Going to the Bolshoi

There is a time and place for everything and tomorrow, after some brief errands for my brother, will be my time.  Sooooo, I'm going to stop first thing in the morning and take some me time.  Kinda of me time.  It will be me and my sister in law.  I invited her to go see the first of the Ballet in Cinema series.  In case you don't know what that is, it is the ability to see ballets (opening nights and encore presentations) not in person but via your local theatre.  Tomorrow at 9 a.m. central is The ABolshoi Re-opening Gala.  Not a ballet per se but the broadcast of the live re opening of the great Bolshoi Theatre. 

Hopefully I will get to see some of the ballets this year.  The line up includes:

The Sleeping Beatury - Bolshoi - November 20
Mozart's Don Giovanni - December 7
The Nutcracker - Royal Ballet - December 18
LeCorsaire - Bolshoi - March 11
Giacomo Puccini - La Boheme - March 13
Romeo and Juliet - Royal Ballet - March 22
Verdi's Rigoletto - April 17
The Bright Stream - Bolshoi - April 29
LaFille Mal Gardee  - Royal Ballet - May 16
Raymonda - Bolshoi - June 24

Doesn't it sound like a great line up?

Fears are for Naught - because I changed it!!!!!

Before I get on with the tale of the woes of quilting, let me share a link.  There is a wonderful poem on this link about quilters and a crazy quilt.  :)

http://www.coveringquilthistory.com/bed-turning.php

Now on to the story.  My flying geese on the corners of the Fears for Naught post should have kept flying instead of settling on the quilt top.  I kept looking at it and didn't like it.  They weren't cooperating at all and I was getting more and more displeased with the top.  Last night I took off the border and adjusted the pattern.  I totally took out the geese and instead put in the corner units with a flower in the middle.  The flower is appliqued on and from the flowered border fabric.  I'm much happier now. 

 

For quilting I think I will do a cross hatch in the middle, follow the big seams for something similar to stitch in the ditch (but not that close) and then go around the salmon colored flowers in the borders.  That should be enough to hold it together and then some.  The entire wall hanging is around 22".  Not sure yet what color I'll do the binding in but that doesn't need to be decided today.

Back to work now.  Everybody have a great day.

Fears are for Naught!

I finished appliqueing the center on for my Quilting in the New Year swap for Jennifer and at first thought that the oranges in the center would be too much.  Then I pulled out the borders and corner units and put them together and sewed it all up and found that my fears were for naught.  They go together.  The orange in the center turns the pink flowers in the border (LOVE that flowered border fabric) into more of a salmon color which works out well.  Of course I was doing this at 1130 p.m. and right before bed and should have stopped about 30 minutes earlier.  Tonight or tomorrow I will start to take off the borders and redo them.  It will look about the same but at least one of my borders has caused my center to become wavy.  I also put on the flying geese wrong.  The lighter gold/yellow should be facing each other but I can live with it if they don't. 

Sunday Memories

Ahhhhh.  Sunday.  When I was growing up Sunday was a special day.  Nobody had to work (except chores of course) and there always was a special dinner waiting for us after church.  Pot roast with all those delightful roasted veggies with it was reserved for a Sunday meal.  Sunday was a day of football watching (something I could do with my brother Tony and my dad).  These were extra special to me because I lost my dad when I was in sixth grade so my memories of him only cover so many years.  I would sit between Tony and Dad (just because) and when the game was on I would pester them with questions like "Which is our team.  Did we do good?  Where's there ball?"  Finally I learned to track the movement by a reverse learning method.  Dad would say "See that pile of players?  Underneath it all is the ball."  I then started to look for that pile of players and eventually learned to follow the path of the football.  I still had to ask "which team is ours" but I don't think they minded that too much.

Sunday was also the day when mom would pull out some mending to do.  Darn those socks for dad or repair a hole in our jeans or teach us to embroider.  I'm sorry that I didn't keep it up like she wanted us to but kids being kids always wanted to do something different. Mom would get plain white towels (flour sack I believe) and draw lines on them.  My sister and I were told to stitch (running stitch) across those towels and when we were done mom would fold them up and put them in our turkey boxes which she called our hope chest.  Dad worked for a turkey farm and we lived on the premises so our boxes (which came in all sizes) always were for turkeys.  Think I should have learned a lesson or taken a hint about that?  LOL.

