You Call Yourself a Blogger?

I have been meaning to get around to posting my quilty stuff for a few weeks! Still learning the ropes with this new computer, so here it is:
     I have joined a new quilt group (The Rotary Club!). We meet once a month for lunch at a member's home. We did the Christmas Tree block exchange, and now we have decided to do a 6" block exchange each month for a few months in "brights". The first month was free choice:

Mine is the lower right hand corner.  For February, we are doing paper-piecing - and yay, mine are already done!

I am working on learning my EQ7 software, as you've probably guessed I am not too computer savvy, so I am quite proud of myself that I designed and made a quilt with it this month:

It turned out a little wild, but I think my niece likes it, she is having a baby girl next month and we are all so happy for her!
     I am currently  working on a twin sized quilt for sweet little Brian and will post pictures when I get it finished.  In my regular quilt bee (Knotts, -we meet each week) our president challenged us to complete TEN projects this year, so I've made my list and we shall see. Luckily 3 are just quilting and finishing already assembled tops, although that could be a challenge too as my quilting machine is still giving me grief!
     I volunteered to teach a simple freezer paper appliqué class this summer, for the Guild, then I realized I probably should have an appliqué quilt to show!!! So making an appliqué quilt got onto my list too. I will be doing a bit of traveling later this month with trips planned well into Spring, so I'd better get hopping!
     Oh, and here is a wonderful Christmas gift I received from my clever DIL:

Something I am needing as our family keeps growing!! Happy Quilting all!

The New Year (Again)

     Well, all of our wonderful Christmas Company has gone home and it is quiet once more around these parts.  I had a wonderful surprise for Christmas from Mr. Handsome, he arranged for Brooke and Ben and their kids to come all the way from Missouri for the holidays! I was super surprised (and I realized what a bunch of liars I associate with!)!! They did a fabulous job, keeping the secret, I couldn't believe my eyes, when they all started trouping up the stairs, from where they were hiding in the basement. I was sooooo happy!

With Jeff and Vanessa here from California, our entire family was here for Christmas - what a wonderful blessing!  Here we all are on Christmas morning, as you can tell from our general lack of make up and my sweet new Christmas jammies! Shaun was mid-sneeze, but we are all in the picture. (You can also see our "real" tree behind us, very scrawny, but loved. The tree above is my MIL's)

Here is Izzy in her new Christmas jammies, and Shane & Brian in their new Christmas sweaters:

Here is Sweet Natalie in her much beloved Christmas rainbow wig, which unfortunately was lost while flying Grandpa's new remote control helicopter at the church. (It was good while it lasted!)

Everyone has gotten home safely, but unfortunately after everyone left, I got a cold AND a kidney stone! Blerk! Cold is getting better and the kidney stone is bearable for the most part - life goes on!  Working on a fun quilt for my niece, MC's much prayed for new baby coming next month. 

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but one of my favorite things about the new year is a pretty blank calendar and plenty of time for QUILTING! (Especially since I'm not putting in longer hours at work with 1099's and tax-type stuff - yay for me!)

Christmas Time!

It's Christmas Time and life is good! It's time for bunny slippers and electronics, as you can tell from Sydnee's cute self:

I have finished my Christmas quilting gifts - 2 quilts this year. My quilting machine is giving me serious grief! (Again!) So frustrating, I barely got the last quilt out of it's jaws, finally complete after approximately 1200 thread breaks! Grrrr. But, now it is sitting meekly in the quilt studio, looking benign, and I may approach it again come January as I still have a few projects to quilt - hopefully I'll forget how mean it is! Was seriously contemplating buying a new machine, but I've spent all my pennies on the Mini Q (AKA new car!), so I daren't.
     Our wonderful Christmas company is here (Jeff & Vanessa) and we are going to have a lovely white Christmas this year, sometimes it is just cold, but it makes it so much better with snow!

Yes, those are little Christmas ornaments on the end of the lights, Mr. Handsome took our extras out there for added Christmas delight.  We will be having a tamale making party tonight combined with a gingerbread house decorating party. Clever me! I froze the leftover gingerbread candy from last year AND I remembered it was down in the freezer! Woo hoo! 

Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season, filled with the things and people you love!

