Category Archives: Family

Love and Good Luck Rolled Up in a Quilt

This is the greatest story and it led to the sweetest quilt I have made yet. Get your tissues ready!

My daughter-in-law, Naomi, has a wonderful family. (Side note, isn’t it cool that when my son married, I gained not just my DIL but also some really nice friends from her family??) Included in her family are her mom, two brothers and her sister-in-law. Just today I finished an adorable quilt for her sister-in-law, brother and the baby they are expecting in September. The story of this baby is pretty darned amazing.

Margot and TJ (these are their real names – Margot blogs at Find Your Spark and uses their names publically so I have done the same) have been trying to have a baby for years. This has been a really rough time for them. Margot has been pregnant numerous times and has miscarried at various stages of pregnancy. (This post tells part of her story.) It has been really painful for both of them. I can relate somewhat to this sort of pain. I miscarried a child a long while back. It was my third child and I lost the baby at 14 weeks. It was a painful experience that took some time to grieve. But this happened to me only once. And it was after having two healthy babies and before having two more healthy babies. Margot has gone through this repeatedly and has not (yet) had the joy of holding her baby or bringing the baby home. That sort of pain and frustration is truly torturous.

After years of this, they decided last December to take an alternative route to their goal of having a family. Margot and TJ are working with a surrogate. You can read all about their decision and experience on her blog – the story of the surrogacy begins with this post. The surrogacy agency they are using is located in Mumbai, India. To say that 2015 has been an exciting year for them is a huge understatement. They went to India at Christmas last year and were able to achieve a successful surrogate pregnancy. They have been in constant communication with the agency and the surrogate mother and everything is going along perfectly. Their sweet baby is due to arrive in September. Margot and TJ will be going back to India in several weeks to wait for the birth of their baby. I am so dang happy for them.

When a quilter knows a new baby is coming there is only one way to respond, right? Today I mailed off this quilt to New York and I am hoping that it brings great joy to Margot and TJ.

I know that they are incorporating elephants into the baby’s nursery. Elephants are a symbol of good fortune in India and I am pretty sure that Margot and TJ will be forever grateful for this woman who has given of herself to birth their child for them. Good fortune? Oh yeah. In India, elephants represent Ganesha, one of the most important gods in Hinduism. Ganesha is the god of success and the destroyer of evil and obstacles – perfect! For more details on this, here is a site to read. With elephants being symbolic for their family, I used that as the theme for the quilt.

The pattern is a simple stripe with the two focus fabrics cut in widths ranging from two to six inches. Just like the green and white quilt that I made a few weeks ago, I have the stripes arranged from narrow to wide widths, in alternating order. The pattern is Firefly, by Canoe Ridge Creations. I went with a color scheme of gray and yellow. They don’t know the sex of the baby so these colors are gender-neutral. Finding this elephant print, “Oh Boy” by Riley Blake was a perfect choice for the backing and binding.

Those tiny elephants are sweet in every way. The yellow dot on the front is from the “Mixology” line by Studio for Moda. I can’t honestly remember which gray I used. My favorite part of the quilt is the elephant that I thread sketched at the bottom, on the widest gray stripe.

To create this little guy I took the backing fabric and made of copy of it on my printer/copier. I kept enlarging it until the size felt right. Then I cut him out and traced a rough shape right on to the quilt. (Actually I made several of them on practice fabric first.) It is hard to tell from the picture but I used three different shades of gray thread so that the elephant would have some definition. I love him. (Why do I keep calling the elephant ‘him’? Is that an omen for Baby Guy? We will know in just two short months!)

To quilt this piece, I used organic wavy lines that were sewn with my walking foot. I didn’t space them too close as I wanted it to be really soft when washed. The binding is double fold as usual, and I machine stitched it to the front and back. Going for baby-proof durability here. After I washed it, the quilt measured 36″ x 36″. Hopefully this quilt will be used and washed and then used some more. It will hold up well for outings to the park, rolling around on the floor, tummy time, and then eventually fort making, pretend play, and so many naps.

A quilt filled with good fortune and love all rolled up in one for a very special baby.

