Antique Quilt

OK here it is, I have finally got pictures of the Antique Quilt I am restoring for a friend of mine. She received the quilt as a gift last year and wants to be able to use the quilt. She asked if I could repair it for her. She is not interested in the value of the quilt as an antique, she wants to be able to use it and pass it down to her daughter later.

It feels like there is no batting in it, but when I finally got the binding off last week there is very thin batting in it. From the looks of some of the fabrics I think they used old flour sacks for some.

The colors are light and airy, with the feeling of spring or summer. I really enjoy looking at each one. It seems the white and very light prints are the ones that are disintegrating the most.

I am not sure if you can see but the white fabrics are worn through and need to be replaced. Some of the fabrics I wish I could find now because I love the prints on them. There are so many different fabrics that you never get tired of looking at them.

Here are some more pictures of the wonderful old fabrics. I have no idea how old the quilt is but it is a wonderful find.

I just love the prints on these fabrics. All are hand pieced and hand quilted.

Someone spent a long time putting this quilt together. I hate to take it apart but I was asked to.

I hope you can see the hand quilting in this picture. I am still perfecting my close up pictures for my blog. I still need to work on it a little more.

Here is another picture of the fabrics, the white fabric is just falling apart as you move it around. You can see some of the wear in the picture.


If anyone has an idea of maybe how old the quilt might be, I would love to hear from you.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I will take some more as I fix it.

Graduation Day

It is finally here, Jessie graduated from 8th grade. She is now a big high school-er. Yesterday was so hectic I was not sure if I was going to make it. The day was not too bad, she went to school and they went to Oaks Park Amusement Park for the day. I should have stayed home but decided to go to work anyway since she would be at school.

Well then I had to get off work early and pick her up. Then we had to get home and get dressed and do her hair and make up for the "big moment." I told her before she did that she should eat. She decided she wanted to change her dress. She was going to wear a dress I had as a bride's maid back 7 years ago, so I spent the last couple weeks altering it to make it more modern, but then her friend had a dress she was not wearing so Jess decided she wanted to wear that one. There she is in the black and white sweater.

After getting situated we had to get to the school by 6pm. We arrived with time to spare, but the line was already long to get in. My parents were coming also and they were at the beginning of the line so that was not too bad.

The class was not too big, only about 150 kids. The ceremony took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. They gave out quite a few awards and gave the customary speeches too. It was actually very nice.

Then they started giving out the diplomas and calling them up. It was a mad house with camera hungry people. I tried to get the photo of her actually getting her promotion diploma and there were so many people bumping into me I could not get a clear picture, they are blurry.

 See how awful this is, and it is the best one.

They were moving across the stage so fast I could only take about three photos before she was off the stage. I figured I could get a couple after the ceremony of her.

Then they had a dance that lasted until 10pm that night so I had to stay up to come back to the school and get her. She had a blast and can not wait for high school to start. Thank goodness she is one of those kids that actually likes going to school.

There she is with her promotion certificate. They were really nice with photos in them and in a hard cover. Her grandparents are very happy for her. They are in the photo too.

Yeah for her, she is down to only 4 more years before she is done.

She keeps getting prettier as she gets older. I am going to have to lock her in her closet until she is 18 hehe.

Home made Pizza

Last night I had both kids and they wanted something good for dinner. So I decided I had a lot of left overs so ok. They were so excited to want to make their own pizza, they love helping in the kitchen.


I made a pizza dough that has been my old standby bread machine pizza dough for years. I love it because it does not take forever.

Homemade Bread Machine Pizza Dough

2 tsp. bread machine yeast
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt ( I use fresh ground sea salt)
2 Tbls sugar
2 Tbls olive oil
1 cup water + 2 Tbls water

Put it all in your bread machine according to your bread machine directions. Set machine to dough. Once it is all mixed up and has combined well pll it out and let it rest for about 5 minutes. I took mine and divided it into 4 equal parts. (One for each person). I rolled it out, put it on cookie sheets that have corn meal on them so it will not stick. Let the kids make all their own topping combos place in oven 400 degrees for 18-20 min.

They really enjoyed theirs. The pizza was about the size of a medium pizza, maybe a tad smaller. The kids ate just about their entire pizzas.  They saw me taking pictures of one that was not cooked yet and wanted me to take a picture of theirs so here you go.

As you can see they are munching away. I just finished getting two more in the oven and they were already finished with half of theirs.

Glad they all enjoyed their dinner. I was a super hero last night and the most awesome cook ever just for pizza, kids are weird.

Hope everyone is enjoying the day. Happy Friday all.

Crochet Quilt

Sorry it has been a while since posting. I have been working on a crochet quilt.

I have forgotten how long it takes to crochet things. It had been a few years since I last crocheted something.

So I spent the Memorial Day weekend piecing it together.

By the way, Hope every one had a wonderful and fun Memorial Day and that all stayed safe.

This was a project I have been working on since last fall. I was able to complete a square every three days or so. I was only crocheting in the evening while watching TV with the family. I finally finished the last squares a couple weeks ago but had some family tragedy things happen so I could not piece it together until this weekend.

Here is a close up of the pieces. Once I had it pieced I crocheted an edge on the whole thing so it would come together and look complete.

It is warm, I used the Lion Brand Homespun yarn. I had several colors left over from making slippers for the kids a couple years ago. I found this pattern in their book of afghans. I loved how it looked so decided I would try it.

I did not realize how long it would take. Now I remember why I do not crochet all the time. I am a instant gratification type when it comes to this. So I feel it just takes too long to create afghans.

But I did finish this and everyone has tried to lay claim to it for this winter already.

I am just finishing up taking the last pictures of the antique quilt I am going to be working on and fixing for a friend.

I will have those up by next week for everyone to see.

Hope you all had a wonderful and productive Memorial Day weekend.

Animal Print Quilt

Well hello all. This has been a wonderful week. The sun has been out and we have actually reached 88 degrees out. Now I do not know about you, but once the temperature gets to over 75 degrees I start wishing for a breeze and some clouds to help break up the heat.

As you guessed I am not a person who likes hot weather. That is probably why I live in the Pacific Northwest. I like having the sun out and I like mild weather, but hot weather is something I do not do well. So when it got hot for two days this last weekend my husband asked if it was time to get the air conditioner out. I decided it was not going to be hot that long and I could live with it for the short time we would be in a "heat wave" according to the news group.

So to pass the time away I decided to finish up a quilt I was making for the husband. It is made out of Minkie fabric. I love the animal prints they had. He has been bugging me to finish it so he could use it this fall and winter so I decided what the heck. I had a fan blowing on me at the sewing machine and went to work. It was one of the quilt as you go type of easy quilts so it was not that long and I was putting the binding on it.

He was so happy when he came home from work yesterday to find it complete and sitting on his chair. He was such a wonderful man when he found it. He turned to me and said, "Thank you honey it is wonderful, but I hope you do not expect me to use it right now. If you can handle me having it folded up until October before I could tell you how wonderfully warm it is, I will give you my review then." He is such a funny guy. "Of course I can wait until then. At least I finished it before the snow this year."

Here it is all stretched out over his chair. I love the Giraffe and Tiger prints the best. He loves how soft the Minkie is, see I made a pink one for my daughter for Christmas two years ago and one for my step son in blue last year, and bought the fabric for this one two years ago too. He has been looking at the fabric for quite a while asking when it would be done. I finally got it complete this last weekend. Yeah one more thing off my work in progress list.

Hope all of you had a wonderful Mother's Day. I know I did. I got two dozen roses and had dinner cooked for me Sunday night. I also got to have a day to myself to do whatever I wanted, which in this house with a 15 year old and an 11 year old is hard to do.

See you all later, have a wonderful day.

Progress on Memory Quilt

Well this last weekend I finished the top of my first memory quilt. It was a little tricky putting on the corner Dresden Plates. I could not decide which way I wanted them to face.

I finally decided I wanted them to face out. I am going to put the backing on and have the points of the Dresden remain showing. I love how it makes the corners look so interesting.

It was a little hard getting it all to line up correctly, but after getting the first corner done the rest went along quite well.

It looks very interesting. I saw on Pinterest someone decide to do their corners this way and I decided I just had to see what it would look like on my quilt. I really like the way they turned out.

I knew my hours on Pinterest would pay off at some point. Who else out there is addicted to it? I know I am. I just can not get enough of all those wonderful pictures, who ever thought of Pinterest is a genius.

I finished it up and ironed it out. Then I finagled my daughter into holding it up for pictures. She was so wonderful about it (not). She was soo busy watching TV and playing her Nintendo DS at the same time, I just had to interrupt.  Then of course her arms were not long enough and they were tired. Does anyone else have a teen like this? She just smiled at me and said dramatically, "Ok Mom, I guess I could help."  She is wonderful just complains sometimes while still doing what she is told.

The pictures are of my Grandmother Signe. She was the one who taught me how to sew and crochet. She was always sewing for something. She sewed for Cancer and for the Senior Center all the time. She used to sew and craft things for the Boutiques that happen during Christmas time too. She used to make most of my clothes when I was younger too. I have such wonderful memories of her at her sewing machine and me just hanging out with her. There are days I still miss her.

Here is a corner. I just love how it looks being pointed out. The colors are wonderful too. They are so Spring and it was nice using them. I really like that I found butterfly white fabric at the last minute. The center has flowers on the white that remind me of the Dresden flower Plate in the center. So I thought having butterflies on the white border would go great with the butterfly Dresdens in the center section.

What do you think. I love that there is a lot of negative space on the quilt. My next thing is to figure out what I want to quilt on it. I am not sure how to quilt it yet so I will have to really have to think on this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hope you all enjoyed this. My next project is to start repairing a antique quilt for a friend of mine. I should have some pictures of it next week for all to see. It is a Wedding Ring quilt and it feels and looks like it is made out of the old flour sacks or maybe vintage sheets. I will post pictures next week and see what you all think of it.

Little Girl Expressions

              



        This is Little Girl. She wandered into our lives when we needed her the most. She makes us laugh like you could not believe.

                             

She loves playing with boxes. Her favorite are the soda and beer cases. She loves getting into them and hiding. The funniest cat I have ever seen

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She loves her play things.

She thinks she is hiding her mouse under her.



She has been our breathe of fresh air. So I will have to share more of her wonderful funniness with all of you more often.