Saturday

Square Pegs Quilt

Square Pegs Quilt
I met a fellow quilter, Mary during a class I took at my local quilt shop, Coins and Quilts. There were only 5 of us in the class so we all got to know each other pretty well. Over the past two years, three of us that attended that class still get together and go to quilt shows together. Mary is starting to feel her age at 76, I would have never guessed. I thought she was in her 60's. She still works at the Polish Community Center part-time. She preps for banquet dinners and even tends bar there. I'm not her age yet and I already know I don't want to work that hard when I'm in my 70's.

Mary is starting to slow down a little bit. She recently decided to clean out her quilt fabric and unfinished projects. She gave me a half-finished bright colored quilt and asked if I would like to complete it then donate it to my Quilts for Kids group. I happily accepted. All the squares for the quilt were placed in a specific order and half of them were sewn into rows so this was pretty easy to complete. I added a flannel backing from my stash and made the binding from other fabric that Mary had given me. The quilt pattern is called Square Pegs and I think I will use it again. I am happy to show off the results here!
Square Pegs Quilt

Square Pegs Quilt

Square Pegs Quilt

Thursday

Photos, Organization and Retirement

My husband, Jeff is retiring. His employer threw him a retirement luncheon yesterday at TGI Fridays at Miller Park. It was very nice that the company allowed all his coworkers to leave work for an extended lunch. Jeff's boss invited the immediate family so me and two of my three kids attended. It was a wonderful and thoughtful event.

Because of this event, I decided to make a collage called 'Jeff...through the years'. That meant sneaking around gathering photos over the course of the last few weeks. When I realized that this was a tremendous undertaking, I was determined to organize all of our photos no matter what. I had photos everywhere. They were in file cabinets, in photo boxes, stashed in envelopes in cubbies, just everywhere.

I dug up every single photo from every place I could find them. Then I told Jeff it was a good time to get all these paper photos in order. After all, in this digital world, I should only have to do this once. It's not like we print photos anymore. And my digital photos, I am proud to say, have always been very organized. I can find any photo in a moment's notice. That's how good I am at labeling and storing my digital files.

But these paper photos - what a mess! Jeff was oblivious to any plans I had in making something for his retirement lunch. I just started going through all the stacks of photos as I gathered them up around the house. Then I opened all 6 of the photo organization storage boxes I had from the back of the closed. What a mess! As we sat around in the evenings unwinding, I just sorted and sorted and sorted some more. As I sorted, I started a pile for the collage I would eventually make.

After a week went by, I tried to talk myself into quitting this project. I felt like I wasn't making much headway and this was way bigger of a project than I thought. But I still plugged away. I told myself that even if I ran out of time to get a collage completed, it's still not a bad idea to get through all these photos. And memorabilia. There was lots of that all over the place too. Ticket stubs, programs, pamphlets, you name it. I had it stuffed all over the place.

The hard part about organizing photos is deciding how to categorize them. Once I looked through them some sorting was pretty natural...like trips to Niagara Falls, motorcycle events, Christmases, family, etc.  Some things were a little more difficult to sort, like photos of friends and events like weddings (were they a friend's wedding or a family member's wedding?). I set the most difficult subjects aside and worked with the easy ones first. Before I knew it, I had the photos filed in 4 of the 6 photo boxes and labeled properly. A 5th box contained all the negatives and the memorabilia so I was feeling confident I was making good progress.

Another tough thing about these photos was the memories that the provoked. So many people in them are now long gone. My dad, Jeff's parents, my brother-in-law and so many aunts and uncles. It was easy to cry over them all. So much sadness in the photos of Jeff's best friend who now has dementia and has no idea who anyone is yet so many blessings in those same photos. Happy memories were everywhere. Once in a while I had to remind myself of that.

At this point I stopped because I really needed to concentrate on the collage. I looked at my stack of photos of Jeff that I set aside and that familiar feeling of being overwhelmed came rushing back. I eyed the photos and chose to apply the same concept that I used when filing all the rest of the photos. I sorted them by subject. Just Jeff, hunting & fishing, family, friends, sporting events, etc. It got easier and easier. Then I made cute labels to print out and add to the collage.

Just one day before the luncheon, I still did not have the collage ready. I didn't even have a display board to use. So I ran to the store and picked one up. I hid it just before Jeff came home from work. That evening, I tried to print my labels for the collage. Much to my dismay, the printer drivers weren't working and I had to reinstall them. So here it is, Tuesday night and I still have no collage to take to the lunch the next day.

I got up at 5:30 the morning of the luncheon. I had renewed vigor to tackle the collage. I decided that if I got it done, great and if not, oh well. No stress. I chose some blue card stock and loaded it into the printer. Instead of printing all 6 pages of my labels, I just printed one page. It worked perfectly! So I printed the other 5 pages and I was off and running.

I took the display board out of the package and laid it out flat. I cut all the labels from each page and started plopping the photos on the display board in piles by subject. I threw the labels I printed on top of each photo pile like I was dealing a deck of cards. One and a half glue sticks later, I had all the photos pasted on the board. I was ready. I even had time to go through the newspaper clippings about Jeff and the ticket stubs and other memorabilia, make copies of them and paste them on the board as well.

