HERE I AM !

OK, OK, I promise I have not gotten lost . Here I am!

Admittedly I have not been doing much quilting in the past few weeks. I've been using my sewing time to FINALLY get drapes made and hung (with my husband's reluctant help !).

This is my make shift "sewing table" at the dining room window. My mother taught me to let drapes hang a while before hemming them. And I guess I'm just lazy, but once they are up (and I'm happy with the way they lay), I don't take them back down. I just leave them hanging and hem them in place. (The ironing board goes to the window too!)

,

Here are the completed dining room drapes.

And here are the drapes across the "great room". There's a matching set on the other side (but I can't get a photo of all at once without furniture in the way). I need to get the swags back down and work on them a bit to get them to lay more smoothly.

I am still knitting on my granddaughter's sweater (May 22 post) and in the meantime, I've ordered yarn for the next 4 sweaters.

This will be my grandson's for his October (12th) birthday.

And this is for my son's daughters for their birthdays next year.

I guess I've got my work cut out for me.

Oh, and speaking of "cut", I have some fabrics chosen and ready to cut pieces for a "community" gift quilt that I'm making with my on-line quilting friends.

FOUR MORE FOR LINUS

Finally - - I got a few more quilts dropped off at my local yarn shop that is a pick up site for Project Linus blankets. These are all pretty much lap size quilts.

These first two incorporate some more of the home decorator fabric that a lady at church gave me a couple years ago. I'm about to get through that 25 yard piece of fabric. Phew!

I had shown you this while it was in the making. Most of it is from my own scrap stash, but the car fabric was donated.

The turquoise with the white "leaves" on this was donated fabric; again the rest is from my scrap stash. I had a good size piece of flannel that worked for the backing of this one.

I've made a couple others (from my own stash only) in the past few weeks that I've decided to keep on hand as baby gifts. But oops, haven't taken photos of those yet.

And yes, I am still knitting: working on granddaughter Isabela's sweater. And just got some yarn this week for one of her big brother's sweaters. I guess it's time to speed it up a bit.

FUN ON THE FOURTH

We all had a great time on our family weekend, but I don't think anyone enjoyed it more that little Roman.

And why not when he has big brothers and sisters to stock his very own pool with fish!

Drats, I meant to take more pictures.

Oh, well, maybe next year. By that time, this little guy will most likely be in the other pool with the "big kids".

SUMMERTIME . . .

. . . and the Red, White, and Blue.

Hope your Independence Day weekend is safe and fun-filled.

Mine will be here at home shared with my daughters and their families.

THE BIRTH OF A STASH QUILT . . .

This was REALLY fun, but when I started out, I had no idea where I was going. (Thank goodness for my makeshift design wall -- that now hangs over the cabinets in my sewing/laundry room -- when I'm not using washer or dryer, that is.)

A couple years ago, ladies at my church donated LOTS of fabric for charity quilt making, along with yarn for charity knitting or crocheting. I had made a few quilts at that time, but a couple months ago, I attacked those boxes of fabrics with a vengeance -- leaving me with at least the beginnings of about 30 quilts, sorted by color, theme, or whatever came to my mind at the time.

A few of those little stacks have been parked on my dryer for WAY too long, so this past week, I've been putting together several quilt tops with those stacks.

One of the piles had this adorable "monster truck" print. But there was way too little of it --and that in several small pieces--to really do the print much justice. There were only 3 whole trucks, and once I cut the fabric to get a the whole trucks, there was very little fabric left for anything else. I was able to cut a few 2 inch strips and three 3 inch squares.

So I "framed" those 3 trucks with coordinating fabric (in the middle, top left, and bottom right). And then I "mirrored" my framed trucks with enough more blocks to get some symmetry. (Oh, yeah, I did have to piece my bits of fabric for the fourth 3 inch block.)

I didn't know where to go from there, 'cause I thought that more blocks would just kind of muddy the whole thing and the trucks would get lost.

Then a light bulb went off. Why did it have to be blocks? Maybe I could just put strips between the blocks.

So I played around a while with several leftover fabrics and came up with this concept.

Tweaked it a little more and . . .

Voila: a fun quilt top!

I have a lot of the red border print that I'll use for the backing.

I'm hoping some little boy will find some comfort -- and smiles-- wrapped up in this one!

THE LAST STITCHES

Finally, the last of the embroidery stitches . . .

on this quilt that I assembled in 2008!

So, now back to the tasks at hand:

Getting back to my charity quilts, using stash and my makeshift design wall.

OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE

Well, at least out of my comfort zone.

I've taken a bit of a respite from my quilt top sewing and have been working on some home decoration items.

Luckily for me, my daughter Eleni of Eleni Interiors, Columbia SC was here to visit me last week and cut a pattern for me for drapery swags. I think they're going to be OK. Realistically they will most likely stay draped over my stairway banister for a while -- until my husband is ready to install the rods. Who knows when that will be.

And on the knitting front, I left my comfort zone of using 4 double point needles for knitting socks. I get e-mails from my local yarn shops. A couple weeks ago, there was a message that Loopville was hosting a class to learn the "magic loop" method for knitting socsk. That's using one circular needle instead of the double points. So I decided to jump on the opportunity. This is the beginning of my "bed socks". I'll have toasty tootsies this winter.

I'm doing OK, in spite of the fact that I didn't pick up that knitting for over a week after the class, I remembered how to do it when I picked it back up a couple days ago.

Now if I can just remember how to do the "long tail" cast on that Jinka taught me the same day. Ah, and I just finished the back of my granddaughter's sweater, so it IS time to cast on -- for the fronts. Hmmmmm, I wonder just which cast on method will be used on those sweater fronts! I'll keep you posted.