Last day of September!

The holidays are sneaking up on us are you ready?  I'm not.  I'm not even ready for early December to hit me because I haven't put together mom's birthday present yet.  That's pretty sad when I already have the blocks done for the table runner and just need to put it together.

I didn't get much quilting/stitching done over the weekend.  It was one of those weird weekends that get away from you and come Monday morning you realize you can't remember too much of what you did but you know it wasn't anything you had planned to do.

I did manage to snap a couple of cute pictures of mom.  My boss, Lyndon, gave me a pen which I thought mom would like so took it to her.  It had glasses and a bowtie on it.  I was right.  I think she looks adorable in these pictures.

I hope I look so happy when I'm 93!  Go mom!

Flying Geese and Triangles

Ready to give me some advice?  I'm new to piecing so am unsure how to do flying geese.  I know various methods but I'm on this kick (in order to do a Civil War pre cut BOM) on figuring out the "proper" way to do them with precut pieces.

Soooo.  You have three triangles.  How do you join them for a flying geese block.  Ignore the bad geometrical shapes (and sizes) in these pictures and just assume they are the sizes and shapes they should be for what you want to join. (grins).

When lining up your two triangle pieces to sew to make the flying geese, do you line up on the bottom....or line up at the top.  A simple newbie question but I don't see it listed anywhere on how to line them up.

Any advice?

While you're thinking on this, I'll go post on the Baltimore page.  :)

Finding patterns you had forgotten about

Oh yes...and another block finished.

First the block that I finished last night because I'm not a fan of it so I want to get it done and over with and I can talk about the patterns I *did* find that I like.  The block I'm talking about is the fourth block from the Civil War BOM from Custom Quilt Kits Inc.  It's not really a bad block but I just don't like how much I'll probably have to stretch it out...oops...I mean block it.  Here it is.

It looks probably better in the picture because I could crop off the uneven edges.  I did manage to refrain from cutting it last night because I know I would have cut too much off.  I would see that I have a quarter inch before extra cream at my points and think I had done it wrong.  Yeah, I know...I can hear you now.  "But Bonni....you NEED that quarter inch for your seam allowance when it gets sewn together."  I agree.  I *do* need that 1/4".  That's why I had to stop otherwise the mad cutter would have hacked at it.  LOL.

I've been going through my files and stuff at home to try, yet again, to get a bit more streamlined and organized.  I figure if I can't get my body more streamlined at least I can get my sewing area and projects more streamlined....maybe.

On the bright side, I did find two books that I had forgotten where I put them.  Actually I forgot that I even had one of them.  They are:

As you can perhaps see from the pictures, I've torn them apart and put them in protective sleeves so that I can take out whichever pattern I need to and when done put it right back.

What are you working on today?  I hope it will be fun and you have a great day.

NIU Presents Princess of Thailand With Honorary Degree

Haven't done any quilting today but forgot to post this the other day.  NIU presented the Princess of Thailand with an Honorary degree and here is the link to the YouTube video of it in case anybody wanted to watch it.  I was able to go to it and it was interesting for me since I had not seen how they handled the honorary degrees before.

                   

A Relaxing Sunday

Ahhh, my favorite day of the week...Sunday.

I tried a different biscuits and gravy recipe this morning for breakfast with mom and both her and Kerm said they liked it.  I might make it again then.  That was the busy part of the day.  Then I came home and have been predominantly lazy.

Being lazy and relaxing on a Sunday means craft time.  Before I could sit down to stitching, I had to prepare some food for the week.  Today it was a hit/miss type thing.  I randomly pulled things off the shelf and threw them together.  The end result?  Something that would be kind of similar to a Spanish rice.  It might have started out to be chili but I never put in the chili seasoning.  Then it might have turned into a pasta dish but discovered I was out of pasta!!!!!!!! So I had tomato base and ground beef in it.  I found some whole grain brown rice and tossed that it with some spices.  It didn't turn out to be too bad at all.  I put some in the freezer and left some out to eat during the week.  It was a little spicier than I was expecting but that was, I discovered, because one of the cans of tomatoes was Ro-Tel tomatoes with mild green chili's.  Ohhh. THAT would explain it.  It helped clean out my sinus a little bit so that was nice.

With the food put away it was now stitching time.  I finished another corner block for Inspired and am about half way through the Eagle block.  I will probably post pictures of that on the Inspired page tomorrow.

