HAPPY EASTER and NewFO Challenge Link Up

First things first, a blessed Easter Greeting to each of you.  As I searched for a vintage Easter card for you I found it quite difficult to choose just one.  I wanted the card to reflect the importance of this day in your greeting, but I can't resist showing you more cards that caught my fancy.

I wonder who styled her Easter Bonnet?  Looks like she is all decked out for the Easter Parade.  Can't help but picture Judy Garland walking down the street with Fred Astaire in the movie "Easter Parade".

And who can resist the children, I truly love looking at these old vintage cards and even have a scrapbook that belonged to my dear father full of these vintage postcards that my grandmother gave him when he was a child.

I could jabber and bore you for a long time about these cards, but I will go on.  It has certainly been a busy month I started  this little candle mat to have some hand work at night.

It will have tiny buttons for flowers when completed.  But not much progress since I had a king size quilt to bind later in the month

Monday of this last week I loaded a quilt on the quilter that belonged to a student and finished it yesterday.  She was going to try to get the binding on last night to give as a birthday gift today.  Sorry no picture, I forgot.  Don't know how I forget those things.

And I did finish my king size Log Cabin Hearts.  It used to be a NewFO in January.

It now has a new home, Angelyn and her husband really liked the quilt.  She sent me a photo of it on her bed and it looked lovely with her wrought iron headboard.

Well, not much new this month but look out next month, I plan to start all sorts of projects, plus finish one or two.  

Hope your journey includes lots of NewFO's.  And a big THANK YOU to Barbara at Cat Patches for hosting this Challenge!

A Lovely Year of Finishes for March Log Cabin Heart

Well here it is, FINISHED, I really can't hardly believe that I was able to get this completed with 6 days to spare.  Many thanks go again to the gals that are hosting A Lovely Year Of Finishes.  Having a goal is great for me since I am a list maker and goal setter.

Click this button on the right side of my blog to go to this site.  Linking up is easy and I am finding it a great experience.  Checking off my list of UFO's is very satisfying also.  I may even get brave and try to finish a COUPLE of UFO's for April.

Well, back to Log Cabin Hearts....I used King Tut Egypsy Rose #403 for the quilting.  I used one 2,000 yd spool for bobbin thread and one 2,000 yd for the top.  Both spools have less than 500 yds left on each so I estimate there is about 3,000 yds in the quilt.  I used Hobbs Heirlooms for the batting.

Here is a closeup of the border quilting.

Now the only thing left is to call Angelyn and tell her she can pick it up and say goodbye to Log Cabin Hearts, I know it is going to a good home.  I am showing great restraint by not calling her too early in the morning.  It was actually finished yesterday, but I try not to do any business activity on Sunday.  So the clock is ticking slowing for me this morning.  But it is all part of the journey.  I am always in awe of the wonderful experiences and friendships you come across as a quilter.  Hope your day is filled with joy.

It's Spring..Is That Snow I See?

Yes indeed , we just received another large snow storm.  I will be the first to admit I love the days I can stay in and sew.  But really this is getting rather tiresome.  Hubby has been out shoveling and said perhaps 6 to 8 inches AGAIN!  Oh well surely spring will wake up soon, and by the way where is that groundhog, we need to talk.

Can't believe it has been a week since my last post, but I have been busy not just sitting eating bon bon's and watching past episodes of Downton Abby.  We were out and about a couple of days attempting to stock up on gluten free products after I canvased the internet for knowledge on this new adventure.  Before we left we deglutened the house.  Son hit the jackpot with free food.  Not only am I more knowledgeable but my computer "favorites" is jammed packed with recipes.  Haven't tried bread yet again but  have made some tasty biscuits, so I feel I am headed down the right path.

As for quilting, I have been working diligently on whipping down the binding on the Log Cabin Hearts, it won't be long now.  And I put this little piece on the quilter yesterday for a "quilting take me away" moment.  This binding needs whipped down too.

Nothing seems to alleviate  my stress more than a few minutes on the quilter. And I've been a little stressed about finding food and recipes that taste good. I've been cooking for over 50 years (oh my did I ever date myself) and it's kind of that old dogs new tricks thing.

I've also been working on my Guild Challenge but can't say much about it...it's a secret till June but am excited about how it is progressing.

Well anyway the journey continues, looking forward to where it takes me next.  Just hope it's not food related.  Have a great day!

My Rainy Sunday

Today is cold and rainy so it has been a good day to experiment in the kitchen, among other things.  We had a nice visit to the health food market and that will be another post when I can concentrate instead of prattle. Most of my concentration has gone to feeling my heart beat in my foot again.  Been on it too much today and you will see as I prattle on...

