Busy week

It's been a busy week again. Seems I'm doing a lot at yet not as much as I think.

Took a few photos of our flowers in the yard. We've got some really pretty flowers coming up this year. The winter has given us a good year for beauty.

I haven't done a lot of quilting lately, because of other obligations. I'm working on a quilt block for a friend. I did get another bag done for my computer, which I really like. I gave the other bag to my son to give to his girl friend.

I've gotten this area done. I haven't touched it for about 4 days, and I'm really ready to get back to quilting. I also need to quilt on the quilt downstairs in the quilt frame. I will try and do some of that this week.

My son has returned home, so I've been doing more laundry, cleaning, and cooking then usual. He is a vegetarian so it make things interesting at times.

I'm working a lot more on my family history. That is time consuming as well. Of course, I've been playing games as well. lol

This is a photo I took when I was circling in the white area. I'm happy to say, that part is completed. So, I can now say I am over 1/4 done with the quilting - if not 1/2 way.

I'm enjoying the way it's coming together. Once I get to the white areas, it goes faster. I'm now back in the center and coming out through the flowers again. Most of them are done, but a couple still need at least half the flower quilted.

Just had to let you know, I'm not forgetting to quilt.

Till next time....Happy Quilting..

Update

I'm keeping busy, getting a lot done, just no photos today.

On Friday I went up to Sequim, WA for a board meeting of the Applique Society. I had a blast. We had a short meeting, Jaydee talked about old quilts, and then there were 5 demo stations. We went around to each station - 20 mins time frame. I learned a lot, just walking around. I did take photos, but haven't loaded them yet.

I finally finished the corner of my Hawaiian quilt. It's really pretty. At least I think it is. I'm working on another section of the center, so I can work out to the edge. Once the center peace is done, I can work on the white area again. That is the quickest area for me. I love the way the design goes in circles and the center echoing is from all sides.

Potluck tomorrow with the TAS groups. May not have a lot showing up, but should be fun.

OH, I did finish another bag for my computer. Decided the bag I made before wasn't what I wanted for the computer - too big. I gave it to my son to give to his girlfriend. Still haven't heard if she wanted it or not. Told him I wouldn't be upset if she didn't want it. Haven't seen it, so guessing she took it. This bag is the same colors, but more butterflies. One pocket on one side and a smaller pocket that fits the cords in the other side. I will take a photo of it when I think about it. I tend to need the camera close at hand for me to think about doing that.

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In the meantime, I'm going to sit here and quilt, while getting caught up on my shows I taped. I'm Happy Quilting....

Perfect gift

This is my birthday week! I'm enjoying every day so far! Then again, I love Birthdays, and this year seems to be one of my better ones. My daughter gave me Disney goodies - I'm a kid at heart! I have a mug that I've used everyday for far (and I just got it on Monday). Then I have a glass that has Mickey on it and have been drinking my water in that. Even wear my Minnie Mouse T-shirt. lol Plus my laptop arrived this week! So, who can ask for more?! Hubby brought me some flowers. And let's not forget miss Charlie giving me tons of attention! (photo) Miss Attitude!  On top of that, I found my 4x's great grandparents. So, my genealogy is moving along great.

When my laptop arrived, my brain thought, "Hey, why not make a carrying case for it!" Wish I could shut off that brain with quick ideas. So, I spent Tuesday working on a bag for my computer. I'm thinking I may do another one a little better, but for now it works fine.

So, I thought I could use some fabric I had in my stash, and would make a bag similar to the one in the photo that I did (UFO) a couple months back. I wanted to make it smaller than this one as my computer isn't that big.

I love my butterfly fabric I bought a few years back and figured purple would work better. I thought about putting a divider in the inside lining. I was surprised how easy it worked out. I actually got it done in one day.

I added pockets that I thought might help. I did do less pockets then I did in the other one.

I may end up using it as a bag, but that's okay. I do like the way it turned out.