Linking to Lorna at Let’s Bee Social and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Double Nine Patch Update

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Hey everyone! I finished the vintage double nine patch quilt top. Yay for staying with it and getting it done. It is a good size for a lap quilt. Finished, it should measure out to about 60″ x 70″. I am really happy with it and look forward to getting it basted and ready to quilt.

The quilting decision is an important one due to all of the negative space that this quilt has. My FMQ skills are improving but aren’t stellar. What to do?? My thinking is that this sort of traditional quilt calls for FMQ over straight line quilting (I usually associate straight line quilting with a more modern project). Because this will be auctioned off at a 1940’s themed fundraiser in October, I feel like I need to do some decent quilting on it. I need a foolproof idea! Please help me out here and send ideas my way! Do I do an easy all over stipple? If so, do I stipple the main portion and do something different on the borders or just cruise right over the borders too? I have plenty of time to decide. I don’t have any batting just now (well, other than the piles and piles of batting scrap – I could probably stitch those scraps together and make a piece large enough for a king size quilt). I need to spend some time on Pinterest and hop over to a few sites (The Inbox Jaunt and The Freemotion Quilting Project come to mind) for inspiration.

One more thing…. Totally off topic here, but yesterday my quilt model and I went to the movies and saw “Inside Out”. I had high expectations for this new Pixar film since the reviews are glowing. Yikes, I was disappointed. Both of us kind of shook our head on the way out, wondering what the hype is all about. I found it really preachy – sort of like they were forcing a lesson down my throat. Neither my daughter nor I could figure out what age group this was aimed at. The plot doesn’t seem suitable for early elementary school ages and it seemed very trite for older kiddos. Did I miss something? Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for it? Just curious what others are thinking about this movie.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Needle and Thread Thursday. Links to these sites are available at the top of the page, under link ups.

Not a Lot of Sewing Going On

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This has been a week spent in the car rather than my sewing room. Some months ago, I enrolled Julia in a class at our ‘local’ state university. They hold summer academy classes in a range of subjects for high school age kids. She wanted to take the Forensic Science class. This academy is very well done. She has a professor from the college and only 16 students are in each class. She has been working on extracting DNA from samples of blood and learning about how things are done at a crime scene. She loves the class. This girl loves her science.The university is about 1 and 1/4 hours from our house. Her class lets out at 5:00 which is, naturally, prime traffic time so the commute home is long and tedious. It has been worth it though to hear the stories of what she is working on. Choosing to live in the rural area that we do means driving your kiddos all over kingdom come in order to expose them to all the experiences a child needs.

We spent one night in a hotel near the university to avoid a couple of the drives. I brought my small sewing machine and set up shop for a day and an evening.

I made a bit of progress on a new project I am just starting. I am using some of the blue fabrics from the vintage collection that I posted about here. I cut strips from the blue scraps and joined those in sets of three strips. Each stripset was then sub-cut into strips that are 1 and 3/4″ wide. Those strips were then joined to make tiny 3″ nine patch blocks. The little nine patch blocks are the cutest. I will be combining those blocks with solid 3″ blocks into a larger, double nine patch to end up with a 9″ block. I have made about 25 of the baby blocks and need 100 so I am just getting started.

Hopefully I will get caught up this weekend. It is supposed to be fairly warm so I don’t see that I will be outside very much. Spending the week in Sacramento with my daughter really made me appreciate living in the Sierra Foothills. Sacramento is so darn hot – it was 107 degrees today! In addition, the traffic is lousy. We are so lucky to have nice cool nights and no traffic. I am thankful for our little town in the mountains.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Linking to Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl and Let’s Bee Social.

Charitable Donation Winner

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Hi Everyone! Happy Tuesday. Wow, as always, summer came quick. Never fails that the temp jumps from mild to crazy hot in a matter of days around here. We were floating along with lovely 78 degree temps and it is in the high 90’s this week. I am not a fan of hot weather. Makes me ever so grateful for the A/C unit. The older I get, the more I dislike hot weather (thank you menopause.)

