilting was a breeze.  I practiced once on some scraps and then I went for it. Using a walking foot and Aurifil thread, only the first spirals in the center were challenging. After that, I just followed along the previous spiral with the edge of the walking foot. It was quilted in no time at all. I went in concentric circles as far out as I could.  When I hit the edge, I echoed out through the corners.

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Basic black made a great binding. I thought about using my leftover Glitz fabric and creating a scrappy binding but this quilt is busy enough as it is. Black toned things down a bit. Joining the ends of the binding strips tends to make me a tiny bit crazed so I looked at a tutorial from Rita over at Red Pepper Quilts. Ta Da! It worked and my binding lay flat and fit perfectly.  Thank you Rita!

I used just about every last scrap creating the backing. I really like the back side and consider this mini to be reversible. All finished, the quilt measures at 24″ x 24″.

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I will submit this to QuiltCon as part ofparticipating in the Michael Miller Fabric Challenge is the stipulation that each of us enter our project for consideration for QuiltCon. I took some time and listened to some webinars hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild for tips on entering quilts. I don’t have huge expectations about this being accepted. I have seen some pretty amazing projects on Instagram and there are more that are not yet being shared. But it feels good to get this project under my belt as a way of testing the waters.

There are a few spots that are less than perfect and I don’t think that the quilts that are accepted have corners that don’t match up. Like the one below.  Sigh. I am ok with it. Overall, it looks good and I really like it.

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This has been a great learning experience. I will certainly do it again, if the opportunity presented itself! Now, what to work on next…..  Probably the blocks for the last row of my RSC15 project. November is quickly coming to a close!!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts. Links are at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Fabric Challenge Progress

I have mentioned before that I am participating in the Michael Miller Fabric Challenge, sponsored by the Modern Quilt Guild. There are many quilters out there that signed up for this last spring. The deal is that you receive a collection of fat eighths from the new Michael Miller line, Glitz. The goal is to make a quilt of some sort using a minimum of one piece of Glitz and any other Michael Miller fabrics. (All fabrics used must be Michael Miller.)

My fabric arrived in July last summer.  At first glance, I wasn’t too wild about the prints. There is a whole lot of shimmer in this fabric. I quickly ordered some solids (gray, red and black) to tone down the collection. The gray turned out to be a bad match. It was very flat when paired with the fabrics. The red and black work fine though.  After receiving all of the fabric, it sat on my sewing table for weeks. I kept looking at it and trying to figure out what I wanted to make. I was feeling less than inspired.

Time was moving along and I knew I had to get this figured out. Luckily for me, my sister Patti was in town two weeks ago and she was a great help. She has a great talent for design and decorating. I pulled out the fabrics and we started going through my Pinterest boards. Talking through this with her, I decided to make a mini that was angular, with a sharp pattern. It didn’t take too long to decide to use the Tokyo Subway Map pattern, designed by Elizabeth Hartman. I purchased and downloaded it right then. Can’t beat the instant gratification of internet shopping!

Image of TOKYO SUBWAY MAP QUILTS pdf quilt pattern

This is a great pattern that I have admired for quite a while now. For this immediate project, I decided to make four of the blocks from the pattern, using 2 1/2″ squares (which is smaller than what the pattern calls for.) Reducing the size of the squares made it possible to make my quilt finish out at 24″ x 24″.

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I love the bright red background with the black, silver and white prints.

IMG_20151112_4118The red sections could be a great avenue for some fun quilting. I (nothing new here) keep going back and forth on a quilting plan. I have sketched, looked through my books and perused Pinterest but still am not set on what I will do. I am concerned that the busy pattern and fabric calls out for tight straight-line quilting. But then I look at that negative space created by the red sections. If I quilt just that portion, leaving the printed sections unquilted, that could be pretty interesting. It would make an nice pattern on the back as well. (Speaking of which, I better get busy with the back. I will have to piece it with a very limited amount of fabric.)

I know I can rely on you guys for input. Feel free to give me an opinion. The other issue is time. I need to have this completed and photographed by November 30. All participants are required to submit photos of their project by the last day of November.

