Who me?

I can take it or leave it when it comes to celebrities.

I'm not an autograph collector.

I don't gush over Hollywood stars.

Okay.

!!!

I've been tapped on the shoulder by a superstar!

LOL

I'm so pumped right now, I can't stand it.

This has totally made my year!

I'm such a geek!

This beautiful fabric is what caused all this.

It's from Pat Bravo.

Love.  Love.  Love.

(still excited!)

I've been working on my values quilt

and the Jack's Chain quilt.



See the darker "star" on the right?  That's the same fabric-Double Bloom in Taupe. 

It's such a beautifully complicated and versatile fabric to work with, I put more of it in the values quilt as I went along.  It has so many of my favorite colors all playing along nicely together.

So, here is where I am now.  Javi was home Saturday and agreed to help me get a photographic perspective on the overall design.  Having a tiny design wall and not much space to walk back for a larger view gets me a little quilter's block.

I am in love with this quilt!  It's watercolorish enough for hubby sweets, has the darker colors Javi likes, Middleman thinks it's cool and even Bean

wanted in on the action!  LOL

(the cat is just there because she's smaller and catchable!)

I posted pictures on flick yesterday and got an invite to add the Jack's Chain wip to Art Gallery Fabrics pool.  Okay.  I'm curious.  Who's pbquiltartist?  And why is she inviting me to her flickr group?

It's Pat Bravo!

OM!

I couldn't add the pictures of the Jack's Chain quilt that I have because it's in too many groups already.  So I will have to take more to add.  LOL  She also commented on the values quilt, so I added that one to the group.

I am a nerd first class.  Starstruck nerd I tell ya!

Deep sigh of coolness.

LOL

Excited to share the back of the Stars Over Indiana quilt the ladies at ISQB helped me put together.

I've been waiting to finish this one because I wasn't sure how I wanted the back to look.  But I loved the effect of the Single Irish Chain on the Aloha quilt so much

that that's what I decided I would do for this one too.

I'm so glad I listened!  This is such a soothing and fresh sight to see when I look at it.  Not sure where it's going design wise, but I like it!  The nine patches are all 1" squares.  Yes, I'm crazy.  But then you already knew that!

I'm working on three quilts right now and waiting for the Quilts for Comfort blocks to come in so I can make them into two quilts for cancer patients.  My mom is now on maintenance chemo.  Once every 4 weeks or so she goes in for a treatment.  She is one of the toughest, bravest, courageous women I know!

Thanks for sharing in the excitement with me!  Hope your day is a happy one!

Spring?

Is it ever coming back?  LOL

How yummy are these?

Or these?

With a little bit of this thrown in?

(all images courtesy of ebay)

I am so ready for green grass, trees budding out, and warmer temperatures.  I'm dreaming of a green St. Patrick's Day!  What about you?



Happy Valentine's Day!

To all you sweeties out there...you know who you are!

To my hubby muffin...thanks for 22 years of celebrating Valentine's Day together!

I love you!

Mabye I'm just too stupid

to get why all the weird things that happen around my house...happen?

I offer up for you a typical Monday morning.

A butter knife in the corner cupboard with the macaroni and cheese and instant potatoes.

A sock, rolled and ready to walk on its own lying on a furnace vent in the dining room. 

Dishes on the floor in the kitchen. (ok, I know why they're there! meow.  woof.)

One lone glove, turned inside out, in the middle of the den.

A headless army man worshipping baby Jesus in the nativity set that's still up from Christmas.

A kid still in bed at 8:00 who should already have had breakfast and be in the shower when I get home from taking kid #3 to school.

Quilting bee blocks that were neatly organized and stacked so I would know who sent what...in three separate piles not anywhere near the identifying envelops they came in.

The lid on the washer up.  The load in the washer wondering where the heck the hot water went to.

A gazillion pairs of shoes by the door to the garage.

A kid who over the week had black and blue knees that I iced down...only to find out it was dye from the jeans he had worn sledding the day before.  Thankful it came off in the tub. 

