Basting and Shop Hop

I don't know if you can tell, but the 2 quilts on the bed are basted (whoopie). I have all the parts for the other 2 in this group, and hope to get them basted in the next two or three days. I hope I'm on a roll now and can get these four quilts finished, packed up and shipped to the great nieces and nephews that they are intended for. Maybe in a week or so I'll have pictures of the four of them to post.




DH and I put about 120 miles on the car today going to 3 of the 4 shops in this shop hop. the first shop was giving away the Flouncy Skirt pattern (may be cute for the smallest granddtrs) and since we were the only ones there at the time we won the little giveaway of the glue stick and little cloth wallet. My purchases there? The basting is killing my finger and so I am going to try the finger cots to see if they help. I got 2 kits for $1.00 to make some very cute travel makeup rolls, and then as I was driving away, I went back in and got 5 more of the little kits. They will make cute little thank you gifts for some ladies I know. The blue star fabric is for a tutorial that I loved and want to make before next fourth of July. It's from "and Sew on" "Bust an Flag It!". (See PS at bottom of post for a picture of the "Bust an Flag it!".)
















The second shop was the farthest away, and a really nice shop. The owner is very talented, she has the shop and a line of patterns and fabrics of her own. The three patterns were freebies from her line, and the red print is a little sample of the new fabric crinkler, not sure what it is really called. My purchase there was the ruler, I have the shorter one and it is one of my very favorite rulers. Wish they were closer as they have some interesting classes.
















The last shop was giving away the pattern for the beach bag, very cute, and again we were the only ones there for the drawing so we each won a fat quarter. They also were giving each person a state thimble. My purchase there was the red fabric, again for my flag.














Just one shop left, the one here in my town and we will go tomorrow and turn in our cards. It was a fun way to spend the day, and DH and I enjoyed the drive, the music on the radio, and each other's company.

PS Lola from "and Sew On" has graciously allowed me to share a picture from her blog. This is a wallhanging she made from her tutorial and what has inspired me to start collecting a little fabric.

Big Boy Quilt Number 2 Done

This looks a whole lot like big boy quilt number 1, just a different border. It is done but not perfect. The front doesn't look too bad, but my machine was giving me problems and the back is not as good as I'd like. I picked out the worst of it, and as hard as it was to pick out, it should hold together well, lol. This is for my grandson, Micah.
I hope everyone who celebrates has a wonderful Fourth of July weekend.

Life Goes On

My husband, Ernie, was in the hospital almost a week, and has been out now for about 3 weeks and for the most part doing well. We have stayed busy with doctor's appointments and therapy for his hand, and I'm sure that will be going on for a while more (he has 3 new doctor's now). Life has pretty much returned to normal though, thank goodness. Thank you for all the prayers and good wishes on our behalf.
My daughter and her fiance, her daughter and his two daughters are going on a short vacation next month, so she and I made tote bags for each of them to take with them. We went to Walmart and they had this light blue denim fabric on sale for $1.50 a yard so we bought the 11 yard bolt and still have some left. We didn't use any pattern, just winged it using a tote bag that I had made a few years ago as a guide. They are nicer than they look in the picture, completely lined in the same fabric and with inside pockets, too. All the pockets are lined in pretty coordinating fabrics, and the straps are a nice length, long enough to put on the shoulder, but short enough to carry by hand. We also velcroed the tops, so no spillage is what we aspired to accomplish. My daughter is a single mom with 6 children and so hasn't had time to sew for many years, I really enjoyed making these with her and hope that she enjoyed it too. I hope that she enjoyed sewing again enough that maybe we can make something else together.
My wish is that these bags will be enjoyed by all on their trip, and that they help with bonding in a small way. Hopefully, they will enjoy each other and these will be a little happy reminder of their trip.

P.S. DD's dad and fiance are both Ernie's.

Quitting Blogging for Awhile

It's been a long week or so. My husband, Ernie, had a small stroke last Tuesday and was in the hospital until Thursday. The results of the stroke were a numb right hand and some numbness in his mouth. It is improving and hopefully will be back almost as good as new. His platelets were very low when they let him out, and unfortunately they got even lower and he was readmitted on Sunday. It has been up and down, and may be a process to get his bone marrow back to making his platelets and red and white blood cells. They are all very low, and at this time he is getting transfusions through his IV. He is up and about and I'm sure will be fine, but at this time I am quitting blogging indefinitely, just too much going on. I've been spending the nights and days at the hospital and am a bit tired myself, so if this is disjointed I apologize.

Epcot and Florida Gopher Tortoise

This little guy unfortunately decided to make his doorway against our back fence. I looked him up and they are endangered so I haven't decided what to do about him, I don't want him to be hurt, but I do want him to move to the other side of the fence. From what I read, his tunnels are also useful to about 350 other species many of which are snakes, and they aren't my favorites. I need to investigate and see if they have more than one entrance, and then I won't feel bad about covering this one up. I just looked it up, and they use many burrows at one time, so I think I'll try to catch him out of it and cover it up. Maybe then he'll use his other ones. (I say he, but I didn't tip him over to see if he was flat or concave, evidently if he's concave on the bottom he's a he.)We went to Epcot the other day and had a nice time. This is the big ball when you first come in, only taken from the bottom. I liked the pattern, if I was one of you creative types, I suppose I'd be making a quilt pattern, lol.
This is the Disney Japanese steakhouse where we had our lunch. I can't remember the name, but it was very pleasant. We shared the table with two ladies from Hawaii and a nice family from the midwest. They had three children and they were a joy to dine with.
Epcot was having their flower festival and there were lots of pretty spots, this was from one of the gardens and I just liked this pineapple.
The American pavilion was very nice, as were they all, but we decided to see the show in this one. DH has arthritis in his feet and it doesn't take much walking to be too much for him, especially on concrete, so we had gotten a wheelchair to make it easier. When we went in we were approached for some special treatment, so we told the ladies that he could walk but they insisted that we go upstairs and watch from the balcony. It was very nice.
This was a little model railroad village, doesn't it look like a full sized village in the picture.
I felt that this little fellow deserved to be here as he strutted up and modeled patiently for us.
I liked this picture with the floral beast and the 'real' beast walking behind himself.
Since it was a flower festival I had to at least include my favorite flower photo.
They had some beautiful bonsai trees lined up on the lake. One was 120 years old. This is one of them. I took pictures of them all because I always love bonsai's, but I figured that this was already becoming lengthy so I only included this one.
It was a beautiful pleasant day and I got lots of exercise pushing DH.

