We have a winner.....

I printed out all the comment sections and did the little "folding into bits" technique and hubby drew one of the slips for a winner....Marilyn YOU ARE THE LUCKY WINNER!!! If you will send me your snail mail address I'll get them all right out to you.Your poor slip got ripped being opened, but it's you! IF for some reason you don't want all of them, let me know that too! I'll keep the jar just as it is and pick again for the next person and ask that winner if they want the rest. We can just keep going down the line until they all end up in a nice home!

I'm so glad I asked about these. Thanks for playing along ladies!

can I just say...

WOW! I'm shocked. I honestly thought nobody would want these guys, so I'm happy to pass them along. So that anyone who comes by knows...I'll leave it open until Friday at noon and then put the names in a hat and have hubby draw out a name. IF the winner doesn't want all of them, I'll go to the second name drawn and see if you want the rest of them.

Now yesterday I started to get out my list and see what I had down to get done.... loads really to choose from. Well what do you do when you feel like doing none of them??? You make a new top!

I went through this book looking for the quilting design on this quilt. I'm about to finish another one and this will be hand quilted next, so I wondered how they quilted it way back when it was first made. It was so much smaller and the pictures shows that she just did small lines of stitches. Looks like she was practicing her quilting stitch. Hey, she was only 7 at the time!

Meanwhile, a few pages over was this wonderful top and I just started pulling fabrics! It took longer to pick just the right fabrics than to sew it together! I love how it seems that they had squares of color that they cut into 9 sections. See the 5 red squares and then the 4 others in another. The same with the pink squares. I tried to stay as close to the colors and choices as the original.

After I got the top done I decided the little triangle pin cushion wasn't working for me anymore, so I grabbed 2 fabrics from my Jan Patek scrap bag and made myself a little round puff. Much better!

free stuff...

Nope, it's not a give-away in the fun sense of the word, but it's free stuff all the same. I'm doing some cleaning up of the sewing room and getting rid of things I know I'll never use. Rather than just toss these I had the thought that maybe somewhere there was someone who might want them. Seriously you will not hurt my feelings if you don't want them...hey, I don't.

So we'll work it this way: if one person wants them...great! If more than one person wants them then I'll draw names and winner takes them. If you only want some of them, that's fine too and maybe we can divey them up!

These were made in the one and only class I ever took...Dresden pinwheels things made from doing the stack and cut method...So here's what I have: 10 completed Dresdens (above) with NO centers...8 1/4" wide from point to point....

And 2 packs of already cut wedges for the same size...10 Dresdens in each pack...for a total of 20 more Dresden circles.
6 smaller Dresdens 7 1/2" from point to point with green centers. They can easily be removed and changed.

Plus 8 pre-cut wedge bundles for 8 more smaller Dresdens.

I've already made 2 quilts with these things and I have no plans for any more, so if you want them they are yours FREE~! Here's how I set mine 4 years ago...see how long these have sat around?? Thanks ladies!

WOW! I'm shocked. I honestly thought nobody would want these guys, so I'm happy to pass them along. So that anyone who comes by knows...I'll leave it open until Friday at noon and then put the names in a hat and have hubby draw out a name. IF the winner doesn't want all of them, I'll go to the second name drawn and see if you want the rest of them.

FINALLY....

Here's she is...almost all done. The hard parts are done, just have to add the buttons to the lower half but I thought you all deserved a picture. Poor hubby's arm were dying!

Sweet Land of Liberty
59 x 82
pattern by Cheri Payne
everything else by ME!

I used an Aurifil thread, color #1318 that was shared to me a while back by Libby as a fabulous color that blends with everything. It's fantastic and is so easy to use for quilting. I did switch to a light off white for just a few areas. I left the picture really large so if you can't see the whole thing you can go in through flickr and view it all all sorts of sizes by clicking on the picture to the right under Just Completed!

Here's a couple close-ups. I don't worry about every stitch being perfect especially on quilts where I make up the quilting as I go along. I like the birds big goofy wing, and it covered the space!An easy graceful curve done up and down with a wide turn at the end.The checkerboard...it's not necessary to quilt every line.
I wasn't going to quilt the embroidery spaces but they puffed too much and had to be tamed, so I used light and meandered around the words.
The big star has...is it called wine glass? on the points, and meandering.
I loved every minute of doing this quilt and I'm loving the next ABC Quilt Sampler too. Please think about doing yours soon. I know so many of you got the bom kits and I even got a final one today which I didn't know was coming. I know big quilts like this look daunting but if you do them one block at a time, before you know it they are done! I'll finalize the last of the detailed blog posts soon. My arms are very tired after pushing and pulling this thing around so I'm saving the typing for later. Thanks for coming along while I muddled through doing this one!

Loser Monday...again?

Geez how fast these come up? I gained 1 pound but then the last 5 I lost were probably half water weight so it's not so bad. I'm over beating myself up about anything. Enough. So I promised a good soup recipe...this came from the best cooking blog called The Perfect Pantry. This soup is fantastic! I obviously use vegetable stock and I found a great pasta called Ditalini that works great for this soup.