One positive side to the heat is that my husband’s berry patch is going crazy. We have blueberries and boysenberries that are ripening and they are so yummy. Right now we are picking about 5 pints daily of the two combined (more boysen’s than blue’s). Ray is all about making jam so I suspect that he will take over the kitchen on Sunday and put up jam. When he does this, I happily become chief bottle washer and he does the rest.

Thanks to everyone who entered my blogiversary celebration giveaway by leaving me a comment about their favorite non-profit. I truly enjoyed reading through each comment and found it interesting to see what everyone holds near and dear to their heart. If you haven’t read the post, I offered to donate $25 to the winner’s favorite charity. My sister, Patti, then piped up with an offer to match my donation, bringing it up to $50. Because, you know, she’s awesome like that. 🙂

And the winner is……….. Number 9, Sarah Goer!! Sarah was one of the first virtual quilty friends I made when I began this blog last summer. A talented quilter and writer, Sarah is also a stay at home mom to two little ones. I enjoy her blog and especially love reading about the projects she does with (and for) her kiddos. Her son (about 5-ish years old) is on his second quilting project already! Do yourself a favor and take a peek at her blog, Things I Make. Sarah left a wonderful comment as an entry to my giveaway. See what you think:

“Happy blogiversary! What a special and unique giveaway. And thank you Patti for contributing as well! The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has a special place in my heart as my friend’s 18-year-old daughter (who I’ve known since she was 2 or 3) is living with CF. She just graduated from high school and is on her way to college. I admire how hard she has worked while also having daily treatments and regular hospital stays to deal with her CF.”

In honor of Sarah’s friend, $50 has been donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation!

Finally, here is a peak at the quilting I am doing on the batik Honeymoon quilt. It is a traditional nine patch pattern with each block being made up of nine 5″ charm squares. The center of each nine patch is a blue square which I quilted with a large flower of one sort or another.

I have all twelve of the flowers done and just started the filler pattern to go around the flowers. I am doing a leafy vine.

It is kind of difficult to see the pattern against this particular batik because is it so busy and leafy. This is the only square I have done so far though. I think I should be able to get this finished up fairly soon. Seems like it is going quickly.

That’s it for now. Wishing each of you a wonderful summery week! The season for iced coffee, iced tea, iced water… get the idea? Stay cool and enjoy.

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks, Sew Cute Tuesday and Freemotion by the River. Links to all of these sites are available at the top of this page, under Link Ups.

June has arrived

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OK – while it doesn’t really seem possible, June is here. School is on its last legs and summer is around the corner. So crazy. Julia graduates from 8th grade (though this year the administration has quite vehmently changed the terminology from ‘graduation’ to ‘promotion’). Whatever it is called, it is a big change and she will move on to high school in August!

We spent Saturday and Sunday in San Francisco. Even though it is a quick 140 miles from home, we rarely go. This weekend was my daughter-in-law, Naomi’s, graduation from medical school. She is officially a doctor and we couldn’t possibly be more proud of her. She has worked so very hard over the past four years.

The ceremony was touching and, with about 100+ graduates, small enough that we could reallyt enjoy and see everything. Naomi will be starting her residency in Diagnostic Radiology in a few weeks. This will take them to Burlington, Vermont for a good four or five years. I haven’t been to Vermont so this will be a good excuse to visit.

I didn’t accomplish a whole lot in the sewing room last week. I made sure to do a bit of FMQ practice. I am trying hard to fit at least a little practice session in each week. This round was just a quick rectangle (7″x 8″) with a loopy figure eight running side to side. I used a tutorial by Rachel over at Stitched in Color.

This side looks reasonable. I purposely quilted with a light gray thread against the blue so i could see my results clearly. A bit uneven but not too terrible. The other side shows a bit of pulling or uneven speed, whatever it is that gives that “eyelash” effect on the curves. I put an Insul Bright scrap in the middle and bound it off to be used as a hot pad. I even machine stitched both sides of the binding, very quick.

Being the first of June, it is time to link up to Sew Bittersweet Designs for ALYOF. I have one last quilt top to finish up so that is the goal for the month. I made a batik nine patch back in August of last year. (Posted about it here.) I love this top and was sort of waiting until my quilting abilities improved before I put it together. Enough waiting. I am going to finish it this month!! The plan is to free motion it with some sort of all-over pattern.