First a little background, (told you I was prattling) we have noticed for quite some time that dear hubby seemed to have allergy issues when he ate, for several years nothing serious, just the cough, nasal issues,  well for several months now his tinnitus had become quite bothersome.  Depending upon what we ate I started suspecting a wheat allergy not the celiac problem but an allergy none the less and I headed to my medical authority, the internet and sure enough a gluten allergy can cause tinnitus.  We also confirmed this with our medical doctor while he was working on my foot.  So our visit to the health food store became even more interesting.  I purchased everything for gluten free baking and this morning armed with my recipe and info I had gleaned from the web I proceed to make my bread.  I am dairy free, meat free, soy free and egg free.  The plot thickened, egg replacements and all, I can't believe it took me sooo long to get a loaf a bread ready for the bread machine, (the method recommended by a couple of the recipes).

I kept reading about gluten free bread machines, well lets just say mine is not.  It mixed and baked and hubby wanted to take a pic and I said a resounding NO!  Strangely enough; taste 10, visual appeal 0.  As I was grumbling hubby kept saying "All I care is it tastes good".  Lesson number 1, don't use the bread machine until you perfect the recipe.  I believe the issue stems from needing a couple of more tablespoons of liquid.  Will try my mixer and dough hook, and the oven next and will let you know if I do any better.  While the bread was baking I put some steel cut oats in the crockpot with cinnamon.  They turned out great!  Is it time for breakfast yet?  Then while the bread was cooling, I decided to take the quilt off the quilter, yes I put the last stitches in last evening, hubby saw me and came to help take the pins out and he carried it to the cutting table where he helped me move the quilt so I could trim it.  Isn't he the best! By this time foot was saying, "HELLO".
But alas, it's time to get lunch I wanted to try a pasta casserole that is a favorite of hubby's with gluten free pasta.  I used a quinoa/corn pasta and rice based mozzarella, it was really good but it needs a little less liquid....I can't win, I should have put the pasta liquid  in the bread, well on second thought maybe not.
Lunch over, I'm starting to feel my heart beat in my foot again, and after that issue had subsided yesterday.  But I still wanted to cut my binding, so it is cut and sewn together but foot said "don't even think about it" as I headed to the ironing board.  Actually it was more intense throbbing, but I got the idea.  So here I am in front of the computer and will have my foot up the rest of the evening.  Will do some hand work, wish it was the binding, but maybe tomorrow.
Sorry this is so long but before I go I want to show you the cutest little birthday gift a student brought me a couple of days ago...

Aren't they cute!

Here they are open and a dime to give you a comparison for size.  They cut thread really well. I even trimmed a dog ear off a triangle. Wouldn't they be great on a plane?  They are headed for my hexie take along bag.  THANK YOU Connie.

Oh, gotta go hubby just got out the popcorn popper, at least we can still eat popcorn!  Enjoy your journey!

WooHoo/A Lovely Year of Finishes Mid Month Update

I haven't posted for a couple of days,  wonder what I have been up to?

No, hubby and I have not been basking in the sun sipping tropical beverages.  But the snowy weather we have had makes this look really inviting.  Although today the temps are to be in the 70's and hubby and I will be off this afternoon to visit a new to us very large health food store we just heard about called Nature's Pantry.  The description I was given was the local grocery store section on steroids so I am excited to see their offerings.
I have told you what I haven't been doing so, what have I been doing?

What is this?  Surely it isn't the end of the king size Log Cabin Hearts, but woo hoo IT IS.  Can you tell I'm excited.  Be still my beating heart and foot, more about the foot in a minute.  And you see below it, other contenders for a Lovely Year of Finishes.  I am so pleased I have found that incentive for finishing my projects. If you too want to have incentive for finishing those UFO's click the Lovely Year of Finishes button on my blog.  I still have a long ways to go to a complete finish, but I know I probably would not have been this far without a little push.
I hope to finish the quilting before we leave today but I am a bit hindered right now.

I had to pay a visit to my physician yesterday afternoon which resulted in a procedure on my foot.  I often wonder why the cure is most times more painful than the actual issue.  I am confident I can feel my heart beating in my foot.  He started to ask me if I wanted the do it right then and I immediately thought about my quilting and was starting to say I would come back when he stated it needed taken care of now.  So standing at the quilter is a bit painful but I plan to push through and see what I can get done.  But if I continue to babble here I wont get done...so til another time.   Enjoy you day and your journey!