Hope you are all enjoying Autumn. We Californians are totally loving the rain that we have been gifted with over the last couple of weeks. They are forecasting for more over the weekend. Yahoo!

Linking to Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts as well as Sarah from Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Link ups to these amazing quilters are available at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

 

Finished My Pennsylvania Blocks

It seems like it’s been a while since I posted a finish. But I have one this week! Getting back into the sewing room has been so nice though it took me a while to really get going. I decided to make the October blocks for my Classic Stitches row quilt. Being so close to the end of this project, I didn’t want to get too far behind.

The color for October was brown for RSC15. The block that Mari chose for October was the Pennsylvania block. I think this was in honor of her recent move from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. It worked perfectly for me too.  I have a strong fondness for the state of Pennsylvania.  When my boys were little guys, we lived there for two years. We were in State College and I loved everything about that town. So making a set of Pennsylvania blocks was perfect for me.

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Unfortunately, I got off to a rocky start with these guys. Mari always posts the cutting plan for various size blocks when she writes her tutorials. I thought it would be fun to make a row of 3″ blocks. Turns out it wasn’t fun at all. 😉  The block is very simple to make but when you are going for a 3″ block, it means using little pesky pieces and honestly, we just didn’t get along.  I struggled along and got two blocks made, throwing away all sorts of attempts along the way. After a fair amount of ripping, cutting, and grumbling, I gave up and made six inch blocks. They went together with almost no effort (or at least it felt that way after my tiny block debacle.)

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Isn’t that a cute row? So traditional. Much like I thought State College was. I remember thinking it seemed like everything was more grounded, more down to earth in State College, as compared to living in California.

The row fits right in with the other rows of classic blocks that I have made this year.

IMG_20151105_4079At this point, I have ten rows completed. (For some reason, I didn’t grab the purple or the yellow rows when I went outside to take pictures. So, they aren’t shown here.) My next decision is whether or not to make the November row. With these ten rows, I have 62 inches in length (two of the rows are 7″ blocks and the rest are 6 inches.) I am going to sash the rows because my not-so-precise sewing style means the blocks won’t line up perfectly and that can be disguised with some sashing. This will add a bit more length. How long do I want this to be?  (It will be 60″ wide.) Any ideas???

The week buzzed by and I am happy to have this checked off the list.  My Etsy shop is getting busier and I need to make a few more things for holiday shopping so that jumps to the top of the list now. Along with that is the Michael Miller fabric challenge that I am doing with the Modern Quilt Guild. That project is due on November 30th so I need to get cracking on that. It is well underway and I am sure I will have a post for you with pictures sometime next week.

Enjoy the weekend!

Linking to Amanda Jean over at Finish It Up Friday.

Wednesday WIP

You know that feeling when you have been down with a bug for a while and you finally feel better? That happy feeling of being able to have normal days, doing normal things? And it feels so good to just be back to normal?  Well that is kind of how this week feels.

It has been three weeks since Mom’s heart surgery. This week she has made some really big improvements and is feeling so much better. She looks wonderful and is up and doing little things here and there. Consequently, we all feel better! I don’t know if this is how all families are, but when one of us is down, we each have this sympathetic /empathetic thing that causes the rest of us to be down. And we know this about each other. When Mom was in the hospital, moving from bed to chair to walker was intense. It was so hard and it really hurt. The first couple of times the nurse came in to tell her it was time to get up and move from chair to bed, Mom would tell us to leave the room for a minute.  She would say, “If you watch, you’ll hurt too.  No need for that.” She knew how hard it was for us to be watching her.  But now, three weeks later, she is on the road to recovery and looking great.  Such a relief! We are endlessly, completely grateful for her good health.

Today I did normal stuff. Enjoyed cleaning my house and catching up on laundry! (Pretty exciting, right? Honestly, it was.) I also decided I had better do something with the apples that have been sitting in my basement for more than a month now.

