halfway through…

How is it July already?!

But here it is, four days in, celebrating Independence Day, here in the good ol’ USA! Weather permitting, we (as in me and the Merkel crew) plan on taking the boat out for an afternoon of swimming and an evening of fireworks on the lake. Boom!

I’ve done some fun things this year. After signing on to be the 2nd VP of Programs for my guild, I decided it wasn’t as bad as I’d worried it would be. In fact, I really enjoyed getting speakers, managing programs, and writing blurbs for the newsletter and introductions. I was actually all set to volunteer to do it again for the next guild year, but the incoming president (who’s currently the 1st VP—a position which automatically rolls into President the following year) told me no. Or rather, she said she’d rather have me as her 1st VP. 😳 Needless to say, I sat on that for a hot minute, but in the end, I agreed. So here I am.  LOL! The position starts with close of our August meeting.

 

I took a very fun wool appliqué workshop with one very darling Vicki McCarty, of Calico Patch Designs. Each day we received four of the first sixteen blocks and worked on one block in particular. There were lots of goodies and door prizes, too—it was like going on retreat, but sleeping in my own bed! Loads of fun!

Our May program at guild was MJ Kinman. Our workshops coordinator was out of town, so I had the privilege of not only escorting MJ through the program, but the workshops as well. 

          

She was a fabulous speaker and teacher. Her classes were full both days and the inspiration level was high! I had planned on paying for both workshops, but since I had to coordinate, I didn’t have to pay…but it also means I had other duties that didn’t allow me to be fully present in her teaching. I did go home and make my topaz jewel!

Nine year old Edith (local granddaughter number three) decided she wanted to make a quilt. By hand. With my help.  She brought me a 5” charm pack of purples and asked. What could I say? I picked up a second pack and she laid them out the way she wanted. Six of the nine rows are stitched. 

 

She’s stitching the squares together and then I’ll machine stitch the rows together and add borders, to make it big enough for it to be a nice lap quilt for her. I’m thinking it would be the perfect quilt for hand tied quilting. We could do that together! With purple yarn, of course!

 

Twelve year old Olivia (California granddaughter number two) flew out with her mama for a wedding. It also happened to be Olivia’s birthday weekend and we were so pleased to be able to celebrate with her! 

Later in June I took a traveled north east to spend a long weekend with my sister and her local family, and then went on to Annapolis for a mini reunion with friend from high school. 

Same group I traveled to Charleston with last year. We had a really lovely time. It was so nostalgic and sweet, plus Annapolis is a hotbed of historical significance, which made being there in our country’s 250th year all the more exciting! And it was Plebe Week, which just added to the fun! I felt 16 again! Plus I got my fill of Maryland blue crabs:  steamed, crabcakes, cream of crab soup, crab puffs . . . ALL THE CRAB! We’re already making plans for next year. Quebec is at the top of our list!

My girls are doing great! 

 

 

They are definitely divas—but such fun and a complete comfort. I love them so much! Even when they are so bad.  LOL! And thank goodness they’re around—they save me from talking to myself! ;)

Happy 4th!!  :)

every little thing . . .

I can hardly believe we're already halfway through the month of November.  Where did the first half go?!  Well, actually, I have a pretty good idea . . . I have a lot to show for the last two weeks!

First off, I do enjoy decorating my doorway, so when we moved from October to November, I re-staged my front door accordingly . . .

It makes me smile every time I come home!

Lots of stitching.  Ellie has been working on ornaments for her table at Advent Market next week.  Originally she thought Everley would be able to do half, but Evey is still a new stitcher, and I think it was overwhelming to her.  So I offered.  At first I did the three snowmen . . .

And then I took on the trees, the snowflakes, and candy canes . . . 

I've got one more candy cane to finish.  Phew!  I'll wrap it up with some slow Sunday stitching.  :)  I'll deliver these tomorrow, and then Ellie will do the work to finish them out as ornaments.  She's so clever!

