Two Give-Aways

Yes another post so soon - computer is behaving nicely - and I forgot to tell you about a couple of give-aways.  Jenny of Elefantz is having a really lovely one, and so is Lyn from Bluebird Quilts.  Go check them out! 

Some Like It Hot [and a Give-Away]

Yes, some like it hot.  Me, not so much.  I love summer, honest, but 90F is a wee bit too much.  Especially when it's humid.  So no sewing around here, because sewing means ironing - sorry Charlie, not gonna happen.

Instead, I've been doing lots of this.



I knew it would be very warm, so I stocked up at the library.  The bottom four have been read.  I'm supposed to be making this -



My mom wants a messenger bag to carry on the plane with her, she's going to Arizona.  In June.  Better her than me.  She needs to carry her insulin on the plane and assorted other goodies, and needs a bigger purse.  We got the fabric last week, but it needs ironing [see above].  I'll be adding lots of pockets to this one, including a cell phone pocket on the gusset.  I'll also be making one for myself....first, to make sure I don't mess up hers.

I also need to take this picture out of its frame and do something else with it.  It's my mum's, it was hanging in her room as a child.  It has a cardboard backing and no glass on the front, so it's in rough shape.



Aren't the faces just the sweetest?



This one doesn't involve ironing, so it just might happen.

And now, about the give-away.  Joanne from Splitting Stitches is giving away a quilt kit for a darling quilt!  Go check it out!  She has a lovely blog and is a wonderful quilter!

I had been hoping that during this heat wave I could catch up on the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  But my computer has been running VERY hot - the fan just kept coming on, so I had to shut it down most of the day.  I would get up very early and check email, then off it went.  Turned out the processor was very dusty and grimy - dh washed it for me and now it's running well.  Scary stuff and boy do I need to do a back-up!  Maybe tonight when it's cooler.

Have a wonderful weekend, and for all you in the States, a lovely Memorial Day holiday.  Remember all those who fought and died for us, and who are fighting still.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Yay it's here!  Wonderful Amy has done it again.  And aren't we going to have fun!

This is my entry for the Festival. 



It was a lot of firsts for me.  First time cutting fabric without a template, all freehand....first time doing free-motion quilting....first time putting binding on completely by machine.  First time using tulle to hold my layers in place while quilting.  I learned SO much on this quilt.  There were rough spots [serious rough spots], but it remains one of my favorites.



It's not completely finished.  I think it will be an ongoing project for a very long time.  Someday I'd like to add seashells, tails to the kites, just little additional touches.  Whenever I see something to do with the sea, I'd like to add it to the quilt.  I love quilts that are heavily embellished.

The biggest thing I learned from this quilt was that it's ok to be imperfect.  It's ok to improvise, to play, even to mess up.  It will never be juried into a quilt show, but it wasn't meant to be.  It represents, for me, a whole new level of quilting - quilting for pure pleasure, not for someone else's satisfaction, but only for the fun of it.  I think this is my favorite quilt I've ever done.

And now I'm going back over to Amy's, and start browsing - see you next week, lol!

Mum's Day

Finally - last night, while visiting a friend, I put the last stitches on the binding for my mom's Mother's Day gift.  I'm glad she's so patient.  They just need to be washed [for crinkly effects] and then she can use them.  Provided I can talk her into using them....she says they're too pretty.  I told her I made them multi-color so spills won't show.



My table wasn't big enough, so I put them on the bed.



I really do like how they turned out.  I'm not sure why they took so long, I don't seem to want to actually DO anything lately - I have tons of patterns I want to make, tons of inspiration, but no energy.



Sweet Cyndi gave me a blog award - 

Wasn't that nice of her?  Thank you Cyndi!  I love her blog and wish I could afford to have her make all of my purses.  I would like to pay her to sit around and just design and create and maybe, just maybe, I'd share her with you.  Maybe.

Now I need to nominate 10 people for the Sweet Blog award.  Not so easy!  So listen, if I nominate you and you don't accept awards, please accept my thanks for your wonderful blog and let it go.  I don't mean to step on any tootsies.  I think, except for the first one [who I've meant to tag before, but thought she didn't accept awards, my terrible mistake], I'm going to pick you all at random.  I go to all of your blogs every time you post and think you're all wonderful.  Having that said, here are my 10....I'm trying to pick ones I haven't picked before.

Peg

Cheryl

Dorothy

Mickie

Susan

Wendy

Lori

Aimee

Victoria

Rebekah

The only trouble with picking 10 is that you leave out the 390 others.  No, I'm not exaggerating. 

And now to go finish editing my Blogger's Quilt Festival post - I'm so excited, guess where I'll be ALL weekend - that's right, surfing all the wonderful links to the quilts!  I hope my Google Reader can handle all the new blogs I'll find, lol!

Thank You and a Give-Away...

Thank you Jocelyn and Mary, I called my friend right away with the link, she was SO happy - also, keeping a cooler in the car is a VERY good idea, as they have multi-park passes and will be driving between them.  I couldn't for the life of me find out from Disney's website.

