Pink Ruffles

The last minute start on the shower quilt ended up going quite smoothly. I finished it the night before the shower. This one is backed in white anti-pill fleece and edged in a pink ruffle. After all these boy babies, no way was I letting the only girl baby get by without pink ruffles! The mommy to be seemed to really like it, and that's what matters. Personally, I think this is my favorite quilt that I've made so far. Not the most challenging by any means, but it is just so cuddly with that fleece backing and those little teddy bears.

Caught Up

I think that has me caught up with finished, or nearly finished projects for now. I still need to finish...actually I still need to START the quilt for the baby shower in ten days! Once that is finished I have a whole list of things I want to do...I'm making a purse like the one a couple of posts ago for my daughter, I've found a several Christmas ornament patterns I'd love to try, I just bought a Debbie Mumm tree skirt panel that I want to embellish and quilt, and I still need to quilt and bind the Mystic Ribbons quilt and then start the Rainbow stars quilt and purr pad for my dear friend and her kitty.

So, there's no shortage of projects to work on...just a shortage of time.

Yet Another Baby Shower

Let's see...what else have I worked on? Honestly, it's been a while since I've spent much time at the machine, so I've kind of lost track. Yet another baby quilt for a shower this coming weekend. I have the top finished and just need to get it quilted and bound. The pattern is Warm Wishes.



The overall picture just doesn't do the colors justice, so there is a close up of one corner. The expecting parents have registered for the rainforest patterns from Fischer Price, so these colors should go nicely for them...I hope!

















Are any girl babies being born anymore? I swear all we've had among family and friends for the last year and a half have been boys. I do have one little girl baby to make for though...a co-worker is expecting a little ruffled bundle in December. I haven't even started cutting fabric for that quilt yet and the shower is November 14th!!

First Purse

This is the first purse I've made. It was super easy, but I thought it was going to be bigger and had planned to use it as a tote. Oh well. I like it anyway. The pattern is "Pick a Pocket" on page 16 of the Fall 2008 Quilts and More magazine.

Baby Craze

I've fallen behind in updating and have a few things to post.

The name of this quilt is Baby Craze, and Baby Craze is about what's been going on around here with one shower after another. This one was for a shower in October. I finished it on the morning of the shower!

The quilt is done entirely in flannels with a Minkee backing. The binding is done by folding the Minkee to the front. This quilt is so heavy, there is no batting. Design credit is a few posts ago, back when I posted the first few blocks.

Back to Sewing

It's been a very hectic couple of weeks here, to say the very least. DGS #2 was born, and was in fact a grandSON as predicted. He had a bit of a problem with jaundice, but his mommy had a very rough delivery followed by developing congestive heart failure a couple of days later. Murphy was in one hospital and his mommy in another and my son was running back and forth between the two. Murphy got to come home a day before his mommy, so we had that to juggle as well. But, finally a week and half later, they are all together at their house now and our house is getting as back to normal as it ever is. So, today I had to partake of some sewing therapy.

I worked on the twist border for my English Cottage Garden quilt. I sewed the first one on wrong twice before finally getting it right...boy did I ever need a retreat day!!

Only the top two borders are actually attached. The cornerstone and the side borders are just laid out to see how it's going to come together.

First Wall Hanging

I'm working on my first wall hanging now. I have the main body sewn together and am working on the borders now. I'm not terribly happy with the dark brown and dark green that I chose for the outer edges of the background, but I think the border fabric will really brighten it up. The blue diamond of the border will pull to the blue sky of the center piece.

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This is my first attempt at border prints, and also my first attempt at mitered borders. We'll see how that turns out.

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The pattern is adapted from "Wild About Horses" in the Quick Quilts magazine #89

Another kind of "side track" project I made was for Grandson #1's first birthday. Two Transformers pillows, a quilted Transformers tote bag and a "store bought" Transformers hooded bath towel.

The tote bag has been nice to use to carry a few toys along when we go out for the day.

Another One Finished

Baby Murphy's Quilt of Many Colors is completely finished! I completed the last of the quilting and the binding today. I also have already washed and dried it because I was so worried about color bleeding with all those brights and that white background. It washed up just fine...thank goodness!

I've got to admit that I feel a pretty big sense of accomplishment for finishing this one. It's far from perfect, but it's also not horrible.

Risk is Relative

One of my favorite TV shows is Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel. If you've not seen it, it is a show that loosely fits into the documentary type category. It follows five or six crab boats through their King or Opelio Crab seasons on the Bering sea between Alaska and Russian waters. The show is called Deadliest Catch because the job these fishermen do is ranked as the number one deadliest occupation by the US Labor Department.

