My favorite word is D..O..N..E

And ahead of time is even better!

The Christmas stocking for our guild.decorated with bells!!  Our guild asks for a homemade Christmas stocking and two cans of food for admittance to our holiday party in December.  We have fun by putting dollar bills in our favorite ones, the money going for goodies to fill the stockings for charity.  This is the first year that I actually have mine done in advance.  That is thanks to our Sit and Sew today and the wonderful support of my friends.

Kathy Lynn's First Quilt

About 35 years ago Kathy Lynn's grandmother gave her this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top, hand pieced from the clothes of Kathy Lynn and her sisters.  Today, Kathy Lynn finished quilting it.  You go girl. It is awesome and perfect for Charlotte's first cold winter's night.

Ironing pad tutorial

Well, injury or not, I have finished my ironing pad..maybe it is the steroids for the asthma, but it is late and I am still at the sewing machine, bandaged finger and all....I do think that I will leave the ties till tomorrow!!!!!

Ironing pad tutorial

Thank you Liz Copeland for this great tutorial.

A little bite of nothing was so much fun

I was going to take a nap today, but I so got into this fun that it didn't happen and now it is 5 o'clock. Going into my bits and pieces last night, I found this orphan block left over from my Grandmother's embroidery. She made these cats from Better Homes and Gardens magazine in the 1970's. I made a quilt from them and this one was left over. After a few years I decided to paint it orange with a Marvy marker. I totally hated it and yet couldn't throw it away cause Grandma embroidered it. You can see that I keep things forever. But, now I see that I no longer have forever. So, I made another block medallion quilt and appliqued a fish in the mouth...It was so much fun that I was driven to enjoy and finished it right now.

The skeletons that are not in my closet!

Gotta love those grandkids....just taking a baby break from quilting!

Blogger's Quilt Festival..My Flower Garden

This quilt is special to me because of the creative energy needed to make the block medallion quilt. The orphan flower block from Mary Lou Weideman's workshop many moons ago sat in a box unused. In the making do spirit, I decided to make a quilt around the orphan block.

Click on this button below to see the hundreds of entries in this great show!!

Mini snowball for the children's hospital

I got a cold. It went into my asthma and 2 weeks later, I am still sick. My husband got the cold. Three days later he is well. Whine, whine, whine.....Oh, well, I remember what Mother said about this!!! She is almost 90, so I had better listen up!!...

She said that when you are feeling down, do something for someone else....OK, already!..... Here is the result...my scrap mini snowball quilt for the hospital!! Yeah Mom! Love, from your slow learner:)

And, look at the so adorable backing...pink giraffes!

White log cabin experiment/ for Quilts of Valor

This top is now ready for my friend, Terri Feehan to quilt it for Quilts of Valor.
http://www.qovf-um.org/

Margaret's chemo quilt

No words needed. This is a disappearing nine patch group quilt. We are hoping that Margaret's lung cancer disappears too. We put in airplanes for her time as a flight attendant, and shamrocks cause she was born in Ireland and cats and dogs and love.

Ugly as sin......

Well, what turned out to be sooo much fun to put together without thinking, turned out to be ugly as sin!! It is hard to put together something pretty when you have limited yourself to using what is already cut and at hand...using up without adding anything else.

So, I can put it together and put a simple border and give it to a long armer for donation to the soldiers. I can do a quick quilting and donate it to the cancer women's floor at the hospital. I can cut my losses and just give the blocks unset to my sister....oh what to do with the uglies????

Log cabin variation/ process

Here are 1.5 inch stripsHere are more and more and more...hanging in my creative way, safety pinned to old wire hangers! Hanging here for 7 years plus....gotta get going using them up....

I found 20!! Can you believe it was 20, orange squares. I separated the white strips from the colored and started making squares. So much fun...no thinking, just sewing...I think I will keep on going, one more round of white and one more round of color...could be doing this all night!!!

My Blogiversary!!

My give away is: Hugs and thanks to all of my readers and friends and family for comments and support and sharing. I have just loved this past year in the blogging world.

Diane

Trees and stars?

I had been working on these wonky stars I made from leftover 16 patches from a baby quilt I made in the winter. Now, I have pulled out of a drawer, trees made 15 years ago in a swap from a now defunt quilting group. The new challenge of the day is can I use these together in a quilt....stay tuned.....

So very happy to be away from the browns!!!!!! I found this link with a similar pattern for the trees.

http://www.simplicity.com/t-free-quilt-patterns-White-House-Christmas-Tree-Quilt.aspx

Done, done and done...Brown star top!!

