Hiatus

I can't believe it's been almost a year since my last post. A lot happened last year, the biggest thing was my mom's health declining significantly until she lost the battle with her diabetes related liver disease May 30th.

Losing a parent is a big life event, and one that you really can't understand how it will effect you until you've lost one yourself. I haven't really felt like blogging in a long time, but lately I've been thinking a lot about it, so here I am!

The last couple of years have been a trial for me filled with change, loss and a lot of betrayal. Every time someone would say 'It will get better!" something even crappier happened so I forbade people from saying it to me! But as the saying goes, nothing good or bad lasts forever, even though it seems like it at the time. And as Train says "I stopped believing although Journey told me not to. Before I call it day, maybe this'll be my year." 

Thanks to my family and friends, and running away to Scotland for a month, I've finally found the good things in life again and have become a stronger, better person for it. This year is starting off pretty amazingly. I'll go into that soon, so stay tuned.

I still haven't posted the latter half of my Scotland trip, so I will do that soon. I really want to introduce everyone to the wonderful quilters I met there! 

Here's a little recap of my projects from the last year for you. It's going to be a quick and dirty synopsis, so please bare with me!

This is a quilt I made for my darling Emmett's wedding in Sept 2012 that I just finished in time for his sister's wedding this January! I baby sat both Emmett and Liz since they were born and they are both very special to me and I love them tons. I can't believe they are both old enough to be married since I'm totally not any older!

Ironically enough the quilt pattern was designed by a quilt shop owner in Austin, Texas which is where Emmett got married! (I can't recall the name now, I'll update it when I find it again) Michelle and I discovered it when we were hitting all the quilt shops in the Austin area!

I used the first David Butler line w/Basic Grey' Grunge. I freaking love Grunge! It always come through for me when I can't find the perfect coordinate to pull it all together. It's white Minky on the back. I made it extra large because Em is ridiculously tall, and I wanted it big enough for he and Chrissy to be able to cuddle up together underneath it.

I quilted this vintage quilt top that a friend of mine found in the attic of her family's farmhouse which several generations of her family lived in. I couldn't believe what gorgeous shape it was in after being packed away for so many years!

I quilted the empty blocks with a traditional wreath pattern. It took me a long time to decide how to quilt it because I wanted to do it justice and be age appropriate (probably the only time I am age appropriate!)

I thought it photographed well on my grandmother's buggy bench.

I've had a terrible case of project ADD lately. I recently started working on this wall hanging. It started out as an entirely different quilt set on point, but I wasn't thrilled with that, so now it's straight set and will have applique when I get done. 

I've also been working on this for my baby cousin's baby quilt. She turned a year in November, so I'd best get it done before she's too big for it!!! I can't figure out how to rotate it, so you'll have to turn your head. I think I'm going to continue the pink down the tree trunk.

I've also been working on some wool applique when I travel or go to guild. 

This is the pattern:

I'm using a variety of 3 Sisters by Moda (because you know, I have quite a variety of it in my stash!) I think I'm going to change around that top left corner block too, because I'm not much of a heart person outside of Valentine's Day decorations.

On the home front, I've been quite busy as well. I found this cabinet at a barn sale for $50.
The bottom is now my sink in the Tiffany bathroom. The top will eventually be repainted and hung in the laundry room.

I have custom molding for the edges of the sink to put on and the backsplash tile to install, then it will be done!

I got the knobs at Anthropologie, I think they cost as much as the sink did in total!!! The 4 corner ones are mercury glass and the center is all blingy and rhinstones. Now if I can just figure out how to put a chandelier in there....

I went with the one on the left.  It sparkles in the light. The photo doesn't do it justice.

I finally finished painting the master bathroom. Say goodbye to the last of the Avocado Green!!!!

And hello to the gorgeous Farrow and Ball  Blue Gray! I thought I took a photo w/the mirror up, but I guess I didn't so I'll do an official before and after when I do that.

Ahhhh, that's better, isn't it?

I was going to go into the outdoor projects, but I have a feeling Blogger will explode if I try to add more photos, so I'll do a separate post on that. Also, I can't seem to get the font out of red and underlined. I'm not sure what' up with that. Apparently Google and Apple don't play nicely together, still.

It's Raining Pom Poms

Hi Everyone and welcome to the Shake Your Pom Pom blog hop!!

I'd like to thank Thearica and Madame Samm for all of the effort they put into arranging these hops. It's a huge amount of work and they've done a great job!

