January 8th

This was my very first quilt!!! It lives at my sisters house and is on the bed I sleep in when I go and visit. No surprise to those of you who "know" me that my first quilt would be scrappy. I made this in a class, it is actually 6 panels. I even quilted it myself!! Interesting to look at it when I am there, it has a poly batting which I never touch anymore for anything. Once I got onto Warm and Natural, I never changed. 95% of my quilts are done on a longarm (I quilt by check).
Even though I was gone out of town for a few days, I took my camera and took a photo a day of some of my quilts!! So far, so good.

January 7th

This is my very first colorwash irish chain quilt. It is on the queen bed in my guest room and has always been one of my very favorites. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you can get a closer view of the fabrics.
Once the center was done, it sat for a year or more while I tried to decide what I wanted to do for the border. The piano key idea came to me one day and I had the quilt finished and to my friendly long arm quilter within a day!! Of all my quilts this is the one more asked for. And the one most likely to stay with me to the bitter end - LOL! I have done a few other colorwash quilts and have taught a class on it twice. Most fun of that was helping people choose the fabrics. They have all been so different and yet all come out so beautiful. The last one I did was a lap sized in raspberry and greens and I gifted it to a co-worker who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrigs disease. Sadly she died last November, two years after her diagnosis. Her husband kept a blog for the last year of their battle and took lots of photos, and it was lovely to see her putting that quilt to good use.
I'm heading south today to Federal Way/Olympia. My older brother is flying in from Atlanta to surprise my Mom for her 83rd birthday, which is tomorrow. I'm picking him up from the airport and presenting him to her door! Then I'm making dinner for all the family on Saturday at my other brothers house, and the highlight will be watching the DVD I am picking up at Costco today. I took in all our old family movies, plus some reels from the early 50's of my Dad and his family. We haven't seen these for at least 35 years, so it will be so great to see how it all came out. Unfortunately the 100's of slides I took in are not transferred yet, but that gives us something to look forward to sharing at my Dad's 83rd birthday at the end of the month!!
BUT - I will still be photographing a quilt a day while I'm gone!! I have a few at my sister's, where I will be staying, plus my Mom and Dad each have a quilt from me, and so does my brother. I don't think I'll have access to post them though until I return home on Sunday evening.
Isn't this just a beautiful sky???? This was the near sunset I noticed when I went out to get the mail yesterday afternoon, and I was so impressed I ran in, got my camera and shot this. I also took one from the back yard.










Amazing how the color changed just in the walking from the front to the back. I thought it might be fun to take sequential photos like these over the year. Thanks for bearing with me!!

January 6th

Guess I should have turned that lamp off before I took the photo!! This was a quilt that I made after seeing a photograph online. It was probably my first attempt at figuring out "how did they do that".....
I'm not a hanging sleeve person, as you can tell from my little pins holding this up. I also am not a label person. I even came across over a yard of cute labels when clearing out my sewing room. Lots of them were with Christmas graphics on them, but a few more country type. Guess they should go in my give away pile.
I also found, still in the package, one of those clover mini irons that I thought I might like if I ever did much paper piecing. But I like my travel Rowenta so well, I just use that for small things. I've learned to keep the box and packaging for that small Rowenta though, as I have had troubles with the cord fraying and with leaking, and when it happens I take it right back to the store and exchange it for a new one. My current one is now 3 months old and so far so good! I spoke to a rep from Rowenta at the Sew Expo a couple years ago and he was basically no help at all, other than to say just return it. So I do!

January 5th

These first several days choosing a quilt to photograph should be easy enough as I go from room to room to shoot whats on the walls!
This project is the result of a round robin that I did with an online group WASIQ - Washington State Internet Quilters. We each made the tree that is in the center and then sent it along. Everyone had to add another round and at some point it had to be put "on point". I was THRILLED when mine came home! This was truly the most successful "robin" I have ever participated in.

I'm still making good progress working in my sewing room. I got the big cabinet moved and cleaning it out revealed a project that I started in 2004. This was a BOM project that I signed up for that came out of British Colombia. I'm not sure what exactly drew me to this quilt, since it has a real Asian flair and there is paper piecing involved, but I did sign up for it. I think it will be gorgeous when finished, just not my normal style.
These are the blocks I had completed already.
I LOVE that one in the lower left, kind of woven star and I have to say, I am pretty impressed with my work on it - LOL!!! This will move up the list of UFO's to be working on.