Eventually Mom would buy a pink checked apron and we would have to practice making X's on every other square. 

Of course we had to do something on the apron ties too.  This is the only example I have left and I know that *I* didn't do the stitching.  I am assuming grandma did because she wouldn't be seen without her apron.

After grandma had passed away and mom inherited some of her embroidery blocks Mom gave them to me.  There wasn't enough to do a full quilt but I managed to do plain squares and made this for mom on one of her birthdays (I think it was 83).  Grandma had done the squares when she was in her 80s so I wanted it give it to mom around the same time.  Mom picked out the backing material and the sashings were done AFTER the whole quilt was sewn.  They were an after thought so they ended up being appliqued on.  :)  Here is a pic of it but I didn't have room to totally lay it out.  It's large enough to fit a full size bed.

Sundays was also visiting day.  The day when Aunt Rachel might come over.  Aunt Rachel was dad's sister and we didn't see her much and she wasn't one of those "huggy" type of Aunts.  She didn't talk much but she did know how to crochet.  She made everybody an afghan when they graduated.  It was the only time they got an afghan from her.  I graduated in 1974 and still have mine.  When it started to show signs of wearing out (I did use it every day after all) I put it aside in my chest.

She was really great at crocheting.  She could look at a pattern and duplicate it.  I wish that I had gotten some of her table clothes.  They were truly works of art.  She was a perfectionist though and I never could learn how to crochet from her.  I'm lucky that I can do any crochet stitches!

So....in remembrance of my crafty family, I am going to sign off and do some hand applique.  It is much more relaxing then machine applique.  :)

Back to the start

Sometimes you just can't win.  Yesterday was a day like that for me.  Took the day off of work to "rest my eyes" and relax a bit with all the stress between mother and my brother.  Don't want to get a relapse of the Shingles again!  So here I was at home laying down and the phone rang.  That is not a good sign.  Most people didn't know I was at home so that meant something was up.  I should have said SOMEONE was up....up to no good that is.  My mother.  She bent over in her wheel chair at the nursing home to pick up something somebody had dropped (she's a neat freak and can't stand things on the floor if they are not IMMEDIATELY picked up) and slid (again) out of her wheel chair.  Back to the hospital.  This time she fractured her L6(?) and needs to be fitted for a brace.  She can't be elevated more than 30 degrees and is on bed rest.  Not sure how long she will be there or how long those restrictions will be on her.  Later that day my news just got better.  Sigh.  Big brother wasn't approved for surgery (bypass).  He is still retaining too much fluids so the doctor changed his prescriptions and hopefully he will get that triple bypass done soon.

Obviously my just resting wasn't working so I got up and looked at the blue wall hanging.  It looked good and I thought it wouldn't take much to quilt it.  Do an echo quilting on it and it should be good to go and send off (deadline at the end of the month).  Figured I'd do a black background and off I went after putting in black thread in the bobbin and white on top.  Hmmm.  that echo quilting didn't look quite how I imagined it so changed my mind and decided to be brave and do Free Motion Quilting.  A couple of squiggly lines inbetween could hurt....could it?  Oh yeah...it hurt!  Did half of the wall hanging and flipped it over.  Hmmmm.  White threads?  Where the heck did the white threads come from?  Shoot!  My tension must have slipped.  Too bad my personal tension couldn't have slipped away. 

I posted this on my yahoo group and you wouldn't have believed all the nice ladies that had heart attacks thinking I was going to throw this out.  I'm going to start over but will use this as a practice piece for FMQ so it is not wasted.  Some said to take markers and color out the white but I don't want to do that.  I don't like the large stitches I had made with it either so it will go into the "learned my lesson" pile.

Perhaps this will explain what happened.

Cute little plaque isn't it?  Don't think it is worth the $14 they are asking but it really DID seem to sum up my day yesterday.  LOL.