I took a class last weekend for this super cute turkey . . .

Isn't he darling?! The tail feathers (and the body) use the Petal Pop Acrylic Template by Sugar Bee Quilts.  It took about a day to complete and was a fun project to kick off the Thanksgiving month!

Ellie and I decided we liked working on tandem projects, so we picked up a couple of cross stitch patterns to stitch in anticipation of Christmas.  We're going to work on this Primose Cottage Stitches pattern first . . .

It is Merry & Bright! We're working this on 25-count mocha linen, two over two.  

I've also joined along with Mary Corbet's latest SAL, Twinkle,Twinkle. I even got the kit.  It's so pretty!  And the blues—*swoon*!  Plus it has beading.  I've finished the first two steps . . . 

That fishbone stitch was a first for me (and it shows), but it was such fun to work! 

I also got the components cut out for the quilt Sawyer asked me to make for him when he visited in July.  He picked the fabrics, then helped me decide on the pattern.  It's a three-yard quilt, but I'm going to put extra borders on it to make it a little bigger.

I have to still stitch up the strips, and then all the components will be ready for assembly!

Again on the machine front, I got my sweet little wool bowl warmers finished up!

I would have put them in a bowl, but this cornucopia (that you can't see for the pillows) was begging for filler.  Voila.

Every time I get on my machine, Celeste feels the need to come snoopervise my work.  

I finally got out my foot pedal so I could use my hand to shield the needle from her little paws!

And speaking of cats, they had an 'ears' competition yesterday . . .

They're both so stinking cute, I can never declare a winner!  They are such good, sweet, and playful companions.  I'm really grateful for them.

I'll close with some select sunset captures from the last two weeks.  I think I've mentioned that my balcony is west facing, so I see the sun setting in all it's glory, and we've had some interesting ones. I also will include a beautiful shot of the northern lights in our skies!  I had to go to the front of our building to get that one.  Haha.

Have a great week! I'm headed to Las Vegas to meet my James for the F1 Grand Prix next weekend, and then headed back with him to spend Thanksgiving in Temecula.  So Happy Thankgsiving to my 'Merican friends!  Only thirty-nine days until Christmas!!

:)

a decluttering story . . .

Do you remember when you first started quilting (or any craft, for that matter), and all the tools and gadgets that seemed so necessary were overwhelming in both the scope and the cost of it all? 

I do.

The biggest for me was the rulers and squares.  They make such a difference in cutting pieces accurately!  And while you can get away with a few select sizes, it's just easier to have the range.  It just is.  So over the last twenty years or so, I've been diligent in collecting.  Let's face it; I've never been shy in my love of gadgets and collecting them.  Rulers were right up my alley.  

It started with the OmniGrid rulers, then I switched over to Creative Grids.  Then Quilters Select rulers were introduced.  And finally I replaced (almost—95%) all my OmniGrid rulers. 

Only I didn't really replace them.  I just added to my collection.  Which was unintentional . . . I didn't really want multiple sets of 2.5" squares, for example.  I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the ones I didn't use anymore. I sure didn't want to just <gasp> throw them away! Until I found a friend who has just taken up quilting (and taken to it with a passion), and you know what? She needed rulers.  So guess what?!  I don't have multiples anymore!  Well ... I may have multiples, but I don't have any more (almost) OmniGrid rulers . . . they went to a good home where they'll be used to make lots of happy quilt beneficiaries smile. 

The end.  :)

In other news, the drive to cull my rulers started a welcome chain reaction and I spent the majority of yesterday cleaning/organizing my Nook space. It had gotten a little (a lot) out of control; I'm much happier with it now! 

Large rulers and specific job rulers are easy to find.  I love this screen.  It does a great job of corralling my creative space, and is terrific storage.  Here's the front:

The entrance to the Nook is right there at my front door.  I hated the thought that the first thing people would see when they walked into my home, was (potentially) my creativity in the throes of progress.  We all know what that looks like! So the screen was the perfect solution, and provided both storage and display space.  Win/win!

I had started using the cubicles as catch all.  I went through each one and tamed that to manageable. 

Part of that was pulling fabric out and putting it into bins in some sort of system.  So this is what that looks like finished . . .

Bins of fabric, just waiting for me to sit 'n sew. Shew!

And then my cutting table had also become a bit of a disaster site.  Some of it was paper clutter, some of it was fabric clutter.  It was an easy drop off point.

Now it's just ready for projects! As you can see, my next wool project is ready to set and sew! Aaah, and you can also see where my finished cross stitch pieces go to wait some sort of final finishing inspiration. Ahem.

I still need to do some reorganizing with my Nook book shelf.  

I have magazines on it that I need to move to the cubes.  Magazines don't really do well on this shelf.  It's the rotating that does it in. (And the cats.)

Ellie and I found our next cross stitch pattern to stitch together.  Teresa Kogut's Give Thanks. 

At first I wondered if it might be too stitch heavy for Ellie.  But then I thought about the samplers 8-year-old girls worked way back in the day . . . I think 13-year-old Ellie can manage this just fine! I had to order the linen and some of the floss, but we should be ready to go sometime next week!

I continue to work on Lady Halloween. Actually, I had to go back and look at my last post to see if I had in fact worked on it!  I have.

Not much, but I've worked on other things, too!  Maybe this will be my slow stitching project for Sunday!  I'll link that up with Kathy's Quilts on Sunday!

Speaking of working on other things, I finished my little Halloween orts tray . . .

I'm so pleased!  The "BOO!" was an add-on by me.  I centered the design horizontally, but misread misinterpreted the instructions, so there was a whole lot of space at the bottom.  Which was perfect, because I really wanted some purple in that stitchery, and "BOO!" was the perfect place for it!

I'll leave you with a little game of Where's Waldo (aka Starry)?

Have a great weekend!!  :)

birthday hijinx . . .

Whew! What a wonderful birthday week/weekend it's been!!

It started when I got out some of my fall decor and decorated my front door . . .

I kinda miss having a front porch ... and the back patio really isn't big enough (or seen well) to do more than a bit for me.

Then I met my Cross Stitch group on Monday.  Remember how I'd made such great progress on my Lady Halloween piece?  I looked at it Sunday evening and realized I'd stitched two complete elements in the wrong place:

UGH!  Don't you hate it when that happens? Anyway, I spent my group time on Monday picking out all the inappropriate stitches. And then the rest of the week adding them back in the correct location (along with a few more) . . .

Then there were presents from my Affirmation Sisters . . .

Fun stitchy stuff!!

On Friday I had birthday dinner with Joc and the local crew . . .

Joc made me this beautiful Almond Joy birthday cake.  It was SOOO good!

And they gifted me with this beautiful blue enamel dutch oven, which was on my wish list!  I'm so excited to cook in it ... just in time for soup and chili season!

Saturday morning started early ... with Ezra's soccer game!

He scored the first goal of the game, and they won (although they don't really keep score officially, the parents do)!

After that, I headed to the Merkel's to watch the Alabama vs. Mizzou game.  It was a good (and close) game, but BAMA pulled it out!  Roll Tide!  When the game was over, I headed home to do some stitching.  I worked on the cute little Halloween stitchery that was gifted to me with the stitchable ort tray.  It's really cute!  

Someone had no interest in what I was doing . . .

And then someone was waaaaaay too interested . . . 

Sassy girl!

A quick look ahead . . . we've got LUKE Haynes coming in to speak for our guild program on Thursday evening, and then he's there for the next two days doing workshops.  

I'm taking his Friday workshop, Clothes to Quilts.  I'm really looking forward to it!

So that's it from me.  Celebrating all month long, though ... whoohoo!! Linking up last minute with Kathy's Quilts: Slow Sunday Stitching!

:)