To say that it is cold where they work goes way beyond being a simple understatement. The waters of the Bering Sea have been referred to by one captain as liquid ice. Waves of twenty to forty feet are not uncommon. The summary of each season on the TV show is given in terms of money made by each boat in the fleet, how much each deckhand's share was, and how many men died or were lost at sea that season. Jockeys often say, and rightfully so, that their sport is the only one where an ambulance follows the athletes around the course, but tallying the season with a death toll takes on a whole new dimension of danger.

Obviously, these men (and a very few women) risk their lives not every day, but every minute of their jobs. If they go over board without a survival suit on, the window of opportunity for a successful rescue is about two to five minutes. As far as risk goes, they live on the outer fringes of the extreme. Where does that leave the rest of us? Are the extreme risk takers, such as the Alaskan crab fisherman, the only ones living on the edge?

Like many other things in life, risk is relative. My level of acceptable risk is admittedly, and thankfully, much lower than that of the crabbers. Some people have levels of acceptable risk lower than mine, and many have levels they are willing to take that fall somewhere in between me and the crabbers. Each person has some level of risk that they are willing to take. Horses are a great example to use for this.

To some, just standing beside a horse is too scary to even contemplate. Horses are big animals with minds of their own and are prone to the occasional fit of fright in which they will very likely try to jump on top of you if you're in the way. To others, petting a horse, or sitting astride while someone else holds the lead rope will push their comfort zone into the realm of risk just about as far as they are willing to take it. Then, at the other extreme, we have the jockeys, three day event riders, barrel racers, stadium jumpers, steeplechasers, hunt riders, etc that ride fast, turn hard, and jump high and love every minute of it.

One of my favorite quotes is from John Wayne, "Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. " Risk is relative. What thrills you, may terrify me. What is simple for me to do, may scare the bejeebers out of someone else. The person who is terrified of horses, yet sits astride while being led around the yard is being brave. A rider that is afraid to leave the arena, but goes on a trail ride anyway...white knuckles and all...is being brave. When we are learning a new event, pushing ourselves to that next level beyond where we are comfortable now, is being brave. I'll never forget when I was learning to barrel race and took the pattern at a fast canter for the first time after working it at the trot for several days. That sounds pretty mundane, but for me at the time I may as well have been riding a hundred miles an hour. The funniest comparison I've heard is between two of the Alaskan Crab fishermen, Jonathan and Andy Hillstrand, two brothers that co-captain the F/V Time Bandit. When off the boat, Johnathan rides a nitrous boosted motorcycle at speeds I don't even want to think about. Brother Andy rides and trains horses on his ranch in Indiana. Who takes the bigger risk? Just ask the brothers. Jonathan says that Andy is nuts for messing with horses. He says even Superman was killed by a horse!

It's funny that watching this show that show cases the most extreme risks most of us can imagine, has made me think about every day courage and risk. Thinking of life in terms of the extreme can make the rest of us feel pretty insignificant if we let it...like our little jobs and hobbies are a joke compared to those living on the edge. However, RISK IS RELATIVE. As long as I am pushing beyond a comfort level and into an area of risk for me, then I am living on the edge of MY level of acceptable risk. To attempt to live on the edge of someone else's acceptable risk is ridiculous.

I adopted a BLM Mustang, gentled her myself, and will begin her saddle training this Fall. For some, that's a pretty brave and risky thing to do. To others, it's nothing. They do that and more several times a week in their horse activities. For me, it was...and is...a risk, but one I'm willing to take. On the other hand though, I have an irritating fear involving horses in that I have grown accustomed to riding in an arena or fenced pasture and as time has gone on and I've gotten older, I've become afraid to ride out in the open, such as on a trail ride. I used to really enjoy this, so I do know what I'm missing. Yet, fear has stopped me from trail riding. I will gentle and train a Mustang, but not ride my trained domestic horse on a trail ride. Even within one person there are areas of bravery and cowardice. Cowardice can quickly lead to stagnation as we refuse to push out of our comfort zone and into a new level of acceptable risk. My horse activities have become less enjoyable and have been at a stand still for a few years now because of this fear. I only recently realized this as the reason that I just don't enjoy horses as much as I used to. I'm doing the same thing over and over every day without growing, without pushing a boundary no matter how small, into a new level of risk.

Will I ever have the courage required to step onto a crab boat as a deck hand? Of course not! That would be way beyond any level of risk I could ever accept. My Bering Sea may be riding a trail through the woods at a state park, someone else's may be riding a three day event course, and someone else's yet may be getting on a horse in the first place. If I can be scared to death and saddle up anyway, then even John Wayne might have called me brave. Risk is relative.

