Are we ready for the holidays????

Sew Mama Sew is starting on Nov 1st for 30 days to give us patterns, tips etc for holiday gifts.

Im hoping it's somethings that we can finish in a day or a couple hours...


The men of the house have taken over the big television to watch ghost hunters (aka TAPS) from some hospital in the south- it's on ALL night till really late. Meaning ds isn't going to school- I think I'll make him cut the grass one more time-lol.

Still working on the cathedral window parts for my road trip this weekend.

I dropped out of one of the web rings as I don't think my blog "fits" the ring any more- not quilty enough- there was a poll of x amount of post needs to be quilt related....I'm a quilter and I blog- I think enough of my visitors see that by my posts...so without any hard feelings happening later I decided to drop out of one. I mean I love quilting as much as the next person but it's not my whole life if you know what I mean???? I mean there is BASEBALL too *wink* and our families and vacation pics etc. Hell on 360 Force and I had peep wars for lent- 40 ways to torture marshmellow peeps. Yep 40= ways and other peeps stuff- boy I need to save all that before 360 disappers...So I have most of the links I visit daily in my side bar, or there in the stashbusters ring so I'll still be leaving messages when I can....it's just a personal matter at the moment. So it's not to cause problems- just the opposite.

Another Fine Mess

Last night while working on my cathedral windows I ran out of the little color squares. Really thinking I had more cut I went looking during commercials for them and couldn't find them. :( So I dragged the rolling bin out and low and behold I found some precut, a bunch of fqs and 6" squares from my friend Mel. And started cutting, of course hubby said I was going overboard as I'll never use them all up this week and blah, blah, blah.....you know how it goes. They have no clue.
And this morning I got a call from my dad and he's going to see his mom, my grandmother, this weekend did I want to come along??? But of course, and I'm bringing DS ,who will make us crazy with "I'm bored" But I'm looking at a 3 hour each way car trip and at least a couple hours of down time in the hotel. Now I'm thinking I didn't cut enough.....better get pressing the muslin parts too- maybe 2 dozen of those.LOL

For Christmas I asked for more of the 30's fabrics and the Feedsack book- there is one more scrappy quilt I want to make from these colors- I'm thinking an Irish chain quilt all different colors or maybe a dresden plate quilt....something to piece over the spring/summer and quilt by hand next fall. Maybe something will be in the book that screams, Make me, Make me!!! Ya never know.....

It's happening again......

Even before I finish the 36 patch and stars quilt ( look in the tags) I found another awesome scrap quilt on gypsy quilters blog :
Now if I could ever figure out how to make it clickable :(
http://gypsyquilterdesigns.blogspot.com/2007/10/touch-of-plaid.html




Now I would make it 9 patches with the diamonds but still..... I have a billion squares in drawers and drawers of these rolling things and extra hsts of all the colors for the depression blocks....( which I'm finishing #10 of 16 by the way )

But I did manage to stop myself from cutting more squares ( for now) and concentrating on strips for a scrappy weed wacker quilt from Bonnie's Quiltville blog. Of course I begged hubby ( I really did ) to order the rullers to make her new string star quilt and maybe I can work on the strings for awhile and get that HUGE tub under control.....I haven't used it since the retreat last Oct and I swear it looks way more full than I remember it...sigh

Now that Paul's Red Sox have won the World Series,( congrats to them) Moose and I plan on taking the book I won and another book and reading for an hour and hopefully falling asleep by midnight - what a concept

Monday with Moose

Here's the quilt supervisor sleeping on the job- normally he's swatting me from his perch





I've decided that in my next life I want to come back as a spoiled cat. That's what my husband calls Moose. Of course this poor cat waited 3 years for adaoption. The agency didn't think he would get adopted being blind in one eye.






It's been chilly at night here. We had our first frost on the pumpkins last night.
Games are over and get over too late for Moose to stay up and watch with me. Maybe now he can go to bed by midnight.

Pumpkins

So hard to see the second from left's pumpkin- It's Sally from Nightmare before Christmas. :)
We carved pumpkins, ate candy corn and popcorn balls and watched the Nightmare before Christmas with Jack the Pumpkin King... we are so not the normal Girl Scout troop huh??? I am so going to miss this girls next year.

