HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NANI

Ah, what can be better for a birthday (my 65th) than to have your daughters (200 and 300 miles away respectively ) come home to help with dinner.

And to have 8 of our 12 grandchildren here to celebrate with us. (The eldest is not in this photo.)

And to have one of the granddaughters like the sweater (her Nani knit last year) enough to wear it to church.

And to know that the youngest granddaughter in New York is celebrating her 2nd birthday on the same day! (God willing, we will be visiting with them for Easter.)

Wonderful weekend.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY

This photograph of my father is part of a quilt (one of my first) that I made for my mother after Daddy passed away in 1998.

He was born on February 18, 1910, so yesterday would have been his 100th birthday. Even though I didn't get the quilt out yesterday, I thought of him all through the day.

I think one of the the most important things I learned from him (through example) was not to feel sorry for myself, to be positive, and deal with life as it comes. There could be no better example.

I know that whenever and whatever challenges I may face, he is up there cheering me on as I go headlong on through life. Thanks, Daddy and Happy Birthday.

Panning a little farther out on the quilt, there are photos of him with my mother in their younger and senior years; photos of my sister and myself with our husbands, with Mother and Daddy; and one of my favorites of my sister and me. (That's me looking up at her so adoringly.) Some of the patches are fabric from Daddy's ties. Farther out on the quilt are blocks that each of my children, nieces and nephew added to the collection, as well as their photos.

Ah, a wonderful loving family. Life just doesn't get any better!

A HA . . .

. . . I knew there was a good reason that I was keeping all those little snippets from the cuttings of my blocks from my Block of the Month quilt. I had already sewn them together into little squares, so it was just a matter of pressing, squaring them up, sewing them together . . .

putting them around this fabric for a sashing . . .

to come up with a fantastic pillow to go with the quilt!

As for another A HA: so this is why my Christmas cactus didn't bloom for Christmas. It was waiting for Valentine's Day.

Hope you all have a sweet one . . . Valentine's Day, that is.

I'M A HAPPY CAMPER !

Ah, I just couldn't wait! I had to put the quilt top on the bed, just to see how it will look when it's finished. Not to mention, I had to figure out just how wide to make my sashing.

I gotta say: I love it! And so does my husband. We will be using it before the quilting is completed. Since it's so large (king), there is no way I can machine quilt it on my sewing machine. So I'm planning to baste it well, sew SITD on the sashing seams, go ahead and put the binding on, leave the basting in place, and USE IT. Then I'll hand quilt the blocks by hand when the mood strikes. (That will be quite often as I always do some sort of hand work in the evening when I watch TV.)

My daughter helped me choose a great backing fabric when I was visiting her in Nashville over the weekend. We managed to hit a great sale at Textile Fabrics--which was nice since I needed 9 yards.

You can barely see the binding fabric between the backing fabric and my blocks.

Oh, and hand work in the evening: This sweater for my grandson is taking turns with the quilt embroidery. (for the quilt that is currently on our bed).

I should have this sweater done in plenty of time before his March birthday!

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD . . .

. . . er, sewing machine that is.

I've finally gotten back to the "Block of the Month" quilt from last year. I've had the blocks assembled for quite some time, but just hadn't gotten around to assembling them.

So this is some of that work:

The two blocks at the sewing machine are the ones that go in the empty spots here:

Ah, and before I started back at the sewing machine, I DID do a bit or organizing.

Oh, and the quilt that I made in 2008 that I'm still embroidering:

These are a couple of the blocks that were the easiest to embroider in a way to mimic the fabric.

And yes, I do have a sweater on my knitting needles, but it's for a birthday that isn't until March, so I've got lots of time--hopefully both of these quilts will be done before I have to worry about that time crunch!

STITCHES, STITCHES

I've been playing around with all kinds of stitches lately. With the help of the Quilter's Embroidery Bible, I'm adding embroidery to the rather solid color squares of this quilt. (It was a "light/dark" exchange with some of my on-line quilting friends.) I machine embroidered the initials of the sender in each block. I used stitch in the ditch machine stitching on the seam between the blocks and the sashing. I hand quilted diagonal lines through the blocks. So I have hand and machine quilting, and hand and machine embroidery all wrapped up in to one quilt. I guess you could call it a sampler quilt of sorts. Within each block I am trying to somewhat mimic the other fabrics in the block, using only a subtle color difference from the fabric I am embroidering.

Funny thing is, we are using this quilt this winter. I just pull it off the bed in the evening to work on it, then put it back before I go to bed.

I'm using back stitching and French knots on the sashing;

This is some of the "feathered chain" that is a new stitch for me.

And when the embroidery stitching gets to tiresome, there's always the knit stitches to fall back on.

These are for my older daughter.

And this for our youngest granddaughter for her second birthday next month.

Next up: a sweater for her almost 5 year old brother, and in a few days, back to my day time sewing and the assembly of my block of the month quilt.

CLUTTER BUSTIN'

Whew, it wasn't easy, but I was able to put together a few baby and child quilts from pajama (and other) leftovers of the past few years. Most of them I could even find appropriate backings in my stash.

A few, however, I did buy some fleece and flannel for the backings:

And now that I'm on my way to ridding my cupboards of fabric, I though it was about time to do the same thing with my drawers full of yarn. This is the first of the yarn stash reducing projects.

Hmmmmm, what will be next?