My favorite season is fast approaching...fall is in the air. And blueberry picking season...and school will be starting soon...

I think back to the August day in 2008 when our five year old granddaughter, Devin Rae, had been visiting here and we were making a dress for her first day of kindergarten. It was a lovely shade of maroon baby-wale corduroy and she wore it proud. We also made a teepee, and American Girl doll clothes, and fresh tomato salsa and blueberry muffins... all fun and exciting things when you are five. 

My sewing room (also known as my bedroom) was bursting with creative clutter: twigs, fabric, feathers and paper were scattered everywhere and the floor was completely covered! And when we finished the dress, Devin tried it on and did a twirl, and promptly tripped over a pile. Still on the floor, Devin looked up at me with her most sincere and adorable toothless smile and said, "Grandma, I think you should be grounded till you clean your room!" Out of the mouths of babes...

The past six years have been like none other for me and have carried a thread of loss. In the pasts two years, the whole world has shifted and swayed as we've felt the squeeze of Covid. More loss. Loss of loved ones, loss of freedoms, loss of choice. And for some the pandemic meant slowing down and more time at home. Not for me. My job in the medical field was essential and I was super duper busy. I kept thinking at the beginning of Covid how I'd love to be quarantined in my room for two weeks. Yes please. Through these very hard six years, my piles grew. And when push came to shove, stuff got stashed. 

Now our beautiful granddaughter number two, Rylee Marie, is learning to sew. She is my left-handed crafter extraordinaire and she is not afraid of creative clutter! But she does need a larger space to work. So this past weekend...yesterday to be exact, with the help of a friend, I cleaned off a very large desk that had been in my room for nearly 20 years while Rylee made a space in her room for this well-loved desk. And the mess that it set in motion is hard to describe, but purging and room cleaning have commenced and what a good feeling to reorganize my work space!

So stay tuned as the 20 years of UFOs (un-finished projects) emerge and the wedding quilt begins to take shape and I'll try to post more often during this process. And BTW, I might just get those two weeks to hunker down....

Butterfly Kisses

My very dear friend asked me tonight if I had anything to enter into the fair tomorrow.... “Nope. Not me”, was my reply... “hasn’t been a very productive year for my crafts. But I survived”...I continued.

And that is pretty much the truth.

Then tonight I remembered I had one more thing to do before I went to bed. Actually two. I made two pillowcases. Two butterfly, dragonfly, streak of yellow sunshine pillowcases for the two beautiful young ladies flying in tomorrow night after midnight to visit the home of their beloved friend. And seek closure...some solace from being in the last place they saw her.

I survived the past year after losing a most beloved granddaughter. She was our first and only for 6 years and I miss her every single day. This past year has been excruciating. But I survived.

Tonight I made pillowcases because I could. It was the first time I’ve touched my sewing machine in many months and it felt so good to be fingering the beautiful cotton prints that will cover the pillows of 2 beautiful girls. The Bff’s of my beloved. Perhaps the pillows they will hug and cry into as they snuggle in Devin’s bed one more time. The bed they all shared some nights when silly teenaged girls stayed up way too late and told secrets. Stories of how things were and how they wanted them to be. Fears. Heartbreaks. Giggles. Fart jokes.

As I sewed, it occurred to me that I was touching something that will touch them long after they leave here and that’s the gift we give when we make a quilt. Or a pillowcase. Or any fiber art or craft that we give to those we love. Mittens. Scarves that hug us like a beloved friend.

I remembered tonight making pillowcases for my sweet niece’s children when they lost their dad several years ago. I didn’t have time to make them quilts but pillowcases were easy and communicated that I loved them and that I cared.

So friends...never underestimate the small things. Small acts of kindness that go far beyond grand or pompous gestures but that say, “I love you and I care”.

No time like the present....

Just recently we moved a beautiful sewing cabinet into my (our) room...it belonged to a very dear friend and her daughter-in-law gifted it to me. It’s a beautiful piece and has so much possibility! A gleaming white rolling cabinet, a large back that flips up to become a large machine quilting platform and even a pop-up side table for additional length.

But I’m most excited that it is the perfect place for my Pfaff Creative to become available for daily use! I can begin a project and leave it and come back at any time I choose. Wow.

There have been so many times that I’ve thought of the creative possibilities of my new (now 10 years old!) computerized and gadget-replete machine and sighed...O if I only has time to sew...
Well...I’ve decided to take each day as it comes and give thanks as my dear friend taught me...and to take 15 minutes (thank you, Fly Lady) each day to create! Anything and everything I choose.

There really is no time like the present...it’s a daily gift! Xoxo

Rylee's Birthday dress.

 Rylee Marie turned 4 on March 2nd. I made this dress for her from my Kaffe Fasset stash; I made a size 6 pattern so she could grow into it a a bit and the sash was to make the bodice snug and to make the fit more contoured. When Preston emailed me and said how much Rylee loved the dress and headband, I was puzzled until I saw this photo.
Little Darlin put the sash on her head. "Ta-da"...she is doing a curtsey in her new dress.
I love this muffin girl!

