Stash Enhancement...

I had my heart broken last month.
I found out that one of my very favorite brick & mortar quilt stores was closing!!  The owner decided it was time for her to retire.  Imagine that!!
So now Quilters Delight in Holdrege is no more.  Boohoohoo!!!

   But You know the saying:  "When life gives you lemons ....."  So I made lemonade and took advantage of her sale.

This is the pile all stacked up on my sewing chair.

 And these are closeups of the fabrics that I bought to fill in a few gaps in my stash.

Greys - blacks - and a couple of golds (just because I like them)

Purples & yellows

Pinks and a couple of blues.

 I should be set for awhile now.  Hahaha

(said no quilter ever)

My Design Wall.....????

Not much of a change going on in my studio.  A little addition added to the borders and I'm working on the sides now.
  This last week I spent working on my hexies.  I am glad to report that my knee is feeling a bit better.  I can now walk without my cane after therapy and a knee brace to help me stabilize it.
I'm heading over to Judy's Design Wall Monday to link up with a lot of other quilters.
And then I better get to my knee exercises.

I hope you  have a great week.
 Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Bum Knee....

Since I tore my meniscus a couple of weeks ago I've been pretty much in my recliner most of the time and using my time to work on hexies.  
((That is when we're not driving out of town to our doctors appointment.  I'm getting really tired of seeing the inside of my car!!))

But my hexies!!!  I really do love working with them.  Yesterday I finished sewing all the white paths around so today I can add some more of the 'blocks' I have made.  

 See those four white hexies connected to the border.  Yeah, well there is a story about them.
As I'm so prone to do I was merrily sewing along adding border hexies and filling in with the white ones.
Until I got to the rust colored triangle. .... Ooops!! something didn't look right.  Sorry I didn't get a picture to compare the goof.  But to make this long story short(er) I hadn't paid attention to the line of my border and I sewed the hexies up one and continued the rest of the row.
Sooooo every other set of hexies I had to unstitch and resew the correct way.  Major "headslap"!
Oh well..... It only took a few hours correcting them and now I'm ready to move on.
AND.... Packers at 3:00pm and Chiefs at 7:00pm and Thanksgiving leftovers to finish up.  Oh Happy Day!!

I'm heading over to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday blog to check out some of the other stitchers.  

Come on and join us.  
  
I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Thankful Day....

Hope your day is filled with every good thing and your heart is filled with love of all.  

Blessings to all.

Linda

My Slow Stitching Sunday....

Of course a good game of football is always on.  Go Packers!  That allows me to be able to stitch on my hexies.  I have now finished the Nov Hexie BOM.   I am completely caught up after being soooo far behind.  Feels good!

Now I'm working on more diamond blocks for this quilt.   I do have a few more finished but I'll wait to post an update until I get more sewn together.

So today I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Hexie Weekend over at A Quilting Readers Garden.

Have a great Sunday ..... I'm going to sew some hexies now.  

Glad you stopped by.....Linda

What's on my Design Wall?

Brett's snuggle quilt and the first three borders.  I'm working on the fourth border that has been all un-stitched now.
My design finally came together so now I just have to make sure I pay attention to the way each piece is supposed to attach to the next.

Let's go over to Judy's Design Wall Monday to see what other quilters have been up to.  

I hope you're having a great day.
 Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Slow (un)Stitching Sunday....

Getting ready to watch our Chiefs play this afternoon while I unstitch 57 pairs of tumblers.
These will go in the border of Brett's Christmas snuggle and I was just having a wonderful time pairing them together and stitching along.

Something made me stop and check the first one..... 

Well Dang!!

Sooooo guess I'll have something to do while watching football.  LOL
And I'll link to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday

I hope you're having a great Sunday.
 Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Hexies .... update .... again

Two more "blocks" finished on the Hexie BOM.

This is Septembers 'block'.  It's supposed to be a Bluebird but
I decided to make mine a red Cardinal.  We have them at our
feeders in the back yard and I enjoy them so much.

This is October and is a Candy Corn.  After I had most of the
brown hexies sewn together I realized I should have used cream
instead of brown.  But I'm sticking with the pattern color as she designed.

Now I'm getting ready to cut my fabric to get Novembers block finished so I'll be caught up.
Today I'll post these to our Yahoo Hexie Group and also to Needle and Thread Thursday
Then tomorrow I'll link to Hexie Weekend 
I hope you're having a great day and a wonderful weekend. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Hexie update...

I haven't been sewing much at my machine lately ..... but I have been doing a LOT of sitting with an ice bag on my knee.  So that gave me the perfect opportunity to catch up on my Hexie BOM.
Two more months finished:

 July

August

And..... I'm almost finished with September.  Yay for me!  I did have a lot of TV programs that I could catch up on so that's good.
About my knee???  I don't know!  All I know was it hurt like He!!
 I've now had an x-ray taken and this week an MRIwill be scheduled.
Doc did give me a cortisone shot in the knee so that calmed the pain.

