Aprons for Eva

Well, I have finished my project for Eva. She asked me to make aprons for the children of some of her staff members. The color requests were for the traditional little girl's love of pink and purple. I like this one the best. The cute fabric that is on the back (these aprons are reversible) is one of my favorite. I thought of Jessica when I was making this apron. However, I am sorry Jessica, I put heart shaped buttons on it. Please forgive me but I just couldn't find anything that worked that wasn't in a heart shape. I think the little girls will like it though.

I also liked this pink and brown combination.

This one is very traditional with pink on the front and stars of many pastel colors on the back.

Finally, this is the smallest one with a pink on the front and dots of pastel colors on the back. I hope she likes them. My sewing room has been busy.

I am taking orders if anyone wants me to make one for them to give as a gift.

Lots of Dots

I have been busy in my sewing room this week. We are attending a baby shower downstate this weekend and I made my traditional gift. This was a fun quilt to make. I collected all different kinds of dotted material in light pastel colors before I knew if the baby was going to be a girl or boy. After I found out that she was having a girl, I made this quilt with those fabrics and emphasized the pink. The pink teddy bear was the last thing I made. I hope she likes it.

I have also been making some aprons for Eva to give to some of the children of her staff members. I am not quite done, I have to go out and find the buttons for them this afternoon. I will take them with me when we go downstate and give them to Eva.

SO, you can seee that my sewing room is getting a lot of use. I still have another project to work on. I am teaching my quilting group how to make the famous baskets and I thought I would try to make some Christmas themed baskets. I will post the results when I finish.

We are having a wonderful fall here. The weather has been kind to us which is a good thing since we are still hoping to get that garage painted as soon as the siding goes on. I hope you are having a wonderful fall where ever you are.

Miscellaneous moments and activities

Well, I really don't have a topic today so I gathered some pictures of some of my activities this past week. Jessica sent this group picture of our trip to Tenn. and our canoe trip. I love this picture. It was a beautiful day and a great memory. Thanks, Jess for taking the picture and sharing it with us.

Josh sent this Halloween picture of Garrick to Bud's phone. I thought you might like an updated picture of him.

Well, the garage has a roof. Bud parked in it this weekend. He took his motorcycle and sports car to have their winter oil changes and is hoping the garage will be ready for him to use soon. We did receive a light dusting of snow on Thursday morning. It melted by noon but it was a reminder that winter is coming soon.

I finished off my latest quilt. I took a class earlier this year to master this technique. It was an interesting class. It is kind of hard to explain but you take 4 layers of a piece of fabric that has a repeat pattern and cut squares. Then you make this '4 patch' with those square. If you look closely you will see that the '4 patch' makes a pattern when you arrange them. I don't have a home for this quilt but it is very nice looking.

Such are the miscellaneous activities of this retired lady. Just a little of this and a little of that to fill my days. I hope your days are filled with some fun activities and smiles.

The trip to Tennessee with LOTS of pictures

Well, I promised lots of pictures of the Tennessee trip. I started sorting through them and couldn't decide so I picked a lot of them. I hope you enjoy the pictures half as much as I enjoyed the trip. It was wonderful to spend some time with everyone.

We arrived just before the girls got home from school on Friday. That evening we relaxed and enjoyed the company and wonderful white chicken chili that Diana made. Saturday was our first day of adventures.

Matt planned some fun activities for us. We drove south and went canoeing on a river that Matt had heard about. He took along his 2 canoes and we rented one.

The bus took us up river. We are ready to go.

We waited for the dam to shut down for the morning so that our launch would be smooth so we launched about 11:00.

The float/canoeing was wonderful. The temps were in the high 60s and the sun was shining most of the time.

Jessica was my guide since I can't steer a canoe at all. I am good at hitting the banks. She did a wonderful job and I helped paddle as much as possible.

Matt had a great time with Eva as his 'princess' in the front.

Annika watched over our lunch.

Here we have the princess, relaxing with Matt paddling. Notice that she doesn't even pretend to paddle.

Jessica did a great job in our canoe.

Now it was finally time for lunch. We found a nice little island to have our picnic.

After lunch Brookelynn joined Jessica and me in our canoe.

It was a beautiful day for all of us. Thanks, Matt for arranging such a great day on the river.

HALLOWEEN, Aunt Jess did a great job with the pumpkins. She had a wonderful time too since she love to carve pumpkins.

Gram enjoyed every moment with her grandchildren.

The knives were sharp but they had a good teacher.

Finally they were done. Aunt Jessica was the hero. She helped with the messy project and even carved the difficult little mouth that Brookelynn drew.

I gave the girls the easy jack-o-lantern that I made for them.

Sunday after church it was time to work on the costumes. Hailey went as a Greek Goddess, I'm sorry but I can't remember which one she was. She was cute though.