Such a bad blogger :(

I've been keeping busy with insurance nonsense all week. Can't go quilt in the detached garage because the insurance people will call hubby at work if they don't get me....but the kids are fine a week later thank God. The idiot was 3 times the legal limit- what a jerk.

But I've been making stars for another 36 patch star quilt :) and working on the Cyber Quilters mystery. Oh and my cathedral windows is starting to look great working on the second half of a king sized blanket ( not really a quilt - no 3 layers-I know)

Tonight is Girl Scouts, the annual carving of our pumpkins- hopefully tonight I can load a pic to this blog for you to see :)

My jelly rolls have been shipped with a new smaller cutting mat that I'm going to try and use on the ironing board - my back is killing me again after 30 minutes of cutting :( I'm too young to feel this old........ but if it keeps up I might consider the surgery they're yammering for me to do- will be not quilting for a few months but if it helps......we'll see.

Good luck to Paula's Red Sox they may just sweep the Rockies in 4 tonight

Just before the no buy deadline :P

I went and ordered some jelly roll type strips from Connecting Threads.
Yep I was talking to someone from guild and they raved that the fabric was nice for the price ( way better than Joann's and Hancocks) So what's a girl to do???
I've been looking at Bonnie's Weedwacker quilt and thought how lovely it would be in fall colors. Yes I know fall is upon us now and I'll never get it done this fall but next year my sister in law turns 40 ( yep a baby ) and she wants a fall colored quilt. So of course I'll need to "test" the pattern to see if it's something I want to do in a large quilts so I figured what the heck ....I also got a thing to smooth out the cutting mats...mine have been taking a beating lately even though the blades are changed regularly.....and as I cut more and more fabric for different quilts in progress now, I have been cutting both 2 1/2 and 2" strips for a truly scrappy quilt of many colors....

Off to take ds for his regular yearly check up- of course his stomach is still bruised and sore from the accident- poor kid. Have my cathedral windows parts to take with me for the wait....

Look Jeanne I won something too :)

I commented the other day on a blog, http://beforethefaceofgod.blogspot.com, to win a book called A Godward Life, a book on short essays on God. I have a book by Max Lucado in my console of the truck for extra spare minutes waiting that I read....and I've read all of those more than once.So these will be new ones for me. And we all can use some new lessons in life.

Lately my new lesson is Patience- those who know me well, know that Patience is not one of my better virtues- I want it and I want it now! But dealing with car insurance companies is teaching me patience.

On a quilty note, I finally loaded a quilt to the frame yesterday and cleaned and oiled the juki so now that I've spoken to 3 different parts of Allstate this morning I think that I can actually go out and quilt for awhile today :) what I should be doing is cleaning this mess up as everything is piled high on the dining room table and lasagna is a meal to sit and eat together :)

Arkansas Crossroads revisited

Paula gave me the name of the block a few weeks ago, thanks Paula :)
And I've been making blocks as a leader ender project- one of many leader ender blocks I was doing. and I finally finished the 20th block yesterday and thos morning pieced the top.



One block looks like X's and a 16 patch but when you add all the blocks together,
they turn into a chicklet looking block....



Last night hubby and I got the scare of our lives. We were getting ready to go out and we heard a series of crashes- ending with a loud one. I ran out the door and saw DD's car pushed up onto a small hill at the end of the driveway. A drunk driver hit a street sign, a rock wall taking out a mailbox, another rock wall -still dragging the street sign and hit DD who was 4 feet back from the curb. Meaning he went into private property to hit her. Luckily she and ds are fine but are going for xrays for soreness today. The man told the police that he's one about 20 different medication. Add to the fact that he was drinking. I thank God for thier guardian angel that protected them. The police said if the man hadn't hit all the other objects first, at the rate of speed he was traveling and if dd was even with the end of the driveway, she would have been serverly injuried if not killed. Needless to say no sewing got done last night but I was able to spend time with my babies.

Saturday's Question of the day

How many of you read other people's blogs and

A: order the book or pattern cause you love it too or want to read it?

B: Try to reproduce some of the blocks/quilts you see on other's blogs???

C: Sit and laugh outloud at some of them so that your family is considering commitment to the hospital for the insane?

D: All of the above???

I personally fall under D fyi

It's raining- it's pouring

Not an eventful day at all. Last day of vacation for hubby and we had lunch with dd and one of her friends- they have off campus study hall/lunches as seniors. Then I trimmed some more of the never ending hsts Clap Clap! I'm halfway though #9's color and have #10 all cut ready to go....
Hopefully it will clear up this weekend as my gardens need cleaning out BIG TIME. My project for the week is to pull wall paper off the wall where I sew, get the glue off the wall and prime it. I don't even have to worry about getting paint on the trim as we're going to be replacing it next month. I should get the graph paper out and redo the area with the computer desk, bookcase, printer etc. I have a treadle with a box on top and I really want to move the one I bought off of Paula last year in the house and move this one to the garage till I figure out if I want to redo the cabinet or get a new one......
Last year when I was on a retreat in Lancaster hubby bought what he thought
was a featherweight and it kinda looks like one but I need to send it in for a new wire and plug.....








But pretty cool none the less- I don't know anything about the HomeMark company...does anyone in blog land???

So hubby and I went to see the new George Clooney movie today- I totally enjoyed it.Hubby could take it or leave it. On the way home we got a call from ds hysterical as he thought that dd's cat was run over by a car. It wasn't dd's cat and I did manage to take the remains out of the street - totally gross and nothing a child should see. I do believe it belongs to the little girl on the street but I had my own child to comfort. Cyd Vicious and I watched Batman the Beginning this evening since there's no baseball tonight :( . I'm bored and will try to trim 50 more hsts tonight and make another one of those road to Arkansas variation blocks I posted a few weeks ago and then I think I have enough to make a twin top. We shall see.

Well I'm going to find another movie to watchas the "men of the house" are watching some Ghost Hunters show from the Winchester Mansion in CA I believe the house is in.

More pics from Tuesday's Trip

So my best friend and myself sampled bottles of wine from last year and this year from the winery and it's not just me- the wine is different and not for the better :( Never fear it will be cooking wine. Waste not want not, right?
But my laptop desk came from the container store this morning- really fast for ordering Sat night online imho :). Today was a no sewing /quilting day as it was run around to Trader Joes for dinner and "stuff", the art supply store for dd's homework, the liquor store for a wine I really like,and the reg food store for makings of beef veggie soup for Friday. Tomorrow DD is off from work so I promised I would make a real Sunday type dinner, roast beef and all the trimmings. Any extra meat will be made into soup on Friday :)

I've been going through my quilty books and found Quilts from Grandmother's Flower Garden- so with my new toy, Inklingo, I will seriously look for a project to make.
Like I have nothing else to do-right? What's another UFO amoung friends????

So here's some pics from yesterday's trip to the winery
the first one we've named the God of Wine :)










I just love the look of old wine casks :)




Isn't this iron railing pretty????? Bet it would make a nice quilting pattern.....

A Day with Hubby :)

Hubby and I drove out to Peedler's Village to see the Scarecrow contest winners and hit a local ewinery. Which the winery must have had a bad year as some of the wines didn't taste as good as I remembered. Or maybe our tastes are more refined
hahahahahahahahahaha I doubt it.



So we did some shopping, had luch together, did more shopping- hit the winery on the way home and called it a day. I put the pics in 3 blogs as it was giving me a hard time with all the pics in 1 blog- enjoy..............






A Picasso :)



This one was made by a local winery name Merlot can you go.....lol









I LOVE Life is Good's shirts etc and I needed to replace my hoodie sweatshirt- and look who was outside the store-

A Day with Hubby part 2

A Day with Hubby part 3

Where does the time go???

Isn't she the greatest? I got this in the mail this morning for no good reason at all except my friend Lois wanted to RAK ( Random acts of kindness) me :)
I collect these lovely angels and even gets confused sometimes of which ones I have. And every year I buy 6 for certain friends for the holidays and I always buy the newest ones for the same reason. I got my first angel 5 years ago from a friend when I was diagnosed with cancer- the Angel of Hope.
Now I need to find another one to send to a friend who went for her yearly mamo to find out she has breast cancer. Now I know they're making progress every year on the disease but it is such a very scarey thing for the dr to come in and say "it's cancer." I know I've been there and actually heard it a few times afterwards with the words "it's back"





So one of the groups I am a former member of has decided to make this friend a love quilt to show our support and love for her. Since there are so few of us making blocks we're all making 4- Mel ( over acheiver she is :P) finished hers yesterday while I playing with new toys. But never fear I finished mine today. See - a cute design but lots of pieces.












