Sew On Wednesday

My BIL has been in a nursing home since Feb. The family has decided that he will not be able to come home. We did try it once and he landed back in the hospital again.

Having said that it is now time to start cleaning out the old homestead where he and his siblings, and parents lived for 70 yrs! OMG the amount of stuff. I've already appoligised to our children for the mess we might leave them!

However I was able to 'liberate' a few vintage items, hand embroidered doiles and crocheted things. One of which was this towel:

SEW ON WEDNESDAY

There are some really bad brown stains on the towel. I did wash it, soaked it in Clorox 2 but still they maybe be part of the vintage look. If anyone knows how to them out please leave me a message. I also need to find some way to hang this on my sewing room door.

I love the detail of the flower!

I'm sure my MIL made this, or maybe her mother, for my SIL. I don't know that she wants it, because I didn't know I had it when I was washing a bunch of linens. Can't think of any way to turn it into a quilt! So I guess I will show it to her and ask her if she wants it. I bet she will!

These little bird doilies are so sweet. As you can see though they have seen better days. I want to use the different sizes in a quilt. Again, I'm not sure how I will do that. Maybe it will be a light weight coverlet.

There are 2 sizes, and one is slightly different w the side flowers. I have a couple of other ones. they will lend themselves nicely to one quilt. Now who has a good idea????

These sweet little perching birds are my fav!

There are only the 2, so I am going to have to do something very special with them

There are a few of these too. I think about 4-5 total. I had two loads to wash, of linens and aprons etc.

As you can see in this close up the fabrics are different. This is a coarser linen. And one of them also is stained.

So I'm hoping to get some responses on how to incorporate them into a quilt, and maybe how to get the stains out. I think I can live with the stains though.

Nothings changed, except for my fabric stash!

It seems like nothing has changed in my quilting. SIGH!!!

However I do have 2 quilts mostly made for the 4 wild women(as we call our GDD's) and 2 planned in my head in my head now that I have replaced some of the fabric with New purchases.
                                                           OH my!

 I also need a GRANDSON quilt The Wild Women have a brother, who's 11 and I wouldn't want to leave him out of the quilt process, all though he has one quilt. is one enough??

This one is still on  th design floor.

2nd quilt for the Wild Women

First quilt for Wild Women

 this one just needs borders,

I had to take a short 2 day trip to Chicago to drop off one of my DD's. That was exhausting, but I did some retail shopping on the way home.

Stopped at a really quaint, areain Lockport Il. called Thimbles where I bought some fabric to go with a future quilt I'm planning using an Eleanor Burns pattern. I saw it on PBS, so I have a vague idea about the pattern. I know it is on the Web, so I will be looking up her shows to get details soon.

They directed me to Roberts sewing center which although my GPS ("B" in a box) didn't give me directions too I was able to find it fairly easily.It's actually in Joliet /Crest Hill IL. That is a really nice quilt store!!!I wish I had taken pictures!The upstairs not only has clearance fabric, but it has a lot of older machines, cabinets that people have upgraded from, industrial machines, and a work space.There is an elevator to the 2nd floor too.
If I lived near there, I think I would be visiting often.

I bought this nice indigo print there, and I see a blue and white quilt in my future.












My kids have all laid claim to one of my oldest quilts,which I see as a learning experience, there are so many mistakes on it. Including the fabric was cheap inexpensive and is now ripping. All 3 of them had input for the design, or the quilting on it.Maybe I need to remake that quilt 3 times??? UGH. sounds boring....It's actually the Lady of the Lake pattern, with a TWIST. making diamonds.

 

but that indigo would look nice to duplicate that pattern

The hand quilting hasn't held up to the years.

I have another quilt that needs the sashing on, and quilt it so that I can give it to my DD for her wedding present(7/6/13!) I have reserved the right for it to be done in 1 year.
 So any new quilts will be after hers.

Sew Many Quilts.... Sew little time!

Finished Hole in the Barn Door.

This has not been an easy week, Family issues have me down. however I did finish this:

and was able to get it to the person by Thursday.

I was making the quilt with donated fabric from our Senior center. The pattern, hole in the Barn Door, Shoo fly, and I think it has a few other names, I saw in an old magazine. I used donated scraps for the whole quilt, only purchasing the batting. I used Rose Cream from Joanns, it is very thin, but it is not my favorite. However it works well.

 My free hand feathering looks better at this end of the quilt than the start. Well I got better with practice.

 I wasn't as accurate w the stencil quilting my hearts like most peoples are a little wonky! Still I think it looks good after washing.

 Even here I didn't have the control I would like.

 A couple pictures of the back

 and the front finished, and washed.

 As I was finally assembling the borders and making the back to fit, I found out that my cousin's son was diagnosed w bladder cancer. I discussed it with my Senior group, and we made an executive decision that it was OK to donate this quilt to him.

 As I was quilting it I added prayers to it, one word like Strength, Love, Peace, Healing. I tried to make it not very noticeable but they are in there.

I hope he and his family are doing well, and are healing through this very difficult time.

Bathroom issues

Ihad an early morning meeting on Saturday, and came home starving wanting to fix breakfast. I knew DH had planned on working on the bathroom upstairs plumbing today as there was a leak some where.
I however was not prepared for this:

and this:

 Or this:

Apparnetly the bathrooms connect in the wall and the drain pipes (PLURAL) were rotted away!!!! who knew. Rather than take out the vanity,or the wall, they took out the medicine cabinets and DS practically crawled into the wall head first to cut off the pipes and then to replace the pipes, and then to make sure they were sealed.