Rainy Sunday

Every other Sunday, son comes for Sunday Dinner and today was the day.  Hubby set the alarm for
5:30 am, that is our regular arising time but someone changed the clock an hour ahead and I really got up at 4:30, I love the extra daylight but for the next couple of weeks I'm sure my sleep pattern will not be right with the world.  But that too will change given time.  Before I started my lunch preparations I was able to quilt a row on the Log Cabin and turn the quilt, woohoo one more row and the quilting will be half completed!  But after turning the quilt it was time to go cook, we had a nice lunch and visit and as we were putting away the leftovers I noticed there were enough sweet potatoes left to made cookies.  Hmmm, wonder if that is why I baked 5 sweet potatoes for the three of us, I'll never tell.
My doctor has recommended I eat no meat and no dairy, which I do find challenging at times and it has been difficult for me to find cake like items that I can eat without guilt.  Really, what can you make without eggs, oil,etc, you know all the good stuff.

In my research I came across this recipe:

Fruit Cookies

1 1/2 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes

1/4 cup stevia

1 cup cinnamon applesauce

1 1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice

a handful dried cranberries

a handful chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cup oatmeal

Place everything in mixer bowl and blend until mixed thoroughly

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes.

The original recipe called for bananas and cinnamon instead of sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie spice  they are very good also. but I didn't have bananas but I did have sweet potatoes.  You can use sugar instead of stevia, I just try to stay away from processed sugar.  I used quick oats so they would be more cake like.  They are soft and chewy and very moist.  Old fashioned oats or steel cut oats would make them a little less moist.  A testimony that they taste pretty good is that hubby ate three out of the oven and he has no dietary issues.  I am kind of a watchdog over what he consumes and when I said I didn't care how many of these he ate, he then chose to go for the third one and we had just finished lunch.

Here they are cooling, a few less then what were baked.  They are fat free and healthy.

Don't think I will get anymore quilting completed today, I'm tired, sleepy and a little lazy this rainy Sunday, I learned some time ago that it is not wise for me to quilt when I am tired as I might just have to "unsew".  So I will relax this evening , try to adjust my biological clock and start my journey again tomorrow.

That First Stitch

I admit it, I'm procrastinating! I have the borders quilted on the Log Cabin Heart and I am pleased with the results and I am now ready to venture into the Log Cabin Blocks.  I know what I want to do.....

 BUT, now I am finding every excuse I can not to start into that white fabric.  I have asked hubby to raise the roller a little for me, I have eaten my breakfast, hubby saved me by saying he would like me to test out a couple of machines for him sometime.   I said eagerly, "I can do that right now". He was surprised as I usually put that on the back burner, but it sounded like a really good thing to do this morning!

Hubby restores all types of sewing machines and has been working on this Singer 99.  It needed some rewiring as he felt the electrical was not quite safe enough.  He also gave it a spa treatment and now it purrs right along.

Next was a little modern Singer Featherweight, it is new and he wanted to know how it sewed because it will soon have a new home.  It performed very nicely.  I checked it for a perfect 1/4" and it will be going to a quilter to carry to class instead of her big machine.

And I decided I really needed to do a blog post, but alas it has come to the end and I'm going to have to go put that stitch in, because it is my day to quilt, nothing on the agenda and I don't think I can find any more excuses..so wish me luck and hopefully today's journey will end with lots of quilting completed on the Log Cabin Hearts!

Paper Pieced Pineapple Quilt

A few posts back, I talked about a sewing day with a few members of my local quilt guild and we made paper pieced blocks for our Opportunity Quilt.

These are the blocks I made, 21 in all 7 of each, and two other ladies did the same.  We set the blocks together and passed it along to another member of the committee for the applique border and she designed the border and recruited a lady very adept in hand applique and she in turn passed a border side to 2 of her sisters and her mother and the four of them appliqued one side each, and we showed the top last evening at our monthly meeting...Everyone thought it turned out well and now it will be machine quilted by another of our members.  Hope your day is going well.  Enjoy your journey!

How I Trained My Dragon

Actually, I'm not a big fan of dragons, because I am a bit intimidated by anything that breathes fire and can make toast out of me if it sneezes, but dear hubby and son seem to think they are pretty neat.  Now not just any dragon mind you, the dragon has to look just right.  Naturally being a quilter, I thought son needed a dragon quilt or at least a wall quilt.  The search began, I looked and looked for an applique pattern to fit the criteria of a "good looking" dragon (according to hubby).  Hubby kept saying if I found a picture he could use as an example he could draw my applique pattern. Nothing was ever right, until one day I found a small picture and then hubby started drawing.  Now I'm just as picky about my quilts as they are about their dragons, so drawing the pattern was not as easy as dear hubby had imagined.  But he got it accomplished.....

It;s laying on white fabric...it is invisible machine appliqued and machine quilted.

