Monthly Archives: April 2023

Leggings, Matching Quilts, & a New Puppy

Friends – It’s been a fun week or so around here. First off, don’t let the title confuse you. Ray and I did NOT get a new puppy!! I don’t have the patience for that. But my sister does and she did get one. He is adorable so let’s start off with him!

This is Powers. My sister has already raised three guide dogs for the blind. This cute little guy makes number four. His name is Powers and he is nine weeks old. They are in the throes of housebreaking him and hoping he will soon be able to sleep all night. It is so much like having a new baby in the house. He is just adorable and like any good auntie, I went and met him. He has that sweet puppy breath and is so heavy!! He is going to be a big boy, that’s for sure. Cathy is already working on his training. Raising a guide dog is an enormous commitment.

This face! I love his eyes and how soft he is.

OK – moving along now! H and A were here last week. We had them plus their parents for a quick over night. They were on their way to take the ferry up to Victoria, Canada for a long weekend with some of their friends. We watched their dogs while they were gone. When they were here I noticed that H had on some leggings that were way too small for her. Not that she doesn’t have pants that fit but this child has her favorites and wears them forever! I told her I would make her a new pair and she was so surprised. “You can make me pants?” Sweet girl, of course I can. Let’s go pick out a fabric. She chose this stretch knit that I used years ago to make her a dress when she was not quite two years old. (You know how it goes – it was on sale so I bought a bunch!) Little sister now wears the dress in the picture above but honestly, it fits like a tunic now. Fortunately, I had enough to make a pair of leggings for big sister and little sis both. I haven’t seen them on yet but reports are they fit well. H wore them to school last week. It was a fun project and a quick finish.

Over the past several months, I worked on this patchwork quilt. It is now a quilt top! I used a blue (leaning to gray) chambray fabric for the solids. Then went through the box of 3 1/2″ squares and chose as many as I could that looked soft and muted. There are some with deeper colors to add a bit of variety but the majority are very soothing tones. It is exactly what I had hoped for. The only issue was the darn chambray. Oh my gosh it frays so easily. This drove me nuts! When I get ready to baste this, it will take forever to clean the threads from the back side. I did use a very small stitch to ensure the seams remain strong.

When I was satisfied with the size of this top, I still had a stack of the chambray squares remaining. Instead of putting them away, it seemed a good idea to just keep sewing!

This baby quilt is the result of the extras! It is so sweet! I put a narrow chambray coping strip and then a soft green dotted border to grow it to a decent size. At approximately 36″ square, it is a bit smaller than I usually make for a baby quilt.

There are so many sweet prints in this little quilts. Kitties, butterflies, rabbits and hedgehogs can be found. I stitched in the ditch first and then did a crosshatch through the chambray. As with the lap quilt, I used a very small stitch to sew the patchwork.

The backing is an older Mode print I thrifted some years back. Because of the smaller size of the quilt, this piece fit perfectly. A pale yellow binding finishes it off well. As of yet, I am unsure where this quilt will end up but at some point, it will find a good home!

Recently there was a great course called Color Mixer offered by CT Publishing. I had posted about it a few months ago. Lots of great teachers gave one hour lessons on color. Anyone who registered for the class has access to the recordings to listen to as they like. While sewing, I have been listening/watching the classes. So much great information was imparted and I am learning quite a bit. Moving forward, when I was at my sister’s house last week to play with her puppy, she gave me a yard of the firehouse fabric in the picture above. She had ordered it not realizing the larger scale of the print and then couldn’t use it for her project. It is such a great print and I don’t want to cut it up. Instead, it will be the backing for a child’s quilt. I pulled fabrics to use to make the quilt top. The focus will be red, white and blue with orange and yellow to add vibrance. The only fabric I am unsure of is the lightest blue (just behind the yellow). I think that one doesn’t fit in. How about you? Should I remove it from the pull?

You all know I am always watching prices and can be very frugal. AccuQuilt dies can be super expensive so it is great to shop their overstock sale items. The dies are 40% off which makes the cost a bit better. To make the system even more affordable, I think it is a great idea to collect these with a friend and share them. When I am cutting, I do love using my AccuQuilt but there are plenty of times it is just sitting on the shelf. Sharing it would be super easy. Just a thought!

(The above is an affiliate link with AccuQuilt.)

Positivity Quilt Along 2023

19 Replies

Somehow another year has come and gone!! It is time to start planning for the 3rd annual Positivity Quilt Along. The Positivity Quilt Along was created by Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts to give the quilting community a fun, social way to make a new quilt for Mercyful Quilts. Each year Preeti designs a fun, easy to make, lap quilt. She shares the pattern for free and guides quilters through the process of making it. These QAL’s have been a huge help to Mercy Hospital’s palliative care program.

Just in case you are new to the Mercyful Quilts program, it all started back in November of 2018. A friend of mine is a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, CA. She explained that they gave quilts to the family of patients who were dying. The family chose a quilt to snuggle their family member under and after the person’s death, kept the quilt as a memory of this time in their life. Patty, my friend, explained how comforted the patient and family were by these quilts and I started to organize lap quilt donations for the hospital. There is much more information available if you click here.

