More Chubby Chicks

I kind of chuckled when I read what I put as the title of this post. I mean the quilt not me and my friends!!

One of the CL's stitched the binding on and PTM hand turned it. I wanted to show you because I love how the polka dots look on this. You can see that I wrote directly on the back of the quilt for the label. This will be going to St. Patrick's Catholic Church for their raffle. I hope I can purchase some tickets. I left it with our priest tonight so he can deliver it to the other parish. Fly away little chickies!!

This is a quilt made from blocks given to the church group by a man named Jack. His mother passed away and he donated all her quilting supplies to us, including many partially finished quilts, some quilt tops and blocks. These were orphan so one of the CL's put it together. I gave it to the pastoral associate for a woman undergoing extensive chemo in our parish. I hope she is comforted by this.

I have a lot of stuff going on in my own life right now and am praying it all turns out well. My dad needs to have some testing done and at this time I am asking you to keep him in your prayers. I hope and pray it will all turn out OK. Thanks for your prayers. His next test is March 17th. I am feeling very stressed by this since I am the only one in the family to take care of him and both of my sisters (both are handicapped). Work is super busy at the moment too and going to the gym every day is a challenge but I am doing it. I am finding, to my surprise that I feel so much better when I do. I have not missed a day since beginning except for Sundays because they are not open!

Have a great weekend. Two hours of work out tomorrow morning and weigh in at the gym too. Wish me luck!!

I'm Back...

I have missed all of you but I have been really busy since I can see properly again, LOL. I did a lot of running around and some cleaning and laundry and have not been all that interested in quilting, I heard you all gasp, but I really haven't been very motivated! All that changed today for me.

I decided to ignore most of what I *needed* to do and tried to get some sewing done. I had some things hanging over my head and decided to buck up and get them finished. First thing I want to tell you about before what I did today is about my amazing CL's. Here is the main group standing behind 33 quilts we are donating to Mott Children's hospital. They contacted us and wanted to know if we could contribute to the 150 quilts they wanted for an entire floor. We sure did that, in a BIG way. They only thing bigger than the number of quilts we donated is the hearts of the ladies that made them. Way to go ladies!!

Now I can tell you about today. The first thing on the list was one of the star/lighthouse quilts. I was so close to being finished with the stars for one of them that I just finished them all up! Now I can bring them on Wed night and lay the quilt out and then I can get it sewn together. Did I tell you that the Wed night group is not going to exist after December. We meet at a theater and they need our room for a choir to practice. Bummer. Anyway, here are all the stars for the first one of these all packed up for Wed.

The next thing on the list was to pack up some things I had promised to mail (and one thing that is a surprise). Mary kindly sent me a witch for an exchange and I needed to stitch around an owl so I did that, I made the 9 patch for her too. Then another blogger send me some back patterns that she had done and so I needed to get some FQ's ready to go to her, check, that's off the list. The last bit is the surprise, old patterns going out to another friend.

I had to make a label for the M string quilt for the raffle too so that is done. I just need to sew it on. I had to write on a label for a quilt for the church too and that is done as well. So next on that list is a baby quilt to send to my French daughter that had a baby in June. (I just found out about it 2 weeks ago). So I used my Odyssea Charm packs and have all the coins done for the stacked coins baby quilt.

I have the sashing cut and the back cut but don't know if I will get to it tonight. I still need to sew on the M string quilt label and finish the laundry and go to the store and pay the bills, whew, but maybe I will.

Last but not least PTM gave me the mother load of peppers. So I got DH to cut them all up and put them in the dehydrator before he left for work today. He is not home tonight so I can stay up later and do what I want to as long as I can get up for work tomorrow! Don't they look yummy?? Now I can keep them and use them all winter.

Last but not least, yesterday I went to JAF to use my 50% off coupon. Could I find anything that wasn't already on sale? But of course! I found this adorable, retro, sewing basket. Too cute, eh?


What were you guys up to all weekend??

Just a quick update, I just finished the baby quilt and is it ever cute. Photos tomorrow, too dark tonight! = )

What happened over the weekend?

Funny you should ask! I had a busy weekend. DD2 came home on Friday and we went to see "He's just Not That Into You" It was a really cute movie. Sat morning we got up, DH made us pancakes and the DD and I drove to U of M to watch her friend, Kara, swim in the Big Ten Championship meet. After the meet we met Kara and her parents at Zingermans. They are a woonderfully, fantastic deli. So before we ate I gave Kara her quilt. She looks pretty happy don't ya think??

