Organizing headache

Do you remember the post where I showed the horrendous state of my unorganized room? Well I started sorting and culling a couple of weeks ago. I also started refolding my fabrics so they are all neat and tidy, so they can get all messed up in the most most likely. LOL
I woke up yesterday with such a horrible headache it hurt to blink my eyes. I took some Motrin and laid back down but someone put a sign in my yard saying " Please come work in the neighborhood with every loud machine you can find". My bedroom is in the front of the house just about 30 feet from the street, the neighbors across the street and just south of me are getting a new roof and they started at 7am. The City decided this would be the day they remove and replace a storm drain cover directly across the street, with a jack hammer, they started at 7:30.
Let me tell you, going under the covers and using two pillows over my head did nothing to stop the jack hammer from pounding in my head. I drug myself out of bed, and went to the only quiet place in the house,my sewing room. I couldn't see to sew, which was a moot point since the room was so strewn I couldn't get in the door much less to my chair. So I thought I don't have to see well to fold so that is what I did. ALL DAY.
I have anything a yard or more folded over my large ruler and anything less than a yard but larger than a fat quarter folded over a smaller ruler and all fat quarters folded like they come from the quilt shop and anything less than a FQ is in a box for cutting into strips or squares at a later date.I didn't figure I needed to play with a sharp object if I couldn't see well. I am dangerous enough with good sight and no headache but with both I thought I would end up in the ER.
Today I still have a headache but it is not pounding so I think I can function.
Today is the day I take my quilt (given to me by my guild) is going to the quilter. I am so excited!
I will post pictures of my pretty folded fabrics later after I return from the quilter.

Later
Diane

Memorial Day

I am sad to see this has become just another holiday in my town. Not even a holiday that everyone is off work. The City worked their regular eight hours! I was shocked.
What has happened to us? We can't take one day out of our precious lives to remember men and women who died for our country? No matter if you agree with this particular war or not, what about the Civil War? What about WWI,or II? What about the American War of Independence? People died so we could live in freedom.
I am fortunate I have never lost a loved one to war, but I know those who have. Their lives were important.
I hope I never take for granted what was given so I can live free.

I hate to be a whiner...

I have tried all day to blog, but Blogger has sworn up and down all day that I was not who I said I was. I have begged, pleaded, fussed, grumped and it still said, "that email address does not exist in our records". UGH!
So I said FORGET IT! I am going to go to the college and look at the quilt exhibit my guild art group put together.

I got home a bit ago and guess what??? Now that I don't have time to write much Blogger suddenly remembers me! ~(:^o

I'll be back after I clean the living room to post pictures of the exhibit.
I have to get this house a bit cleaner before hubby gets home, or he will know I have done nothing but play since he has been gone. LOL

Later
Diane

Quiltathon

I have joined in with Judy and all the other Quiltathoners today. So far I have cut 3 yards of fabric to use in disappearing 9 patch blocks. I hope to get at least one top made today, but we will see.
Later,

I am so blessed

My JJ friends surprised me yesterday with a teacup quilt. These are the sweetest ladies!
Each block shows the personality of the maker. Karen and Joan love batiks and made theirs out of batiks, Lynn put reminders of our show tune singing and all our laughing at retreats. Suzanne who embroideries, stitched hers. Joan D made hers with a piece of old lace, as she loves anything antique. You get the idea, I will be able to look at this and remember vividly my friends

A.Q. gave me a beautiful teacup (her block didn't make into the quilt) so I can sip tea while looking at my quilt and remember all the fun we had together (and will again as often as possible). This was not a garage sale teacup, but one from her collection. She is too kind.

My Aussie friend Suzanne gave me

a cute Koala bear that now lives on my computer, cool fabric that has cave marking designs and a pin to put on my pin chatelaine.

After all is said and done, I feel so blessed.

I was told once when I was fighting depression, if I had one person I could call friend that I was a fortunate person. I can honestly say I have more than one friend and I am very blessed.

Results of May Day dyeing

<--bucket pouring with 3 colors

This was an orange with black added

------->

These are some of the fabrics we made during the May 1st dye day. I tried to teach about colors and how they mix and work together.

<----Mixture of 3 ----->

Mixture of 3 colors

<----mixture of 3 colors



Learning to manipulate the fabric

------------>

Those sneaky ladies!

This is a picture of me and my "buddy". We have so much fun when we are together. While at retreat we sing show tunes, which I am sure the ladies around us wish we would stop doing. We giggle, we talk about our favorite books, the Mitford series by Jan Karon. Actually Lynn was the one who introduced me to these books. I love them and all the characters.

This is Mrs. Ruth. She is one of the sweetest ladies you would ever want to meet. Her quilts are wonderful and usually big. Her fried fish is so good it makes you want to stuff yourself. (My eyes look like I am drunk, but I promise I'm not!)

This was a TOTAL surprise! Nancy on the very right with the stripes on was talking about some quilts that we all have worked on to donate to Quilts of Valor and Linus. While she was talking she said I need Diane to come up here. I was confused because I didn't remember that I needed to say anything so I asked her if she meant me.

Over the past couple of months guild members have been signing block and making 4 patches and then Nancy, Joyce and Kathy sewed them into a top. According to the story today I actually walked in on them a couple of times but "head in the clouds Diane" never noticed anything. LOL

One of our newest members Beth is going to machine quilt it next week so I will have it to take with me on my first real house hunting trip.

