The joy in my heart...

•  Guess who had her first outing in my car in 10 months, since double pneumonia and infected gallbladder in August, the fall out of her wheelchair on her head in September, C-Diff in October, UTI going round the bend in Jan..More C-Diff...but she is still here and she is 91...Yeah Alice Franzen Clemons Burt!!!  Unbelievable..she was so clear minded today.  Two staff members lifted her into my car.  She couldn't swallow much..two bites...but loved it.  She didn't remember the neighborhood lake we always ate by..but she loved it.  Her voice was a Parkinson's whisper, but her eyes sparkled with joy:)  My heart....

  

  

  Great attitude as usual..

  
  

  

  Eating her Mexican pizza by the lake.

Typewriter pouch revisited..

I didn't mean to allude that I do not like to try new things now that I am older...I just do not like it forced upon me, eg..learning the hard way!!!!   I took scissors and cut off the offending zipper...lesson learned.  I added a larger lining making a tube for the strings, added some beads and now I have a string pouch instead of a zippered one.  All figured out after reading a crazy pirate story I got free on my Kindle from the daily emails I get from...http://www.pixelofink.com/

And what else did I learn?  I learned that after owning my awesome Janome 6600 for two years, I do not have a clue about how to use the buttonhole attachment...Tonight was just full of lessons.  My husband pulled his back again.  Since he is resting, it looks like this will be a sewing weekend for me, not a bad thing at all.

Doing it the easy way, harder....ugh

Remember all those 20 year old summer clothes from Miami that I found in an attic box last week..Well, there was this cotton/linen skirt I decided to salvage.  The material was fine, but I went further than that...a mistake.  I decided to make it easy on myself and use the zipper already in the skirt.  What a mess.  The flaps were so bulky, I kept trying to make it work..even going so far to trick myself into deciding it did work..and cut and zigzagged the edges..wrong again.  I have been working on this for an hour.  I could have had a pretty yellow zipper installed in 10 min.  Now I have a mess on my hands.  I love the typewriter patch that my daughter sent me...I love the pig fabric Ruth got me from Japan..and the green and yellow ribbon from Andy..what I do not love is the mess I made. 

 and the frustration....see here even the zipper is off...taking a break from this, let me tell you and reading my Kindle.

Florabunda...done:)

Thanks to Terri for her wonderful longarming, my Florabunda,

 block of the month variation is done.  I was so excited getting it back the other night that I did the binding right away. Unfortunately in my zeal, I forgot the faucet in the kitchen sink was running.  Forty minutes later..TBTG  down the other sink... went all the hot water...and my brain.

 I love this backing.  I can imagine the animals trekking through the flower garden.

 When I was young I grew wide...traveling all over the world, trying new things.  As I am older, I am growing deep, hopefully making lasting friendships and being even more sentimental.  So, here is the quilt in front of Great Aunt Carl's gardenia bush..grown from a single stem in her window in Alabama.

 And here is the tree planted by Uncle Kieran when he was 83 on his visit from Ireland...It was 2 feet tall.  He wanted us to have something to remember him by...as if....but he was right...

Both plants are huge, bringing back wonderful memories of family love.

A joyful day

Today I finished this quilt.  All washed and snipped.  I am delighted that I took a risk and tried something new.  When Karmen suggested that I was brave to practice free motion quilting on solids..I was surprised...surprised because I had not even thought of that before!!  But, I am glad I did.  It is great to finish something you are pleased with.

Sunlight and Shadow

 The backing fabric is called "Desert Sisters".  It is an Alexander Henry fabric from 1996.  All of that is printed on the selvage.  My sister and I bought it in Phoenix, Arizona when our father was in the hospital after a failed heart operation.  If my math does right, that was 16 years ago.  I cannot believe that Daddy died so long ago.  Last year my sister was cleaning out her stash and gave her fabric to me...so now I had plenty to back this quilt.

  The next part of my good day was to visit with Wanda.  She has an exhibit of her work downtown Charlotte on Park Ave at her daughter's mosaic studio, Ciel..  It was great to meet Wanda in person after knowing her in Blogland.  It would be well worth your while to see the lovely exhibit.  I have enjoyed Wanda's work online, but it is even nicer to see live.  While you are down there you can check out the  mosaic studio and even eat at Prices Chicken Coup...a very nice outing.  Wanda will be going back to the Chicago area at the end of the week, but her wonderful quilts will continue on exhibit till the end of June.

