Cleaning....or not..

I am trying to clean my sewing room.  My Easter request to my husband for a sewing room maid...was denied.  Evidently Zoey did not get the memo, because she wants to help..help chasing my old cats..that is.

 I am also trying to keep cat hair off of fabric,etc.  Again a loosing cause.  Sigh...and my ironing board...double sigh...

I went to bed late after finishing Tanya's potholder last night and made the mistake of leaving out the basket of vegetable fabrics. 

Ok, Milito..I give up.  I just wash all my projects.

Saying "Thank you" with a potholder..

My mother's volunteer appeared from seemingly nowhere...She just showed up one day at the facility and now for a month has spent 5 hours each day 4 days a week with my mother.  I think an angel sent her.  A 73 year old retired oncologist, she immigrated 3 months ago from Russia.  I can imagine the stress of retiring from such a job, but to immigrate too. Her two daughters live in the States.  Because she is a doctor, she reads and writes English.  She does not speak it.  She cannot drive, work, speak the language.  She is taking English classes.  Between her kind of English and my college Russian, we get by.  In one month, she has become everything to us.   I want to give Tanya a million dollars. Instead I made her this potholder from some of the Japanese fabric I have been carefully guarding in my stash.  I only have love to give...and a potholder.

"Good morning" Tanya...Thank you!

Sunshine heart quilt top number 2 and..sunshiney links:)

I am delighted to have finished this second Sunshine quilt top.  At the sit and sew yesterday, I spilled my diet Coke all over the blocks so last night I had to wash them before sashing them today.  Ugh  These quilts are fun, but a quilt is not a quilt till it is quilted and bound..

Below are some very cute links!!  Just love them.....

Straight Stitch Society and Curious Quilter

When I visited my mother tonight she had been asleep most of the day.  She had no recollection at all of the dopamine being so weak yesterday that her Parkinson brain couldn't send its signals to her mouth to talk and her throat to swallow.  I was able to feed her 1 tsp of crushed chicken potpie and three tsps of crushed cooked apple with vanilla ice cream. She chatted away and when I left she was in bed reading her New Yorker.

Heart quilts and giving back

My mother always says that to cheer yourself up, you need to do something for others.  So, thanks to yesterday's Guild sit and sew, I was able to prepare some heart blocks that others had made.  Today I put these into a quilt top.  I belong to the Sunshine committee in our guild.  We put together 7 and a half inch heart blocks into quilts for Guild members who are sick or injured.  Sometimes it is a challenge to arrange the variety of "7.5" inches:)

 This outside border I got from the Springs sale last month.  Oh, it was so hard for me to cut it because I love it...but just listened to myself and did it the "Nike way"!  Now it will go off to our Terri for quilting.

It is getting harder to get a good picture in my backyard.  Spring has brought so much grown foliage blocking out the light.

Antique Yellow Basket quilt to cheer my soul...

On Thursday I was trying to cheer myself by walking through the Sleepy Poet Antique mall...It worked when I saw this.  I put it on hold and sent a bargain request to the vendor with no reply at all.  Yesterday I decided that I had to have it anyway and got it.  Unfortunately it has some fold lines and a quadrant faded, but that doesn't mean I do not love it.  I have a rescuing heart:).  This quilt is all hand pieced and hand quilted in the fan pattern.  The fabrics look hand dyed and totally Amish.  The backing is a thin flannel.

My sister and I are trying to give each other times free to relax and chill so we can deal with our Mother's decline.  That is how I got to go to the Guild's sit and sew yesterday.  It was great fun.  I picked up my treasure on the way home.  Last night my mother was unable to swallow and unable to move her mouth to talk with the muscle decline. She also got her first bed sore from sitting with her tailbone and thin skin.  Just when I thought in the evening that it was all over, she sat up and asked for her papers and told me to move some flowers around.  Parkinsons...stop and go and stop and go and stop and go...hanging here on the edge .

The day..

I was soo very proud of myself today.  Last night I finished the CEU's I needed. Today I washed all my winter sweaters getting them ready to put away. I learned how to use my Evernote and I was thrilled with myself practicing free motion quilting on flannel.  Until...this!.  ..UGH...I ruined my expensive Supreme Slider and it was taped down..And then my husband decided to pressure clean the deck instead of all the nice honey do things I had planned for him...He said.."What are all those sweaters doing on the deck..they have to go!"....Oh, dear...my great day...

