Feeling good!!

Wow--3 weeks later and I feel like I'm back to normal--whatever that is! LOL And I worked overtime catching up with mail/emails/sewing/cleaning. It feels so good feeling good that I have been working extra hard, and that's a good thing. Follow all that?

I have been trying to tackle old UFO's to finish and here is one that I started in 2001. "Going to the Beach"

I got most of the blocks fused and partly satin stitched, then for some reason went on to something else. Why do we do that to ourselves? I got it out again, found my basket of rayon threads and matching bobbins and went to town stitching the rest of the blocks. Geez--only 3 hours later and they were done. I was so excited that I put them together with the rest of my red fabric and somehow ended up 20" short! Dang. I didn't have more and as would luck would have it, I had just had an Open Sew day at my Studio that day and as I emptied the trash, I found one of my students THREW these away! She claims to have no stash OR scraps at home and now I know why! Why there is perfectly good fabric there and enough to do something with it! I dug it out of the trash, frogged stitched the pieces apart and what do you know? The color is so close it's uncanny and when I pieced them together, I had an extra 1/4" !!! Yes, I said that right--I had enough with 1/4" to spare!! Now, look close, can you see the difference? Yep, life is good again. A few close ups of the blocks in the wallhanging. I am going to put this in my SC house in the laundry room, of all places. :) It really matches the border in there and I'm running out of room to hang quilts. I'm still working on the final border. I had more of that cool water fabric, but not enough to do a whole border, but I have an idea. I'll show you when it's done.

This is post 199 for me, and I mentioned a few posts ago that I am going to do a 200th Blog-avirsary give away so stay tuned........ I'm looking for something good to give away! :)

Finish,cough cough, finish

Finishes in between the coughing. I'm ready to be done coughing--the medicine I am taking is really good about stopping the coughing, but then I find myself on the couch sleeping/snoozing/napping. LOL My choice: no meds, cough my head off--take the meds and sleep half the time! And then I somehow got the OTHER type of flu with it coming out both ends this past weekend. But here is what I got done BEFORE the flu hit last week:
Coral Brick Road..at least 2 years old and all I had to do was add the borders! I quickly finished this one up so I could have it for a practice quilt for my "Zoe" students (I'm teaching others how to use my HQ16 so they can rent my machine). They just did an allover meander and didn't do too bad, considering there were three people doing it. I finished up the binding last week, so it's another 'done' quilt!

This is finally done! I've been working on hand stitching the 'Bubbles' with a utility stitch using different variegated Perle Cotton threads. I'm going to keep it here for my newest granddaughter. All the grand kids have their own quilt when they come to Nana's. Here's a close up of the stitching. It was hard to determine where to stop! :)This is a quilt that a student request I teach. She really wanted to learn how to do the lettering. So I taught the class and showed them how to make their own lettering and personalize their quilts. This was a free pattern here. "Nana's Sweet Shoppe"And a close up of the machine quilting. I used Superior's MonoPoly Thread and did a 'wood grain' design in the bookcase. And my last Stashbusting report: (geez--I'm getting later and later doing my report!)

Stash busted last week: 11 1/2 yards (mostly for backings and bindings)

Stash purchased last week: 0

Total Stash busted YTD: 218.5

Total Stash purchased YTD: 9

Net total busted: 209.5 yards!

Vacation on the couch

Some vacation--I spent most of it on the couch! I went to SC last week and met my hubby down there with his motorcycle for Bike Week. I spent the first day with my parents and then took them to the airport early the next day and on my way home, I didn't feel well. And it all went downhill from there. :( Fever, chills, terrible coughing. I did manage to piece a quilt that I started YEARS ago though. Every time I felt a little better, I'd get up and sew for 1/2 hour. Over the course of the week, I finally got it done. At least it was nice weather I could see out the window! LOL

This is called "Morning Glory Moda Stars"..a free pattern from Moda using Robyn Pandolph's Morning Glory line. It was a really easy one to do, just lots of little connector squares (over 500 of them!). It would look really neat using christmas fabrics too.