And that's about all I did today, no reading, no playing. Just these blocks ( 4 of them) oh and a couple loads of laundry. Of cours eall this after I argued with Enterprise rent a car over the rates we were charged for our car I had all weekend. But sometimes it does pay to bitch as I got $47 off the charged price and a free day on another rental in the furture. Hubby just shakes his head.

Speaking of the wonderful man, we went to drop the car off this morning and out to breakfast and he went to clear up some loose ends at work and has the rest of the week off. How cool is that? Not that we're planning any big trips with the kiddies in school but tomorrow we're going to Buck Country PA to Peddlers Village to see the scarecrow display and hit a winery or two. Plus we have to finish the painting and staining from the contruction. And whatever day it rains first we're going to see the new George Clooney movie- well I'll see that and my money is he'll want to see the gorey Resident Evil movie- now don't get me wrong I love a good horror movie as much as the next BUT Resident Evil is a video game that should have stayed a video game from what I saw of the other movies-lol.

Guild meeting tonight and the Red Sox are playing the Indians again tonight- I think the Rockies will be in it but the American League is kinda tough to call.....maybe I can get another flower done or at the very least get some more cathedral window pieces ready for the "window parts"

It's Offically Fall

It's really fall even though the leaves aren't turned yet....
October baseball is going on even without the Yankees :(
We've done our annual apple picking. And after apple picking there's this.....





Which leads to these:





When I moved here 10 years ago one of my friends and neighbors taught me the fine art of making candied apples. Of course she claimed she knew what she was doing (lol). Remember claimed is the key word. Though we made a double batch of 24 apples and I learned never to use the popsickle type sticks that come in the kit you buy in the produce department ( buy lolipop sticks from anywhere that sells them- like Wilton ones) never ever dump the extra syrup down your sink. NEVER! It hardens in there and you need to pay mucho bucks to get a plumber to fix the drains. Making the cost of an apple over $20 each . It is much better to keep your cappichino cup from Starbucks or where ever and dump it in there to harden then dispose of the cup. And that is my public service announcement of the day.

Now though I have another gmfg flower ready to go, I need to hoop my first chocolate stitchery as my sil wants to see this project and we need to figure how much kona we need to dye for the borders to make a nice wall hanging out of our blocks.

On another note, yesterday in Linda's class she had one of these:
http://tinyurl.com/yvr9rz (I have no idea what to do to make it a clickable link-sorry)
and hubby ordered one online this morning with the logic it would be cheaper even with shipping than letting me loose in the container store- silly man.

Playing with Inklingo

So like a small child the day after Christmas I NEEDED play with my new toys *VBG* much to Santa's dismay. After much playing with the printer to find the custom setting of the size of paper, I gave up. Yep we found them but instead of letting us put in let's say 5x5" they want %. Now granted I swore in high school I would never use any of the math we were learning except business math- I passed algebra by the skin of my teeth and promptly forgot most of what I knew the minute I got my diploma :(. So forget the % feature I asked for a new printer for Christmas - Santa rolled his eyes kinda like last night.

So I took some 10 1/2" scraps and printed some hexagons and managed to figure I can get 6 per page at that size. I did my ink test just like Monkey said too. And started playing. I managed to get one done before the Grinch started yapping I need to make candy apples for the bday party for my oldest niece ( the one in the apple pics from the other day) So I PROMISED that as soon as I made my flower and blogged I would be a good "wifey/aunt" and stop playing and go do my grown up responsibilities






Can you see the light lines printed on the back of the fabric??? If not, click on pic.





I can see this is going to be addicting and will to show some great restraint if I want to get anything done....you really need this toy!!!