Now - about the give-away - go to Susan's blog, Sew Many Things to Say, and enter!  She's having a lovely give-away in honor of her birthday, and 100th post!

I hope to be back sometime this weekend with pictures of PROJECTS!

About Disney World....

I have a friend who was just given tickets, she'll be taking her four grandsons to Disney.  Does anyone know if you can take food into Disney, or is that prohibited?  Feeding two teens and two picky toddlers could add up fast!  Thanks!

Public Pranks And Some Machine Sewing

Today, I braved the cold and rain to go meet a friend I hadn't seen in awhile.  It was lovely to see her.  But I couldn't stay long, I had to make a Mother's Day gift for my mum....from the Wonderland honey bun that Terry had sent me, last year, when I won her give-away. 



Which I'm still working on.  While I was sewing strips together, I turned on the tv, to see what was on.  My television remote has a button called Guide, you click it and it will show you what's coming on.  This is what I saw....



Do you see what's in the red circle?  [I added that part.]  Apparently someone doesn't like this show!  I don't either, but I didn't expect that, lol, especially from PBS!  I laughed so hard.  And yes, I do feel a bit sorry for the guy whose show it is. I would LOVE to know the back story on this one.

I'm making two placemats and a tablerunner from the honey bun.  I'm using every bit.  It's been lovely to sew on the machine instead of by hand.  They're now pin basted, and I will start quilting them in the morning.  Mum isn't home right now, she's at my aunt's, but I'll see her sometime tomorrow.  She may not be able to start using them on Mother's Day....but she'll get them sometime in the next week!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mums out there, I hope you get spoiled rotten!

Such An Honor....

I'm the featured quilter today over at Amy's Creative Side, formerly Park City Girl,  for the Blogger's Quilt Festival interview.  Very humbling...I mean, have you SEEN the people she's interviewed?!  Rock stars, and I'm definitely NOT, lol.  And Amy herself is a rock star!

Remember, the Blogger's Quilt Festival is coming up, Get your quilts ready and join in - it's absolutely amazing.  Every time I find more blogs to love and quilts to gasp at.  The talent out there totally takes my breath away.  And what is so lovely, is that Amy puts them all in one place for your convenience, you can grab a cuppa [or three] and get lost in all the inspiration.  From first time quilters to masters of the art, it's a fabulous show!

Thanks Amy, for such an honor!

May The 4th Be With You

In case you didn't know, today is national Star Wars day.  Now you know.  My son wanted to celebrate with a day of movies, but it was too late - it takes over 13 hours to watch them all. 

Recently, Mary had a give-away on her blog.  Bless her heart, she picked me too.  Today I got the most beautiful package...




of black, white and yellow fats.  Aren't they stunning?



Something very special is going to come from them.  Not sure what yet, but I'll enjoy looking through my patterns!  Thank you so much, Mary!

I'd like to introduce you to a very special friend of mine - Denise - we've known each other for many years, and never met in real life.  She lives in a very special place, if you ever read Anne of Green Gables, well, that's where.  I've wanted to visit her ever since I "met" her online.  She's just beginning her journey as an author and has written a children's book called I Believe I Can Fly.  She's self-published and I can't wait to read it.  Go say hi if you get a chance - she's a kindred spirit.

Today I actually sat down and quilted on my tablerunner.  No pics.  After my eyes got tired [thread is the same color as the fabric, dark blue] I worked on something else - a secret squirrel project.  Here's a sneak peek.



I think tonight I'm going to go through my patterns and see what I have that will show off my lovely new fabrics - or maybe I'll draw something, for some reason I keep thinking lemon tree.

Please keep the folks from Nashville in your prayers - and of course the entire Gulf Coast, including the sea life.  I love the Gulf so much and it's breaking my heart to see the devastation.

A Long Time Ago.....

in a galaxy far, far away....a woman had a blog.  She loved her blog, and all the blogs of her friends.  She loved to show pictures on her blog, mostly of finished projects, especially projects designed by her friends.  But then something awful happened....she decided to create her own project.  Due to the nature of the fabric she used, she had to hand-quilt that project and suddenly she lost her enthusiasm.  War broke out between her fingers and her needles and thread.  It was chaos.

Ok, enough of that.  I'd forgotten how long it takes to hand-quilt.  And I haven't found my gold trim yet for around the border.  They closed the Joann's that was 5 minutes from my house and now I have to drive half an hour to find one.  Since it's taking SO long to hand-quilt, the pattern isn't finished.

I'm also working on some secret squirrel stuff that I can't show you.  I've had a bad sewing month during April, let's hope May is better.  Seems like everything I'm doing is by hand, I'm itching to break out my machine!  I must say I'm really enjoying seeing all the projects you have all been working on, but it's making me a wee bit jealous.

Since I don't like to do a blog post without a picture, I'll leave you with a pic of my friend's puppy, Greta.  She's absolutely adorable, but STUBBORN.  She loves my shoes - not sure if it's because they're leather, or if they smell like my dog, or she likes the [bad] attention she gets when she goes after them.  We have to find a toy she can chew on to keep her away from them.  She's a stinker!