Another of my New Year's Intentions is to prepare at least one meatless meal a week. Tonight is my first attempt. I have in my crock pot a Cuban black bean soup. I soaked the beans and everything! And tons of yummy seasonings in it, cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, coriander, serrano pepper......I hope it's as good as it sounds! And I'll be serving a tomato cilantro rice. My husband is a very easy eater, will try just about anything. Last night after dinner he put on a coat over a hooded sweatshirt and said he was taking his first of 300 consecutive walks after dinner! SHOCK!!! And out he went. Gone for about 15 minutes. Good for him. He says when he retires he is going to walk across America and I have been teasing him that he ought to practice walking the mile and a half to our little downtown Lynden - LOL!

I do love any comments that you leave, so feel free. I think I will have my first free giveaway next week for those leaving comments!

Design Wall Monday - Week One

This is another challenge I thought about last year from time to time, but never really got into the swing of it. So will start now!! This is a project that has been on this wall far tooooooo long. I have been sewing these little strings together for a long time, and then cutting and designing as I go. Once I get my sewing room put back together and a couple of blocks that I owe to people finished, I'll get to work on finishing this up and getting it off this wall! Lucky me, I have three design wall areas in my studio, though one is covered with photos of past quilts and mementos. Thanks Judy for continuing this inspiring challenge again this year.

January 4th

This is an old and loved favorite quilt of mine. I actually made the center as part of a class taken at The Calico Cat in Auburn, when I still lived down there. The borders and quilting happened after I moved up north to Lynden. I did the quilting on this one myself, and it is the last time I did something more than lap sized. I just don't "love" that part of the process.
Now the Calico Cat is closing. More and more local quilt stores seem to be closing their doors. I think the internet competition makes it harder for all store fronts. But, honestly, if I can buy it cheaper online, that is what I am going to do.
I know, I know.....support your LQS.....I do what I can. Last year I bought very little fabric, whether in person OR online....it was a good year of working through my inventory. Kind of shocking that I bought over 30 yards of fabric while out on New Year's Day with my friends!! Anyway, this quilt will now be lovingly folded up and packed away until December when it will come out again and be my favorite one to snuggle under, with it's flannel backing and a grandchild in my lap.

See that little bud in the photo???? I was so excited when I spotted it when watering yesterday I just had to take a photo. Many, many years ago when I had a houseful of plants, and a dozen African Violets I was thrilled when a new bud would appear. This is my first Violet in over 20 years, and I had repotted it a week or so ago, and surprise!! A bud!! I even took a leaf from this plant and I'm trying to make a new plant. Will see if that experiment works! Also, I may have found a nice spot for them to grow, so my Violet collection just might grow again.

The birds are really going through the suet!! Looks like I'm going to need to run out between rain storms and fill them up again. Those and the sunflower seeds are most popular at the moment.

I made good progress in my sewing room last night, and I'm down to the last episode of Season 4 of The Wire. One more season to go, I hate for it to end!

January 3rd

I love pinwheels. I also love stars. Probably my two favorite quilting block elements. This was a wall hanging I did maybe 5 or 6 years ago. It hangs during the December/January months as it does have a feel of Christmas to me. Also in the photo are a few of my newly divided houseplants. I hope they all make it!

Yesterday would have been my MIL's 93rd birthday. I miss her.

While working in my sewing room yesterday I got lots of quilts, table runners and wall hangings refolded and put into a cabinet in the family room. It's full enough that the cats can't jump up in there and lay on them, so that is good!

I have a matching cabinet to this one in my sewing room. I'll share a photo of it when that room is finished in it's shuffling.

Happy to report another quilting book sold on Amazon. That's four in four days! It does feel good to get some of the clutter out of that room, where hopefully I'll be more productive.

I've had fun cruising other blogs again. Found one that lists a recipe a day for using the crock pot! She shows a photo of the ingredients she used and then a photo of the final product. I'll be sourcing that one frequently I'm sure. Now to find one using the pressure cooker I bought last year! So far I have only used it once for pot roast.

Off for a second cuppa coffee, a quick shower and back to the sewing room project.

A Quilt A Day!