I had to put the word "Hope" on this quilt to donate to Relay for Life at our church.
Since it was already quilted I used fusible and stitched around it by hand. I also put the binding on. The blocks were donated and one of the CL's put the quilt together, but I finished it!
In addition, I got the Chubby Chicks quilt all put together too. I love this quilt!!
I really loved how the flying geese border math was already done so it actually fit together like it was supposed to. WHEW!! These chicks are just so adorable!!
Now on to the more mundane:

Stash report

Amt Added this week: 4.5 yards
Amt used this week: 10.25

Stash busted YTD: 45.75

Weight loss this week wasn't, LOL. I was very bad. I gained 1.4 pounds, bummer. I resolve to do better this week. I hope you all did better than me!!

Too much fun

Wow, I sure opened a can of worms with my last post!  Thank you everyone that commented!  I got to hear from some new people and I hope you all com back and visit some more!  I guess we all pretty much feel the same way, that we may not post our fights with our husbands or show the unclean parts of our house but beyond that we are all pretty big on telling the truth!  I think Vicky summed it up well when she said, "lying on your blog is a little like cheating at solitaire, isn't it?"  Yes Vicky, it is!

We had quilt till you wilt at the church on Saturday.  I wanted something I could put together in that time and remembered that I had all these beautiful pumpkin blocks from a pumpkin exchange I did last year.  So I gathered them up, along with some border fabric (loved the stripe) and packed them to work on at the church.  As you can see I got the entire top pieced!  What do you think??
I took this beauty home with me from work on Friday.  It needed the binding sewn on.  (I hate doing binding).  So I decided to machine sew on the binding.  Once I finished that I wanted to watch some of my favorite shows so I thought, what the heck, I'll just do a little more and see how far I can get with the hand sewing.  I finished it.  I even got the label finished!  (I had to rewrite it 3 times, but it is finished and stitched in place!  This is the annual Big Ten quilt for the Department of Pathology quilt raffle.  Tickets are just $1 if any of you are interested!!
Here is the label.  It turned out well too Third time is a charm!!  And it is not crooked, the quilt was draped over a chair and the bottom corner was drooping!
I love how the Penn State one turned out.  That cat was a bugger to applique!
I like how the Iowa Hawk came out too.  His beak was a little difficult to applique too.
I made this block.  I appliqued the Big Ten and all the symbols around the outside too.  LTW did her famous quilting too as you can see.  She quilted in what is chanted by each school around that school's block.
She also did these cool footballs all around the outside border!  Now, if you want to see any of the other schools up close let me know and I will post those too.  I took photos of each block.
Now I am going to go back to Saturday.  Remember the quilt I showed you but told you it was a secret?  Well here it is again with it's recipient, father Mathew, from our parish.  My CL's made this quilt for him (our main priest already has a quilt).  Father Matt was thrilled and asked us if he came every Saturday would he get a quilt each time?  Funny!!  Charlotte and Shirley did most of the work on this and they did a wonderful job!
Wow, who knew that DS would clean up so nicely?  He had his homecoming dance on Sat night.  I made him pose for the obligatory photo before he left.  Handsome young man!
On Sunday, I was working on my needle cases for the Christmas craft show and discovered the wonder of iron on velcro!!!  As I was diligently working on putting velcro on all my finished cases (25 of them) DH asked me if I wanted to go on a color tour and drive to East Lansing and see DD2, in the Mustang with the top down.  He was already making hot mulled cider for us to take with us.  He put it in a thermos and packed a blanket so I would stay warm and everything!!  What a romantic, huh?  Well, we did make a stop on our way to see DD, for any of you that don't live in MI this is a picture from Hell.  I know it is not what one expects from Hell but it is what it is, right?
I'm not kidding, he took me to Hell...Michigan!  Just thought you all could use a little fun in your blogging lives!  (See I didn't lie, I really was in Hell!)
We continued on our way to EL and took DD and her BF out for dinner.  Then drove home in the convertible.  I as a little chilled when we finally got home but I didn't complain!  It was a wonderful day!!

My Weekend

My friend, Ruth-Ann No Blog was taking me to task for not entering anything new on my blog.  Here is how my weekend went.  I came home from work and changed my clothes. (Dinner was ready because I made white chicken chili in the crock pot).   I really needed dog food so was going to head to the pet store to get some.  Well, DH decided he wanted to tag along.  Why? I asked, Because I want to spend time with you, he answered.  At the pet store??  Whatever.  So of we went.  Then I got home and needed to bring a pen over to Charlotte's house.  I got the pen and some other stuff I needed to give her and went over to her house.  About an hour later I was on my way home.  By this time it is after 9pm.  I did some laundry and a little cleaning and watched Stargate Atlantis and then at 11pm went to bed.

