Nothing special today. Just cleaning house. I have friends coming over on Wednesday and I can't do it tomorrow because I have guild meeting in the morning and evening. We will be sewing quits for the Home of the Brave organization. The quilts are given to the families that have lost a soldier in the war from Louisiana. We have enough blocks for four quilts. So alot of piecing sashing and borders will be going on. We will be eating Taco soup. One of my friends is bringing it and the others are bringing the condiments to go with it, like cheese, sour cream, fritos or tortilla chips, onions, etc. We will also have plenty of desserts. We love to eat here in south Louisiana. I will hopefully be able to take pictures soon of my workshop, where I will be teaching. It is finished and ready except for the valances that are going up on the windows. They are redwork designs and I am only on the first one so it will be a little while.

Enjoy your day!
Quilt til your arm falls off...

Not doing much today. It is so cold here today. Suppose to start warming up tomorrow. I will be making some phone calls. I'm starting my Basic beginner quilting class next month and need to call some of the people that were interested in taking the class. I am also going to try to finish quilting my sample and bind it by the end of the weekend. Next week will be busy. I have my guild meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday I have one of my mini groups coming here to sew together 4 quilt tops for the Fallen Soldiers families here in Louisiana. On Thursday a field trip to Baton Rouge to see our new and old state capitol with the homeschool group. And on Friday me and my friend leave for a quilting retreat. So much anticipated fun! That's all for now. Sorry I don't have more but that's how it is sometimes.

Pictures are of a rainbow that I took not too long ago. It wrapped around the whole sky. Beautiful!

Quilt til your arm falls off...

I don't have much to post about today. I'm going to the bowling alley later with my son and some homeschool friends. I think it will be fun for him. He loves to bowl even though we don't go very often. Maybe we should try to go more often as a family. When I was growing up we always had someone over or we were at someone else's home to visit. We don't do much of that anymore. I think it is a shame but I am as much to blame as anyone for not doing it. I rather stay home and quilt or read or any number of things that I am interested in doing. Even my family, which live all down the same street, sisters, Dad, aunts, uncles, all together, I hardly ever go to visit them. Sometimes I feel bad about it but I guess not enough because I still don't get out there and visit. Maybe I need to try harder. Make time. I know it is important to get to know people better. It is better for you and for them. Visiting seems like a lost art in a sense. I am always afraid I won't have anything to talk about. I think being able to conversate (is that a word? probably not) is a gift. My Mom was good at it. We would meet up with people somewhere that we had not seen in a while and boy could they talk. Maybe it takes real interest, you know, really be interested in others lives. Maybe that is the problem with me, I'm not always interested. WOW! that is horrible! How could that be? When did that happen? Something I really need to work on. Well, by now I'm sure you are absoulutely bored with me and not interested so that's all folks. Off to try to get a little sewing in before the bowling alley.

By the way, what the picture has to do with this subject--Rocking chairs always make me think of people visiting on the front porch.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

These are pics I took last week ago. Every winter we have an abundance of birds that fly in. Whenever we see a large flock like this all over the yard and fields we know there is cold weather to come. At least that is how it always seemed to me since I was little. We have a cold front come in this weekend as expected.

I love watching them. At the slightest noise the go flying off. One following the others. It is wonderful to watch.

I of course could not get them all in one shot but, here they are just starting to fly off. A car went down the road and they started off only to land in the yard of the neighbors behind us. Fascinating!

Today I am off to my best friend's house. We will look at quilting books, current projects and just hang out and talk. It is the most fun! Later tonight I have a "Woolie" meeting here. I need to go and bake a fig cake for refreshments. Yesterday I got my teaching quilt basted and tomorrow I will start to quilt it. Things are coming together. I love the feeling of getting things accomplished. Me and my friend leave in 11 days for a quilting retreat! Yeah! I can't wait. Lots of fun! Bye for now.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

This is what I was working on yesterday. The two blocks at the top are January Louisiana BOM's and the bottom is a BOM I bought from a friend. It is from the book "Seasonal Delights". I have 4 BOM UFO's and I promised myself I would get them done this year. It is past time. I will do all the January in Jan. And Feb. in Feb., you get the idea. The other two BOM's I have the Jan. blocks are done already so I didn't take pictures of those. I will take them out in Feb. and take pics then.
The Louisiana BOM has two blocks each month, a pieced one and an appliqued one. The applique this month is called "The Mardi Gras" it is a Mardi Gras mask. The pieced one is called "Shrimps on Point". They are all LA related and very nice. I'm looking forward to getting these done. Today I have a small quilt to quilt on the frame and my small teaching quilt to sandwich. I better get busy. Bye for now.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

These are some pictures from Christmas Eve that I didn't post about. My brother in law closed in his carport with roofing felt for us to cook outside without being too cold. We thought it looked dull so we grabbed some chalk and prettied it up. What do you think? We all got into the act, even the kids. It was fun.


See the pot of gumbo cooking in the bottom corner? It was so good! The snowmen look a little afraid that it might make them melt. Don' you think?

How about this little tree? It was so fun to just draw and not think about whether it was perfect or not. The kids loved the little gifts underneath. And the snowflakes were wishful thinking. I don't think I have seen a snowflake in this area for a long time. It nevers snows in the south. (well not never, there were about two times in my lifetime I can remember snow on the ground but it wasn't much and melted quick.)

I like this fireplace. Santa better watch out! He's about to get burned!

