Spring Butterfly Quilt..aka...Alien Eyes!!!

It is raining again! Lake Lanier is full. It is cold and less than one week till Christmas. I am not ready for Christmas and truthfully I am not surprised one bit that I am not ready! We have done this crazy routine every year for 32 years now.

I start asking the kids what they want for Christmas when the leaves start falling and by the week before they still don't know. I then get desperate and threaten to go out and buy them all surprises!

This gets them to thinking because they know I am really bad at shopping. So, while I wait for their frantic "this is what I want" emails....I have decided to think about spring this morning and post about my Butterfly Quilt!

The picture above is the back of my quilt and how much quilting went into this baby...around and around many many times...I start to feel dizzy inside just thinking about stitching my way around it again.

Truth is I started with the back of my quilt because I don't know how to change the order of my pictures without deleting them all and starting over, and I still have to wash my hair before I go into work at noon! =) I work at the local quilt shop, did I tell you that? It is for me like working in a candy store is to a kid!!! Whoot...whoot...love it!!!

Spring is such a wonderful time of year and love is in the air so it was perfect for my first try at freehand hearts all around the border. I love the color blue and listening to the blues just in case your interested! hahaa


Spring is here! Spring is here! Spring is here! Those are the words of my first and only stage performance when I was in second grade. I came out on the stage in my frog costume jumping as high as my legs would let me singing "spring is here" three long jumps and three ear piercing shouts. But I would have preferred to be a beautiful butterfly and float gracefully out onto the stage with huge periwinkle colored wings! Ummm, anyone who truly knows me knows the frog is more my style, and I can not sing to save my life!

How about this beautiful pink butterfly? I figured since I was creating these 3D embroidered beauties I could make them sing with shine and color~~~See the glitter on the antenna??? Yep, I Bejewelled her with my handy dandy Bejeweler I got at the Sewing Expo a few years ago. In case your interested I am including a link to two different kinds of jewelers.
https://www.mybedazzler.com/Default.aspx?MID=528183

and this is the hot fix tool for glitz I have used many times when the mood for bling bling grabs me....thanks Sue!

http://www.suessparklers.com/?gclid=CLP63vCR4J4CFQKdnAodtDRHJA This pretty pastel butterfly is my favorite with her lavender, and pinks!! Spring is a glittery time of year with the spring rains and dew on the leaves right?

Can you just smell the freshness in the air with spring just around the corner...naaaa, I didn't think so with all the pine and cinnamon candles and frosty the snow man playing on the radio.

Know what Christmas song gets to me every year? The one with the line, "It's the most wonderful time of the year!" Oh, ya...then why do I see so many mom's with that cruel mouth expression, frustrated as they are dragging around their way over due for a nap kids, who are crying their eyes out on isle 5 or 6 in every store!!! "Its the most wonderful time of the yearrrr"....umm, really?....do you see this oh so sad scene come SPRING on isle 5 or 6 of every store you go in?

Last but not least this is my Spring Quilt that my sweet hubby refers to as alien eyes! Yep, he said it made him think of alien eyes.

Do you know how many hours went into this quilt? Wish I had kept a count of my amount of time I spent just dreaming up this quilt. She started out as a challenge quilt with the Quilters N Stitches guild. We were given the back ground fabric and told to create something with it. This is my first challenge quilt and probably my last too. I mulled over fabric for weeks and months as I searched in stores and my stash for just the right colors and once I started I sewed on this baby for months.

Alien eyes??? Oh, well....I get the tingle for spring down my spine with the scent of sweet daffodils ever time I look at it or is that the tingle from space creatures eye-ing my artwork~~~~

Getting things done!!

The colors are red, white, and blue! For the colors of our flag!


But pay no attention to the date on the pictures!! I am camera stupid even though my Dad retired from Kodak! So, I went round and round with the menu on my camera and strangled the date stamp...it will not frustrate me
anymore. I have been told I am a bit tenacious...yep!

These are my Yellow Ribbon Quilts for the men in Claudia's step sons troop in Afganistan. Our Quilters In Stitches met on a Saturday and a Monday night to sew up a storm and get at least 35 quilts completed to send to the troop by Christmas!

I enjoyed sewing on these quilts so much and the pattern is so easy. If you are interested in getting involved in making a quit to send please check out her blog, and also see the pictures of our guild at work!! http://yellowribbonquilt.blogspot.com/

Christmas Tree Napkins video!

