Super Saturday

Today was a good day. I got up and went to the gym, an hour of body vive and an hour of abs work. WHEW!! Oh and the weigh in (down 3.4 lbs). Now if I go by the scale in my own home I have lost 14 pounds so far in the month. Not too shabby huh? Then home to shower, grab a quick bite and off the quilting at the church with the CL's. We are making a string quilt for the Relay for Life group at the church so I brought my machine and planned on working for a few hours. I can't seem to find my 9.5" ruler at the moment so I will have to borrow one and trim up the blocks. More on that later.

I was surprised but there were many CL's there today and several of us actually sewed blocks. It was a fun afternoon. Charlotte brought donuts and Pilar brought ice cream cake and I didn't have ANY!!! That was so difficult, but I was good.

I haven't posted about this but I got the Chubby Chicks quilt back from LTW and it came out soooo cute! Here it is untrimmed and no binding either. I make red with dime sized white polka dots on it for the binding. It should be cute!

I took some close ups of the quilting for you to see. Notice the wing on the chick?

More of the quilting.

On top of that on Wednesday night I got some more of the Rabbits Prefer Embroidery finished. This one, and this one.

And do you remember that I told you I won a giveaway? This is what I won. A yard of fabric from Amy Schimler and she even sent an adorable post card.

DH was gone for the last 3 days and came home today. He is making a steak and I have potatoes and green beans cooking. He leaves for another 3 days tomorrow, so this is our Valentine's celebration. No gifts, I told him, the transmission is enough!! LOL Plus the clock light that I failed to mention. I appreciate that much more anyway!
So that catches you all up on what's new here. Hope you all have a great Valentine's Day tomorrow and get to spend it with your sweetie, or at least some sweets!!

***Great BIG Smooches ***

What a Weekend!!

My weekend began with a wonderful belated birthday gift from Mary Ann.  I sent her a HUGE  (Think size of a small child, like 53 pounds) package and she received it on Friday too!!  Funny how that worked out.  I sent her vintage magazines and patterns from my dad's house.  I know how much she loves that vintage paper!!  Have fun Mary Ann!!  So this is what was inside.

And her it is all unwrapped!!  Very cool.  I really like the animals and the other fabrics play so nicely with them.  Thanks, Mary Ann.
Saturday was Quilt Till You Wilt with the CL's.  I had to bring a project that I could use my little machine on and decided to work on the 4 leaf clover string quilt.  As it just so happens, I got all the blocks sewn into rows! Then when I got home I used all the blue and yellow orphan blocks to make another orphan star quilt.  Sat night was a party at my friend Terry's house as her son     was in town and will be going back to Iraq soon.  I met them when I was his religous ed teacher many years ago and we have been friends ever since.  My DS is best friends with her youngest son also.  

On Sunday I decided I *needed* to get the St. Pat's quilt done.  Aiden was helping me on the couch behind the sewing machine.
Laxy was in the chair directly to the right of the sewing machine all curled up in the chair.
Mosen was lying on the bag with my sister's quilt in it in front of the sewing machine.
There was no more space so Jack went into the family room and took his nap on the Texas fleece I made for DS!
Here is the orphan star.  Now I have done 2 of these with blocks left over from the M string quilt.  One will be in our art auction here at the U of M and one will go to the Christmas sale for the church.
Well, here is St Patrick's Good Luck all finished!  I hung it on the clothes line for a picture and you can see it is too wide and long for it, but at least you can see it!
I think it turned out quite nice!  It will be the raffle quilt for St. Patrick's church next year.  I am happy to have it this far along already!  Our church works with theirs to help them as they are a pretty poor parish.  Every year the CL's make a quilt for them to raffle.  I actually designed this one myself.  I have to say, I really like making string quilts
After I finished this I made caramel brownies to take to my friend's house as DH and I were going to her boyfriend's house for dinner.  We had a really good time and the brownies were a hit!

Skipity-Do-Da

Wow!! Who knew how generous you all would be to me!! I asked for green and blue 6" squares for the"S" quilt and you certainly delivered!! These beauties came from Amy at the Calico Cat. Thanks Amy!! I sent her some cat squares in return for the greens she sent to me.
Here are a few more from Amy.
Now then these fabulous blues came from Jeanne at Luv 2 Stitch.
Jeanne also sent all these wonderful greens. I love it!
Now these beauties came from my newest blogland friend, Pat at Bell Creek Quilts. Apparently she is a transplanted Wolverine and now lives in Badger territory (sorry for you). She was asking about my MSU fabric and we got to talking and I told her about our Big Ten quilt that we are always looking for fabrics for and lo and behold she sent me a yard of each of these wonderful Wisconsin fabrics! What a doll you are Pat, thank you. Last year that Big Ten quilt raised over $1500 for charity so the patient families at the U of M will appreciate your generosity also. (Hard to swallow the old Spartan pride, but thanks!) Let me know if you get in a pinch for the MSU fabrics. She even sent a cute little note!
Lastly, I wanted to show you all how great our green strings are turning out for the St. Patirck's quilt! This is just four I put together but there are a lot more. I think they are quite striking. The CL's liked them so much they asked if we could do them in another color (wonder who will design that quilt??)


