FALL INTO FALL QUILTERS BLOG GIVE-AWAY

Debi is having a Fall Into Fall Quilters Blog Give-Away - and I am part of that. Stop over at her blog and find out more about this. A bunch of quilters will be having give-aways and you can find links to these wonderful give-aways at Debi's blog. Hurry on over - join in the fun.

I will be giving away a nice little box of things - here is the beginning of what I'm giving - so stop by often and see what has been added to the box. The drawing will be on October 15, and to be entered in the drawing I would like to know more about you - and what is a favorite thing that you like about quilting - or a clever story about quilting - or something wonderful you have discovered while quilting. So just a comment saying "I want to be in your give-away" will NOT get you entered. I love to hear good stories - long or short - about your quilting experiences - good and not so good - so come along - leave a comment about something quilty - a favorite, a clever story or something wonderful. Let's have a good time sharing our quilty moments. If you don't have a blog - be sure and leave your email so I can contact you about your prize if you win.

The first thing I'm putting in the box is this


A set of three zippered bags mesh bags that I made with quilty fabric - the sizes are coin purse, wallet and make-up bag. You can use them for stitching supplies, buttons, coins - just about anything you would put in a little bag to keep organized.



Next item is a knit pincushion in lovely fall colors - I knit this with the help of my three year old grandson - he likes to pull the yarn out of the skein as I knit. Sometimes he gets ahead of me and we get tangles, but it is such fun to have him help. So stop by and see what else I will add to this fun box - maybe some fat quarters - maybe some quilting supplies - who knows what - and leave your comment about quilting - this is going to be fun.

I'M BACK - WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Wow - what a week - one week ago today I was rushed to the ER - tests, xrays, CT scans, ultra sound, proceedure to remove gall stones Friday night - rest up on Sat. then gall bladder surgery on Sunday at 7 a.m. - like I said - what a week.!!! I got home Monday evening - doing super great - our daughters have been here to help out with cooking and cleaning and laundry - and entertaining mom - and today I am on my own - feel great - eating most things ok and looking forward to feeling completely better and getting back into quilting.

Since I'm not going to show you ANY pictures of the hospital stay (no one wants to see that) I will show you something pretty - just so you'll have a picture to look at.


A lake near our house - a peaceful morning!


A quiet cove on the lake.



And a grandson riding on his little bike - now that is enough to make anyone happy.

Hope your days are sunny - or sweetly full of soft drizzly rain like ours is today - and quilty!

BACK AGAIN - AND A SQUISHY IN THE MAIL

It's been a long time since I posted - I've spent most of my time working on getting the photos back in my blog that blogger deleted and then said they couldn't do anything about. I still have tons to re-do - but I'll get to those later.

I got a delightful squishy in the mail the other day - from Messy Karen - and she is NOT messy - I can tell you that. She was giving away fabrics - we weren't even asked to pay postage, and I just loved the teddy bear holiday fabric she posted. I was lucky enough to be the first to ask for it - and so it came my way. Inside the package was another delightful package - all sweetly "stitched" together with embroidery cotton - tidy as can be (but I opened it before I took a picture) and in the package I found fabrics, floss, even a needle and instructions for making the cutest bookmarks.



The three pieces of fabric for bookmards are on the left, with the threads and the needle at the bottom - and of course the holiday teddies are on the right. I can't wait to make up the cute bookmarks - she even included the stiffener to put in the bookmarks so they would not be floppy - what a dear!!!! I love the dotted fabric, and the Halloween and the duckies - they are all delightful.

Every year I have a teddy bear christmas tree, in addition to our family tree, and I am thinking that this teddy fabric would be great to work up into some decorations for the tree, and for making some gift bags for gifts that go under that tree - oh so many ideas. Maybe a few bookmarks to hang on the teddy tree for friends to pluck off and take home with them. And some little "hats" for jars of jam that I give for gifts each year - and bags to put the home made bread I give, along with the jam. Thank you Thank you Karen - I love it all.

