I had a fun girls day out with my friends Robin and Yuki. We decided to visit a quilt shop we had heard a lot about. It is in Bettsville Ohio about 2 hours from where I live. We left early in the morning and got there around the time they opened. It is a smallish shop in the middle of *nowhere*! An old barn packed full of fabric! Over 15,000 bolts!!! It was overwhelming! Here are just a few photos of some of the rows of fabric.





Door Mouse Visit


Here is a picture of Yuki and I and one of me, Yuki and Robin:



After spending almost 3 hours in the shop we went to the local golf course for lunch (there are NO other places for lunch!). We went to another shop in Sylvania, Ohio and then stopped at the Quilt Patch in Tecumeseh, Michigan for our final stop of the trip. We left just as a shop hop bus was arriving! Perfect timing!!

I told you I would post a pic of my siggy block. I finally got them all signed! WHEW!!


I have been working on the sampler quilt for my sister-in-law and got all the rows sewn together today too. It took an hour for each row! It is really beautiful. The colours are a red, green gold and chocolate brown (Moda kind of colours). I have to find a border fabric now. I will be going with some friends to a shop called the Door Mouse, it's in Ohio, next Saturday. I have to go and do some laundry. The fun never ends around here, hahaha!!

BIG TENS

Well, I have returned from the Big Ten championships in Minnesota. My daughter swam well, 2 lifetime bests! It was really, really cold there though.

This is a photo of my daughter and her teammate with frozen hair! She froze her hair and I am the one that returned home ill! go figure. I did manage to visit some quilt shops while on this little trip. We stopped in Hudson, WI and there was a nice little quilt shop right off the highway! I bought a few things there. Then between prelims and finals, I went to 3 quilt shops in MN. I found a wonderful book entitled, "Minnesota Memories". I loved some of the things in it, like the mosquitos and fish and bobbers! I want to make a fishing quilt for my husband and thought those things would work into it very well.

I finished my siggy swap blocks and now have to write on them and then get them in the mail. I am excited to see what everyone else has done. I will post a pic of mine here later in the week.

I am also working on 4 dresden plate blocks for a friend of my daughter, Shelby's. I got all the "plates" done and they are pinned to the background. I am hoping to get that done soon so I can move on. I need to finish the quilt for my sister-in-law so I can begin to work on quilts for my son and husband. I still don't have a quilt on my bed and that is one of the things I want to accomplish this year!

I was working on several quilt projects last night while watching the superbowl, or rather the super bowl commercials. I am making a sampler quilt for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's 25th anniversary, so I worked on those blocks. The pattern was spread out in 3 magazines so now that I have them all I can actually work on finishing it. I have the blocks from the first month done and am now half way through the second month.

I signed up for a signature block exchange with Aussie Quilter. There are now 40 people signed up to participate. Thank you Cynthia for doing this! It should be fun. I was so excited about it I made the triangles for the siggy block last night too. I made them the same way as Bea did. Thanks for the tip! : D

Then one of my daughter Shelby's friends gave her some fabric that used to be her grandmothers. She asked if I could make something from it for her to remember her grandmother by. The fabric looks like it is from the 70's so I wanted something kind of old-fashioned. I decided on a dresden plate. I made one of the units last night. I will applique it down in the car on the way to Minnesota this week. I used a template from Elenor Burns that made the point east and no needle turn! The top was a straight cut, I folded the "petal" in half length wise and sewed a 1/4" seam across the tip of the petal. Well, when you turn the seam to the inside of the petal the point is made and you have no raw edge for the point! It was great! I then sewed the petals together into the ring. Now I will applique it down and make a center to cover my raw edges on the inside of the unit. I think I will make 4 of them for a wall hanging. The colours of fabrics are so varied that I think each plate will be a different colour scheme.

We leave for Minnesota on Wed. My middle daughter swims for Michigan State University. MSU is in the Big Ten Conference (see the quilt in the last post for all the schools). The championship meet is Thurs-Sat this week. She is swimming one event each day. Keep her in your thoughts and pray for some fast swims!!

Leave me a comment and let me know what is going on with you and your families!