When I'm not working on my genealogy and cleaning the house, I do get some quilting done. I have been doing a lot of laundry as well, since my son moved back in.

Last week I got around the purple areas.

Gee, can you tell I like purple. lol Didn't realize how much I tend to go with purple and blue.

I did finish this area yesterday while my friend fell asleep when she came over to get together and work on crafts. lol

This is were I am with the quilting on the edge. It's coming along nicely and quickly. It hard to believe how fast it's going and how much fun I'm having doing it. The more I quilt, the more excited I get at seeing the finished product, but I'm I even half way done. lol

Got caught up on my shows and quilted a lot!  I've got my block ready to go for tomorrow while I'm at The Applique Society's board meeting. Looking forward to working with them. I really do want to get more active in TAS!

Going to have a good meeting and checking out Squim, WA. Should be fun! I'm looking forward to sight seeing along the way!

In the mean time.....Happy Quilting.

Getting more done

Today was one of those days. I did get some quilting done as well as some genealogy.

My friend came over today, but she wasn't feeling good. So, while she was falling asleep, I was quilting. I finished a really good section. I've got photo's I need to post on here.

Yesterday I made another bag. I decided to make one for my laptop. I may end up making another one, since this one just isn't the right size. I will try and post some photo's tomorrow. I have been getting a lot done lately, and it's really a good feeling to have so much done.

I'm finding letters and photos I haven't seen before. Once in a great while I find a photo of a quilt or someone in the family mentioning a quilt they are working on. I have found more quilt patterns, with one of them being the Indian gal and guy. I've put that aside, as I may make one, one of these days.

Till I post photo's...Happy Quilting.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is to wish all of you who are mothers (or fathers who took the roll of mothers) a Happy Mother's Day.

Today was wonderful! My daughter called to wish me a Happy Mother's Day. She was working but still got time on her break to call. It was great. I enjoy talking to her lately and look forward to her chats. I do miss her.

My husband and my son took me out to breakfast. Afterward we went to Tenino and went for a 14 mile bike ride. That was the first ride I've been on since last year...and I could have died! I didn't though and actually enjoyed myself. I felt bad for those two because I was holding them up. NOTHING is worse then watching these people on bikes that pass me like I'm sitting still. Makes me wonder if it would be faster if I just walk. Oh, well, I made it, all 14 miles worth. Stopped three times going from Tenino to Rainer, and twice from Rainer to Tenino. Can't complain, I have seriously done a lot worse!

Got home, and even my husband was feeling it! So, while he worked in the yard, I sat on the deck and quilted. I'm really getting the echoing done! I'm so thrilled with how fast it is going. I'm hoping to get to the next quarter section this week. Since (Lord help me), there are no plans for this week other thank having a friend over and going to the TAS meeting in Sequim on my Birthday. I'm ready and willing. I need to get the quilt top done for my bowling friend, so I can get moving on my quilting and other projects. Wish me luck and let's see what I ACTUALLY get done.

Looking forward to this week and happy Quilting...

Week In Review

Okay, I know I said I'd be on, and I have tons of excuses! At the same time, I tell myself NO EXCUSES!

Decided to make it easy on myself figuring out what I have been up to the last week...well, good questions.


May 2, Wednesday

Went over to a friends house and worked on our bags! I finally finished the bag!! At first I was getting a little worried we wouldn't finish the bags, as my friend tends to wonder off when she thinks of something and the sewing doesn't get done. OR she wants to do another project and finish it. I came home and finished the last details of it. She finished up the coupon carriers that she was making for us both.

Worked on my cross stitch for a little bit.

May 3, - - Mom's Birthday

Called mom and wished her a Happy Birthday. Double checked on the time for dinner. Worked on my genealogy. Got a letter from a long lost relative, and am looking forward to keeping in contact with the family. Took dad the photo's they sent. One was of my 3x's great grandparents. Hadn't seen a photo of them before.

