Cows and QuADD

Yes, cows on the purse! I have a friend who has cows, and chickens and she NEEDED a spring purse with cows on it! This may be a Wisconsin thing...............

I even made her a little Kleenex cover to match -check out inside the purse. I love the hay and egg fabric.

These are my bottle blocks for the wine wallhanging. As usual I am "winging it". Which for me, means making up the pattern as I go along. Sometimes this works very well and sometimes..... um... lets say I can learn from my mistakes.

Anyone who knows me or visits my house knows I love glass bottles. It was so fun finding hand dye and batik fabrics that looked like glass. I even found fabric that had areas that looked a bit like cork.

Now I bet you are wondering what QuADD is.......... it's something I have recently diagnosed myself with. Seeing as how I work with medical records I figure I'm qualified to self diagnose. Quilters Attention Deficit Disorder. I have it so bad that I have literally lost count of my UFO's. If you looked at my list at the bottom of my blog here........... that's not all of them. One symptom is fabric buying, those fat quarters can be sooooooo addictive, not to mention books, and magazines, and surfing quilt blogs, and, and, and,

There are some days, like today for instance that are just so darn Monday-ish that the only thing that will help is a trip to the local quilt shop for some fat quarter therapy. It's easier on my butt than McDonald therapy, which I also indulged in today. It was THAT much of a Monday. And of course now I am regretting the medium fries and the large diet coke. sigh.

So, I felt that a stop at the quilt shop was in order, and besides it's right on my way home............In my defence I have been meaning to pick up some more light colored fabrics for my 365 challenge quilt. I wanted some spring colors since it's almost April, and spring has to arrive at SOME point in Wisconsin. So here are the lovelies! It may be a bit hard to see them, but there are two soft light green ones, and then the pretty pink flowers that I am going to use from the back side to make it even lighter, and an ivory print too. Part of my QuADD symptoms are that I sew with one shoe or slipper or sandal off and never take the time to slip it back on so a lot of the time I am thumping around the house with only one shoe, slipper, or sandal on my foot without even noticing until some helpful member of the family points it out to me. The label dork gets thrown around a lot at our house. Another symptom of QuADD is buying doubles of quilt books because it looks so good at the store or online, and I'm sure I would LOVE to use it........... I'm thinking of starting a support group, maybe we could meet in various quilt shops!

"Hi my name is Mare and I have QuADD, my last fabric purchase was at 03:30."

I don't particularly wish to be cured, but maybe if I drink enough coffee and eat enough chocolate, and did you see those great scraps that are in my #3 basket of leaders and enders next to my sewing machine......... oops there I go again!

Better late than never?

Can you believe this pictures were taken just two weekends ago?? Check out this snow at one of my favorite places in the world! Yes, I did the silent retreat at St. Anthony's again. Quite the difference with snow covering everything. It was an awesome weekend, and I do have art to show when my camera comes back to life. ;-) I had to get outside on Saturday and the grounds were buried under about two and half feet of snow! It was frozen enough that I could walk on top for most of it. The deer tracks show a different story for the poor things. They were sinking in about 2 feet on the trail.
The first photo is of the stone steps that lead down to the grotto. What you don't see any steps? Buried! Yes, I went down them. It was an awesome sight, thank goodness there was no one else to see!
Yes, that would be because they were all smart enough to stay inside where it was warm and not covered in snow.
Poor St. Theresa! Snow up to her neck!!! I kind of felt like I should bring her a quilt. Hey, that's a great idea! I better go on retreat again next winter (spring) to make sure she is warm enough. Who else will do it? Obviously just me and the deer came this way!




How could I miss this though?

After my trek through the grounds this swing seemed like a perfect spot to take a break. The snow makes an ideal foot rest!








Ahhhh the good life! Now if I had just had a cup of coffee..........








And even amidst the piles and piles of snow, one little bed of Iris were trying to come back to life. My hike through the tundra was a beautiful lesson for me. There is part of hymn that says "and all creation sings his praise". All creation was singing to me from every angle. Sun glinting off snow, deer prints, frozen river, bird calls, and finally the little Iris struggling to come up through the cold.

Just my three cents worth

I have been trying to give my three cents worth lately. I read about this movement to change the world by 3 pennies.

What you do is, every morning you put three pennies in your left pocket. During the course of the day if you do something nice for someone you move one penny to your right pocket. So, it can be something big and nice, something unexpected and nice or even something small and nice like opening the door for a stranger. Then at the end of the day your goal is to have the three pennies in your right pocket.