I choose to do this:

 since we are having people over tomorrow for a cook out I have to get all of the medicine cabinets cleaned (who cleans those???) and all of that stuff put back in. Needless to say I did throw away a lot of old stuff.

they made matters worse, by dropping something that they needed and had to take out the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom too.

That's right 3 messy bathrooms to clean now.

Design wall/UFO

Have you ever have a project that you started because you wanted to make the pattern, then get into it and start to really dislike it???

I found this pattern in an old quilt magazine and decided to make it at my senior center group as a donation quilt. I've been working on it at the center every Tuesday for TOO many months!!!! When I was at home I was mostly working on my quilts, this was a donation quilt, with donation fabric.



I got it out last Tuesday, after the 2 weeks I had missed when my life was 'hijacked',  as one commenter said last time I posted. I had totally forgotten where I was with the project.









I needed one more row, actually only 3 pieced squares.when I figured that out last week, I did cut them out, start sewing them, but needed to leave early (my BIL was having a procedure. and had been in the hospital, he is Developmentally Delayed from Birth, and now at 71 has Dementia) Yesterday I wanted to get a little sewing done on it.

I've decided it needs to be done this week! So that's the plan. I finished the 3 squares, they need to be pressed.Then added to the plain green squares, and sewn together. Of course I need borders, just because I like borders. I'm just using strips for this.... not 1/2 square triangles like the original was shown.

Finding something for the backing, I think I have something for that, and get it on the long arm, that I haven't used in 2 months! ARGH.... I think that all this stuff with BIl, has made me want to JUST be finished with something. It is the closest to being finished. Although this just needs borders to give it some more length and width.

Sorry I don't have a pic of the whole thing, but it is all pieced, just waiting for the borders. I'm actually making 2 of these, w a color variation.

What's on the needles

I haven't been doing much seeing lately. My BIL who is developmentally delayed, and had dementia was brought home from the nursing home. We ended up taking him to the hospital and is now re- admitted to a nursing home again. I hope he gets good care there. But he can be difficult to say the least. I did a lot of knitting so all I have to show is a 2/3 finished shawl/sweater

I started it last April, tore it out this spring and restarted it again in April of this yr. I'm not a dedicated knitter, and I'm slow at it. W/O anything else to do at the hospital knitting and stupid cable shows was all there was to keep me occupied.here's a link to what it is supposed to look like. I should have 1 more skein of yarn too. Otherwise I'll have to rip it out!
Merino&Ewe Ruana

So here's what's on my needles.... Again, and still!

We will be needing to sell BIL house soon, so the owrk of emptying out a lifetime of stuff starts today. There is an old Montgomery Ward featherweight like sewing machine upstairs it has shuttles! I will be bringing that home. and will post more on that later. Not sure what else... there is too much stuff in our house too.

Trip Around the World Quilt, quilt of valor for Peggy

 When my children were younger the youngest became fast forever friends with Peggy. She and her siblings eventually joined the army, went to Iraq (I believe ) then she went to West Point, graduated did some work as an MP, and other stuff, and JUST recently returned home from her 2nd deploment in Afghanistan. She is now stationed at Fort Knox Ky.

When the call for quilts after hurricane Sandy was put out, I did a Trip around the World (Bonnie Hunter pattern. She has a lot of them on her "Free patterns) I was finishing that one it went quickly, and thought it was a fitting pattern to make for Peggy too.

The way things go with quilter, I was also working on Jared Takes a Wife also a free pattern by BH, I had started it with patriotic colors because my daughter (best friend of Peggy) is in the Army Reserves Band. I had purchased this fabric for the backing of that quilt

But for some reason I decided it wasn't right. I did use it on the both Trip Around the World, for Sandy donation, and in the front of Peggy's quilt too. I had gotten a great deal on it at Jackman's Fabric in Il!

It was such a soft pretty fabric, at less than $4/yd, that I BOUGHT the rest of the bolt! So I easily had enough to do the back of Peggy's quilt.

 

There are a couple few funny stories about her quilt:

1) I used it as a diversion so that my DD would not see her quilt. When DD was coming over, I would cover it up w Peggy's quilt. LOL DD never saw her quilt in the making!!!!

2)We had planned on sending it to her, then she posted that she was starting to send some things home. I could see no sense in shipping it over there, when she would have to send it back! So we waited.

3) Peggy saw DD's quilt on Face book while  in Afghanistan, when pictures were posted.  She told me after she opened her quilt how jealous she was that DD got a quilt and she hadn't. She is/was too sweet to ask too!

 

4)Her mom and she were in love with the back, because  she has always talked about "The Lady" her parents took her as a child to see the Statue of Liberty, because she always talked about "The Lady". I have no memory of this, but maybe on some level I was aware of it.

 

So here is Peggy starting to unwrap her quilt.

 

I think she was surprised!

 Auditioning fabrics for the Border. My DGrandteen chose the colors and "Oked" the Combinations. LOL she has a better color sense than me.

Quilting in progress

On the frame.

Close up of quilting.I used a red white and blue variegated thread, it's hard to see in the quilt pictures though.

 The two strips in the middle are 'orphaned' blocks from DD's quilt.I think they look like Twin Towers....So she "always has her Best Friend with her in bed"