Fathers Day Today!!

Happy Fathers Day to dads, husbands, grandfathers etc etc etc!!!!!!

Breakfast out with Wayne and friends, and surprise Toby/Sarah/Ky and Gus showed up at the same restaurant.

Home again and for me its sewing day.

I haven't been up to much sewing lately but I was determined to stick with it today.

Made July Birthday Blocks, and no you cant see them yet.

After many months of waiting, I finally loaded and quilted the quilt that Ky made for her Grandma in WY.

Its DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  She just needs to add the binding.

So beautiful, I'm taking it to guild with me on Tuesday for show and tell.

She is going to show this at the Edgerton Quilt show this October, then it can get mailed to WY.

Let her choose her own quilting panto - she chose Double Bubble by Patricia Ritter, www.urbanelementz.com.

Its hard to see the quilting in this one - because of the dark colors and busy fabrics, plus I used black thread.

Gees I hate working with black thread sometimes.  Its so hard to see, but lucky with a panto, I just have to follow the laser light and trace the lines.

This is one quilt where the quilting does not take anything away from the quilt.

June Birthday Blocks

By now the girlz have received their blocks so its safe to share with you.


Deb Woods - Holts Summit, MO

Churn Dash

Baby Bud

Debra requested French General fabrics or similar to them - Many many years of quilting I had never heard of French General - so I went looking. Now I have another new love of fabric color line - these aren't French General, but the colors and designs are so similar they worked fine.

This just goes to show you there are hundreds maybe thousands of fabrics, designs yet to  be discovered and explored.

I'm doing my best to find as many as I can!!!

Cindy Cullen Evansville WI:

The one on the left is made up from the additional HST  - the one on right is Next Door Neighbor

The one on left looks very much like Amish Diamond other than I placed HST in each corner.

Its been a while since I made these and mailed them. Normally I send a copy of the pattern to the recipient and keep one for myself so I can use for future reference.

I thought no need to keep a copy........ I can remember an get the pattern anytime I want. Yeah if you have a good memory. I could not for the life of me remember these so I spent some time going to the "quilters cache website" where I go to get new blocks.

After searching over and over the hundreds of blocks I remembered I made up the one on the left.

Note to self : keep copy of block patterns and write down the ones you make up!!!!!

Cant Turn Down Free Labor

Boy did I hit the jackpot today -

4 young people came to help me with my gardening and Gus came along as foreman.

These young  people were offered to me by DIL Sara, and were here from around 8 till 2:30 - and believe me they worked hard helping me with the weeding, planting trimming and mulching.

Who in their right minds would turn away fee labor - Not me

They did as much for me today as it would have taken me to do in a week by myself.

Whoo hoo - whens the next visit to my house?????????

These are pictures before all the cleanup and mulching -

Sew Much To Do And Sew Little Time To Do It

I know I know I have been missing lately.

So much going on all the time around here.

I did manage to make valances for Kylee's new room -

Using Aunt Donna's hand dyed fabrics (because they loved them so much and couldn't find anything liked them in stores).

I will get a picture of them hung - in her room they will look fantastic - she is a bright multi colored kind of girl - but I think you already knew that.

The picture does not show the true colors - these are vibrant jewel tone colors.  Maybe I can get a better shot when they are hung.


Also made some cafe curtains for Sarah and Toby's dining room -

Yes Cow print - I cant wait to see what they look like hung.


In between sewing, Gus, and cleaning I'm one busy lady.   REVISION  - Wayne is now home - go figure - already!!!! And ..... He does not have to be on oxygen at home.  Changed his meds to help keep the fluids off.  SO THATS THE GOOD NEWS!!!

Wayne is back in the hospital and expected to be released Monday.   He took himself to the ER Friday and they took him to Madison St Mary's.  (I couldn't drive him as Gus was with us) Currently he is on oxygen and will have to have oxygen when he get home.  He had filled with fluids, because the heart is not pumping fast enough.  So they are getting the excess fluids off  and then decide what else they can do for him.   His heart is getting weaker.

To look at him you would never know there is anything wrong with him, but we have to realize he has had a heart condition since he was 49 and he just turned 72 on June 5th.  So he has beaten all odds so far.  He has had 14 heart attacks from age 49 to current in addition two cardiac arrests.  Knowing  all of that one would think he would be this frail little fragile man.  Nope - big husky looking guy.

We will have to remember looks can be deceiving.  He still works in his garden and yard and does many physical things that I never thought he could or should.  Persistent son of a gun that he is.

Although we don't know now what his immediate future is, we are both going to be looking  forward to many more years.  Maybe for him a little less active.  Its not like he will be vegetating in his chair watching TV, Heck no we save that for winter.  And there is always light housework HINT HINT.

I'm sure he will be able to still do some of his gardening and with the riding mower some mowing but for the most part, I plan on and have always planned on picking up the slack when needed.

The only thing I told him was to remember come July 29th I get my hip replaced and he will be taking care of me for a while.

Now that will be a real switch of rolls.

Mound Of Color

Whoo hoo - finally a beautiful sunny day so I could work in my flower beds.  I had one goal today, clean out the fish pond mound of flowers - SUCCESS

My reward this year an abundance of colors and more coming:

The poppies are almost done but the peonies are almost ready to open - iris opened almost all at once over night - The gas plant is in full bloom - giant hasta is magnificent and more coming each day.  What fun, I walk my yard each day and discover new and colorful blooms.

Instead of having to spend a week of weeding, like last year it took a couple of days to finish the mound.  Next step add more mulch and maintain the rest of the year.

On to the next one - tomorrow!!!!

Before heading outside this morning, I did a customer quilt.  Gotta keep busy with my quilting too ya know.

With any luck at all, no rain tomorrow and I can continue to enjoy a walk in my "park", along with pulling more of the nasties, but there are less and less each day.

Rock Valley Quilt Guild Challenge 2013

Taa Daaa - quilted my challenge quilt today, just need to bind and I'm ready for July show and tell.

The challenge, using the multi colored gold fabric, at least one diamond must be in the quilt and using favorite embellishment.

I used my own pattern Forever Diamonds (perfect huh) - and shiny gold thread.  This is not a metallic thread but a poly blend thread I purchased while in Houston - "Twisted" by Superior.

I could, if I wanted to add more embellishment using hot crystals.  Haven't made up my mind on that yet.  Once I get it bound I might lay a few crystals down to see how it would look.

Feels good to get one of my many UFO's finished - I guess rainy days are good for something.

Grandchildren and Quilting "Perfect"

Yesterday we celebrated our great grandson Tavyn's 6th birthday:

Tavyn in his Iron Man "floaty shirt" and swim suit   The shirt has swim floatation padding right in  the shirt.  So he should be able to wear this swimming without the arm floatation's.  With supervision of course.

Grandma Stacy helping him put on his Pirate costume

Mommy Brittany bought him this awesome big wheel bike, yeah she really did buy it for him "yeah right"

The seat does adjust forward so he will be able to ride without mommy

If she will let him hahahahahaha

After the birthday party I finished a customer quilt:

Patriotic quilt - I quilted free motion loops, stars and waves that might also be fireworks.  Depending on how your mind works.