More Quilt Show Entries

The first quilt is my version of a Sudoku quilt. It's done in Oriental style fabrics and quilted by my friend, Rhonda. She did wonderful free hand Baptist Fans on it. This is one of my favorites of the quilts I've made. The next one also has some Oriental fabrics in it. (They are my new favorite type of fabrics.) It was started at an August Mystery Class our guild held. I was a little disappointed in how the colors all worked out. I would have liked the Orientals in the body of the quilt to have shown more. The next one is called Barefoot in the Park and is done with 2.5" strips and was a guild project too. Again my friend Rhonda quilted it. It's got lovely free-hand feathers in it. She quilted it as a gift to me for my 2009 birthday and our wedding anniversary. Thanks, Rhonda. You're the best! The jacket as you can see, if you look closely, is not done yet. I photographed it for the show entry with it just laying on the floor piece on top of piece. Hope to work on this Wednesday and finish it up. It will be donated someday to some charity cause.

The Quilt Show is Coming Soon!

It's less than a month away and there's still work to be done to get ready. The pictures here are some of my quilts that will be in the show. I still have labels to attach, a jacket to finish and a bag to start and finish. Not to mention some Silent Auction donations. Looking forward to our speakers, Karen McTavish and Sandi Irish. Life is busy!! The red/white/blue quilt is a wedding quilt for a young couple we know where both are serving in the military defending our country. The brown quilts are lap-sized and Quilts of Valor for that same couple thanking them on behalf of the USA for serving in the military. The lavendar kaleidoscope is a friendship quilt from a swap our guild did in the late 1990's. I finally finished it this year.

Grandson's and Their Vehicles

Here are the grandsons farming one day. As you can see, Brandon wants to be the macho-man that doesn't smile. But you also see that if you click quick you can catch that great smile sneaking in. Colin is Granpa's little farmer. He helps feed, opens and closes and electric fences, and of course, drives the Gator! Both are terrific kids, but certainly different personalities. Gotta love `em!

WINTER? ALREADY?

These are the images off our deck this morning. Beautiful, but way too early for those of us that love warm weather. Can't complain too much, we need the moisture. The weather people tell us that we will still have bar-b-ques and great weather. Can they be believed? We hope so!

Knitting with Brandon

Brandon picked up knitting real quick. He did have trouble when he took it home and tried to do it. But then mom and dad don't knit so he had no one to help him when he turned around to do the next row. We need to get together again and work on it.

Spool Knitting

Colin wanted to learn to knit too. So we tried spool knitting. Not the kind I grew up with which was an empty wooden thread spool with four nails in one end, but a modern plastic one. He's pretty pleased with himself, as you can see in the picture. He's seated on my grandfather's rocking chair (Colin's grea-great-grandfather) that is over 100 years old. You can also see my grandmother's treadle sewing machine in this picture & our new bay window. We made a trivet for Colin's mom out of his knitting, but it later became a cover for one of his toy cars. He is a happy boy and we do enjoy having him around.

Back-to-School Shopping

The granddaughter and I went back-to-school supply shopping yesterday. Times have changed!! The kids need dry erase markers, highlighters, specific Sharpie pens, specific other pens and lots of other things. Glad our kids are grown! It's fun shopping for the grandchildren because we don't "need" to be responsible for everything they need. The one item that I found interesting is that 5th graders need multiple composition books. At first I thought that meant spiral notebooks. But no, it means a book sewn together having a schedule on the front inside cover to fill in and using wide lined paper. It looks to me much like the brown one I remember at my grandmother's home when I was growing up. It makes me think that everything old is new again.

We did have a great time together and found my pink/purple granddaughter a couple of new items of clothing for back-to-school. She is a bargain hunter and was thrilled to find jeans she knew retailed for $33 on the clearance rack for $7. They fit her perfectly too!

We also enjoyed lunch together and shopping for yarn and knitting needles. Knitting is a big hit with fourth to seventh grade girls around here this summer. Good passtime to learn and know for the rest of their lives.

Deck Update

This week our deck builder took some time and went to the Wisconsin Dells with his family for a very well deserved vacation. That means that only three days of work was done on the deck. But we are fine with that. It did give us (mostly Wayne) a chance to get ahead on the staining/sealing. The project is coming along nicely and we are looking forward to being able to use it! Yesterday and today we did more staining of lumber for the steps and raisers.