Today though I found a nice blog and it had on there a PDF for circular patterns.  If interested go to:

http://www.scientificseamstress.com/circularpatterns.pdf

Check out her blog and scroll down towards the bottom of her page.  She has a periodic chart for sewing.  :) 

http://scientificseamstress.blogspot.com/



Another thing that I did today was to try out the 3-2-1 cake recipe.  It is simple and quick since you only make a small serving at a time.

Ingredients:
1 cake mix (your choice of flavor)
1 angel food cake mix (must have this)

Mix the two cake mixes together and store in a sealed container (I used a one gallon ziploc container)

When wanting a sweet treat,

Mix
3 tablespoons cake mix
2 tablespoons water

and microwave on high for one minute.

TaDa!  Top with fruit or whatever (or nothing).  Quick and simple. 

The borders are on

Making progress on the wall hanging.  I managed to put on the border to Vicky K's wall hanging (quilting in the new year swap).  I am thinking of using one of the blues for the binding.  Not sure if I want black, white or one of the blues for the back yet.  Unfortunately one of the blocks got too close to the border (or would that be the other way around...the border got to close to the block?) but overall I like it and I will not redo it.  As I've said before...my projects aren't perfect (grins).

Today has been a good day.  My brother put new nuts and bolts in the hoop for me for my embroidery machine and so I had to test it out.  I decided to use it for the design for a label for Vicky's wall hanging.

My next machine I will hope to be able to do the entire label on it.  I'll probably set up a stock label then to use.  In the meantime I'm branching out to try different things and see what my machine can do.

A friend of mine has a sister whose name starts with H.  I was testing a border design and thought to do it with the H.  I can now just send this to my friend who is a quilter and see if she wants to make a mug rug or something out of it for her sister. 

Making progress

Thanks for the well wishes for mom and Tony everybody.  Mom is going back to the nursing home today.  They changed her medication and it helped.  Tony is a long haul though so we just put up with the loveable lug and if he does what people tell him to he should pull through.  Hmmm.  perhaps I should have put that "if" in larger letters and all caps.

I had a nice note from my swap partner in the doll quilt swap.  Her daughter Emma loved the doll quilt and wanted to claim it as her own.  I have some of those flying geese left over so perhaps Emma needs one for her too.  This is Emma holding it up.  Isn't she cute?

I have also made progress on my Quilting in the New Year Swap.  I have two partners.  Actually one of the partners is the same person who I was assigned to in the Doll Quilt (Jennifer).  I gave her the option of having the blue wall hanging (blue is her favorite color) or the deeper pink/golds/green wall hanging.  She hasn't seen the colors of any of them yet.  She was tempted to do the blue but decided to go with the other so she can say she is "branching out".  LOL.

Here is my four blocks of the blue put together.  This is the pattern that I did in EQ7.  Didn't turn out too bad.  Tonight I am hoping to add the borders to it.  They will be around 2" and black.  Not sure what fabric I'll use for the backing but I think I already have enough on hand in my stash so it won't be a problem.  I will probably bind it with one of the blues so that it pops out a bit more.

One of those blues/teals has dragon flies on it and another one (the largest size) is a paisley.  I think it came out pretty good.

Another weekend

Another weekend comes and is almost over before I get some time to work on quilting.  This was my gaming weekend but that got quickly replaced with dealing with my brothers circumstances and then mom went to the ER on Friday and was admitted.  She should be OK and dismissed within the next day or two.  She has an UTI and is dehydrated.  That has caused her to lose balance and become more disoriented. They changed her medications since they think one of them was causing her to become more disoriented and will see how it goes.  My brother sees the heart doctor on Wednesday and then things can be scheduled (hopefully).  Of course in between all of this brothers old landlord (he is currently paying double rent) called and left a message on his phone asking when he would be out.  I have talked to the landlord in the meantime to settle Tony's affairs with him but now Tony is involved and is confused and worried and upset at us...wondering if we got everything done like he wanted.  Of course that is probably no but we did get t done and I have been in contact with the old landlord.  I think Tony had an old message but of course he deleted it before he paid attention to when it came in.