Happy Mother's Day!

Picture Courtesy of My Granddaughter-in-law's Facebook. My Great-Granddaughter about 4 and 1/2 months old.

Mystery Tree

About a year ago when we were walking by the lake I picked up some berries on the ground under one of the trees and stuck them in a pot. This is the result, it is about a yard high and made it through the winter. It seems to get some small violet flowers (very small) and has a very sweet smell for a time in the spring (mine didn't, but the big one by the lake does). The problem is, I don't know what kind of tree it is. If any of you know the name of it please let me know, I don't know what range it has, but I'm in central Florida so it tolerates heat and as I said it made it through the winter and we did have some freezes this year.












Yesterday was overcast and drizzly, but I wanted to take a picture of my bottlebrush. It isn't a good picture, but you can see that it is absolutely full of pretty red bottlebrushes.

April Amy's 2010 BOM

Second Quilt for 2010 and Second Finish for the Week

I don't know if anyone remembers my four big boy quilts which I thought were quite homely.  This is the first one finished (finally; the back says Robert 2009) and I'm actually very pleased.  The pattern doesn't show up well here, but each block is a medium strip, a small strip and a large strip.  I copied it from a quilt on another blog, which I thought looked quite good, and easy.  The four are all basically the same, although the blocks are random, except each has a different border.  Now, only about ten more tops and I'll be caught up, lol.

I have decided that although I'm not good at it, I do enjoy the free motion quilting.  I don't know if I'll progress to much more than meandering, as I don't have any artistic talents, but I am improving a bit, and it is fun as long as the machine cooperates, and my Juki has been doing well.

The part that hangs me up and makes me procrastinate is the basting.  Boy do I dislike basting.  I tried pins, not so good, as I tended to run over them now and then and break my needles.  Next, I tried Sharon Schamber's board method, which I rather like.  I tried it with basting spray instead of thread, and it worked wonderfully except for the sticky mess.  Also, my DH got pneumonia and I felt that the spray could have contributed.  On my GGD's baby quilt, I used Sharon Schamber's method with the thread, and it worked well, except it is so time consuming.  I guess, unless someone has a better suggestion (other than a frame, lol) I'll keep doing the thread.  I have a goal to get my backlog done, and then to not do tops unless I finish them right away.  On one of the Yahoo Forums someone was talking about unquilted tops being closet clutter, and it sounded right to me, lol.

Here's a link to the board method:
http://www.sharonschambernetwork.com/free_area/videos/basting/index.html

P.S.   I hope the boys (ages 13 to 17) find them manly enough, there is nary a pink, purple, or flower to be found.

Winner, Baby Quilt, Schnibbles, and Leaders and Enders (In Short, Misc.)

 Whew, I'm finding this new way of doing pictures on blogger very challenging, but I think I've got them in the right order now.
I saw a really neat giveaway on Heidi's blog "Handmade by Heidi" and you've probably guessed by now, that I was fortunate enough to win it!  I've followed and enjoyed her blog for quite a while now, and if you haven't visited her she has a new tutorial on a curling iron holder that she has just added.  Here is the information on my new block tool  http://handmadebyheidi.blogspot.com/2010/03/time-for-giveaway.html
I'm really excited to have won it and since I just received it I haven't had time to really look it over, but it looks like it is just as awesome as I had hoped.  Thank you so much, Heidi.

I'm ashamed to admit that this is my first actual quilt finish for the year.  I have finished other things, but not a real quilt.  This is my new Great Grandbaby Mackenzie's quilt, she just turned 3 months old, that's pretty good for me, lol.  The top is sock monkeys, and the back is assorted baby flannels and nice and soft and cozy. 

It's sitting on the back of my nephew Robert's quilt, I hope to have it finished by Monday, as he and his dad and my other brother are coming to visit and I'd like to give it to him then.  I just finished pressing the top and back with my new spray that I got the recipe for on one of the yahoo groups.  I like it a lot, it smells good and does the job.  I'll put the recipe at the end of the post if anyone is interested.

The picture above is of my new leaders and enders project, I haven't finished the old one yet, but this one came to mind.  It is the little leftover half square trianges from the Iowa (Carolina) Christmas.  I am going to make doll quilts with the little 3 inch pinwheels alternating with plain blocks.  I'm thinking either more of the neutrals with the prints, so the pinwheels float, or the gold below.  What do you think?

I've been seeing the Schnibbles quilts on different blogs and decided I want to play, too.  I was hoping to have this one done this month, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards, as I need to do other things first.  I have several of the Moda charm packs, Hollywood and Vine by 3 Sisters, as I got them about five years ago thinking my granddaughters might be interested.  Alas, only one showed interest, and hers seems to have waned.  I think they will be perfect for a Schnibbles though.

Here's the recipe:

SPRAY STARCH

2 cups distilled water

2 ounces vodka

6-10 ounces essential oil

1/3 cup liquid starch