2/20/25

 This was a week of sending quilts to a brother (in-law), nieces, great nieces and great nephews. And hoping they arrived safely.

I'm happy to say that they all arrived and I even received a couple of photos documenting their arrival.

My brother, Pete (actually Mark's brother, but I dropped the "in-law" years ago because I love him so much), received Picnic in the Park, one of my favorites with a lot of Heather Ross fabric.

I sent out six quilts to nieces titled "The Same but Different" because they were all the same pattern and all made with Anna Maria Horner fabric). I numbered them in chronological order from oldest niece to youngest. Rose, the youngest of the group, received hers first, but then again, she is the nearest geographically.

Our niece in Chicago, along with her son and daughter, sent me this photo. Makes my heart sing.

I received the nicest thank you texts from two of the other nieces. I'm going to ask if they can take photos too.

This was something I was not expecting to see when driving through the neighborhood. Seeing bounce houses is pretty common but I've never seen this before.

I  made some fun zipper pouches for the three women who work at the post office I always go to. They are always so nice and helpful. I had the fun fabric, ribbon, and have been saving the "postage due" and "air mail" selvages for ever. The lining fabric was another one that has been in my stash for a long time--perfect for this project. The selvages got a little ripply, but all in all, I'm happy with how they turned out.

Finally, I put together the blocks from a bee I have been part of for the past year. It was called "not a bee" because each month someone chose a block, which we made but didn't need to mail to anyone else. Win-win. I chose a fabric palette based on a poster I had seen last year (which I guess I'll post later because I can't find the photo). Here are the blocks (mine is the upper right corner), and once it's quilted, I will do a separate post.

That's it for this week. Happy weekend.

Thursday, 2/13/25

 It's been an interesting week. A week ago, I presented a trunk show to the quilt guild in Hanford, California, about 40 minutes from here. I took no photos. *sigh*

It went well, and as usual, Mark was my quilt holder. He really excels at that job. He's had a lot of practice. :) And I couldn't get three suitcases packed with quilts, along with everything needed for my PowerPoint presentation (a photo of my inspiration, and then Mark holds up the quilt), without him. On Saturday, I went back and taught a class in sewing with selvages, based on this pattern, Spool Play.

I took bags of selvages and was able to gift a lot of them to the class participants. 

And I did start a couple of  personalized pincushions:

As soon as I got home from class, we unloaded the car and repacked it for a weekend at the coast. For years, we met our friends from Calgary, Russ and Ingrid, for a weekend. But then the pandemic. And then schedules just didn't click. 

We finally were able to get together this weekend in Carmel and it was so great. We had lunch on Sunday at the Chart House in Monterey, one of our favorite restaurants and kind of a tradition with the four of us. It was a beautiful day, and this was the view from our table. We took 17-Mile-Drive to get to Monterey, an iconic road that skirts the coast.

We watched the Super Bowl, but mostly just caught up and laughed. It was a much-needed respite from the chaos going on.

Mark grew up on a farm and there was always a lot to do. His mother, Esther, had a saying, "The best way to get a sh*tty job done is to start." Growing up, he was not allowed to say words like gosh, darn, etc., but for some reason, it was acceptable to both pray and cuss in German. And since they lived on a farm, the word sh*t was also acceptable. 

We are both list makers. There is just something so satisfying about having a list and crossing things off. Lately, we have been channeling Esther as there seem to be a lot of things that need to be done but we don't feel like doing. So I finally had some note pads made. I was limited by character count so I had to adjust the quote a bit. But I'm pretty happy with them. 

I started a new colorway in my Glow quilt: amethyst.

Haha.

The other night I was fast-forwarding through commercials while watching a show I had taped when this popped up--Christa (on the left) from a few weeks ago talking about a "stop human trafficking" campaign.

The other day I grabbed a random bottle of red wine at Trader Joe's. Only later did I realize, as an avid reader, how much I liked the label.

And I'm finally at the final step in finishing the Tilda Flower Vase Embroidery quilt. Two things I've never done--a wavy border and bias binding. Both seemed daunting, and in the end, neither were too bad. All I have to do is hand stitch the binding on the back and it will be ready for the charity quilt auction in April. I'm smitten with it.

And because I'm still obsessed with IG templates:

Till next week...

Wednesday Update

Happy Wednesday, and welcome to February.

I finished another colorway for my echinacea quilt--Grape. I enjoyed working with these colors. I thought I was getting close to the end, but then I read that Anna Maria is coming out with three new Echinacea colorways, dropping in September. Hmmm....

I told the 13-year-old that Friday is National Periodic Table Day. Two minutes later, he sent me this. It took me a couple seconds, and then I laughed...

The Flower Vase Embroidery quilt is beautifully quilted. I made the borders extra wide because I am contemplating a wavy border. I think I have the math figured out, so hopefully it will work out. If not, I made it wide enough that I can just trim it back to a straight border. 

Books I read in January. How to Age Disgracefully and How to Read a Book are already my favorites of 2025. I know it's early days, but these two are going to be hard to beat.

I've been in a bee called Not a Bee. Each month someone is in charge of choosing the block design. We make one block, for ourselves, and no mailing to other bee members is involved. That's kind of nice. One more to go and then I'll figure out how to put all the blocks together.

Last Friday night, Mark surprised me with a fun date night--tickets to Disney on Ice. Apparently every time it was advertized on TV, I said, "That looks like fun." So he got tickets and we had such a great time. Disney sure knows how to put on a show.

This would be funnier were it not so true.

For my birthday, I received this puzzle.from Aaron, Christa and the grandkids. I'm totally and completely hooked on puzzling, and this one was so much fun to put together. 

Hard to believe, but next week it will be a year since Aaron and I went to London. Since I'm ready to start another puzzle, I ordered this one. 

I'll end with this: