Sidetracked

I didn’t mean to start up posting to my blog again and then leave it sitting idle but I got waylaid by a good friend. 


I used to make baby quilts for all of my coworkers for quite a long time.  And, of course, I made baby quilts for members of my own family and a few close friends for their children or grandchildren.  I don’t make quilts for customers and now I don’t make quilts on request.  I much prefer to make charity quilts for children in need.


I was in a brain fog over the holidays and instead of saying no when asked to make a baby quilt, I found myself saying “primary colors or pastels”?  Big mistake.  At least I got to choose the fabric I wanted to work with.    So, this is what I rushed to get done so I could go back to what I had planned on doing this month:

Dr Seuss fabrics are always fun for babies and toddlers.  As is often the case with panels, the fabric tends to be askew and I had to finagle the block size to accommodate and correct the unevenness.  But, all-in-all, I think it turned out to be cute.


Then I got back on my schedule and will probably be able to finish my project for One Monthly Goal.  Will try to post tomorrow!!

What's Been in the Works

I have been busy doing a little cutting for one Quilts of Valor Mystery – the clues will be offered on Aug 12^th.  And I have been following the clues for a second QOV Mystery – clue 1 has been posted so far:

I have quilted two of the tops I brought back with me from my fun quilting retreat in Omaha:

Floral Wave

Butterfly Enchantment

And I did a little yardwork – not too much since it has been oppressively hot and humid here.

This is our typical forecast – the lightning chases me out of the sewing room each day:

mon	tue	wed	thu	fri	sat	sun
jul 17 Scattered Thunderstorms 90° 78°	jul 18 Thunderstorms 88° 77°	jul 19 Scattered Thunderstorms 91° 78°	jul 20 Scattered Thunderstorms 91° 78°	jul 21 Scattered Thunderstorms 90° 78°	jul 22 PM Thunderstorms 91° 79°	jul 23 AM Thunderstorms 91° 78°

And this is my latest kitchen gadget purchase.  So far, I love, love, love it.  I’ve made lots of chicken, beef roasts, and these pork chops:

Several things I really like about it are that it keeps the kitchen cooler since I am not using the hot oven and it makes putting an entire meal on the table much quicker.  The roast took 40 minutes rather than 3 hours.  That’s a win!

Quilts of Valor Meeting

Posting some photos of quilts turned in quilted and/or bound at the June meeting of the CT Quilters QOV Group in Tampa, FL so I can link up with Alycia's blog.  A big "thank you" goes out to our great longarm quilters.

The little cards pinned to the quilts are the tracking system we use so we now where the quilts are in each stage of the process.  Some awards pictures to follow soon - we have made 44 awards so far this year!

Recap of the Busy Times

I am s-o-o-o-o not used to being busy.  I live a pretty nice, dull and sedate life with an occasional outing.  But I ran into a spate of things that each took up a little time and blogging fell by the wayside.  One more big occasion (for me) and I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled programming … sewing and snoozing ...

Here’s a synopsis of the last few months:

Out of town visitors

Got to meet and greet and shop a little

Yardwork

Planted some new annual sacrifices (and no, the delphiniums aren’t going to last thru the heat) – lots of mushrooms are growing because we’ve had tons of rain (that we really needed)

Golf

I get to substitute when the boys aren’t available to play with my husband ...

My "caddy" retrieving my ball - lol

this ibis tried to get the cranes to adopt him - his tribe soon came to gather him up

Travel

Had a wonderful trip to Indiana to visit my cousins/spouses/children/grandchildren/aunt

unset on the river from my cousin's front lanai

Sewed and quilted

Got a box off to Wrap-a-Smile and almost have one ready to go to Quilts Beyond Borders

Tammy assembled these quilt tops and I quilted and put the bindings on

Bought a new car

I love my smaller SUV – a stripped down Jeep Cherokee with almost no bells and whistles (but had to keep my Sirius radio – love that)

stock photo - mine has no chrome

Lots of Vet visits

The dog rules in my house – she’s almost healthy now - had a paw infection - lots of pills and creams and cream cheese

One more bit of traveling on the schedule and then it’s back to normal !!

QBB FQ Challenge

Quilts Beyond Borders has a booth at the Houston Quilt Show each year and gives fat quarters to quilters as a Challenge to add their own fabrics and return a finished quilt as a donation to the group.  Those that return their quilts are eligible to enter a drawing to win prizes!

This is my finished FQ Challenge quilt and detail of the quilting:

The fern-like fabric was the original FQ fabric and I added the various green and blue frames and the alternating squares with the froggie fabric.  Since I quilted it with my new panto called Route 66 that is wavy, I call it Ripples in the Frog Pond.

It would have been mailed out today, but I was able to stop myself from going to the Post Office on Tax Return day.  I have a penchant for going to the P.O. when normal people are trying to get their tax returns postmarked at the last minute ... not this year!  I'll go tomorrow...

Tuesday Ramblings

Started out this morning doing a load of laundry then dusted furniture all over the house.  Thought about vacuuming but went to sit down until that silly thought passed!  Decided to go upstairs and finish binding this little cutie for Quilts Beyond Borders:

I wanted to try some custom quilting, but have been holding on to this for far too long and decided to go with the meandering just to get it finished and into the hands of a child that needs some comfort.  Done!

Then opened the box of tops from Tammy in TX and paired them up with some potential backings:

These are now wrapped up together and in a stack to be quilted and the brown/gold one on the left is on the frame.  Progress!

What's on the Back Wednesday

More often than not, I put fairly plain fabric on the backs of my quilts and save the cute stuff for piecing the tops.  But, sometimes you run across a cute fabric on sale and it begs to be used as a whole piece.  The dinosaurs made it onto the backing of the blue quilt shown in the last Saturday Sewing post:

They are at home in the "forest" of the Retro Leaves quilting!

And they reminded me of a dino quilt I made a long time ago for a baby shower gift.  Please forgive the photo-of-a-photo from my scrapbook album, but that was before digital cameras.  This was a cute pattern and easy-peasy so I might make one again.  The quilt photo is shown on the right on top of the polka dot scrapbook page paper with a small piece of the fabric looking it over!

Quilts of Valor

I went to both the Friday and Monday meetings of my Quilts of Valor group and finished up my duties for them for the months of Aug and Sep.  In addition to the few I showed in the last post, I quilted this one and turned it in:

the panto is called Variety

And then I took these blocks home from the Monday meeting and assembled this top - it's the same design as the one above, but it was using up lots of various size strips so it needed different borders to bring it to the right size:

Now it's back to quilting and making quilts for children - they go so much faster than those big ones!

The Rain Stopped

I actually got a lot of quilting done when we had all of the rainy days.  This is the standing water at the back edge of our yard.  They haven't been able to mow that far back for three weeks:

But this is the quilts/quilting I have completed when there was no lightning:

this is the Easy Baby top - it is now quilted - I'll take another photo when it's bound

still using up the Nigerian fabric I received

Spaniels quilted up with Paw Prints, of course!