Quilted Diamonds with Linda Franz

Is this the most amazing quilt you ever saw? I thought the Dear Jane quilts were great ( not that I wanted to make one) but all those teeny tiny pieces all HAND PIECED and HAND QUILTED. One day- maybe.

Yesterday Linda Franz was the speaker at our local guild meeting. And she had an amazing lecture and slide show. Really amazing. And I got to see some of Jeanne's from Luvs2stitch's work. :) Very nice Jeanne. I need alot of practice to make my stitches smaller for these pieces. But we do try.





Today was the guild workshop and of course I signed up right away and up till last week we thought I was getting a private lesson but lots of talk from myself and members we managed to get the class up to 12 people which though it sounds small was a perfect sizes as we all had our own card tables to work at and room to spead out. You know how that happens...lol. Linda was a great teacher and I so enjoyed myself. I am so glad I took this class! I never thought that I would actually do the diamonds all those small pieces! Lots and lots of small pieces. But I promised my self I would try.




And try I did. Though the class was off track alot of the day and poor Linda thought we wouldn't get through it all we worked through and got it all covered. And look who was the only one to finish a diamond??? And look Monkey is checking it out. I never did hear the critique.....




Right before we left Russ, Linda's ,wonderful husband took a pic of Linda, Monkey and Myself together. Thank you Russ. And Russ, I did manage to come home with Inklingo 3 even after all the times you packed it away on me.

Now my hubby was just shaking his head as I went on and on about what fun I had and what I learned. His eyes glazed over and I showed him all the goodies I bought.
And he told me buying fabric is so much cheaper ( for him) than classes and all the toys I come home with. Men seriously, lol

sewing merrily along

I got sew much sewing done today clap!clap!clap!
5 blocks of the Road to Arkansaw variation- 1 more to go and I can piece a top!!!
I need to trim 40 more hst of the # 8 color and I can move onto #9!!!!
I did 10 blocks from Simply Squares as a leader ender
as well as 2 36 patch blocks for another 36 patch star quilt.
My truck is in the shop for brakes-gasp! I had a hole in the brake lines- let's just say I was so thankful I was driving it and not dd.
I have guild meeting tomorrow and my class Sat morning with Linda Franz...Im so excited. I tried to catch up on blogs today and will do more Sat night or Sunday. And I PROMISE some pics next blog.

I lived to tell the tale.....kinda

yesterday we took my monsters and my brother's 2 oldest monsters apple picking in NY state.


Look at that red hair!! Amazing color...both were well behaved. Amazing since everyone else in the family seem to have problems with them.




The trees were full of apples that even the little one could reach :)


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I love this pic ds took



After picking all those apples you need some cider and doughnuts, right???



and spend some time in the rocking chairs while hubby and I check out the little store :)


Of course the cutest apple looked like a butt!!!!!!

baseball humor

Still amoung the living

I have a break from construction till Tuesday morning :).
So I've been sewing more of the never neding hsts for depression quilts. I'm on number 8 of 16 now. Thank God!!! I'm so sorry I started this pattern I should have picked something , anything else to make 7 of. Oh well.
I also tried a few blocks of the mystery on Cyber Quilters yesterday. Marge from Delaware Quilts did it. I love my color choices and spent the morning cutting more pieces out to work on as another leader/ender project.

I went to put stuff in my rolling sewing machine case for next Saturdys class with Linda Franz and found a TON of blacks and whites in fqs. I mean alot!!! So that was my color choice for the mystery and the leftover red from my son's grad quilt. A large twin quilt from stash :O ...oh my!!!!
Oh back to the class, we're doing quilted diamonds and we need some background fabric and some 6" pieces to work with that play together nicely. I decided on Kona Snow and Amsih solids that I must have bought on retreat last year and then I found another fq of solids I bought on the shop hop 2 years ago!!! Now Beth,
has been working on applique and hand dyes and I have lots of those too (sigh) but think snow and solids would make a cute table topper or wall hanging...what to do , what to do.

Hope all are having a great sewing weekend- I'm trying. And I still have that backing that needs to be pieced so I can load it on my frame....oh oh it's a mess and I have to take before and after pics of that mess for another day. Contractor will be sanding on Tues and I want to be in the garae quilting :) a method to my madness!!!!!!