First day of Advent 2009

It is really hard to believe that Advent starts today, where has this year gone - it has just flown by! We are now in the waiting and preparation time for the arrival of Baby Jesus and the celebration of Christmas. As we begin the Advent journey lets us pray the words of Mother Therese:

Dear Jesus, help us to spread Your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through us, and be so in us that every soul we come in contact withmay feel Your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus.Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others.

Took my Embroidery Machine to Japan ...........

Well not literally to Japan but did work on some great Japanese Sashiko design that turned out awesome! Here are some pictures for you to judge for yourself:

Next steps is to bring these squares with me to my Open Sew at Eddies on Wednesday and decide how to put them together to make a quilt.

New quilt project - Nickel Bricks

Last week there as a post on the HGTV quilting message board wondering what the following pattern was:

My good buddy Trish, responded with posting the pattern from the book Loose Change and the pattern was called Nickel Bricks.

I then read the post and started to chuckle as I had cut out this pattern a while back and started working on it but then got distracted with my Scraps to Treasures challenge quilt and had totally forgotten about it. I resurrected the fabric to see where I had left off and began working on it. At the end of the first day I had all the single blocks completed:

And one test of what a four block will look like:





The next day my friend Cynthia was coming by for a sewing day and all the single blocks became twos and then fours. This is what is currently on my design wall:



I really like how it is shaping up as I love batik and black together. As tomorrow is a Football Sunday I think this is the project I will work on and hopefully will get all the rows put together. Stay tuned for an updated photo!

One question I am mulling over in my mind is which way to finish the quilt. As you can see in the first two pictures each of them have a different boarder. The top one has a plain black border and the one in the book had a piano key style border. I have the batik fabric cut out but still need to cut the black if I go with the piano key option. Decision, decisions!

RONALD McDONALD HOUSE CRAYOLA CHARITY CHALLENGE - Part 2

Last October, I had a post about the Ronald McDonald House Crayola Charity Challenge I was taking part in with my quilting buddies on the quilting message board on Hgtv.com and it is about time I gave an update on how it progressed. At the end of the last post I has sent my completed top off to Carol in Texas to be machine quilted. She did an awesome job of it and here are some pictures to prove it:

Next I had to add on the binding and it was ready to send on to Thearica by mid December so that the quilts could be pictured and ready for the sale of the raffle tickets which went from January 2009 - July 2009.

Here is a picture of my completed quilt with the binding on it:


Here are all the quilts that were in the raffle.

Roll on to July 3rd, Therica and a number of her friends headed to Gastonia Fire Department to have the raffle drawing. Here are some of the pictures taken that day:

From all reports a great day was had by all on the visit to Gastonia and the best news of all that the final total of money raised for the Ronald McDonald House in Dallas, Texas was $4000.

Next steps was to give the presentation of the money to RMH and one of the board members Sherry got the privilege of doing that and here she is with Sarah from the House Love Built:

The house currently has 26 rooms and a couple of transplant rooms when the new house is opened in November there will be a total of 52 rooms. The money we donated will be put towards furniture for the new house.

Another exciting day arrived when the postman left a nice big box on my front door step, I was on skype talking to Mum and Dad in Cork so I turned on the video and they got to see the beautiful quilts that arrived out of the box.

A big thank you to JeanClaire, Terrimae and Therica for the wonderful quilts that emerged out of the box. The first one was not in fact from the raffle but an extra one that I got for selling the most tickets among the quilt makers. I never win anything so was really amazed to win all of these quilts.

Overall taking part in this challenge was an awesome experience. I was so new to quilting when I started and was very nervous when I volunteered to take part but in early January when I saw my quilt with all the other quilts I was able to declare - "I am a quilter!". It was also great to be able to take a small part in the $4000 that was presented to the RMH in Dallas, I want to thank all those who bought tickets from me and it feels great to know that the money will give comfort to families who are going through a tough time dealing with a sick child.

So I though the story ended there and on Friday I went to the message board and low and behold there was a post from Therica announcing the "2nd ANNUAL Crayola Challenge". This time there is a different twist as we will be be only getting one crayon in the mail but we can use all shades of that crayon - light to dark and medium and anything in between and then and pick one crayon ourselves but we can just use the true color of that crayon. So what do you think.................have I signed up???!!!!!

Another quilt top finished

I just finished another quilt top and added to the list of other one that needed to be quilted!
This on is called "Zen", I made this one from the Batik that I had already on hand i.e. in my stash. I am pleased at how it has turned out.