This is one of my basted $5 tops from the Spring's sale.  It did all work out in the end..all but the Supreme Slider, that is... 

And the mother update...suffice it to say..yesterday she went in her wheelchair to Lunch Bunch at a Chinese restaurant.  Never mind that she cannot eat Chinese or swallow it.  She initially said that she was too tired, but then decided that another chance to go out may not come her way..so she went.  Today she had her hair done and Wednesday she ran her poetry group.  She is like the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead.  When she is good, she is very very good, and when she is bad, she is horrid!  She is planning her 91st bday on Cinco de Mayo.

The quote again....

I do not know why this quote didn't fit in the screen...ugh...my computer skills...but the quote is worth it..so here it is again:

"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."

Leonard Cohen

Happy quilting..your way:)

The quilt, the book of inspiration and the saying....what a day...

Lillian's Flower Garden, finished...Thank you Terri Feehan.  The story of this quilt is here.  And the courage to    just wack off the edges of this beloved top I have had for 40 years came from Rayna and her great book.. 

I am delighted that I listened and that this quilt top is now a quilt.  I think Lillian would be pleased.

  I found this on Susan Branch's blog...and it really said it all in my mind and spirit of the day.  And, of course the lovely handwriting of Susan's made it even more special

No quilts..but oh, such a relaxing day

Today was the best day ever!!  Not a bit of stress all day long.  The first day of Spring break meant a road trip.  Poor Dylan is only two so he had to stay home.  Here the children are packing their snack boxes and Easter bunnies for the trip

Who would ever have known that before we were even out of the neighborhood, the snacks were being devoured!  

 An hour and a half later, we arrive in Columbia, South Carolina to the zoo.

 This lady feeding the fish knows each and every one of them and their special needs..who knew that??

 Evan got to do this!!!  

 Lynsey was too little for that, but she got to do this.  This ice cream is just dots...a new thing to this grandma.

 Making new friends.

 Really getting to know you...

 The best time ever!!!!

And my sister said that Grandma survived just fine...TBTG

Happy Easter

Outside of Mom's place...a miracle...

 Lynsey is holding her new Easter pet..

 Zoey...close but no cigar:)

 Dylan cannot believe his good luck.

 My son and my daughter-in-law..

 The family monkey...I mean Evan...

The gratitude of Easter..

The 20 cent panel and more

Since last June...10 months ago?  I have known about these free online continuing education credits that I need for my license.  They expire in two weeks...I did this instead:)  There is nothing like the power of procrastination to get something else done.  I was very pleased with myself tonight.  I free-motioned this 20 cent panel in one hour.  It is not perfect, but I am pleased with it.  I used variegated thread and did it the Leah Day way.  In her free-motion quilting project she suggests that the quilting is done in rows.  That is the way I quilted this..easier because I could then remember where I had been.

The back was a very old fabric that needed to be used up.

And, tonight I was not too lazy to use my quilting gloves..it did make a nice difference.  I had my mug of tea with local honey to get me going.  I was oh, so calm despite going to Walmart and forgetting the new iron I needed.  I was also discouraged looking for jelly beans.  Plain Brach's jelly beans..how hard can that be.  I found the jelly beans...Starburst jelly beans, spicy jelly beans, rough coated jelly beans, life saver jelly beans, etc, etc...but as you can see, according to my mug...I stayed calm:)  Calm that is without my jelly beans.

My mother is really a big baby.  And, she is nuts about Mickey/Minnie Mouse.  So I made her an Easter basket.  I tell her that at Sunrise Assisted Living, where she lives, she can be the sweet angel and I will be the witch.  Oh, no dear, she says...you can just be the crocodile!  And so I am......

The fix for the crabby...

Well...there was certainly NO reason for me to be crabby this evening..none at all...It was a great day...The award from Beth...all the Easter food shopping done..a crisp day and my mother had probably the best day since Christmas...and my excuse is what?  Well it started with the computer..I am terrible at the computer and I could not do a link like everyone else seems to be able to do and I cannot figure out my Flickr.  In fact until my daughter sized my picture for me, I couldn't even follow people because I would just be a shadow. Then my iron broke and the new dog chased the old cats with hissing everywhere...OMG, the funk was on.  In the great  

big picture, this is nothing at all. Of course not!  With all the life and death issues of the past 9 months..I think I am crazy.  (And, there is no Halloween candy:)(and the M&M's are gone).  I found a CD of Johnny Cash...but nooo, that did not do it either...with songs about prison and Good Lord...no, it did not do it.  Finally I listened to my own advice and just did it the Nike way...I sat down to my machine and just did it.  I took one of the basted flannel tops from last week and sat down and sewed.  The beautiful hum of my Janome 6600..mmmmmm...I felt back in control..I am a new woman...and a cuddle quilt is done!