Guess what arrived in the mail this weekend?  Block 4 of the Civil War BOM that is from Custom Quilt Kits, Inc.  I laid it out but haven't sewn it yet.  Perhaps I'll get to it this week.

I think it will go together pretty good.  I will have to be careful on how I sew it but it does help to lay it out first.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I hope everybody has a good night/day and a great week.

I know what the hanging fabric is!!!!!

I heard back from my brother.  Remember I was wondering what the fabric (which looked like pillow cases to me) were?  I didn't think it could be a pillow case because why was it hanging over a table?  Guess what it is!

Now Roma guessed that it was beard protector.  LOVE that idea.  I can see that happening because beards do rub on the fabric.  It wasn't that.  Ready to hear what it was?

It's a fan!!!!!!

Yep, that's right.  It is a fan and a slave would push back and forth (perhaps two slaves, not sure) on the rods the fabric is hanging on to make it sway and create a breeze for those who are eating at the table.

They certainly were inventive weren't they.

It's going to start soon!

What is going to start soon?   Esther Aliu is going to start another BOM.  I've been saving Love Entwined but it's too complicated for me right now.  Esther is going to do another BOM though and the pictures of it are up on her blog.  She's posting for Wednesday now on her blog but just scroll down to Tuesday's post and you'll read all about it.  I'm not sure I like all the color combinations for the HST but overall I like the looks of......

Lily Rose!

I have a button on the side of this blog that I put up when Love Entwined came out so you can click on that or go to:

http://www.estheraliu.blogspot.com/

Updates will be posted when I do them.  :)

History and Old Quilts

I'm feeling a little better today so will have to be at work the whole time but thought I'd stay in at lunch and type up my blog post for today.  My brother Kerm and his wife Bobbie just came back from a 3-4 state wide road trip visiting visiting some historical landmarks.  I can't remember all the places and states since I wasn't paying too much attention until he handed me his jump drive and said "If you want to look at pictures here they are.  I even got some some with quilts on it."  Of course he didn't say that a lot of his pictures were blurry and some of the blurry ones were of ones I wanted to see.  Imagine that.  Wonder how that worked out.  LOL.  I know he went to Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois (had to go there since we live there) but can't remember the other state.  Could be Ohio but not sure.  They visited the historical sights for a couple of the past presidents so if you like history or just like to see the pictures people take on their trips feel free to check it out.  All the pictures can be seen on my fotki page.  Here is the link.

http://public.fotki.com/bonni56/kerm-and-bobbies-se/

There are a LOT of pictures there which will slow down some people's computers.  I thought I'd post a couple of the quilting related ones here also.

Like I said, blurry on ones I was particularly interested in.  That's a brother for you.

Love the crazy quilting!

no particular quilt on this but just love the crib.

Sorry for the blurriness...drat Kerm!  LOL!

President Harrison's Civil War memories!

Love the variety shown in this one.  I forgive Kerm for the blurriness on the other ones.  LOL.

Does anybody know what the hanging things are?  They almost look like pillowcases (grins)

Hmmm.  The quilt on the bureau almost matches the pattern on the cainned chair.  hehe

Oops.  Almost forgot one.

I made this one a lot larger so you can see the details more.  Isn't it great?!

I hope you liked this snippet of pictures and will go to the fotki site to see the other pictures he took.  The monuments have great relief work and inscriptions on them like "General George Rogers Clark, Conqueror of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio from the British, 1778-9".  Or perhaps the monument in Indiana which read "To Indiana's Silent Victors" and had from the War with Mexico to the "war of the revolution - capture of Vincennes from the British" and Mexican Border Service 1916 - 1917 for a total troops 3123.  So it covers from 1946 - 1917.  That's quite a spread.  

I bet it was awesome to see in person.  Something you could look at multiple times and see something different each time.

Well that's it for today's post.  I hope you enjoyed it and keep on making those future heirlooms.  :)

An Apple Today

This will be a small post since I'm feeling a bit under the weather.  What better day than to work on my mini block for The Quilt Pattern Magazine Newsletter BOM?  This month the pattern was an apple.  I got to thinking of the saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."  Well I stitched my apple today so I'm not going to go to the doctor (especially for a cold).

Here's my apple.

Changing of the Thread

I changed the thread that I was using last night to a darker one for the Inspired blocks.  check out the Baltimore page when you can.  I think I like it better.

weekend progress

I was making such good progress on Sunday so you know what that means....ripping out today.  LOL.