By the way--this is post # 197--I'm thinking that I should do something special for my 200th Blogiversary (sp?), some type of giveaway...I better think of something soon! Stay tuned!

Some stash busting and finishes!

I finished putting the label on this quilt this morning for my secret pal in a group I'm in. Our final meeting for the year is this week and I'm leaving in about 20 minutes for a week in sunny SC! I'll be glad to get out of the rain here. Although it's making everything pretty, it's getting a bit soggy.

I also got another top quilted, or rather my "Zoe" students did. :) I had another class teaching others to quilt on my HQ16 and they used it for practice. I hoped to get the binding on this past weekend, but didn't get it done. I also finished another baby quilt..but will have to post that next week when I return.

Stash Busting:

Stash busted this week: 4 1/4 yards (for backings/bindings/borders)

Stash in this week: 0

Stash busting for the year: 207 1/4

Stash in for year: 9

Total net busted for year: 198 1/4

Remodeled kitchen--done!

yeah! Kitchen is done and I'm finally getting some pictures up for you to see. I moaned and groaned about it often enough, at least I should share the finished product.

This picture seems a bit dark for some reason. You can barely see my great new refrigerator, a French door top and freezer on the bottom. And my 'induction' cooktop. It uses magnetic energy to cook. You need to use stainless steel pans as the magnetic energy reacts with pan somehow to heat up the food. Not quite sure how it works, but it boils water in less than a minute! You don't need to cook on high anymore (especially with my new pans) and saves a lot of energy.
This is the 'buffet' side. The tall left cupboard houses my 'coffee' station. You open the door and pull out a drawer with the Senseo coffee maker and it has the mugs, coffee, sweeteners, etc. already there. The coffee pot is plugged in, so nothing to move. And no mess on the counter! The glass cupboards now feature my glasses.
This side of the kitchen used to have my Hoosier cupboard, but there was space on both sides of it that was so darn convenient to have full baskets, totes, junk, etc! LOL Now there is no place to put stuff to deal with later, so now I deal with it right away. See all the drawers? I have 40--yes 40 drawers in this kitchen! And there are still quite a few empty ones. My friends make fun of me because I have one drawer dedicated to jello! :)
View from the great room. See the apple green? I finally settled on this color after trying 2 different yellows. I like this color with the black.

I'm hosting a Mystery Day today at my Studio. I have given fabric requirements, cutting directions and some pre-sewing directions over the past month. And today is the day they put all the components together. I made them lunch--Chicken Pasta Salad--yummy recipe, Flat Earth Mixed Berry chips, Blueberry Struesel Muffins, crudites and dip, and individual Key Lime Pies for dessert.

Have a great weekend!

Stash Busting at it's best!

Wow--nothing like having a cousin who likes to organize! My cuz, M, from Colorado flew out for our reception for Ted and stayed the rest of the week. And being the organizer that she is, she offered to help me organize my fabric stash closet. I think it made her a little edgy to see such a chaotic mess! Folding, using the ruler method like the Happy Zombie, made all the stacks of fabric nice and neat. I ended up folding my FQ's and putting them in plastic shoe boxes. The stacks were little, but tall and kept falling over. So this way I can pull a shoe box of FQ's out according to color and still keep them nice and neat. 33 of them to be exact! And I could fit 10 yards worth of FQ's in each box!

Looking good, huh? 3 days of folding EVERY piece of fabric and sorting and it's now done! Wonder how long it will stay like this? LOL I'm hoping that since it's done now, it will be easier to keep like that.

So...how many margaritas DOES it take to make a closet look good? LOL Good job Mona! Thanks for all your help and perserverance in getting this done. I figured it was going to be an all summer project for me. And there was even a bonus attached--I was able to purge 116 yards of fabric!! Add that to the .11 3/4 yards that I have used the week of 4/7 for purses/borders and baby quilts and 9 3/4 yards for the week of 4/14 for backings and a new quilt, that makes 203 YARDS of fabric busted from my stash year to date!! I do have to admit to buying 9 yards of fabric at the Paducah show--but that is SO much better than the past for me. AND, I thought about it for a day before I went back and bought it. I have been really good at using self restraint when it comes to fabric buying. Now...food? A whole 'nother story!! LOL

Fabric busted: YTD 203
Fabric bought: YTD 9
Net busted: YTD 194 yards and there STILL are no empty spots on the shelves!

