A Thousand Colors for the Children of Abruzzo

I was reading Tanya's blog, and she mentioned a project her friend Roberta is doing for the children in Italy affected by the earthquake. Roberta is looking for quilters to make bright, colorful quilts for the children in Abruzzo, 48x60". Roberta and her husband will be delivering the quilts personally. Her blog is written in Italian AND English, and she will email you the details of the project.

I have some brights in my stash, so I'll be looking through there later. I think a simple one-patch, or disappearing 9-patch would be fast. My blogless friend Cathy and I are going to make quilts this weekend. The deadline is July 15, but Roberta says it can take from 7-30 days for mail to reach Italy. So I'd like to get going on this.

This will be my first time joining in something like this. I'm sorry for the need, but excited to help. If you can, please consider joining us!

Shabby Goodness

Jenny at Elefantz is doing a Shabby Roses BOM - I'm so excited! Click on the link or the picture on my sidebar to join. These will be embroidered blocks, made into a quilt. She's also having a contest! If you check her out from here, could you please mention I sent you? [Shameless plug].

She also has a Wonky House BOM - the final block is coming soon. I just love her work!

What I'm Doing Today. [NOT].

How about, what I SHOULD be doing today. Sigh. I know I complain about the cold weather, I know I long for summer......but oh golly it was HOT today. Zapped all my creative energy. Tomorrow will be even warmer. Looks like we've skipped spring and gone straight to summer! Here's what I SHOULD'VE been doing today......







Digitizing for embroidery.







Ironing and cutting squares for my girlfriend Kathy's quilt.







Stitching out some more blocks for hubby's quilt. Yes, I was going to paint it, and got four blocks done, but I'm tired of that and changed my mind. He'll have to live with whatever puckers are left after quilting. [Please ignore the jump threads - I haven't cut them yet.]







Working on my Wonky Houses blocks. Jenny is starting another BOM and I am so behind. I started to crayon this one [not sure you can tell in this oh-so-bad photo] and I like it. So when I'm all done stitching, and wash out the blue marker, I'll color them in. FUN. I'm going to work on this tonight while I watch dvd's of Murder She Wrote.







And last, a secret project for a friend. I hope it comes out the way it is in my head. If it doesn't, that's ok, she doesn't know anything about it. *G* Aren't surprises fun?



So what AM I doing today? Sitting mindlessly in front of the computer, reading blogs, and going to a quilt show at Amy's. With the fan blowing right on me, of course.

An Answer

Mary-Kay C. posted this comment on my last post:

What a cool idea. The colours are so bright. I've seen this type of quilt done but the colours were very muted. I like how you did yours. What a wonderful quilt and amazing that your son still uses it. Does he hide it when friends come to visit?

Mary-Kay, I tried to reply but you came up as a no-reply, and had no way to email you. So, I'll answer your question here! Cuz I really liked it. *G*
No, he doesn't hide his quilt! Pretty amazing, *I* think. I was a terribly self-concious teen, and my boys are totally the opposite. They have high self-esteem without pride, for which I'm awfully grateful. I think the homeschooling has done that. I remember the peer pressure in high school - ack. Their friends are also homeschooled, and they're all quite confident young men as well, and don't look at people funny like they have two heads. It's a new world to me.

I do love to reply to all of your comments - if you haven't recieved a reply from me, via email, it's because you're set to no-reply. I'm not sure how you'd change that, if you wanted to. I do read and treasure your comments!

Joining the Quilt Fun

Amy at Park City Girl is hosting a funfest of everyone's favorite quilts. I decided to join in too! I've blogged about this before, but it IS my favorite.



This is my favorite quilt of all time. So far, anyway. It was only my second quilt, it was my first time using fabric markers, and it was all done with my son's artwork.




He was 4 by the time we started this, using pictures he had made starting at the age of 2. He LOVED to draw. Entire walls in the house were covered with his pictures, and lots of times we couldn't find the fridge, it was so covered.



When I finished transferring all the pictures, I started the hand-quilting - and for a few years, didn't know if I'd EVER finish. It's quilted in lines around all the pictures, about 1/4" apart. His favorite color was [and still is!] orange, so we had to do orange binding. This quilt is big enough for a double bed, and he uses it to this day - he's almost 17!



It'll never win any awards, it's not beautiful except to a mum and her son - well ok, grandma too - but to us, it's priceless.

Quiet Week

Don't you just love azaleas? My mother-in-law brought me this plant for Easter, and I haven't killed it yet. *G* I'm good at that. My favorite flower is the tulip, my mum brought me some for Easter, and I killed those almost immediately. Fortunately, they can be planted. So can the azalea. Growing up, we had an azalea bush right outside the front door - it was monstrous and oh so beautiful. Every morning, after my dad left for work, my mom would empty the coffee grounds on it. It THRIVED on coffee.


This is Sam's quilt. I've been trying to get a good picture all week and can't. If I don't use the tripod, I'm all shaky and all my pics are blurry. I need a good camera with image stabilization, cuz I have no stabilization at all.


Sam loves his quilt. He's very protective over it. It's very similar to Russell's, but Russell's had green strips, simulating seaweed. Sam wanted his all blue.

AND - drum roll - I finished a quilt I'd been hand-quilting for over a year, I believe. I found a fabric line called Follow Your Imagination by Prints Charming and fell in love with it. If you get a chance to get their fabric, DO IT. It is so soft and lovely - I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I bought a stack of half yard cuts, and ended up buying more of the stripe for the sides of the quilt. While I love it, I'm sorry now that I didn't get a bit more and put another section of stripe at the top. It looks off-balance to me.





And the back:



I couldn't bear to cut into the half yards, so I left them as is and put white sashing in between. I quilted bubbles in the half-yard sections, and semi-straight lines in the stripey side sections.

Glad to have that done.

I also stopped at a church rummage sale yesterday. I LOVE church rummage sales. Normally, I find way too much stuff, but yesterday I only came home with one thing; and it was a doozy. Although I seem to be the only one who thinks so, lol. I love flamingos, collect them and would live in Florida if I could. Well, I found this:

Click on it to see the bigger pic. I believe it's from the '50's. It hangs in my sewing room and it makes me happy.

That's all for today - now to go read all the blogs I've been missing!