While that is the main goal, I have others. (Of course I do!) I will make the row for June for my Classic Stitches row quilt. The color is light to medium blue for RSC15 which should be fine. I have quite a lot of blue scrap. Hopefully, I can continue to do a bit of FMQ each week, though quilting the batik quilt will probably make up a few of my practice sessions. Finally, I have a quilt idea that will use some of the 1940’s vintage fabrics that I recently received. I want to use this as a donation quilt for an event in mid-October. At minimum, I need to get the cutting done for that (hopefully I will get some of it pieced though.)

OK, that’s it for me – what’s on your list for June???

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks, ALYOF, Sew Cute Tuesday and Freemotion by the River.

Lazy Sunday

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Yesterday was a busy day so to balance that out, today is not! I am not a fan of jam packed weekends. This morning I was up early and spent quite a while in my sewing room cutting pieces. I cut everything I need for the May blocks for my RSC15 row quilt. The color is dark green and I am hoping to piece those blocks (at least some of them) later today. I also cut the binding strips for the Alison Glass miniquilt that I am trying to finish up. I should easily get that binding taken care of as the quilt is only 24 x 24 inches. Then I cut the pieces for a cute little zippered pouch using the scraps from the AG mini. I will send that along to my swap partner with the quilt.

Yesterday was a little crazy. Julia had a science/math competition that she took part in. She did well, placing 7th (they did a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4 ‘honorable mentions’) She was happy to place within the honorable mentions. The test was really difficult. After that we spent the afternoon at a picnic for the incoming freshman at her new high school. She had a great time meeting her new classmates.

We got home at about 4:00 and I was wandering around the garden, letting the dog run around a bit since she was cooped up all day. So many things are blooming right now. My garden is definitely a spring garden. It really peaks in May. Looking at the peonies and iris, I nearly tripped over this huge snake. It startled the heck out of me. Because of it’s color and the pattern down the length of it, I immediately looked to its tail to be sure it wasn’t a rattler. We have quite a few snakes around here and a somewhat large number of rattlesnakes. (The mascot for Julia’s middle school is the “Rattlers” if that gives you any indication.) The garter snake on my grass was a good four feet long. While snakes don’t scare me too much, it is somewhat disturbing to nearly step on one. I went to get my phone from the car (we’d just gotten home) to text a picture to Ray but by the time I returned the snake was gone.

Deciding it was time to go inside, I called Lady (our dog) to come in. She came bounding over to me and had the head of a rabbit hanging from her mouth. Snakes I can handle, dead animals – not so much.The sight of this made me gag. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to do about it. I yelled for her to drop it and she looks at me like, ‘are you kidding?’ She ran to her crate in the garage and put her treasure in the crate. Yuk. To be honest, living on acreage, we have our share of dead animal tasks to deal with. But that is Ray’s job. I want no part of it. Unfortunately, Ray was up at the house in Downieville. I texted my advisory board, aka my sister’s, for their advice and hmmm…. surprisingly, it wasn’t all that helpful. A lot of ewww, gross, and call the neighbor for help. Gagging all the while I managed to deal with the yuk in La dy’scrate. But the visual of my dog’s trophy piece stuck in my head for a long while (it’s still bouncing around in there, if you must know). I went inside and had a glass of wine which is unusual for me (hypoglycemia = no alcohol). Julia was teasing me; dealing with the horrorific experience with alcohol Mom? Eighth graders think they are so wise.

Enough of that nastiness, I need to move on, get over it, clear my mind! Let’s talk about quilt shows and silent auctions instead. That topic is much more pleasing. Two weeks ago was our guild’s local quilt show and I worked at the silent auction table. We had so many wonderful donations and I bid on quite a few. I wasn’t there at the end of the day to actively try to outbid people on the items I wanted but I did manage to win two items.

Below is a stitchery of bamboo done on dark green batik. Green is my favorite color and I have quite a bit of it in my home. I love the simplicity of this piece. It is hanging in the dining room.