Fun in Paducah!!

congratulations TED!! The 2008 AQS winner--Best of Show! Here she is getting interviewed in front of her quilt at the AQS show. She was completely shocked--all of her friends were not, but she was delighted to say the least and got very emotional when so many liked her quilt. It was inspired by her great-great-great-great grandmother's hankie that has been passed down over the years until it is almost brittle. So she recreated it in a quilt to be passed down further. Which is why she turned down the $20,000 prize money in order to keep it.
Since we didn't decide to attend the show until earlier this year, we were forced to stay outside Paducah, on Kentucky Lake. The cabin was a fisherman's cabin, and the view was fantastic! It was nice to be able to relax in the evenings and had room to spread out the 'purchases' of the day! The owner's of the cabin took a liking to the fact that 5 women were staying there and ended up having a fish fry for us one night, complete with all the trimmings. We had croppie, catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw, sweet 'taters', and finished off with a yummy blackberry cobbler! Worth the stay, let me tell ya!

In order to avoid the long lines and pricey food fare, we packed our pb & j for lunch and ate in the car. What we quilter's will do to preserve our fabric money :)
Ted had a compete entourage with her--from Road Manager to bodyguard (courtesy of AQS)

Left to right: Marilyn, the Road Manager (who arranged the accomodations and fish fry!), TED, Candy (hair stylist), Steve (Ted's quilt guard for the week), Maureen (Driver) and me, (Business Manager).

We had a ball this past week and it was fun to share in Ted's excitement over her win. This show is really different from the Houston show, where the quilts tend to be more art oriented. This show is definitely more traditional and you saw more handquilted quilts. I would love to share some of the awesome quilts I saw, but anymore I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to share, so will refrain. It's sad and I can understand to a point, but it's not worth getting in trouble over. I did see our Judy's quilt--great job Judy!

The excitement continued when we got home....more later on that!

PJ's, tornados, aprons and the Pantry!

What started out to just a fun PJ party at my Studio making the Four Corners Apron got sidetracked when one of the gal's husband called and said that we had tornado warnings in our county and it was tracking right near us. I could hear the tornado sirens as I ran over to the house, and asked my hubby to turn on the TV and sure enough, there were tornado warnings and we were told to go straight to a basement or an inside closet. I ran back to the studio, told everyone to hurry over to my house where there was a basement. We sat down there for 1/2 hour watching 2 waves of threatening weather go right by us. We heard there might have been a touch down about 4 miles from here, but we don't know for sure. They told us on TV to go to an inside closet...so hubby thought it would be funny if we all huddled into the pantry and he took a picture. Obviously the threat of a tornado was gone and we could have some fun. But dang..it took us away from sewing for about an hour. And then I couldn't find my camera to take a picture of the finished aprons! They were cute let me tell ya!

I'm back!

No, I did not fall off the face of the earth--I just got buried in kitchen remodeling stuff--it's ALL over the house! All the stuff from my kitchen is everywhere and then add a nice thick icing of dust and you can imagine what it's like here. I had lots of design decisions to make, paint color...handles (80 total!!)...lights, etc. And then I left for a week to SC with some friends to just get away from it all, the snow and mess here! They are not quilters...BUT I got them into a quilt store and they bought fabric! Heck, if I can't buy it (honoring my stash busting commitment), I can sure help those that can! LOL I'll write more in the next post about that. So, obviously there is no STASH BUSTING report--good or bad. But soon..soon I'll be back sewing. The kitchen is almost done now, so a few more finishing touches and then taxes and then I'm free!!
I just have to share this pictures...my daughter just sent a bunch to me with Little L..who just turned 2. He loves to eat and found some cookies...but dang, can't quite get the package open but if I try hard enough, I might get something..


