As promised, Show and Tell!

This week just went so fast! Miss V started high school on Monday, and getting back to work was, well, work! Sometimes it seems like it's not always worth it to take time off when you have to play catch up, but honestly it was SO worth it to take this time off!!!



Lots of catching up to do! My local guild picnic was two days before I left for Colorado-- So......
First my gorgeous birthday presents from my guild secret pal
AND my good quilting friend Trudy. If you remember a while ago when I was showing off my cool secret pal gifts and I said I thought I knew who it was.... I did! Trudy has fabulous taste and is really clever.
She got me a pretty embroidery pattern!!! I've been wanting to do some of this!

Here is a picture from our guild picnic, I'm not sure how neat it looks in the picture, but it was fun, and everyone looked great in their aprons. The funniest part for me was that everyone seemed to pick out an apron that went with what they were wearing. Aren't women funny?




Here is the "full" size quilt for Miss V! My favorite cousin is on the stairs, and that's her wonderful son Brad holding up the other side. See how tall he is? he is NOT standing on a step!







Here is the snack quilt, can you see the cute cupcake backing?? This was sooooo much FUN! I didn't use any pattern I just played from the front of the machine. Bliss!!




Baby break! Isn't MY Maggie just the sweetest thing?



mmmm baby smell, and what a lovely armful of sleeping angel.....
sigh, I miss her already!



I had made a little pieced top that we made a jacket for Maggie out of, the pattern link is here........ http://www.quiltyindulgence.com/
Flori, of our smallest guild fame has designed these patterns and they are fabulous!!!!

Here is a quilt "sandwich" that we made for the base of Maggie's fall jacket. Aren't those colors fabulous? Now we both want to make a bed size quilt like this!




And here is my wine quilt getting quilted. I think there may have to be another one in the making because I found some really cool wine theme fabric out in Colorado!
So many quilts! So little time!

quilting and snuggling

Gosh, how is that for a choice? Play on the long arm or snuggle the baby???


As long as the baby will have it I chose my little Maggie. sigh, bliss!

See this bright quilt? Vanessa is getting a new bed. Obviously a new quilt is in order- She chose a full size bed, so a full size quilt would be the best right? Well, we started out with some swap blocks, she wanted white sashing, and white borders to really set them off, and by the time I finished adding all that it seems to have morphed into just about a king size quilt. It measures out at 106 X 95. What the heck was I thinking???? I suppose she can always fold it in half and have double the warmth? Yikes, it is a bit easy to get carried away isn't it?


Speaking of getting carried away, I need to go trim quilt number 3 that I just finished the quilting on!! yeah!!! there will be show and tell later. Or if sweetie pie falls asleep you know I'll be doing something else..............

counting down

Well, 3 more sleeps until Mare's great adventure!

Remember this adorable little god-daughter? Okay that was blatant showing off of a cute baby, I totally admit it. But she is soooooooooo adorable that I didn't think anyone would really mind.

Anyway, Saturday morning I am hopping (okay I'll be strolling down the concourse) on a plane to go see her, her super siblings, and my FAVORITE cousin in the universe!!!!!!!!!!!! I am sooooooooooo lucky!!

So, I should be finishing my packing, and getting the border on the last quilt to go in my suitcase. I should be.

But of course we all know I'm not. Being "Mare the wonder ADD person", I'm playing with these............

and turning them into this..............

and can you guess why? Do you care why?

In case you do............

It's because these little babies are fire starters for making this!
I meant to make these sooner, I collected cardboard egg cartons, stubs of candles, and I was waiting for Jim dear to bring in wood shavings. Honestly I sort of hoped he'd do that after I left, but cest la vie. So I'm clearing up my messes before I go.
Next time I'll show you the quilt tops I'm bringing to my FAVORITE cousins, where I get to play on her long arm quilt machine!!!

Catching up on some things

Finally I am catching up on some pictures I meant to publish. This one is from last month.
I got all this great stuff within 3 days!! Yes, birthday treats extraordinaire!! But other treats too, see that pack of cute fabric tied with the bright green and buttons? I got that from some of my favorite records ladies at one of my clinics. I made them all bags and they obviously liked them! I got lovely things from my very own OCC (see my sidebar) Flori. I got more lovely things from my local guild secret pal. Now if someone would have given me some extra time so I could play with all this stuff!!
This gorgeous drink is rhubarb juice from a recipe Kathy gave out. You can visit Kathy here:
http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/
Isn't it the prettiest color? I mixed mine with some diet Squirt and it was awesome!!



And last, but only because it just got here is this lovely Australian haul from my friend Leigh. Aren't those calves with the quilts adorable?
Leigh used to have a great blog, but alas, she retired from blogging. Luckily she emails (and sends loads of cool stuff!!) so I can keep up with her exciting life. She recently broke her wrist bungee jumping off of kangaroos. Wasn't that the story we decided on Leigh????

Hands across Eau Claire

Hands hands everywhere!!
Back again! We visited daughter number 2 who is currently living in lovely Eau Claire, WI.


If you remember some time ago, also when we visited her at college, Jim took a picture of me in a big hand, it's my little blogger i.d. picture- anyway, Lissa told us there were more of these around town, they are a movement called "hands across Eau Claire".
So, as we walked all around the city we stopped at every one we found and took more pictures.........

The girls bought me this GORGEOUS bouquet of zinnias at the huge farmers market we walked through. Aren't they lovely??? And heavy! I could have killed someone with that bouquet!









Okay, here is a hand with an eagle painted on it!! Of course it reminded us of our camping trip.






This hand was painted like henna art.

Here are the two lovely daughters posing with it.






This one was so cool, it's puzzle pieces, and the interlocking parts are shaped like hands! From a distance it looked like blue camouflage. Very cool!!



To our disappointment, there was a pedestal with no hand, they must have been using it for a display somewhere else. Of course I didn't want to lose out on any hand pictures, so I convinced Miss V to pose with her hand up in it's place. To her credit, she didn't roll her eyes........... of course she IS wearing sunglasses.............



This hand has rock stars and singers painted all over it. I'm not really sure who they all were as some of us were getting a bit tired of the walking around and wanted to move along..........


Can you guess who got tired????

Jim liked the hands, but then he spotted this Guinness and thought that was a MUCH better idea than empty hands!

Now all I can think about is a hand quilt!!