It's been awhile since I have had time to post. Life has been hectic to say the least! I hope everyone had a nice holiday and is looking forward to 2007. After the U of M raffle was done I didn't think I would want to quilt for awhile, but I ended up making a "quickie" just before Christmas. We were doing a secret santa in our lab and I just happened to draw one of my friends. Well, she is from Brazil and had never heard of the poem "The Night Before Christmas. So I decided to give her small gifts from the poem. I was stumped for the final gift, which is usually something nice. My husband and I were in Shipshewana and I was in the fabric store (of course) and there I saw it. A "Night Before Christmas" panel! Well I *had* to buy it and make a quilt for my friend!! She loved it. So that was my last quilt before Christmas. Since January 1st of 07 I have finsihed and given away 3 more!!




My son has a good friend who was just diagnosed with Lukemia. He is only 15. They played football together. I made him a football field, complete with his number in the corners, "Go Rocks" (the school mascot) quilted into the sides and the school emblem appliqued on the back. It was all flannel so when he has his chemo he can stay warm. Well, we had a little party and all the football players signed the large label and Mike loved it!









The next one was for a raffle of a sister parish. Our priest asked out church group to make a quilt for them and as the leader, it sort of fell to me to get it done. I used asian fabrics and a variation of a friendship star and desigedn it, it was a simple one!




The last one was for a good friend's daughter. She has been having some health problems too. Not as serious of the lukemia (we hope anyway) but difficult anyway. She LOVES Curious George. Years ago I bought a panel that was a soft cloth book of CG. I made it into a quit for her. She loves it!!



I will post some pics of these quilts along with the "Big Ten" quilt, which was the other one I helped make for the U of M raffle. I actually made the MSU and Northwestern, and Big Ten blocks and I appliqued all the centers except Wisconsin and Indiana. We had 26 quilts and raised $11,000 for our charity!


Enjoy the pics and let me know what you think of the quilts!

I work at the University of Michigan in the Pathology department of the Medical school. Each year our department does things to raise money for patient charity here at the U. Last year we were able to give 27 families $1000 each at the holiday time. These are people that are in the hospital (or a family member is) and they are determined to be "in need" by the department of social work here at the University. One of the things we do is a quilt raffle. We made $7800 last year and are hoping to make even more this year. Many people donated quilts. Last year we had 13 quilts. I think we will have more this year. I am going to post photos of the quilt I made for the raffle this year. Let me know what you think of it! I am hoping it will raise a lot of money. Here is the link to view previous years quilts and to look for to view this years quilts (after Nov 20th).

www.pathology.med.umich.edu

Here are some pics of the quilt I made 2 years ago called "Oh Holy Night". It was a pattern published in the Jan/Feb 04 edition of Quiltmaker magazine.




I saw this quilt in an issue of Fons and Porter magazine and fell in love with it. My friend Liz longarm quilted it. If any of you need a good longarm quilter email me and I will give you her email address. I call the quilt "Star of Wonder". Enjoy!!




Here are a few close ups too:

I heard recently about a book called One Thousand Gifts. It talks about the things you are thankful for in your life, things provided by God. I think I am going to start a list too as I have soooo many things to thank God for. I am going to try to reach 1000 tings too. Feel free to let me know what you are thankful for and link here with your list! Happy Thanksgiving!!

1-A loving God

2-A loving Family

3-wonderful children

4-amazing cats

5-My mom and dad

6-My sisters, even though I didn't always appreciate them : )

7-Reliable transportation

8-A house to live in

9-My bernina

10-doctors, especially this last year!

11-Sunshine on a cloudy day

12-My wonderful friends

13-My international friends

14-the smell of clean hair

15-The smell of chlorine on a wet swimmer

16-The ability to watch my wet swimmer swim

17-Eye glasses

18-the smell of fresh cut grass

19-The smell of banana bread baking in the oven

20-Thread

21-My washer and dryer

22-My dishwasher

23-kittens and puppies

24-email and the internet

25-chocolate

I have been thinking about entering a quilt in a contest on the internet and I finally did it last night! It is called pretty, pretty princess. I made 2 of them. One for someone I work with whose wife was expecting and one for a daughter of a friend expecting her first baby. I designed it all and then put my paper design into cloth. It was very exciting. This is the 3rd quilt I have designed myself. The website it is on is www.americanquilter.com If anyone wants to go and vote for it I would appreciate it! It is number 1067. I will try to figure out how to post a photo of it on this blog, but we'll see! Whoever gets the most votes wins a prize and that would be fun!