I got something!!

yeah, it's good!

uh-oh, I don't think Dad is too happy..

Dad--don't take them away!!

That kid is always looking for food-he loves apples well, the first 4 bites anyway!

and to give the others a chance to shine...here's the Divine Miss M on Easter..

and finally Miss A, who is now 5 months old! I wish time would slow down, this might be our last little one and I LOVE the little ones..it just doesn't last long enough!

What am I doing???

I am SO supposed to be working on my books/taxes and somehow I wandered off to just look at a 'few' blogs...and I happened to see yet another cool signature and I clicked on it and found a site where I could get one too!! Woo hoo! So, of course I had to go do that, play with my name, nicknames, my Passionate Quilter name and then of course, it's the 120 fonts, colors, sizes and slopes! Then trying to figure out how to get it into my post. My question? Do you have to copy and paste the code in EVERY time you post? I tried to find a place in the template where it could just 'be' and I can't seem to see it. I'm in Blogger and if someone knows how to get it to stay there so I don't have to copy/paste each post, I'd sure appreciate a heads up! Thanks!
Now what kind of post would it be without pictures? (and a chance to try my new code!). So I'll show you another quilt that I finished last week. "Crazy Friendships"Another 24 FQ challenge quilts--I used some pretty contemporary fabric with a 'modified' traditional design and thought I'd finish it off with a traditional quilting design, the Baptist Fan. So it has a little of everything in it. Here's the back...an idea picked up from Mary--I love the way it looks instead of having a seam down the middle separating the two fabrics. This spices it up a bit.
and another snow picture....I love this pump--it's a real pump, but never used. I bought it just for decoration. :)

PS..woo hoo..it worked!

Retard??

This is NOT a quilty post here--but just an observation and sad commentary. So, you can move on if you like. In the last 3 weeks, I have had 3 different friends who know me/us fairly well and know about our Down's Syndrome daughter,(notice the 'pose', when I told her I wanted to take her picture, she immediately went into her 'modeling' mode--oh, the pictures I'm NOT sharing!)

and they have all made similar comments about someone doing something stupid being 'retards' or that 'retarded dog' or something along those lines. Have you ever made a comment like that about another person or animal that isn't being too bright at the time? Unfortunately, that term is used in a very derogatory and negative manner with no respect for the truly 'mentally retarded' population out there. It's something I have heard all my daughter's life. I'm an emotional person and I'm afraid if I would say something, I would start crying. I know they love my daughter--but they are TRULY demeaning her as a human being when they say things like that. I wish I were a witty, quick on my feet person and had a great comeback. After the one episode, my husband and I just looked at each other when the comment was made, but said nothing. Apparently someone saw our eye exchange and said something to our friend, who called and apologized. We thought about saying this comment when someone makes a rude remark.."Oh, do they have Down's Syndrome too?" I thought, that would be a great comment to kind of bring their attention to their poor choice of adjectives. So, when it happened just ONE week later, from one of my best friends, I stammered. It was said so flippant, she gave it not one thought. So.........does anyone out there have any great suggestions? I know it's a very important thing to me, having a retarded daughter, but to others, it doesn't even cross their minds. But please, if you have ever made a remark similar to that, think about what message you are sending--that you think they are the lowest forms of our human race. And you know what? We were BLESSED by having her, wondering what we ever did to deserve to have her.

So, now that being said--and thanks for listening to my little 'soapbox' tirade.....here's a little story about her day today....