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My in-laws have a small apple orchard and we went and picked apples a long while back. I made a large pot of applesauce with the last of the apples. Yum. Our family loves homemade applesauce, chunky with lots of cinnamon.

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Even our hens were happy about this. They get all the scraps. Lucky girls.

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I have also been back in the sewing room. Finally! This week I have been workng on my blocks for the brown row of my Classic Stitches BOM quilt. The blocks are so cute.  I started out making 3″ blocks. This was two weeks ago. My brain couldn’t deal with the small, fiddly (as Mari says) pieces. I just couldn’t come up with consistent blocks. It took me forever to get two finished. So, I gave up and went back to 6″ blocks and they are great.

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I will get these finished up in the next day or so and stitch them together. The last color of the year is bright green. This is an easy one for me – I love green and have a big tub of scraps to go through. I need to go check in with Mari and see what sort of block she has planned for us this month. It is really crazy that we are coming to the end of this project already!

Lastly, while making applesauce today I was watching the finches. We have lots of them. This little guy settled in way up at the tiptop of our spruce tree.

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Hope you are having a wonderfully healthy week filled with the ordinary pleasures of life.

Linking to Let’s Bee Social – the link is at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Quilter’s Planner for 2016

Last summer I had the good fortune to join up with a group of fairly inexperienced quilt bloggers for the 2015 New Quilt Blogger’s Blog Hop. It was a wonderful experience and I learned so much from the other bloggers, and even more from the four leaders of the Blog Hop.  One of the projects that resulted from the Blog Hop was the Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop.  About seventy quilters designed an original block using fabrics donated by Fabri-Quilt. Together, this made for a wonderful series of creative, original blocks, each of which was posted with a detailed tutorial.

One of the leader’s of this year’s Blog Hop, Stephanie Palmer, of Late Night Quilter, took it a  (giant) step further. She has created a Quilter’s Planner for 2016 (and isn’t it crazy that we will be heading into a new year so soon?) Stephanie put hours and hours of thought into the creation of this calendar. She included both monthly and weekly pages, quilting references and tools, and pages to write detailed quilting plans for your projects.MonthlySpread

There are pages to write notes, doodle designs, and plenty of room to organize your quilty life and your family life. This is perfect for me. I am a list maker and keep a list on the kitchen counter that I create at the beginning of each week. There are always four lists containing my goals for the week. I use one each for Sewing Etsy Product, Blog Posts to Write, Personal Sewing and Quilting and Family/Household.  Stephanie thought of everything and I think this book will cover all of it for me. She collaborated with Kelsey at Lovely and Enough. Kelsey created artwork that is interspersed throughout the planner.

In addition, there are a number of quilt patterns from numerous pattern designers included (including Pat Sloan, Amy Garro, Yvonne Fuchs, Lee Heinrichs and Kitty Wilkin among others).  Finally, on each weekly page there is a gorgeous original quilt block from the Fabri-Quilt Block Blog Hop, with instructions included. And guess what… my block is included!!

This calendar will be the perfect holiday gift for that quilter who has everything. Or a gift from you, to you! I just ordered mine and it should ship the first week of December. I am so excited to receive my copy.

If you are interested, you can click here to order.  Alternatively, you can also click on the Quilt Planner button on my page. (I do not receive any compensation for the purchase of the planner.) Stephanie is self-publishing the books so she is using Indiegogo as her tool to sell them. These lovely planners are available for order until  the end of November. The planners should ship in the first week or so of December.

Mixed Bag of Updates

I want to give a couple of updates on past posts. They are both heartwarming to say the least! Here goes:

Remember the post about the yellow and gray elephant quilt that I made for a friend several months ago? To recap, my daughter-in-law’s brother and his wife had been trying to have a baby for a very long while. After many miscarriages, they finally decided to take an alternate route and use a surrogacy firm. This firm is located in India and it was a huge undertaking but it speaks to their determination to have a child. You might want to read more about it on my blog, here, or on Margot’s blog, Find Your Spark. (I have given you the link to her home page, rather than a specific post. There are many posts on the process as she went through it and it is a wonderful read.)

