School's Out!!!!

The semester officially ended last Monday and I enjoyed the rest of the week by catching up on all the little things that I let slide. It was a lovely week. Here are a couple shots of part of my final project for my Design Communications class. What a great class. Really challenging but very rewarding.

I thought I would spend the summer getting re-acquainted with my sewing machine and my garden/yard but I didn't have to wait very long because Thursday a return customer mailed me some fabric for a baby quilt. I got right to it and finished it and already sent it in the mail since we will be gone next week to visit Kristen in Texas. My pictures all turned out blurry, I guess I'm out of practice.

I'm so excited to see Kristen in action since we will be tagging along with her for one morning while she's at work. Bess will join up with us and we will have two days together as a family and that will have to last us for the rest of 2009!! We will have a wonderful time:)

Spring Has Sprung!!!!!!!

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted, but come to think of it I've been crazy busy so it makes sense. Today, the first day of Spring, seemed like a very good reason to do a post. It is, after all, my very favorite time of year:)

I took this picture at school along a walkway. There is a smallish field nearby and they were all over the place!!! Oh, the fragrance!!! It was simply wonderful and it put a skip in my step, literally.

Since I have no sewing projects to show, I will show my projects from my Design
Communications class. Three plan drawings were required and they took many many hours.


These are two of them and I must say that I am pleased with the outcome. They received good remarks from my instructor so what more could I want? We are already on to the next project so the pace continues. I'm afraid I will have to wait until summer to do any quilting since most of my classes (I have four) have big projects coming up.

Saturdays (aka Donut Day)

This post is a little belated since it's already Thursday, but that just shows how crazy busy I've been this week. Lots of projects for school. Anyway, I wanted to document our Saturday morning ritual..........DONUTS!!!!! It's a very long story, but suffice to say that treating ourselves to donuts on Saturday mornings is a very important part of our family history and even though the girls are grown and gone, we still keep the memory alive. There's a wonderful donut shop about a 10-15 drive from our home (yes it's that important) called Yum Yum Donuts. So after sleeping in to our hearts' content, we make the drive and settle in for a delectable feast. This is how it goes: we take our own coffee(Tim) and milk (me, because I like non fat frosty-cold milk and they don't always have it). This is is the mug I use. Kristen made it for me years ago and I'm tickled pink I get to actually use it because I rarely drink hot beverages, especially on the go. While Tim is making his coffee he pours the milk into this and puts it in the freezer while I get showered, etc. By the time we leave the house it has a slight frosty layer, yum:) Once we are there I go and grab a seat. There aren't many but there's usually one available. Meanwhile, Tim stands in line and buys the donuts. I let him pick because we like similar things. He buys 4 donuts and we split each one. Our very favorite is only available during the fall........pumpkin! Several times this past fall we arrived at the shop when they had just put them on the shelf. They were still warm and the experience of eating a freshly made donut is hard to compare to anything else. It's simply delectable. It sort of makes it difficult to go back to eating room temp donuts again, but somehow we go on:) Another top favorite is a glazed buttermilk stick and of course their regular glazed are wonderful as well. This particular day Tim opted for an Apple Fritter. We split that one 70/30 because eating the equivalent of two regular donuts once a week is indulgent enough and an apple fritter is considerably bigger than a donut (after all, they do have holes in the middle, whereas a fritter is filled with gooey sugary apples!!)

This particular Saturday was Valentine's Day so I took a photo at the next stop we made and that was at Barnes & Noble. I had bought Tim a gift card for his birthday and he wanted to use it to buy a new journal.
Here's the selection. It took a while for him to find just the right one and for some insane reason I didn't photograph it, but you get the idea.

Aside from the journal buying, that's how a typical Saturday morning goes for us. We look forward to it all week long:)

Getting Things Done

I've had a very productive few days and still managed to have plenty of quality time with Tim, my fabulous, wonderful husband. I finished the Friends and Flowers table runner and it was difficult to get a good picture of it due to its length. It's not really all that long but my camera skills are wanting. Anyhow, I'm pleased with the outcome and I think Janet will be as well. I also spent oodles of time working on a sketch plan for one of my classes. On top of that I got to take a cat nap today. Pretty terrific day and now I have a movie date on the couch with my sweetie. Oh, and the temps reached into the 40's!!!!! Sunshine and warmth really make a difference:)

Friends and Flowers

My dear friend, Janet, has commissioned a table runner from me. Actually, what really happened is she saw what was going to be in the works and put dibs on it! I bought this charm pack and accompanying fabric a couple of months ago with the intention of making the runner for my shop. When she visited me recently and saw them she realized how well the fabrics suited her home. How fun is that? So now I get to make this knowing whose home it will rest in and where the prayers will go! Love it:) Sorry for the fuzzy photo---the charm pack is the Friends and Flowers collection by Mary Engelbreit.

A Prayer in the Mail

I haven't had a sale in my Etsy shop since before the holidays. I took a break over Christmas when my daughters were home and I think I made the best choice. However, lo and behold, a quilt sold yesterday!!! I was doing homework at the time so I was pretty excited about it. I made this quilt during the summer with a fun collection of fabric from Clothworks. The designer is Sue Zipkin. I'm not familiar with her work but these caught my eye when I got the Hancock's of Paducah catalog in the mail last year. The title of the quilt is Fruits of the Spirit because I literally machine quilted the words love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control into the quilt. While doing so I prayed for the child who will eventually be wrapped in it. I have no idea who that child will be, but God in His sovereignty does and I trust Him with those prayers. In addition, this quilt sold to a person who lives in the same town I went to high school in, which is on the West Coast and I now live on the East Coast. Pretty neat, huh? So my day started with an exciting trip to the post office (by the way, Priority Mail rates went up) followed by a few errands and will finish with me doing homework into the wee hours. Well, maybe not the wee hours, but more hours than I had anticipated. Could it have something to do with the hour long haircut I got at a beauty school that normally takes only fifteen minutes elsewhere? My husband asked if she cut each hair one by one!! It sure seemed like it!! No photos to show, thank goodness.

Homework

I am really excited about my classes this semester. I am a Landscape Architect student and so far I am loving it! I have a beginning design class where we are learning basic drafting and our first homework assignment was to answer some get-to-know-you kind of questions and letter them in block style. It was fun but after a few hours my hand cramped up! I'm sure I will adjust :)

I am hoping that once I am in the swing of things I will be able to make time for quilting again. I want to keep my Etsy shop running and I have a list of projects I'd like to keep making progress on. But school comes first. However, if I can squeeze it in, I'd like to make a bunch of blocks like this and make a good sized lap quilt. We'll see.

Back to School

Classes start up again today and I had my requisite anxiety dream last night, you know, the kind of dream where you go to school and you realize that you forgot to wear panties. Except in this dream I was getting a haircut, a really bad one, and in trying to get it fixed realized I had missed my first day of classes. As anxiety dreams go, it wasn't a really bad one and I guess it's because I'm not really nervous, just excited. This is after all the second semester of the year. But last semester, well, yes indeed, I was nervous. I was returning to school after a 20+ year hiatus. My nervousness didn't last long once I sat my butt in one of those fantastic students desks. I looked around me and realized that some of the class were folks like me, though not quite as old, and some of the folks were kids (young twenty somethings like my daughters) so there was really nothing to be freaked out about. So in honor of my first day of classes, I took a self portrait. You see, when my girls were growing up I always took a picture of them on the first day of school. Every year. When my first daughter went off to college, she kindly had her roommate take a picture of her on her first day and she e-mailed it to me. She kept this up all four years. Ain't she great?

Itty Bitty

Ever since I was itty bitty I have always loved to cut and paste. It's something that just makes my soul happy. I'm sure if I looked deeper I could find all sorts of meaning behind it but then that would probably detract from the simple bliss that comes from it. Anyhow, it makes sense that I like to collage and I have found ways to fit it in through the years. Recently I spent an afternoon with my daughter, Bess, working on collaging our journal covers. She's particularly talented at this and has a style all her own. I guess my style could be called whimsical, which suits me fine. The journal I worked on this week is my inspiration journal. I've had it for several years and used it very sparingly but after reading an article on these types of journals recently I decided to dust it off and use it regularly. I've been having so much fun. Here's the cover. I have found that rubber cement is the glue of choice. It doesn't ripple and stay wet forever like Elmer's Glue. Plus if there's spillage, if you let it dry (as in one minute) you can rub it off with your finger tip. Simply wonderful. I like to cut out images and quotes to fit the purpose and then assemble them in a pleasing configuration and then glue it all down . Some folks glue as they go, which I think shows a pretty free spirit, but I guess I'm just a little more uptight about it and I like to have it "composed" before I glue it down. (Wow, there's some deep stuff here...............that's another post, he he. ) Then the cover is taped with clear packaging tape to protect it. Very easy, very fun, and very cheap, but oh so rewarding! Now I have a place to keep pictures and ideas and notes on future projects. Some folks take their journals with them every where they go. I'll probably be a little selective about where I take mine since I usually try to travel pretty light. Hmmmmmmm, I'll have to think about that. In the mean time, it sure is fun to paste in all the pics I've been cutting out of magazines lately.