Sewing in sunny MX!

Just got back from a fabulous vacation in Cabo with our lovely daughters, their hubbies and our three one-year-old grand babies. We certainly enjoyed the beach and hot weather- and the time together was priceless! But I also managed to sneak in some time for needlework. I finished the embellishment on three wool blocks I started last November. The 2011 BOM kits from Sue Spargo. And I appliquéd block 7 and got it almost done too!

And- we're in the final stages of getting ready for our annual Spring Fling- an event we look forward to every year. This year our teacher, Brenda Henning, is coming from Anchorage, Alaska, and our theme is "Still Stripping!" I'm so excited to be gathering with friends once again to sew, laugh, and enjoy good food while learning a thing or two. I'm so happy to be connected to such a wonderful group of women who all enjoy the love of quilting. I love our common threads :)

Finished in the nick-of-time!

This is from a book called Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin-by Sara Nephew. The pattern is called Native American Blanket and it was made for our son and daughter-in-law for Christmas. They'd moved from Alaska to New Mexico this past year and replaced their queen bed with king- so, naturally they needed a bigger quilt!

The technique is fairly easy and uses a proprietary triangle ruler to precut 1 1/2" inch strips. The result is pretty accurate triangle-shaped log cabin style blocks that make many different patterns based on the layout and color scheme. Easy- or mostly easy...but we did have a little set back. In an effort to make it a mother/daughter gift, my lovely and talented youngest daughter, Kylie, got things turned around and ended up piecing the "winged-triangles" with the wings on the wrong side. And it wasn't until she finished sewing and pressing all 70 blocks and I attempted to put them together that I made this discovery. Yikes!

So, late one night, after ripping (or "reverse-sewing" them as we'd rather call it) removing the threads and pressing all 70 blocks with the help of my dear friend, Amelia, I began the reconstruction. We were watching a movie, the title escapes me just now, but I got on a roll and began chain-piecing them and made quick work of it. AND it wasn't until I got to number 67 that I finally realized I was sewing them back together THE SAME WRONG WAY! Yes- really! And in that instant, rather than melting down, I actually started laughing. It may have been to prevent a meltdown, but it worked. I hadn't even had much wine that night...we were drinking mostly tea. So I again ripped, pressed and re-sewed all the winged-triangle blocks. And my friend Amelia hung in there with me (she deserves a medal) but by the time we got to bed, the winged-triangles were done!

The next day it was my goal to sew all the diamond-shaped blocks together in rows with the winged-triangles and I did get it laid out and it looked pretty good. I was feeling pretty proud of myself and actually had hopes of getting the borders on by supper time. Oh, I forgot to mention this was December 17th and I was supposed to drop it off the next day to the Lovely Shana in North Pole. When daughter number one, Brooke, got to the house later that afternoon, she exclaimed how much she liked it....but that it wasn't anywhere big enough for a king bed. Seriously? Couldn't I just put wider borders on?

"No!" came Brooke's reply. She looked at my pile of fabric and figured I had enough for two more rows of blocks. 26 more blocks in all. Holy-moly! But she was right, it wasn't big enough. So back to the cutting table I went and she volunteered to press and we kicked it up a notch and finished it by 11pm. It did make it to Shana's by the 18th- which was the day Preston and Sarah arrived from NM- and because Shana is SO amazing, I got it back by Friday! Then the binding- whew! Kylie had offered to hand sew all 450" of the French double-fold binding by hand and that girl pulled it off. So maybe my dad was right in nicknaming me "Last-minute-Lonnie" and maybe some of it rubbed off on my talented girls. And maybe it's not such a bad thing! :)

Preston and Sarah seemed genuinely pleased with their new quilt- a Christmas gift from mom and sisters. And when they sleep under that Native American Blanket- woven with TLC, they know they're loved!

Calling all UFOs

 Last Saturday at our monthly guild meeting, after we had to change a scheduled class and substitute it with a UFO workday, one of our newer members said, "hey, what is a UFO anyway?" and I smiled a great big smile as she got the scoop UnFinished Objects....

She learned that most quilters have their fair share of stashed quilt projects at various stages of completion that never see the light of day. Most are doomed to spend their days crammed into boxes or piles lurking in closets or if they're lucky, maybe a quilt studio. And it did my heart good to hear the confessions of fellow quilters describing their long lists of stalled projects all vying for attention.Then a brilliant idea was suggested...another chance at something that I'd participated in a while back while still in the Juneau quilt guild, Capital City Quilters. Why not trade these outcasts?

And so it came about that we decided to have a UFO swap. And we're planning on sweetening the deal by combining it with a Spring Tea Party. Just think, you can come and enjoy tea and scones while rummaging through another quilter's reject projects and unloading a few of your own.

So the date has been set: April 21, 2012. Bring your UFOs and an appetite for adventure and come to my house at 2pm. Stay tuned for more details- but embrace the opportunity to free yourself of "quilt-guilt" and let go of closet clutter. What could be more fun, right?