January 2015 Blog Posts (52)

It is a good day to stay inside and sew/quilt all weekend! Woke up to -15 BRRRRR. I ordered fabric for the ct. cross st. quilt. As you can see I cut the two borders off with the flowers on them. Will use them on pillow cases. I have ordered another fabric for the second border from another company, but won't be here until Wed. then the third border will be a repeat of the first. This will be very Spring/Summery looking for the lake house!…

Prayers request for our dear daughter.  Will try to make a long story short.  Last April she was discovered to have a "mass" in the mesentery, tissue that holds the intestines in place to the back of the abdomen (best way I can explain mesentery).  I have never heard of this before even though I am a retired nurse.  "Mass" was found to be benign in 2 places; plan was to "watch" it and do periodic CT scans.  Scan in July revealed "mass" was shrinking; continue to "watch" by CT scan in Jan. …

For those of you who congratulated me on my early Christmas present from DH, I promised I would post before and after photos of my sewing station.  The new table is a "Kangaroo" and the attached cabinet is a "Joey".  The room used to be my DS's room before college and before marriage and before moving to the frozen north (Alaska) with my new DDIL, so there is a day bed in there.  New chair too.

Oops!  "After" is the first two photos; "before" is the last.!  (I don't do this…

Free Blocks

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Cinderella Pisani is the winner of Murder by Gravity. Congratulations!

If you will send your mailing address to barbara@bgmysteries.com I will mail your book.

One thing about having wintery weather and the furnace on, is that I'm constantly dusting and swiffering the hard wood floors. (There's something to be said about cloudy days!) The sun comes out and it looks like I haven't cleaned in months! Well, I'm in the broom closet gearing up for a day of swiffering and to my delight ....I found the " EARRING"  I thought I might have lost in the soup back in Nov. !!! Luckily, I kept the other one just in case!! So...you just never…

I'm making use of the new LED light for my Featherweight, which is back out of its case and on the job.





The piecing of the first quilt top of the new year, "Seeing Stars," is almost done. Here's the photo I took of the first block, ready to put together.…

I occasionally check out ebay for quilt tops...this popped up for a 6 day bid...so I placed a bid and won! It is an odd size. 94x64. I only have queen beds and like it more to be a coverlet. Thinking I might cut it down to the framed stitching and do some quilt blocks in the same color palette to make it the size I need. Do you think that it would be better to just add borders of the same print but both colors? Am open to suggestion ladies!!!!…

come on over and see what i've been doing!

https://prairiecharm.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/first-finishes-of-2015/

The scene from our new home is ever changing. Early morning sunrises are as varied as each day, as are the sunsets. We have a gorgeous view from our deck and on a morning a couple days ago I was fortunate to capture these photos. Mt. Baker towers to the northeast of us and the second is to the southeast through the trees. The waters of Puget Sound are between us and the mainland. What a view to enjoy as I sit and quilt. I have this scene from the living room, kitchen, bedroom as well as my…

Hi all,

I'm giving away to a blogger on this site, a hardcover copy of my latest murder mystery with clues to a mystery quilt. Murder by Gravity: The Coffin Quilt is #6 in the series.

Put your name in the comments. I'll do the drawing on January 28. Good luck.

Now, get back to…

This was our weekend quilt retreat that wasn’t.  Unfortunately, scheduling problems at the University prevented us from having our three day retreat, but we did manage to have an unexpected ‘wilt’ on Saturday.  No less than six of us arrived with the remnants of the worst head/chest colds that any of us could remember.   We were a coughing, sniffing, nose blowing group, let me tell you.  But nothing stops the intrepid quilters so we soldiered on.

Teri has spent several months working…

It's been awhile since I've posted on here.  As with everyone, life gets in the way too much.  We are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen, that was started the day after Christmas.  DH is doing all the work himself (I assist where I can).  With both of us working FT, it seems to be going at a snail's pace, but half of the kitchen is now done!  

My sister, Katie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November.  She had…

Common Threads met at Wasatch & Wool on Thursday.



It was inspiring, sitting with our knitting while surrounded by lovely yarns of all types. Margaux provided us with some delicious munchies.



Lynda wore the hat she just finished:…

The February Little Quilt project blog is available demonstrating how I made my HSTs from cut corners. Yep! I had a project that used the Stitch-n-Flip method and it left me with a ton of cut corners. I used these corners to make the HSTs for my…

It's hard for me to get back in the groove after the Holidays. It's been that way since my mom passed away in 1998. Hard to believe she's been gone this long. Mom wasn't a crafty person - she loved that kind of thing but, with 4 kids and no one to teach her, she really never learned how to do things. Think of all the wonderful inspirational things we have these days.

• Sewing/Quilt/Embroidery classes at the shops - used to be you could buy fabric almost anywhere but, the only…

I finished hand stitching down the binding on my row robin this morning.  I have the label made, but it hasn't been stitched on yet.  I still need to add the hanging sleeve too.   It has been so much fun using some of the various decorative stitches on my new Pfaff 5.0.  The only thing I would say that I'm struggling with on this machine is doing binding as I don't feel the IDT system is quite as good as using a regular walking foot.  I have my 1st class on this machine this afternoon so I'm…

My bow tie quilt made from "The Ladies" quilt block exchange. Five of us each made blocks for each other and then we all put our quilts together.   We all picked our background colors (mine was white on white) and told what fabrics we wanted.  I wanted mine to be scrappy with a vintage layout and look and quilted it with a very simple design. I didn't like the flapping 3-D centers so I quilted the edges with a tiny zip zag to hold them down.  I found a scrap of light blue fabric with tiny…

I decided to stipple the ct. cross st top. This is a double size quilt, which is big enough to wrestle. I am going to have to lift weights to keep this up! Taking a photo definitely helps to find places that I need more stitching. Last project before going to Florida for a few months. Family always has some project that needs my help, so will keep busy with…

There's an old saying that whatever you do on the first day of the new year is what you will be doing the whole year! I certainly hope this is not true or I am in BIG trouble! LOL.

Right before Christmas, I was put into the hospital with what they thought was a heart attack, "I" knew it wasn't but since I don't have all those letters after my name, no one would listen to me. I ended up being there a week. Had a stress test, which I failed miserably as well as having a bad reaction to…