The other piece that I took home is a whole cloth mini quilt. It was made by a friend of mine and I love it. She did a lovely job with the quilting. The fabric has a wonderful shimmer to it. I use a lot of lavender in one of our bathrooms and plan to hang it in there. I need to put a sleeve on it first though.

When I was working the silent auction table it surprised me how little activity there was. I think it wasn’t in the best place as far as traffic goes. Also, I noticed that most of the activity came at the end of the day when people would actively try to win items and out bid other people. It seems like there must be a way to encourage more activity during the day. I would really appreciate hearing how other guilds handle the silent auction at a show. Would it work to have the bidding for certain items end mid-day rather than at the end? Seems like that might encourage that active bidding process to happen at different points throughout the day. Plus people that don’t stay at the show all day long could have the fun of trying to win items before they left. Thoughts? Please leave me some hints on this in the comments section.

Gratitude-Part 6

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I haven’t done a gratitude post for a couple of weeks but this week I have one to share. I am grateful for these two people.

Mom and Dad are celebrating their 60th anniversary tomorrow. Sixty years! That’s a long time to live side by side with someone. They are truly soulmates and their marriage has long been an inspiration to me. I am grateful for the example their marriage set for me and my sisters, over the years. With the high rate of divorce in the US, we are very fortunate to have grown up with parents that stayed (happily) married. They enjoy and respect each other, which created a solid home life for their six children.

Research shows that growing up in a home where the parents marriage remains intact, decreases the likeilhood of the childrens’ future marriage ending in divorce. Having a healthy marriage modeled for you teaches a person what it takes to successfully marry. It appears to create a stronger commitment to the institution of marriage. The study showed that this increased level of confidence was more apparent in females than males who grew up in homes with intact parental marriage. I was blessed to grow up in such a home. Thank you Mom and Dad.

This is a fun picture of the legacy they created. Taken at Thanksgiving of 2012, there are a couple of the grandchildren missing, so the group wasn’t quite complete. Since this picture was taken, two more great granchildren have been born so the group is even a bit bigger now. I think our family (their six children, our spouses, their 21 grandchildren, and their eight great-grandchildren) tallies 45 people now. Little did they know what they were starting when they said “I do” back in May of 1955.

Linking to Yvonne over at Quilting Jetgirl.

Squeaked in a Finish

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Crazy busy around here this week. We are definitely making progress on the house up in Downieville but it takes time and effort. Much more on Ray’s part than mine but still… On Wednesday I took a drive up to the house (it takes just over an hour’s time to get there) to let in a guy to finish the drywall. He textured the walls which took the better part of the afternoon. While he was working, I took advantage of some gorgeous weather and went for a hike. I was a little bit nervous about hiking alone. I don’t have cell reception and no one knew where I was going. I played it safe and didn’t go too far down the trail. I did find a new one though and the water was gorgeous. With the drought, the river is extremely low. Even so, it was breathtaking in spots.

Spending the afternoon on my own up there was really nice. I haven’t honestly spent very much time alone. Four kids will do that to a person. When I got back to the house I was texting with Ray and sending progress pictures of the work being done. We decided I should spend the night so I could: 1.) Continue this alone thing that was going so well – and – 2.) prime the bedroom once the texturing dried. The only issue was that I didn’t bring extra clothes as this was completely unplanned (spontaneity isn’t my strong suit either, so this was a good thing for me to do!) My husband had extra clothes up there. He is a planner and is always well supplied with whatever he needs. I dug into his stuff and came up with a lovely pair of jeans and a tshirt of his to use for painting. Just as a point of reference, he is 8 inches taller than me and probably 80 pounds heavier. As long as no one came to the door, I was pleased with the look I was sporting.

I know, it was an amazing look. I got the room primed and ready for paint. We will go up later this afternoon and finish up the painting. One step closer to having a bedroom. Wahoo!

While all of this was going on, I did manage a quick finish. I completed the chevron table runner.

The quilting is inspired by an older quilt along on www.christaquilts.com. I reversed it though and pebbled the white sections and straight-lined the chevron. I didn’t want to pebble over the print fabric or it would have been too busy. The pebbling looks great on the white though. I combined the two stitches and ran some straight lines along the border with circles interspersed on those lines.

