Christmas Blessings

Blessing number 1: You Float My Boat is finished! I am thrilled with how it turned out.
I am giving TJ and his Daddy quilts this Christmas. That is an extra blessing.
Blessing 2: My mother. My sweet, sweet, mother came today and wrapped gifts for me.

One of my least favorite things to do, and it was like the wrapping fairy showed up and took over. She is a professional at wrapping...NO seams. She was wonderful. She stood on her feet for a good couple hours wrapping each and every gift for under the tree.Blessing 3: My grandbabies. They came last week and made Christmas cookies. It is a tradition here for them to make cut out cookies and decorate them. Emerson got to join in this year. She LOVED it.TJ did too. What wonderful children they are.They will be here Christmas Day to celebrate with us.Blessing 4: Love mail. Joann sent me a beautiful box with gifties inside. Beautiful fabric bundles...
A box of dish cloth yarn for Charlotte (most of it is already dish cloths), footies to warm our feet, candy canes filled with chocolate treats for the kids and grandkids, and this gorgeous plaque that graces the wall in my studio.Melzie also sent me a box with a beautiful necklace with a charm stamped "Sassy". Very cute. I am truly blessed, not by the material gifts, but by the heart behind them. Thank you.

Blessing 5: I am not in jail. Yes that is a blessing. Today I saw the womb standing on a street corner. For 10 years I have visualized what I would do and say when I ran into her. It has changed over the years....I started with the idea that I would lose control of my car....oops. Over the years that has evolved into many different scenarios, all ending with her mortally wounded, and me needing bail money. Of course, I have prayed. I have prayed that God help me to forgive her. I have over and over again placed her and my rage and hatred of her deeds at His feet, only to pick them up again and then ask for a "do over". *sigh* Today, as I sat at a red light (in the red light district) and saw her standing on the corner across the street, I was shocked at my own reaction. I was dumbfounded to realize I had none. Nothing. No anger. No hatred. There was no love, mercy or overwhelming feeling of anything good either. Just. nothing.

I'm ok with that. So it truly is a blessing I am not in jail....nor held captive by the chains of hatred. Praise God!

Blessing 6: My bed. I am thrilled with the idea of bed time tonight. I still have lots to do before I can climb between those covers, but it will be a blessing when I do. Sassy agrees! Look at that yawn!
The BIGGEST blessing of all: My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The King of Kings. Jehovah, Yahweh, Adonai. It is He who sits on the throne who is the greatest blessing of all. May you all know that same blessing as we celebrate this Christmas.

Seeing Stars

Look at that attitude. She is a total narcissist! There are sometimes, though. when she works her magic and makes you feel like you are her whole world....but again, mostly she knows she is everyone else's whole world!

I have made it to the boarders of the sailboats. The star pattern is very intricate, but totally worth it. I love the effect and it will be a main focal point of the quilt.I spent some time today decorating the blog for Christmas. It helped put me in the mood. We are expecting 3-6 inches of snow on Saturday. It will be the perfect day to set up the tree and decorate the house. As you can see by the table runner, I still have all my fall decorations out! I have not been in the mood to put the tree up at all! Now that I am thinking about it, it will be nice to have the beautiful lights and cheery decorations out....of course, I am certain Sassy will think we put the tree up just for her. It will be her first real Christmas (she spent last Christmas in a box) and I'm thinking "cats and trees"....hmmmm. Should be interesting!

