Some Goodies in the Mail!

I have had a good mail week. I told you on the last post about winning 2 giveaways on the same day. I received my goodies this week. First I got this pattern from Cindy. I love anything with pumpkins, so I can hardly wait to make this table runner. Isn't it cute? Thank you for the pattern, Cindy. I love it!

Yesterday I received a package from Mary. It had these goodies in it.

I would be embarrassed to tell you how long I played with this little bag. It is made with a piece of metal measuring tape in the top for a closer. I can not tell you how many times I opened and closed it. LOL Yep Mary, I sure enjoyed playing with it. LOL

Look at this adorable cell phone holder. It is a kitty! I can hardly wait to make this pattern.

Thank you for everything, Mary. I love it all.

My finger is doing much better. It is actually healing quickly. I told you it wasn't very bad. Thank you for all the good thoughts for healing for me. I appreciate it.

I have been busy this week. I have the two Bow Tuck bags ready to sew together. I also am almost done with the second border side of Bob's quilt. Never got it done by the end of Sept., but the end is in sight! I spent yesterday afternoon with mom. I got her bills and meds ready for October, and we had a good visit. Tomorrow is a busy, busy day for me. I need to get groceries, run several errands, then meet Kevin at Menards after he gets off work to pick up some supplies. Also tomorrow begins the Fall into Fall Quilters Giveaway. So be sure to check back. I will have something posted, probably pretty early. You will want to check out the many, many other quilters who are having giveaways also. It will be a fun couple of weeks.

We have had gorgeous weather this week... Sunshine, lows in the 50's, and highs in the 80's. Does it get any better? (grin) The leaves are just starting to turn. Awww, lovely time of the year.  Now I know I have not used proper grammar in this post. I know every sentence needs a subject and a verb, but I have just been writing as it comes to mind. Please forgive me for being a little improper. (grin)

Well, I have things to do, so I'd better get with it. Thank you so much for visiting and please come again. Have a wonderful day!

I Have to Buy a Klutz Glove!

I had a little mishap this weekend. I was busy working on a couple of Bow Tucks bags. I decided to do two at a time. I doubt that I will do that again. It seems to take forever to get to the next step. Oh well. I now have the pieces ready to put together for 2 Bow Tucks bags.

I was working away and doing some trimming with this.

I somehow managed to get my left pointer finger in the way. I won't show you a picture of it, because it kind of makes me sick to look at it, but here it is with the bandage on it.

It is not bad. I have had worse cuts when dressing chickens. I got it to stop bleeding, then bandaged it up. It hurt a little, but now only hurts if I bump it. I didn't even freak out, but Kevin did! Oh my goodness! You would have thought I had cut the whole end of my finger off. (big sigh) I got to hear a whole lecture on how dangerous the rotary cutter is and how I need to pay attention when using it. (eye roll here) Of course I had to cut myself the first time in four years of using this cutter while Kevin was home. LOL  He made me promise that the next time I go to town I will buy one of the klutz gloves. He knows about these from watching Fons and Porter with me. (grin)  He wanted to know why I did not have one. Ok, I will buy a klutz glove. (I may not use it much, but don't tell him. OK?)  So then things settled down and I decided to get back to sewing. Hmmm, then I was told that I have to pay attention, because the sewing machine needle is dangerous as well. OK, enough already. I gave him the look, so he went about his business. LOL I really do appreciate the fact that Kevin is concerned for me, but come on. He does way more dangerous things that this. OK, so maybe I do a little bit of the lecturing about being careful too. (grin)  Anyway, no more accidents happened and I am now ready to put the bags together.

I also worked on the borders of Bob's quilt. I am more than half done with the first border. It doesn't look like I will be done by the end of the month, but it is what it is. LOL I will continue working. I am loving the blog hops this week. Sorry, I didn't think to get the links, but they are pretty easy to find. The free table runner pattern that Gudrun posted on her blog is cute as can be. I am seriously thinking about working on it this afternoon, instead of the things I should be doing. (grin) 

Everyone have a great day. Thanks for visiting and please come again. Hopefully, I will have something better to show soon. LOL

Down to the Borders on Bob's Quilt!