Caribbean Way, formerly known as Pablum:)

When I made this quilt top, I hated it.  I was mean to myself and named the top, "Pablum".  Because I had just finished it and it was the basic of all basics, a disappearing nine-patch...and because I had used a charm pack,  really, anyone could have done it with their eyes closed...thus "Pablum".  But, now, with the magic of Terri Feehan's quilting...it has come alive.  And with distance and less recriminations, I like it.  Then too, I used white...never did like the white thing...too bright and all I could think of was spilling chocolate milk and jelly on it..But, then again...I like it.  I am getting so flexible:)

Then there is the great IKEA backing..

 

And my wonderful Snowball bush...and who has to be in every picture??  Zoey..

 
And who is disgusted with Zoey???   My Milito!

  This quilt has been gifted to Sarah Connick to bring her comfort and brighten her life.

The Liebster Award

 Beth at Smazoochie has given me the Liebster Award!  I think that that is just very very nice.   You see Beth and I are fellow travelers on the Mom scene.  Her mom has Alzheimer's and my mother has Parkinson's disease. Both are tough diseases.  It is a difficult thing to post about the pain in your heart.  Some folks will say that you are whining, some will say that you are airing your laundry in public, some find it just too painful to talk about or read about.  I think a blog is a perfect place to share.  If someone does not want to read about the difficult times, there is that great delete button!  For me, it has been very therapeutic.  I have been uplifted by the support I have  received from others and the new friends going through similar struggles.  So a big thanks to Beth.

Now I understand that my next task is to name five blogs that I respect with under 200 followers:

1.  Emily at Two Red Wellies for photography, trying new things and adventure in living abroad.

2.  Shannon at the Pied Kingfisher for her outstanding fine cooking in rural South Africa as she teaches and does community organization.

3.  Bridget at the Nickel and Dime Ranch for role modeling that at any age we can do whatever we want and love it and share it.

4.  Andy at Stitches and Tea for her beautiful art, cooking, photography and ability to flourish in the face of adversity.

5.  Karmen at A Quilter Awakens for her sense of humor and her encouragement of other bloggers with her comments.

There are rules with the Liebster Blog Award. I must

1. Thank my Liebster Blog Award presenters.

2. Link back to my presenters' blogs.

3. Copy & paste the blog award on my blog.

4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to five blogs with 200 or fewer followers that I feel deserve to be noticed and post links to their blogs on my blog.

5. Let the recipients know they have been given the Liebster Blog Award by posting a comment on their blog.

Gardening and Empress of Dirt!

Empress of Dirt linky party  I am joining in with my garden stepping stone!!

http://oquilts.blogspot.com/2011/09/scraps-in-another-fashion.html

Flannel

Yesterday was the day.  Small wonder after all the stress.  Stress plus daily pain medication equals a big fat stomach ache. (of course eating the M&M's hidden in my fabric stash did not count at all).  After seeing my mother, I crawled home to bed only to find someone else beat me there.  My husband had pulled his back again and was in bed with muscle relaxers...Good Lord....what a way to spend a beautiful Saturday, the two of us out for the count.  There is nothing like a good rest when you know you are sick and cannot do anything else.  Today is a new day..aren't we lucky when a brand new day comes along.  So out came the flanne quilt panels that my friends bought me at the Springs Creative sale. And out came those wonderful flannels I bought on Black Friday at JoAnn's fabric store.  You can buy some of these panels at Mary Jo's or Hobby Lobby, but the price was right at Springs.

 I do not really like working with flannel, but I like the feel for children.  Usually I use iron on batting to stabilize them.  This time I did something different.  This quilt basting spray sat unused on my shelf.  With windows open on this glorious day, I was able to spray baste the flannel top to the batting and then the flannel bottom with no trouble at all.  I like this better than the iron on batting..easier and less clutter.  I pinned too, just to be sure.  Now I have about 5 quilts basted, ready to quilt, relaxing my mind!