 Here is an up close view of dragon trying to make toast out the the knight. The knight is wearing red satin and I machine stitched around each of the castle stones.  There is an overlay over the water because the moon is shining on it and the moon is even quilted with the shadows like we see when we look at the moon. Oh and I get it all finished, label too and hubby says "he needs gold toenails" I say "that should have been done BEFORE the quilting".  Long story short dragon has gold metallic toenails.

 Any way, dragon lives on son's wall and has since Christmas 2009.  Hubby and I call it dragon but the label says Knight's Quest.
Just thought you would like to know how I Trained My Dragon.  Hope you are having a great day
 

A Day of This and That

We still have snow...........

Our sidewalk to the front door is somewhere under that snow, but it is getting better.  The drive is clear and the porch is clear so that's the path to the door.
We got out today.  First thing of the morning was my yearly mammogram.  I get really nervous about the results of this since my breast cancer, so I got a call early this afternoon from the wonderful mammogram tech saying that my results were clear and she would see me next year.  Generally she would send a letter with the results, but since the cancer she calls me and that call is so appreciated.
Next a trip to Michael's....I wanted to get A ball of yarn that I hadn't been able to find since Christmas.  One of my quilting students said she had gotten some and it was even on sale.

Don't you like the color I chose?  Oops guess I can't count to one.  I just couldn't decide, so my one turned into five.  In my defense. it was ON SALE.  And I NEEDED it because I crochet while hubby drives to whatever the destination or while he runs in to pick up something in a store and I am along.

This is the scarf in progress, these spiral scarfs are so much fun, so now I won't run out of something to do, I have a new ball of yarn, well maybe five new balls of yarn.

Actually I also have the thread for spool pin covers in my carry along bag, you know to replace those little red felt circles that come with our sewing machines, they are just so cute and fancier than the red felt.  And you really need something under your spool if you have a vertical spool pin, it will keep your spool from spinning and will allow your thread to come off the spool more evenly.  These go very quickly and I can do one in about 10 minutes and make cute little gifts to quilting friends.

And I have been quilting on the Log Cabin Heart quilt.  My quilter has a 26" quilting space and I'm just about done with one row and have already used 2 bobbins, and the bobbins are larger than our sewing machine bobbins, gonna take awhile to get this one quilted.
Well, that's what has been going on in my world.  Oh and hubby took me out to dinner to celebrate my results! The journey continues.....hope you have a great evening!

A Busy Day

I am excited, thanks to dear hubby who was LOTS of help today, the backing has been loaded on the quilter and the batting is basted on and now the batting is relaxing....that's the only thing that bothers me about packaged batting is it is sooo wrinkled.  But I can tell a difference already and I will baste the Log Cabin quilt to the batting and backing in the morning and then I will be set to go.

I am really good at making things difficult.  I decided on a stripe with roses for the backing and of course that means the stripe had to be matched and the repeat naturally didn't match up straight so I had three uneven length of fabric that had to be squared.  And it was lots of fabric.  I chose a new bolt of 12 yards of fabric and only had a yard and a quarter left.  The backing took 10 7/8yd.  of fabric so dear hubby helped me carry it around and fold it etc.  And even helped me to pin it on, so while the batting is relaxing, hubby and I are relaxing too.  Hope your journey was fun today and you are relaxing too.

Log Cabin Hearts/A Lovely Year of Finishes

Many thanks to Fiber of All Sorts and Sew Bitter Sweet Designs for hosting A Lovely Year of Finishes for 2013.  I was actually able to link-up my finished Buzzsaw quilt the last of February which has urged me to step out on a limb and link up my Log Cabin Hearts that I am making for Angelyn as my "quilt to finish" for this month.

This is King Size and dear hubby had to get out the 5' ladder to get this photo and we still didn't get all of the outside border.  In fact after spreading it out in the available floor space there was no where to walk so every time we stepped on the edge of the border (in stocking feet) we wrinkled the border.  It really got comical after awhile. Actually we didn't get the full top and bottom either.  Oh well, you get the idea.  So before the last day of the month I must prepare the backing, lay the packaged batting out to rest, because it is larger than my batting by the roll, it only goes to 96" and I need a minimum of 114", load the quilt in the frame, wind a zillion (well maybe not a zillion but lots) of bobbins, load the quilt, quilt it with custom quilting, trim it, prepare the binding and sew it on and hand stitch it down...oh I can't forget the label and then I am done, all in 31 days. Glad it's a longer month, I may need that extra day.  Hmmmm, yep, I'm stepping out on a limb, but that's ok it will be fun to see if I can do it and if I can't I just won't be joining the linky party.  The fun is in the trying.  I'm going to have a busy journey this whole month, hope you enjoy yours.