I have been busy this week. I was determined to get all the blocks quilted on Bob's Patriotic Shoo Fly. It has 35 blocks. I finished the last one up today.  I did very simple quilting, but it still took a while. I laid it out on the bed and took a picture, but I don't think the quilting shows up very good.

Here is another picture, but it isn't much better. I'm not a very good photographer.

The backing I used is very busy, so the quilting doesn't even show up there. At least I can feel it when I run my hands over it. LOL I am now working on the first side of the border. I used my chalk pencil to draw the design, so I am only drawing on one side at a time. The chalk does have a tendency to rub off. I tried to take some pictures of it in my hoop, but of course it didn't turn out very good.

Kevin's hours have changed again. He was working 2nd shift. He went back to work Monday after having two weeks off. His boss had left a message saying he wanted to talk to Kevin. Now Kevin is working first shift. He works 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and a little bit of overtime thrown in each week. He was working 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., so these  new hours are much better. We can eat supper together again! (grin) Tonight we had fried chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, gravy, noodles, green beans, and peas. Some of that was leftover from last night, but it was still a very filling meal. The good thing is we have enough leftover for tomorrow night, so no cooking, just warming up.(grin)

It is pouring down rain here. Has been since mid afternoon, but at least we are not getting the severe weather they were predicting for our area. This has been a very rainy year for us. All of this rain will delay the harvest.

I bought some fabric for another Bow Tucks bag while in Walmart last week. I have several I want to make for gifts. I have been machine quilting on the coffee cup bags, but not accomplished much. I am concentrating on Bob's quilt this week. I really would like to have it finished by the end of the month and that is next week. Anyway, here is the fabric I bought.

Not sure if the colors are coming through true, or not. The dark fabric is a pretty purple. The front fabric is pink. It is another scrap sent to me by Cyndi. I am thinking about using it for a front pocket.

I watched the premier of Hawaii Five-0 on Monday. I loved it. I hope it makes it. Yesterday, Kevin and I watched The Defenders. It was another good show. It comes on right after Criminal Minds, so it has a good time slot. Tonight Kevin is watching Bones and Fringe. Not my type of shows, but he has worked hard all week, so I won't say anything. (grin) Besides, I got to pick the tv viewing on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. His turn!

I have been lucky again. I won 2 giveaways today. More on that later. I never buy lottery tickets, but I am wondering if maybe I should. LOL  I really appreciate everything I win. It sure would be nice for my luck to hold long enough to win a GO cutter. Hope that doesn't make me sound too greedy. (grin)

Well, I guess I will get back to the hand quilting. Thanks for visiting. Everyone have a restful night and wonderful day tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Cathryn!

Today is daughter number two's birthday. I called and left a message and of course sent her a card. Not heard back yet from her, so I am assuming she and her family are doing something special. I just wanted to tell her that her dad and I are thinking about her and wish her a wonderful birthday. We love you Cath. Lots of hugs from us. Hug the grandbabies too and give Jeremy a squeeze. Here she is with her darlings, Ashton and Ava. She is such a good mama. I'm very proud of her.

 One more picture. Here she is working on her school work. She is back in school trying to get her teaching degree. She has a degree in business, but found out that just wasn't for her.

I had some good news this week. I have posted before about our lack of fabric shops in our area. All we have are Walmart, JoAnns, and Hobby Lobby. Walmart had plans to take the fabric department out, which really upset me. I found out this week, that our Walmart is going to leave the fabric department in our store. Yahoo! I guess the letters, calls, emails, and complaining to the manager worked.  I was back looking at fabric, like I do every time I go into Walmart, (grin) when Rita, the lady who cuts fabric asked me if I had heard the news. She said some of the big guys from corp. came in and talked to the ladies that run the fabric department. Asked them their opinion on closing it. Needless to say, they were told that the fabric department is staying. Sure made my day! To celebrate I  had to buy a few more pieces of fabric, but haven't taken any pictures of it yet.