 I'm going to link to Judy's Design Wall Monday.
I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Inspirational....

 I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

My Design Wall ....

For the first time in months I have something on my wall that isn't about a wedding quilt.  LOL
And since two of my female Grands are now married .... that means I now have two new guys added to the family.  
And that means I have two more snuggles to make for them because everyone in the family gets a snuggle quilt made by me.

Since Alivia & Brett's wedding was first this year I decided I'd start on Brett's quilt first.  And for that guy it could ONLY be about John Deer!
He is an engineer and works at John Deer in Waterloo, Iowa ....  he collects John Deer miniatures ... and he lives and breaths John Deer.  So it's only fitting.

The fabrics weren't as easy to find as I thought they would be ..... but I did eventually get enough to make the quilt kinda scrappy.

Soooo   after much pondering about a pattern I eventually settled on my favorite.  

What else but Tumblers!! 

 I'm still pondering the border(s).

And now since it's that day of the week again..... I'm linking to Judy's Blog

Design Wall Monday. 

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

My Hexie BOM Update....

Yes I'm behind!!  Very behind!  Four months behind actually.
But I did manage to finish one more design from the Hexie Blog.
I think this one is June.

 And I'm now working on July.
I'm linking to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday.

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

2nd wedding quilt.....

On October 4th our family celebrated the second wedding this year.  Jess & Grant were married in Joplin.  Jessi is our granddaughter.  She chose a Gatsby theme for the reception and for the wedding her bridesmaids wore Taupe and the groomsmen wore black.  And then she added a touch of red .... Her lips and the red roses she carried.  The wedding ceremony was wonderful and the reception decorations were beautiful.   Sorry I don't have any pics to show you so I'll just move on to the quilt I made them.
The morning after the wedding a few of the family gathered in one of the rooms and the newlyweds opened the gifts that they received at the wedding.   Since Jess knew which gift was from me she wanted to open it last.    And of course they love it!!  lol

I originally made some of these blocks as a paper pieced BOM mystery from Carol Doak.   I needed several more blocks to make the quilt larger so when I made more blocks I reversed the colors and added a bit of red.   

Jessi, Grant and his mom are admiring the quilting that shows up so well on the black backing.  I had the Quilt Bugs use a gold thread.   So glad I chose that ..... It's gorgeous!

They love the label I added.

May I present the beautiful Mr & Mrs Conrad 

with their wedding quilt made with LOVE!!  

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Back again .... Maybe

I think this is the longest I've gone between posts since I started my blog.  I'm not going to bore you with all the reasons why I haven't posted.   I'm just going to move on from here and act like I haven't been gone for weeks.

So let me share the two wedding quilts I made for my granddaughters and their new hubbys.

First up:  Alivia & Brett   They were married in July and the weather was just perfect.  Her bridesmaids wore Coral and the guys wore dark chocolate brown.  All of her decorations were lace & burlap & Baby's Breath with touches of gold thrown in.  This is the brides mom (Gina) putting together all of the vases of baby's breath.

 
Alivia wanted a mini-light background for the head table and after checking the rentals (and the sizes available) her dad said he could make one.   Bigger & better!!  lol
Soooo he made three panels each measuring 9 ft tall and 12 ft long.   We ordered satin fabric for the back and organza for the front and they strung Christmas tree lights in the middle.
Here is the work in progress.  Dan & Stuart (my son & grandson) hanging the lights while the brides aunt and I are making sure they do it right.  LOL  

We were stripping the satin to trim the top edge.
The bride on the left (Alivia) and Brett's sister.  

Then they were ready to hang the
wedding wreath with their initial on it.

This is the finished backdrop.
Dan did a mighty fine job!!

As they start their married life...

I so loved making this quilt for them.  I used wool batting since they live in Iowa and their winters are a little ..... wintery!!  

Next wedding quilt installment coming soon..... Jessi & Grant

My poor pitiful garden...

I love tomatoes, green peppers and zucchini and butternut.
So this year I decided we would buy a few plants and pretend we are gardeners.  Soooo, we planted 4 tomato plants, 3 pepper plants, 4 zucchinis and 4 butternut squash.  We added that good stuff to the soil and after planting put a layer of straw over the soil to help preserve the moisture.  And we watered and waited and watched and .....

Well.... pretending didn't work and we are NOT gardeners!  We've had a miserable crop of veggies.  especially zucchini's.  I believed 'those people' that said if you planted just one zucchini you'd be overrun with them.  Well.... 'they' didn't know my 4 plants.
And the green peppers.  Hahaha  I do believe this picture says it all.  Hubby may be happy but my peppers.....not so much!

Hexie BOM...

