It's a BOY!

Welcome Liam Matthew to our family! Born on March 23 at 6:43 PM, 7 lbs. 12 oz. You were the brightest spot in our week. Papa is really sorry he couldn't be there when you arrived, but we kept him in the loop the whole time by cell phone. And thank you so much for waiting for me (Nana) to get there before arriving. Mom only had 3 pushes left to get you out. We are so glad you are here and healthy.




Your big sister, Mia, is glad you are here too! And I think she forgot that she wanted a baby sister. She was very curious where your toes were, we reassured her that you do have them, but you were wrapped up very tight. She wasn't happy that she couldn't give you a bottle like her baby doll.








Your cousin,Kai, just loved you. He was asking his Mommy to please get him a baby brother. He's not very fond of older sister sometimes and a little brother sounds like fun! I imagine lots of fun days ahead for you.










First stop home from the hospital--to see Papa. Well, at least for him to see you! You are such a good little baby and seem very content. You sure brightened our week.









Congratulations to our daughter, Tenille, and her husband, Matt, on the new addition to your family.

Quick update on hubby

Thanks for all your prayers. He definitely has a fractured pelvis, meaning no walking for 4 weeks or so. They found another fracture in his clavicle (??) one by the neck and the other on his shoulder and a fractured wrist. Still not sure what they are going to do. The dr. originally thought that a special platform walker that allowed him to use his elbow to displace his foot weight might work, but now with that second fracture, he isn't sure anymore. Physical therapy is coming in tomorrow to work with him in moving around. We tried twice today to get him off the bed and the most we could get was both feet hanging over the side. That makes hubby worried. It is definitely going to cramp his style. The dr. could already tell that he is one to push the limits. But he told him, NO JOKING-he had to follow his orders or create a bigger problem than he could imagine. And he is backing down his meds--dr. wants him to feel when it hurts to do too much, so he won't push it. Smart man!

Again, we just thank God for his mercy. I shudder to think what could happen. Maybe now he'll stay off the roof, and doing things that aren't quite so smart. Why do guys think they are invincible?

say a quick prayer...

I'm asking for some prayers for my hubby. He was trimming a large limb off of a tree, on a ladder 15 ft. up and the limb hit him and knocked him off the ladder. He had presence of mind to throw the chain saw out of the way and landed so hard on his shoulder, he bounced. We are so fortunate that someone we hired to grind up the tree stumps was there and saw it all. He called 9-1-1 and then got me. I would have not found him for at least an hour. I was cooking dinner.

We spent 10 hours in the ER last night, they thought he had an aorta aneurysm, but it was fine. He fractured his shoulder and his wrist, bruised his ribs and there is something wrong in his upper thigh/groin area. He's in a lot of pain and they keep doing x-rays/CAT scans to see if his pelvis is fractured. It keeps coming back fine, but the doctors say he's in way too much pain to be just the ligament. So, more tests are being done. They admitted him and he'll be there for a day or two, we hope. I just hope we find what's wrong, so they can get on with fixing him, rather than giving him loads of morphine.

He is so very lucky (making ME very lucky) that he's going to be fine. Sore, for sure, but alive.
thank you

Pluggin' along...

I'm finally back on blogger and the ring! I thought I got kicked out. Blogger was sure having their share of problems last week and as a result I had to be removed from the ring because my page was blank, thereby stopping the ring. Thanks Judy for letting me back in!

I finished my Feathered Star Medallion late last night. I started cutting it out last Thursday! My husband had a crisis at work and was on the phone or at the office quite a bit, so I kept plugging away at it. All I can say is Thank Goodness for triangle paper. Which, by the way, did you know you can buy a CD, Triangulations, that allows you to print out your own triangle paper, in ALL sizes? It prints out as many as can fit on a 8 1/2" x 11" paper. I used Carol Doak's Foundation Paper, so it would tear out easily. I'll have to give credit to a fellow quilter though--at my small quilt group, a friend was at a standstill on her project, so she tore off my paper and ironed them all for me. It was a huge help! Thanks Mary! Now all I need to do is get it loaded on "Zoe" (my HQ16) and get it quilted. I was hoping for a little more practice on doing feathers sideways before doing something where it mattered. Oh well, here goes...

this is a test--yesterday my whole blog was invisible..just trying to get it back while blogger works on their bugs.

Christmas Row by Row

I'm teaching a Row x Row quilt that started last September. Every month we do a new row. Well, at least we are supposed to complete the rows! I had all my blocks in parts and pieces in every stage and thought it time to get them done! I finally got all the blanket stitching done on the poinsettias. I'll make the row tomorrow. This was for January.








This was February's block, we had to do 9 blocks. Lots of boring satin stitching, but all done now and the row is together.











This is for this month. I got all the rest of the fabric cut out for the other 7 blocks. I'm doing 4 with green stars and 4 with red stars.