I also just realized that I never did post pictures of block#2 of my Raggedy Annie and Friends BOM. I have had this done since the first week it was posted. Now Kaaren is almost ready to post block #3. LOL So here is my block #2.

I did this one different that the first block. I made the embroidery blocks bigger, did the embroidery, then trimmed them to fit. Then I put my block together. Worked much better for me. I had some of it ravel quite a bit on the first block, especially the Kona black. So I will be doing future blocks this way. Here is a closeup of the top stitchery.

This is the bottom stitchery. I really had fun doing these.

Kevin just has today and tomorrow left on his vacation. Thank goodness, he is actually going to have to shave. LOL Sorry, but I hate the whiskers on him. Two weeks growth will soon be gone. I think I have talked him into just relaxing this weekend. I think I am going to try to sandwich Ivan and Jeremy's quilts. I want to have them ready as soon as I get Bob's done. I only have about 6 blocks, then the borders left to do on Bob's, so hopefully it will be done in a week or two.

I had never heard when the next season of Biggest Loser started, so I finally went online to check it out. It starts this Tuesday! Glad I looked it up. We haven't had the tv on much in the past couple of weeks, so I haven't seen any ads for it. Looking forward to another great season.

Almost forgot to add that I will be joining Debi's Fall into Fall giveaway. Just click on the scarecrow in my sidebar to find a list of other bloggers who will be giving things away. I am still thinking it over, but will post my giveaway by Oct. 1st. The drawing will be Oct. 15th, I believe. Check it out. This is very exciting and Debi hopes to get 200 quilt bloggers to join in. You can win some great stuff. (grin)

Well, those quilts aren't going to sandwich themselves (although I wish they would LOL). So I'd better get with it. Thanks for visiting. Have a wonderful weekend.

Still Lucky!

I decided to pop in here and do a little post. We are down to less that a week of vacation left. We have got lots of things accomplished in the past 2 weeks. I think we will soon be ready for winter. (Not really! I am never ready for cold, snow, wind, and ice! Makes me cold just typing it.) We had hoped to go visit each of the grandbabies while Kevin was off, but that hasn't worked out so far. Makes a difference when their parents work and the grandkids are in school. Noah's birthday is coming up. Maybe we can all get together for that.

I am still lucky. A couple of weeks ago I won a giveaway over on Pat's blog. It was a good one. I received it last Saturday. Haven't had time to do anything with any of it yet, but plan to do some playing soon. Here is everything.

Here are a few closeups of my goodies. This is the layer cake. It is called Winter Song by Deb Strain for Moda. I love it. I already know what I am going to do with it. Debi sent me a PDF file of how she makes log cabin quilts from a layer cake. I am anxious to try it.

Also these three rulers: flying geese, pineapple, and kaleido. I love different rulers.

There was a journal, triangles on a roll, a cute little cupcake plate, and a cotton picker. (grin)

I felt like it was Christmas morning, opening this box. (grin) Thanks so much Pat.
I won another giveaway back in August from Jill. I neglected to post about that. Here are the two books I won on Jill's big giveaway.  There are some cute quilts in these. Sorry Jill, for taking so long to post about this, but I love them.

I made a trip to JoAnn's during their Labor Day sale and picked up these fabrics. Most are Debbie Mumm.

I have already started a Bow Tucks bag with the cute polka dot, striped, and coffee cup fabrics.

After I got this bag cut out, I realized that I had enough fabric for another bag if I changed things around a bit. So I cut out another one.