I did finish up my two snowmen blocks for this month.  It won't be long before I will be having to make some decisions as to what I'll do about putting them all together.

Here are the blocks.

The middle picture is what the finished product is suppose to look like.  I'm not sure if I'll finish it like that or not.  It is very cute as designed but I'm not that much of a fan of the 9 patch in between the blocks.  Is that what they call setting blocks?  I will have time to figure it out.  Another thing that has me wondering is how  to quilt it.  Will I take the easy way out and send it out for quilting?  With all those French knots I'm not sure about the quilting.

Today must be my day to question things for not only was I questioning the snowmen blocks but also my inspired blocks.  Go over to that page to see what I was questioning.

Anybody else having such problems today?

Sundays and tradition

Ahhh, Sunday after visiting mother in the nursing home.  I love seeing her and we have some good, if not funny, conversations as her brain gets her thoughts mixed up at times.  At 93 (94 in December) it is to be expected.  Sunday mornings got me thinking about what we used to do.

Our Sunday mornings had a routine.  We'd get up and walk across the parking lot to church and Sunday school.  We would go our separate ways since I was the church organist I had to be there and in a different area than mother.  I was glad to be the organist so I wouldn't fall asleep during the sermon.  I could see mom in the congregation (the organ was in a loft so I could peek over the edge) and 30 minutes into the sermon she would start to tap her shoes.  She had Sunday dinner in the oven (usually a roast) and she didn't like her dinners ruined.  After church got out we walked across the parking lot to our house.  As soon as we got inside, she'd tell me to turn on the TV and she'd check the roast.

It wasn't until later that I started to wonder if mom just didn't like her roast to be over done or she wanted to watch what was on TV.  She could have lowered the temperature on the oven or even cooked it the night before.  The TV programming, on the other hand, was outside of her control.  Did you have a favorite TV program that you watched?  Sunday mornings was filled with a western, a mystery (Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan,Hart to Hart, Columbo, etc.), Wresting and then the Sunday mid day movie.  This was usually a Tarzan movie which she loved.  Later on she would draw upon all the above to figure out what she and I should do to one of my ex fiance's (whom I refer to even today as Slime Bucket).  She didn't waste time with telling me "I told you he was no good" but instead she would just figure out what kind of punishment she would like to do.  Usually it was a "torn in two by being tied between two trees and then cutting the ropes that held the trees together" like in Tarzan, or buried in sand pouring honey on his head and inviting the ants to come and eat him.  Loved her for all of those suggestions.

Of course Sunday also meant stitching day.  We'd do our individual crafts throughout the week also but by Sunday I would be done with homework and Church obligations so I had hours of stitching time if I wanted to.  I'd settle down into an easy chair and pick up my embroidery to do.  I wasn't into quilting yet but cross stitch, needlepoint, and other crafts.  I was thinking on those crafts today.  I ran across an apron that my grandmother made for me.  She did wonderful cross stitch and while this is relatively easy and simple I still love it.

Furthest to the right is the back flipped over a bit so that you can see how neat her stitching was.  

 To think that from a plain checked fabric she created this without a pattern or anything.  Something that I couldn't do.  I could do the cross stitch but that was it.  This was also how I was taught to cross stitch.  Mom would buy towels that were checked or made towels out of checked materials and my sister and I would cross stitch a design on them.  If she couldn't find any checked fabric, she would take plain fabric and lightly draw the checks or line on it.  That is what we had to do for part of our summer vacations.  It might have been summer but we also had to be productive.  I don't have any of those early stitching projects any more but at the time they were put away in my hope chest.

Grandma wouldn't ignore the little details like putting stitches on the ends of the apron ties or up by the band.

I wonder if any of my things will last as long as these did.  This was done in the early 70s because I can remember using it in home economics class.  I bet I only did it once since I don't see stains on it.  Mother probably found out that I took it and put a stop to it.  LOL.