You might remember that the chevron fabrics are from a Joel Dewberry line. The backing is called Sphere, a part of Moda’s Zen Chic line. That was scored during a 50% off sale a while back.

As usual, the binding is my favorite part. I used Daysail, by Bonnie and Camille. I love the stripes. I had originally planned to make a bias cut binding but decided I liked the standard cut better for this project. It is adorable; the blue and red stripe plays well with the Joel Dewberry prints. This is one of three table runners that I am making for my April goal for ALYOF. The second one is nearly done as well, so I am making progress. This table runner is listed in my Etsy shop.

Saturday is my 17th wedding anniversary. Time has flown by. We are celebrating in high style, because that’s the kind of couple that we are. The plan is to paint the bedroom and hopefully finish up some electrical work in there. Jealous, aren’t you? Enjoy your weekend, whatever the plan!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts and Let’s Bee Social, my two favorite linky parties. You’ll find these links at the top of the page, under link ups.

Gratitude – Part 4

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We’re home! My husband and Julia and I spent a long weekend up at the Downieville house working. It was really productive and, consequently, tiring! We made so much progress though.

Over the weekend Julia and I painted the basement level bedroom. It had dark paneling on the walls – ick. It made it feel like a cave in there. We primed the paneling and then painted it a sage green. It looks wonderful. I forgot to take a finished picture but do have this (iPhone) picture which portrays the wonder of having a 13 year old that is already 5′ 7″ tall. She did a great job rolling the top half of the walls. Made me jealous of her height.

Also got the valances and pleated window shades installed in the kitchen.

Another project that I tackled was painting the picket fence that runs along the front yard. (Yep, I felt like I belonged in a Mark Twain story.) It was in terrible shape. Most of the fence needed to be scraped paint and then primed and painted. This took up the better part of two afternoons but was well worth it. Here is a before picture.

And after:

It looks so clean and fresh. We did a relatively good job of not getting paint all over the little rock wall. See the little orange tulip peeking out? It is the only one in a sea of iris. Gorgeous though.

Photo credits to Julia for the three pictures shown above!

The best part of the weekend, and my gratitude focus for this week, was the new friends we met. You might remember that this is a tiny town. At it’s peak, during the California Gold Rush in the 1800’s, the population peaked at about 5,000 people. Now there are about 300 people that live there full time. From what I can tell, the school district there has about 50 students (grades K through 12). Pretty tiny. Spending the afternoons outside working on the fence gave me the opportunity to meet a few new people and everyone was kind and gracious. They seemed to truly appreciate that we were fixing up this little house.

The day after painting the fence, Julia and I checked out the library. It is adorable. Tiny but with a reasonable selection of books and because it is part of a larger library system, the patrons have access to a much larger selection. People can “order” books from the larger library and they are delivered to the local library. But best of all was chatting with the librarian (Cheryl) and guess what? She is a long arm quilter. What do you know! Immediate connection there as we talked all about quilting. The local guild, the Mountain Star Quilters, keep a library of quilting books in the public library which is a fairly impressive collection considering the size of the guild. As we talked quilting (and bored Julia) another woman (Linda) came in. I remembered meeting her briefly when I attended the quilt retreat in Downieville last October. (I posted about that here.) The three of us visited for a bit and and Linda showed me a book she had brought in. It was Tula Pink’s City Sampler book. We talked about it and she said she had decided she didn’t want to use it, and would I like to have it? I love Tula Pink and have looked at her beautiful book numerous times, wondering if I would ever really make the blocks in it. Seems like fate, right? There was the book falling into my hands. Clearly I am meant to make these blocks.

This adds another project to the list. I will use the 1/2 yard collection of Floriography, a Riley Blake fabric that I won from Doe Street Fabrics a few months ago.

I need to add a few solids to it but no problem there. I think making a block or two a week will be a fun way to use the book and the fabric.

