Little bit of progress

I don't seem to make a lot of progress on my projects, but I guess a little here and there is better than nothing. I don't have anything finished, so I'll show a picture of what has been my main focus.

I posted a bit about this project earlier, and I have worked on it a bit more. I had a hard time deciding what border to put under the eagle block, but I'm happy with what I finally worked out. That same light fern fabric will appear on both sides of the deer (after that block is trimmed down) and a similar arrow border will go on the bottom of the deer.

Charity quilt and San Francisco

I finished tacking down the binding on this quilt last night, and it is my first completion of 2011. I am in a local on-line quilting group, and we have a challenge to complete at least one UFO each month. This is my January project. It will go to a charity group I occasionally work with.

DH and I got back from CA yesterday. We had gone down to spend a few days visiting his mother. On Sunday DH and I and my SIL and her husband went to San Francisco for the day. It had been a long time since we had been there. We went to Fisherman's Wharf, took a cable car ride, walked in Chinatown, and walked most of the way across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a sunny day and we enjoyed every minute of it. At the Wharf, we had clam chowder in sour dough bread bowls, which is a requirement for us whenever we visit San Francisco. It's so yummy.

This pic is DH and I with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

Belated pictures and GO DUCKS!!!

Well, better late than never, I hope.  At any rate, I wanted to share a few pictures from Christmas Day.  We had such a wonderful day together.

Our younger son and his family above, and older (not old) son and his family. 

 Here are DGDs with the nightgowns I made for them.  I don't particularly enjoy making them (I'm a quilter, after all), but their pleasure with them makes it worthwhile.

And today is the big day - Oregon Ducks play Auburn Tigers for the NCAA football championship.  We got this shirt for this DGD and I'm betting she's wearing it today.  GO DUCKS!  Most folks probably don't care, but we sure do!

Happy New Year

It's been a while since I've been on here, so I want to first wish everyone a very happy and healthy New Year.

We got good news after Christmas that our DDIL's CAT scan showed no cancer.  It has made for a very happy beginning of the year for our family.

I showed a picture before of some of what I have been working on from time to time.  I have completed more of it, and the picture is not great, but I have made some progress.  I have more machine applique to do and more piecing, but bit by bit, it is coming along.  The churn dash blocks have fish in the center.



Tomorrow I am going to a charity sew event where we will work on quilts for Project Linus.  I have one in the works and hope to maybe get that top put together tomorrow. 

Merry Christmas to all!

I have not been good about posting, and I need to take time to catch up, but it won't be happening before Christmas, so this will have to do for now.   I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

This and that

First the good news. Our dear daughter-in-law is doing well and for that we are very, very grateful. She has been free from side effects from the pinpoint radiation. She and our son and their two children (two of our DGCs) and Hubby and I are going to Florida and spend some time at the Disney parks before Christmas. We will all be home to spend Christmas here. Hubby and I are going a week earlier and will go to the Florida Keys and explore some other places in Florida, and then meet up with them in Orlando. We have never been to the Keys, so are excited about going there.

I am not going to give many details about the following pictures. Suffice it to say that in time the entire project and its destination will be disclosed. I doubt that it will be seen here by the recipient, but just in case...

This quilt top is waiting for me to make a back for it, and then sandwich and quilt it and give it to a local charity group.  The pattern is Play Time by Random Threadz. 

Random thoughts and one completion

Today would have been my Dad's 92nd birthday. He was taken from us much too young, at the age of 58. He was a very patient, good man, and I miss him to this day. I once asked him if he regretted not having a boy (my sister and I are the only children), and his reply always has stuck with me. "Of course not," he said. "I'm very content with my two daughters."

Now on to the main thing that has had me busy, but unmotivated to do hardly any sewing or anything creative. I have posted about our daughter-in-law learning that there was a tumor in her brain stem. It had metastisized there from her breast cancer. She has undergone radiation for the tumor and had some pretty severe complications. Yesterday she underwent a final pinpoint radiation treatment, and that went well, and hopefully she will be free of complications from that. Hubby and I have helped quite a bit with keeping our grandchildren, and we are very grateful that we live so close so that we can help.

Some time ago I mentioned that I had taken a Hawaiian Quilting class from quiltuniversity.com. I had completed the applique portion of it, but the hand quilting part was one thing I just had set aside and ignored. I finally finished it a week or so ago, and then made it into a pillow yesterday. My hand quilting needs serious improvement, and while I enjoyed it, I'm glad to have it completed.

Project Linus; Sad news

I finished quilting the last Project Linus top that I had stashed.  I need to get busy and piece some more, but first I want to work on a couple other things.  A group of friends and I made lots of four patches using the Billie Lauder method.  It was fun and we got some good-looking Project Linus quilts out of it.

On Thursday of this week our son and daughter-in-law got up and our son thought his wife was having a stroke.  He rushed her to the hospital, and unfortunately the breast cancer had metastasized to her brain.  She is upbeat and determined, but it is very, very scary.  She is receiving 15 radiation treatments.  She is such a sweetheart, and we are hoping for another victory over her cancer.  Our son and DIL have two very dear children, a girl 11, and a boy 6.  The children definitely need their mommy, and our son needs his wife.  It is hard to think of anything else now.  Fortunately, they live very close to us, so we can help with pretty much whatever they need.

