What a wonderful Christmas!

Hi all! I hope each one of your had a blessed Christmas. Above is a picture in the dark of our Christmas tree, a tall, skinny tree, just right for a tight spot.

I received the most wonderful package from Monika in Germany at www.luenetraum.blogspot.com. She has a wonderful blog! She was also my lady to send a secret santa gift to, and she blogged about it. She speaks only German, so she had a translator send me a letter, wonderful chocolate, pictures and a guide book to her wonderful German town. In addition, she sent very pretty trims for my crazy quilt, with a lovely card. Also included was a cozy teacup stitchery pattern. I am so spoiled! Thank you so much, Monika, for all the lovely gifts and my DH thinks we must come and see Germany.

This darling little doll came from Lyn at www.bluebirdquilts-lyn.blogspot.com. This precious little doll is lucky to me! She is on the dining room table in a place of honor. Thank you Lyn, I love her!

And this was my secret santa gift! Anne Heidi at www.lappemor.blogspot.com was my secret santa! She sent me the above most lovely bag, it has pockets and zippers and lots of room! I love it!

She also sent the so very cute fabric above...yummy! Coasters made from fabric I had admired on her blog, chocolate from Norway mmmmmmmm, and a sweet card. Thank you so much, I love it all!

This is the only thing I have done remotely quilt-ish in a couple of weeks. I had overtime pay at the hospital, so I grabbed all the overtime I could, and also got ready for Christmas. I am such a lucky lady, and of course am spoiled rotten. Hope you all had such a wonderful day too.

Hugs from Julie

Christmas is coming!!

Good morning all! In between the madness of getting ready for the holidays, I decided I just must rebel and have a little break and blog a little bit!! I recently saw on one of your fabulous blogs, the above quilt. I did mine long ago, (well, maybe three years) in all turquise/blues, and got the pattern from the Quilter's Newletter Online cache of patterns. It was quilted by a friend here in town who just got her longarm quilter and wanted to practice on this with a panto. I said sure, go for it!!! I have had it in the quilt cupboard, but today I am going to wash it, and dry it, and enjoy the crinkly goodness of it!

Above is my quilt, the only one I have left from my Grandmother. Now that lady was a quilter!!! Of course you recognize the double wedding ring pattern, all from 1930's original fabrics. It is so tattered and just loved and used up! All quilted by hand in the most tiny of stitches, dense and yummy. Unfortunately, most of her quilts were destroyed, so this one is extra special!

Millie at http://www.needleandthread.us/ quilted this fabulous whole cloth quilt above. A constant request from my husband is to make great, big quilts!! Enough to cover him all up. I saw that Millie had quilted one like this for her mother, and impulsively asked her if she could make one for us. She said yes! This one is a wholecloth quilt, machine quilted, and just huge! Very pretty, and I will use it on the bed and put my smaller quilts on top seasonally for color. Good idea? I hope so!!! And I can proudly say I did all the piecing....not! Hee!!!

Hope you are all ready for Christmas and enjoying this wonderful season. Hugs to each of you!!!

JulieK

Wishing for fun things...

Hi all: Above is the start of my little Red block of the month, Red Delicious. The block is so cute, now just needs to be appliqued down. Lots of Red!!!I am feeling pretty under the weather, I have a super bad cough and congestion...sound familiar to any of you? Above is a baby quilt I finished for a friend at work, due December 30Th! They are hoping for a tax deduction...or a New Year's baby! The photo was taken in our messy break room at work. I quilted this on my little Brother domestic sewing machine.

I have also been crocheting, see above! Dishcloths...lots of them! Nice cotton, fun to work with, and fast.

Hope everyone is well and waiting for the sleigh to arrive, and to also celebrate Jesus birthday!!

JulieK

258,266,583 leaves...

I have been raking leaves! The faster I go, the behind-er I get....lots of leaves still yet to come. I wanted to show you one of the beautiful trees in our neighborhood. Isn't this pretty? Not our home, but the neighbors did not mind if we shared their beautiful tree. Not much going on, on the quilting front. We had a lovely visit with our son and watched the UT/A & M game. We were thereat the game and had a great time. I actually lost a little weight over Thanksgiving...there are some blessings with not having to cook! Hope everyone is well and I hope I can get to some quilting fun soon!!


I have found the most beautiful new block of the month through http://www.estheraliu.blogspot.com/. She is doing a Red Delicious block of the month. This is definitely one I will be doing the coming year. Want to join me? Do you have a lot of red fabrics just begging to be in a quilt? This BOM may be the one for you!! Did I mention? It is FREE!!!!