Hey, Here is a video from Nancy's Notions that shows you how to make Christmas Tree Napkins with a serger but I think you could also use a zig zag stitch to accomplish the same thing! Oh, and she uses the glue stick to go pinless!!! Uh..huh!!! Anyway, I will be working on Twinkles the Clowns cape today***

http://www.nancysnotions.com/category/id/101962/102113.do?extid=091114

The sewing machine song!!!

Hey, I was just clicking around on my blog in the youtube videos and ran across the sewing machine song...haaha I love it!!! They just don't make good movies like that anymore...

This was a snap shot at the church sew in! We made many bags...and I was tired that night! hahaaa

Click the link below to get the "sewing machine song video"...it will bring a smile to your face!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=999ph8iRT4o

Going to hang with the girls!!

It's the first Wednesday of the month and today is my first time to be a part of the "hand sewing club" at the local quilt store! I am so excited and have my project all ready to work on. This square is part of a quilt I have been workin on for many years now, and one of my UFO's that seeems will never get completed! But, I push forward and never give up no matter how large, ugly, or messy it gets! I am told I have tenacity!! I must live up to the honor...lol By the way, I used glue stick to get the applique pieces to stay in place. Just dab...dab...dab and they stay. My projects travel with me to all kinds of places and there is no worry if there are small children or animals around...my squares are pinless I just dabbed them down!!!

My first Quilt!

This is one of the prettiest days of fall so far! The golden orange and red leaves are blowing from the maple trees and the sun is warm on my face. I love it!!! It makes me want to clean house. I washed every sheet and blanket on our bed yesterday. I am one of those women that thinks of spring cleaning but doesn't get around to it till the fall.

As I was putting the quilt back on the bed I took a picture of it. This is my first quilt I made and hand quilted. The fabric cost me $1.00 a yard and as you can see it ...now you know why...lol. I cut all the pieces by hand and was so very proud of it. I quilted on it for a whole year and loved every minute. The year was 1981 when I started this quilt, and it has a label on one corner declaring to the whole world that I made it!

My quilting frame was made from some 2x4's my husband took out of a wall we opened up between the kitchen and dinning room in our second house. I would sit at my saw horse quilt frame that ran the length of our dinning room and quilt while the kids took naps. Those were some really sweet days of motherhood for me. The kids were still young and they thought I was smart and a lot of fun to be around. Can you see the hand quilting stitches...I was so proud of them..shoot I still am!!!

The colors are still so vibrant after so many years because it has laid on our bed upside down!!

The embroidery job!

Oh...my...goodness... I am knee deep in an embroidery job that is not going so well and time is short....but tomorrow is another day, right?

The challenge!

Ever had one of those mornings where the sun was shinning, your feeling good with lots of energy and a million things you want to do? I found myself running around the house piddling here and there doing stuff, but getting no where... really. It's like spinning on a whirygig and you have to make yourself get off to let the world stop spinning!

Today I spent my moring taking pictures for my blog, and putting them on my pc... all the while following theMotherhood blog site, and monitoring Facebook, laundry and cleaning (guilt beast made me do that) and reading about other people in their world. There is another whole world on the internet that I could get swallowed up by or addicted to if I don't watch myself. Naaa, I don't have to worry because I have a really big guilt beast in me!

About that time the teen gets home from school and I look at the clock and discover half of my day is gone, slipped right through my fingers on the keyboard. Yikes! I have to get something done...really done....sew, I always feel like something is done when I sew. It is the one part of my world that does not get undone.

Mothering is the most frustrating job in the world but the love makes it priceless. I empty the dishwasher....it gets full by dinner. I put clean towels out...they are dirty by dinner. I vacume and mop...the floors are dirty by dinner. I empty the laundry basket, washing all the clothes...most are back in the basket by dinner, not really but I think you know what I mean. Like I said the pay sinks but the hugs are priceless!

Anyway, I struggled with the guit beast and won this time. I walked into my sewing room and stood at my cutting table working on those tiny little 2 1/2" four patch squares and did not stop untill they were all squared up! Yep, now there, I have done something today!

Oh, I had to paste in a picture of my most favorite sewing tool of all...no sewing room should be with out it! Glue Stick....forget pinning things that go slip slidding around...glue them down...dab, dab, dab! It's washable!!!

Hey, I finally figured out how to get music!

Ok, today I declare I will have a more productive day! Yesterday I spent the whole day trying to get music to my site...and it appears I have stumbled on the fix this morning! Yes, for me to figure out anything on the web is simply a stumble. I bump around here and there trying this and that and then when I am about to give up, I finally get it. Could I do it again, not with out stumbling around first!

Yesterday I found the "themotherhood" blogging site! It is just for mothers and their world. I really enjoyed meeting some of them and hearing their stories. Last night I went through all the different Circles you can be in and found a few that interested me enough to check them out today. Oh, I need to get some cleaning done around here...

I also have been commissioned to run cable to the TV room down stairs today. My son has been pestering me to get that TV hooked up for sometime now. I don't even know if there is still
a cable in the wall. But, I will give it a go later around noon when he finally gets up. The deal is I run the cable and he gets a job!

So, what has all this got to do with quilting? Not a thing! That is my problem...I would rather sew and create than to run cable or clean house. I did get my pictures uploaded to my sewing room pc yesterday. It took me hours to figure it out again and then hours to look at them, that was fun! Now I can take more and more pictures since I have memory in my camera again. I love the whole digital camera idea because the potential for taking pictures is unlimited.
But, the house is still in need of some cleaning...

Remember the old 35 mm days when you had an event you needed to take pictures of? The big moment arrives for that perfect shot of your precious cherub and you snap one shot and bzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Your allotment of 24 pictures is taken and the film is now rewinding and your child's moment of glory is gone. Plus, you discover when you get the film developed that your finger is blocking the one shot you did get! Those were the moments of motherhood failure that pierce my soul with grief!!! But not anymore, I can get 25 shots of the same moment now and have it all. The problem is what to do with all those pictures now? They sit in my pc just hoping to be good enough to make it to the Sam's Club for processing....pick me! pick meee!!!

Now, I will clean something to ease my guilt and SEW till my precious teen wakes from his beauty sleep~~~

Pictures of my world!

This is my short arm quilting machine. It is the older version of the Mega Quilter by Husqvarna. The sewing field is small, about 5 to 6" depending on the quilt size, but so was the price! It gets the job done!!! It takes me just about as long to load the quilt on this baby as it does to quilt it. I used to hand quilt every quilt from baby sized to Queen bed size. They took me years to complete. I can get one quilted in about 6 to 8 hours with this machine!!! I love it!!!

This is my sewing corner and pc set up. I love my little space and spend lots of time in this room as much as possible anyways. The clock on the wall is from my husbands Dad's barber shop in Elkin NC. That baby is over 100 years old but has the best tick tock sound to sew with! This room is only 12X12 aproximately! You would not believe all the stuff squished in here!!!

These two quilts are just the tops and not quilted yet. But I was so proud of them I took pictures anyway. I have about 7 tops finished from my UFO collection that I have made this year. This is the year to get my act together on my UFO's! I told myself I could not start any more projects untill I got all these done! Motivation!!!! Quilters love to buy fabric and start new quilts.... well most of them done anyways. I still have two quilts that will take me years to complete. One is an applique quilt that will be rotted before I can finish quilting it!!! The other one is an attic windows that is sooooo slow to work on...mostly by hand! I am working on a machine method!!!

Hey, look at the dates...think I need to reset my camera settings?? That's what a cheep camera does when you take the batteries out to get to the memory card...lol

These two furry friends are Gracie and Layla. The smaller one is Gracie and Layla is the big sheddar! Gracie we have had for years...Layla adopted us last spring before she shared her sheddar habit with us...ever heard of the furminator dog brush? She loves it and we do too. There is no love like the love of a dog to make you feel special! They love you no matter what kind of a day your having and never leave the towels in the bathroom floor! :)

Well, it's a begining anyways. I was just going to spend a few minutes uploading a few pictures to my blog and it is now 4 hours later. Haha...oh, but it has been fun learning!

I am now going to go work on some of those squares I started at the Sew in on Friday night at the local quilt shop. Oh, was that ever fun!!! I really should do some house work though...clean...sew...clean...sew...hmmm...

We love our children, who keep us awake...worrying!

Welcome to Monday again! I was hoping for a sunny day...I need a little sunshine in my day today.
Ever had one of those days where you wish you could just turn you face to the sun, with your eyes closed, and feel the warmth?

It was a crazy weekend...how many times do you get to have police in your home for a visit just as your family comes over for pizza?

Seems my son has been wallowing in the mud with some little pigs down the road and learned his "wallow with the pigs" lesson. One of the little swines decided Saturday to break into a house near us. For once my 16 year old son was home sitting in front of the TV and not involved in the action.
I had just caught him drinking hot chocolate in the family room with my best quilt in his lap! I was fussing at him for risking the mess chocolate would make in the chair and the quilt... as the crimal was running to our house and hidding out under our porch in the swing catching his breath. We were unaware of anything happening and our guard dog Lala, was sleeping on the job.

Well, about that time my daughter is leaving the house and asks the young man if he was looking for her brother? She calls her brother down stairs to talk to the breathless young man. He asks my son for a jacket to cover up the mud...not telling my son he slipped in mud getting away from the owner... that caught him robbing his house! Without asking why....Yep, my son gives him a coat, of course he is a generious kind of guy right! Then they go walking down the road...the same road the kid was breaking into the house on!!! Ok, ever met a smart pig???

The angry neighbor comes ridding up in front of my parents house next door, and starts talking to my son, who knows this neighbor well because... they have two very pretty daughters. My son then realizes what this other kid has done when the neighbor starts questioning him about the break in....the other kid takes off running into the woods.

Well, this is where the police come into the picture to question my son and my daugher. This is where it gets good...my sister and her husband are visiting my parents next door to work on Dad's pc and we had ordered pizza for dinner. So, just as my husband gets back with the pizza's two police cars drive up in our drive way and come into our house. Mind you my Dad, sister, her husband and my family are all there in my tiny family room to witness the whole fiasco! Yeah, I got drama at my house!!! I am just thankful for once my son was at home and I was fussing at him!!!

Well, the day for the Patchwork sew-in has arrived! We will be there for many, many, sweet
hours just sewing away in the bliss of the back room of a quilt store with no demading interruptions!! Whoo Hoo..I am so ready! Well, not really ready...I still have to get my stuff together in my bags.

This is one of those times when I pull out my baby "Brother" machine that I travel with. He is a
sweet little machine that works like the big guys but just didn't cost very much...the kind you get
at the discount store in your area. I have my material all cut and ready to sew too!!

By the way I got that Quiltblock Sunday Sampler top done! It has been a challenge to accomplish that goal but the joy of seeing it completed was worth the effort. Now I have seven tops finished and
only about 2 major UFP's left!!! This is great...although I still have to quilt them...hmmm...does that count in the promise to myself that I will not start another quilt till I get these UFO's done???

Oh, fiddle-de-de...I can't think about that now I will think about that tomorrow, after I go to the quilt shop!!!! :)

Today I have decided I would get another Quilt Block Sunday sampler quit top together since it has been waiting so long to see it's completion. I have been on a mission this year to complete most
all my UFO's from as far back as 1995! Those were the days of cutting each piece out by hand one at a time....but, I discovered rottary cutting and everything changed in a big way!

Yes, way back in 1995 after quilting for over a decade with old donated cast off fabrics I decided to
go to a REAL quilt store and buy fabric for a quilt. I spent hours picking out that fabric and spent
about $50. which seemed to me to be a fortune. I had a pattern from Southern Livings sampler
calendar with a square for each month. Well, we all know how those square a month goes..ha!
Anyway, I savored that fabric for months and as they say I would pull it out and pet it too. I was
scared to death to cut into it. Eventually I would cut a little here and there and put those squares together and I did this for months and then it was years. Then it got put aside with
new projects and three small adopted kids and two teens to raise.

Many years passed and my budgeting got better and better and my ability to buy more fabric grew too, it was great! You know how we quilters are about our stashes. So, after many years of my stash growing and my projects growing too! Plus, those were the years I spent much time in my gray van sewing by hand waiting on kids at lessons. It was a crazy time in all areas of my life!!! The time went fast for me....my hand quilting was oh soooo slow though...

In the fall of 2008 I got the crazy idea to move my sewing room to a basement room that was larger than my little space upstairs. I thought I was used to the basement since that was where my first little sewing space was in the very back room with the heater unit. My middle daughter moved out to a place of her own and there it was... a huge room with an 11 foot long closet.... and huge folding doors!!! A dream come true!!! I set about moving all of my collection of sewing machines, tools, fabrics, tables, quilting machine, etc.

