Getting Caught up on my Hexies

I have been behind on my hexie responsibilities for a while and 

have been trying to get caught up. These flowers went out to my June partner.

These are the flowers I received for my June swap. Most of my partners are behind as well. HA HA 

These are the flowers I sent out to my July partner unfortunately

 they were returned to me. This partner has seemed to drop of the face of the earth. So they are up for grabs as angel flowers. 

TTFN

AWOL Again!!

I am really not trying to be gone. I think of everybody here on these blogs as friends. I miss everybody. But you know how it is, our outside lives are more important. I was hoping to find a new balance once my DD#1 went back to college this fall but alas that was not meant to be. I not only had one daughter going but two!! Both my girls are away. Boy how hard that was to leave them behind. We went to Yellowstone while we were over on that side of the state. It is so beautiful!! I am amazed that something so dangerous can be so wonderful. Another life change for me is that I have gone back to school. It is a course through BYU-I where my daughters are going. I am taking the Pathway Program. It is all online except a weekly gathering with people like myself going through the program. This program is for a year, three consecutive semesters. When it is done I will be able to join BUY-I as a full time online student going for an Associates or Bachelor Degree. I am looking at getting an Associates Degree in Family History Research. Mostly I would be doing Family Histories. I love that area of study. I have been doing lots of homework but I am loving every minute of it. I am trying to find a way to do homework and then leave time for quilting. I have not been in my sewing room for over two weeks, except to finish up a block for Saturday Sampler. 

I MISS MY SEWING MACHINE!!!

Enjoy some pictures of my sweet ladies and Yellowstone!!

 TTFN

Manic Monday~9 Getting a Lot Off My List

 I have had a busy few days. My dad is a volunteer firefighter. His group had a BBQ/Auction this weekend. He asked that I make a quilt to put in the auction. So being me I made two. They are very simple quilts. I bought two fabrics that had sections in them. I cut the sections apart, added sashing, and then put them back together. I added just fleece to the back with no batting. 

This one went for $65.00.

This one went for $65.00. Not bad. I paid about $45.00 for the fabric for both of them and the fire department made $140.00. I love that!!

I made more quilts for my church. We had a Humanitarian Night. All the ladies got together and put together backpacks filled with school supplies for our local schools. We tied quilts for a local Food Bank. We also made stuffed bears for a hospital nearby to give to hurt and sick kids. This bellow is one of the quilts laid out on my bed before I finished the top. Now I need to get the binding on all of them, wash them, and drop them off.

I had taken a picture of my two blocks all finished and stacked before I made the top for Double Delight. I wanted to added a picture here for the fun of it. That right there was a lot of work. I have it sandwiched and have started the quilting. I needed to stop for the above quilts. I am hoping to get back to it soon.

In my PQA group we did another fabric swap. These are becoming really popular. We have more planned. I received the fabric and finished cutting the strips for our fall set. I still have to cut the patriotic set. But I thought you would like to see some of the rows laid out. 

Here they are all rolled up and tied with a  ribbon. HA HA they look so beautiful!!

One of my favorite flowers is in bloom in my yard. It is a Trumpet Plant or what we like to call a moon flower. We love them and they are huge. Almost the size of a dinner plate. 

I hope your day goes well and you get  a lot accomplished!!

TTFN

15 for '14~Quilts for Kids

In all of the confusion of not blogging. I failed to post about my two Quilts for Kids quilts that I had completed and mailed off. This on is the one I made out of my own fabric. I think it is so cute!!

This is the fabric they sent to me. The bugs are so fun to look at. 

These make quilt 5 and 6 that I have made for them. I don't think I am going to do any more for a while. I have so many other UFO's of my own to finish. But some day I will make more.

TTFN

Maniac Monday~8 It is a Top!!

Since Wednesday I have spent a lot of time in the sewing room. I have enjoyed myself so much. I have missed the process. The vision I see in my head of what I think my project will look like. The multiple identical steps. The seemingly hundreds of little steps until you get to the part were with each seam the whole thing starts coming together. Then before you know it the top is a top. It is a quilt!! I cuddly blanket that many naps will be taken under. How exciting!! I love this quilt. I am not sure about the colors but I love that I can look at this one and say, "Yeah, I made that!!" I am not sure if I need to add a border or leave it as is. I only have orange fabric left. What do you think? Should I add the orange or use the orange as the binding? I am leaning more for the second idea. Thank you for stopping by!!

TTFN

Not WiP Wednesday~Double Delight Quilt Along

Freshly Pieced is not having WiP Wednesday today because she is still on vacation. Good for her. But I worked hard today so I thought I would do it myself. I had so much fun over the last few day working on one of 15 for '14. My Double Delight Quilt Along by Bonnie Hunter. I have kept track of my progress on my UFO's here on this page. I started yesterday trimming all of the pieces into 3 1/2 inch squares. So many trimmings. I am not a football fan but these look like pom-poms. The parts that look blue are really a dark purple. I could not get the colors right on my computer. So just imagine purple, orange, and white. I KNOW!! What was I thinking. Those colors are so weird. 

After some of the trimming was done I wanted to see what the blocks were going to look like. Interesting colors. The four corner squares on point are blue and white flowers with yellow centers.

Here is some of the piecing being done today. When I stopped I had but the last seam on all of these "9 patches" done. There are 30 blocks total of this set. Each block has 49 pieces. So that is 1,470 just in those blocks. Tomorrow I will finish sewing them up and start working on the other blocks. I will be only making 20 of them. But each of them have 49 pieces in them as well, for a total of 980. WOW!! After I get the Center together I get to add 22 setting corner pieces. That is a total of  2,472 pieces. Not counting borders and corner stones. CAARAZY!! What was I thinking taking on this quilt. It will be beautiful.