JulieK

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope you have a wonderful day of thanks, whether with friends and family or not. I hope it is all you wish it to be!!

Julie

A Winner!

The little quilt drawing was today at noon. Random numbers were assigned and one pulled out of the hat. Congratulations to Joann of Pieceful Afternoon! You are the winner of the little quilt! As soon as I know how to send it to you, it will be on it's way!!

JulieK

The most precious of all...

Friends! They are so wonderful...I received a wonderful package from Lyn at http://www.bluebirdquilts-lyn.blogspot.com/. She has a wonderful blog, you should stop by and tell her hi! Am amazing little quilt that she made, and some buttons, lace trim, lucky penny from Australia, some cute Christmas buttons, an angel ornament, some wonderful fabric, a book mark, and some great antique lace trim. What a fun, fabulous package! These were wrapped for Christmas...hey, Lyn? I did not wait, sorry, K??

I wanted to tell you of the most wonderful quilts of all in my life. My mother died way too young, of Lou Gherig's Disease. She was a wonderful woman, not just because she was my mom, but she was strong, cared about everyone, and was just the best person I have ever met. She was also an avid quilter! At the time she quilted, there was not a lot of cotton to be found. She used leftover garment material and whatever she could find to make quilts. I recall that she made a good many double knit quilts, but I do not have any of these, all the ones I have are cotton. Above is a log cabin quilt she made. All her quilts that I ever knew about were tied, and she used flannel for the backing on each one. They are so warm and snuggly!

Close up of the log cabin, remember, when these quilts where made, each strip was cut with scissors ( no rotary cutters then). She always said Log Cabins were hard to make, and I bet so, when you had to cut out 1.5 inch strips by hand!!

A Grand mother's flower garden. Tied, of course, and you know, she used what she had, as we were very poor when I was growing up. The yellow setting material was probably what she had at the time. Different than any I have ever seen! This quilt has another quilt inside of it, used for batting, a practice the old time quilter's sometimes did.

I don't know the pattern name for this quilt, but this may have been the last quilt she made. Scraps, of course. This one was for me, as I was the youngest child of many.

My name above, embroidered by my mother. Now, my mother was a very accomplished needle woman, with very fine emboidery skills. My sisters told me that she could not embroider in the last stages of her illness before she became bed bound, but she was determined to embroider my name on this quilt. This is the best she could do. I am so honored to have some of her work. Tears are in my eyes and on my cheeks as I write this. Love you, Mom!

Another of her quilts. Finished on the back with flannel. Reminds me of the squares I sewed together today for the bargello quilt. It seems to me that this has older fabrics in it...many my sisters remember as dresses they wore.

A close up of some of the fabrics, maybe 1940-1950 vintage? Maybe a bit later, I don't know.

So! I honor my precious mother, and miss her each day. She died when I was 12. A precious lady, and such a loss for our world, but a gain for heaven above!!

JulieK

Bargello Bowl

The bargello bowl center is together, as in one piece. Here is the border plan...piecing in progress.

And here is the whole thing! Each fabric separately is nothing special...but together, it is pretty, I think. I do not recall purchasing any of this fabric. All of it was given to me by friends and acquaintances who know I quilt. So the whole thing is a gift! And thanks to Bonnie of Quiltville for the pattern. It is a gift too! This came together like nothing else...seams mostly matching, did not run out of thread, border cut with not one centimeter to spare...some magic in this one. Do you have any of these fabrics??

Hope you are doing great today!

JulieK

A scrappy day!

OK, I finished my bargello quilt blocks...all of them. I got tired of it and put the blocks away to put together on the next day off. But I made a big mistake...did not put my sewing machine away! And this is what resulted. I had a baggie of crumbs leftover and made them into 6 inch blocks, then sashed them. No new fabric...just stash/mess fabric. It was fun! Now how do I finish this? Like a crazy quilt? Or just quilt in each little fabric place? Please tell me!

What a crookedy little quilt! Again, with some fabric and triangles from the crumb bag. OK! Off to scrub the bathtub!!

JulieK

Lookee!

Two posts in one day! Look what came in the mail! This quilt is for a very special lady...for a surprise! Darcie of October's Child fame quilted this for me. Isn't her work the best!!? The texture she creates is wonderful. The quilt is lap sized and made from Bonnie from Quiltville's Pineapple pattern.