I finally got my beloved Janome back last week and had an already scheduled girls quilting weekend, so I've spent the last 72 hours quilting like a mad woman! I've literally had 5 hours sleep in that 72 hours, so this is going to be short and sweet in order to keep it somewhat coherent. Even though I pulled 2 all nighters, I wasn't able to completely finish my quilt, but it's mostly done.
 I couldn't believe my luck when I found multi-colored blue poms that I think actually look like a rainy day.

This is my in fully assembled quilt top. I put the hot pink rain drops on pre-applique, but found that I couldn't quilt with them on, so I had to snip them off and will reattach them once the quilting is complete. I used my pom poms to symbolize rain drops around some of the cutest umbrellas possible.

I used white metallic thread and quilted a Morton Salt girl silhouette in the focus, beaded umbrella. I used blue metallic thread to quilt the umbrellas and rain.

My dear friend Sophie happend to be at the quilting weekend, which was lucky for me since she can draw and I can't. Stick figures are my forte, so the salty girl was well out of my league. Thanks Soph!!!

Unfortunately I had a mishap and some of the colors started to bleed onto the gray, so I had to quickly wash and dry my unfinished quilt, pins and all. I would not recommend this, but I was terrified the bleeding wouldn't come out if I didn't deal with it immediately.

This is it's current state:

Thanks for visiting and putting up with my sleep deprived ramblings. I'm off to sleep for about 14 hours now.

Here's my fellow Pom Pom Hoppers, I hope you get to visit them all and enjoy their Pom Pom Shaking as much as I do!!

April 29

Accio Fabric

Quiltsmiles

Scrapbook-chickadoodle

In The Sewing Basket

life, quilts and a cat too

Debby Kratovil Quilts

Just Let Me Quilt

Meadowbrook



April Showers....

Well it's official, my beloved machine is broken! I have been without a machine for 3 weeks now and I've got one more to go! The bar that holds the needle and goes up and down is worn out and has to be replaced. Things are bound to wear out, so I really can't complain, and considering I've had it 11 years and I sew about 5 days a week, I've probably been lucky it's made it this far without needing major repair.

In the meantime I've been talked into joining the Shake Your Pom Poms blog hop at the end of this month by Thearica. I debated it for a while, because I couldn't come up with a project that included pom poms that the dogs wouldn't eat. Koda has been systematically redecorating my reading room curtains by plucking the pom poms off the trim. He chews them, decides they don't taste all that good and leaves spitty fringe all over the room for me to clean up.

Then it hit me. I bought the Laundry Basket Quilts "Dancing Umbrellas" pattern a couple of weeks back when my friend Pattie and I stopped at a local quilt shop:

As I totally love cute umbrellas, my first thought was "oooo, wouldn't this be cute in bright, happy fabrics!"
As I only have my small travel machine, which is fine for piecing but not heavy duty quilting, I decided I could at least get the blocks together fairly quickly. Then I realized it was Watchathon week and Comcast has all of the seasons of Downton Abbey for free. So I sat on my hiney most of the week and watched and watched. I did try to be somewhat productive though. I have 14 umbrellas together, not bad for the weekend, don't you think?
Here are my first two blocks: 

They aren't appliqued down yet, I just posed them because I was excited to see them all together.

I've mostly used Tanya Whelan's fabrics (who has a gorgeous new shabby chic line coming out that I'm sure I will need to have some of). I did through in a couple of Sarah Jane's Out to Sea line because I totally would love a real life Narwhal umbrella! The background is Kaufman's Mix Master Fizz by Patrick Loose.

Well that's all for today. I think I'll post the rest of my vacation while waiting for my machine to be fixed. I can't possibly forget to share the time I spent with the lovely quilting ladies at Borderland Fabrics in Jedburgh!

Happy Quilting,

Vicki

Living Like Nancy Drew

Well, it's here! My day to post my Nancy Drew project.
The good news is all of my ridiculously small flying geese are done and the top is put together. 

The bad news, when I went to started to quilt it I had a machine / tension issue which I tried to resolve myself. I got the machine back together, with only one extra screw! I hope it's not an important one. The issue came back within a short time, so my project is sadly not complete.

I loved Nancy Drew as a young girl. My friends and I read and re-read every book a billion times. My all time favorite were the originals with the blue and orange covers. Nancy was smart, independent, and fearless, which are all things I strive to be in my life. These are also qualities that we should teach all girls to be, in my opinion!