My Mamal

     Early this morning, my Mamal went to heaven to be with lots of family members that are already there. She was 92 years old.  I am so glad that I went to see her for her birthday in October. She was a neat lady who went through a lot in this life - good and bad.  While I was growing up in California, she lived in upstate New York, so we didn't see each other a whole lot and it was the days before "Skype" and "FaceTime".  We wrote letters and my mom would wait and call occasionally after 9 p.m. when the rates were lower, of course.  There were visits though, she would come out and we would go to Disneyland and Busch Gardens.  We were always so excited for her to unpack her suitcase, since she would generally have a little something in there for us.
     One year, we flew to New York, then got in the car and drove to West Virginia for a family reunion. Mamal sat in the back with us 3 girls (wide old car, no seat belts) and told us stories the whole way there, we made her tell the turtle story over and over again, we loved it!  When we were at her house, in New York, she baked us our favorite pies and ate our vegetables for us too! She did ask my mom not to give us quite so many though.  She had an old claw footed tub and the only shower she had was in her scary basement.
     When I was married and she would come to California, she would come out to my house to see me and my family and she would do some little thing, like clean my toaster all sparkly! It has never been as clean before or since.

Here is a picture of 5 generations, with her on the right in Arizona a few years back. She came out to live with my Aunt Linda in Arizona for the past few years as she needed more care. Aunt Linda and her wonderful family took great care of her and we are all grateful. Today I am grateful for my family and the love, because even as we are all struggling along doing the best that we can, we all love each other A LOT!

Modern Girl

     We are headed to a family reunion for Thanksgiving this week and I volunteered a quilt top to be 'tied' (I know, perish the thought) and given away during the reunion. So, I need to piece the back (exact size - gack!) and scare up some batting that won't be terribly hard to pull the ties through, which I probably will also need to piece together, etc.
     BUT, the other day, after getting back from visiting a friend who is having her 5th baby as we speak, I decided to whip her up a little quick quilt for her new little guy. I came home and got it done after some head-scratching math, that still was off somehow. I made this from a  12" block pattern in my block book. The block finished 12", so I multiplied the pieces by 300% to make it approximately 36".  It is 39" and I had to do some fancy trimming to get it put together. I know those of you who actually took (and passed) geometry in school are laughing at me right now, but such is my life.

The beauty of it is the back doesn't need to be pieced! So I can get it quilted up quickly. By the way, this is a "Modern Quilt", I know this because at my last quilt retreat, I took a little lecture on modern quilting and one of the things that make quilts "modern" is blowing up a block like this. That said, in the class, we talked about how modern quilting is just a little bit different take on the same (wonderful) old quilting that has been around for centuries.
     So, yesterday, I headed back down to the studio (ostensibly to work on the backing/batting issue for the reunion) and I started a whole new quilt! It's going to be really cute, but I don't quite know how it jumped in front of my other projects that have a deadline…
     While I was downstairs quilting it up, Mr. Handsome was putting up the Christmas lights!!

He is so funny, he only likes to put them up if he can do it differently each year. As you can tell by our house shape, it's kind of hard to get creative, but he manages, last year there were giant X's on our roof. The nice thing about this year is I can see my own Christmas lights looking out my own windows, I don't have to cross the street to see them.

Moving Along

So, I've been working on this quilt for my newest little granddaughter and after some fighting with the tension on my quilting machine, I got it finished today! I did have to vacuum up copious amounts of picked out threads, but it looks great! (Or as great as it gets with my meandering quilting, with a word thrown in here and there). Ready to bind.

I have also been working on this Christmas Quilt for a family member and I had it on the design wall and was vacuuming near it and the vacuum caused a breeze which blew off a couple of blocks and they got SUCKED up in the vacuum! We had just gotten our old vacuum serviced and I can certify it's got the suction restored for sure!

So I fished them out of the bottom, ironed them and starched them and am currently ignoring the slight dirtiness that got on them.  Today I finally finished sewing the rows together:

Super simple pattern, just took 3 sets of charm packs, then I cut white on white fabric into 5 inch squares, then made half square triangles out of them, and sewed them together like so - ta-da - an argyle looking Christmas quilt is coming soon.

I saw this on Facebook the other day and I feel like these could be my New Years' Resolutions (If I ever actually made any)

I would have to add sewing to the list, of course, but other than that, it looks pretty darn good.

Bad Blogger

     Hello - I am writing before I dash off to another quilt retreat (Yay!!!). Headed to Park City tomorrow for 3+ days of quilting and partying and laughing! I am hoping to have lots to show when I get back, I have been remiss about posting, but part of it was not my fault! (I know, excuses, excuses) My computer bit the dust, so I now have a new computer, but it is a MAC, which is new to me, so I definitely have some figuring out to do!  I think I will love it, but there is always that headache producing new phase of figuring and head scratching with a small amount of swearing and crying thrown in.  If you were expecting pictures, you will be sadly disappointed as I have not figured out how to find my pictures on here, but fear not, I WILL figure it out when I get back! I did download all 20,000 of them somewhere on here!
     I am in the full swing of gorgeous Fall around here! Did I mention I LOVE that time change "fall back" thing - whoopee for me, no longer a lay-about lazy person sleeping in until all hours, I am awake at 7 a.m. - (not up, but awake).
     Anyhoo, hoping your Fall is going great! Happy Quilting!