Pasta E Fagiole

2Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 Carrot, peeled and chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped
Pinch of Kosher salt
Ground pepper to taste
1 Turkish Bay Leaf
4 cups chicken stock ( homemade or low sodium) or vegetable stock
14 oz canned diced tomatoes with their juice
1 tbsp ketchup
15 oz canned cannellini beans
1/2 lb dried spaghetti, broken into pieces 3-4 inches long, or any STUBBY pasta
5 oz bag of baby spinach leaves, remove hard stems.

In stock pot over medium-high heat, melt butter with olive oil. Add the onion, celery, carrot, garlic, salt and pepper to taste and saute until the vegetables are soft. Add the bay leaf, chicken stock, tomatoes and juice, ketchup and canellini beans. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the pasta and simmer for 10 minutes more stirring occasionally to keep the beans from sticking. Fish out the bay leaf. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Add the spinach, and stir to combine. As soon as the spinach wilts, the soup is ready.
(Note: Like many bean soups, this one improves with age. It will be delicious the first day and better on the second.)

I blogged about this soup here and the changes I made. Less pasta and a tad more liquid.

**BTW, I FINISHED the quilt...all done and waiting for a good pair of arms to hold it for a picture** WHOO HOO!!! Post to follow as soon as I have some pictures to post!

quilting machine...

In case you wondered where I am, I can be found right here...still working on getting "the monster" quilted...as it's now named. Boy is this ever a big heavy quilt. It's all those layers I think. I really need to do some piecing, but that involves switching machines and I'd just as soon finish before doing that, so I'm giving it one more full day of quilting to get it done.

To the right is my faithful companion, who stays right there all day with me to keep me company. Okay let's all cross our fingers and wish for me to finish today!

snow. sewing, and sanity....

All have returned to the household. Hubby was away at a conference since Friday morning and I hate him being gone. I'm not scared to be alone at all...it's not that. For some reason knowing that I can't get to him easily causes my anxiety to soar and I stay in a constant state of panic attack. It works the same when I' m away somewhere. It's stupid, but it's just what happens. Thanks to those special ladies who held my hand through it...you know who you are! He's safe and sound arriving very late last night after fighting through snow, ice, and rain to finally make it home 3 hours later than planned! Whew! Calming sanity.

On the LOSER front! A side effect to all that anxiety is that I have a nervous stomach and generally lose weight. I've been worried about hubby's company sale so last week when I totally forgot to post I had lost 3 pounds. I begged forgiveness from the Drill Sargent and I think I was forgiven?? Huh? But I knew I better post this Monday. Today, I'm down another 2 lbs from this weekends experience. I wouldn't recommend anxiety as a way to lose weight...seriously, but I'll take the side effects all the same. That's 5 pounds for the 2 weeks!

As, I'm sure you all know it SNOWED on the east coast! We got 3 days of rain first then finally last night it started with the ice and I thought we'd end up with an ice storm. Then everything stopped. When we woke up this morning it was all snow! Not much..maybe an inch. I know I've asked for it...but not while hubby's on the road passing ditched cars...szeesh! See that flooded street in the second picture? The construction guys had to stick one of those giant rolls in front to keep debris from getting into the sewer line. It never drained well before, so of course it doesn't drain at all now!It's all the way up to and COVERING our parking spots. Picture me...10PM, I realize that the water is about to go into hubby's car. I'm in my pj's, so I pull off my bathrobe and pull on my flannel pants, roll them up to my knees and stick on my socks and the oldest pair of tennis shoes I own. I tucked my nightgown into my pants and pulled on the thickest sweater I have, got my gloves and an umbrella and out I go to move his car! I must have looked lovely. I knew my feet would get wet but that was the COLDEST water I've ever felt and it was up to the bottom of my knee caps! Lordy, my feet stung and ached for about a minute. I backed out the car a tiny bit and circled around the empty spaces and moved his car, then trudged back to the door shivering, trying not to slip and fall on my sizable behind. I carried my dripping shoes up the stairs and stuck them right into the garbage!

Now I really admire those gals who love when their husbands leave and they sew for days. I thought that was my plan too. Turns out I can't concentrate on anything. I finally made myself pick one thing and got to work. I finished the second block in Gail Pan's free bom and sewed on the green borders. I'm liking this Christmas CW thing in the fabrics.

Then I got to work getting the next 2 ABC sampler blocks ready for sewing. I marked all the embroidery work to do before I stitch down the applique pieces. I like to do it that way rather than crease the fabrics that never seem to smooth out for me. So M, Q and R are marked and getting sewn while all their applique pieces are pre-turned and ready for sewing. NOP will be next. But first, today I'm doing some more work on the machine quilting of the SLOL quilt.

Hubby's in the den and I can finally relax and concentrate!