And an extra surprise was in the box...some delicious hand-dyed fabrics! From Darcie too, did you know she does fabric dyeing? They are wonderful! She said I needed a little more pink fabric in my life, due to our son getting married soon. Cool, huh?

Have a wonderful!!

Celebration!

Celebration! For I am off work, and life is so, so good!! I love the library...for one thing, it is free, and we have a lovely selection of quilting books there. One of my favorite authors is Gwen Marston. She became a favorite when she wrote of Mary Schaffer, and Mary's achievements in Michigan and the US as a quilt maker. If you can get hold of her book about Mary Schaffer, it is a wonderful story and has oodles of fabulous quilt pictures. The above wall quilt is Gwen's design. I omitted a couple of large leaves, but the rest is hers. I need to add two more borders, but basically this one is together. Folk-arty! I love it. It will be hand quilted. It needs a good press!!

And I have Bonnie's Bargello Bowl above, working on this madly, which I have had cut out since she did hers last year. Individually, each piece of fabric in this is not so very pretty...but together, it looks so beautiful!! I think I will do one in brights, too.

Remember to enter my drawing below if you haven't, and hope each one of you has a wonderful day!

**************************************Nursing************************************

I have to talk about this a little bit...just worked several days in a row. This is not about quilting, so if you are not interested, please skip this part, but this is a diary of sorts for me, so in this little bit goes!! I had a lady (woman, I hesitate to call her a lady), who spit at me, called me all sorts of foul names, pretty much abused me to tears....I am so glad I only had her one day!! Her profession was a lady of the evening. She is my age, and totally oriented, just FYI. The next day I got floated to ICU, and had a older guy who was very pleasantly confused, until he got mean, pinching, kicking, hitting, spitting, any bit of flesh he could twist and pinch he did! Sigh, what is going on? I thought wow...what am I doing here? And then yesterday in CCU, I had the most WONDERFUL patients! Sweet, brave, very ill, but full of wisdom and peace. Yahoo! My hope is restored!! I want to say a word about the nurses I work with..there is not a bunch of gals anywhere that would fight harder for a patient's life. Just the best! Our unit has the top patients satisfaction in our entire hospital. Yahoo for these wonderful caring nurses!!!

OK, thanks for listening and really...have a wonderful day!!

JulieK

Butternut and Blue...a giveaway!

I absolutely love to hand quilt. It gives me such a measure of peace and fun in a hectic world. I hand quilted this little nine-patch quilt above, about 18x24 inches. A blue, and a brownish yellow. Butternut and Blue! If you could please ignore the shadow, that is me leaning over the quilt...it is very much yellower in the picture than in real life.

So! I wanted to do a giveaway for my hundredth post. And missed it, so to honor my 118th post, I would love to give away this little quilt! But this is the catch...won't you please share a quilting legend that you have heard in the past? Or some romance about quilts? Some old family story about quilts? Please share!! And be entered in the drawing! Next Friday, November 21st, at noon, I will draw a name from those who tell me a quilting legend to win this quilt. This should be so fun!! For example, one legend I have heard is the a girl who is the first to sleep under a new quilt will dream of her husband to be. Please tell me your folklore!!

JulieK

Leaves, leaves everywhere!

OK, please help me with the above. This is what I have been doing with the strings. This is a busy, busy, BUSY quilt! Is it OK, or should I put sashing and cornerstones to calm it down a little bit? Please tell me what you think!!

I have been raking leaves, exactly 1,582,496 leaves. It has taken me a really long time! It would probably take less time if I did not stop and count each leaf! Hee!! No, seriously, a lot of leaves. I enjoy it, though! There are many more to come, I just have to take it slower now since my back surgery last February. No bending, I actually have to sit down on the lawn and put them in bags. Takes longer, but hurts much less than bending over, and I still get to experience the pretty outside. It rained lots of inches last night, and everything is washed clean and fresh.

Above are chocolate Cherry nine patches for my friend Sharon at work. She is making a nine patch quilt with all pinks and browns. I call them Chocolate Cherries!

And some more nine patches! We quilters at work exchanged these about 2 years ago, and mine are still aging to be just the right vintage to put in a quilt. You know what I mean, right? About 50 nine patches here, 6x6 inches.

Back to work tomarrow for a few days...sigh, I hope it just the right amount of busy!! Please, all have a wonderful good day!

JulieK

Falling Leaves!

While I was in New Mexico recently, I saw the beauty of a flock of geese, flying south for the winter. My geese are lost, apparently they only fly clockwise, around and around, not south. This is my quilt, Tobacco Rose, patterned (kind of) from Bonnie of Quiltville fame's Tobacco Road. Without the pinwheels! I liked it better without the border, but it is done, and I am glad! My borders even lie straight, which is an amazing feat for me!

The pinks are pinker and show up more in real life than the picture.

OK, these are my strings! A BIG, GIGANTIC tub of strings. And boy, am I ever having fun with them. What a treasure trove of possibilities...isn't it funny that I enjoy the littlest of scraps ever as much as brand new, quilt shop yardage.

I have blisters on both hands, due to raking leaves. We have lots of trees, therefore lots of leaves. I hope to get them all up this evening, if it does not rain on me. At least for this week! There are still lots more on the trees.

Hope everyone is happy and quilting a little!

JulieK

A mini quilt retreat

Good morning! I had a day off yesterday, and thought I would finish up a few things! Actually, I got a lot done. Above is a table runner I have had cut out for ages, and put it together yesterday. The charms squares came in a package, and I set them together with the stars making up the sashing and cornerstones..

The best news is right above! I received my t-shirt from Vicki Welsh...it is wonderful! Just exactly perfect! Thank you Vicki, it is wonderful. How in the world does she do that!!!?

Since I talked about pillows in my last post, here is an old one above, almost worn out, made of templates and hand sewn.

And a newer one! I really just made it to preserve the pattern...I saw such a beautiful quilt in Pueblo Colorado on one visit, and just took a picture since the shop was closed, then drafted the pattern. Does anyone know the name of the pattern? I would love to make a quilt using many of this star!

On the brown and pink theme, I made a little needle book from the leftovers of other projects. I have never had one before, and it is already in use.

I made ties to tie the needle book shut, but think I will do Velcro or a snap, or something else.

Baskets! I have made three baskets between yesterday and today for friends! This pattern is from the Patchwork Penguin. It is so fun and easy to do, and I love how the baskets came out. I am going to make a bigger one also. Thank you for the pattern!!

All three baskets together...

Ok, off to do useful things....

Have a wonderful day!!

Julie

Pillow talk...

Ok, I almost never post twice in a day, but I had to show y'all what else I got done today. We have plain brown sofas...brown, you know? I am going to make some pretty pillows for these. This one is made from leftover 1/2 square triangles, arranging into flying geese. It is 12 x 17...and the bag of polyfill just fit in it! Stay tuned for more patchwork pillows...Have a most wonderful day! We are watching the election returns...are you? :)

Baby quilt almost done

Hi all! I have had a productive day, if not on the housekeeping front. I really needed to complete this little baby quilt for a co-worker...it seems at any one time, several of the girls are expecting, and the one that is due soonest is a little boy. Hope this is OK!I quilted it myself on my little Brother machine, and still need to hand-stitch the binding. The girl I am making it for wanted pastel blues...so this is what she got! All the pastel blues I own! The fabric is interesting; it was given to me as some samplers from the fabric warehouses. We have fabric warehouses in the metroplex, and they are simply dangerous to go in to...dangerous for the pocketbook that is!!I think that when this little quilt is washed and dried, it will scrunch up and be fine for a baby boy.

This is my package, minus bows, to go to my Secret Santa Swap partner! I hope she loves it as much as I do...

I went to vote very early this am. We use old fashioned paper ballots. Hope you all got the chance to go too!! I got sheets changed, mirrors and microwave polished, laundry done...will work on dusting, that is my least favorite.

Hope you all have had a most wonderful day!!

JulieK

A Very Talented Lady! and an inspiration...

Hi all! I just got home from work...phewww!! 4/5 days at work...only one more to go!!



At my job, everyone knows how much I love quilts and quilting and quilters...so I occasionally find some goodies waiting for me! Scraps found in a garage sale, patterns from estates, etc. Today, I found in my box a most interesting pamphlet! It all about Diane Rose, the only known totally blind quilter and speaker. It is amazing that she is such a prolific quilter, and has no vision at all. Her website is http://www.theamazingquilter.com/. It is such a humbling thing to know that she has no sight, but is able to make beautiful quilts, and her own clothing too! Cool, huh?



Have a wonderful day! Maybe you can check her out too.! Her joyfulness sure made my day!





JulieK

Call as you see it...Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween! I finished this a year or two ago...Hee! It just fits my ornery self!!

This cute witch and broom certainly fit me!!!

Happy Halloween to all you fantastic quilters out there!