Cooling off

The quilts are in the mail!  My sister will be able to move back home this weekend and I wanted to get the tabletoppers to her by then.  She knows I made one for her friend, when she opens the box she'll find out I made one for her too.
Whew, I was a stitchin' machine over the weekend! My machine needs to cool off this week (smile).  Here's a photo of the second tabletopper.

I'm excited about a trip I'm planning with a friend.  We're going to the Mid-Atlantic quilt festival in Virginia. I went to this one a few years ago and had to pick my jaw off the floor more than once.

Comin' and Goin'!

This is one of the tabletoppers I made this week, they went together fast!  It's a pattern I came up with after getting ideas from quilting magazines.  I call this pattern "Comin' and Goin'".  The pinwheels look like they can go any direction!

Here's why I chose this design... My sister's house caught fire January 12th.  Enjoying a day off from work, she was sitting on the floor of her 2nd bedroom, filing tax paperwork piled on her lap and around the floor. Then “someone” told her to go get something to drink. She thought she was going crazy for a minute, and didn’t want to move because she had just sorted things. So she decided to say back ‘I’m not thirsty, I don’t need anything to drink.” And the voice said, “Yes, you do.”

So she moved everything she had just sorted, went to the kitchen and saw puffs of smoke blowing past the kitchen window.  She ran to wake up her son, grabbed her cat, and the tax papers.  As she was headed outside, on the phone to 911, a man in a red truck pulled into the driveway. He yelled out the window “are you on the phone to 911?” She yelled back “yes!”. He nodded, pulled back out of the driveway and left. She still doesn’t know who it was.

I said "Isn’t it cool God sent back-up just in case you decided you weren't going to get up?  He's got you comin' and goin'!"   And that's what I decided to name this design.  I made 2, one will go to her friend who is taking care of Sushi (the cat).

Progress!

My sister's house caught fire 2 weeks ago, while she was home.  The firefighters arrived quickly and had the fire out before much was damaged.  She lost the roof and but nothing inside the house was damaged.  The electrician she hired a year ago did some shoddy work in her attic, he's in trouble now.

The power has been off since the fire, so she's staying in a motel until her house can be repaired.  A friend of hers is taking care of her cat while she's in the hotel. 

I took a break from the scrapbooking to make a table topper as a thank you gift to the friend for helping my sister, and while I was at it I thought I'd make one for my sister as well. 

One can be seen on the far left.  The second one is nearly assembled.  I'll add the borders and get them quilted this weekend.  I need to get them in the mail by Tuesday!

The.... NEEDLE (theme to Jaws playing in the background)

My 10 yo son experienced his first rusty nail yesterday. In the doctor's office he ran circles, paced, jumped up and down, squeezed the goop out of the hand sanitizer, danced, ran the water in the water fountain, flipped the light switches all the while asking "Mom, why does the air in my lungs come out like this".... displays the air coming out of his lungs...."Mom, why do the cords on my neck look like this when I do this".. displays the cords on his neck...you get the picture... for nearly an hour while we waited for.... THE NEEDLE.

And when it went in, he looked at me and said "MOM, THAT DIDN'T EVEN HURT!"

His mother went home and had a very strong Bahama Mama.

Civil War

The kids are in bed, dh is working and the house is quiet.  I love scrapbooking during this time.  A friend and I are visiting a new fabric store in the morning so I should get to bed but it's sooo nice and quiet right now.

I'm honoring my great, great grandfather James Monroe.  James fought in the Civil War from start to finish.  He enlisted on 6 Jul. 1861 in Company D, 4th Iowa Infantry. He fought in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou; Arkansas Post; First and Second battles of Jackson, Mississippi; Champion Hill; Siege of Vicksburg; Brandon, Mississippi; Chattanooga; Mission Ridge; In the Atlanta Campaign and in the battles of Jonesboro & Savannah. He was wounded in the head by a piece of shell at Chickasaw Bayou and was shot through the clothing at Vicksburg. Honorably Discharged at Davenport, Iowa 6 Aug. 1865.

I'm off to bed now... thanks for visiting!

Using fabric in a whole new way

A woman in Oregon makes these using chairs from a garage sale.  They're beautiful!

If I wanted America to fail...

Good ol' NC blizzard

We had ANOTHER tree fall on the house. 6 days before high school graduation too! We had super help to clean it up though and by dusk all that remained was a stump, saw dust and the ever so lovely scent of gas/oil in the air.

Our front yard used to look like this every spring, a good ol' North Carolina blizzard (flowers falling off our flowering pear trees):

Today, our front yard looked like this: