what I’ve been doing …. Or Not

This weekend, I finished quilting my 15th  quilt top for our Guild Charity.    How did this happen?  There are several ladies in our guild that do long arming . It’s only the beginning of the year, how did I get so many ?

When this year started, 2014, my New Years resolution was to tackle all those UFO’s that I’ve been staring at for a few years.

only a few UFO’s

What happened?  Well, I got so involved with helping out our guild charity that I lost track of my priorities.

It’s a wonderful cause that our guild works on.  I’ve always given to several charities, after all how many quilts can a person use?  Currently I make and quilt for “Quilts for Kids”, Cotton Patch Charity, (nursing homes, battered women etc.) and Eagle Ranch Children’s home. I did 15 quilt tops for the Eagle Ranch charity so far this year.   I haven’t counted for the other charity groups yet. That’s another day. I think it’s time to get back to my projects.

Here’s the Eagle Ranch quilts.

WOW ! !  Aren’t they gorgeous. And what a great job these girls are doing for the children.  Now, I’m getting back to my N.Y. resolution.   Going to tackle those UFO’s today.  I’m starting with  the Celtic Solstice quilt from Bonnie Hunter’s November mystery on her Yahoo group.  I am up to part 5, the last step before  getting the blocks together.  I hope I can get this huge quilt top finished this week.

Our guild retreat Winter 2014

I’m finally recovered from our guild retreat 2 weeks ago.  We had 26 guild members,  wonderful weather, lots of good food, giggles and sewing.    Our retreat has been held at Future Farmers Of America for the past 2 years. they have wonderful accomodations, private rooms and bath, some great cooks with all the food you want.  I know I gained a few lbs.  Our sewing room was big with a separate room for ironing and pressing.

My friend and I had to get there early to set up the tables and ironing spaces, speak to the cooks about the menus and generally set up for all the quilters.  By the time everyone arrived, some later than others, we were sewing up a storm.

One of the gals stopped at a local quilt shop and received a gift certificate for us to raffle and coupons for % off our purchases.  A lot of the girls did a road trip to the quilt shop the next morning.  They just HAD to buy something.

I got one quilt top finished and blocks of another. Just have to put that one together. It’s going to be a quilt of valor for a Viet Nam Vet in an adjacent town.  I usually make one or two a year for the vets.  My other finished project, I’ve already quilted it, bound it and donated it to our guild charity, Eagle Ranch Children’s home.

Here’s some of the tops that gals finished at retreat.

My top for Eagle Ranch children’s home

Lydia’s machine embroidery project

Mary’s been working on this one for a while and it came out gorgeous

Peggy’s blue and white

My friend and I are planning another guild retreat in April but with a different guild.

the weather will be warmer, we’ll get in some long walks after our meals and hopefully won’t go home with those extra pounds.

Disappearing nine patch Churn Dash

I just finished quilting a Disappearing Nine Patch Churn Dash that is going to a Homeless shelter.  My night guild makes lots of charity quilts, nursing homes, preemies in the hospital, battered women, even doggy beds .    this is the neatest technique and so easy to do.  Here’s the link to the U Tube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rgQd6asPQs&list=PLD5EF21A981F69C28   Hopefully , if I did it right, the link will work. otherwise, go to U Tube and look up Missouri Star U Tube Disappearing nine patch churn dash. it will come up.     I can’t wait to make one myself

Disappearing Nine Patch Churndash

getting those charity quilt done

some Eagle Ranch Quilts.

 

Celtic Solstice

A few months ago I started following Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery Celtic Solstice.   I had to stop for my foot surgery so fell way behind but as she says, it’s not a race.  Making Bonnie’s patterns is a great way to use up scraps.  I’ve made just about all of her mysteries, I think I have one UFO hiding under my sewing table.  But I just can’t get rid of these scraps.  it’s like they multiply even tho I’m using hundreds and hundreds of them in her quilts.

I”m not using her exact colors, she’s using bright oranges and I’m using a darker almost burnt orange.  And my greens are darker also.   I’ve done pretty good trying to catch up. I am starting step 5 today.  that means I have to make 244 split triangle units.  I’ve got the triangles and half square triangles all cut so I just have to sit and start sewing.

Here’s step 1 thu 4. 

 

 

Once I get thru step 5, I’ll be putting these blocks together then finishing up the quilt. I cheated a little, I peaked at the finished quilt and it’s gorgeous.

 

 

It’s Been A while

HI everyone.  I know it’s been a while.  Once I recuperated enough from my foot surgery Tom and I drove down to Florida, the Pensacola area for a little R & R.