A bathroom floor that was clean and clear yesterday, piled high with clothes today.  Gee.  Someone cleaned out their bed?

But, I am thankful for things in spite of my self pity, I hate housework, I'm tired of homeschooling, long hair growing out-on a boy, cats with cancer pooping and peeing, dog just wants to go run in the snow when it's a -5 degree day, I am a living taxi, party.

I am thankful for:

The man who was walking by and helped Middleman push my car back into the driveway after getting stuck backing out of it.

Javi's 19th birthday and safe return from an Intervarsity conference down by the ice-encrusted airport.

Kelsey Koch went home to healing and Jesus.

A job my husband goes to every day that provides for us.

Heated car seats.

A garage.

Three somewhat, well, square meals a day.

A soft and warm bed at the end of the day.

And a cat who found out she can't walk on water.  Bean brought Wee-kips to me drenching wet.  I checked every possible spill source in the house before coming back to the kitchen to find wet paw prints coming out of the sink full of dishes. 

Please, I'm accepting donations from friends and family alike for a mini-vacation to Cancun, Mexico.  I hear the weather is great there and that it's a lot warmer there...than here!

Global Warming?

Well, we've dodged the bullet so far.

Monday night, in preparation for the ice and blizzard coming our way, I made a huge pot of ham and beans and baked some corn bread.  I also made a huge pot of potato soup.  Two meals we could heat up on the camp stove if we lost power like we did in 2005.

Our neighborhood looked like Bastogne must have looked like after the German shelling.  If you've ever watched Band of Brothers...the tops of the trees just exploding and raining down destruction.

We went to bed that night fully expecting a tree to come through the roof.  Finally falling asleep, exhausted from the stress.  The sound of the branches cracking and breaking from the weight of the ice was nerve wracking.  We have huge, old trees everywhere in our neighborhood.  I've never seen such a mess, except when we watched those scenes in that miniseries.

Thankfully, we've not had our power company have anyone out of power for a long time.  7 hours at the most is what I've heard.  Kudos to the power company crews!

Schools have been cancelled again today.  When Bean's school and Middleman's school are out...we don't do homeschool either.  And since I cleaned and prepared like a madwoman Monday, I've had time to sew.

I took the Jack's Chain quilt top to the guild meeting.

KT and I had a late brunch.  (yes, grits are on the food pyramid and I did find someone who serves them this far north of the Mason-Dixon Line)  We went to a sewing machine sales store and they had their machines out for us to use.  I'm glad I brought mine because some of the ladies spent a lot more time figuring out their machines than they did sewing.  Met some fabulous women and KT and I got to visit a LQS where I added to my Kaffe Fassett collection.

Jack's Chain is a fun block to piece, but I took a slight break from it to try this,

just a simple bow-tie block.  I wanted to play with the Kaffe Fassett fabrics so badly.  This is out of the box for me normally.  But I'm really liking the effect.  So does hubby-muffin.  That always helps.

Sending us all sunshine, warmer temperatures and tropical breezes!



Finished!

And I kinda like it!

Too bad it's not staying around here!

LOL

A little table quilt to hopefully brighten someone's day!

A fun project to learn a new quilt block on and accomplish a goal I'm late on.  I had originally planned on sending this table quilt

but I had accidentally quilted a scrap onto the back where it would have been too much to pick out all the stitches and fix.  So, it now lives on our dining room table under sea shells we collected by the seashore.

Last night we got to take the younger boys to see

the amazing Harlem Globetrotters.  Do you think we remembered the camera?

Nope.

Thankfully, a friend whose husband played on the opposing team took some shots and I will nab them from her Facebook page (with her permission).

Okay...here's one and hubby sweets had a stub with a number on it so we can view a picture on their Facebook page of him and Middleman.  Middleman is doing his world famous finger spin!

We decided one of our favorite moments was a player putting on a wolfman mask and dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller. We laughed so hard!

Thanks Daddy!

(and thanks Nancy for the photos!)