My friend Ellen had given my some fat quarters in a tin and I found a pattern but (of course) I needed a few additional fabrics. They are not really "my" colors anyway so I was struggling with the whole thing. (Aqua, orange, green and brown) The print is kind of retro too so it was difficult to add to. I don't have anything like it in the old stash. So I went to JAF tonight and bought a little orange that should work. I will take photos tomorrow once I get some of it put together. If I don't like it I will just donate it. I need a quilt for the raffle too so...hmmmm maybe this will be the one!

I spent the day getting DD2 off to Co with her BF. They are staying with his sister in Denver and will go snowbording, ah to be young again! She was pretty excited. It necessitated several trips to stores to get "stuff" that needed to be gotten and packed for the trip. I hope they have fun and don't break anything important, those are some big mountains!

Progress...At Last

OK,OK, so I haven't been very good at posting lately. I have a lot to show today. I am kind of going in reverse order so bear with me. After I made the sampler quilt for my SIL and BIL I made another quilt from those fabrics for my In Laws. I *still* had fabric so used it for my Doll Quilt Swap quilt (hi Natalie), but I *still* had fabric left over so decided I needed to use more. I had seen a pattern in a magazine where they put a cat in the center and built a log cabin around it but I didn't like the cat. So I looked on line for a cat I might like better and found the one I ended up using to make this "Cats in the Cabin" wall hanging.


Here is a close up of one of the cats. They were paper pieced and after I did 4 of them I was sooooooo frustrated that I decided that would be enough to make a 4 block wall hanging. I "built" the cabin around the cat only to realize that I should have switched up the placement of the lights and darks so back to the drawing board. I couldn't make any kind of pattern this way.

I figured out what I needed to do to make another center with a pinwheel the same size as in the cats and then made a frame and built the cabin around that. That allowed me some play in design. Not much...but some. I think it came out pretty well.

The problem was that I, once again, made too many blocks, so I made a table runner! Lemons...lemonade!!

Now, I don't know if any of you remember that I was making this quilt for my son's lacrosse coach and his wife who are expecting a baby next month. I entitled it "Spinning Crosse" (the head on the lacrosse stick is called the "crosse") Liz quilted little mice into it. I think it came out really cute! What an easy quilt!



The church ladies and I have been working on quilts for the Methodist Boys Home (MBH). I posted one that had the bears all over it in this same crazy rail pattern. Here is one of the football ones. I chose the fabric, and cut the rectangles and then I gave it to Liz's folks and they cut it up and put it together and Liz quilted it. I liked the way this finished. I gave then another bear one and one more, different football one. I think I liked the colors in the second football one better but I hope some boy will like this one too.

There are 70 high school boys at the MBH. We managed, with the help of Liz's parents to make over 40 while a LQS had another 30 donated to them.

With the additional quilts Liz's folks have we should be set for awhile. We should even have some to give as they get in new kids too! I am so proud of the CL's and of Liz's parents too. This was a huge accomplishment!! Great Job everyone!!!
We will be delivering them to the MBH next Friday. I am so excited to get them to the boys!



Last but certainly not least. Every year the CL's make a quilt for a sister parish, St. Patricks. It is in a poor area and in need of assistance. We make a quilt for their raffle. This year Liz had given me some Quiltsmart Scotty dogs so I chose do to that. The CL's appliqued them and one of the women, Kim assembled the quilt. The setting design was my idea. I realy like how all the plaids work together to make the borders.


We had 2 left over so I had Kim put them on the back and she appliqued a bone between them. I used the little brown one for the label. That particular dog was made by one of the CL's that has recently passed away.
Scotties on parade! Nice stippling and notice that every rectangle is outlined.
I love the curlique border quilting that Liz chose too.

I guess that's all I have to report on for now. I have decided to chip away on the projects that are either in some state of "done" or on some of the things that were purchased to be a quilt. This should keep me busy ALL YEAR!! LOL. I have been keeping up on the 365 day challenge quilt too. I need to sew some more rows together now though. Not sure what the next project will be but I will keep you posted.