Lillies in Wisconsin

While I was taking tree and house pictures I could not pass up a chance to take flower pictures. The pictures make my gardens and my gardening ability look much better than they really are.

Downed Tree

Here are a couple of pictures of the Box Elder tree that decided to tip over about 6:45 this morning. We were just stalling on getting up and getting ready for church. All of a sudden there were all these popping sounds like gun shots or fireworks going off. I looked out the window and some trees were moving and some weren't. Then I could see the tree on the ground. We had planned on having the tree taken down a while ago, but the siding project started and the tree people couldn't get in the yard around the construction crew. Now someone will have some wood for campfires when it dries. I took these pictures while standing our the new deck. I am glad that we did not get up as soon as we usually do on Sunday mornings. Wayne could have been right under this tree as it came down on his way to feed the heifers. It did add some a job to his morning routine before we left for church, but we still made it on time and no one has been hurt in the process and the pasture fence was not taken down when the tree fell. That's a good thing!

Home Makeover Our Style 2

Just a couple more pictures of the project in process. We are really looking forward to sitting out there.

Home Makeover Our Style

We've had a major project going on this summer. New siding, new windows and doors and the addition of a deck along the east and south side of the house. As you can see in the first picture we even have colored concrete out the back door to what will be the steps to the deck. A friend of our's is an unemployed cement finisher and wanted to do something special as he was helping us. Thus the red and white sidewalk. We now have a new prettier front door, a window overlooking the front door where there was no window and a bay window where there was a smaller picture window. It really opens up the place and the summer breezes blowing through are wonderful.

2009 GND Parade

Brian usually drives a ready mix truck for the Parade and did so again this year. Bri & Tina road on the top of the cab and the boys road inside with Brian.

Colin Kiddie Tractor Pulling

Grandson Colin tried the Kiddie Tractor Pull at Good Neighbor Days for the 4 year or so. He didn't place, but he did have a good time and tried very hard.

Granddaughter's 4th Grade Promotion

The 4th graders in our school system move to Middle School in the neighboring town for 5th grade, so there is a 4th grade promotion program at the end of the school year. This is granddaughter Bri that day a couple of months ago. She received awards for almost perfect attendance (she only missed 1/2 a day), and was Student of the Month every month of the school year. One month was for helping others, one for being polite, one for being most improved, etc. She is a very spirited young lady.

Grandparents Day

This is the majority of Brandon's class practicing the song they are going to perform in the afternoon for Grandparents Day at school. We were early for Grandparents Day and got to sit in on the practice. Brandon had the same teacher for second grade as his dad, Brian, did.

Grandson Colin loves to have his picture taken in all sorts of silly positions. He's holding one of his other grandmother's new puppies. We were celebrating his brother Brandon and his mother, Tina's birthdays that day.

Here's grandson Brandon showing off his birthday cake in April. It was his 9th birthday, as you can see on his cake. He decorated it himself.

This is a magnificent HeartStrings quilt that I've had the honor of binding and labeling. The top was sent to Rhonda to quilt. It is so striking and that's because the block maker took the time to work to make the blocks all similar and then lay them out so nicely. I used it in a demo of HeartString blocks a couple of weeks ago at my local quilt quild. It does generate many comments. And to think that we generally use scraps for HeartSting quilts!

Here are three quilts I've had the joy of working on this winter. Gals in my local guild and I made the blocks and finished the pastel baby quilt. The other two are from blocks that Sue Frank forwarded to me. I set the blocks (and see now the errors I made in the multi-colored one! Oh-oh!!), Rhonda, Carol or Kathy quilt them and then I bind and label them. They are now ready for donating.

This lovely blue/biege HeartString baby/toddler sized quilt was a combined effort of Agnes of Iowa and myself. Agnes is the mother-in-law of my "boss" and has started sewing HeartString quilt blocks/quilts at my suggestion. This quilt is much nicer in person that my photography shows. It will be donated to a fund raiser at the library I work at to raise funds for our new library building. Great job Agnes for the blocks and Rhonda for the longarm quilting!

Last year I was in an International Applique Round Robin and one of the gals wanted Halloween themed blocks. These are two that I finished while in Florida in February and gave her just before her March birthday. The cat is all needle turn applique and the pumpkin queen is machine appliqued.