Saturday.  I had to get up at 7am because DS had detention at school and had to be there by 8am.  And DD2 was coming home.  I had to head to the LQS to get the Shop Hop passes for myself and Charlotte.  I went to the shop and bought our passes and our bus passes too for the November 15th Shop Hop.  It should be fun.  I left the shop and decided to stop back at home to see if DD was there yet.  I had a hair appointment at 1:30 and it was 1pm and it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the salon.  She was not there and the door was locked.  Where was DH??  There were messages on the phone, better listen.  DD was indeed home but locked out, and BTW I left my cell phone at the LQS (15 minutes in the opposite direction of the salon).  Called Dd from the house phone and asked her to go and get it while I was gone.  Remember that MSU was supposed to play football at 3:30 too which I wanted to watch.  Ended up at the salon and 3 hours later, yes I said THREE HOURS LATER, a cut and color takes that long.  I was on my way home.  Got home only to find out that DD could not find the LQS (said DD could not find her way out of a paper bag either, but I digress) so this necessitated a trip to the LQS (I made DD go with me so she will know where it is!)  Got my phone and was on my way back to my home.  Walked in the door to the Texas and Oklohoma  game (DS is a HUGE Texas fan).  Had to wait for that game to finish before I could watch the MSU game.  FINE, did dishes while waiting, let the dog out and did some laundry.  *Finally* I got to watch the DVR'ed game.  We had dinner plans with my friend Shelby and her boyfriend, Ray, so I had to stop watching the game and get ready.  It was a *nice* resturant so I had to dress up (or dress up for me).  We left around 6pm and got to his house around 6:30.  We went out and had a nice ( and ungodly expensive) dinner.  Left for home around 10pm.  Fell into bed exhausted.  

On to Sunday.  DD wanted to go shopping.  We ended up at MANY stores until I was ready to cry uncle.  We did manage to find some of the things she was looking for.  Came home and had to begin to get dinner ready.  Ate dinner and bundled her off and back up to school.  Much too short of a visit.  I really miss her!  Now it is about 6pm and I am whipped, but I go to the sewing room and work on the second MSU quilt, which is coming along nicely.  So that's how my weekend went.  I had NO time to blog.  

Monday was a lacrosse meeting at 7pm until about 9pm, Tuesday was quilting with the CL's from 7-9 and tonight is quilting with the CHV quilters until 9:30 (which I may have to leave early to get home and watch the debate, although I don't know why since I already know who I will be voting for!)  Thursday I have another lax meeting and Friday I may take off work to do something "fun" for myself!  I complained about being tired last night and DH suggested I quilt less, pfttt as if!

Anyway, here I am blogging at work (hahaha) no one is here today and most of the things I need to do today are already finished so...

Here is another 5 yard challenge quilt made by...you guessed it, LTW.  Aren't the cranes great??


I don't know how many of you remember this quilt?  Shirley from the CL's made it and her joke was that she would die before ever finishing it.  Well, here she is with the quilt displayed at the CHV Theater.  It is a beauty!

You may or may not remember a few months ago when a really nice man, Jack, dropped off a crap ton of quilting "stuff" at the church.  His mom had passed away and he was hoping we could use the stuff.  Among the stuff were several boxes of almost completed quilts.  So I decided that I will pull a bag each week and see what we have.  Grace, one of the CL's, is interested in putting them together so Grace, here ya go!  It is interesting to see someone else's quilt pieces and to try to figure out what they intended for them.  Here is the one I did last night.  I think I got it right.  There were 15 main blocks with stuff to make the 16th.  This is all hand pieced too.  I think the colored fabric was from old sheets as there are borders and they are not pieced but all one piece.  Alternatively, I guess she could have cut them length wise, but they feel like sheets.  What do you think?  I think it is really neat.  I know that my friend, Yuki, would appreciate all the flying geese in this one!

So for inquiring minds, there is the update!!  What was your weekend like??

Friday and Saturday

I decided to try to make a quilt using the 5 yard quilt pattern and since I really wanted to make a MSU quilt for the raffle (in addition to the U of M one I already did) here is what I came up with.

Let me know what you think of this.  I cut and sewed the "focus" blocks on Thursday night in about an hour and did the cutting and sewing of the rest of the quilt on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.  This one is really quick, folks.  This is the quilt I wanted to use for the challenge.  (Swap on the blog if anyone is interested).  This is the challenge the CL's will be doing in January.