Needless to say that has cut into my quilting time and time to finish my current obligations.  I will get them done.  In fact I opened up EQ7 and think I might have a wall hanging figured out for one of those obligations.

I am thinking of doing this design.  I still have to make sure that I have the blue fabric for it but think it might not be too hard to work up.  Each block would be 10" and the black border would be 2".

Whatcha think?

What a Day!

I got an Elf Envelope in the mail!  Wasn't that great?  I will post a picture tomorrow because I have been busy!!!!

Of course it hasn't been doing too much fun stuff.  I have been dealing with big brother Tony.  The good news is that he is out of the hospital and now in a rehab center in town.  That makes it easier when having to talk to him.  The bad news is that it is he is feeling JUST well enough to start a list of stuff for Bonni to do. The list is not that long but it is long enough to take a day or two to get done.  On top of that his old landlord called and thanked me for sending his rent check but wanted to tell me that he was shutting off the utilities because he had heard that Tony had a new place to live.  The house (Tony's apartment was upper half of house) is to be demolished (yep torn down) starting middle of next week.  Normally this might not be bad but Tony still has some stuff in there.  Of course that means Bonni has to make arrangements to get the last of it out.  I'm whining.  I know.  But it's my blog so I get to whine sometimes.  :)  Enough of that.  Where was I?  Oh yes.... the good part of the day....

I mentioned about the Elf Envelope.  It had the cutest fabric in it.  Snowmen and round candy mints.  I also received my two quilting books that I ordered from a discount book place.  It's a Stitch  is the title of it.  I ordered two of them since they were under $7 each.  I will give one of them away in an Elf Envelop no doubt.  That wasn't the only envelop in the mail for me.  There was also my faerie fabric panel there.  I'll try and take a picture of it tomorrow.  Not sure what I'll do with it yet but it was too cute to resist.

I ordered through the Quilting Board a Celtic applique book that somebody had for sale.  $8 with shipping and handling included.  Can't wait to get it. 

I also finished the quilt for Quilt for Kids.  I was right.  It was a pain to do.  My machine doesn't like doing quilts that size.  Most of the problem (besides operator error) is the small throat (?) area to push the fabric through.  I did manage to do it though and to date it is the largest quilt I've done on that machine.  It also tells me that for now Shelley Gardner gets to do my quilting.  LOL.  Of course my opinion of it might be slanted since my bobbin ran out about 3/4ths of the way into the quilting.  I wound my bobbin up and that took the rest of the black thread I had so I had to stop and run to JoAnne's to get thread.  I didn't have any money on me (payday is Friday) so I pulled out my card and decided I wasn't going to use it just on $4 for thread.  Logic would dictate that I had to buy more right?  My purchases cost me $30.  Two spools of thread and five one yard cuts of fabric for the preemie quilts and I went back home and finished up the Quilt.  Of course this time I would up two bobbins of black thread (good thing because I needed it) and even did machine quilting on the binding.  The directions said to only have 1/4 to 1/2 inch of binding and, of course, with me not having done machine binding before....managed to miss part of the fabric.  Of course this wasn't discovered until I had finished....or thought I had.  To cover it up I changed stitches and did a zig zag around the border (sometimes having to back stitch here and there).  THAT IS ONE BINDING THAT WILL NEVER COME OFF!  Now I have to wash it which means taking it to the laundry mat and spending 1.5 hours doing one thing in the washer.  Perhaps I can dig up some hand applique work to do while I'm waiting.  Then a quick iron job (although not sure exactly why since it will get wrinkly in the mail) and mail it off.

I still want to do charity quilts but am now going to switch over to doing quilts for preemies.  A couple of ladies in my quilting group on facebook do them.  They only have to be 20" which is going to be easier to do. 

Time to head to bed.  Have another full week and weekend ahead of me. 

Everybody have a great day/night.

Updates

I managed to talk to Tony today.  Of course after we talked his phone in the hospital room went dead so now it is whenever he can remember how to get online from the hospital.  LOL.