The whole series was supposed to bust all my scraps of Christmas fabric. I bought Folk Art Christmas fabric for 4 years to make Christmas quilts for all my beds. Two are done, two more are cut out (only because I needed their leftovers!). I don't think my tub has gone down one little bit! And I only have one more row to go besides the border! I see lots more Christmas quilts in the works. Maybe I'll head over to Bonnie's and take a peek at what else I can do.

Missing Pictures

These are the pictures I tried to put up last night. Nothing real exciting--but they are DONE! The first one is "Butter Blues", pieced in 2000. My daughter started to do this, thinking she wanted something blue and yellow, then something happened, she changed her mind and so it sat waiting patiently to be done. I pulled it out to finish so I'd have something else to practice on my HQ16.















This is called "Flip Flop Summer". The yellow check border is actually chenille. I was hoping to find a lime green, but couldn't. I saw a picture of one in a magazine last summer and thought it was cute. I had this in the HQ16 at my retreat, and so some of my friends practiced on it too.















This is my 3" finished Rail Fence. Why? Just because! Actually, I get bored with doing the same 12" blocks over for demonstrating, and thought I'd challenge myself. I made a quilt with 6" blocks last time, so why not go even smaller? I think this will be it though!

QADD???

Okay, I give up--tried loading pictures 5 times, reduced the size, the amount, and nothing. Sometimes it timed out and other times it said they were loaded. Now watch them all show up at once! I'll try tomorrow..

Hmmm, do I have Quilter's Attention Deficit Disorder? Jeanne mentioned maybe she had it in her blog today and MANY joined in to admit that there does seem to be sort of a problem along this line with MOST of us! LOL (sorry Jeanne, this is the last time I'll use your blog for my jumping point!) So, let me count the ways that I think I am afflicted. This is what I worked on TODAY!
1. Finished binding and labeling my "Butter Blues"
2. Finished binding and labeling my "Flip Flop Summer"
3. Labeled "Cathedral Window Rag"
4. Finished machine quilting baby quilt #1, cut binding.
5. Quilted "Spring Iris Tablerunner", cut binding, sewed on top, needs hand stitched down
6. Added last two borders to baby quilt #2--looked for backing and everything is not quite big enough, didn't feel like piecing a back, so folded it up.
7. Tried to cut a new quilt out and I kept knocking things off my table...so cleaned up my work table and ironing board--how do they get so full anyway? I cut all the scraps on the table into strips or squares.
8. NOW I could cut out a new quilt that I need to make for our new condo for NEXT week! Like I didn't know we were getting it! Started doing the HST, after 40 sets, got tired of doing that, so labeled everything and put in baggies.
9. Cut out a kit for the class I taught tonight.
10. Liked the colors so well of the kit I cut, I decided to make one for me--only in 1/4 size! This class is a Sampler class for beginners and I have them make 12" blocks. I get tired of the oversized blocks, so mine are going to be 3". First block--Rail Fence--logs finish at 1/4"!! Make 1st block for class.
11. Finished piecing my poinsettia blocks. Was going to put them together, but there was a lot of matching and precision sewing and my favorite machine to do piecing is up in my classroom, so bagged them up.
12. Finished satin stitching on the peppermint twist blocks. Did all the white stitching and about 1/2 way through the red. Ran out of bobbin thread and am almost out of that color red, so bagged those back up too!

Whew! And I wonder why nothing gets done! I did finish 3 things today--but that only brings my total to 5 for the year! And "Butter Blues" was from 5 or 6 years ago! I hit little stumbling blocks along the way, and so I divert to something else. So, sad to say, I think I do have QADD. (disclaimer: please note that I am only having fun. I know people, including adults, that suffer from ADD and struggle with it. I know it's not to be taken lightly and I do not mean to offend anyone)

1991 memories

Jeanne asked in her blog for us to share our 1991 memories...Thanks Jeanne for a "blast from the past" walking down memory lane......this is what I remember...

I remember being the Taxi Mom. Sure glad gas was a lot cheaper then! We had just moved to a city 30 minutes north of us in late 1990. My oldest daughter , who was a sophomore in HS, had extensive knee surgery that required many trips to the doctors and physical therapy. Meanwhile, our middle daughter was still in the Christian Jr. High in the other city. And my youngest daughter with Down Syndrome was still yet in another school---in the other city. Add all the sporting events we went to for the girls volleyball teams, softball teams, my Taxi Meter ran all the time.

Quilt wise? I had been hand quilting for about 3 years by then with my friends. Thanks to Grandma Klunk (my friend's husband's grandmother) who taught us how to hand quilt. We had quilted a top that was my friend's and in 1991 is the year we worked on my Grandmother Lena's quilt top. My mom gave it to me, thinking we could practice on it, since it wasn't very pretty! Okay, so it wasn't a perfect quilt, but there was a lot more thought into it than it first appears. I dug out my diary that I kept when we quilted. I even found a few pictures--egads! Remember those perm years? Here's me, Debbie and Cindy quilting away....