Here is the latest! Margot and TJ’s daughter, Emmerson Kate, was born in September! It is hard to believe that she is already one month old. This baby is such a miracle. Margot and TJ traveled to India about a week before Emmerson was born so they were there for the birth of their baby. That was such an exciting day. Pictures were being texted from India to the East Coast and then to the West Coast. The first pictures of Margot holding Emmerson brought tears to my eyes.  It took a few weeks to process the paperwork and get Emmerson’s passport but as soon as that was completed, they were able to fly back to the States and settle into their new life as a family of three.  Margot sent me a few pictures of Emmerson with the quilt I sent her.

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She is just adorable. Here she is on the back side of the quilt.

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She is such a sweet girl. I wish this family joy and happiness. Margot continually says that she is blessed to have Emmerson. That is certainly true.  It is also true that Emmerson is so blessed to have such wonderful parents in Margot and TJ.

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Update number two is about the Ashes to Beauty project.  At the end of September I wrote a post about a project to help the quilters in Northern California who had lost their homes and belongings in the Butte Fire. I put out a call for quilters to make pastel colored, 10″ blocks with a heart appliqued on each one. It was wonderful to see the number of readers who made blocks and/or put the word out to others. One reader posted it on a Facebook page for a quilt guild in Ohio and they responded with blocks. A few days ago I received an email update on the project. Here is what Kerri (the project coordinator)had to say:

THANK YOU to everyone who made Ashes To Beauty heart blocks.  We stopped counting at 500 and there are still many more.  We have more than enough to make 9 quilts for ladies who lost everything in the fire.
We received blocks from all over the country and as far away as New York, Ontario, Canada, and Hawaii.  Needless to say I am overwhelmed at your generosity, kind words for me and the ladies who will receive the quilts and the obvious love and care that went into your blocks.  Also for generous cash donations for battings and backings and supplies, etc.  One gal who was evacuated but her home did not burn made lovely labels for each quilt. 
Again- THANK YOU so much.  God does truly console the hurting and turns ashes into beauty and many times uses us to accomplish it.   We have begun sewing the blocks together and they are wonderful.
I’ll take some photos and send them along later.
I think it is just awesome that they received so many blocks! Thank you to all that participated and sent in blocks or told others about the project!  If I receive pictures of the quilts, I will post them later on.
Finally, last but certainly not least, thank you all for the prayers and good wishes you offered up for my mom. She is really doing well. It seems like she gets a bit stronger each day. We are all so happy to see her up and walking (still with the support of a walker). She is now doing the work of healing and resting and going to myriad post-op doctor visits. My sisters and I are taking turns staying up at Mom and Dad’s to help with errands, cooking, etc. In a strange way, this is sort of the silver lining for me. We don’t all get together very often, but with everyone coming and going to help out at mom’s, I get to see one, if not two, of my sisters each week. (Mom and I live about 15 miles apart.) I think I need to convince my mom to keep this visiting daughter/nurse thing going on as long as possible! 😉
Well, it is the end of October and I have done little to no quilting. Clearly I didn’t complete my ALYOF goal for this month! I had hoped to sandwich and quilt the Kaffe Fassett jelly roll quilt I made. But it is still hanging in the closet, untouched.  I had also planned to complete the brown row of blocks for my Classic Stitches BOM quilt. I have completed only two of those little blocks so far. But it feels like life is calming down now and I think I will be getting back into the routine soon. So what have you accomplished this month?? I would love to hear.

Gratitude – Part 7

It has been a long while since I have written a gratitude post but, this week life is all about gratitude, so it feels like the thing to do!