He is doing better.  He might be coming back to DeKalb, hopefully in rehab, but I won't know for sure.  Another brighter part for me was in the mail.  I received my blocks form Rhonda's September (yes I know...my partner was a little late) block swap.  I think they are cute.

I think it was funny that she sent me a flying geese when it is the bucket list item this month.  LOL.

A New Week

And what a start I had to it.  I got up this morning and went in to take my shower and wash my hair.  Everything normal right?  Well and I shouldn't probably admit this but........I fell out of the shower.



Yes Yes... I know.  I'm talented what can I say.  I'm all right (contrary to the above tale) and my headache (no lumps from hitting my head on the porcelain stool...oops...wasn't going to mention that) went away after 3 hours and 3 ibprofen.  My shower curtain now needs to be replaced but that is relatively easy to do.  I had my foot up on my stool I have in the shower and the stool started to tilt.  When it tilted so did Bonni.  LOL.  What a way to start a Monday!!!

Work was work.  But I did manage to get some stuff done this weekend besides doing stuff for Tony.  Oh before I forget.  They found that he had bleeding uclers and were able stop the bleeding and found a couple of pollups (sp?) and took them out also.  That was good.  Tomorrow I should find out when he can leave the hospital and start to get stronger before he goes back in for by pass surgery.

In between all of this, I did manage to finish the top of the quilt for Quilts for Kids.

Connie will help me tomorrow to lay it out in the conference room and sandwich it.  Then hopefully I can get the binding on and label and wash it.

I did manage to get the doll quilt done and will mail it off tomorrow.  I also was able to knock out the bucket list project since it was flying geese.  I did the flying geese on the doll quilt so it was a two for one knock out on that.  The method I did for flying geese was the one seam flying geese (also known as dimensional flying geese).

I also pulled out some of my blocks from that pre printed fabric and did some mini's (7.5 x 7.5") and will find some left over fabric to do some more.

I also decided to put together some of my earlier experiments with the embroidery machine.  This feather I put into a coaster size which is 4" x 6".

It's hard to see but those colors are actually dark green.

Well it's time to sign off for tomorrow is another day.  It will be busy since Lyndon (bossman) will be in the office for TWO WHOLE DAYS!   LOL.   Then he's gone again for a couple of weeks.  So he will feel the need to catch up and leave me a whole lot work to do for the next two weeks.

Have a great evening and an even better day tomorrow.

Nite Nite.

Back to posting

It's been awhile since I've taken time to post.  Tis the season to be busy with projects and family.  Especially family for me.  My big brother (Tony) is in the hospital and it was totally unexpected.  Since he is a bachelor the rest of the family (my other brother Kerm and myself) to get some stuff done.  It's been a long struggle considering it's only been a week.  Thank you to my nieces and nephews and friends who have been there to help and lend support.  Prognosis is good but it won't be an overnight thing.

Soooo, after taking care of his business I go home and see what I can do to relax.  Today it was working on the Quilts for Kids quilt.    You are suppose to return it in 3-4 weeks.  I can't believe that my time is up on Monday.  Not sure if I'll make that but i won't be too far off.  Today I finished doing the top.  Tomorrow I hope to sandwich it and then another day to quilt it and another day to wash it.  How many days was that now?  Hmm.  Ok.  I might be a week late.  If they don't like it then they don't have to send me another quilt to do for them.  I still liked working on it.

Time to grab something to eat.  I was concentrating on getting that top down forgot about lunch.

Chat with you later everybody.

Spilled paint on the flying geese

This months bucket list drawing was flying geese so I thought I'd try the one seam method.  That method is also called 3 dimensional flying geese and 5 minute flying geese.  Here is a good PDF of how to do it.  It really IS that simple.

http://www.countrycreations.net/images/threedimensionalflyinggeese.pdf

It also has an optional size chart for different sizes so it is something to keep on hand.

Now...for my spilled paint title.  I had flame fabric that I've never used so decided now was the time to use it.  I'm playing around with different patterns instead of just the usual straight rows of flying geese.  This is one of them.

I also wanted something funky looking since it IS getting closer to Halloween.  :)