I'm not Dreaming it's a White Christmas

Here's the view out my home office window!  It's been snowing since last night and is still coming down in large flakes even as I type this.  Most of you don't know how rare this is for us.  I can't remember the last time we had snow for Christmas.  It usually doesn't snow here in the desert until January, if at all.  We have had two really good snowfalls already this year.  The year of the drought.  It's great to not only see the snow, but look at the lake!  It's full once again.  Remember this picture from this summer? Okay, I can't seem to find the picture I took this summer.  It was probably that one that I deleted just a little bit ago of my screen, looking out the window.  I thought I had another one besides that one.  Okay, let me describe it for you.  Looking at the current picture, everywhere you see water, was brown, dried up lake bed.  I mean, everywhere.  There was no water at this end of the lake.  You could walk across the lake bed and I saw several people do just that!  Where you see white snow, picture it as dry, brown grass.  No rain, equals dry grass.  The bushes along the fence are purple sage, but with no rain, all you have a gray leaves - no purple flowers.  It was a bleak picture outside my window for many months.  The good thing about being so busy this summer was that I didn't have time to get depressed looking out my window. 

Now, is the time for me to get busy sewing.  I have three classes I am teaching in the early spring and one lecture I have to prepare for.  Thank goodness, one quilt top is totally finished, but it still needs to be quilted, if there is time.  I now have 9 blocks done for my retreat quilt and am debating whether to stop there or continue on to 20 blocks.  I have a few blocks done for my lecture quilts and need to add to those and put them into tops at the very least.  Finally, I need to finish my Inspiration quilt top and decide if I have time to get it quilted before April.  I have bits and pieces done, but nothing finished.  I can't blame the computer for distracting me since I haven't had it for several months.  I just need to focus and get going.  I need to set a plan, work on one thing at a time and not let other new projects distract me.  HaHa!!  I am always distracted by the new and fun project which is why I have such a nice collection of quilt tops.  I have quilted several quilts lately, but those are the small tops, some of which have been sitting around for more than a year.  (10+ years for the color wash quilt)  edit: oops!  didn't realize I hadn't posted pics on this one.  Made the center many, many years ago.  Then several years ago, I added the border.  I was planning on making a pillow out of it, but then I decided how to quilt it and put a hanger on it so now, it's a small wall hanging.  See it hanging off my yardstick? I came up with that system so I could photograph some of my small quilts. 

Okay, I know, get off this computer and go get busy.  But, first lunch!  Now to decide what to have?  This may take awhile.

I'M BACK!!!!

My computer is back!  I don't know if you remember or not, it's been forever, but I killed my computer.  I took it to our tech person and she was able to save and store all  my info, but didn't have the time to work on my computer and suggested I have the students in our computer tech class work on it.  I agreed and finally, finally I have it back.  They had to wipe the hard drive and re-install.  Then re-install when that crashed again.  It took them forever to get it done, but it is finally back and I am on-line once again. 

I have soooo much to show you and don't even know where to start.  I need to download a bunch of pictures I have been taking because while I don't have computer to play games on every night, I have been sewing!  So, lots of goodies to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.  That's all for now, just a tease for tonight. 

Jack-O-Planter

Our Bee Friends Quilt Group has a "stay at home" quilt retreat 4 times a year.  I know I have mentioned it before, but I just love those weekends.  We start at 3:00 on Thursday afternoon and go until 3:00 on Saturday afternoon.  We held our fourth and final one of the year, October 27th - 29th, right before Halloween.

My friend, Gerrie, brought a bunch of quilt patterns, marked down to one dollar, that were in her daughters garage sale, but they didn't sell.  She offered them to us for free, if we would just take them.  So, being the nice friend - who, by the way, doesn't need anymore patterns or junk in her house - I went over to look at what she had.  I looked them over and said "no, thank you", but the more we stood there and talked, there were two patterns that kept calling my name.  So, I said I would take them.  This was on Thursday night.  This pumpkin pattern kept yelling at me to make it so, that night when I got home, I reached into the batik buckets and pulled, without really looking, a bunch of batiks to make this quilt.  Did I tell you that this pattern was done in dark wools?  It was very country/primitive looking, but there was something about it that I liked.  I don't really know why I pulled batiks, that wasn't the plan before I got into my quilt studio, but that is what I came up with for this quilt.  After school, when I got to the quilt-in, I started drawing off the pattern onto the paperbacked fusible I also pulled Thursday night.  There were some fabrics that didn't work at all and some that only a bit of it would work.  I wanted the background to be a darker fabric, but I didn't have enough to make it work and it really wasn't dark enough for me.  This blue fabric was the only other piece that was large enough to use as the background.  Then, I went from there, selecting one by one the fabrics I was going to use for each piece.  The only one I re-did was the middle of the eyes.  The second color was going to be that dark orange and then the little bit was a dark blue and there just wasn't enough contrast.  Everything else stayed the same as what I haphazardly decided on, even the mouth - which I thought was too busy, but after adding the stitching for the teeth, it needed to be that dark.  Of course, once I ironed it on, it was staying there no matter what. 

