The First Quilt for Iowa

Well, it is done, the first quilt to be sent to Iowa for flood victims. I know I recently saw somewhere where there is a quilt shop I can send this to, but hopefully by next week I will have a box full.

I just love both of these fabrics. The blue one is Winnie-the-Pooh that I have had forever and used it for several other quilts. The light green is a vintage fabric with baby buggies and bottles and I also used it for several other baby quilt projects.

Anyway, I feel good because I have one done and who knows how many I will try to make, but I would at least like to send a total of 4 within the next 2 weeks.

I am sitting at my desk and listening to my grandchildren play and the wind chimes gently making a melodious tune as they all ring together. Chimes are one of my weaknesses, I just love them and I am sure my neighbors aren't as happy, but at least I don't have a yapping dog or bratty kids.

I love my husband! I just think I am so blessed to have this man in my life right now. He has been sober for over eight years, the grandchildren have never seen him drunk and he is just so amazing.

I am asking for everyone to pray for my husband, to lift him up and have God shine down on him. I am not working right now and can't find a job and I have been looking for over a year. He is carrying the load and it is getting heavier and heavier for him. He wouldn't complain I know, but I can see it in his face.

We live in a not-so-friendly neighborhood, it is just the way it is, no one talks to you if you are new and the area we live in is very closed minded if you weren't born or raised here. Just pray God will show my husband His mercy and love.

Finally...

Okay, so I got a slow start on quilts today, but I was able to get one cut out, pinned together and it is ready to sew tomorrow. I also cut out patterns for a purse and coin purse I have been wanting to make for awhile. Added some more stitching to Sunbonnet Sue and a few more buttons to granddaughters quilt.

Hubby brought home KFC for dinner and it was nice, after, we sat in the basement and watched a movie. For those who don't know, our basement is completely done, but needs a lot of work, so while we use it as a family/play room and hubby has an office down there, it isn't a creepy basement.

I will take pictures tomorrow of finished quilt and will hopefully get the bag started and another quilt done. Right now my biggest expense on the quilts will be mailing them to Iowa and California and I try to make them for a variety of ages since I don't have a list to go by.

It is 11:30 and I do need to get my aches and pains to bed for the night.

God Bless!

A Great Day!

Aside from our jerk of a neighbor backing into Hubbies Harley today because the ass can't stay out of the driveway and he obviously doesn't pay attention to what is behind his truck, it will be a great day!

We have a shared driveway and according to previous owners, renters and family members, it is only shared for the purpose of said neighbor doing repairs on his house, but he seems to think he can park in it and we don't have the money to fight him, not to mention no matter how many times we have requested a surveyor to talk to us or come out and survey the property, they won't.

So, while said jackass has his own garage and parking on the street where his house is located and we cannot park on the street, not to mention it is a hill and I walk with a cane and suffer from Fibromyalgia and the driveway is actually located out our back door, jackass still parks there.

Hubby made a police report and we have pictures, jackass said he will pay for the damage, but remember his name is jackass for a reason, so we expect this to get ugly.

Anyone want to help us find a place without a shared driveway? HAHA!!

The boys are gone running errands and it is just us girls home today, so we are going to be working on some quilts to pass them forward to those who lost homes in the Butte California fires and the Iowa floods. I don't know how many we will do today, but I am hoping to complete at least 4. Wish us luck and enjoy the flowers!

The ones at top are growing wildly and happily in my front yard. The others are either sitting out on my front porch or hanging. I love flowers & quilts!

Heaven In a Small Town

Is this too cool or what? First this week I find these really cool blogs that do swapping...No sillies, not the wife or partner type of swaps, but fun things. One site I found the people make miniature quilts and then they send them to another person that is part of that blog community and they are really cool.

Then I found the Goodness Girls and they have swaps of things they thrift or find at swap meets and garage sales, but they do them with fun themes. I was pretty excited because these women are not ohnly thrifty and crafty, but they are doing fun things, which I haven't done in a long time.
So, please check out their blogs for yourself at:

1. http://frauleinh.blogspot.com/
2. http://sweetgoodnessswaps.blogspot.com/
3. http://thriftygoodness.blogspot.com/

The last one belongs to Rebecca and she has a shop aptly named the Goodness Shop of which I felt was just so cool that I have listed it with a link right here on my blog.
I have truly enjoyed just reading these ladies blogs and adding them to mine. Also, check on the Cutest Blog on the Blog website for some really awesome free stuff for your blog.

Now, today I was pretty depressed because yesterday was my last day at work and living here in a small town I have almost exhausted all my options over the past year. It is really hard to not be working, so I took the grand babies out for a long drive down the back roads here in Grays Harbor County.

We saw lots of cows, hay being mowed, older homes. But I was on a mission to go to the Elma Variety Store that a friend kept trying to get me to check out. Hit me in the head Kellie, we should have gone long ago!