So, it may not be my finest work, but my challenge to self has been met! I shopped only from my stash and started with only two orphan blocks....two stars... I am so glad this top is done.

Choice

Just got this surprise in the mail!! Oh, Tatyana, you make my heart sing!! Thank you so much!

Painting by Tatyana Kulida Shelley

This is my favorite of all your paintings. It reminds me so much of my mother's poem below.


CHOICE

In a niche in a rock carved by the sea lies a
cradle of comfort, a haven for me.

Threatening tides roar with their spume of
salt spray while seductive waves rise only
two feet away.

Danger abounds on this high windy place as
the lure of forever kisses my face.

Alone in a circle of stone, protected yet
wildly free, will I cling to the solid
rock...or yield to the tempting sea?

Alice Burt

I am surrounded by such talent and love. I am so grateful.

I hate Parkinson's disease!!!!

My mother is getting worse. I want her to be perfect forever. My grandmother died at 99 and I told my mother that she owes me 9 more years. She said...."Please don't make me!" It is not my call. Thank God she still has her mind and thus this poem.

A SMASHED TOMATO

Like a smashed tomato, so true
Sqooshy red eyes and a nose full of goo.

This is my pity party and I’m not inviting you.

Frustrated, infuriated, I know the reason why.
Unbidden grief engulfs my soul
All I do is cry

Sorry not returning calls; busy drying my eyes
Forgive my self-indulgence - guess it was no surprise.

I have not been myself these days. Please let me make amends.

I love you lots, you know I do !
Hope we still are friends!

Alice (4 oct 2010)

Daddy's shirts #5

I know why I just love quilts when I touch this one. It is so soft. I made it six years ago as the last of 5 quilts made from my father's shirts. I found it upstairs in my son's old room and decided to add more quilting to it. Soft, with memories of Daddy flooding in. He was born in rural Alabama, one of five. His mother died on Christmas day when he was twelve. Christmas then was a shotgun fired in the air to memorialize, no presents and no tree. He dropped out of school at 8th grade and joined the Air Force as soon as he was able. The Air Force gave him his education as an airplane mechanic and gave him a nice life. He met my mother at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.
We had so much fun growing up with Daddy cooking breakfast at sunrise in the desert and travelling all around Europe while based in England and France. He had the best heart and he could build and fix anything. He was a whiz at the card game Hearts..remembering every single card played. I feel this all with the patches from his shirts here on Daddy's shirt quilt # 5.

Brown Star process

The beauty of a good scrap quilt is that the eye keeps moving around the quilt always finding something new to look at. That is why it takes more work than a quilt made with a pattern or with just a few colors. It is also a challenge to work with a stash only, even with a large stash like mine. I have very little dark brown left and wanted an inner border with dark brown. I settled for dark maroon which has the same value and it not only works fine, but adds more interest. I wanted to add in green and also to start making the quilt rectangular instead of square. The greens that I liked were too green, but the one I added here has black with it and works. It is put only at the top and bottom to make it larger at that end. The eye travels around to the wonky blocks in the corners and the clips at the end of the blocks in the center. I am still auditioning the next border..quilt top is on its way, but the road is still rocky....I thought you might like to see the process.

Green "X" block quilt

This quilt is the same pattern as the purple "X" seen in this post: http://oquilts.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-yummy-purple-x-quiltmmmm.html
I used up the green solid I bought 30 years ago. I do not know why I didn't toss it, but I guess it spoke to me. Once the blocks were done, they did not have enough contrast, hence the double lattice. I see that this picture doesn't show the vibrancy of the quilt. This quilt does have alot of character having been made with old and new scraps.

Process...and more process..or lack of process

Sitting on the design wall forever and forever...I decided today to avoid one and work on the other. So I finished these blocks..no measuring...done the Gwen Marston way...flying by the seat of my pants...And why did I do this today??? Because I have been avoiding this!!..My husband said that it is very dark and unattractive (ugly) and why has it been on my design wall for three months or so??? Because it requires thinking and I have been lazy. As often happens...just happens, I do something else very efficiently to avoid something harder...thus the grandchildrens's bags and potholders, cuddle quilts, etc..So now with the stars done, I will have to work on this...I have been thinking....

Also got great inspiration from this really beautiful blog and this post there http://craftjoys.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post.html. Be sure to watch the videos...my idea of a perfect quilt show. Thank you Una for sharing that post.