Wisdom or not?

My mother said that her father said that friends are all around you when there is fun and laughter, but when you are sick, grumpy or needy...they run fast in the other direction.  I never bought into it, but  my grandfather was born in 1877...so this family "wisdom" is 135 years old.    If it was so hard to be so sick and isolated for 3 weeks with bronchitis, a more serious illness is worse. 
When we lived in Miami, our very best friends became fair weather friends when I injured my back.  I was unable to walk for 6 months and they never came to visit even though she worked within walking distance.  No one likes illness.  I am glad this didn't happen to me this time. My friends did bring M&M's and did come to quilting anyway.  And, my mother has good friends too..they visit all the time even though it is hard. Good news...I am well now...Thank you God, I am so grateful.  Here is what I am doing today.  Free-motion quilting on my solid quilt.  I am terrible at FMQ..so practice, practice, practice.  On this beautiful day, I am reading quilt magazines outside and coming in to do this quilting.  I am waiting for my son and his family to come tonight and for my son, boyfriend in law:) to visit from Ireland.  A lovely day.

Celebration

Celebration:

1.  I am well...Thank you God....I am so grateful!

2.  Today is our 32nd wedding anniversary....Thank you God...I have the best husband ever!

3.  Quilting...to make my cares go away...the rest of the "mess" of solid charms, now sewn into 4 patches for future projects..

Sewing from Stash..Bring in the Clowns..

Who would have thought from a mess of solid charms...

And as for the old vintage dresses...one was silk and bled to death..donated, one was cotton..about to be cut up and buttons saved and the rest were not worth it..no matter how much fun I think I remembered having in those dresses???  Gone..thx for input..

Good to have a daughter!!!

From across the sea in Galway, Ireland came today a snippet from my girl, Emily!  Great to have a daughter.  She is keeping me modern:)

Thank you Emily...

Love love love the process

The solid charm scrap bag quilt is morphing...so much fun..

 Ten years ago our mother gave each of her daughters a hutch.  Charmaine got the family heirloom and I got this lovely one.  She was hoping we would thus display the family china......My mother has always been a dreamer:)  So 85% well gets me...a clean and organized hutch and my solid charm process blocks done.

85% well also gets me an improved disposition.  My family and friends are thrilled:)  It also will get me a part-time work schedule tomorrow..wish me energy...

Vintage?? Who me?

Yesterday when my son was here, I asked him to go up in the attic and get down a box of files from Miami that I needed to shred.  He couldn't find the box I needed, but he found this box labeled, "summer clothes".  Naturally we all thought that they were children's clothes.  Down came the box.  It was to my utter amazement that the box contained MY summer clothes from when I lived in Miami, almost 20 years ago.  I guess that I never missed them.  I just cannot believe this.  My 27 year old son declared that not even the Salvation Army would want these clothes as they look like a flower pot all old and stuff.  Two dresses I see were those when we graduated from grad school ..Lordy and  sigh...so definitely they are vintage. There is a lot of aging in 20 years and I am not what I used to be back then.  Most of them are rayon.  I still like the colors and wonder if I would cut some up for quilting.  I never use anything but 100% cotton...Anyone out there use rayon for anything?  I wonder if I should bother or just give them to Goodwill.

Below is the sweet Magnolia blossom...as I now live in the South:)

Quilt Process

How the brain works..amazing!   And we are all a bit different.  Here is a mess..and I mean mess of solid charms I had cut awhile ago...I decided to just start sewing two patches..then I decided these plain solids were boring...

 So, I added a black center.

 Loved that look of the 9 patch cut diagonally...and a quilt has begun with no idea of how it will turn out...soo exciting..

My husband is working tomorrow.  Guess what I will do...