So, I parked in the back of the store (Kellie said the locals all go through the back door), and when I stepped in, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Fabric all over in bright and beautiful colors, quilts hanging from the ceilings, sewing notions very reasonably priced and the kids favorite area today was the button racks that were filled with unique and brightly colored buttons.

No job, means I have to really keep to the stash of fabric I have on hand for now. But I bought 2 skeins of embroidery thread, an 89 cent wooden embroidery hoop and 2 packages of cool buttons.

If you ever get a chance to visit the southwest portion of Washington and do some shopping, check out the Elma Variety Store and um, park in the back like the locals do!

Record # quilts in a week...

I am hoping this invokes some really great communication between myself and all the quilters out there, young and old, new and experienced. Quilts are great, they are an addiction and most of us, give away far many more quilts than we keep.

I want to know what is the most quilts you have made in one week, without anyone else's assistance? Large or small, size doesn't matter.

As for me, the most I have so far put together is 9 in one week for the Virginia Tech Dispatchers and I am still behind the quilting frame on these, as I have more to make, but lately it just seems that life gets in my way & I don't have all the time I want or need to keep up with everything.

So, this week, I am hoping to finish the handwork on a quilt I truly want to enter into the local fair just to say I have tried it. I have to finish adding the flip-flop buttons to my granddaughters birthday quilt and I have to work on a crazy quilt.

While doing these things, lets not forget, I have to clean the house, do the laundry, fix dinner, go to work, give 3 small children baths, meet with our churches VBS director because I am in charge of registration & find a full-time job since my Americorps position ends on Tuesday.

I am looking to make some quilts for the fire victims in California, so if you would like to help, I am in desperate need of batting for these quilts. They will all be between lap, crib and double bed sized.

****My Old Sewing Machine****My Old Sewing Machine****My Old Sewing Machine****
I am looking for a new sewing machine and it doesn't have to be brand new, but it does need to be easy to use, have multiple stitches, easy bobbin winding. I know many of you are quilters and quilt shop owners. Many of you started out small like I did and have moved to short and long arm quilting.

If you have a nice sewing machine you could donate to me, I would appreciate it and I am willing to pay the postage. If you know of a quilting shop or fabric store that may be giving away used machines, please let me know.

Quilts and Fires

I don't know how to even open this part of my blog this morning, it is just so painful to watch all these homes in California being destroyed, but it is more than homes being destroyed, it is lives. People have their entire lives going up in flames.

I think of the quilt my mom just sent me and told me to sell and I think about how her and my step-father have had to go through their lives and choose what to pack in their car when the call comes (perhaps today) to evacuate.

There are my grandmothers things that I am sure will remain behind: her dining table that we ate so many holiday meals on. My moms bell collection that she has had for so many years that I can't remember when she started it.

Their beloved RV without a transmission that has taken them to many beautiful places across our nation.

They have loaded their car with pictures & the few memories of their 70+ years on this earth and are just sitting at home waiting and praying for the Butte Fire to not 'jump' the feather river.

I know the fear these people are feeling. Several years ago, a large fire broke out in a river bottom close to our home in Phoenix. We could see the flames shooting up, we breathed in the smoke, neighbors began watering yards and roof tops & we began getting ready to evacuate.

The first thing we did was pack up my daughter-in-law and grandchildren and have them leave the house. We wanted to make sure they were safe & took as many things with them as they could.

Then we began packing up our truck and motorhome. We were only blessed in the fact we had a storage unit close by and we began to take things to the storage unit. I was a police dispatcher at the time and so many co-workers called to see if we needed assistance.

We were lucky, the winds stopped, the firefighters were able to put the fire out and we were ready to get back with our lives, but the people in Butte County, the towns of Concow and Paradise are not so lucky. Many of them have nothing to go back to.

If you would like to help me get quilts to these people. please contact me at: compassionatequilter@yahoo.com

A Very Old Quilt

The two photos above are a quilt my mom sent me to repair for my step-dad. I am open to any suggestions in doing this. It isn't bad, but it does have some holes in the borders around the squares.

This quilt is a king sized quilt that was made for my step-dad by his grandmother. All the pinwheels are hand sewn as all of the squares are. The border is sewn with a sewing machine and even the binding is hand sewn with the smallest of stitches.

My mom told me to sell it and use the money for what I needed, but I think I will repair it and continue to hand it down to my grandchildren.

The batting? Wool stuffing from their sheep they raised. The age of this quilt has to be over 60 years old.

Just a few projects I am working on!

I am always busy. I just finished this quilt above for my grandchildren when they are watching television in the basement. They wanted something to cover their legs with or soft to lay on, so I had some scraps laying around (Don't all quilters?) and just threw this together. The middle or batting portion of this quilt is an old blanket we had sitting in a box, so I washed it really well and used it for batting. The back is a large piece of polar fleece I had left over from another project. It is the perfect quilt for what we lovingly refer to in our family as the 'Basement Quilts.'