This is really not the final picture.  I have totally finished it.  Yep, bound, hanging sleeve and label!  Amazing, I know.  It is ready to put out next year.  It also has these curly lines of perle cotton stitching that twirl out from the jack-o-lantern and some buttons.  It is really cute and I thought I had that picture, but nope, you only get the partially finished product.  At least it is a better picture than the previous ones and it, too, was taken with my tablet.  So, now I have a cheery halloween quilt to hang.  I have also finished the top from the other pattern  - oh, wait, the funny part of this whole thing?  After I started working on this quilt top, Gerrie decided she really liked the pattern and took it back to make her one, also!!  I told her I would sell it to her for one dollar, but she wasn't going for that!

Two new small quilts

Over a year ago, my friend Kathy and I joined an Art Quilt Guild in Lubbock.  The first meeting we attended we made a wonderful black/white top. I don't have mine finished to show you because I am not sure what exactly or how exactly I want it to be.  It was a lot of fun to make and just to be sitting in that room with about 14 other art quilters was inspiring.  Then, with the scraps and other things we made a couple of other projects.  This is one of the projects.  I used the leftover cutout pieces from my black fabric and made some more of that pattern in other colors.  I put it on a lime green background and there it was for almost a year.  A couple of weeks ago I decided to make it into a quilt.  I had fun quilting around the edges and off the edges.  It is bound in dark purple and is about the size of a sheet of paper.  (I don't have exact measurments.)

One of the assignments from that day was for strips and one shape.  I made this next quilt top and invisioned fish swimming among the reeds and seaweeds in a lake.  Everyone else that saw it just went, "yeah, that's good."  They couldn't see my vision.  After I quilted it, my friends thought it was wonderful.  Of course, now you can clearly tell that those black blobs are actually fish.  It all makes sense now. 

Okay, I can't make this picture turn the way I want so just turn your head to the left to see it the way it is supposed to be seen.  It is also about the size of a piece of paper. 

McDuffy Quilt

this isn't a very good picture and I apologize for that.  I am still a little bit in limbo computer-wise, but I am trying to make a go of it between several electronical devices.  I e-mailed this picture to my school computer three days ago and it finally showed up today.  It's a little bit slow, but that is probably due to needing to be re-charged.  Who knows.  I will try and do better in the future.  (If I can figure out the new high tech devices) 

this quilt is my version of the schnibble McDuffy.  I have loved that pattern since I first saw it and now I have finally gotten around to making one.  A couple of weeks ago, Midland Quilter's Guild, held their bi-annually quilt show.  that is where I picked up the charm packs, Etchings.  I loved the front of that pack and flipping through the stack, I thought it would make a great quilt.  After opening up the packet, I realized that there were a lot - - I mean a lot - - of light colored fabrics.  I don't usually work with light colored fabrics so putting this together was a bit of a challenge for me - not piecing it - that was simple - just dividing the lights from the darks.  there were more lights than darks so some of the fabrics are both a light and a dark depending on which other fabric it is paired with.  I like the look of this quilt (sorry again about the poor quality) it might be turned into a baby quilt for someone since I have about 6 friends and family that are pregnant and due sometime in the early new year!!  It's baby crazy here now adays.  Be looking for more from me in the near future since this isn't the only picture I e-mailed to my school address.  I am back to blogging!  It feels soooo good.  Now it's back into the kitchen for me and my students. 

a quick check in

I know it has been forever since I have posted, but I just wanted to touch base here and let you know that I am still alive and quilting. School has become busy, busy, busy.  We are in labs 2 or 3 times a week and that means trips to the grocery store.  The good thing is, last week we made focaccia bread for the first time and it turned out pretty good.  They had never made a yeast bread before.   I had never made that recipe and it was good, but needs some tweeking before we make it again. 

The good news is volleyball is over for me for the year, unless there are playoff games they call and ask me to work.  One of the basketball coaches wants me to keep his books, but I haven't told him yes yet.  I keep putting it off and thank goodness he didn't ask on Friday. 