Ironed in the morning on the handkerchief's that belonged to my great grandmother. Want to put them into a quilt or two. If I can get more than one quilt out of it, I can give one to one of my brothers.

Right now they look like kites. lol

May leave this one as is.

Then we all went out to eat for Mom's Birthday, and found out mom made other plans for Mother's Day. That surprised the heck out of me. My husband and son told me not to worry, they will take care of me on Mother's Day. Went home and worked on my quilt. Even played on the computer for a hour.

May 4,

Worked on genealogy - Hubby's side. Didn't get much of anything done actually. Just cleaned up the house and made a bigger mess in the computer room with genealogy.

May 5,

Saturday, woke at 5 am and finally got up at 4:45 am. Played games till the rest of the house woke up, then went to the casino to play some more. We came home with $40 more then we took. Not bad, better than usual. :-)  My son joined in the fun as well. He wanted to check out the people that go to the casinos for research. He researched and we played!

I did got a good 4 hours of quilting in while we watched a movie on TV. I did start a list of what I needed to do - on that list is CLEAN UP THE QUILT ROOM. What is it about quilters that have a quilt room? We clean it up, work on projects, and when we are done, leave it where it is. Then when something needs to be returned to the quilt room, we put it on top of what we were working on. OR we start a pile right next to it. By the time a week or two has gone by, the quilt room likes like a tornado hit it, and the rest of the house looks great. Go Figure!!

May 6,

Worked on the computer with genealogy, playing games, and a few other things before I went out to help hubby with gardening. Actually took a few plants out and re potted them. Took photos of my flowering plants in the yard.

Our apple tree this year.

Another bush in the yard.

My parents came over for supper. We had a great meal that my hubby fixed with some help from my son and I. After dinner we played card games - AND I WON BOTH GAMES.

May 7,

Yesterday - headache so my morning was not a morning. I did get laundry in, sleep, laundry in, back to sleep, etc., all the way till noon. Explains why I couldn't sleep last night at all! Anyway, worked on genealogy, played games, and quilted. The quilting is coming along great!  I'm in the background area again and it goes faster then I get there. The corner is being worked on, and I keep hoping no puckers will show up as I go, since I'm having to work in a BIG circle area. So far, so good.

I'm going around the flower and stems, to get to the "V" area, so I can start working on that part of the corner. I should be able to get to that area tonight and if all goes well, the flowers will meet up with the center portion and I can echo in that area before going on around the corner.  I'm really liking the effect I have on it.

So, as you can see, I'm still quilting when I can. I'm still doing genealogy just about every day.

As I type this, I see my cat through the side of my eyes, sneaking into our bedroom. She likes the quilt on the bed, and sometimes sneaks in there to sleep. Hubby doesn't want her on the bed, so I'm going to have to go put her on her own quilt. She prefers the bed lately. Oh, well.

No, this isn't my bed, I actually make my bed every day. This is the quilt she's supposed to be on. lol

BEST news is I bought myself a laptop for my Birthday!! So, when that comes in, I can blog more while I'm watching TV. I can even get a few more letters done for the "Letters from the Past."  In the meantime...
I'm Happy Quilting.

Looking good

Things are looking good! I've been quilting more on the Hawaiian quilt and am ready to start quilting the echo stitches on the white area (in the corner). The purple flowers are what take time and I've really been going faster than I expected with it. I took photos, but just not ready to get them on here yet.

I washed the handkerchiefs that mom had from my great grandmother. A lot of them where destroyed when  mice help themselves into the storage area. I was able to salvage quiet a few. I ironed them and started folding them into butterflies to applique onto a quilt top. I haven't decided the design yet, but I will work on that another time. I still have more to iron - took photos of those too, so you can see what I mean. I think one of them is Civil War era but not sure. It has the plain blue color that was used in that time frame. I just didn't want to fold them up and store them again, since that's not putting them to use. I have a few in my drawers now that are not being used. So, I decided this is a way to keep great grandmother alive for another generation if not more. She collected them, and there are more than I could ever use. (If I can find where I put them).