Making Waves

I ordered the wave stencil on Wednesday and it arrived on Saturday! I just love Quilting Creations International. I have never had anything but great service from them and they have the best stencils. Ok....enough commercial (of which I am not receiving anything...just passing on a great company). I already have 3 blocks and their surrounding sashing quilted. I just LOVE this quilt.
So....let's talk fabric organization. I have a crappy system for my fabrics. A 3 drawer bin system that I have been using for years. I am a fabric snob.....I buy mostly quilt shop fabric...so therefore I do not buy big yardage at once. Fat quarters and 1/2 yard cuts of fabrics I fall in love with that I do not have a purpose for. If I buy big yardage, I have it earmarked for something specific and usually immediate. The bins have worked for my small pieces....until now. I pulled fabric and found I had several larger "chunks" (how's that for fabric etiquette?) and decided anything 1/2 yard or larger would come out. I did end up pulling some fat quarters that have not been cut, but that I want to include in my Libby Quilts. I made lots of room in my bins and was able to sort and re organized what was in there.The larger pieces went on the shelves above my sewing/cutting table.
There was a stack of unwashed fabrics too, and those were later added once they were washed and dried. I always prewash and dry my new fabrics before I use them. Still not a wonderful system, but it will work for a while.
While cleaning and sorting I found a couple of items of interest (to me). Do you remember back in the late 80's/early 90's, it was so "in" for quilters to wear quilt related pins? I had several, but this one was my favorite....What a dork! It is now pinned to a quilted bear.....I still love that pin! Maybe I will wear it again....what do you think? I don't mind being a dork!
I also found, in the hutch, this little house made by my oldest. It is now almost 25 years old....those pretzels still look like new.....how is that possible?????I am making homemade lasagna and garlic bread for dinner. It is a chilly day and a hot, heavy meal should feel good.....that 15 pound block will have to wait another week ;)
Right now, I plan to make binding for the Hidden Star and get the machine part done. (I found my scissors and bought new fabric) I think I will set the Sailboats aside this evening and hand stitch binding. My quilting fingers need a rest. I am very concerned I will not be able to wait til Christmas to give this quilt to my son.....I am SO not good at waiting!!!!It is a nice laid back Sunday here. Praying it is the same for you......

Ever Have One Of Those Days?

Yesterday was "one of those days". Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Not to be all negative, cause there were some good mixed in with all the bad, and I will look at yesterday as a learning experience!

The Hidden Star is completely quilted! I finished it a couple of days ago and got so thrilled to be able to put the binding on....one of my favorite things to do is binding, second after hand quilting! So I lay it all out and run down to get my Gingher Scissors to trim the edges and thought I would go ahead and make the binding while I was down there.
The first thing I notice is, my scissors are missing!!! They are ALWAYS in the ball jar. Always. No one is confessing anything at this point. I will look for them once I get the binding made. I find the fabric after 12 years....I was pretty proud of myself in that. What I did not remember was, that over that 12 years, I had cut into that fabric for several scrap projects. Hmmmm. Looking at it, it was not hard to see there would be no where near enough for binding. Good Grief! Well, I would get a binding fabric next week. In the meantime I will move on to my next project, cause there is NOTHING in my hoop, which is driving me insane!
I pull out the Sailboats and start marking. UGH!!! It did not go well. My freehand "wind" was a disaster. I decide to draw diagonal lines for movement.I messed that up too. Using a ruler I measured from the corner of the background fabric to the opposite corner of background fabric, totally forgetting that the water is part of the block....the lines looked cock-eyed. I figured it out and started over. In case you are wondering, that is what an eraser looks like in the home of a child who has PICA. ;) (I use a water soluable art pencil to mark light colored fabrics)
On to the waves.....GREAT! The small waves are too small and the large waves are too large.I head to the computer and order the correct sized waves...those will have to wait til the stencil arrives. I am not stopping....those 12 boat waves will have to be marked on a basted quilt.
Here is some "good". This border stencil was GORGEOUS! Lots of detail but it will make the quilt!There. All marked and it was relatively painless.Now to baste! My least favorite part of the quilting process is basting. Anyone who knows me for more than a minute has heard me complain about this part. I am a thread baster....I only use pins when machine quilting, which happens once every 12th of Never!!!! Sweetheart was getting ready to head out the door to spend the day working at the farm. I smooched him good-bye and turned my focus back to the quilt. A few minutes later he came back with a full days supply of Road Ranger Diet Coke!I LOVE THAT GUY!!!!!!!
I had washed and dried my backing fabric, and carefully laid it out in the living room so it would not wrinkle. I went in to get it and look what I found.....SASSY!!!!! What did you do???? That darn cat was curled up in a ball sleeping in the massive wrinkles she had created into a nest! She took off running when she saw me!!!! Great! Now I have to press it! I got it all pressed and laid out on the table. I went to get the batting....a very expensive Quilter's Dream bat, mind you...and there is a freakin HOLE in the corner of the package with batting hanging out. SASSAFRAS!!!!! That cat is gonna need a middle name!
I lay the batting out and position it where the hole is not going to be in the quilt. It is tricky but I get it to this.....Yes, it was that close. The whole time I am doing this process, that dang cat is under the table pulling on the backing fabric like I hung it there just for her. To the basement she goes!!!!!
Let the basting begin!Once I get it halfway basted, I realized that all that pulling on the backing with her claws had actually shifted that backing fabric a bit. CRAP! That is the nicer version of what I actually said! For a minute, I thought I would have to pull those 2 hours of basting stitches out and start all over! I was ready to cry! Instead, I barely made it work.......the backing was uneven on that side to begin with, so most of the side was ok....all except about 1/4 of it. This is the backing fabric. See that teal colored stitch?That is where the very edge of the quilt top comes to. There is about 1/16th of an inch of extra backing fabric there. Enough that I stitched it down so there will be no shifting and I could move on. *deep breath and exhale*
Grrrrrrr. I should have hissed at her!!!!She escaped the basement with the help of the kids who felt sorry for her. I kept my eye on her! Every time I looked at her she looked away! Brat Cat!
I finally got all the basting done and help arrived just in time to trim up the extra batting and backing.Little Emerson wore a "fimble" on her thumb all evening while I hand quilted on the first block of "You Float My Boat". The good in this quilt, is that the quilting shows up beautifully....it will be a very detailed quilt when it is done. The bad news is, that expensive batting is not the Quilter's Dream" I am use too. Though it is for hand and machine quilting, it is more of a machine quilting bat. Kinda tough to needle. I am hoping and praying it softens up to my needle as I handle it. Either way, I am relieved it is in the hoop and life can move on!!!
I am ready for an easy day!!!!! Praying you have one too!

Sailing Boats

I can not even remember what day I sat down and put all of TJ's boats together. It was over a week ago now, but I thought I would share them with you in all their glory. I had a vision for this quilt before TJ was even born. I knew my grandson would one day have a sailboat quilt. Well his parents did not do a theme that would have blended with the sailboats, so his first quilt was all primary colored, bright, Churn Dash blocks....that would go with any theme. Well, 5 years later, I am not really concerned about theme....my grandson is getting a sailboat quilt!! My granddaughter got her Sunbonnet Sue...my vision for her, so now to fulfill the vision of this quilt.Sassy helped me along with the placement of the blocks. I had pictured the blocks sashed with brown fabric with red cornerstones and a brown inner border. A larger red border was in my minds eye. That is until I saw that water fabric....I wanted to somehow get that into the outer part of the quilt. What to do????? Brown and red??? Red and blue??? After a trip to Acorn Quilts, Jan helped me find just the perfect solution.....brown sashing with red cornerstones, a red inner border and a blue outer border. The best of both visions!!!

The brown sashing fabric and red cornerstones were beautiful! Exactly what I had purposed for this quilt!

The blocks all went together beautifully.
Once the borders were on, it really became striking!
I can hardly wait to get my needle into this quilt! I can see the textured waves and ropes already! Swirls of wind created by quilting thread, pushing the outlined sails along.....Yep. It is a vision fulfilled!
Sass was all tuckered out once we were done, but she rested well knowing the boats were sailing!

You Float My Boat

That is what I am calling TJ's quilt. He does float my boat, so it is fitting. Today Sweetheart headed to the country to work at his mom's house. I set up shop in the eating area so I could watch kids and sew all day. My goal: 12 sailboat blocks. I had some pieces cut, but still needed all the background cut and had all the piecing to do. I got busy!

There was the marking of the sails (1/2 square triangles).

The trimming of the sails.
Hey quilters! What do you call these little corners you have to snip off???I call them tits. Am I the only one?? I am sure I did not come up with that term on my own....did I?? Please someone, tell me that you call them that too!!!
Sails are done and flying in the sky.

Next I made the boats. Such a simple and fun process, these blocks.Now to float my boat.....This water fabric is wonderful!! I just love it!! I had planned to use a different blue in each block, but fell so in love with this fabric I bought it for all the blocks plus the cream for the sky....looks like wind in the cream color, and waves in the blue.The boats kept multiplying.Soon....ok, not so soon, but by nightfall I had all 12 boats floating!!Now to find a perfect sashing and border!!
The postman brought a package today. I had forgot I was a runner up on Linda's blog giveaway. The runner up gets just as good a prize as the winner over there!!!It is just gorgeous!! Inside were a notepad and matching wallet....I forgot to take pics of those. I am bad like that! Thank you Linda. It is beautiful!!! I plan to take it on my trip to Galena next week!
Sassy was all worn out from protecting us from houseflies. She ate at least 3....Zach lets them in on purpose for her.Would you all say a little prayer for Joanne? Her sweet husband passed away after a short battle with cancer on Sunday night. I can not imagine the grief of that, but I know many of you can. Maybe let her know you are thinking of her.