Ha Ha after all that math I feel silly saying I also got two more pet beds made. They will be dropped off on Friday.

 TTFN

Maniac Monday 7~Pets and my Finger

I am having one heck of a time with a few changes and I think that is partly why I am having a hard time staying up on my blog. For Christmas my husband bought me an iPad Mini. I love it. I can use it anywhere. I quickly learned I could not blog from it though. To keep under the amount of space my pictures use blogging I always edit my pictures in a different program before I upload them to Blogger. Well I can't use the program on my iPad. Well that was ok I still had my laptop to do that. Well then about after 3 weeks after Christmas my laptop died!! Oh I was so MAD. Now what. So I found an app I could use on my iPad to edit pictures then an app to blog from. I was a little fussy so I stopped using them. So off and on I have used my daughter's computer. She will be leaving soon and I need to find a more permanent way to store and edit pictures then to blog them here. So I have been using a small older laptop my husband used awhile back. It is SLOW!! Oh I am frustrated. But I am going to figure this out. I miss blogging. So I am going to stop fighting it and teach myself a new trick or two, ha ha!! Do  you have a process of how you blog? I would love to hear how you do it.

 On a sad note we lost another pet last night. Here is a picture of him from yesterday while I was holding him. He was a huge gray cat that we got from a sister-in-law. She had rescued him at another sister-in-laws house about 6 years ago. He took him and he has been a great cat. We got him fixed when he was young and shortly he started acting weird. I took him to the vet. We found out that he was one of a lucky few that get "sand" like calcium deposits inside the bladder that block his urethra and cause urine to back up. We had to buy him special urinary health cat food. The vet told use he would always have that problem and it might get worse. Well I believe that is why he passed away. He was my DD#2's cat. He slept with her and just loved her. We are all very sad and hurt. Losing pets is so hard. This makes 5 pets in 6 years. Our Boston Terrier is getting up there and we will lose him soon also. Hug your pets!! Tell them you love them for me.

With help from my quilt group we were able to donate 5 pet beds to a local shelter a few weeks ago. (How fitting these two pictures are together.) Anyway we are saving all of our fabric clippings and scraps. I then sew two fat quarters together and stuff them. The shelter was so happy to receive them. I hope to be back next week with pictures of other fun things that I got to work on.

I have not been able to do very much sew because I did a very bad NO-NO!! I was at my sister-in-law's house sewing a few weeks ago. I had moved the sewing machine petal more to the back of my foot because  my nephew was crawling under the table. I got up and walked away from the table. When I came back I was talking and not watching what I was doing. This is what we think happened. I put my hand inside the machine to move it and at the same time stomped on the petal because I forgot that I had moved it. Well the machine took off because I had not turned it off, who does that! And the machine ATE my finger. ATE it! Like a hungry monster. I will show you the after pictures first then at the bottom is what it looks like with the need stuck in my finger. The arrow shows where the needle went in. I had to cut my nail back because it went through the nail. OUCH!!! It hurt so bad when they took it out. But I am fine now. Just tender when I bump it. 

I this one you can see where it went in and then back out.

Turn away now if you do not want to see what the needle looks like stuck in my finger. That spot of blood is all the blood there was. 

Turn away now if you do not want to see it!!

DO NOT DO THIS!!!

 TTFN

Maniac Monday 6~Long Time No See~Picture Heavy!

So after a very busy 7 weeks plus two weeks of just relaxing I finally feel like myself again. I have had so many things back to back that I just kept trucking with my mind set on the next big thing. What needed to be planned next, what was my part in those plans, what were the deadlines. Finally from now until the middle of September I can just roll with the small bunches and enjoy the summer. There is only a few birthday parties that I am not in charge of, one holiday, 4th of July, and a few small town quilt shows to go to. I can handle this. 

Here are a few pictures to show what I have been up to!

Old Fort Boise Days is our small communities summer celebration. It was so fun! Here is our float we put into the parade. You can see my daughter and a niece. All of the quilts you see are mine. The one standing up is the quilt we raffled and the quilt show. We made about $75.00 on it. 

The PQA Quilt Show went so well. We had 67 quilts. For our first quilt show that makes me so happy!! Here are a few pictures of some of the quilts we had and some of the fun ways we hung them.

 One of the things we had was some art made out of just a piece of fabric wrapped around a board. It is a cool way to show off beautiful fabric!!

I also made two wedding cakes. One cake for practice and let me tell you my family and extended family was very happy!! Yummy cake!

 Then I made second on for them for the wedding. HA HA on the day we were setting up for the quilt show! What a busy day that was. Here is the cute couple. I made a very small cake for them to cut up and feed to each other. 

 At my church we just had a craft night. A very large group of ladies got together to make a bunch of fun seasonal crafts. I was in charge of making quilt tops that we could tie. I was able to bring 5 and we tied 3. I still need to bind them. (sorry the colors are off a little but I will take better pictures when they are done)

THEN...We got a new kitten. My husband found it at work and was afraid it was going to be killed with all of the big equipment moving around there. So we went and picked it up. She was about 3 weeks old. We had to bottle feed her. now she is all grown up and feisty!! But she fits our family and we love her!

Now just a fun picture of me. I love that I am able to do what I have done. Now time to get back to quilting for me.

TTFN