I then started to think on MY Sunday routine.  It really hasn't changed too much.  I see mom in the mornings for a couple of hours (any more and she gets too tired) and then come home.  Depending on how busy my Saturday was I might take a nap but soon I find myself sitting in my easy chair, my crafting supplies within arms reach and the TV on.  MeTV and Me-TOO tv has lots of the older tv shows on it so I find myself watching my mystery shows or, thanks to DVDs, Sherlock Holmes or Charlie Chan or whatever.  Instead of the oven going, I have food in the crock pot.  Tradition is a wonderful thing to reflect upon.  Whether it's seeing a police car at the drive through window of a Dunkin Donut shop (see?  They really DO love donuts)

or finishing up stitching some blocks,

it boils down do a relaxing Sunday.  You can say it's a relaxing end to a week or a relaxing way to start your week...the key word is relaxing.  Time to step back and do things at a slower pace and enjoy what you are doing.

I hope you all have a great day and take time out to relax.

Inspired block done

For those of you who are following along to see progress on the Inspired block, go to the top and click on Baltimore Album Inspired  Projects.  I will be moving over my Inspired blocks to that page and that is where I posted my latest one.

See you on the other page......

another mug rug

I gave Connie her birthday present the other day so now I can post the finished product.  I made her a mug rug which is a little larger than I usually do.  She wanted one with a Christmas theme to it and I had just the thing.  Once again I went into my Craftsy pattern library and pulled out this mug rug to do.

I wasn't worried too much about it being larger since it is for Christmas time and we all know how many cookies and treats are brought into offices at Christmas time.  This will be large enough for her drink plus her treats.

So that's one project done and over with.  I also gave her an NU pendant/flag which she can hang in her office if she wants or whatever and an I.O.U.  The I.O.U. is for me to finish up one of her blocks that she is behind on.  We are both in the Snowmen BOM and the mini BOM although if she wants me to do the mini-BOM I'd do two since they are so small.  :)

She said she liked it so that is what counts.  We'll see if she takes me up on the offer of doing one of the blocks.

what's on the design wall - Labor Day 2013

Happy Labor Day!  At least Happy Labor Day for us in the US although I hope everybody, no matter where you are, will have a happy day.

I am some things on my design wall that I will start to stitch on.  Not sure I will get anything done but the fusing has been done on a  number of things and it's time for stitching.  That is one of the things that I love about applique.  It is portable so I can still be watching tv or sitting at the computer while I stitch.  So what's on the wall?  Here are the pictures.

Here are the next two snowmen blocks.  I have a problem with fusing with wool and heat n bond lite.  I've been told that I should switch to steam a seam or something for wool.  I keep forgetting though when I get to the fusing stage.  I am wondering, I guess, if the steam with "smoosh" the wool down too much.  Oh well...perhaps one day I will remember.

I also cut out and fused down my African dancers.  I think I'm going to like it.  Here are the individual dancers...

and here they are fused on.

All of the above projects need embroidery done on them also so it will be interesting to see them when they are finished.  I haven't picked out which African fabric I will use for the binding yet.

Then I also have the new September mini BOM to do.  That one is quickly done and is an apple.  I haven't printed up the pattern yet so you don't have a picture yet.  Perhaps I will finish up my current Inspired block.  I only have 8 leaves left to do.  Have I mentioned that I'm tired of leaves yet?  I still like working on the blocks which bodes well for the chances of it being finished.

What are your plans for today?

September 1, 2013 - already?

Labor Day is right around the corner and I find myself realizing that I don't have to work tomorrow.  Yes I know, I knew it but I didn't *realize* it.  That means this weekend is the rare weekend where I get to meet with gaming friends as well as get some stitching time in.  Hopefully I won't waste it wondering what to work on.  I might work on some mug rug for Christmas.  Not sure yet.

I plan to work on the two snowmen blocks.  I've started to copy the pattern onto the fusible but it's so hot that I want to wait a bit longer for it to cool down before I adhere them to the fabric.  

On a non quilty topic, I had a delightful visit with my nephew.  While I was there, I managed snap some pictures of some of the kids.  Of course since one of the children is a teenager, no picture of her.  She's into her own world (still love you Tori).  Think I missed taking another picture...perhaps Bella's?  But I did manage to get some.  Here they are.

Jessica and Jason Erlandson - Jason is my nephew.

Liam - Their youngest who started 2nd grade.

James.  Their oldest son (fourth child) and only Bear fan.  GO BEARS!

Aurora - One of their three girls.  Love them all.

The kids had to check out the chase lounges which I brought over today.  I had them and wasn't using them. It didn't take long for them to be put to use.  Liam started out on the computer but soon joined his brother in the living room playing games while on the chaise lounge.  Aurora had gotten up and Liam claimed her seat.  :)

Aren't they all cute?