If you are keeping up on my Letters From the Past, then you will see a photo of Minnie True Matheson Reeder, who collected those - all those years.

I'm doing pretty good lately, I have actually gotten some genealogy done and some quilting done. That is not easy at times.

In the meantime, I will take more photos and post them later on. I'm going to do more genealogy and be Happy Quilting....

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Life is Good....

Life is good...busy...but good! 

In case your wondering where I am at this time with my quilt, here is the corner I've been writing about. 

I'm slowly getting this corner quilted. This last week has been so busy, I'm lucky if I had 2 nights that I was able to work on it.

This is the section that is quilted. I think I showed this part earlier. As you can see, I haven't started quilting much in the lower part where the flowers are. I'm going to do those last, I think. We'll see how the corner goes and I may change my mind.

So in the mean time I am quilting this area first. This is the corner area. I figure once I get the purple part quilted, then I can start going around the echoing in the white area. That usually goes quicker than the purple part, only because it's the edge of the corner and it needs to lay flat. If I can quilt it right, I shouldn't have any puckering at all. So far, so good as far as that goes.

Yesterday was Haven't Missed a Stitches meeting. I went at 10:30 am and was surprised to find I was the only one there that early. As time went on, we ended up with 5 of us working on our projects. I forgot about doing the block that needs to be done for the "ughly fabric" contest.

 I had started working on the head of the scarecrow on Monday. I kept putting it off and putting it off because I couldn't figure out what I was going to do about the hands and feet. I wanted it to look like there was hay coming out. Every time I took the block piece out, I would stall or put it away because I just couldn't figure out what I was going to do. As we worked on our projects yesterday, I was humming and haahhing about it. I LOVE GROUPS because Kathy in our group told me of some fabric she has (and showed me) that will work. She's going to bring the fabric and I'm going to fuse it. Then I'm going to cut it out and glue it down. (If you get my drift)  So, once I figured that out, it was so easy to get it done. And I did. I finished it last night knowing I'm going to add the hands and feet a little later.

I worked on my embroidery to add the face, and garden "growing."

Last night I got a call asking me to take my father to the Lazier Client since he wouldn't be able to drive home. Said I would and this morning grabbed my cross stitch project to work on.

By the time I got home today, I had this much more done.

One of these days, I hope to have this done as well. Wish me luck!! ***laughing***

Now, as you can see, I'm still keeping busy with my projects. I'm just a little slow in posting what I'm up to. I'm hoping to have a few more things done before too much longer.

Tonight, we are going to the movies, so no quilting....tomorrow looks like we are going to the dump with more stuff from my parents house, so no quilting then.....My son comes back home tomorrow night, and I need to pick him up, so no quilting then......Sunday looks good so far....we'll have to wait and see....

In the meantime I'm thinking I'm able to be Happy Quilting!

Cleaning day

Well...today was a cleaning day...sort of. I have so much stuff I'm overwhelmed. I vacuumed, and every time I went from one room to the other, I found something to take with me to put away.

All these letters, photographs, and genealogy stuff is overwhelming and I'm freaking because I'm not set up or organized for all of this. I want to get the information in the computer, but when I have more then I need or piles of it all over the place, I just don't know where to go from here.

So, I'm heading into the living room and calling cleaning quits. I'm going to sit down, watch TV and quilt. At least that is the plane.

In the meantime, wish me luck, and Happy Quilting...

Busy finding new things....yet old....

Okay, it's time to let you know what I've been up to the last two days.

A friend of mine came over and we worked on making a couple hand bags. I had everything ready for both of us to sit down and sew the blocks together and get the bag done yesterday. Rose was more interested in the embroidery, as she brought over her Designer machine with attachments. She worked on embroidery for the coupon bags she was making for both of us. While she was embroidering I was sewing the blocks for two bags. I got the 4 panels done yesterday. She also go embroidery done on my bag which turned out great.