I made a huge mistake this morning by not remembering in time to change my daughter's watch and alarm clock for Daylight Savings Time. She is very much a creature of habit, she LOVES structure and follows her watch to the second! Believe me, when it's 12:00 noon--you KNOW where she is! Asking about lunch. 3:00--same thing, only it's 'snack' time and then 5:30 it's dinner. For some reason breakfast doesn't 'have a time'! LOL She-She (affectionately called by her nieces and nephews) has Down's Syndrome (although if you ask her, she's over that! She doesn't suck her tongue anymore and so she must think that's all that means--and don't even argue with her about that!) and is 26 years YOUNG. She's not old, she tells us, she's young. Okay, whatever. Dhe doesn't 'get' the time change thing, so she refuses to let me change her watch or clock. So I'm going to have to sneak into her bedroom tonight and do it quick. She's just not happy--she kept changing MY clock to match her watch! I threatened no dinner to her if she did it again. She didn't.

update: I HAD to change something-either change MY clock or her watch, because it didn't match and she was not a happy camper. Well, these new-fangled watches confuse me and do I know where the little book you get with the watch is? HA! So, after almost 1/2 hour of messing with it--oh let's see, I first changed her alarm by accident, I convinced her it was a better time anyway (it was 4:27--probably set by me to start with accidentally, and I got it to 3:00--snack time!), somehow changed the alarm to 5:00 and told her it was quitting time at work, so that's okay. FINALLY got it to the right time, well, not quite--it was ONE minute behind her newly changed alarm clock. Easy fix--change the alarm clock! LOL BUT oh no--I somehow got it in military time and can't get it back! There is no way I can explain that one to her, so I kept playing. Somehow I got it all right and she's not super happy because it's all confusing her why we do this, but she feels right with the world again.

And again--I appeal to those who don't even think about the choice of words they use..to maybe come up with a better way to express your frustrations with someone. I thought of several comparisons of what it sounds like, but they were all too negative and demeaning, I didn't even want to say them. I would love to hear your suggestions on how you would handle it? Remember it comes out of the blue with no forewarning and I'm not the quickest thinker! LOL

Stashbusting Sunday 3/9

Okay--did fairly well getting rid of the stash and no NEW stash again. But let me tell ya, it's VERY dangerous to have a free 1/2 hour roaming the internet! You won't believe all the new stuff I saw and loved! SOOO tempting, but I'm being strong.

Stash added this week: 0 yards
Stash added YTD: 0 yards

Stash busted this week: 12.5 yards
Stash busted YTD: 70.5 yards

Boy, it sure helps not going to quilt shops, Super Bowl Sales, quilt shows or staying away from Internet sites! But Paducah is next month--that's when the real test comes in. LOL What's sad is that 70 yards sounds like a lot--but there is no way you can even see a dent in my closet. :( I wonder how much you have to 'bust' before it's noticable?

Blizzard of 08

Well, that's what they're calling it. LOL It just amuses me that the newscasters love to 'name' events--AS they are happening! Yes, it's true there were blizzard warnings until 4 PM today--which technically means there is low visability, winds over 35 mph and it lasts more than 3 hours. So, by definition, we are 'having a blizzard'. But for those that lived through the Blizzard of '78--this is just a bad winter storm! We have about 20" of snow since yesterday and the roads are hazardous to drive on since the wind blows the snow right back on the roads as soon as it's plowed. We're in a Level 3 Snow Emergency--which means only emergency vehicles--you can get ticketed if caught. Well, you won't get caught--just stranded with no help! In the meantime, we're all holed up here with a pot of vegetable soup going and a pot of homemade chicken noodles cooking.

So, what's a gal to do when housebound--and no husband? Well, shoveling is NOT one of them! LOL I'm calling the snow plow guy when it's all over! I've been a VERY busy gal and finished 10--yes, TEN quilts this week. Granted most of them were small and almost all of them were flimsy's, but hey--done is done! Here's a few:

"Twinkling Stars"--remember I got this done at my retreat. Now it's bound and labeled."Merry, Merry" # 2 and #3--I can't find #1, LOL Oh well, these were very old projects that all they needed was some simple quilting and a few buttons! Why oh why do I wait so long? Not sure what I'll do with them. I'll show more finishes tomorrow. In the meantime, I felt like I was due to play and do something NOT on my list and fun to do. I bought the fabric and pattern for this tote in Houston last year. It's a new line from Lakehouse Fabrics, I can't remember the name right now. But it's now done too! Now 'that was fun'! I think I'll make another one or make an apron tonight. Or maybe be lazy and look through quilt magazines and books.