A little more than one week ago I posted that I would be away from my sewing room for a while. My mom was in cardiac ICU. She had experienced some odd symptoms and after navigating the maze that is our country’s current insurance system, was finally scheduled for a stress test. They told her that she had a blockage in one artery and would need to have a stent placed. This didn’t sound great but it was ok, she could deal with this. Two days later, she checked into the cardiac outpatient center at a hospital about an hour away. Once they got started, they said a stent wasn’t enough, she would need a triple bypass. This was crazy because mom has been lucky to enjoy very good health. At 80 years old, she volunteers in so many capacities in our town, plays bridge, goes to the gym twice weekly, is in a book club, and the list goes on. We all had a hard time adjusting to the idea that her heart was in such bad shape. Once they got started on the bypass, they found they also had to replace her mitral valve. The day following surgery, Mom suffered a gastro-intestinal bleed and had to have a procedure to correct that. Two days later, the cardiac surgeon found she would need a pacemaker to regulate the heart beat. So, another procedure to place the pacemaker. It was horrible for mom.  She has always been a trouper though and she came through each of these events quite well.

Yesterday my sisters and father brought mom home after 13 days in the hospital. We are all filled with gratitude that she came through this series of events and is home again. We are also thankful for the amazing technology that made all of this possible. It is so amazing what  they can do! A balloon was inserted and ran up into Mom’s heart assisting it until she could be scheduled for surgery.  When the valve was found to be non-functional, it was replaced with a bovine valve (I didn’t know this was even a “thing” that was done. A valve from a cow?)  Next on the list of things we are grateful for are her ICU nurses. Wow! These people are so highly skilled and they took such good care of mom. She had so many IV’s, tube, monitors, and different drugs to keep in balance; it was a huge process. But for the first couple of days she had one-to-one nursing and throughout, she received excellent care. They took care of our family as well. Answering our endless questions (some of them more than once, I am sure.) Reassuring us that whatever was happening was normal or would pass soon. Truly amazing. While we were at the hospital our family was in constant communication. My sisters and I would text updates and questions. I was texting with my own children, giving them Grammy updates. I had a list of a few of mom’s friends who wanted daily updates as well.  So I suppose I am grateful for the technology that allowed all of us to be in constant communication during a very stressful time. It was such a weird time. If I was at the hospital, I felt better about being able to see mom and observe all that was going on.  The days that I wasn’t there I felt restless and sort of agitated. It was hard to get anything done. The communication with whichever sister was at the hospital at the time was really helpful. I know my sisters felt the same. So, yes, we are grateful to Apple and Verizon both!  😉

So……surprises are the best, aren’t they?  Well, in the midst of all of this misery that our family was dealing with, I received the sweetest, most unexpected, surprise in the mail. It came on a day when I was really tired and just so unhappy. I stopped by to pick up the mail (we have rural mailboxes and they are about 1/2 mile from the house) on my way home from the hospital. Inside was a package from Janine. Janine is an amazing quilter who writes a sweet quilty blog over at Quilts From the Little House.

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I knew what it was when I saw the package. She had recently posted about making some mug rugs for gifts. I certainly didn’t think one was going to be sent to me though.  I sat in the car and opened it up and cried some more (lots of crying over the past couple of weeks!) Her note was so sweet and the stitching on the tiny quilt so perfect. It really touched me.

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I have been using it over the past couple of days and I tear up each time. It reminds me how lucky I am to have found this community of kindness. I have enjoyed exchanging emails with Janine ever since we found each other’s blogs over a year ago.

Maybe I will put it up on my wall with my other mini’s. Then I will see it whenever I am sitting at my machine.

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Thank you Janine! I so appreciate your kindness.

Linking to Let’s Bee Social.

 

Over at Blossom Heart Quilts Today!

Hi Everyone –

I know I have been incommunicado lately. I will write more about that a bit later on. But I wanted to let you know that I am guest hosting Sew Cute Tuesday this week for Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts. With all that is going on in my family’s life right now, I forgot about this. I saw some feedback in my email and remembered this was Needle and Foot’s week for guest hosting. Lucky for me, Alyce is very organized. She asked me to write my post and give it to her by October 6th. Phew. If left to my own devices, it would have been overlooked and I would have been so embarrassed!

Anyway, please be sure to check out Alyce’s Sew Cute Tuesday Link up. So many talented quilters link with her each week and there is always inspiration to be had!  Hope to be back to regular posting soon. I miss you guys!!

Wishing everyone a wonderful week.