No stars tonight

I decided to take a break from the star quilt and tried working with my embroidery machine. I embroidered this Mrs. Santa, with the big hands, tonight. I've decided to use it as the center of this block. You might remember it from a previous post with the Snowman block. I removed the center of the block and replaced it with this one. So, now I remember why I haven't used the embroidery part of the machine so much. It takes too long! But, my sister pointed out that you can't get all that detail, or man hands, in 5 minutes. This motif took almost an hour to complete. Longer than that when you consider the time it took to change out the thread color.

Since I didn't work on the star quilt tonight, I think I'll go on to bed. I'm too tired to do anything tonight and I'll make mistakes if I try.

Roses are red...no, wait, the stars are!

Here's the red star quilt ready to be sashed. That will connect them all together and then the binding will be put on and it will be done! I really enjoyed the quilting on these blocks. So easy to just "draw" with my sewing machine. It looks like a poinsettia blossom on each block.

Tonight I also finished the rag quilt I started last night that will be a Christmas gift. Jim snipped it for me since he didn't want me to have to do it all myself since he realized what a job that is. Thank you, Jim! I then washed it and put it in the dryer to fluff up. Can't show a picture yet. It's not Christmas! lol

I'm off to bed. Dad's been doing great. Thank You, Lord!

Seeing Red!

Only 37 more blocks to go! lol I've got a running start on these blocks now, though. These will be sashed, quilt-as-you-go style, with white on white on the front. The back of each block is a white-on-white, well, the same fabric on the front, and will be sashed in red. I had thought about alternating white and red on the back to get a checkerboard effect, but with the time limit I have I thought I'd better stick to something simple. If I can keep everyone relatively healthy, I'd like to get this one finished and ready for binding by the weekend. I'll let you know..

Dad's still doing fine, thank You, Lord! Jim and I took him out for a bit yesterday and I think he enjoyed it. He even discussed news he'd seen on television. He loves to watch the news channels.

Time to wake up grumpy. I let him sleep today. :-) Actually, I'd better get in the shower or I'll be late for work. "I'd rather be quilting!" LOL

Thanksgiving '07

Just thought I'd post a picture of how Dad is looking these days. Better, wouldn't you say? We had Thanksgiving Dinner at his house yesterday with Jim, Judy, Joe, Robert, April and me in attendance, along with Dad. We had a wonderfully filling meal with lots of pies, not the least of which was this
mouthwatering Peanut Butter Pie! This was one of Joe's contributions to the meal. Judy did the majority of the meal. I added the fruit salad and brought potatoes and green bean casserole and April brought a HUGE apple pie and a great salad. After we ate, Judy and I ran to Big Lots. Now, that's the time to go shopping. But, the deals advertised are not good until Saturday. :-(

Time for me to quit rambling and get in the shower. Some of us have to work today! I've always said, though, that I'd rather be working on Black Friday than out there with the crazies, shopping. You know who you are! LOL I'm not a big shopper, as my friends and family can attest.

Christmas blocks

The first block is made with a panel square and the corner squares are a la Cathedral Window style. This will be my block for the block swap during our Christmas party this year. The snowman is for the outgoing president. She requested snowmen in her blocks. They are both 12" blocks, finished.

Busy day at work and it will be that way tomorrow, too. It's a little strange knowing Jim is home all the time, at least, not at work. It's nice to come home to vacuumed floors and a clean kitchen when he takes a mind to do that. I don't expect him to stay home and clean house all day. That'd be nice, but let's get real! lol He finally got a chance to get out to the golf course today since it was so nice. It's been windy and cool until today but they keep telling us it's going to get colder tomorrow.
Judy and I will work on pies and stuff tomorrow night. We need to get to the gym sometime! I must find the time to work on a commissioned quilt that the lady wants to give as a Christmas gift. I've got 11 of 28 Friendship Star blocks made that I'll be using. Once I get the blocks done, I'll start quilting them with an alternate block of plain white fabric. It'll be a two-color quilt, red and white.

Time to take the contacts out.

Crazy 9 patch turtles

 This is the front of the batik Crazy 9 Patch with the turtle borders. The colors are so vibrant in person and these pictures do not do it justice. The next picture shows the back of the same quilt done with the quilt-as-you-go technique.

Then, below those two pictures is a picture of a comfort quilt going to a soldier who's name was given to the QOR group by a member of the Patriot Guard group in WY. The top was donated by Marcia, of the QOR group, and I went ahead and quilted it and will send it off tomorrow.

It is such a beautiful day out! I really need to get dressed and get to Dad's so we can get out and enjoy the day.
 
 

When you have nothing to do all day...