Preeti became a loyal donor and would send me quilts whenever she could. Then during Covid, when we all desperately needed more positivity in our lives, she hosted the first QAL. I am so grateful to Preeti for her commitment to Mercyful Quilts. Because of her we have received so many stunning quilts for our families.

Positivity Quilt 2021; finished July 2022

This is the first Positivity quilt I made. It took me a long time to finish it because we moved in the midst of everything. This event garnered well over twenty Mercyful quilts!!

2022 Positivity Quilt for Mercy Hospital; August 2022

This was the quilt I made for the second QAL. I loved the pattern and the ease with which it all came together. This QAL resulted in over a dozed quilts for Mercy’s palliative care program.

Here is a sneak peak at the block the next QAL is based on. I see lots of leafy vines coming my way! The block looks super easy to make which is a good thing for me. I am not one for fussy quilts with millions of pieces!! Also, Preeti mentioned it is jelly roll friendly and I happen to have two rolls of strips sitting on the shelf!! Of course cutting your own scrappy strips is a great idea as well.

As before, the Positivity QAL will have a super relaxed schedule allowing plenty of time to make the quilt. The kick off is at the end of May and the event concludes over Labor Day weekend in September which means you’ll have all summer to work on it. We have a selection of lovely prizes that might be won by those quilters who finish and share their quilt in September! There will be link parties along the way to share progress and cheer each other on.

You are all invited to join us as we make a lap quilt for Mercy Hospital. Let’s work together to fill their shelves with quilts for patients and families who are struggling with grief and loss. We all know how comforting it can be to know someone out there is thinking of you and trying to provide a bit of solace. I hope you will sew a quilt with us! If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

(Also, if you are interested in Mercyful Quilts and want to donate a quilt but cannot commit to the QAL, that is fine too. We ALWAYS need lap size quilts. They can be scrappy, simple, complex, patriotic, or whatever you like. This particular hospital does not treat children so no juvenile themes or fabrics please.)

Central Coast for Spring Break

29 Replies

Ray and I just got back from five days with Julia in the California Central Coast. Usually Julia comes home for spring break but since this is her ‘last’ one, we decided to enjoy it with her in California. The three of us had such a nice time together. Much of our time was spent beach combing with Julia and Ray looking for rocks and me hunting for beach glass. The shores in Morro Bay did not disappoint. We left with our pockets bulging each time we walked there.

The three of us never seem to tire of beach wandering. We had some sunny days and walked in a bit of rain at other times. But it was all lovely.

Nothing like a sunset shot on a California beach.

We asked Julia if she would tour us through the Swine Unit at Cal Poly. Since she spends so much of her time there, we wanted to better understand the work she does there.

I don’t know about you, but it is such a treat to see our kids in their world. What they spend their time doing, the jobs they are so knowledgeable about, their favorite parts of their work – it lets us, as parents, see our kids as the adults they are becoming.

Julia took us through all of the various barns. Some held the boars (like the photo above). Some had the teenagers (piglets who had recently been weaned from mom but not released to run outside yet). Others had sows who currently were not taking care of a litter. There were sooooo many pigs! Julia seemed to know many of them by name and what each one was doing and why. How she could tell them apart was beyond me.

The nursery was my favorite part. When we were watching the mamas (sows) with their babies, the whole nursery was quiet. One of the sows was laying on her belly without exposing any teats to the piglets. Julia said they do this when they don’t want to nurse at the moment. The piglets started to really scream at her and she grudgingly rolled to her side to let them feed. The funny thing was once that litter of piglets was screaming to eat (and they were really screeching!) then ALL of the litters immediately began to screech. The power of suggestion, right? It was hysterical to listen to the whole barn come to life.

The piglets are so cozy when they are new. They huddle together under the heat lamps and keep each other warm.

When they are just a bit older (the piglets shown above were about 12 days old) they will do whatever it takes to find their place to nurse. Look at this one laying on top of her sibling. I watched these two for a bit. It was so cute.

As they get older, the piglets climb all over the place – exploring their pen. Mama is kept in the farrowing crate. it doesn’t look like it but she does have room to stand, stretch, drink and eat. The piglets end up on the wrong side of her and will then climb up and over to return to the side of their mama that provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I didn’t get any pictures that show this but on (most of) the males there were two little slits where they had all been recently castrated. I asked why they didn’t stitch up the opening but Julia said the environment in which the piglets live isn’t sterile so they would be sealing bacteria into the cut. Instead they just apply antibacterial on the incision and let it heal. It looked so clean and the piglets just ran around like nothing was bothering them.

On another afternoon we drove up the highway to San Simeon to watch the elephant seals. There is a protected area where they congregate in large numbers.

At this time of year, it is the females and the babies who are on the shore. They sure have a hard life – lounging on the sand day in and day out. 🙂

As always, it was nice to get home yesterday. The next time we go down to San Luis Obispo will be in June to celebrate Julia’s graduation. How wild!! Her college experience was less than traditional considering the hiccups due to the pandemic but she is definitely ready for the next phase in her journey.