Project Linus completion

I have been trying to get a few Project Linus quilt tops quilted, and this is one I did a couple days ago.  This was such fun to do, starting with a small scrap in the center of the block and working out from there.  I may have to do that again.  I love the way it turned out, but part of it may be that I really love the sashing and border fabrics and binding that I had and used.   I am trying very hard to use some of the stuff I have and I have been pretty successful.

Race for the Cure

I have posted before about our daughter-in-law having breast cancer and her brave fight against it.  Yesterday was the annual Race for the Cure in Portland, and our other daughter-in-law put in a lot of work organizing a team called "Tonya's Team."  There were about 80 who signed up for the team, although not all got to come do the walk.  As a team, we all did the 5K (3.1 miles) walk together in downtown Portland.  For the most part the weather cooperated and it was sunny and great walking weather.  Toward the end of the walk we had a couple rain showers, but that didn't dampen our spirits.  A huge crowd of people packed the waterfront park.  I heard it estimated that with all the voluneers, organizers, runners, walkers, etc., there were over 40,000.

This picture is Tonya in her "survivor" shirt and cap with all the children on the team.  There were several entire families there walking together.  It was very inspiring.  I didn't mention, but our son Kurt designed a great T-shirt that said "Team Tonya," and most of our team bought one. 

 This picture is Kurt and Tonya and their family.

 What a great picture after all they have been through!

Below are hubby and I and our two sons and their wives and our four darling grandchildren.  Have I ever mentioned that we have four darling grandchildren??  (tee hee)

Project Linus completion

After completing my landscape quilt, I decided I better get some machine quilting done and complete a Project Linus quilt.  This is the latest that I've done.  On the Connecting Threads website a few months ago they had a flying geese quilt-along, and I decided to use up some of my batiks making flying geese.  I'm quite pleased with the results, and hopefully it's a quilt that someone will enjoy.

Well, it's done

Well, after what seems like days of fussy cutting and miles of thread, my landscape wallhanging is complete.  It measures about 38 by 44 inches.  I have to say I now like it.  I wasn't sure all the time I was working on it, but it turned out pretty well, I think.  Despite being pleased with it, I don't think I will ever do another one.  It is just not the type of thing I really enjoy working on. 

In my last post I wondered if summer had gone already, and I am pleased to report that we have had a beautiful week, with weather in the 70s, and that will help us get a few tomatoes off our plants before it gets real chilly.

I am now doing the quilting on a Project Linus quilt, so that is something that I definitely enjoy doing.

I hope everyone has a pleasant week.

Is summer over?

Well, I am about as inconsistent with my blogging as anyone could be.

So far September has been quilt cool - more so than usual, and already some of the trees are changing color. Our summer was quite unusual - cooler than usual, with very few days that topped out over 90.

I think I may have mentioned (maybe not) that I was going to take a landscape quilting class. It was on two Saturdays in August. The picture below is the not-yet-finished result of that class. I am not yet decided on whether I even like it very much. It has been a very intense process, with LOTS of fussy cutting from several different fabrics, and then LOTS of gluing and then free-motion tacking down of the pieces with monofiliment thread, and then sandwiching and LOTS of quilting down the pieces. I have finally finished through that point, and still need to quilt the green between the fence posts, and the blue at the top. I can't see me doing this process again, as I have decided I am definitely more a traditional quilting/piecing person.

Winter Wonderland quilt in Quilting Gallery Embroidery/Stitchery contest

Hi blogging friends,

I have entered my Winter Wonderland embroidered/pieced quilt in the Quilting Gallery's Embroidery/Stitchery contest. The winner wins a nice basket of sewing goodies. So that's a long way of saying please have a look at the entries, and if you are so inclined, I would appreciate your votes. My entry is the last one. There are quite a few lovely quilts. The following is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/24y9r87

Quick escape to Long Beach, WA

We made a spontaneous quick overnight trip to Long Beach, WA on Sunday. It's probably 2-1/2 hours from home, and we hadn't been there for a long time. Other ocean beaches are closer, so we had stayed south of the border. We had such a nice time. We were disappointed when we went through Astoria though, that our favorite little fresh tuna fish and chips shop was closed. 

The first picture is taken when we were walking along the beach, and the second is from the balcony of our room.  The day was just beautiful!

We took a drive and saw this inlet with the tide out and a gaggle of geese working on getting their dinner.

We loved this picture taken along the Bear River.  We wondered what those pilings had supported in days past.

This bridge crosses the very, very wide Columbia River from Astoria, Oregon to Washington.  It is a pretty spectacular bridge.  Toward the Oregon side, the bridge rises high above the water so that ships can go under, and then drops down again.  At this particular point, I think the river is approximately 3 miles wide.  It is a very treacherous area for ship navigation, and tugboats are hired to guide ships through what they call the Columbia Bar.  There are many large sandbars, and they have to really know the deep channels of the river to keep from going aground on the sandbars.  The tug operators are experts on the river navigation.  The Columbia rolls on out a ways from Astoria to meet the Pacific Ocean.