Nancy maze quilt top.



Nancy's following the clues.



Flying geese lead the path to the center.



All pinned a little quilted.

I picked some of my favorite sayings from Nancy's Guide to Life for the white areas. It will say things like:
Boys like girls who doggedly pursue their goals (or prey, as the case may be) - The Secret of the Wooden Lady
Clumsy, fat men who are looking at middle age through a rear-view mirror should not attempt to keep pace with lithe young women. - The Whispering Statue
A young lady with some judo skills can take care of unwanted advances in short order. - The Whispering Statue

I keep my Guide to Life on my desk at work, next to my Congolese "Speak no Evil" gorillas and my mold spore.

 I hope to get my machine fixed asap, so I hope you all can check back and see the final product!

In the meantime, please visit my fellow Nancy Drew bloggers and see what they've been inspired to make with Get a Clue with Nancy Drew!

  

 Marjories Busy Corner

Kris Loves Fabric

The Slow Quilter

Sew Many Yarns

Lixie Makes It

 Betty at That Other Blog

Marcy at That Other Blog

Pig Tales and Quilts

Things that make me smile Sunday

Ok, this is going to be a super short, sweet and picture filled post because I'm in the final time crunch to finish my Nancy Drew quilt and I've already lost an hour thanks to the time change last night.
These are all things that made me smile today:

Cute sleeping dogs.

Freaking adorable tea things.



Fun butter dishes
(I know, it's weird.
What can I say,  I like cute butter dishes,
especially if they have wee sheep on the them.)



Gorgeous pink and white tulips.

Finally finding Nessie!



Having my quilt hanger (aka: curtain rod) hung up.



Finishing the cutting down of 150+ flying geese from 2x4 to 1x2.
(A serious miscalculation on my part for the Nancy Drew quilt)



My Ness pink and blue tartan purses and cow.
How can you not smile at a plaid cow?

Chocolate mouse eclairs from Ambrosia in Barrington.
(Thanks June!)

Dogs who shouldn't be on couches but are anyway.



And last, but certainly  not least;
 Ness pink and navy tartan wellies under my chalk board.
( I made the chalk board out of an old cabinet door and vintage chalkboard slate from an 1800's schoolhouse in Rockford which was renovated into lofts.)



Reality

We interrupt this fabulous vacation for an important quilting announcement and a dose of reality.

I'm unfortunately back from my vacation, which means I'm back to real life. I have to say, vacation is so much better than real life. I will get back to the vacation photos and travel log soon,but for the moment I have to scramble to get my Nancy Drew quilt done in time for the blog hop! I'm scheduled for March 12th, and have many flying geese to go before I sleep.

While the things that made me want to run away from home are still there, I have a different attitude about them now. As an added bonus, I'm also no longer intimidated/self conscious about going into that male bastion, the free weight room, in the health club. It's funny how spending so much time on your own, dealing with everything yourself and meeting new people teaches you about yourself and your fortitude. I found these two quotes that kind of sum it all up for me:

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

I had a fun reminder of my trip this week. One of my bosses happened to be in London for meetings while I was staying with Anne and Matt and he kindly consented to hauling my London purchases home for me in the suitcase I bought at an OxFam charity shop for 5 GBP. (Little did he know how much the fabric and books weighed when he agreed to this!) This is also the boss that keeps me in Belgium chocolates from his travels there, and also hauled my loot home from the New Orleans estate sale in March, so he's a really fabulous guy in my book regardless of all the whining about how heavy my suitcase was (consider please that I had three 75lb checked bags and two 40-50lb carry-ons that I hauled all over Scotland for 3 weeks and through 2 airports all by myself). I brought him a lovely bottle of Scottish whiskey for his pains.

Cath Kidston happiness!

It was like Christmas again this week as I unpacked my English goodies, which consisted mostly of Cath Kidston and Liberty of London products. I was really glad to be there during sale time, because I could get some things at Liberty that I wouldn't have been able to afford if not on sale.


Ah Liberty of London, how do I love thee, let me count the ways....

We got a proper snow this week. I love snow, and I love the snow in my new house. It's so pretty with all of the trees and deer that I will now bore you with photos of trees in the snow.

View from the Reading Room

Birdbath in the snow.

View from the deck.

Garden fence

House from the street.

The contrast of the branches in the snow at dawn was really striking.



My glorious pine tree.



I love how the needles look furry on this pine when it snows.