 

What do you do first? LOL This is the question I posed to Jim this morning. It's been two weeks now since he retired and he STILL feels as though he's on vacation. Granted, he hasn't been anywhere or done anything "vacation-y" but just not having to get up early, is vacation enough. It's taking some getting used to, but I knew that. The cap he has on is one that the P.O. gave him upon retirement. It reads "Retired Postal Worker. No more snow, no more hail. I'm retired, YOU deliver the mail!" He has been a big help with my dad. Who, by the way, is home from the hospital and doing much better.

Time to get to work. Well, some of us, anyway! LOL

Janome 6600 and Crazy 9 Patch

 

I've placed my new Janome on the dining room table for now. It gives me a little more room to quilt bigger quilts. I hope to, someday soon, find another table, or an extension of some kind, to add to my present sewing table.

I've really enjoyed working with this machine. But, I also have my Bernina set up in the sewing room. I find myself going back and forth between the two. For instance, last night I was quilting some blocks and some required green thread and others, white. Instead of having to re-thread the Janome, I just used my Bernina. Purty smart, huh? LOL

I finished the I Spy, Crazy 9 Patch in order to go to the local group meeting today. They are meeting, since 9 a.m., to work on this pattern. I have my batiks all cut out and I really had planned on going, but I was just too pooped. I didn't savor the idea of having to pack up my machine to travel, either. So, instead, I just finished the one I started right after last month's meeting. I think I'll stop by to visit here in a bit and take the quilt to show and tell.

Wedding pictures, galore!

I won't bore you with all the 300+ pictures that were taken during the wedding (actually, April and Rob tell me there were over 800 pics taken!). These are just a few of my favorite ones. I couldn't resist adding the two of my boys by themselves. The photographer really captured them.
I thought this was such a cute picture of April and her parents.
Of course, this is a favorite of mine with my "baby". lol
Here are my good-looking sons!

Rob and I, with Jim behind Rob, walking down the aisle.
Rob and April walking into the reception.
On a quilty note, April had quilts set up at the entrance to the yard for folks to use during the ceremony if they happened to get a little chilly. I thought it was a nice touch. She had some of mine and a few made by her grandmother. (I hope that's right! I'll have to double-check)

One more run to the hospital

We've got Dad in the hospital here in Clovis tonight. The cardiologist decided, at his routine visit, that Dad's heart rate is too high. It has been that way for the last 3 or 4 days and we knew something was up. So, we were sent straight to the ICU and he was admitted to have meds administered intravenously to lower the heart rate. Hopefully, he'll only be there 24 hours. Please pray...

The picture of the pincushions you see are those I received from a swap. What a treat! I love them all. Now to clean my room to find a place for all of my pincushions. I'm afraid that won't happen anytime soon, though.

I need to get some things done and head on back to the hospital in a bit.

Houston 2nd Day

Here is Angie, finally! What a sweetie this lovely little lady is. I wish we'd had much more time together. She called me just as I was getting ready to start a mini-class (the results of which you can see here). Angie, it was SO nice to meet you! Thanks for taking the time to find me and for the little tissue holder. I love those and I really needed one.

The heart you see here is the project we worked on. It's a very simple idea...you just layer your top, batting and backing, take a few decorative lines of stitching to hold it down, cut out a heart shape, turn the heart shape over and re-attach with more decorative stitches. So much fun! Can't wait to get home to do more and then put them all together with the quilt-as-you-go technique. What you see here is the front and then it's turned over to see the back.


Now this is the Toothbrush Rug I worked on last night. Today I picked up a sample of the oval rug to work on. It's coming along nicely. I also bought some fabric to use for a rug, but I have decided it is too pretty to tear up in strips for a rug. So, I'll just have to wait until I get home to use up some of my "ugly" fabric in rugs! lol They are sort of addicting...

Houston '07

I met up with Liz today. She and Tina are the friendliest people you'll ever meet! We had lunch with them after we found each other. That was a story in itself. I called her when I first got to the convention center. We decided I'd call her when Deborah got out of her class. I was walking around about 30 minutes later and my phone rang. It was Liz wanting to know if Deborah was out of her class and just where were we? I asked her where she was and she said, "near the Pfaff display." I realized that booth was just to my left so she said, "wave your arms!" LOL I did, and there she was, nearly right in front of me! We had a good laugh and went to eat. I hope to find Angie tomorrow.

I bought a few things today. One of my purchases is a "toothbrush rug" kit. Just a small, learn how-to kit. It looked very interesting so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I also bought a vibrating cushion that I'm leaning against right now. Gives my lower back a massage. So many things to look at! I really like the Grace quilting machine. I am seriously going to look into that one of these days.

I'm going to pop the DVD in showing how to make this rug. If I can figure it out, I'll post a picture of what I've done. I know a lot of you are going to say, "My grandma used to do that!" lol