And here is a picture of my Nanny's feet. She always wears these flip flops. They are a special kind that she bought about 5 years ago and she swears she can wear not other shoe because they hurt her feet. She has bought many a pair over the past 5 years.She wears them year round and so this Christmas she had these cute socks to go with them. Very appropriate, I just had to snap a photo. Good thing she doesn't read my blog. She tan my hide if she saw this! That's all folk's. Have a great quilty day.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Good morning everyone! We are going to Pennsylvania in August! My husband has gotten in a woodworking class that is taught by JD Lohr. His class is in Schwenksville, PA. He recommends hotels in Pottstown and we are close to Valley Forge. Does anyone out there live in that area? Can you suggest a place to stay and sites to see? We went to Lancaster in 2006 and had a great time but this time my husband will be in class all day long for 6 days. My 14 yr. old son and I will be on our own. I will bring my sewing machine and sew in the hotel/motel. I can't be without it for long you know. But, I would like to hear from someone in that area with info to share. Thanks.

Here is a picture of a used sewing machine I bought just before the holidays. I love it! It has a lot of quilting features on it and it has a larger bed area for quilting. I am enjoying piecing on it. I can make and accurate 1/4 inch stitch because I can move my needle over slightly to the left or right. Don't get me wrong, I could quilt just fine without this machine but the inconvenience it provides is helpful.

Today we are going to Chuck E. Cheese with some other homeschoolers for a day out. I will also get some much needed shopping done while I am out. Are you like me? I hate shopping, even fabric shopping. I don't know what it is about it but I just can't stand to go. Oh well, sometimes you've got to bite the bullet and do it. My daughter loves-loves-loves to shop. Hey maybe that's where all my likeness for shopping went. Yeah, that's it, I gave it all to her. It's not my fault I like to share. That's all folks, have a great quilty day!

Quilt til your arm falls off...

I have not posted in a while but I have been busy sewing, finally. I have many projects to work on but have not felt like sewing because the things that I knew I had to work on I didn't want to work on. So this made me feel like I could not work on anything at all until the things I needed to get done were finished (I'm sure I'm the only one that understood that!). Does anyone ever feel like that? My creativity was stifled because of things I had to get done and did not want to work on. Anyway my friend suggested that I work on the "have to" project only on Saturdays and the rest of the week can be split up doing the projects that I wanted to work on. Such a simple suggestion but one that opened up a whole new concept to me. I didn't have to work on the same project everyday until it was finished if I didn't want to. (I'm a little slow sometimes!) Well anyway, that is what I started doing a couple of weeks ago and you know what? I finished the "have to" project on Saturday and I finished the "wanted to work on" projects yesterday. How about that. The creative juices started flowing and I got work done. So thank you my friend for the suggestion and here is a picture of the "wanted to work on" project. I will post pictures of the "have to" project later after it is quilted and bound. It is for a friend and her Mom is getting one too so I plan to work on the Step Mom's quilt at a retreat I have coming up in February.

It is two versions of a quilt that I will be teaching beginner quilting classes with. The first one I made on the right is very simple in it's color. I chose only a light, medium, and dark in three colors from the border fabric and the only other color is the sashing. I will use it to teach them about color value. Then I will show them the quilt on the left (which is my favorite) to show them that they can use many fabrics and still use color value and a border print to choose fabric for their projects.

I still have to type up cutting and piecing instructions and do a lesson plan but I should be ready to start in February. I'm so excited about this new venture in my life. I can't wait to help others get excited about quilting! That's all for now. I will hopefully be able to post more often. My daughter says I have to! HA!


Quilt til your arm falls off...

I haven't posted in a while. Trying to get back into the swing of things or just trying to organize the projects I have to work on. I am in the process of making a sampler for a beginning quilt class that I am going to teach. I have never taught beginner quilting before so there is alot to figure out. Like, how long will it take for the students to cut out and make the blocks? I have to figure this out because I need to know how long and how many classes to have to finish the 4 block sampler I will be teaching. I also need to organize my thoughts as to what I want to teach them. All the tips and techniques they will need to make a quilt and to move on to their next quilt. Anyway that is what I have been up to. I have also begun working on past UFO BOM projects. I have 4 of them and I will begin this month to do all the January blocks and next month the February blocks, etc. Hopefully I will have them finished by the end of the year.

My daughter (who says she has no interest in quilting) came over the other night with a pair of jeans to make a purse. She sat at the machine and proceeded to make one. She cut them up and had an idea in her head of what she wanted to do. These pictures are of what I found when I walked into my sewing room later. She had gotten into my jar of small scrap fabrics and was piecing crumb blocks to put onto her purse! Yes she was piecing! She denied it but I ran for my camera and got the evidence. Look and see!

After I saw what she was up to, I went and got out my box of trims for her to use. This is the purse when she was finished. It is great! She really likes the way it came out. And she was quilting! Yeah! Maybe there is hope yet.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Thinking that I wish I had one of these today. My husband and I have wanted a wood burning stove for a long time and have not been able to work it out. One day maybe it will happen.

Sitting around in my PJ's today. Felt like it was about time to have a day all to myself to do whatever I wanted to do and this is it! I'm playing on the computer (EQ6 program for Christmas) and just hanging out. Spent time on the phone with my best friend this morning (the only thing better would be if she were here and we were sewing--maybe not, the sight of me in my PJ's might scare her off!) Anyway, I am going to head to the sewing machine later and if I feel like fixing supper later I will, if not, I will order pizza. That is what I'm up to today. Just taking it easy.

This is my son with his new car! He bought it last week and today he is signing the papers to sell his old one. His first car was a mustang. He bought it in his teens and had an accident (though no fault of his own) hitting a light pole and the insurance totaled it. He was given my Mom's car when she bought a new one. She has since passed away and Little Red (the name my Mom gave the car) will go to a new owner today. Hard to see gone but necessary. He loves his new mustang.

Quilt til your arm falls off...