We rented a gorgeous condo right on the gulf.   The town of Santa Rosa holds a Singer/Songwriter festival every year and since Tom volunteers at Red Clay Theater here in Duluth GA, he signed us both up to volunteer for this festival.   The great part about volunteering is you get to see any of the 175 singers for free, the not so great part, we had to volunteer for 2 nights out of 4. This in itself wasn’t bad, we still got to see the singers where we volunteered but  I stupidly didn’t wear my walking boot the first night. We stood for 6 hours, I was a greeter at the front door of  “Fish out of water” a hotel/restaurant.  I paid for that mistake the rest of the weekend.  Wore that walking boot all day and evening even to the next show that we volunteered at.     The people were great, very friendly and when they saw me in my walking boot, well,  they gave me their seat.  We met a lot of people that live here in GA and some that came from up north too.  The weather was cold but clear, thank goodness we brought winter jackets.

Here’s some photos taken from our condo.

sunrise

Sunset

 

walking the beach

It was a great week, wonderful restaurants and great singer songwriters.   We don’t know if we’ll do it again next year,  but it sure was wonderful seeing friends and enjoying the atmosphere.

 

Raffle Quilt Finished and Presented

I’ve just finished a year of being President of our Quilt Guild .  It was a very exciting  and educating year for me.  Lots of interesting speakers, lots of great workshops.              One major task for our guild each year is to make a raffle quilt to earn money for our workshops and mostly for us to have funds to make twin size quilts for Eagle Ranch Children’s home in Gainesville, GA. This non-profit home is over 400 acres, all land that was donated, there are 7 boys homes and 7 girls homes. These children are taken by court order and spend from a few weeks to several years.  Some are from broken homes, some from dysfunctional homes.

This year the executive board chose a pattern and 5 of us met every 2 weeks for almost 2 months to cut, piece the blocks, sew the rows  then put the entire quilt together.  After it was all pieced, I asked one of our “bee” groups to applique around the border for us.  As usual, our wonderful ladies came thru making our raffle quilt exquisite.  When I got the finished top back, I loaded it onto my long arm, quilted it, making sure to skip over the applique.  The finished quilt came out beautiful. It is full of warm beiges, browns and a touch of deep reds.  This queen sized quilt will look lovely on someone’s bed.,  We’re selling the tickets  $1.00 each or 6 for $5.00.  We’ll be selling these at several venues locally throughout the year and then announcing the winner at our December holiday luncheon.  I hope we sell lots of tickets this year so these children can benefit from our hard work.

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My Newest Scrap Quilt

I recently had foot surgery. nothing major.  I had planters fashiitis, probably spelled that one wrong.  Anyway, it’s been painful for over a year. I went thru injections, 6 weeks of PT another injection, a night boot and after all that, it was worse not better. So surgery was finally scheduled for Dec. 18.

Since my foot surgery I haven’t been able to sew for a few weeks.  But, I finally got the stitches out, can walk around without a walker and best of all without a walking boot. This boot felt like it weighed 10 lbs but when I put it on the scale it didn’t even register a pound. Dragging around with that boot on my foot, sure wore me down not to mention the pain meds I had to take for a few days.
Now that I’m mobile again, I’ve been spending hours and hours sewing and trying to catch up with Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery, Celtic Solstice.                           http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/celtic-solstice-mystery.html  Bonnie sugested if we get behind, to just make a few of each step  as she posts them.  Me,  I can’t do that. I have to finish each step one at a time.  It’s tedious but I’m a “it has to be organized” freak so I had to do it my way.

step 4, in progress

As you can see, I’m still working on step 4. I need to make 300 4 patches.  that’s 1200                 2″ squares.  I hope to get this step done today.  I can’t believe all the scraps I’m going thru and still have tons, they just never go away.

My Friend the Cardinal

siting on the pole for the bird feeder. resting from his flying into my window.

My Cardinal is till here banging on my window. I bought new birdseed, the good kind, berry’s and nuts. the birds have been coming all week, the large feeder is almost empty already.  but this darn cardinal just wants to land on my window.  I’ve closed the blinds thinking he see’s his shadow but that makes no difference to him.   He still comes, lands and bangs on it.

Here he is landing on the window

I hope he finds his mate soon.

my friends quilt finally finished

Here is the finished quilt for my friend.   She picked out all the fabric, I did the piecing and quilting.    I’m a bit annoyed, I tried so hard to make sure there were no mistakes, But, of course I’m not perfect.   After quilting it and showing it at Guild last week, a friend showed me one mistake.  Can you find it?                                                                                                                                 So now should I pick out the quilting stitches and turn that one square or leave it and tell her?