Something else I've been working on:

I think I posted on flickr that I wouldn't be making any more of these until, like labor, the pain and frustration had been forgotten.

LOL

You know...I have three children...and I am a determined woman who hasn't met too many challenges that have stumped me for long.

I started a new quilt just to show myself I really could master this block.

I'm not sure I've mastered it, but I have a start that I like.  I found some Pat Bravo Paradise Double Bloom Taupe at a family excursion to Indy a couple of weeks ago.

The center star of the quilt is made of this way too beautiful fabric.  I then went hunting through the stash to find fabrics that I thought would help give it a scrappy, watercolorish sort of look.

I have a 1 1/2" Humky Dory honey bun that I bought myself for my birthday last year and it's been waiting to tell me what it wants to be.  Last week, as I was looking for scraps and stash to add, I realized the dimensions were perfect for the nine squares.

This is a messy quilt, let me tell ya!  There are y-seams wherever you go in here and lots of finageling to make seams meet just right.  And I have to say, some do in this quilt, and some don't.

But I have learned a lot, added a new block to ones I can sew and hopefully will have another quilt that's unusual and not one you see around much.

Anybody interested in a "how to" post?

Life has been full of helping Middleman write papers for a co-op class.  He's a high school freshman, but his teacher is having them do college level work.  Woo Hoo!  I really enjoy helping him improve his writing and grammar skills.  It's not his best subject, but he's making me proud.

We're also reading Shakespeare's Hamlet.  We checked out the Kenneth Branagh movie version and it's make a huge difference in helping him understand the scenes and characters.  The book we have, also from the library, has quasi cliff notes in it to help explain the language Shakespeare used.

On the Bean front...he'll be representing his 5th grade class in the elementary school spelling bee.  He's not quite sure if he wants to go to Washington though!

LOL

I'm spending the rest of the week cutting out fabric ahead of time to take to the Indianapolis Modern Quilt Guild meeting this Saturday the 29th.  It will be the first one I've been able to go to and KT and I are having brunch and heading out together.  Three hours with other quilters working on projects, swapping scraps (maybe...you know how I love my scraps) and working on this quilt.  I just bought some much anticipated frozen pizzas (stuffed crust!) for the boyos to munch on while I'm gone.

Can't wait!

Hope the rest of the week treats you kindly with time to sew, health and smile or two.

 



This post will self-destruct...

as soon as my head hits the pillow!

OY!

It all began so innocently.

Some scraps.

A simple nine patch.

Got it.

I'm in control.

Oh look.  Another one.  Only this one is all about blue.

How cute.

Then...

I was enthusiastic.  Energetic.  Optimistic. 

The whole day ahead of me.

Kid numero uno occupadoed.

Check.

Kid number two distracted.

Check.  Check.

Kid number three, quite simply, gone.

Check.  Check.  Check.

A few weeks ago I came across a beautiful beginning from another blogger.

Jen of ReannaLily Designs had a stunning batch of blocks on flickr.

But if you go to her blog, you'll see much more.

You'll find out just where the Devil is in the details.

There's a handy dandy link to Hell.

LOL

Okay.  Maybe  not that bad.  Or scary.

Oh yeah!  It's been every bit of it today as I made this block.

I had wondered why I hadn't seen too many of these hexies on flickr.  I mean, it's cute and happy and fun and all...so why wasn't anyone else crazy enough

making them?

Probably for the same reason I'm not making any more!

Now...

My back and neck are killing me and I've steamed my fingers into lil' broccoli florets.

Seriously.

It's been a tough, dismally disappointing couple of days.

My hexie table topper I was working on?

I somehow quilted a bit of extra fabric onto the back and stupidly didn't notice until I was sewing the binding onto the back.

How did that happen?

What to do, what to do?

It was going to be a PIF, but now...

(insert a little violin music here please)

Should this lil' fella (we'll call him...oh...say, Roy.  Roy G. Biv) be a new PIF to replace the other?

Inquiring minds want to know.

ps.
Javi's in the tan pants!