Full Length

Close up

Tomato Success

We have success in our tomato plants as our first green "little" bud has appeared.

Can you see it next to the two yellow flowers, just above the wire??

Making great progress since they were planted.

Another quilt top finished tonight

I was working hard on getting this finished today, I just LOVE how this one turned out, it is called Weaver Fever.

Happy Birthday Aislinn

Aislinn, was 4 on April 7th which was the day that Mum was flying out to visit us for three weeks. So about 2 weeks before her birthday I asked her if she wanted her gift sent to her by the post man or if Nannie could bring it home for her and also if she wanted me to buy her a gift or make her a gift. Her answer was that she wanted me to make her a gift and for Nannie to bring it home for her.

As I had already made Aislinn two quilt and a crayon roll up, I had to come up with something really special to make for her. I asked the ladies on my quilting message board on HGTV for some suggestions and Trish my buddy from Australia came up with an awesome pattern for a Ballerina bag.

Here is how it turned out:


And the inside has ballerina fabric and of course I had to use the one with the red hair inside!

Hope you love your bag, Aislinn as much as I loved making it for you. Happy Birthday.

French Briad Back from the Long Arm Quilter

In a previous post I should you all my French Braid Quilt Top, I mentioned that Melodee was going to quilt it for me on her Long Arm Machine. Last week she came by to have lunch when Mum was visiting and she brought the finished French Braid quilt with her and what an awesome job she has done:

The reveal




Front

Back

Close up of Quilting

What an awesome job, Mel has done with my quilt. I am so proud of this quilt and Mel has added the icing to the cake!

Tomato time again

In early April I was at the garden center and they had tomato plants, I felt it was a little early to plant them but the two people working at the garden center told me it should be fine. I bought  some Early girls, some cherry tomatoes and some Big Beef tomatoes along with some flowers.

We got home and spent a while cleaning up the pots from last year and got the new tomatoes, planted, watered and all ready. Also planted the flowers, it was great to be work in the garden again as it was a while  since I felt the dirty in my finger!

It was a nice sunny April day when we were working in the garden but as we moved into the afternoon the wind picked up some. I really wasn't that worried about it until Lar called me from the kitchen and said "look where the umbrella has blown too." I went to the back door to see the umbrella lying across the newly planted tomatoes. We quickly rescued the plants which were really not damaged in any way the cages were just moved a little from the weight of the umbrella.

The following show some pictures of the planting day:



Would you like to win 30 Fat Quarters

Check out Thearica's Giveaway , she is giving away 30 Fat Quarters to celebrate her daughters 30 birthday. If you leave a comment tell her I sent you :-)

Thearica is an awesome quilter who I have met on the HGTV Quilting Message board and is the hostess on the Ronald McDonald Quilt Raffle. I was a new quilter when I took the challenge to make a quilt based on three crayons that she sent me and I am so happy I took the challenge.

Therarica, I was at a quilt show last week and took this picture especially for you:

Spring has arrived in California...............

Spring arrived officially on Friday so I decided to take my camera to the garden to see what I could find to see if Spring had actually sprung! Here is what I found:

So I think we can declare Spring is here and it is time to clean up some of my other pots and plant some more plants! :-)

What I should mention is that our Landlord looks after the front garden and Dad planted the bulbs in my back garden when he was here for Thanksgiving 2007 so it was good to see that his bulbs gave us joy again this year.

St. Patricks Day 2009

We had a wonderful day this year with a lunch time visit from some great friends the Murphy family - Andrea, Gerry, Bernadette and Maryn all arrived looking splendid in green.

We all had a wonderful time so I think I will leave the pictures tell the story:

Cool Quilt Photo

Lar has found this real cool iPhone app called Color Splash and was playing around with it today. I love how this one turned out:

Banishing UFO's

For the non quilters out there I am not gone all weird and trying to find Unidentified Flying Objects but in Quilting terms a UFO is an Unfinished Object. At the end of 2008, I had a number of unfinished quilt tops that were waiting to be quilted and then binding added to be completed. The week I made great head way and finished two of them.

Here are the pictures:

Front of Quilt # 1

Back

Machine Embroidery Roses

Machine Embroidery Butterflies

Front of Quilt # 2


Back
Close up of fabric
Close up of Machine Embroidery used for Quilting

It feel really good to be finished these two quilts and it is nice to see and end to the pile of 2008 UFO that were sitting on futon in the sewing room. This means it is time to start some new projects for 2009!!