Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I won't be cooking much until Friday and Saturday.  It is difficult for us to get together with family for 1 day, so we will be celebrating on Saturday.  My blog may be slowing down for a little while, because we are finally going to be able to close on our first property on Dec. 2nd.  I still am praying that all is going to go smoothly and this will really happen.  We have been thru many trials and tribulations to get to this point in our lives.  May our Lord, Jesus, give us the blessing of signing on that dotted line this time.  This means you may be following me thru the move.  The tear down of my sewing room and the re-build.  What a mess this is going to be!!!!!  I so badly want to have this done.  Oh, to top all things off ---- we are suppose to close on Dec. 2nd and we fly out for our very 1st family vacation on Dec. 8th.  We are needing to find peace with all the mess and whirlwind.

Rotary Blades

I found out about a place that sells 45mm rotary blades cheap!  $1.99 for 2 blades.....WOW!!!!!  I know they fit an Olfa cutter, but I am not certain about any other brand.  These blades have a round hole in the middle and fit the Olfa just fine!  Go to www.harborfreightsusa.com and search blades.  I found them on the second page.  The shipping may be high if you only order 1.

Still exhausted!

The weekend was a great get-away.  I got very little sleep, but a lot of sewing and quilting done.  I felt very successful and beginning to get ahead of the game.

 
I finished ANOTHER baby quilt.  I used an easy rail fence and  a very cute duck border.  I quilted the body of the quilt with quilting The open tear drop or the J hook, not sure exactly what the name is.  In the border I quilted bubbles.  It turned out very nice.

These are the fabrics and I used the flannel for the back for softness.

Finished with a pail blue binding,  this will be a warm cozy quilt for a baby.
I also work on a huge rag quilt and finished stitching it together.  I still have all the clipping to do, but with the special scissors for clipping rag quilts, it will go pretty fast.  It will be warm and cozy for our COLD, SNOWY winter.  I used 10" squares from 5 different flannels.  10X11  BIG!!!!!

The best of laughs happen to be when we arrested the undercover cop that was very stiff with the fines.  We had to take 2 1/2 inch strips of Christmas fabric and when caught in violation ----- well a strip was due to pay the fine.  Man, let me tell you she was a strict one.  I was broke by Saturday night!!  I was down to giving my clothing!  Here is Elaine strangling the undercover cop, Marlene. 

I found that we all have the need to be accepted and appreciated for our love of quilting.  We enjoyed each other and visited a lot.   I look awful and exhausted--getting a total of around 5 hours of sleep from Friday thru Sunday.  Guess, I'm not looking too bad!!  LOVED MY TIME

retreat

Well girls today is the first day of a 3 day retreat.  It was foggy and the roads are very ice with lots of snow.  Made it safely and ready to get busy.  Will be updating with pictures later. 

Getting ready for baby

Finding out that our daughter and her husband are giving us our first grandchild, so ....... grandma got busy.  I have not done much for DM quilting, so here goes----- Our family is a true ranch family and true cowboys, so this fabric was a great choice for a quilt.  The salmon fabric was a little plain, so thought I'd use my embroidery machine and add some saddles.


 Then I found some sulky thread that had all the colors needs, so I used a teardrop type motif all over the body of the quilt.  Not too bad for the first try!!




This is a crib size quilt and it didn't take as long as I had thought, so on to the borders.  This quilt has two--salmon that I put hearts and swirls in it and then the yellow border I tried my hand at J hooks.  Not bad!!

 




 
 Now I am working on the binding.  I am hand sewing on a yellow binding.  I am moving on to another one to see what new things I can come up with.
I must say that the quilting world really push long arm quilting, but I am finding that my domestic machine, Pfaff C1100, is doing just fine--think I'll keep it.
I plan on working on a couple small projects and then I am going to move to a larger quilt.  Working on small projects and seeing that I am successful gives me the courage to go BIG!!!  

New beginnings

The "quilt Police" showed at a group I was at.  Our retreat is suppose to be having the police, too.
Today is a new beginning for me.  I am trying something new, a blog!  I have decided to share my love of quilting and things I have learned.  I have a good friend Elaine that blogs and told me to give it a try--well, here goes.  This weekend I am going to a 3 day quilt retreat and plan on sewing until my machine starts yelling "stop".  I'll keep you posted on how much I get done and what others are doing.   Enjoy the future and God Bless.