The Peaches are done!

What a bounty! I never expected that we'd get this many peaches! Thankfully a friend told us to thin the fruit on the tree, and the remaining fruit matured to a nicer size. They are beautiful white fleshed peaches, and the canning work begins!



I finished my second Priority Alzheimer's project quilt, got them both registered and they are on their way. It was a fun project. Working with smaller than bed sized quilts is always rewarding as it's much easier to finish.

Now to start thinking about my next project, a friend's quilt to do on the long-arm. I'm still mulling over what design I want to do on it. Okay, back to work in my heavenly peach smelling kitchen.

Inspiration Monday

Well, after a dry spell, I got out in my sewing/sunroom early and made this scary sock stuffie. Several years ago I made sock monkeys and a sock elephant for my daughters. Today I came across these wonderful creatures and decided the pair of socks I scavenged from hubby's uncle had seen the inside of a drawer long enough. This one has a home, if she wants it, with my daughter's friend to whom I promised a sock monkey if she quit smoking. Don't know that she has quit, but her birthday is coming up.



Got to the post office and mailed off a couple of quilts. I'm also putting more touches on the second Alzheimer's project quilt. Hope to get that done soon so I can concentrate on another quilt on the long-arm. I still have a box of apples that need handling, and peaches keep dropping off our tree. They aren't quite ripe, but tasty with a sprinkling of sugar.


I'm going to try cooking them into something, perhaps a peachy orange sauce for our fish dinner tonight. The peaches have survived lots of wind without coming down, but now that they are heavier we're getting a lot more of them blowing off.

A WIP and a finished piece

I've been working on a small piece (9X12) for Ami Simms Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts project and finally finished it. I'd had the little jellyfish hanging on my bulletin board for a couple of years since I participated in a postcard swap on About.com. I had intended to make a postcard out of it, but the swap ended and I hadn't yet found inspiration. I needed a little more background to make it a 9X12 size and so pieced some fabric to give a watery look. It's so nice now to quilt backgrounds on the bottoms of what's left when I finish a quilt on the long-arm.


My other piece is still a work in progress and I hope to get it finished in the next couple of days. I'm terrible at naming things and hope that someone will be able to help come up with something.

Nobody in my family or that I know personally has been struck with Alzheimer's but I do understand the burden of taking care of a sick and/or aging family member, having spent eight months in MN caring for my mother-in-law.
I better get back to my "work" before I lose the momentum.

Girl Trip to Colorado

Well, if I waited a few more days I could make it an even four months since I last posted anything to this long forgotten blog! I can't believe it's been that long. The summer is getting away from me.

So, my BFF Rosie and I are on a girl trip to Colorado, staying with Jackie at her new digs with a wonderful view of Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak in particular. The weather has been beautiful, and there is never a dull moment watching the clouds and light playing over the mountains. The photo credit belongs to Rosie. While I have my camera with me, I haven't taken many pictures. Hers is always at the ready.
The days have been filled with lots of thrift store shopping, good food, and today I spent some time (and money) at a fabric store.
The last few months have been busy. Besides nursing a bum knee, I've gotten my long-arm machine and am just getting into it. We also got broadband access at home, so maybe I'll be better about updating this blog, though I won't make any promises.

Postcard swap

These are all the great cards I got in the postcard swap for Earth Day on About.com with the exception of the one bottom right. That was the first butterfly I tried for my card--my sewing machine was seriously misbehaving and didn't want to do the zig-zag stitching around the card.

The spring bird migration is well underway. I need to sit patiently with my new camera and try to get some better photos. This one of the Bullock's oriole was a quick one through a dirty window, but even so, it's beautiful bird.



I'm now working on the Turtle Day postcards. I still can't settle on just one idea, and make them all the same.

Earth Day

Here are the Earth Day postcards I made for a swap on About.com. I kept trying different ideas, never settling on one I wanted to mass produce--although five postcards to make is hardly a mass production.

Spring is finally arriving here, which is always a busy time.

I seem to only post about once a month. Oh well! This is my "granddolly," as dubbed by my friend. My older daughter made this doll when she was a teenager and then gave it to me for a my birthday when she went through the typical teenage difficulties, along with a note apologizing for her behavior. I came across the doll when unpacking other dolls in my collection and decided that I had cared for her long enough, and gave her back to my daughter for Christmas. In the many years in between I have started quilting, and my daughter told me, the doll needed a quilt. The chair came from my mother-in-law's home which we went through last summer after she passed away. (Each of my daughters got a rocker.) So last weekend we went to visit my daughter and I gave granddolly a new outfit, a quilt, and puppy for my daughter's birthday. My friend Pat gave me a box of 1.5 inch squares--there are I'm sure, hundreds in the box--and I quickly decided I didn't want to make a whole quilt out of the squares, and so that's how the puppy came into being. I tried handquilting this little quilt, but my hands weren't cooperating with that.

Since I'm not likely to change my ways any time soon. I'll be back in about a month!

As Month's Go By

Can't believe it's almost a month again since I've blogged. I spend my early mornings on the computer, but with dialup, a lot of it is spent waiting for pages to fill in. With spring entering the scene, there is so much to do and so much more I want to do that blogging is usually an afterthought. We've had beautiful weather the past week, and this was the treat in the sky last night. Not actually the sunset, which was rather lackluster, but a cloud formation to the northeast which was being wonderfully lit.

I bought a new camera, long overdue, and so I've slowly been learning to use it. I'm sure it will take me a long time, if ever, to make use of all the features it has. For the time being it is mostly being used on AUTO, letting the camera make all the decisions. Got a new metal, industrial type shelf for my sewing room as well, and so everything is momentarily in worse disarray as I rearrange everything. Never ceases to amaze me that in order to get organized it usually entails a much bigger mess, but I'm hoping to be done by Monday. Today laundry must play into my day as the basket is overflowing, and soon we'll run out of socks and such! Happy St. Patick's Day!

People Fish

I I got this sarong (rayon) from a friend that was living in Hawaii at the time. Because of the lines in the design I thought it would make the perfect piece to practice machine quilting. I backed it with flannel and machine quilted the lines in the design. I didn't want to border it with anything so I made the edges wavy and rounded the corners. It is my lap quilt, but I'm not using it much since the cat thinks any time I sit in the chair with a blanket I'm there solely for her comfort! It's nice to get something else finished.

I've also finished the child's quilt top I started about two years ago! Tomorrow I'll get the batting down from the garage rafters, and get it ready for quilting. Pretty soon I'll have caught up with all the UFOs I intend to finish, and I can think about starting new things. There are some UFOs that you just know you're never going to be in the mood to finish.

Practical sewing

A lot of quilters I know feel it's beneath them to mend clothes or sew other than quilting. I have no such qualms. I started sewing making my own clothes, and I like to make practical things for my home and family. My husband needed some gaiters for his newfound hobby of snowshoeing. I made them like the gaiters I had had for downhill skiing. Well, they didn't stay over his boots, and so I had to add the lower part which also has elastic that goes under his boot, but isn't fastened in this picture. They were a big success and he didn't get any snow down his boots and come home with wet feet like he did on his first trek. Luckily I had some rip stop nylon that I had bought to make a kite with. (The kite had long been on the back burner after seeing some wonderful kites in Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast.)

That got me sewing again after a rather long, dry, sewing spell while getting settled into a new home. After I came home from a quilting retreat in Arizona, I've been fired up, and have lots of completed things and have made quite a bit of progress on some long standing projects. It feels good to be inspired again.