Not only did I not do any blogging these last few months .... I also didn't work on my Hexie's.
Soooo A few days ago I did finish up the (May) butterfly I had started.  Here's a link to the Hexie BOM if you're interested.
  I did make a little change to the original butterfly pattern and made my butterfly a swallowtail.  We always have a big yellow Tiger Swallowtail in our backyard every year so I'm a bit partial to them.

I still need to embroidery the antenna ... but I'll do that later.
  I did spend a few hours this afternoon cutting the fabric for the next two months hexie BOM patterns.  So hopefully I can get caught up soon.
I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Believe it or not......

Here I am again.  After a very long absence.  Seems like I had things to do ... places to go ... and people to see .... AND a wedding quilt to focus on that I could't show.  And my blog took a back seat to everything.
 But now that the kids are very happily married here is a picture of the quilt I gave them.

I used her wedding theme colors for the top:  Coral, burlap, lace & babies breath and a dark brown for the back to represent his tuxedo colors.
It turned out to be a bit larger than I intended because I added the extra row to extend the pattern.  Then added the borders.  I did use wool batting for the first time and love it.   I had the quilting done at The Quilt Bugs and I don't remember the pattern they used on their computer machine.

Here they are reading the label.  

Now I have another quilt to finish up for another GD that will be getting married in Oct.  And .... I'm going to be testing the waters and try making some of my own jewelry.  I LOVE hobbies!  
Have a really FUN great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

2½ weeks ....

That's how long it's been since I've posted anything.  And that's how long it's been since I've even had my machine on.  Nothing real important kept me away from sewing.  I'd walk into 'my studio' (I love saying that) for a minute or two then turn around and walk back out.  There were a few boring health issues -- medications taken -- all well now.   Spent several days driving to and from appointments and when we do that I usually don't get back to the machine that day.   I'm making a lot of excuses I think.

But mostly I just had a bit of a lack of sewing mojo there for awhile.  

>>> Oh yeah!  The biggie!  How could I forget???  Chalk it up to a senior moment(s).  ..... I bought a new computer and that thing is sucking up all my time just trying to learn how Windows 8 operates.  Quite a change from EP for sure!! 

So there's nothing new on my Design Wall so no need to link to Judy's.   So I'll just show you a few pics of some of my pretties at this time of year. 

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

April Hexie BOM

This months Hexie block is a 'Basket'.   I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it too.
I did have to dig around a bit before I found the fabric I was looking for. 
This will show it up close....

I thought I could make it look like the basket was woven and I think it kinda looks that way if I use my imagination.  hahaha   

Here's a pic of it completed on that black background (that I still don't have cut up and basted)  Maybe next month. 

I'm linking this block to the 2014 Hexie Yahoo Group and Esther's Work In Progress Wed.  
 I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Monday on my Design Wall.....

Just a quick picture to show how I'm coming along with my Carol Doak blocks that I made and how I'm setting them together.  I'm really happy with it so far.
And of course, it's really much prettier in person.  

So now I'm going to link to Judy's Design Wall Monday. 
I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Sandhill Crane Migration....

A couple of days ago we headed to Kearney, Ne to watch the Sand Hill Cranes as they feed in the farmers fields.  "They" estimate over 500,000 cranes stop there on the Platte River to rest and feed to be ready for their next leg of their migration.

   This was our 3rd or 4th time to take this trip to specifically watch the cranes.  I could sit for hours and watch them as they 'dance' and feed and then lift off and fill the sky.  That day, however was very windy and that hindered the cranes dancing.  

Once we turned onto the Fort Kearney road we saw a large group of cranes in the field.  We pulled over to the side of the road to watch them for awhile.  (This is a very common sight if you're driving along this road at this time of year).  I did manage to get a couple of video's.  Here's one.....

 Crane migration near Fort Kearney

If you're interested in reading more about the cranes I found this site to be very interesting..... 

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Sashing & cornerstones.....

When I started designing this quilt in EQ7 (using Carol Doak's finished blocks) I wanted to spread it out as much as possible to make it a large quilt so I chose to set the blocks on point.  Then the sashing came next.    I decided on a 5" sashing and a square-in-a-square cornerstone.  That's pretty simple!
Then I wanted to dress up the plain sashings a bit so I chose to paper-piece them.

 

 This is my original idea with the sashings and the cornerstones. 

  Once I started making the sashings and adding them to my design wall I realized very quickly that I wasn't going to like those cornerstones.  They just didn't play nice.  So out with that idea.  

I did want to continue the black from the sashings into the cornerstone.  

So ..... 

Of Course!!  

A nine-patch would be perfect!  

See how it finishes the curve of the sashing?  Love that!!

Here's how it works on one block. 

I'm going to link this to Judy's Design Wall Monday.
And....I'm off to get some more sewing done for this quilt.  Yep!  I think the quilt is happy now.  :-)

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda