Last Box of the Year & Reindeer?

I boxed up the last of this year’s donation quilts today.  I am sending off 5 quilts to Wrap-a-Smile for distribution to children around the world who are having cleft palate surgery.  I have posted about these as tops when I finished piecing them, but these are now finished – quilted and bound - and ready to go.  My timing is unfortunate, as I’ll be standing in line tomorrow with the desperate Christmas rush people, but that’s the way it goes!

Lottery Blocks I won

 

Lottery Blocks Detail



Road to Treadleonia Detail with backing

Road to Treadleonia - Block Swap

Frog in the Pond

Frog in the Pond Detail

Broken Dishes with Critters

Broken Dishes Detail with Backing

In Memory of Bev B

In Memory of Bev B Detail

And this was the false reindeer that I saw in the back of my neighbor’s yard today.  Well, I must admit, my dog saw her first and it took me awhile to spot her!  She was just happily munching her way down the fence line … waiting for the elves and Santa to get ready, of course!

Deer or Reindeer?

Nope, not a Reindeer but I'll keep looking for them!

Back to Regular Programming

I finished up the second quilt for the local quilt shop’s March of Dimes project yesterday, so today I’m back to those pesky UFOs.  I still have:

·         a jungle quilt,

·         a Mystery quilt (the mystery has long been resolved!) using Dora the Explorer fabric scraps,

·         a “sort of” D9P with novelties and

·         a Little Twister,

all sitting around waiting to be finished and looking like clutter!

I also have to gather up my leftovers from baby quilts to send to a woman’s prison ministry in Colorado.  I have been wanting to find a good use for these fabrics since I usually use older kids prints for my donation quilts.  These were extras purchased for friends and family quilts and I always start over with something new for those.  I saw a request for scraps on a quilting message board and thought that would really help me clear out some stuff -  a win-win situation if there ever was one!

These are the final pics from the LQS quilts:

Monsters  and Their Trains

Monsters - Detail with Monster Footprints Backing

Sports of All Kinds

Sports - Detail (before binding)

What's Been Happening

I’ll have to admit that this is what I really have been doing:

But that having been said, I did get some work done on the last quilt for the local quilt shop’s collection for March of Dimes quilts.  This is the progress on a little boy’s quilt with fabric that has balls from various sports:

And this is the goofy cardinal that has been distracting me while I read:

The picture is taken from inside the front door looking out - that is a real cardinal sitting on the fake berry wreath that I had up for the Fall.  We have real holly berry trees in our yard, but this lady liked the looks of this wreath and kept coming back!  Too funny.

Fun Event for a Good Cause

I was lucky enough to attend a volunteer event at Scrap and Sew, in Lutz, FL this past weekend.  This was a whirlwind event from 6:00-midnight (way past my usual bedtime!) and the response was great.

The recipients of the quilts will be kids from the Murray Child Development Center, a March of Dimes facility (the Easter Seals people).  Each sponsored child receives gifts per his (her) wish list and a quilt made by the volunteers.

The Murray Center serves children from 6 weeks to 6 years old.  They provide educational, childcare, therapeutic and family support services to children of all abilities and their families.  Many of the children have special needs and/or disabilities.  The center cares for children with conditions such as spina bifida, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, birth defects and/or developmental delays.  Physical, speech and occupational therapy are provided on an individual basis.

These are a few photos of some of the group as we watched a short March of Dimes video plus several of the quilts in process and some of the finished quilts stacked up.

I worked on my Monsters fabric quilt at the event, but had to bring it home to finish the binding.  I’ll take it back in next week.

I also donated this Ohio Stars quilt that I had finished earlier:

I also have fabric for one more quilt for them ... I should finish it next week also.

It was a fun event.  Oh, and did I mention we had pizza and cookies?  Yeah, a good time was had by all …

Happy Thanksgiving!

I started getting ready today for the Big Day – for the uninitiated, that is Thanksgiving, not Black Friday (I like eating better than shopping) - by baking the traditional pumpkin pie:

And then the trouble started:

As I was putting the pie in the oven, the flimsy aluminum pie pan buckled and out plopped at least a quarter of the filling onto the oven door.  I was able to clean most of that up without toasting my fingers, but there wasn’t anything I could do about the parts of the crust that got covered in filling and then naturally got burnt to a crisp.  So I just cut the crimped part of the crust off.  And made another pie.  I’ll have to sacrifice myself and eat the ugly pie all by myself.  Not a bad plan …

But then I got an email that a LQS was having a volunteer event to make quilts for 19 local children in a marathon event one evening next week.  What fun!  Of course, I signed up.  I’ll be taking two kits that I had made up while my machine was out for repair.  This is one:

Aren’t those monsters cute?!  I've had them a long time and it's time for them to go to some little boy somewhere.  I hope to remember to take my camera to the event!