• The Deadliest Catch TV show http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/deadliestcatch/deadliestcatch.html
• The F/V Time Bandit http://www.timebandit.tv/
• Hobby Horse Acres, owned by Andy and Sabrina Hillstrand http://www.hobbyhorseacres.net/

Baby Craze

I started a new quilt this week for a family friend who is expecting a baby boy in October. I hope to finish it before the shower so I can give it as a shower gift. So far, this is an extremely easy and fun quilt to work on. It's so easy, I feel like I'm "cheating".

The design is called Baby Craze by Terry Starke. It was in the Summer 2008 Fon's & Porter's Easy Quilts magazine. I've taken a few liberties with the block designs, but it's basically the same. So far I don't have enough variety going on to photograph well, but this is a start.

Each seam of the blocks will get stitched over with a decorative stitch to give it the appearance of having been sewn together as patches.

It is FINISHED!

Well, the top anyway...but that's the hard part with this one. In some miraculous freak of quilting luck, by the time I got both borders on, this wildly misalligned quilt top with virtually no two blocks the same size ended up folding up completely squared. Go figure.

Mystic Ribbons Continues

I got the inner border on the Mystic Ribbons quilt today. What an accomplishment! This quilt has been a real lesson in making things work whether to fit or not. Hopefully the outer border will be a lot easier now that I at least have four even edges to work with now...even if it's not square.

Grandma's Quilts

Below, are three of my grandmother's quilts that I still have. Because of her, I have always wanted to learn to quilt, but it took grandkids of my own to actually get me started.

Progress on Mystic Ribbons

I have all 24 blocks finished and have 12 sewn together in three rows of four. When this one is finished, it will have two borders...one the yellow of the lattice and the outer will match the background. Hopefully, the effect will be that of the yellow lattice with entertwinging ribbons floating on the celestial looking background. We'll see how that works out in reality.

Just a Swingin'

Of course, there are more grandbaby projects. I got a wonderful old style wind up baby swing at a yard sale for five dollars, but the seat cover was awful. I challenged myself to create the pattern and make one totally "from scratch". I also made a support pillow for his little head that matches the ruffle on the seat cover.

Pounds to Quilts

(NOTE: The above is NOT my quilt. It is a picture of what my quilt will hopefully someday resemble. The picture is from page 53 of the August 2008 issue of McCall's Quilting magazine and was designed by Beth Hayes, machine quilted by Asta Dorsett and called Summer at Mom's)


This started out as a project for the HGTV message boards where a group of us are joining forces in support to lose weight. Face it, quilting isn't exactly a physically active hobby and as the quilts grow, often too do the bottoms of the quilters. So, as a reward and incentive, we have each set a quilting related thing to correspond to each pound lost.

This was supposed to be mine, with each pound lost being represented by each block made. So far I've lost six pounds and made three blocks. But, while I wasn't looking, this project got hijacked as a Christmas present. I realized this would be perfect for my mother in law. So, now it is going to be her quilt and I'll have to think of another pounds to quilts reward. Maybe a string quilt...I've been wanting to try one of those.



Here are my first three blocks.

Back to the Quilts

Finally. This is NOT for one of the grandkids. It's not for my husband. It is for ME!

I like pink and green together and have always been drawn to the Yellow Brick Road quilt pattern so I'm making myself a pink and green version. Every fabric is either a botanical or is a swirl or other look that reminds me of the ornamentation in an English Cottage Garden.

The second picture is a layout of the border fabrics. The top is finished, but still needs the borders. I'm going to try something different with this one and attempt a Celtic like twist at each corner.

Mrs. Santa

Oh my...I forgot about my real first quilt! LOL

This is a little quilt, sham, and dust ruffle that I made for a doll house that I've been working on for years (with no end in sight). It's my vision of the Santa home at the north pole. Here, Mrs. Claus pauses for a cup of warm cocoa before settling into bed for the night.

Another Non-Quilt

Since I posted the first thing I made for Grandson #2, I thought I'd post the first thing I made for Grandson #1...even before the first quilt. The second picture was taken with my new camera and it shows the true colors. Obviously, the first camera had color issues.

I sort of designed this as it went. It is basically one huge Granny Square except that every few rounds I did a few rows of Double Crochet. That created a problem of how to get back to the Granny Square stitching. I figured that out, then continued on alternating between a few rows of Granny Square, then a few rows of Double Crochet.

By the way, this is the first, last, and ONLY crocheted items you'll see from me. I finished this set, but I'll never again start a crochet project. I'll leave that to those that actually enjoy torture.

Fleece Blankie

Obviously, this isn't a quilt. But, I'm on a roll and this was the first thing I made for Grandson #2. It's a tied fleece blanket that I made for the baby shower and used it as a liner for the "bedtime basket" gift I put together.