Cindy, me and Deb finally get to take it out of the frame!!

And now....15 years later, still on a bed and I still love it!

Churn Dashes from the past

This is another one of the block swaps I did with a group that Nancy was also in. If I remember, some people had problems with points in this one too. I wasn't sure what to do with them, as I really wanted to use them in a quilt because these people were my friends. Then I saw this idea where someone appliqued over blocks. I found this cat fabric and knew exactly how I would handle bad points, things not matching quite right. It's funny, because I am not a cat lover (don't get me wrong--I don't have a choice--allergies) but I couldn't pass it up. And now people don't even look at the blocks! :) And I have a quilt with fond memories of my cyber friends.

any Y2K swappers out there?

Evelyn, this is for you! After you commented about siggy squares and yours was from Cape Cod with a humpback whale, it sounded so familiar! I went and looked and there you were! Right on my Ohio quilt. It was featured in the Y2K exhibit in Houston in 2000. And that's where I met Nancy in person. What a small, small world! It made me start thinking...how many others participated in the Y2K swap? I did enough for 5 quilts! My husband made me continue. He was totally fascinated with the swaps I got from all over the world. Actually, my Ohio quilt is my second quilt, the first one had only ONE siggy/fabric from each state, each province of Canada, each territory of Australia and numerous European, Asian and African countries. This Ohio quilt actually appraised more than the other one that had so much more variety in it and it was hand quilted by my Amish friend. This Ohio quilt has lots of duplicate states, countries, etc. But it was the machine quilting by Diana Huff, the Quilt Elf, that made this quilt sing. She drafted out the counties and quilted in the counties and a few rivers!! So, there you go, long armers, you can really make a quilts value increase by awesome quilting.

Bear Paws from internet Swap

Nancy of www.nancyquilts.blogspot.com wrote of making Bear Paws quilts and mentioned a swap done quite a while ago with a group. I was IN that group! And I have the quilt done and labeled. So I decided to post it, and Nancy, it wasn't as bad as you thought! :) Sorry, the label picture isn't too clear. I pieced the quilt and then had my Amish friend hand quilt it.

Another Retreat...

Thanks to Sandy M. (a retreat attendee) for this beautiful cake! She had my logo put on the cake and the date. Not only was it beautiful, it was yummy too. It was from my favorite cake shop.

Not only do I attend retreats with my own quilt group, I also host retreats for students or whoever would like a nice quilter's getaway. Since my two older kids are gone and my youngest is living in our basement efficiency apartment, I have lots of bedrooms not used. Add a seperate studio with a big classroom, bathroom and kitchen and you have the perfect set up for retreats! There were 4 people at this retreat (not including me). I hired someone to do the food, and she had a last minute family emergency, so I spent most of Friday shopping and cooking! Needless to say, the cleaning was a quick once over! But we had a great time and lots of UFO's were being knocked out! I'll post more pictures and recipes on my website.

Let's see, a whole weekend of sewing, eating, laughing, eating white chocolate dipped strawberries (again, thanks to Sandy M. for the scrumptious treats!), getting a wonderful massage from my favorite massage therapist (who came to the retreat to give all of us massages), being serenaded by our favorite crooners...Michael Buble, Michael Bolton, Barry Manilow, John Tesh, Rod Stewart.....more sewing...what more could a woman ask for?

What did I work on? First of all, I finished the last 5 rows of my Reversible Quilt ( a few posts back). I am waiting on my bolt of Black Kona Cotton to make the setting triangles. I had the blocks laid out (all 218 of them) in the massage room, and had to move them for our massages. I forgot to take a picture before I picked them all up. Then I finished my Cathedral Window Rag quilt. I taught a class in this a few weeks ago, and left some of it undone for demonstrating purposes (that's my story and I'm sticking to it! LOL) . It's made with flannel circles, sewn together (I used a tie dyed flannel on the back), with raw edges and then the "arcs" are stitched down. It ended up being 53" x 70". I need to clip the edges and wash it and LABEL it and then can claim it to be done.

Happy 31st Anniversary!

Happy 31st Anniversary to my hubby--who is in Germany right now and I'm in Ohio. :( This picture was taken last year when we were on our 30th Anniversary Dream Trip to Australia. This was actually on Valentine's Day and we were about ready to leave for a Dinner Harbour Cruise. See the Sydney Opera House behind us? It was very beautiful and very romantic. So, although we are many miles apart right now, my heart is still close to you. Here's to another 31!

Thanks to my hubby who sent this beautiful basket full of spring tulips, hyacinths, cookies, chocolate and herbs. He also sent, via our favorite internet shop (www.fatquartershop.com), some bundles of pink/white FQ's. He's a sweetie, I think I'll keep him!