Jodie's inspiration

I've been having a little fun, digging around in my 'already haves', looking for something to fit the bill after JoAnn mentioned something she has in mind for a baby quilt she's making.  Thanks, Jodie, I think I ran across just the right little treasures !

More to come when it's ready.......for now, you can guess from my banner today.  Of course, if you wait a day or two, the sneak-peek will be gone !

Border, border, border !

I couldn't believe it when I looked through my rubbermaid tub and found a piece of yardage that was just perfect for this quilt's border......Praise the LORD !

I think that the quilt is a much more usable size now, and I hope that the hand-quilting will be enjoyable.  Do I make myself wait until the Monster is finished?  Nah........... but I do need to save it for doctor's appointments and other times of waiting.  Better concentrate on finding a back for it now, though.  I don't think I'll want to make a pieced one, even though they are my favorites, because the extra seams are horrendous on hand-quilting.

As you can see from this photo, the wind is up today....

....March is trying to go out like a lion, but with two days to go, and 70's predicted for Wednesday, it may just have to settle down and go out quietly, like a good little lamb.

It's way too early to say this.......

but the MONSTER quilt will actually come to an end.......someday...............I can see the light at the end of the tunnel ! 

It became too boring to document every time I worked on this quilt, as each section pretty much looked the same as the last (plus, I was no longer quilting on it EVERYDAY once hubby broke his hip and life got upended again!)

But take a look at this.........

now, granted, I still have to go back and quilt all of the paisley swags with some type of design once I finish all this border quilting, but look how close I am to that !  This one section (two q-snap frames-ful) is all I lack......I can hardly believe it !

EDITED.....CHECK IT OUT ! Having a PIECEful morning !

Thought I'd play around with a charm pack

 that Wanda gifted me with several years ago......never found anything that seemed worthy of it before.  But I like this design that Wanda herself is playing with, offered in pdf form by Elizabeth Hartman for SewBabySew.

I'm sewing the strips together now, and going to choose a sashing fabric after the strips are made.  I think I like it with light sashes like this.

(Don't be confused.....this strip wasn't sewn together.....just laid out.)

I had laid out this idea with dark sashes and liked it too, but decided to try to actually follow a pattern for a change since my amount of squares is limited.

Of course, I never get ANYTHING done without it's allotment of cat hair, thanks to my constant sewing room companion, China.........

So, after a few hours, here's today's finished results.

I wish the photo did these colors justice.  There's lots of peach, and the brown is a pinky brown, then there's a goldish hue......ah, luscious !

I didn't quite have enough of the border fabric for the sashes, so two of them have a substitute fabric.  This was meant to be machine-quilted, but I think I may have to spend more time with it than that would require !

It only measures about 33 by 40 inches right now, so I'm thinking of adding an outer border.........undecided on that.  I think I'll live with it for awhile and see what it wants. 

Love it !

Thanks, Wanda Gayle, for the fabrics AND the idea !

Only 9 more months til Christmas !

Sorry.......couldn't help it when I realized today was the 25th. 

Wouldn't be a bad idea to start a quilt for someone's gift right now, though !

Fun mail !

You can just imagine how many bills fill my mailbox lately, with hubby having had his hip surgery in February, so anything that breaks up the monotony of that is a welcome relief.

But this was extra fun............

I've seen these fabric postcards mentioned online but never received or sent one myself.  What a fun little treasure to receive !  Thanks, Wanda Gayle !

Following Leslie's lead, I'd like to mention my favorite quilt-making notion.............binding clips !  They're basically just the plain version of hair clips, but they ended the self-induced acupuncture I used to endure while binding a quilt that was pinned with straight pins............don't wanna ever go back to THAT !  You just turn the folded edge to the back of the quilt and secure it every 2 inches or so with a clip, rather than with a pin.

National Quilt Day.....my contribution--"Hosanna"

I took today's opportunity of free time to finally finish this little quilt.  It measures approximately 21 and a half inches square. 

I began this project last Spring, while I was staying at my brother and sister-in-law's house.  I only had access to my brown fabric drawer and my dyed fabrics, as my other fabrics were all stored away with my quilts at another brother's house.  When I picked the project up last night, only the center was completed.  Looking through my green fabrics, I found this print for the border.......if you could see it up close, you'd see that it looks sort of like tropical fern fronds or something, so it reminded me of palm leaves.....thus, Hosanna.

They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.  A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.  The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

 "Hosanna to the Son of David!"

"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!"

"Hosanna in the highest!"

I just made the design up out of my head, and I'm disappointed on looking at it now, to see that it's not dimensional at all.  But it speaks to me of that time in my life and says where my head was then. So, with Easter approaching quickly, I decided that I wanted it to be a finished project.