These are all ready for machine quilting. I'll do my usual diagonal crosshatch. (grin) Cyndi, recognize the front pocket fabrics? I cannot tell you how many times I have gone through that box of scraps. Every time I find just the perfect piece. LOL

Thank you all for the kind comments on my Pink Dreams quilt. It was a lot of fun, but now my sewing area is a disaster again. When will I ever learn to put things away after each project? Or for that matter, when will I learn to finish a project before starting another? LOL

Before I leave, I want to tell you about a giveaway that Lana is having. I don't usually post about giveaways, but she is so sweet, I decided to post about it. She is giving away a honey bun of...well, you will just have to go to her blog and check it out because my brain just went blank. Happens a lot any more. LOL So go check out Lana's blog and enter her giveaway. Thanks for visiting and please come again. My vacation is almost over, so I hope to be back regularly again. Have a great day.

Pink Dreams

I finished the top of the pink baby quilt today. I am calling it 'Pink Dreams'. That name just seemed to fit for some reason. (grin) This one was just pure fun. I have a story for the fabric used in this little quilt. It may not be of interest to anyone but me. Since I also use the blog to help me remember things, I am going to tell my story. LOL

Ok, now for the story of the fabric...I was digging through some of my scraps and found a plastic container that said 'pink scraps'. When I opened it, I found 5 of these blocks. They are leftover from a quilt I made for the first granddaughter of a very good friend. I had forgotten that I had them.

The blocks were just the pink and white. I went to my stash and found the yellow. I had less than 1/2 a yard of this left. I had used this yellow in two other baby quilts.  I found one little strip of the pink daisy fabric used for the corner stones. I had about a yard of the pink in the block left. Then I found this blue paisley like fabric. I had about a yard of it. It was leftover from Ava's Heart quilt. I showed it to Kevin. He liked it with the other fabrics. So I went with it. I have learned that my husband has a good eye for color. I trust his judgment.

Photography is not my thing. Sorry things are kind of blurred and too light in places. Anyway, I now had the basic center done, but wanted something to add a little pazazz to it. I had never done a flying geese border. What better time than now? I also wanted to use 2 rulers that I have not used much. They are the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle. Using these two rulers together made the flying geese go very quickly. I love how they look, although I am not sure I would want to do them on the borders of a large quilt. (grin) I made 14 flying geese for each side of the border.

I decided to put pinwheels in the corners. Theses were kind of fun. Then I cut a thin border of the pink to go around the flying geese border. I laid out several different fabrics for this thin border, but Kevin said it had to be the pink, so pink it is. (grin)

Then I measured the paisley to see how wide I could make the outer border. I decided to cut it 3 inches wide. I used a little bit of the yellow and daisy fabrics to make four patches for the corner stones. That way the paisley did not have to be pieced.  I think the top turned out to be about 46 inches square. Bummer! Now the back will have to be pieced. Oh well. I hope to come up with enough scraps to put a stripe down the back of the backing. I had just enough of the pink left to make the binding.

Here are a couple of different angles of Pink Dreams.

Not bad for a quilt that is completely out of leftovers. (grin) I have one 2" wide strip of the yellow left, about 6" long by 2" wide of the daisy fabric, a strip about 4" wide of the paisley, and little bits and pieces of the pink left for my scrap bin. I am quite pleased with this one. Now I have to wait to quilt it. Too many projects ahead of it. It is going to be hard to wait, because my fingers are itching to be stitching. LOL

Tomorrow is grocery day, so I have been working on a list. Saturday some of the kids are coming to help us with some projects around here that need to be done before winter. I am fixing a big crock pot full of taco soup. I will get some tortilla chips to go with it. Carolyn is bringing a cooler of pop and water. I am also picking up some frozen pizzas. We will have the taco soup for lunch and anyone who hangs around gets frozen pizza for supper. (grin) Kevin starts a two week vacation Saturday also, so I will probably not be around much till towards the end of the month. I may try to post tomorrow. Depends on how grocery shopping goes. Everyone have a good day. Thanks for visiting.