This week we were in the lab today - didn't go great, burned cookies, yucky brownies - just not a good day to bake I guess.  Tomorrow we are serving lunch for 24.  Then on Wednesday we are serving finger food for a series of meetings held here at our school.  We made some mini muffins for that today.  Tomorrow will be extremely busy!! 

I have been working on quilts.  I even have the pictures to post, but I killed my computer.  Thank goodness our tech person here was able to save everything to one of her computers and I am hoping our computer class can find the problem and fix my machine.  I am going to have to make the trip to Best Buy in Midland to look at getting a laptop.  Too bad our Best Buy here isn't open yet.  Well, gotta go put the cooled muffins and cookies that made it up for the night.  I may work some more on my hexagon quilt top this evening since I can't play games on my computer!  (by the way, I am writing this at school which is why I don't have any pictures)

Whisper and Retreat

Last posting I talked about my whisper quilt.  Even though I have to top completed, I still haven't had the time to quilt it.  I really need to get on that since I have to have it finished in 13 days.  I will share with you a little bit of the quilt I got from Kathy. 

Then I will share part of my quilt. 

Sorry, that is all you get to see at this time.  I shouldn't even be showing that much, but I couldn't keep it all a secret, now could I?  Last weekend was the Ogallala Ceta Canyon Retreat and my friends Kathy and Gerri and I headed out on Friday making the long trek to our getaway.  Of course I planned on getting away much, much earlier than we did, but I really overslept and then I wasn't completely packed and the car wasn't clean and well, let's just say about 2 hours later than planned, Kathy and I were on our way.  Which, it turned out was not a bad thing since Gerri was leaving about the same time we were and we got to meet up in Lamesa.  However, the quilt store there was closed.  Neither one of them have ever been to that store since she has been closed every single time they are with me and we stop there.  I, on the other hand, have stopped there quite a bit.  She has great prices on her fabric and some wonderful  new and clearance items.  I seem to always find a few things to purchase.  Next time we will have to call ahead of our trip and make sure she will be open when we get there.  Too bad we didn't do it this time. 

Since that quit store was closed, we headed on up to Lubbock to the Bernina store - yes, we purchased a few things - and then Sugarbaker's for an early lunch - okay, since I was running late, yada yada yada, it was about lunchtime.  Gerri went to Sugarbaker's and ate first.  When we called to find out where she was, she had already ordered and we were already purchasing so we both stayed where we were.  Then we swapped.  Lunch was good as always, but the Italian Cream Cake was exceptional!!  Since we were already in Lubbock and not going to make it to Ceta by 10 - hah - we decided to schlep on over to Rachel's.  yes, we all found goodies and whatnots there, too.  We enjoyed sitting at the counter getting our fabric cut and chatting with the employees. Then off to Plainview for a Sonic drink and a stop at the Wal-mart.  I know, we have a Wal-mart here, but you know how you have those last minute items you forgot and this is the last stop along the way to pick up any of those items.  We shopped and found some wonderful things that we just had to have - S'MORE GOLDFISH!!!  Have you tried them.  YUM!! 

Now a few more hours and we are at Ceta Canyon.  It looks like we are some of the last to arrive.  There is a table for two and Kathy and I grab that one.  Gerrie had already put her stuff down on a table with another friend, Pam.  It wasn't right next to us, but we don't usually sit really close together anyway.  We need an excuse every once in a while to get up and move and not sitting close is our excuse.  Here is a picture of Kathy with her winning challenge quilt.  The Challenge was to make a small quilt with a "Calendar Holiday".  She chose Johnny Appleseed's birthday.  Yes, it's on her calendar.  Maxine doesn't celebrate it on my calendar, though.  I loved her use of a pair of jeans with a hole it that she used to make Johnny's jeans with a knee hole.  It was very clever and I was so proud of her when her quilt won. 

This is one of the quilts I worked on while there.  Like I have said before, I have been wanting to make one of these interlocking crosses quilts for quite some time.  I have read about them on the blogs for over a year now and I finally decided to just draw one up and make it.  This is some of the fabric that I was cutting and cutting the last couple of weeks.  This quilt is made up of 4 1/2 inch squares.  196 squares to be exact!!  I can't believe there are that many squares, but there are.  It went together really fast.  Much faster than I thought it would.  It would have been faster if toward the end I hadn't sewn some of the rows together wrong and then had to take then out and  sew them back together correctly.  I really like this quilt and plan on making one or two more.  I thought I was giving it for a baby gift, but I think I might just keep this one all to myself.  At least for now.  Anyway, it's not quited and may not be for a few years the way things go around here.