Dini

On Wednesday morning, my husband, Michael, was suppose to pack the car and drive me to Hershey PA for a quilt weekend. Michael was going to spend the first day and night with me and then leave me for the next few days to sew, shop and have fun with some quilting friends. We ended up leaving much later. When I entered the bathroom, I found Dini, our eldest cat, lying in the cat litter box. As soon as I walked into the bathroom, she began purring. I knew something was really wrong because no cat lies in a cat box. She did not move out of it. I went and got Michael. I told him, I thought Dini had a stroke. He tried to pick her up and she wiggled out is his hands. She was trying to walk but was dragging her left leg behind her. She made it to her bed and repositioned herself several times. I woke my daughter Kate and told her Dini was very sick. We ended up taking her to the vet. She confirmed my diagnosis and gave Dini oxygen. Dini was breathing through her mouth and the breaths were labored. The vet said she was in pain. Of course, we had her put to sleep and out of her misery. Dini was 16 years old. Somehow she found us when she was only a few weeks old. We found this tiny kitten hiding around our mini van. Michael and Kate (at the time, 5 years old) asked all the neighbors and no one claimed the cat. We ended up keeping Dini. She was not a lap cat and would hide when visiters came. She had no problem hanging out in the same room with us. She would let us know when it was time to pet her and feed here. She would even come to my quilt room and sleep right next to my sewing machine while I was sewing. She was a sweety pie. She had a lovely purr. I really miss her.

In the picture above: Dini kept on lying in a plastic bin of fabric that I was working with. Michael took her blanket and put it on top of the bin so that her hair would not shed all over my fabric. So here she is lying on her blanket but surrounded by some of my fabric. It looks like one of Mark Lipinski's line. The other two cats that live here, rarely come to hang out with me while I'm sewing. Dini would come often and I would have to scramble to make sure there were no pins lying around to stick her. RIP Dini.

Rag Quilt Blocks

These are the blocks for the Rag Quilt that I'm making in a class with my Viking dealer. Class two has to be rescheduled due to snow.

I had fun making these blocks. For each color I used a different stitch. I love using my Interchangeable Dual Feed foot.

First Quilts For Kids

This is my first Quilt For Kids that I made with my stash.

I still have to quilt and bind it.

I'm looking forward to quilting it with my new interchangeable dual feed foot. Now I can use some of the cool stitches that came with my Viking Designer.

YTRR 2010 Step 2

Here is Step 2 of Carol Doak's 2010 YTRR

YTRR 2010

Yours Truely Round Robin is a challenge that Carol Doak gave to her Yahoo Group Members.

Step One: Make a center using any number of paper-pieced blocks (my designs)in any size in any number of colors.

Family Pictures

Christmas 2009 Pics:

I'm not really good with labeling pics.
My pictures are of:
Me and Pumpkin, our youngest cat. Yes it looks like I'm strangling her but I promise, I'm NOT hurting her. LOL
Buster our faithful dog. He looks like he's posing. My sister Bert (Roberta) and I.
My children Kate and Andrew.
Me and My sisters, Bert, Me, Cathy and Carol. Yes we were laughing. For the most part, that's what we do when we get together.

Perfect Points

This is a really silly pic of us but this is Carol Doak, paper piecing queen herself and me. I took her Perfect Points Class at Quilting Possibilities. Long drive but a fun class. It was GREAT to see Carol Doak again.

:)

Carol Doak Mystery Quilt

Yippee!

I finished my Carol Doak Anniversary Mystery Top.

Carol Doak Mystery Step 2

Here's a pic of Step 2.

I'm new to Facebook. I really don't understand what's going on with it or what it's for but it's fun.

Now to pick out fabric for Carol Doak's Anniversary block.

:)

Carol Doak Mystery Step One

Here is Step One of Carol Doak's Second Mystery Quilt. I hope she posts Step Two soon.

Now I have a RWB swap and more Carol Doak BOMs to work on.

Embroidery Placemats

Ok, I have finally worked on my machine embroidery. I took a class with Roseanne from Viking, located in the Joanns in Colonia NJ. I made four placemats and four napkins. I could not finish all these in one class so I hung out with Roseanne at Joanns over the weekend. It was fun. Sewing and chatting.

Carol Doak Lottery Block

Here's my June block for the Carol Doak Lottery.

Carol is providing a free mystery quilt pattern. I still have to pick my fabrics and cut them per instructions. I do have my patterns printed out. I think that's what I'm working on today.