AJ's Room Set

I got adventurous with this one. It started with the window treatments I made for Grandson #1's bedroom (are we noticing a pattern here?). Then, I had some of the animal print fabric left over...so...of course...I made a quilt out of it. A bit more was left over and there came the pillow sham.

Baby Whosit's Quilt of Many Colors

As any quilter knows, a new baby is just another great excuse to make a quilt. With grandbaby #2 on the way, I started Baby Whosit's Quilt of Many Colors, but now Baby Whosit is known as Murphy...assuming the ultrasound is correct and Grandson #2 is, in fact, a Grandson rather than a Granddaughter. Stranger mistakes have happened. We should all know in a few weeks.

The main block in this quilt is called Arkansas Crossroads. Of course, after I had most of it finished I saw a MUCH easier way of constructing the blocks from a member of the HGTV message boards.

This pattern came from a book that has long since been returned to the library or I'd give credit. The top is completely finished and it's ready to sandwich and quilt. Only five weeks until Due Day, so I'd better get to it!

Mystic Ribbons

This is the first quilt that I feel like I really started "from scratch" by finding a pattern, selecting the fabrics, and cutting and piecing all the blocks. I'm posting these in the order that I started them, so by now I've actually finished a quilt including the machine quilting and binding...but this one still feels like the first even though it's not finished yet.

• Pattern is adapted from a couple of different sources, but it is usually called "Ribbons"


• I'm making this one for my husband, for a "TV Quilt"


• I have 21 of 24 blocks finished so far. Shown are 12 blocks laid out, but not yet sewn together.

Baby Rags

After making two quilts for the baby shower, I realized that I had no quilts at home for the first Grandbaby. I wanted something quick and easy. I learned how to make a rag quilt, though I did it a bit different. I used just two layers...one of flannel and one of fleece.

• Flannels and Fleece


• Basic Rag Quilt Pattern


• Made for Grandbaby to have at our house


• Completed May 2007

Quilt of Many Textures

The next quilt I did was also grandbaby inspired.

Though this was a very simple pattern from a kit, I learned a lot from it. The pieces had to be cut to size, sewn together, and the inner and outer borders had to be measured and assembled for the full quilt. Then, I had to decide how to quilt it. I chose to stitch in the ditch for both borders and tie quilted the center panel

• Made from a JoAnn's kit



• For Daughter's baby shower in April 2007

Quilted Beginnings

I think it's a common thing for a first grandchild to spark a new creative hobby. I grew up with my grandmother's quilts, but never sewed more than a stitch or two myself until my first grandchild was on the way. Of course, my first quilts were for him.

This first attempt was a prequilted panel that I just sewed the binding to. I found that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be!

• Made from a Prequilted panel


• For Daughter's baby shower in April 2007

The Podiatrist

There used to be a time when, if something hurt there was a reason. My foot hurt because my horse had stepped on it. My leg muscles hurt because I'd been on a long ride. My throat hurt because I'd been sick. Whatever the hurt, always a reason.

Lately, there's not always a reason. At least not one I want to acknowledge. Old and fat is a reason, but I'd rather not consider it just yet. Now it seems that I'm just falling apart for no reason.

I wake up at five in the morning and have to get out of bed because there is no longer any position that stops the pain in my back. This could, of course, be blamed on a bad mattress. However, when I was twenty a bad mattress wasn't such an issue.

At work, my elbow hurts when I hold my hands up to type on the keyboard. An older lady in the office showed me a strap she uses on her forearm to ease the elbow pain. I suppose I'll go buy one.

I was just pulling a blanket from the clothes drier. When I gripped it to drag it out, my wrist hurt. I can't even have the satisfaction of knowing that it's because I spent all day yesterday pruning the bushes...because I didn't. They probably make a wrap for this too.

The part that is hardest to stomach though is that my feet hurt to the point that I've gone to the podiatrist. The podiatrist! Not only did I go to the podiatrist, but I now have orthodics on order. I've been to the podiatrist and ordered orthodics. If there is a single statement in the English language that will make you feel older than that one does, I don't know what it would be.

I seem to be simply unraveling. But the way I see it, I can let the ends all fray out and feel sorry for myself, or I can take what the podiatrist and the ace bandage aisle at Walmart have to offer and hold everything together and get on with it...no matter how frumpy it makes me feel to now have a podiatrist.

First Entry

There does have to be a first entry, doesn't there? I could make a big deal out of it and try to think up something really worth while, thought provoking, or entertaining. But, then I'd probably just get stuck and end up writing nothing.

So, without further thought...

No drama. No fan fare. Just a first entry and get it over with.

Now it is done. The first entry is made and I can move on.