tis the season

Pretty much every year as soon as Halloween passes by I get the wonderful season fever. It's a fever of anticipation, love, family, giving, thanking...did I say family! I'm looking forward to having a house full here for Thanksgiving. Our house has become the destination spot for Thanksgiving and I love it. Two of my brothers (I have 6 brothers so it's not really even a majority) and their families will be coming.

Last weekend I went to a holiday bazaar with my friend Tracey and my daughter Kristina. The hand made items were all so cute, but I must say that I think the women don't charge enough for their awesome crafts. I know how long they take and what talent it takes and I was so surprised at some of the prices. With that said, how could I pass up this cute tree and the 2 houses. Each piece sold for a little over $2. I should have splurged and bought one more house. Tracey bought 3 houses and I'm thinking that's what I should have done. Oh well. I love how it looks.



In the meantime, I'm busily starting to get my plans together for my handmade Christmas presents. This is a preview of what I'm working on now. It's on my design wall. I think it will be perfect for "her" (can't say who in case she pops in on this blog.) I've pinned the flowers on to see if I like them. I love them! So now I need to decide how to attach them.

The key to a less stress holiday season for me is to do only a few handmade items since they take so much time (there's always next year for other friends and family) and to make lists. The other big help for me is to play Christmas music while I'm working around the house. It always sets the tone of the day. Is it too early to play Christmas music? Not for me. My DH is a big fan of Christmas music so we have tons of CD's to choose from. Lucky me!

Swap block

Here's my November block for my flickr group, Bee Scrappy. This will be a fun quilt when it's all put together. It's based on this blog from Nittany Block Party. The hardest part is matching the white strips. Took me a couple of tries.

Artist in the family

I have no drawing skills at all. In fact, my stick figures are even hard to recognize at times. But my 10 yr old daughter Leah took an art class and came home with these beautiful pictures. I had to frame them and show them off. She loves drawing and is feeling that wonderful confidence that comes when we recognize a new talent. I love seeing her beam with pride at the pictures she can paint or draw. It's hard to find good art classes for young people, so when I passed a sign along the road for art lessons, I jumped on it. I'm hoping her teacher will continue to hold more and more classes. She's a great teacher and taught several different techniques.
So now I've told Leah that she's an artist on paper and I'm an artist with cloth. She gets that. I've also told her how great it feels to be creative in life. It feeds our souls and feeds the souls of those who behold it.

Binding on...

I finished my mosaic quilt and showed it at my group, Material Girls Idaho. I quilted it at my friend Tracey's. She just got a new Gammill and it was fun. I didn't like putting it on the machine, that was a little confusing and time consuming, but the quilting was a breeze. It sure beats trying to wad up my quilt and fit it under my little sewing machine to quilt it. Not that I didn't make any mistakes, but it makes me want to try again. I know lots of practice will make things better each time. So now I will gather a bunch of quilt tops that never made it to the quilting stage and use them for practice.

Turkey Carving

After my rotary cutting mishap, I managed to keep quilting (the next day) and finished my turkey quilt. I'm calling it Turkey Carving in honor of the sacrifice I gave to make it. It went together quickly and I even managed to find the border fabric on the sale rack at my local quilt store Quilt Expressions.
The only thing I added to my pattern by Country Threads, was the wattle on the turkey face. My girls thought it looked too much like a chicken and needed it and I agreed. It's always good to have daughters in the house to add second, third and fourth opinions (whether I ask for them or not :)

Turkey trouble

I'll spare the details of my injury while working on my turkey, it wasn't a pretty site, but I now will use much more caution and even slow down while using a rotary cutter.

In fact this may convince me more into getting an Accuquilt for Christmas.

Please be safe :)

New Bee Block

Just finished this month's Pizza Box Exchange block for Material Girls Idaho. The owner of this box wants squares with lime green, reds and creams.

Beautiful Batik block

These are 2 blocks for my flickr group, Beautiful Batik. I'll send it out in the mail tomorrow. It's a very simple block but I think the quilt will be stunning when all the blocks get put together.

All Because 2 People Fell in Love

I made this wall hanging for my parents. They'll be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary next year. My mom suffers from severe memory loss which has been progressing slowly for the past 10 years.

She doesn't remember any of her 12 children (all of us were adopted), so I thought I'd make this wall hanging with all the kids' names and their children's names underneath so at least the names were there for her. I'm already behind on 4 more grandchildren.

The older I get, the more I realize how incredible my parents were and are. They made parenting seem fairly effortless, but oh, do I know better now. Their love and their concern for all of us came from their strong love and bond for each other. Their
prayers for all of us must have worn down their knees because we sure needed a lot of praying for.

Family values are disintegrating all around us and it makes me even more vigilant in my own efforts as a mom to help my children know who they are, how important they are in this world, where they can turn for peace and how much they are loved. It's a foundation in life that every child should have and deserves. Thank you mom and dad for giving me that knowledge.