Can It

One of my online groups, SewGoodFriends has a swap going called the 'Can It' Swap. We're swapping items that we can fit into a Lays Potato Chip blue canister.

I hope I can figure out how to properly post these pictures. I'm posting the items I received from Dee (Arkansas) and another pic of the items I sent her. I made a draw string bag and put a necklace in it and made a case for reading glasses. I coordinated the fabrics, the button and the glasses. I hope Dee likes it.

Carol Doak 2cond BOM

This is the May Carol Doak BOM. This is the second BOM that Carol has offered. She's quite generous. Unfortunetely this is the first block I have done. I believe this started in October/November of 2008. I'm in the process of catching up.

I'm so happy. I'm back to sewing in my quilt room again. Yippee!

I listened to the audio book, 'Emma' by Jane Austen.

Here's a pic of a Springy colored block for the Carol Doak Group's May Lottery block.

I like the colors. I'm sending this one out for the lottery. There's a chance I may win 20 blocks. Time will tell.

:)

Pics from Blockbuddy Ohio Trip May 2009

Pictures:

Carole(NJ) showing us the hula hoop.

Ila and Carole in Front of Miller's Dry Goods.

Horse and Buggy hitched right in front of Miller's Dry Goods.

Ila looking quite happy after we exchanged our Scavenger Hung bags.

The window at Heini's Cheese Chalet

Dinner at The Millersburg Inn

From Left to Right: Kathy (Texas), Ila (Michigan), Ann K (Michigan), SandyFromNJ, Carole (NJ)

Amish Countryside

A couple of horse and buggys.

Group pic taken in Donna's shop:

Front Row: SandyFromNJ, Kathy (Dallas, Texas), Ann K (Michigan)

Back Row: Carole (NJ), Sandy (Ohio), Donna (Ohio) and Ila (the pirate from Michigan).

Ohio Blockbuddy Trip

I have just returned from a road trip to meet some of my online friends from the Blockbuddy Yahoo Group. The trip was lots of fun. It was great to actually meet some of the group in person.

We left NJ on Thursday, the drive was approx 8 hours long. The Amish towns we drove through, had no restaurants opened. We ended up driving all the way to Ohio to have dinner at Mcdonalds. Afterwards, I did meet up with Ila (Michigan), Ann (Michigan) and Kathy (Dallas Texas). The lobby of the Comfort Inn was quite accomodating with tables and chairs, TV, sofa and a rocking chair or two. We had brochures laid out in front of us, picking out the places we wanted to visit. We had a plan to meet the next morning and shop until it was time to meet at Donna's new shop (a 90 minute drive north from where we were).

The next morning, Friday, we drove to a quaint little town called Berlin. Shopped. We went to Helping Hands quilt Shop and Museum, Queen Anne's Lace, Berlin Chili Traders, an Antique Store (Huge), and a bakery. The quilts were lovely. Too bad I didn't think to take a few pics. Later, we drove up to Donna's, had a tour of her house and her shop. Yep, I bought more fabric there too. :D It will be a lovely shop when it's all done. Afterwards, we went to dinner at the Olive Garden. Yum.

The following morning, Saturday. We went to Charm. We visited Miller's Dry Goods, bought more fabric. It was a nice store. We also began traveling around the area, we went to Gramma Fannie's Quilt Barn. Heini's Cheese Chalet, and Breitenbach Wine Cellar for some Dandalion Wine. We also went to Zinks Fabric, another bakery (big one), a candy store, we ate at a couple of Amish restaurants during our stay but I can't remember the names. In fact, I don't remember the names of all the different places we visited. By the end of our days there, we were so exhausted, I have to admit, I slept very well.

Quilt Show

With my husband's help, my Quilt Room is improving. I can actually see the floor. I still have to put the design wall up, put the fabric in 'color' order and organize all my notions but it still looks a lot better.

This weekend is The Quit Fest of New Jersey V. I went on Thursday and started out really good. I just bought the taboo, Quilter's Home issue and two books, on quilting with strips. I figured, I needed those books for ideas on using up my stash. Then I realized that there were open quilt classes and before I knew it, I signed up for a full day class for the next day. Weaver Fever, taught by Jackie Robinson. This meant that I needed fabric. If I was home, I would have went to my stash and pulled fabric out but I was at a Quilt Show with lots of vendors. I needed 5/8Th's of a yard of 7 different fabrics, plus 1 1/2 of border fabric. Since I wasn't sure what I had home, I ended up buying 9 yards of fabric! So much for using up my stash! I went home put it all in the washing machine and went to get my hair cut. I went home, threw it in the dryer, watched American Idol. Bye Bye Tatiana. And I ironed the fabric, added some of my stash to it and began to cut it into strips according the the directions given by Jacki, the instructor. Unfortunately, I was tired while I was cutting the strips and missed the direction to cut some 1 1/2" strips. Good thing I brought the extra fabric with me to the class. I was embarrassed but I had to cut up the extra strips before I could set them in order.

Weaver Fever- The class ran from 9-4. It was a long day. Jacki Robinson was a lovely woman, very kind, with lots of patience. The poor thing had a cold but did her best talking while having laryngitis. First, Jacki showed us the correct way to cut strips and explained the correct way of sewing them together. This quilt requires exact 1 1/2", 2 1/2", 3 1/2" strips and exact scant 1/4 inch seams. Unfortunately, I'm not an 'exact' person but I chugged along anyways. Next was the sorting of the strips, first you place row one in order (according the the book directions), row two on top of row one 'one inch' below row two and keep on going till you get to row 10. Then you sew row 10 strips together strip 1 to strip 2, flip it over, don't break the thread and sew strip 3 to strip 4, etc until you sew all the row 10 strips together. Put that aside and sew row 9 and keep going until you get to row 1. Then you iron the 10 different strip groups. Now it's time to cut each of those strip groups into 1 1/2 inch rows, put the rows in order and sew row 1 to row 2, row 3 to 4, 5-6 etc until you have a block. So far for the entire day, I have one block finished. with 23 more to go. This is a lot of work. If I looked at the book without taking the class, I would have put it down and not buy it because without someone explaining it to me, I would NEVER have figured out the directions. Even now that I understand, I don't know if I'd do this again. I don't know. I'll have to finish this quilt. I put so much time and money into it already. I really want to finish it.

New Year

It's been a long time since I posted anything here.

The pic from the Carol Doak Class had prompted me to eat healthier and exercise. So far, I've only lost 15 pounds, but I'm a work in progress.

Quilting: I have not been sewing for months. It seems that my Quilt room has become a Catch All Room. My goal for the next two months is getting my room in order. It seems that, over the last year, I obtained even MORE fabric and it does not fit on the shelves, it's now spread to the chairs and the sewing table. I really have to STOP buying fabric and work with what I have.

I need a plan.

I'm thinking of removing the dresser that is in the room and putting that in the bedroom. Then take the bins out of the closet so that I can easily get to all my gadgets, WIP, UFOs and other things in the bins. Eventually, EVERYTHING will have to come out of the room so that I can reorganize it all again. I know I have many UFOs. I have blocks just waiting to be put together to form a quilt top. Right off the top of my head I can think of Carol Doak's BOMs, lighthouses, teacups, friendship blocks and sampler blocks. Oh and all those Build a Blocks, postage stamp blocks and various paper pieced blocks that I have done. Many kits, just waiting for me. A quilt top that is in the process of being put together (I HOPE I have all the pieces). Not to mention the tops that I have done that need to be layered, quilted and binded.

Then there's two mystery quilts that are just SCREAMING for me to make them. There's the NYE quilt from the Pickle Group and the newest Quiltville Mystery. I just won't be happy unless I do them. And then from my Blockbuddies group, I want to participate in the challenge and make a potato bag.

I have not joined in any type of block swaps on any of my groups. I must get this room straightened out and then I can go from there.

Orange Crush in Progress

What's my next project?

I stopped making a mystery quilt to start working on those darn lighthouses. The mystery is from the Quiltville site. It's called Orange Crush. I'm trying to figure out where I'm at, what step I'm on. I've come to conclusion that I finished step 5 and made 30 spinning stars.

The other pic is pieces that I have left. I printed step 5 and now have to figure out what fabric I was planning on using for this step. Apparently, I do have the smaller block pieces assembed, ie the pic of the pieces. I also need a total of 140 3.5" squares of fabric. 120 are suppose to be orange but I already put orange in the quilt, I will have to see what I have. I also need 20 3.5 inch squares in blue, that's the easy part. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the orange part. I'll have to see if I have another shade of orange or if it will be too much orange with my orange spinning stars. I'll have to see what I have in my stash.

Good thing I have a few days off from work. I can work on this mystery AND be home for the refrigerator repairman. Ugh!