Helpful Hint

Helpful Hint:  Store leftover strips from your projects on a peg rack.  This shelf hangs in my studio and I organize the strips by width.  They come in very handy when making scrap blocks like the center block on yesterday's table runner.  

I unfortunately am still having problems loading images to these posts and I'm lucky I got at least this one today.  Not to worry, it just gives me plenty to post on later, a little bit at a time:)

My next project was to finish the binding on a different table runner that I quilted yesterday but I realized I used all the fabric that I was supposed to use for the binding.  Not sure how that happened but I think there is still a bolt of it at my local quilt shop.  I'm definitely not headed there today, though.  It's lightly snowing, which isn't bad, but there are a few icy spots and I just don't like to deal with that if I don't have to.  So that gives me the green light to spend the rest of the day on a quilt that I am making for my brother-in-law.  He fell in love with a quilt he saw (that's a whole other post :) and I offered to make it if he bought the kit.   It's even more fun to play with fabric that I didn't have to pay for!

Ready to Send

The table runner is quilted, bound, and ready to send.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  I quilted a trail of hearts between the two chimneys and added door knobs to each house.   The house blocks are fun but I really like the way the scrap block in the center turned out.  I am very partial to scrap quilts although I don't have one of my own.  Don't get me wrong, I've made lots of quilts but I keep only a rare few and I don't have a scrap one in the house.  After seeing this block, I think I have a hankering for one...................... 

I actually tried to upload several more photos, one that includes a helpful hint but I got no cooperation from my computer or blogger or the technological doo-dad that lives behind this screen.  In any case, I'll try again tomorrow :)  

From Our House to Yours

This is the table runner, not quilted yet, that I am making to match the placemats in yesterday's post.  I'm having so much fun with it.  The colorful zany house with a girl in each window represents my family's house and the other house represents my friend's house in California, note the sun in the sky:)  

I asked my daughters (I have two) to make a comment on my blog and one of them ended up starting her own blog!  I'm hoping to learn from her as she is much more savvy with all of this.  You can check her blog out here .  

I start classes full time one week from today.  I'm excited but I will miss these carefree days of the holiday break.  I so enjoyed having my family together.  We are empty nesters now but over the holidays we were all four together and it was absolutely blissful.  I enjoyed every minute.   We have been so richly blessed and I am so very grateful.  

Project in the Works

Last year I made this set of placemats for a very special friend of ours and she loved them.  This year I am working on a table runner for this same friend and I attempted to upload photos of the work in progress but the photos won't load.  So perhaps tomorrow when the project is complete I'll have better luck.  I am not computer illiterate but I'm having a slow time of figuring out this blogging business.  

I've been sewing my whole life and quilting for over 22 y ears.  Two years ago I opened an Etsy shop (loveseeds.etsy.com) in addition to doing commissions by word of mouth.  I've made many many baby quilts and experienced a few sales this year when I ventured into table runners.  They are fun and quick and allow me to use charm packs and jelly rolls.  Here's an example of one I sold last  year  (here's where my lack of knowledge and frustration are really showing.  The picture at the top is what I wanted to be in this space but I can't figure out how to do that, HELP!!!!!)  

The sun is shining and I have free time until I start classes next week so I'm signing off for now.

Blessings!

In the beginning...............

I'm not sure if "Hello" is appropriate or "Dear so-and-so", or maybe I'm just talking to myself right now.  Either way, this is the beginning of my blog experience and I feel a slight sense of giddiness and anxiety at the same time.  These feelings leave me a little tongue-tied at the moment but I'm sure I will recover.  For now I will just settle on this modest beginning.  Blessings!