Back to the kindness of these women. It never ceases to amaze me what a friendly group quilters make. Meet a quilter in the store, instant rapport. Run into a few in the library, new friends. Both women talked about the local quilt guild. They have about 30 members and meet one afternoon each month. I am going to attend the April meeting and see if I can start participating in their guild. I belong to our local guild as well and it is a challenge to get myself to the meetings, so we shall see. Luckily the schedules of each of the guilds seem to be opposite of each other (quilt show dates, challenge quilts, etc) so that will help. For sure, joining this second guild will be a great way to meet new friends and for that I am thankful.

Finally, just so you don’t think the weekend was all work and no play, here are some pictures from a hike along the river that Julia and I took. It was a gorgeous morning.

We are fortunate to have found our place on the river. It is a treasure for which we are so grateful.

Linking to Quilting Jetgirl’s Thankful Thursday and Needle and Thread Thursday and Let’s Bee Social (links to these are at the top of the page under Link Ups.)

Happy Mother’s Day to Me

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Last year I got such a cool Mother’s Day gift. It may strike you as odd that I am writing about it 10 months later, but bear with me. In April of last year, my son and daughter-in-law were home for a weekend to attend a wedding. Andrew overheard me talking about wanting to learn to use a long arm. There is a shop about 40 miles from my house (everything is 40 miles from my house) and when I was there I found out that a person could take a class on their long arm and then rent it for $20 per hour. This sounded great to me. Just seemed like a fun thing to learn and a nice way to see if I would like to work on a long arm. Being a thoughtful guy, Andrew decided to send me a gift certificate to cover the cost of taking the initial class. I was so surprised to get this in the mail the following month at Mother’s Day.

In theory, this was such a great idea. I just could not get it to happen. Certainly not for a lack of trying however. This shop is more than a bit flaky. I won’t mention any names, but it is basically the only LQS in the Marysville/Yuba City area. There, now you can avoid it if you are ever in the area. When I got the certificate I scheduled the class. I called them at the end of May and was told I would have to wait until August for the class. Ok, no big deal. Come August, they call me and tell me they are so very busy that they have to reschedule to October. A bit frustrating but I am nothing if not patient (ha!). So I schedule for October 22nd. October rolls around, and guess what? I get a call on October 21st telling me that they have just returned from a huge show and the long arms aren’t set up and blah, blah, blah. They cannot actually reschedule me during this phone call and could they please call me back? Fine I huff at them, call me back. Are you surprised that I never got that phone call. Five months have now gone by and no call. I did leave a message or two between then and now, but I am fairly certain I am not going to get to take a class.

Now there I was holding on to this gift certificate to a quilt shop. Hmmm…. what to do, what to do? I called a quilty girlfriend last week and asked if she wanted to come along to this oh-so-poorly run LQS. Always up for a quilt shop trip, she agreed. My mission was to splurge on a pile of 1/2 yard cuts of solids. My stash is woefully low on any solid fabrics. I was pretty darn excited. I told myself I could not go over the amount of the gift certificate though. (Remember, I have incredible will power when it comes to fabric shopping.)

Here is a one (Kaufmann) collection that I purchased.

I love the texture in these pieces. The colors are so deep. Look at the violet piece on the right. Gorgeous.

On to another aisle for more traditional solids. These are all Kona solids. Since I don’t have projects lined up for these, I just selected colors that I like to use. I have no doubt that I will find lots of fun quilts that will include these hues.

Sooo pretty. I just love the way they look all stacked up. I don’t really need to sew with them, I can just look at them sitting there in my sewing room and it brings me pure joy. 😉

Now another funny thing about this shop is that their pricing was wildly erratic. The first batch of textured cottons were all the same price and they were a bit spendy. But the selection of Kona solids varied in price from $4.00 per yard to $9.99 (crazy high, in my opinion) per yard. When the owner was cutting the fabrics I pointed out the price differences to him and asked why Kona solids would vary like that. He had no real answer. He said, “I guess the cheaper ones have been around the shop for a while.” What? It made no sense to me. But really, it didn’t surprise me considering my experience with this guy over the past ten months.

No matter, I got to indulge in a stack of gorgeous fabric and celebrate Mother’s Day 2014 all over again! And get this, I nailed the cost! I was over by eight cents! Thank you Andrew. 🙂

Linking to Molli Sparkles for Sunday Stash (even though it’s already Monday!)