Good to go

I've decided this top is done. I had some ideas of changing a few things here and there, but I'm ready to move on and I need to just call it "good to go". It was fun doing the mosaic tile look in the center, I'll probably use that technique again on another quilt. From here I'll pick out a fabric for the back and then I'm off to my friend, Tracey's house, to quilt it. She just bought a new longarm quilting machine and I'm anxious to see how I do with it. I'm pretty sure I'll get addicted and will need to hang out at Tracey's house more often than she may want me. But she says she really wants to see her machine being used rather than just sitting there (her husband feels the same way :)

Design Wall

What's on my design wall right now? Here are a few of the things I'm working on:

This is some kind of free form piecing. I love mosaics, so I thought I'd put a little grout between my pieces of fabric.

Here I'm auditioning a piano keys border to go around my mosaic tile quilt. So far the vote in the family is unanimously in favor of this border. I always make everyone come into my quilt room and vote. I have to see their reaction sometimes before I can move forward. So I'll trim it up and add it to the sides.
In the meantime, I also managed to finish another pizza box square for one of my fellow Material Girls. Wish I had paid attention to which way the stripes were going, but as I look at it now, it kind of adds interest to the card tricks square. I'll just say I did it on purpose...

Pizza Box block

Just finished my next pizza box block for the Material Girls Idaho block exchange. This month I got Jeanie's box. I made one square using the disappearing 9-patch method. Hope she likes it.

Block for Bee Scrappy group

Here's a block I made for my Flickr group, Bee Scrappy. This month we're making a whimsical block for one of the member's who requested trees, houses, birds, etc so she can make a quilt for her 9 year old son. I hope she likes it. I saw this block on
Flossy Blossy's blog and made some variations to it so it will fit a 12" square.

Green Room

My oldest daughter (14 almost 15) has agreed to share a room with a younger sister. We made a deal with her that if she shared the room, she could pick the decor of the room. Well, here's the chosen colors. I actually love it and thought it turned out really cute. My husband had a hard time seeing the beauty of it while helping us paint, but he couldn't deny the enthusiasm and anticipation in the girls' faces.

The nice thing about this is that it's pretty minimalistic. Both girls are not leaving things out (so far) because they don't "fit into the chosen color scheme". We'll see how long that lasts. We'll even be adding some black floating shelves on the walls-probably next month, but until then, I popped my black and white quilt up on the wall for some interest. The flowers on the right are just the peel-off removable stickers.



The great thing about being a quilter and having scraps is that I usually have whatever color we need for whatever project is at hand. With my black and white scraps I covered 3 canvases. Notice who still gets number spot on the board-ZAC!!



I love all the new stick-on-the-wall art that's available now. The best part is that it peels off and can be moved so easily. This was a roll I got from Home Depot, so I just stuck it on top of the dresser to see how it looks. I think we'll keep it there. I'll also be adding black, white and green knobs on the dresser later.
When I go in their room now, it makes me smile-can't say that's what it did for me before. So this has been a fun project. After all, they're only young girls for such a short time...

Dresden plate chargers

I saw this tutorial on Moda Bake Shop and instantly knew I wanted to try them. They were easy, fun and I would definitely make them again. I think they would make a great gift. The tutorial calls for wool as the background, but to save some money I used felted fleece and it worked beautifully.

Disappearing 9-patch

Another disappearing 9-patch, but this time I added sashing. The bad news for me is that the fabric I want to use as a border is from the new Moda line Lily and Will and won't be out until September. I used 2 new charm packs for this top from Moda, Lily and Will and also Pure. So away it goes until September and now onto the next project in the lineup. If I can get a 22 1/2" wedge ruler, I would like to make some dresden plate placemats.

July Menu Board

I've loved having my menu board this year. It helps me keep organized and the kids can easily see what's for dinner. I even find curious changes in the board once in a while when someone has secretly added their favorite meal to the week's menu. At least I can see what they're craving.
Each month I change the paper in the background and it's been a lot of fun, but when I put the paper in for July, I instantly loved it. The yellow/gold background I chose for the words and the calendar remind me of mustard, which of course is a must at any summer picnic. I like it so much that I may keep it up during August too.
I first posted about this menu board in January of this year. Here's the link to get to it quickly-Menu Board

Jello Art

Little Birdie Secrets gave me this fun idea for the kids. Even my older kids thought it was pretty fun. This is Jello art. Make copies of the picture above, paint each fruit with Elmer's glue (just use your cheap paint brushes), sprinkle the corresponding Jello flavor to the fruit (we had to label our containers because so many of them look alike) (also, we couldn't find any banana flavored Jello-is there such a thing?),




shake off the excess and tada-you have a wonderfully fun smelling work of art. The bowl and leaves can just be colored or markered in. Here's how my daughters' pictures turned out.

Charm pack disappearing 9-patch

I bought a couple charm packs from Moda, Pure and Lily and Will, so I decided to make another disappearing 9-patch. This time I thought I'd put sashing between the squares to make the quilt a little bigger. So I'm auditioning fabric that I have. I'd love to be able to use up some of my stash. I'm leaning toward this green as a sashing. Then I need to decide on something for an outer border and I'm looking for something with a brown as a background. Browns can really vary in shades and tones, so I'll need to take the top with me to a quilt store if I don't find anything in my own stash.

Asiatic Lillies

Wouldn't these be great colors for a quilt. I love the Asiatic lillies when they bloom. Wish they lasted all summer.