Down home, free fun, better than any doctor or pill

Oilcloth fun..pouch

An accomplishment makes a nice day...started a bit fuzzy with my first outing since sick.  Saw my mother and was shocked with how she looked.  I do not know what I was thinking...that in three weeks she would have improved...be younger??  not have Parkinson's ...anyway sweet denial came to an end this morning, albeit a lovely visit.  Then I came home to rest waiting for my son and grandchildren since I had been too sick on Mother's Day.  Oh, no..he had a flat tire and could not come...sewing to the rescue again...I was eager to work with my new Oilcloth charm pack.  As with other charm packs, you get a nice variety with a smaller output of money.  I decided to use this tutorial to try putting nice ends on my zipper.  Interesting to try, but I found that with the oilcloth endings, it was all too bulky for a smooth finish.   I am delighted with the Done part and I think that using different patches of the oilcloth to make something new was great fun...

 I have on hand clear vinyl from Walmart.  I like the see through look.

 The little strip of oilcloth scrap at the end of the scizzor was nice, but did not work as I had thought.

 I was very happy to have my great selection of colored zippers.

Done and happy!

What a difference a day makes...

This midnight brings so much fun ( as opposed to last midnight!!!)...I am playing around with my new oilcloth scraps.  Cutting up the scraps, using my Teflon foot, I am sewing them together..just overlapping with a double stitch or decorative stitch, including some clear vinyl for fun...sigh...I am happy I have all those bright new zippers....

The light at the end of the tunnel...

This positive life brings 4 different types of Hydrangeas from my garden shown in Grandma's old coffee pot..

 It brings the first harvest of my jalapeno pepper for my homemade salsa..

 The excitement of my new mail today..fat quarters of laminate

 and...a big thrifty charm pack of oilcloth...so excited to create with all this.

Of course there is the report from my PCP today.  The lung x-ray and wheezing were negative so the infection is over.  He said that it takes awhile to recover from a serious illness and I need ...ugh..that word again...patience....As we left the office, my husband got a mean bone...he said we could always go by Mental Health to see if there was a new pill out for patience...I mean really!!!!  So doc said I should be better by Tuesday...which would be good since I have work scheduled all day on Tuesday..I cannot wait to get my life back!!

The midnight hour

It is safe at the midnight hour to be rageful...and that I am.  Today I called the asthma specialist at 12 because I was so done with being sick...left a message with some attendant for the nurse to call me back.  At 4:30 with no response, I called again...well there was no record of the first call and the staff all took half a day on Thursday, etc but I could talk to the triage nurse....15 min later the triage nurse informed me that the doctor and his staff were on vacation till Tuesday with NO back up physician...and patients should either go to the ER or their family doctor.  I was rageful then and it was not even midnight.  I made an appt with my PCP for tomorrow afternoon and burst into tears.  It was then that the house phone rang and it was my mother.  She had remembered how to dial my number.  But timing...I was in a fit and blurted it all out like I was five years old.  And, she acted like she was my 91 year old mother...soothing and sorry.  A gift at the right moment.  We had a delightful talk.

Tonight I finished the quilt for the hospital boy.  On the evening news last night there was a race car driver on the children's cancer ward with some of the adolescent boys.  I noticed that they had cool pillowcases and a quilt on the bed, not nicely folded but crumpled with love.  I was so delighted that I was working on this to ease someone's journey.

 The quilting on this is easy, just channel stitching with a little wiggle stitch in the middle..at best 70 min...

 At this hour, I decided to go outside and chill...I remembered the wine I had bought in October for my mother's funeral.  She missed the train, but I still had the wine.  I took some outside and tried to chill.  We have pine trees in our yard, at least 20 of them that are from 70 to 80 feet tall and beyond our fence into the woods there are more.  It was dwarfing..and then I saw the big dipper..how many years have folks been watching the big dipper...??  And then there was Great Aunt Carl's gardenia bush..20 feet wide and 10 feet tall that I had grown from a single cutting from her window sill in Greenville, Alabama...Perspective is coming..the miracle of life and my insignificance.  After two glasses of funeral wine..I decided to pretend I was a burglar looking in from the deck to my quilting room....can you just imagine what that person would think????

Quilting for the cure

"Twisted Scrap", gifted to Lauren.  Love you Lauren..get better quickly.

 When my newly delivered fabric from Fabric.com arrived at noon..I felt so much better...a shot in the arm for my mood.  Alas, it was not a shot in the lungs, so I have a call in to my pulmonologist. Patience is greatly overrated.