Let's just see how long this lasts!!! I am going to take a photo of a quilt everyday for as long as I can. When I run out of actual physical quilts (table runner, toppers) I will scan photos of quilts that have gone to good homes already. This ought to serve a couple of purposes. It will give me a good record of my quilts and maybe wear out my camera sooner so that I can rationalize buying a new one!!!
This quilt was actually a gift made for me by a Lynden Guild where I served as president for two years. It is done with Christmas fabrics. They had already gifted me one with black background and batik leaves so I was stunned when this one came to me a year later. I just love it, and appreciate all the lovely women who are part of my quilting family.
I'm still working away on cleaning and clearing out my sewing room. One of the sewing tools that I have a special fondness for are scissors. Especially pretty little scissors.
Some have been gifted to me, and some I haven't been able to resist when they are on sale. I came across a few while cleaning out a drawer and here they are, aren't they cute?????
Some of them have matching Momma Scissors too.
I signed up to a UFO challenge on another blog, where you list 10 projects that need to be finished. The owner of the blog will draw a number each month and that is the project you then finish. I actually have 10 quilts that need binding, so those are my 10 on the list - LOL!
The kids are coming over for a short visit today, and I think I am going to do a short video interview with each of them, and start a library of them. One of my "intentions" this year is to make sure to use my video camera at least once a month!
Dinner tonight is homemade split pea soup, using my ham bone from Christmas - Yummy!!

2010 - New Day, New Year, New Decade

This is a photo of my big orange cat, Dutch. And my first reminder of the New Year about WHY you should always at least pull up the sheets after you get out of a warm bed.....
I am so happy to be done with 2009. I've made more than my share of New Year's resolutions, so I'm not doing it anymore. This year I came up with some "Intentions" instead of resolutions.
And each intention has a plan. Will see how this works out as I work towards living a more fit and healthy life!
Today was such a good time spent with 11 quilting friends. We went to an annual New Year's Day sale at a shop about an hour away. We have been attending this sale for 8 years now on the first day of the year. We added another stop at a non retail shop (woman runs a HUGE online fabric business from her barn) and had fun plowing through stuff there. Then a great lunch at one of our favorite places. A stop at JoAnn's on the way home for a new roll of batting and then home for the night. Now I can get a few more quilts to Carol so she can quilt them on her long arm before she leaves town for her two month visit to warmer climate! I did get the last quilt I had given her today, so another one onto the binding pile!
The weekend will be spent working on cleaning and clearing out my sewing room to make room for the new futon. I'll be moving some book cases into the closet in the guest room, and clearing out the closet in that room. Then into the garage for a good clearing of the cupboards in there.
I am really needing a quilting retreat! I have one scheduled for mid February, just hope I can get enough people signed up to make it a go!!
Hope you all are looking forward to the new opportunities in this new year.

Two Weeks to Christmas

Life has been occupied with other things lately. My small quilting group Christmas party was two days ago, and any and all energy I had went to working on two projects that needed to be done for that. One was my secret sister project.
This was a bonus project actually. The "wonky trees" are a pattern from a project I did years ago. The trees were pretty big, so I reduced the pattern and made a few small ones. These are 6 " x 8 1/2". I had made 4 of them long ago and they were up on my design wall since then. At the top, where there weren't in the way. I could just enjoy them and they would remind me once in a while that they would like to be in a project! While thinking and searching for a pattern for my secret sister, I looked up and there they were! Thankfully I had the other trees all cut out and organized, saved rolled up in a paper towel and I even knew where they were - LOL! The layout also happened rather "organically"....Our projects were to be under 40" x 40". So I did a free form stack and slash star to finish it off. Came out really cute, I think! Of course I want one for myself now...
The best part of the holiday season has been watching Jillian and Ethan have such fun. At 8 and 5, they are the perfect ages. For the last three years I have gotten them a small live tree for the family room, and they get to decorate it. This year it was just precious. They had such fun. My favorite moment was when Ethan picked up a bell and said "hey look! a bell! but it has lost it's ring a ding ding"......

We have an advent box that is wooden and has a door for each day. Their eyes are bright and merry as they run in the front door and race to the advent box to see what Santa's elf may have left them. Often it is a piece of chocolate or taffy, but sometimes there is a note from the elf directing them to somewhere else in the house. One day they found two adorable stuffed puppies in the dryer. Always important for the elf to remember to get something in the box!!

Next weekend is our family gathering at my brothers house. Krista has Friday off also, so we will be baking and candy making on that day. I have done NO Christmas shopping yet, and for some reason I am not at all panicked about it - LOL! My siblings and I do a stocking stuffer exchange and I have been collecting small things for that all year. Jillian, Ethan and Carter are certainly easy to shop for. Kyle, Genie, Jeff, Krista, Todd have been advised that they are getting their annual Christmas box, and that is it. This is an oversized plastic crate that I fill with "stuff". From razor blades (at $30 a package - YIKES!) to TP to jam to motrin....It's pretty fun to do, and they appreciate and use everything in there. They might find a gift card if they are good boys and girls.

Now to head outside and do my last bit of outside lighting. Then hopefully we can get the big tree wrestled into the stand and I can have Jillian and Ethan help me decorate it this evening when they come over for a couple of hours.

Hope you are all well, and warm.