Brookelynn went as a cowgirl. This is the costume that Diana wore when she was a little girl. It was a great fit and a wonderful tradition.

Here they are, ready to go.

Aunt Jessica couldn't be out done by the kids. Can you guess what her costume is??? She is a CD burner???

Gram was so happy to spend time with her girls.

We went trick-or-treating downtown first but the crowds were too big and it was just a constant line of people walking around the town square. Then we headed off to a great neighborhood and did traditional trick-0r-treating.

Hailey or Brookelynn said that Matt was dressed up as a green frog. Diana had some mysterious costume that involved Abby from the TV show NCIS ????

We all had a great time. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and that I didn't post too many.

Bud turns 56

Yesterday was Bud's birthday. I arrived home about noon and unpacked. I tried to buy him a birthday gift but it didn't work out. It is kind of funny. When I got home there was a page ripped out of an advertisement on the counter. The advertisement was for a toaster oven. I know that we need a new one so I thought it was a BIG hint for me to buy one for him. SO, I went out to the store and picked up one that I thought he would want. I felt so proud at getting the hint. HOWEVER, it really wasn't a hint. He just took the page out to check it out and see if it would fit on our shelf that we keep our old toaster oven. As you can probably guess, it didn't fit so I will be taking it back today. I guess after so many years of marriage I still can't guess what he is hinting or not hinting. Maybe that is a good thing. We had a wonderful dinner with Sonja, Walt and Sue. It was good to catch up on all their travels. Sonja just returned from a quick trip to Denver to see her brother and Sue and Walt went to Rome a few weeks ago. The birthday boy was happy even though I still don't have a gift for him. He did order some new shirts for himself so maybe that will be his gift this year. We are getting a new garage so that is a pretty bit output AND I always have trouble finding a gift for him.

I haven't sorted through my trip pictures just yet but will be making another post with many pictures as soon as I get to them. We had a wonderful time with Matt, Diana and the girls.

out of town

I am very lucky this weekend. I am visiting with family in Tenn. Eva, Jessica and I drove down part way on Thursday night. We finished the trip on Friday and arrived a little before school was out for the girls. Bud isn't so lucky. He stayed home to deal with our power outage. Our power went out in the afternoon on Wednesday and didn't come back on until Saturday afternoon. He just brought in a large garbage bag and emptied the refrigerator and freezer. I am glad that I wasn't home all that time without power.

I have been taking lots of pictures so I will posts them when I get home.

HAPPY TRICK OR TREATING TO ALL OF YOU.

Be Gentle, I am sharing my work

I said in an earlier post that I attended a class this past weekend that really stretched my skills and tested my desire for art quilts. I was attracted to the class for two reasons, a very dear friend was the hostess and invited me to share the experience and an 'overnight'. Also irises are my favorite flower. I won't subject myself to the test though, the above and below piece were made by the instructor. She was teaching the technique of applique and using paints to blend the colors. The thing that makes this technique so difficult is that you use fabric for each one of the color changes on this piece. You start out with 6 different shades of purple, 6 different shades of green and a couple shades of blue. You put a fusible backing on the fabric and iron the pieces on the background fabric, following a pattern, kind of like putting a puzzle together only using an iron, fabric and paint.

You can see that she quilted her piece after she finished.

These two pictures are of my piece. The one above is how it looked before I started blending the edges with paint. You can more clearly see the small pieces of different colored fabric on this piece. I hadn't put the stems or grass on it yet but this is about how far I got in the class. She did start me with my painting and blending before we left so I decided to finish it right away last night, before the paint dried since I don't have any paints and wasn't planning on buying my own. I did my best blending and mixing the paints to complete the project and blend the areas where the colors meet.

Here is my piece finished. Like I said, I blended the colors with the paint last night and today I added the leaves and stems. I don't plan on quilting mine though. I really don't enjoy machine quilting. I am not very skilled at it either but am not interested in practicing to get better. I always take my quilts to a quilter and she does that part. What I am thinking of doing is stretching this piece on a canvas and just hanging it.

I have taken several classes since retirement and I am kind of getting to know the kind of quilting I like to do. I have worked in applique 3 times, and I am finding that it really isn't a technique that I enjoy. First of all I don't like cutting out little pieces and then fusing them on another fabric. Usually you need to use the zig-zag technique around the pieces to make them stay on the quilt and I don't enjoy that part of applique projects. I don't enjoy the look that well either. I DO enjoy doing quilt piecing in a pattern though. I like cutting up strips and sewing them together for blocks and making quilts right now so I think I will stick to that for a while.

SO, like I said in the beginning, be gentle with your assessment of my project. I will continue to share other projects as I expand my quilting experience.