The three pictures above are a quilt I am working on for my granddaughter Aly. She came up to me a few weeks ago with the quilt I made her when she was younger and said, 'Ranny, this one doesn't cover my feet anymore.' Sure enough that night she was sleeping and her two little tootsies stuck out about 14", so I decided to work on this one for her.

All the fabrics in this quilt are flannel. The first picture shows the single and classic Nine-Patch squares. It also shows the flip-flop buttons that are going on in each seam meeting. Aly loves shoes, so I thought these would be a cute addition to the quilt...all 82 of them!

The picture on the left, shows the flowers made. There were 10 squares with these flowers and each was made with the flannel pieces, so has a different flower pattern, different buttons for the flower middles and each is sewn with a different stitch.

Once all the flip-flops are sewn on, I will add a warm & natural batting to the middle, complete it with a flannel backing and I am thinking about adding a ruffle to the binding. I will add more pictures to the blog when it is complete.

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Above is the last project I am working on, Sunbonnet Sue and Sunbonnet Sam. I am hoping to have this quilt completed for the Grays Harbor County Fair and enter it as my first ever entry into a fair.

Sunbonnet Sue and Sam are appliqued onto a beige linen border and standing on a bed of green grass fabric. Sam is handing Sue is prized Sunflower from his garden. You can see his bib overalls are made of green fabric and his shirt and pocket rag are blue bandana. His hat is a wide brimmed sunflower hat.

Sue is decked out in purple and if you look closely, you will see the brim of her hat is bordered with tiny purple seed beads. I just really liked adding the beads to the hat. Her dress & blouse and shoes are made with a reproduction fabric someone gave me a few years ago.

The yellow batik reminded me of the sun and how bright it is & the blue batik surrounding Sue and Sam illustrates the sky.

The purple to me helped tie in all the purple in Sue's clothing. The green fabrics I discovered from my local quilt shop is very 'old' fabric and of a good quality.

You can't see the areas in which I have copied a leaf and scroll pattern I bought from a quilters catalog. I will embroider these around the final purple border and then add my backing and front border.

So, I hope you enjoy looking at all the projects I have going on and I just realized I am also working on a crazy quilt and a NASCAR quilt, but those aren't quite ready for pictures to be taken at this time.

Finally, My Own Digital Program

Today, I finally got our digital camera program uploaded on my computer, so now I can take pictures and add them to my blog at anytime of the day or night without having to ask DH when he will be off his computer.

The quilt pictures above are of the front and back of a quilt I just completed for some homeless teen in our area. After speaking to several homeless teens in the area, the one common thread they all shared was how wet and cold they get in the rain all the time and that there are no places to hide from the rain because local businesses won't let them in their shops.

This quilt was made with that in mind. It has double batting as well as a layer of waterproof material between the layers. I am hoping that this will work well, but some have said it will be hard for the middle layer to dry, so I am still trying to perfect a quilt that will help protect these

Speaking of young men and women of our community, I wanted to share with you some pictures of a quilt that while I put it together, the students from North Beach High School in Ocean Shores, Washington did all the art work you see on the quilt.

As an Americorps worker, we worked with a group of 7th and 8th grade junior high students from North Beach in teaching them what they can do as a group of young people in their community that have no money. They choose in the end to work with the local animal shelter and clean it up and I can tell you that I have never been prouder of a group of kids as these.

They were ready to go on the bus on time and they loaded wheel barrow after wheel barrow of trash, debris and tires to be burnt or recycled. They walked dogs, groomed cats and cleaned and sanitized the bathing area & they did it with smiles and jokes and friendship.

During the weeks that preceded their project, they were supposed to be given pieces of paper to make a quilt with, however, being I am a quilter, I wanted them to have something more permanent, so I gave them all a white quilting square and asked them to think about their community and draw something on each square they felt was important to them and made their community.

The following quilt pictures are the quilt they helped put together and that is now hanging in the Ocean Shores City utilities department for everyone to see when they come in to pay their bills.
Some of the quilt squares showed an Eagle (Eagles can be seen frequently in this area or in the Quinault Rain Forest). One showed McDonalds (it is the only fast food business in the area), another showed the importance of the tourist industry to the area by making the sign from the Days Inn. There is the IGA (the local shopping market), one that just says PEOPLE, several that show the beach & sun.

Since ferns grow naturally and wild in the area, I bordered each picture with fern fabric and then did the border and back in a pink & green Batik as the vote for the group was pink for the fabric #1 & #2 was green.

If you ever hear of a group of students in Ocean Shores calling themselves the 'Vroomin Ninja Elephants,' rest assured this is not a gang, but it is the group of 15 young students who took part in the Civic Engagement responsibility project with the 2007/2008 Americorps team from Grays Harbor County.

If you know of any of these young students, tell them thank you for caring!