One of the embroideries she worked on was a butterfly.

The other was a hummingbird, which is so cool!

She took her bag home to work on the embroidery on hers, and then we will get together and put it all together. I'm looking forward to the end result.

It's fun having friends over to work on stuff, have lunch and get a lot of stuff done!

Today, I went over to my parents house, and I will tell you, I give so much credit to my sister-in-law! She has that house almost empty now. It is soooo cool to see the house ready for the market. We found out they need to do a little more work on a few things and then they can put it on the market on Friday.

In the meantime, my "sis" is putting stuff aside that mom wants me to have. She gave me more boxes of letter, photos, and "stuff." One find was several quilt patterns that are old, or older than those on the market today.

Note on top of the pattern: "Taken from the "Kansas City Star" in 1933"

This pattern has a note on the bottom from my grandmother: "One of the oldest designs for quilting. Trace with pencil may be enlarged if space to be filled is larger."

My family is from Kansas, so it won't surprise me to find a few more patterns like these:

Hope this give you something to read, since I've been slowing down on my posts. I'm hoping since my husband and son are still on the road, I can post more this weekend. LOL

I'm excited about the findings of my family history information, and have been glued to my genealogy. Wish I had this information 20 years ago when I really wanted it. Now I'm busy doing two family histories and they both are coming up with some really good information. I may have to do a quilt about all this research. There were quilts made in my family, very few (if any) have made it to me.  The White's and the Wineland's were all quilters, and I know there are quilts out there made by them. I heard the story of one of my mother's Aunt's quilt that were stolen when they were moving into an old "folks" home. They called everyone she made a quilt for to help in finding the quilts. Instead, everyone whom she gave a quilt to brought a couple back so she wouldn't know they were missing. The had a floor to ceiling chest of quilts, so that tells you how many people were kind enough to bring quilts back to her. After her death, they were returned to the owners, but the other quilts where never found.

Okay, on a happier note, I'm bowling tonight, wish me luck. lol

In the mean time...Happy Quilting.

Still quilting

I'm getting what little quilting in I can. Things around here has been going faster than expected. I have been putting time in at night with quilting and I'm slowly getting there. More and more things are coming up and less and less time is being spent on the quilt. I did decide to try and work my way around the quilt going to the border. It has been working okay that way.I did get a quarter section done, as I stated before. 

Then I reached a corner area and was worried how I could get around the corner with out messing it up. I was going to skip the corner and move on to the other quarter section. I decided to rethink that thought out. So, I'm working my way to the corner and will quilt in that corner before moving on the the next section.

This is the section I finished with the border connection. I was planning on quilting it to the end border, and got most of the purple quilted when I headed toward the corner.

So last night I got the left area quilted and will start on the white area once I get the purple done. The flowers  go around the corner and are not straight off the corner. (sorry if I'm confusing you). So, I started quilting the flower last night, and will work my way to the bottom corner, in order to quilt the white area in the corner.

This shows a little of what I'm trying to say. It goes fast, once I have a direction. When I don't seem to have a direction, then it seems to take too long. the more I chip away, the more gets done. I will try and do more today, as I'm behind on my shows as well.

Hubby is leaving on Wednesday to go pick up my son and drive with a U-Haul back from NC since he got the job in Olympia. We're excited to have him back after 5 years of being gone. I'll be taking him to the airport tomorrow. Then I will have a week of working on genealogy and quilting.....let's see how far that goes!

I'm planning on working on a couple bags with a friend this Thursday, and will let you know how that goes too.

Until then, Happy Quilting.....

OH! check out my Letters From the Past! I've added some from my great grandmother that were written in the 1880's. She only lived to be 23 years old. I can't wait to start trying to re-write her diaries so we can see what kind of a life she had.

Okay - back to quilting - till next time....HQ'ing.