BUSY WITH RENOVATIONS

We have again been busy with renovations around the house, this past week it was replacing doors. I did not have much to do with it, except making sure the door did not come too far into the house, and helping with shims when the door was installed. This disgusting door was the door from the outside into the garage.


And this is the replacement door. It is so nice, I love it!

This is the door that goes into my little sitting room where I do my hand stitching. This is the new door and I love this one too.


This is the inside of the same door. I made a little shade yesterday for this one. The old door used to have a lace panel, but I am rather tired of that. So I made this shade, that actually matches the ones I made on the French door on the other side of the room. This is the shade up.



And this the the shade down for night time.

I also last week spent time redoing my garden outback, putting in almost 100 bricks on a retaining wall. While DH picked them up in his truck, because of his bad back, I unloaded them and installed them. This was all made possible by the nifty garden wagon DH bought me for Mother's Day. Today I plan to get more soil and bark to go in the new area. Our native soil is so awful, really bad hardpan, and I have to cart in everything I need. It is almost impossible to dig in my native soil.

PIN CUSHION SWAP

I joined Sandra's pincushion swap. Check out her blog here for the details: http://www.quiltathome.blogspot.com/. This should be a lot of fun. The signup deadline is May 10th, and you package must be mailed by June 21st. It is an international swap.

BIRDS AND BEES RR, WENDY

The past week, I have been working on Wendy's Birds and Bees RR. She had a lovely block, and some great work on it already.



What I added was a row of Rengin's beautiful oyas (the row of pink flowers). Rengin makes these and sells them here. I also added the row of fuschias and the hummingbird charm.


I also added this section with the fence and patch of flowers, the stepping stone and the little frog charm.



This is her whole block so far.

UNDER THE SEA BLOCK-LYN'S

This is Lyn's block from the Under the Sea round robin I worked on recently. This is the entire block.

And a close-up of the treasure chest.

Online Quilt Festival, Spring 2009

There is an online quilt festival going on, which you can see here.


My favorite quilt is my Dear Jane Quilt. I called it "In Changing Times". I first started my Dear Jane in October 1997, just 3 years after I started quilting. I bought Brenda Papadakis' book Dear Jane and became fascinated with it. I started collecting reproduction fabrics with a vengeance. I found out about the Dear Jane List and joined that, which helped a lot with support and help in the construction of this quilt. They had challenges to get certain blocks and triangles done which urged me on. I hand appliqued blocks, machine pieced, and also paper pieced
this quilt. I would put my blocks away for months at a time, and then get started again
with renewed energy and determination. Finally I started completing rows and that helped
me focus more. I finally completed the top in February 2003, and had it hand quilted by
a lady named Carol Morris. I had a good time working on this quilt, some blocks
I started over because I was not pleased with them. But I am so happy I finally finished.

You've Got to Watch This-Dream the Dream

My friend Nancy recently brought my attention to this You Tube performance.
I second her sentiments. You have got to see it! You will not be sorry!

Kyleigh's Wallhanging, Landscape II RR

I finished up this little wallhanging for granddaughter Kyleigh for Easter and put it in her Easter basket. The stitchery was a kit I bought a number of years ago. It was one of Lynette Anderson's designs called The Bees Garden Stitchery. I finished the stitchery several months ago, and finally finished it up last week.












I am starting in a new CQ RR. This one is a landscape theme. I took a watercolor I had painted a number of years ago, and cropped the house and designed the landscale and where the path would come off the house. By the time I got around attaching the house, to the path it is sort of crooked, but I didn't have time to take the whole thing apart. I need to send it out today.

I am going to make a tea cozy out of this project so I have a back and a front. This one is the front.





And this is the back side.

HAPPY EASTER!

LOTTO BLOCK, MOIRA'S RR

I have actually had a pretty productive week this week. I finished getting my back garden
cleaned out of the winter's weeds and got some vegetables and flowers planted.

I also made a major cleanup in my sewing room. I cannot work in chaos, and for the past 6 months or so, my sewing room has been a horrible mess. But I managed to get it cleaned up, and I now have work surfaces to be able to work and cut fabric on.


The first thing I accomplished was making this lotto block for Nancy. It was her month (last month) in our small group that makes a block a month for the person of the month. Nancy chose this Mocha Trails block, in reproduction fabrics.












I also finished working on Moira's block for our small CQ RR I am in. Moira's blog is called Quilted Snail, so I embroidered a snail on one section of this block.









I also did the feather stitching around the curve and the silk ribbon flowers.













This is the whole block. Susan, and Gail, have already worked mostly on the fan part, and it goes next to Candi .

Former "Ugly"Block Transformed

Last weekend we attended an 85th birthday/open house for our son-in-law Jeff's grandparents. We have known them since Jeff and Kristen first got together over 10 years ago. Carmel and Lewis happen to share the same birthday, the same year, so it was a double celebration.

I first contemplated getting them chocolates or plant or flowers of some kind. Then I started looking through my quilts to see if I had any lap quilts, but sadly I have given away most of my quilts to family and friends. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me what I could possibly do as a quick gift. I mentioned in a prior post here about my former ugly block, which I sent around in my small group of CQ friends in a round robin, Susan, Gail, and Moira. My block came back transformed and beautiful. I decided to make a cushion out of this block. I embroidered an L and a C with a love charm in between.



When we presented it to Carm and Lewie they were delighted with it and proceeded to show it to all their relatives coming in the door.

This block was constructed mostly of men's silk tie remnants I had bought years ago in the Bay area I think.

Anyway, I would like to thank Susan, Gail and Moira again for making my block beautiful!






This was the back, which Carm said she almost liked the back as much as the front.












Last week was a hard one, at work. As I do all my transcription work on the internet, the secure server or something got messed up with that virus on April 1st, which didn't bother me that day,
but did the April 2nd. We couldn't sign on to transcribe, or if we could, we would not get a sound file. I messed with different settings suggested by the company on and off for 5 hours, and then was finally able to finish my work. But it made for a very long day. The next day, our company offered a bonus to do extra work, as we were so far behind from 2 days of messed up connections. Added to that, last week I worked on taxes, and thankfully those are done now too.

Today should prove to be a wonderful day, as I am finished with my day's work at 9:30 in the morning. I am looking forward to a day of working in my sewing room, gardening, and maybe painting a small watercolor to use in an upcoming round robin block.