And now - to change gears a little bit - look who visited us the other morning.


We had taken our tea and toast out to the little grove of trees behind our house - and up the hill from our neighbor's yard comes this handsome fella. This is not a zoom photo - this is actually how close he came to me - after a bit I was a little concerned that he wanted some tea and toast - but he turned and walked off behind our house to find something else to look at.



That same morning I found these cute little mushrooms in the yard. I don't know that much about mushrooms so I didn't pick any - though a friend told me there were not poisonous ones in our area - I'd rather hear that from an authority I think - just in case. They certainly were cute.

A good day - for sure - with a little hand quilting in the grove after tea and toast.

BUTTERFLY QUILT AND TOTE BAGS

I finally finished the flowers and vines appliqued on the butterfly quilt. Some friends were over on Saturday and they helped hold it up for the photo. It is just way too big for one person to hold it up.

We found four butterflies that don't have antennae so that has to be done, but will only take a few minutes. Next is basting and hand quilting - that is for the winter when it is cooler and I can stand to have a quilt draped over my lap.


Here is the whole quilt - I love the vines and flowers on it. The flowers are tiny Grandmother's Flower Garden pieces. Each piece is 3/4" across when finished. - making the flowers 2 1/4" across.

Close up of some of the flowers and butterflies. Colors are definitely better in person.

I've also been making some shopping bags. I got the super heavy canvas bags on ebay last year. I love how tough they are, and I didn't have to stitch them. I just added some orphan blocks to the front of the bag and I was done. This one is what I call Umbrella Sue - because it kind of reminds me of a SunBonnet Sue block. I made this for a sample to see if I liked it for a whole quilt, and I think a lighter sky/clouds background would be better - so this one gets to be a bag.

I think this is a perfect winter quilt for the rainy Pacific Northwest.

This bat shopping bag is from a "What's in you Garden" swap I did about 10 years ago. There were enough swappers so there were just a few blocks. This was one of my favorites and I think it makes a great shopping bag.


Again - anothe swap - this one was "Holidays and the Seasons" so you could pick to do a season or a holiday. I made the turkey from Dresden Plate pattern. I had two of these left over from the swap so I made two bags like this one. It is a good use of orphan blocks - and a super way to have "green" shopping bags. My older ones are almost completely worn out.

Happy Quilting - I'm off to hem some napkins made from my hand painted fabrics on this rainy, cool day.

WHERE TO START - I'M SO FAR BEHIND IN BLOGGING

Recently Don had a two week vacation - we didn't do much travelling, stayed close to home and had a lot of fun. A couple days we had Ben over for the day - and that is always fun



Having pizza and milk - he likes to sit ON the table instead of next to it.


Grammy has a big bag of bananas!


Time for a ride on my bike - watch out for me!


Grampy and Ben taking a walk/ride.


Playing Grammy's piano - singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to any song.

One evening of vacation was spent at the Bellingham Bells Baseball game. Both grandsons had a great time. We sat out on the grass in the family section and they could run around all they wanted. We ate hot dogs, hamburgers, ice crearm bars, nachos, peanuts and a couple other "good" foods.

I forgot to slip the scan disk back into my camera so all I had was the in-camera memory so got very few pictures of the ballgame - drat. We only go once a year, so I missed a good opportunity for pictures.

When we entered the ballpark they asked Jahn if he would like to race the Chicken - the local mascot and he said sure. They pick one kid and after the first inning they race around the bases with the chicken - and of course the kid wins.


Jahn in his Seattle Mariners outfit. He is ready for anything.

Jahn is the little kid in red - they give you a huge jersey and a batting helmet to wear and the batting helmet kept falling off so he had to hold it on. The Chicken (named Cluck) was waiting at secon base for Jahn to catch up.

