Home Is Where the Heart Is

Grandma/Muttsie/Mom has a new place to call home.  A month ago she took the daring step and sold her house, downsized all her belongings, and moved into a retirement home.  It was brave, courageous, and one of a major life change for her.  As usual this 93 year old lady is pretty amazing.

I just came back from a quick visit with her and this time I remembered to bring a camera with me.  So lets do a tour of her new home.  

 
 The living room is small but cozy.  It is called an Alcove with about 500 square feet.  When you have three floors of building to roam and join in activities you really don't need a lot of space to live in.  She is right down the hall from a fantastic lending library!

The kitchen is small but efficient.  No oven, a two burner top, a microwave, and a refriegerator (for her fruit and ice cream!).  Since she does not cook, Bill built a cover for the burners and gave her twice the counter space.  

Grandma has a choice between lunch or dinner in the dining room.  She has chosen lunch and usually brings back a sandwich or extra dessert for her evening snack.  Lunch always has a soup, 3 different sandwiches, lots of salad greens and toppings, fruit, an entree, and a surprise dessert.  And yes, she has gain a total of 3 lbs. since she moved in (and is talking about going on a diet).

There is lots of wall space left for hanging more pictures.  But for now she is content with the few pictures she has up.  The basket holds the extra blankets for the lucky one who visits and sleeps on the couch!

 And this is the most important part of her apartment.  This is the information center!!!  I caught her early in the morning getting out the daily morning emails to all of us.  She is quite a lady!  

So what else does she do.  While there her friend CaroleK picked us up and took us to the Christmas Forest.  The Christmas Forest is a yearly happening put on by St. Peters Hospital (where Grandma has volunteered for 23 years).  The trees are sponsored by various businesses in the area and then auctioned off to the highest bidder.  The trees are decorated by designers and they are quite elaborate....just down right beautiful.  If you are not in the Christmas spirit these trees will surely put you in one.

Mom/Grandma was really having a good time.  She just forgot to smile!  And this is CaroleK (another Polish lady) who showed us a wonderful time. 

Only two of the many trees.  

Oh, I forgot to mention.  She also has a huge walk-in closet that most of us would die for!

Merry Christmas to all who find their way to this blog!

Picture Endings

 

Happy Endings!

Quilting Update

The challenge quilt has been turned in to the Country Lady quilt store and has been hung.  There was a total of 7 or 8 that made it in on Halloween, the due date.  They will hang for a month before coming back home again.

I am so glad I cut my packet into small pieces to make the quilt.  Okay, enough of this pratter.  The following are the challenge quilts.

A couple of the quilts are really good with a lot of creative pieces to them.  Won't know till December 1st as to who gets the prize money!

Once mine was turned in, it was off and running to start a new quilt.  I like the look of the trendy modern quilts and the simplicity of design.  

 This quilt was super fast and fun to put together.  It should have been an easy pattern to figure out.  But noooooo, it wasn't until Bill wandered by that I learned 'what I should have done'. The strips in the center were eye balled to center (no, no, no).  So when I was squaring it up, one brown side was always longer than the other.  This went on for a few cuttings.  Simple solution was to fold the strip in half and press in the center before adding the next strip!  (Thanks Bill, but where were you when I started this one???)  But I still love the quilt even if the brown sides aren't exactly even.

Last Tuesday was the Quilters Guild (which Chris and I are now members of) at the Art Center.  It was a surprise that in the Art Center's main gallery was a showing of quilts.  These are all art quilts - candy for the eyes!

I would have had more pictures but the battery in the camera was going dead.  Aren't they wonderful though.  The use of color is awesome.  If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as an art quilter!

Happy winter days!

 
 

Addicted to Challenges

Life is going by in a blur.  The addiction to quilt challenges is an easy one to acquire.  You just need time (which I have plenty of now), material (my stash is always growing) and quilt shows or the web to find out about the close to home challenges.  I'm a quilt challenge junkie and loving every minute of it. 

For those of you who follow this blog know, I love to quilt.  It is a wonderful excuse to pass on cleaning the house, to look busy so the husband will cook, and the best part is supporting all the local quilt stores.  I must confess the last quilt store handed me a $10 gift card and I was scared to ask how much it had cost in past purchases to be handed this.

So here is the latest on the quilts that are in the making for the next three quilt challenges.

This one I've blogged about before.  I was so thrilled to have finished it.  This high lasted all of 48 hours until I realized I still needed to sew on a hanging sleeve.  Drats, so close and so far.

The hippie bus is hand stitched on ready to be ripped off when the quilt comes back home again.

The back of the hippie quilt.  The zodiac was another piece of material that was in the kit for this quilt challenge.  It never said in the rules where it had to go.  I think it looks perfect on the back, don't you?

The next one is a quilt challenge for the Silverton, OR quilt show in January.  This one has also been in previous blogs.  Every day I work at least an hour on it and it is slowly coming along.  

There is tons of thread stitching on it.  When it is finished all the yellow background material will be cut away. At this time I'm not sure how it is going to look when it ready to be attached to a background fabric.

Jenny, you had asked if there was a book on thread painting.  This book is a great resource on that subject.  Most thread work is done with the feed dogs down and a darning foot.  When a person has mastered this then quilt tops can be done quickly.  I have not mastered the subject and so I keep a regular foot on, feed dogs up, and slowly turn my material back and forth.  It is a great way to veggie or zen out.

The next quilt challenge is from the Stitchin' Post in Sisters, OR and it is for the first of April.  Sisters puts on a huge quilt show the week end after the 4th of July every year.  You are lucky if you can find lodging anywhere close to Sisters!  Jean Wells is a fantastic well know quilter who is part of the Stitchin Post.  To take a class from her would be like dying and going to heaven.  (I keep hinting to Bill that this would be the greatest gift I could have.)  

Oh, back to the challenge.  Simple enough, any quilted object with at least 1/4 of it in hexagons.  How hard can that be.  It is known as English paper piecing.  Grandma's Flower Garden is a well know quilt design using this method.  It can also be very time consuming.  So why not cut the time, bring the design into the present, and just have fun with it.

This is the first go with it.  Don't like all the bits and pieces of lizards showing. Of course, you could use a black marker and color over them.

But then there is the simplicity of fusible webbing.  Cut and glue, no turned edges!  A white background is so popular right now in the quilting world. mmm, still lots of times to play with this one.


Happy Creativity!



 

the BIG quilt show!

Chris and I went to the BIG OR quilt show in Portland this last week!  The quilts were awesome!!! and neither one of us had a camera or a smart phone to take pictures...  I did look for my camera before leaving and didn't find it (under a pile of fabric) until I got home.  Needless to say we will be back to Portland next year (with cameras).  

What I can show you are all the fun stuff I bought while there. (I just took the pictures minutes ago!!)  The vendor booths were as good as the quilts as they came from all of our favorite quilt shops and from quilt shops we never heard of.  So that being said, here is what came home with me....

The last one will be my traveling project....

I am frantically working on a second quilt challenge for the quilt show held in Silverton, OR in January.  The fat quarter fabric is the flower print which I am thread painting on - that is the time consuming but easy part.  I've auditioned a few different backgrounds for it and think I just might stay with the batik block one.  Only two rules for this challenge:  you have to use the flower print and it cannot be bigger than 36" by 36".  

It is hard to see all the thread stitches but it is there.  After the stitching I will come back and add a lot of beading, then there will be spots that are cut out so only the flowers, leaves, and stems are left.

This is a 6 X 6 batik block which will probably be made into a 7 X 7 block.  Still not sure how this will end up.

Happy quilting!
 

 

Finshed!

The challenge quilt is finished! if you don't add the hanging sleeve or tacking on the stupid 6o's Peace Hippie Bus.  I am pleased with how this one came out... and I did it in all of 3 weeks.  Now that must be a record setting quilt.

Without bus....

With bus....

Close up of bus.... (which is only temporary until after it comes back home).

This quilt challenge is judged on a popular vote.  If you have enough friends to drop in and vote on your quilt (wonder how many times I can talk the husband into driving into town and voting????)  or if you happen to work at the quilt store then you  can be the big winner. Now this might work in my favor as all my stitching is not evenly spaced....and I did not use the panel.... but what the heck, I like it and will either hang it or use it somewhere. So in the end I am the big winner just for liking the end result.

Then we come to the knitting project.  I have been faithful in picking up the needles every day (great excuse for sitting on the couch in front of the TV).  Can a person be termed a couch knitter instead of a couch potato?  The directions said "no matchies" but when you veggie it is so much easier to do whatever came before.  Is it enough to find new knit patterns and use them over and over again.... I promise the back will be different.

Happy Veggie Days!

Not Enough Hours in a Day!

There never seems to be enough hours in a day to get everything done that needs to be done.  I've already given up on cleaning the house, mowing lawns, cooking, dishes....  (ok, so I really still do all those things!)

The secret would be to finish all the projects that I have started instead of seeing something new to try and going for it.  So this is where I am on old and new projects.

The 'old' project is coming along only because there is an Oct. 31st deadline on it and I could be looking at carpel tunnel hand surgery before that date.  So if the challenge quilt is going to be ready I have to stay with it!

Handy Bill (dear husband) has made an extension table to help me with the top stitching on this quilt.  

This really helps to take the weight of the quilt and makes it easier to slide it under the pressure foot on the sewing machine.

See how well the extension works.  And this is as far as I have gone with the challenge quilt.  Due date Oct. 31st.

I do finish a few projects...

The hanging bags are so much fun.  What you can't see in the pictures is all the beading that has been added.  Four more of these are in the embellishing stage.

Then we come to a new project.  While having lunch downtown with Chris (remember her from my other quilting blogs) we discovered two new stores in the old downtown part of Roseburg.  One was the bead store which has seen me 3 times already and a new YARN store.  

Sharon, the owner, had me hooked when I saw a knitted vest in the window and found out she gave lessons....  so I am knitting a strip vest.

It is really quite easy as you knit this sweater vest in strips then sew them together.  It is being made in all my favorite shades of blue, green, and purple!  It looks a bit wocky as the yarn and pattern is changing but the blocking will straighten all of that out.  It is also being made up as it goes along.  

Happy Days with Long Lists of Fun Things to Do!