I got the project done with an hour to spare. At the lunch Jeff was so touched and surprised and his coworkers enjoyed picking up on a little history about Jeff. The display was a great hit and I am so glad I got it finished. It's nice to have a little conversation piece added to any party.
So now I am looking at the unfinished box of photos that is left. I was really sick of going through photos but I knew if I didn't finish the sorting and filing, I would regret it. It would become another unfinished project tucked away on the to-do list in my brain. I had to finish. I would only feel good if I could totally remove this from that list of things to do. So this morning, I sorted everything that was left and filed it away. Yes, it took me another 3 hours but it is done. Completely, without anything left over to file or to review. And I am happy to report that if I had to find something, I could easily.

Those photo boxes are back in the closet and there is more room in my file drawers. What a great feeling and a great week of making new memories.


Friday

The Quilter's Apprentice


I finally took the time to read The Quilter's Apprentice. My friend Judy recommended it years ago and I just didn't want to read it. I have a few reasons for not wanting to read it. The first is that Judy is really into genealogy and she is passionate about books that reference history. I, on the other hand, have no real interest in my family's roots. I prefer to look toward the future than review the past. I guess I am just not that curious. And this book links some real history within the quiltmakers' stories.

Another reason for not wanting to read this book is that I knew Jennifer Chiaverini's novels were in a series. If I end up liking the book I didn't want to get hooked on more novels. I have an endless list of books I want to read and more would just stress me out.

I know how silly that all sounds so I took the plunge and read the book. Of course, Judy was right. It was worth reading. More for the historical links than the quiltmakers' stories. That was a little on the cheesey side. I did enjoy some of the quilt making references and it was an easy summer read. 

So I am hooked. I'm already waiting for the second book in the series to be ready for me to pick up at my local library.

One down, nineteen to go!

  1. The Quilter's Apprentice (1999)
  2. Round Robin (2000)
  3. The Cross-Country Quilters (2001)
  4. The Runaway Quilt (2002)
  5. The Quilter's Legacy (2003)
  6. The Master Quilter (2004)
  7. The Sugar Camp Quilt (2005)
  8. The Christmas Quilt (2005)
  9. Circle of Quilters (2006)
  10. The Quilter's Homecoming (2007)
  11. The New Year's Quilt (2007)
  12. The Winding Ways Quilt (2008)
  13. The Quilter's Kitchen (2008)
  14. The Lost Quilter (2009)
  15. A Quilter's Holiday (2009)
  16. The Aloha Quilt (2010)
  17. The Union Quilters (2011)
  18. The Wedding Quilt (2011)
  19. Sonoma Rose (2012)
  20. The Giving Quilt (2012)

Thursday

Happiness is . . .

kohlrabi. In summer sewing takes a back seat to gardening. Mother Nature waits for no one so I have to bow to her demands. So every morning I spend time weeding, tending and raking in my garden. After that, there's a good amount of time spent watering all the plants around the house. I don't just grow vegetables in my garden, I also have a raspberry patch, pumpkins, cantaloupe and cucumbers (viney things) growing on trellises next to the house. Everything requires much attention so by the time I am finished in the garden, my back is pretty sore and I have to rest. I don't mind the sacrifice but it is really hard on my spine fusions. Here are some of the benefits of the hard work.

Wednesday

Wonky Block Quilt

Quilts for Kids
 I finished the wonky block quilt today and I just love the fabrics in the blocks. The whimsy of the dog and cat print along with the whimsy of the crooked blocks is a perfect combination.

I don't work with blues much - it is not one of my favorite colors so I didn't have much to work with from my stash. So the binding on this quilt is a blue that is just a shade off of the sashing for the blocks.

The backing is made of gray flannel with a blue flannel (left over from another quilt) strip that makes the back just a little more interesting. I hope this quilt is enjoyed by the recipient and that is brings whoever gets it some healing.
Quilts for Kids

Tuesday

Independence Day

It's a family tradition to attend the 4th of July parade. It is followed by games and events at our legion post and we meet up with extended family there.

My granddaughters always enjoy the tradition and I hope we spend many years together following it.

Here they are happy and having fun.

Monday

Antique Quilt Delivered

My client came to pick up her quilt today. She brought her family along. They were quite amazed at the result and loved it. I am so very happy with the results of this project and even more happy that they all were thrilled with the quilt.

It is so nice to accomplish something for a nice family. I hope they get many years of enjoyment out of this heirloom.

Saturday

What's on the design board?

This month my Kindred Frivols kit is in the works. The kit came with the Hello Darling fabric collection that is really pretty. I seriously don't think I would have chosen this fabric because I don't usually work with these kind of floral prints. I love stepping outside of the box and trying new things, so I am not complaining.

The block is made up of quite a few pieces so it took a little bit to get going. In fact, since I'm working with a kit, I was terrified that I would make a cutting mistake. I'm not so sure there will be a lot of fabric left over so I paid very close attention to the instructions. But once I had one block completed, the ones that followed just kept getting easier to make.

I can't wait to complete more blocks since these look so very pretty.