Kind of neat huh? Just a little pocket reminder to be nice to people and go out of your way a bit. I also tell myself sometimes, "ooo that wasn't a nice thought, I should have to move my penny back!" ;-)

Yesterday one of my "pennies" was to make a camouflage hospital gown.

I know it sounds pretty bizarre, but my brother in law has been in the hospital for a week and a half and until yesterday he was in two different ICU's. Now that is SICK! Anyway, he is a big hunter/out doors kind of guy and I cannot imagine him in one of the foo foo hospital gowns. So I went to my favorite quilt shop and found some quilt fabric that is pretty much camouflage and made up my version of a hospital gown. As soon as I get batteries in my camera I'll get a picture. Personally I think this gown could have advantages.

Don't want the nurses to see you? Put on your camo!

Well that's it for me today, I hope whoever reads this has a three penny day.

some se4wing

I have been getting a bit of sewing done, just not the humongous quantities I dream about.

Here is a little comfort quilt for a toddler with a very rare disease. She is the younger sister of one of Vanessa's classmates. And the minute Vanessa heard about her health problems, her first thought was "Can we make her a quilt?" Ahh, she is a true quilter at heart. I had some nice cozy pink flannels in my flannel stash and we were able to whip this up in a couple of days so the wee one could snuggle in it right away.

Then I needed to make a spring purse for my friend Cookie. She ordered one in blues and yellows and a bit of greens, all spring colors. Oddly enough I found a charm pack in my stash with the EXACT colors she was looking for!!!!

Plus, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with that pack. Those charm packs are just soooooooo lovely, but I don't really know what to do with them. Any ideas out there would be really appreciated! What do you do with charm packs? Do you buy more than one? Do you need to buy some of the coordinating fabric to finish anything? Okay, back to the purse............

As always there are loads of pockets inside.

Now I just need to get going on the next two purses that have been ordered.

Why is it never as much fun to make things that are on your "have to do list" as it is to make things that are on your "someday this would be fun to make" list?

This past weekend I went on retreat again at St. Anthony's. I'll save those pictures for another day though. And there will be more of my pastel drawings then too. This weekend I worked in a series. Are you curious? ;-)

You would think after a nice retreat weekend I would be raring to get at my sewing machine, but it's snowing out again and I am just tired of this winter stuff. It is sucking the ambition out of me. sigh.

If any of you out there in blogland have extra spring, could you please send a Little bit this way? pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaase? (yes that was a REALLY whiny voice)

ART QUOTE

Kathy has an art quote on her blog, http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/ here, and it reminded me of one of my favorite art quotes.

"I'm very supportive of the visual arts, then again, I am a visual art"

Kermit the frog

The ultimate peep show

Okay, I soooooooooooooo could not resist sharing this one! And I can even blame it on a quilting friend! ;-)
I have been working on some things in my sewing room, but I never seem to remember to take pictures to show everyone. Well, honestly one thing I have been working on in there every darn day is vacuuming up the bunny fur, brushing out the bunny fur, vacuuming up the bunny fur I brushed out........... can you say shedding season? ARRRRRRRRRRRR I really NEED spring so I can move him back outside where REAL bunnies belong!

Here it is! My March abstract challenge!

I was so inspired by my idea for spring under the snow that I skipped the housework on Sunday and made this instead!

Here is the top of my spring quiltet for the abstract challenge. I was going to use some layers of netting, but my flowers were a bit bright and showed through too much then I remembered this piece of eyelet just sitting in my stash waiting to be used....







And here is the spring under my snow! Oh, how I hope it's going to be there when all the snow and ice melt! Last night we had thunderstorms, then we got rain, which turned to sleet, which turned to snow just in time to drive to work. Now most everyone's yard is full of ice. I think we would do better with a Zamboni on our driveway than the tractor to plow it!

Then and Now

Remember this flower bed last summer?

This is what it looks like now.

In the online abstract challenge, the word for the month of March is spring..............

Even though this is what it looks like in my neck of the woods, I know that there are flowers under that blanket of snow............ hmm, quilt of snow? Now I'm getting some ideas about doing bright springy things and then covering them with a few layers of netting and other light fabrics so they almost show through, and not sewing the top layers down so they can be picked up to see the spring things under there.............. flowers, buds, bunnies........... lots of greens and soft yellow/green............. pinks, lavendar,

now if I just had more TIME to play!