I keep wanting something to hand-quilt on, something small and portable, but this wasn't that project.  I could see in my head how I wanted to quilt it, so I started on it last night, doing the lines across the center first.   Then today I quilted the borders and the 'rocky hill'. 

I could not master 'bubble quilting', but am satisfied that I achieved the look that I wanted.  And praise the LORD, it's nice and flat !

Birthdays all around !

Our wonderful Mary had a birthday yesterday and is hosting a quilty get-together today to benefit Project Gabriel in Shawnee.   I hope to talk to them via telephone while they're having fun so I can live vicariously through them.

And Miss Terri's birthday is tomorrow........she puts us all to shame, not looking a day over 40 (she's 50+ by the way.......

(HEY you can't be mad at me for telling that, Terri;  I said YOU DON'T LOOK IT !)

I finally got to talk to my best pal, Wanda Gayle last night.........it only takes us an  hour on the phone to catch up on a month and a half's news, so that's pretty good !    She finished this

last week and is going to have it machine-quilted (probably) by the lady who did THIS.

How awesome is HER quilt going to be?  Woo HOO !

It's his birthday !

T.J.'s that is !   And the first one since his birth here that he's been in the United States to celebrate !

Happy 4th Birthday, T.J.

Nana and Pawpaw love you to pieces and wish you were here !

Can't believe it !

This month is already half-way over !  Hmmmmmmmm........that sounds like a pessimist.  Maybe I should say, "I can't believe that I still have half of the month of March left before me !"  Either way, I'm missing the warm weather we always enjoyed in Oklahoma.

I did finally see some buttercups (Daffodils, Jonquils) in bloom this week......hooray !  And I planted some Morning Glory seeds around the mailbox and in a pot on the porch, after soaking them for 24 hours to get them started.

Kelley had her first day at work today, and is happy to think about relaxing in front of the fireplace with a good movie.......as soon as those kids got their late dinner.  They loved daycare, too, so everyone seems happy.

A quiet Saturday

Cloudy days seem to be winning around here, but atleast we're out of the freezing temperatures during the day.  We drove to the next town over yesterday, and hubby and I treated ourselves to Long John Silvers batter-dipped fish fillets for dinner.......my favorite fast food !

Kindof at a standstill, craftywise......I guess I should be quilting on the monster again, but don't really want to !  I also haven't made a firm decision on the sock.  I just waste SO MUCH TIME in indecision.   Do you do that?  I mean, I fill the time in other ways, but still......

Then there's this friend.......
....my pal, Jodie, is being very productive........she pieced these tops this weekend.......

I think that I can safely say that she is enjoying her retirement.   The girl always put us to shame with her productivity when she WASN'T retired.........look out for her now....there'll be no stopping her !

BOUND to be finished.......right?

"Crossing my T's"

Well, almost ! 

 It's in the washer right now, and will receive a label in the next few days.

 For binding fabric, I took the easy way out, going with the scraps from trimming the back away.  

  I finished in good time, sitting on the front porch enjoying the sunshine !

Ahhhhhhhh.......here he is.....fresh and crinkly !

And on a cloudy, rainy day........

.......we get 'er done !

                                                                     The quilting, that is !

I did a little practice on a few scraps and a small piece of batting, just to get my tension right. 

Then I decided that I'd just meander-quilt the border.......if I didn't like the looks of it, or the process, I'd do some straight-line quilting in the middle of the quilt. 

Well, that went alright, so I moved on to the blocks, quilting one vertical row at a time.  Wonderful,........except for the CONSTANT breaking of this cotton-polyester thread, the quilt progressed quickly, and I was done before you know it ! 

I guess it was around 11 a.m. when I began, and I stopped to fix lunch, and to run and get another spool of said HATEFUL THREAD (wasn't gonna change horses in the middle of the stream, mind you !), and I finished around 4:30 p.m.  Not bad for an afternoon. 

After doing the entire border, and 1 vertical row of blocks, I found that I had created a pleat on the back !   There was just too much quilting over it at that point to take the stitching out, so my flaw will remain.   I blame it on too little basting........pin OR thread, and I think it's just fine for a 'using' quilt..  I mean, I regret it, but I'm not pulling my hair out over it !

After trimming up the edges, 

I lay the quilt on the bed for photos in the last,waning light of day. 

  I love shadowed quilt photos ! 

Tomorrow, I'll figure out what I'm going to bind it in, and begin that little job........hopefully. 

 Actually, you never know what a day will bring, so I"ll just say,

 Praise God for a productive afternoon !

Wow, 71 degrees, Farenheit ! I read that that is 21.6 C. degrees (Celsius)

Earlier post edited by request. 

I took these photos of the sock I've been working on..........I don't love it, and I feel, at this point, that I don't want to put so much time and effort into handmade socks unless I LOVE them. 

So, I think I'm going to frog it tonight, and choose another design.  I don't regret it at all.  I needed something to work on at the nursing home, and enjoyed the knitting, so it's all good.  

I also took a couple of photos of this little heart-shaped dish that I found at a garage-sale yesterday..........YAY, GARAGE SALES ARE STARTING AGAIN !     It only cost me a dollar and looks so pretty on my bedside stand, holding my watch at the end of the day.  Can you see the pretty raised nature of the design in the white area? 

 So pretty.......it even has a pretty backside !

BLESSED SUNSHINE !

Hooray..........hooray.......what a beautiful DAY !  55 to 60 degrees, very little breeze, and pure clean sunshine..........what's that add up to?   Why, basting outside, of course !

I set the basting frame up in front of the trailer (this quilt was too big to use the front porch), and I combined pin-basting with thread-basting.  I used the pins as far as they would go, and then thread-basted down the center of each "T".  I also thread-basted around the perimeter of the quilt. 

        Gracie seems to be saying, "Are those jungle cats I see?"

I surely hope this holds it well while I try to machine-quilt.  Not sure what design I'll do yet.  I wish I had a little sample made up to practice on.  I do need to make up some of those quilted pads like they used in the bed in the nursing home, just to have on hand if hubby (or I) ever needed them.  I could practice on one of them, though it's still not like wrestling with a big quilt under the head of the machine.   That's why I usually just settle for straight-line quilting designs.

As I was reading through some of my favorite blogs, I ran across Janet talking about the spool blocks that so many people are making.  It spurred me to look up my little wall quilt that I made many years ago, and I was surprised to see that my blocks were so much bigger than hers.  

The second shot has Gracie giving you some idea of the size of this quilt.
I really love my spools, so I wanted to share the dimensions incase someone else wanted to do the larger ones. 

 Now that the quilt has shrunken, the individual blocks measure 4 5/8 inches, but I'm sure that I would have drafted it at 5 inches square.  The square in the middle started out to be 2 inches, finished, and the side pieces 1 1/2 inches , each, finished. 

I just love the way the plaids look all antique-ey.

No more empty house !

Oh, I was just standing at the sink, washing the supper dishes, and hearing the t.v. in the background as hubby searched for something worth watching.......and it hit me........

NO MORE EMPTY HOUSE AT NIGHT !

Oh, I am so thankful that hubby is home........I really didn't like coming back into this quiet place after leaving him at 8 p.m. every night.
  He's doing so well,....... good appetite, good attitude, getting stronger all the time,........ and he's not demanding at all, like some hubbys I hear about who don't know how to handle being 'off their feet'.  This morning he said to me, "I think I've come through the worst of this."  If you knew how difficult it is to understand him sometimes, and how down he's been since the fall, you'd know what a HUGE statement that is !   PRAISE THE LORD !

Dipping my toe into the 21st century.....or the end of the 20th, maybe?

Seeing as how this is a weB LOG, I think I'll record, for posterity, the fact that I've finally gotten myself a cellphone.  Granted, it is a prepaid TracFone, but, like I say, I'm testing the waters !

I was out for 2 whole hours this morning, running errands and restocking this place with groceries.......I ate mostly junk food while hubby was in the nursing home, except for the meals I took with him down there.......while hubby waited here, alone, at home, and it dawned on me that I had promised the daughter that I would look into getting a phone to take with me. 

I only plan to use it for emergencies, so I'm not giving out the number, but I feel much more 'in touch' now. 

So, congratulate me..........I"M IN !

Don't even ask me about texting, 'cause it ain't happenin' !

Pardon me......

.......while I take a deep breath and..............ahhhhhhh...............decompress.

I snatched my hubby home for good today, fed him a delicious fried chicken dinner, homemade, of course, and now, I'm gonna settle back and find a little peace in God's word.

A blessed night to all of you, too !

The days get away from me ! Happy MARCH !

Hooray......how far away can SPRING be?   

The hubby now wants me to pick him up as EARLY as possible each day, and not return him to the nursing home until suppertime, so I don't take alot of time to post.......really nothing much to report.  I don't seem to be accomplishing much craft-wise, but I have just really enjoyed being around so many sweet people there at the home.   The LORD has blessed me with a boldness to speak to people I don't know, and it has enriched my daily life beyond measure. 

I hope to speak to someone in the office tomorrow, though, to find out how much longer he's expected to stay there. The place is fine, but it's getting a little old, and he's ready to come home to STAY. 

A sweet friend from Church in Oklahoma contacted me this week via email, after losing touch for many months, and I received a nice little letter from her today.  So great to hear from her again.  Love ya, Deb !

I'm going to sit down and finish watching QVC's silver day......just love to look at all those purties ! 
Be well and be blessed !