Jahn racing ahead of Cluck and getting to home base first. And this is where I ran out of space for any other photos. Jahn got a Bellingham Bells water bottle for winning - it was great fun. When he got back to where we were sitting all the people around us cheered for him - he loved it.

Even Grampa Bear got in on the vacation action with a nice cup of tea and his own lawn chair. The weather was superb during vacation - in the mid 70s and sunny almost every day. The last day of vacation it rained, but we had a nice cozy stay-inside kind of day.

It was a great vacation.

QUILTING IN THE SUMMER - AT LAST - AND LOOK WHAT I WON!!

In case all you think we do in the summer is go to the berry farms - here is a bit about quilting, Just to prove that I actually DO think about quilting in the summer.

Dorothy Baker had a give-away a while back - and I couldn't believe my eyes when I read my name as the winner. What a surprise - and a delight. She was giving away the 12 patterns for Santa Through the Year - and I can't wait to start working on it. I still have to finish my butterfly quilt - and as soon as that is done - I'm off and running with the Santas. I doubt that I will get it done for this holiday season - but I plan to give it a good try.

These are all the patterns

And here is her finished quilt. I hope mine comes out as great. It will be fun stitching the Santas for each month. Thank you so much Dorothy. If you haven't been to her blog - it is one of the best around - stop over some time.

And as for my quilting - I have almost finished the butterfly quilt - I did all the flowers and vines that were basted on the quilt and decided that one spot on the quilt needed a few more vines and flowers - so that will take another hour or two of work and then I'll be done.

This is just a small portion showing some of the butterflies and some of the flowers. I made that flowers with Grandmother Flower Garden pieces - very small. Each piece of the flower is about 1" or less across. This has been a fun quilt to make - but I'm glad that I am almost to the end. Then maybe I can start on the Santa quilt.

Happy Quilting.

SUMMER TIME AND BERRIES AND JAM

We've been at it again - buying more berries from the farmers. The prices are just so great I can't resist them - and we will use a lot over the winter.

Two flats of strawberries - I always forget to take the pictures before I start cleaning the berries.

Strawberries in my favorite big yellow bowl - ready for the freezer. (and some for eating on ice cream)

Four flats of raspberries, total, went into the freezer. I freeze the berries in a flat layer on cookie pans and when they are frozen I bag them up into quart and gallon zipper bags.

Two flats of blueberries.

Two flats of black berries. Don't you love that name - Barbie's Berries.

Marion Berries- absolutely delicious!!

One flat of marion berries - this is the cookie pan with the last of the marion berries, on the left, and the blackberries, on the right, ready to go into the freezer. We picked the marion berries, all the others we bought the ones that were already picked. We are so fortunate to live near the berry farms - we get the flats of berries for just a small fraction of the cost of buying them in the stores - an average of 18.00 a flat - which is often 2 gallons to a flat.

MAKING JAM

One day it was cooler last week so Don and I decided to make some jam. He is on vacation last week and this week, so it was nice to have a jam assistant.

Raspberries, mashed, in my favorite big red bowl - ready for jam. I modify the jam recipe given on the sure-jell package. I use the specified amount of fruit - cut the sugar in half ( 5 cups of fruite - 3 cups of sugar, and use raw cane sugar) and put in 1 1 /2 boxes of sure-jell, and have perfect jam every time. I know they say not to change the recipe, but I just don't like 5 cups of fruit and 7 cups of sugar - you don't taste the fruit.

Don stirring the jam - notice his nice pink protective glove - saves his hands from jam spatters.

Rapsberry jam, standing on its head, helps to super-heat the lids and makes them seal faster. I just leave them that way for 5 minutes.

Add a batch of blackberry jam and we are done for the day - well except for wiping down the entire kitchen it seems. Jam does make a mess - but it is so worth it - our whole family loves jam on toast and pancakes!!!

We'll make more jam during the winter - and of course pies and more pies. One of our favorite pies is BumbleBerry Pie - blueberries, raspberries and blackberries - scrumptious!

May all your days be berries and cream days!