Meanwhile:

As Fall turns to Winter, may you and yours enjoy the blessings of Thanksgiving

I'm Back Sewing!!

My sewing machine is back home and currently working well.  I’m not getting my hopes up yet because the problem took 3-4 days to show back up again the last time I thought it had been repaired.  But I was able to accomplish something yesterday and I’m in a good mood again – that’s a plus!

I made bindings for the quilts waiting for them – I added the border quilting on one quilt and I got the binding sewn down on another … I’m on a roll now, but I am being careful with my machine.

Bindings-in-waiting



(left) Borders Quilted and (right) Bound

Of course, I took the opportunity when I picked my machine up to select and purchase a few more homespun fabrics – lighter colors that I was lacking.  Can’t let those good 40-50% off coupons go to waste …

More Homespun Fabric

Spoiler Alert:

I’m about to describe a few walks and at the end I have a picture of a snake – so if you don’t like snakes at all, stop reading after the two bird pictures (you won’t see the snake picture because there is text first)!

So to continue -  I guess the silver lining to the machine being down was that I did take a few extra long walks.  I went to a new neighborhood where the sidewalk became a wooden walkway through a wetlands area then came back out and went back to being concrete.  It was very pretty (and much cooler!) in the cypress woods and I took a few pictures:

Fall foliage on the boardwalk thru the wetlands

Ibis

 

White Heron

 

Gorgeous day with a breeze blowing the palms

A new pond with a dock (that's an Ibis, too)

And now for the little guy I saw on the way back.  This Peninsula Ribbon snake is semi-aquatic and totally harmless.  It has brown and cream color alternating ribbon markings down the length of its body with a cream color belly.  It feeds on small fishes, frogs, salamanders and earthworms.  It is often found in marshes and cypress stands like the one that I saw this one in.

It has a very pretty round eye that is black surrounded by a gold ring then a rusty brown color.

This guy stayed motionless and tried to act nonchalant until he saw I wasn’t going to threaten him and then he went on his merry way and disappeared in search of dinner.  If I can’t have a nice Black Snake (they eat venomous snakes and other creepy undesirables around your house), then I like this guy that helps to keep populations in balance.  To read more (yes, some of you do) go to:

  http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/herpetology/herpetology.htm

Oh, and I can't forget that I have this fun Lil' Twister project waiting for me!

A Designer and Gardening

I tend to gravitate towards animal prints when selecting fabrics for quilts for children.  You might recognize some of the artwork of Sue Zipkin because you can see her designs on greeting cards, paper products, scrapbook materials and other things in addition to fabric.  Aren’t these adorable?!

And this is Sue Zipkin.  Check out her home page and see her extra special, vibrant watercolor butterfly.

Two fabric lines that Clothworks has out now are Cool Cats and Froggin:

http://www.clothworkstextiles.com/collection.asp?ID=298

http://www.clothworkstextiles.com/collection.asp?ID=278

Click on the links under the photos to see all of the colorways and fabrics in these lines.  Sue and Clothworks are also sponsoring two free quilt patterns designed around these collections.  Click on these photos to go to a .pdf file with directions:

http://www.clothworkstextiles.com/pdfs/patterns/coolcatsquilt.pdf

http://www.clothworkstextiles.com/pdfs/patterns/frogginquilt.pdf

My own special animal was supervising my gardening this past weekend.  Here she is directing which overgrown flowers needed to be cut down and replaced.

And here are the before and after shots – I put in pansies for the winter since the local newspaper advised they should make it through the winter in my area.  Good luck, Pansies!

Before

After

I also did a little cleaning up in the sewing room and ran across this beginning of a homespun fabric top.  There are lots of pieces cut out in various size squares and logs and I had started putting them together.  Apparently, they had gotten set aside and forgotten.  Now that I want to put them together I don’t have a working sewing machine – heavy sigh.  Maybe I’ll get the call tomorrow to pick up my machine!

It's a start!