Seasons of Change

It has been an eventful fall at our house this year. My oldest daughter has left for college and so has my youngest daughter. It was very difficult to have both of my girls leave the nest. I miss them every day. Every day of their young lives you know what they are doing and what's going on with them. Each year as they get older you share a little bit less...unless you are blessed with girls like mine. We have had a great relationship through out their growing into beautiful young women. Communication is important. I lost this with my own mother but was determined to keep those lines of communication open with my own daughters.

Too many people go through life these days without discovering the joys in the everyday things that make up life. I have heard many parents complain that they have to drive their kids this place or that. Look at it as an opportunity to learn more about your children. You can learn so much about them when they are in the car, away from the every day distractions elsewhere. i was always the first to drive, have the get together, take the pictures, just be involved in the everyday that is their life. My kids always wanted me there, they felt like I belonged there and so did I. One of my daughters has a lot of friends where the families have a lot of money and big houses etc, but the kids always wanted to come to our home as it was a real "home", not just a house. Make your house a home and work on making yourself available. Learn to take pleasure in the everyday. God puts joy right in front of us in the everyday things we have to do. Find the joyful and rejoice in that which God provides for us!

A Tribute to Fred

I first met Fred when he was wondering around in the street by my house. His tag said Greens and that they lived in Texas. I had noticed that our new neighbors had a license plate from Texas so I figured this was their dog. They weren't home and my husband was so I left Fred with him all day. Well, that was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with not only Fred but his people, Gretchen, Chuck and their son Scott. To this day Gretchen thinks that Fred was on his way back to Texas and that we saved him. Many happy years have gone by. The Greens had another son, Tommy. Fred loved those boys! We would watch Fred whenever the Greens went out of town. Fred loved frisbees so whenever we went anywhere where there was a free frisbee we would pick one up and give it to Fred. He would destroy it in no time flat! He loved to go on walks. When he stayed with us, Chris would take him for a walk in the evenings. He would take his cigar and a plastic bag and they would bond. Fred always did his business in the park which was nice as there was a trash can there and you didn't have to carry the poo in the bag then. About a month before Fred died, Chris bought him a great toy that he loved to carry around the house with him. Anytime I would see him outside he would race over to me and be so happy to see me. I will miss him like crazy!! Shelby came home from college the weekend before Fred died to stay with him while the Greens went out of town. They didn't want to ask us as he was not always able to get outside to go to the bathroom. All of my kids spent time with him that weekend. Last night when Gretchen came over to tell me that Fred had died on Friday, I was working on a quilt. After she left I spoke aloud to Fred and asked him to wait for me on the Rainbow Bridge. Even if his people get there first I asked him to at least visit me. I told Rimshot to keep him company while he was waiting. We are all sad over Fred's passing but I know I am a better person for having known him. I will miss his sweet personality but I know we will see each other again on the Rainbow Bridge. Good bye dear friend may God's peace be with you!

It is another beautiful day in Michigan and I am ready for another week. My DH has gone off to flight safety for school and it is just me and the kids for most of the week. It makes it an easier week as I don't have to plan a lot of formal meals.

I almost have the second baby quilt done. I called and ordered the fabric for the borders. I wasn't going to but I think it will make the quilts. The theme is Noah's Ark (for twins). I am hoping it comes soon as I have 4 other quilts to take to the quilter. I also took out a quilt someone asked me to repair. It doesn't look like too much work, shouldn't be that difficult to fix.

Well, how about this? I have finally entered the world of blogging!! I have been *lurking* on the blogging scene for awhile but finally figured out (read got up the nerve to) join in on the fun! I am waiting for a gel to run here in the lab so thought I would post for the first time while I wait.

I am currently trying to get my kitchen painted and a floor put in before my middle daughter has her graduation party in June. This has been a 2 year ordeal and I hope (hope, hope, hope) that it will be done on time. I also have some quilts to finish for graduation presents (along with 2 baby quilts) before June. Hopefully I can get them done before that as I need to pick up the sewing room (aka the LR) so I can help with all the yard work and finishing the kitchen.

I will try to upload pictures of the graduation quilts once I get them done. I need to take them to the quilter and then bind them. I really hate the binding part!

If any of you reading this are quilters, please leave a comment or email me. I am always looking for more quilters to make friends with! Also, if you are a King Arthur enthuisiast, or like anything celtic email or leave a comment. I am always looking for more books to read or places to visit or music to listen to.

Off to check on the gel and get pictures!