What a mess of stuff I had and when it came to those "unfinished objects" I had a moment of panic or a total mortal moment of recognition. I could see into the future and my kids standing in my sewing room after I was gone saying..."thanks mom, for leaving us all these unfinished quilts! Well, at least she was organized. Ok, so who wants to get these put together???" None of my girls sew at all... It was then that I decided something had to be done. I made a vow to myself to buy no more fabric, well maybe not anymore fabric, but definetly I could not start another quilt till I got most of these tops put together!!! I began counting my UFO"S and discovered I had over 14 quilts in varios stages of completion...ugh! What have I done!!! How will I ever get all these done! Oh, yeah....I have a short arm quilting machine now...but, oh my goodness how did I get this out of control!!! What was I thinking....

Ok, so now I had all my stuff in that huge room and began the task of getting organized. You guessed it...I spent months getting that room set up and ready to sew....I love organizing. Then when I got it all together I could not find anything in my super organization. In my tiny room upstairs I knew where every tool was stored and had been for years! Frustration set in and I lost my mojo! No matter what I could not get the inspiration to sew. That is a bad place for one like me to be in. I decided the room was too quiet and too far from what was going on upstairs with the family activity all around me! There was no choice but to move it all upstairs again! This further instilled in me the decision to complete these UFO"s once and for all even if it took years...which it will!

It took me weeks to get it all back upstairs again, the quilting machine being the biggest challenge. Oh, and the room seemed even smaller than before, but I didn't care, I was happy again and my mojo to sew was back. The women at Quilt Guild were even asking me for months what had happened to me since I was not bringing quilts for show an tell anymore that winter.

So, here it is October 2009 and I have gotten a lot done! I have completely finished four of the quilts complete with binding hand sewn on. I have one of the Sunday Samplers on the frame now and
I have completed six tops with binding even cut out and it feels great!!! I have no idea what I am going to do with all these quilts but they will be done! What a great feeling it is to see those empty project containers. Now, I can start the whole crazy cycle over again...hahahaa! Yes, and that 1995 Calendar sampler quilt is one of the six quilt tops waiting to see the quilting frame!!! Oh happy day!!! I have promised myself to put pictures up later...right now I have to get back to that Quilt Block Sunday Sampler top!

A cool new tool in my sewing basket!

I have been sewing since I was old enough to sit at my mom's sewing machine. She made my sister and I clothes and matching clothes for our dolls and barbies. I was born in the 50's so I had a Good Housekeeping kind of mom. I would sit under her old Singer machine table as a small child and catch the scraps falling to the floor. I could play for hours listening to the gears humming on her machine. Since then my love for sewing and cool sewing tools has been a fascinating adventure!

I have made clothes, dolls, quilts, cushions, pillows, most anything that can handle a needle and thread of some sort. If I can't fix it with needle and thread or tape then I am in trouble. I am a member of a Quilting Guild and recently learned about Blogging on the Internet. Now, that is my next big adventure...I am a mommy PC geek. My sister and her husband introduced me to the world of computers and since then I have discovered that you can combine the PC world and sewing...how cool is that! So, I am an Embird and EQ6 student... I think for the rest of my life! There is so much to learn just in those two programs. Embird is for the world of machine embroidery and EQ6 is for the quilting world in my PC.

There is so much excitement in the world of sewing that I decided to add my two cents...probably all it's worth too! lol

I plan to write as often as I can, telling about the things I have learned in my 45+ years of sewing. I have learned most of it by trial and error. It cost a lot of money to go to classes and my husband of 35 years is a retired fireman. I learned to budget well to stay at home and raise 5 kids!!!

In my sewing adventure I have expanded my world of sewing from my first machine bought used just like moms to a Brother Innov-is Embroidery machine and a lot of others in between. The old Singer 401 Slant Needle is still in my sewing room in it's original old wooden table. That old Singer machine has been the best work horse of all and is still in excellent condition with out even one professional tune up. Remember I had to budget well including learning to clean and care for my own machines. Well, since then I have added to the collection and my little sewing room is maxed out. I am also an organizational nut! Put those two together and add in there a little "can't throw that out, it might come in handy" and you have a very packed room. I plan to put pictures of my sewing room in my blog too. I took about 100 pictures yesterday just for my blog. I am excited!!!

Anyway, day by day I am going to add to my little journal for my lasting legacy in case my quilts and dolls rot too quckly...hahaha...I will post pictures of my quilts and what few dolls I have left from my doll making years. My sister and I made those Cabbage Patch type of dolls years ago and I wish I had one of those to put in my blog...mine looked like little old women in a baby's body! lol...but I made a few bucks anyway! Somebody thought they were cute...a face only a mother could love I tell you.

So, to my sister Phyllis...my sister of inspiration how is this?