Saturday morning I made my DH take me to the Ghoultide Gathering in Northville, MI.  It was a Halloween Artist Spectacular (their words not mine) .  The stuff was so cool, but there were only 14 booths and everything was very expensive (or maybe I'm just that cheap!)  These paper mache guys were in a secret auction and min starting was $500.  They were made by Scott Smith.  He was there in a booth and his stuff was really really cool!
Here is my DH standing by one of the pumpkin people also made by Scott Smith.  There were several of these around the park.  You can see they are really BIG.  DH is 6 feet tall.
This was chalk ware by Vaillancourt folk art.  Her things were very interesting.  I had a friend that used to live across the street from us and she did similar kinds of work (chalk ware) and I think they were competitors.  My friend's company was Walnut-Ridge Collectables.  
I also got to meet the artist Debra Schoch of Hop Hop Jingle Boo.  She was so nice and her stuff was very very cool.  Her stuff was by far the one I liked the best!
Here is a closer up photo of her work.  Isn't it fabulous?  I loved the cat girl, she is on the right.  Get the photo up closer 

Another Pumpkin Guy!
This artist (Murphy Bears, Pat and Tom Murphy) had the most awesome Halloween pincushions.  I met Pat and she was very nice too.
Each one had such a personality!
I think this one was my favorite!!

Just in case you are wondering, I got permission from each artist to take the photos and post them on my blog.  They were all very kind about it so please respect their copyrights!  I hope they like the photos I took too!

I have lots more to blog about as on Sunday we got together and made the top of the Big Ten quilt.  I will show you more of that when I get a minute.

What did I do all weekend?

It turned out to be a crazy busy weekend,. DD1 decided to come home for the weekend as she had a dr appointment on Monday. She arrived home Sat am. I made all kinds of "tailgate" foods and we ate and watched the MSU game. Of course there was laundry as well, what were you thinking? I *never* just sit, and I bet none of you do either! Saturday night I sewed a little bit on the blocks for Karen and Cory's quilt (I bet you all forgot about that one, huh?) I also traced all the owls and cut out all the little owl parts. I read my book and look who kept me company the entire time!
Mosen was more than happy to take my place once I got up.
I had sent away for the "Creepy Squirrel" that I saw on Kim's blog and here he is in all his glorious creepyness. Don't you just love him?
Sunday morning was great. I got up and worked on the fourth block in the Designer Sampler BOM. It turned out quite nicely I think.
I also mansaged to get another orphan star done and finished the Big Ten block of applique. I had to applique all the school symbols around the block and put the sashings on. Then we had the doctor appointment for DD. Poor DD she is having a difficult time with that time of the month. She experiences so much pain she often is incapacitated, so off to the dr. Well, said dr is having her come back on Monday next week for blood work and an ultrasound (transvaginal) so we will see how she does. They want to rule out ovarian cysts before any hormonal therapy.

I gave LTW my quilting plan for the M string quilt and she didn't expire. Then I gave her my quilting plan for the Witch's Pantry. All she said is :"You don't want it for this Halloween do you?" Well with as much work as it is all I have to say is "DUH!" If anyone can do what I asked she can. I can't wait to show you what I planned. LTW has my crude drawing so we will see how it goes. I have my friend, Robin print out a picture of the quilt and lighten it up and then draw how I want it quilted. This way I can give it to LTW and she can make it happen. I did forget to talk about thread with her but I know she will ask before she begins.

I had to stop by the LQS to get border fabric for the Big Ten quilt. They should never let me shop alone! I did manage to get the border fabirc as well as several other fabrics for the BTQ next year. Now we are only lacking a few and we won't have to scramble as much.

Then I had quilting with the CL's tonight. I sewed the binding on the St Pat's donation quilt in hopes that someone would hand sew it down. Luckily Dian agreed to do that for me. Thanks, Dian! LTW shared a pattern with me this week and I decided to make it into a challenge for the ladies. Everyone needs to bring in 1 yard of a focus fabric and I will put them in brown bags. Each person that wants to participate can take a bag, and using 4 other fabrics make a quilt. If they like it they can keep it, if not they can donate it. I think we will have a party at the end and show and tell. *AFTER Christmas!*

Well, that's all for tonight.

Strings of My Heart

The LC's have been "bisy" and so have I.  I wanted a group project for the CL's to work on and have been visiting Mary's blog.  She is actively involved with the Heartstrings project.  This quilt was designed by Jane of Forest Jane Designs and Heartstrings uses it for their logo.  I wanted to teach the ladies to string piece so it was all good!  Here is our first attempt at a string quilt.

If you notice, the center strings are not all the same width, we have since corrected this by having *me* cut all the center strings!
We are currently working on a 4 leaf clover design.  I think the all green blocks are turning out so well.  I plan on trimming some tonight, so will take a  picture to post tomorrow.