You will never know how loved I feel. I love these ladies and really like to be with them, but I never am sure how people feel about me. My insecurity is such a pain.

I keep hearing in my head the song from Toy Story, "You've got a friend in Me". It feels good.

Later

Diane

playing around

I have been playing around with my stash and I like what I have come up with. What do you think?

I looked at it for a while, then decided I might like to put some scrappier blocks in. They are the leftovers when I cut the blocks.

I have a couple placed in there to see if I like them, and I think I do. I have a few more things I want to try so who knows what it will be.

Ray headed back to Florida this morning. He will only be gone a week this time. :^) We are glad to know this is the last time he will go to Florida without us.

Time to sew,

Diane

It's a GIRL!

I was so excited when a box arrived today about 4pm. I unwrapped my new friend. A Bernina 1230 that I bought on Ebay.

The first thing I did was to totally take it apart and start giving it a good scrubbing. It kind of reminded me of having a baby. The first thing the nurse does is start rubbing them and cleaning them up.

There was a bit of dust and gunk in there, but after a while I reached it all and it was all clean.

Then I got after the bobbin area...scrub, clean, oil.

Introducing Nina! Nina the super quilter! I have been telling everyone there was too much testosterone in this house, we needed another girl, so here she is. I am so pleased.

Take care,

Diane

Old Sew and Sews

For the past several years (I can't believe how fast time goes!) I have met with friends from my quilt guild in Joyce's home to sew quilts. We began because we wanted to make quilts for the local Linus Quilts group. Over the years we have made quilts not only for Linus, but also for the Ronald McDonald house, the local Methodist Children's home, Quilts of Valor and even made quilts to go on the beds of a local hero soldier who was hurt in the war.
This is a hard working bunch of ladies. We have a lot of fun together and we enjoy each others company. Well yesterday was the day to meet and I knew this was very likely going to be my last chance to meet with them due to the move coming up quickly. Ray and I had already talked a month or so ago and we agreed that I was going to soak up every moment I could with my friends. I get in my truck and bop on over not knowing they had planned a going away lunch. I knew there were people there who were not "regulars", but I am so goofy I didn't think anything about it. I was even given a gift from a former guild president but just thought she was so sweet to think of me the lone Texan in the group while she vacationed in Texas. I honestly have never been accused of being the quick witted person in the group! LOL
Even when Nancy left to go "get something" and we had to play musical cars to let her out, I just thought it must be important because Nancy is one who doesn't like to cause a bother.
DUH!
She went off to buy my favorite kind of food! BAR-B-QUE! Everyone chipped in and treated me to a wonderful lunch and then gave me a bag with civil war reproduction fabrics! Oh and a flying super pig fabric, LOL! I was so surprised!
Then I cried. It finally dawned on me that my normal was once again going to be gone. I was going to have to pull up roots. Roots that if the truth was known I never wanted to begin with. When we moved here I had really never made friends in my previous towns because I was very busy raising my children and being a wife. I still had young kids at home. But over the ten years here the kids have grown and two have moved out and Joseph is ending his high school career soon. I have more "free" time. Without even realizing it I made friends.

While planning the move to Florida I forgot I was leaving Mobile.
I think I miss them too much.

Diane

Sheeesh!

I am here to say once and for all, I firmly believe computers should never be shared with teenagers!
At least a thousand times in the past 11 years of having teens in high school my sweet husband has fought another downloaded worm/trojan/virus whatever you want to call it. I can honestly say Ray is alot more mellow about it than he was in the beginning. I don't know if it his age or his weariness.
We asked youngest son where this virus/worm/trojan came from and his reply was "I don't know, I only go to the same 3 places."
WRONG!
After it was all over and done with we discovered it was from son trying to find a music file converter thing to make his MP3 player play some music he bought from Best Buy Online Music Store, but they don't want to play on his Sansa.
Ah HAH! I knew it!
I am going to save up my pennies and buy him his own (not expensive)computer and he can hose it all he wants just as long as he stays off mine!

Diane

May Day was Dye Day

I had a play day/workshop Thursday. It was so much fun! Two ladies who I have come to love dearly wanted to play in the dyes and asked if I could pop over and show them a few things I have learned over the years.
One of the things we did was play with dyes and shaving cream. Kind of like marbling fabrics.

The ladies both are very artistic and have way more creativity in their little fingers than I have in my whole body.

We laid shaving cream down, then put the dyes where we wanted them. After the dye is placed just so you lay your fabric on top and very lightly pat the fabric to make sure it comes in contact with the dyes. Normally this is not a big deal but it was very windy and it was drying the cream faster than we could finish, so we had to squirt it a bit with a water bottle.

I made these for shop samples. The one above was made from charm squares. It was so fun and very fast. If you need a quick throw or a baby or toddler quilt this is your answer. I made this top in about 3 hours.

Don't you just love Bow Tie quilts? I do. Not only are they cute they are pretty fast to make. You can do so much with them. This one is simple diagonal rows, but you can make them in X's and O's, or just O's.

So much is going on around here. Only 8 more days of instruction at school for my son and 19 days until graduation.

Fun fun fun!

Diane