Welcome to the third installment of my quilt gallery. I grew up in central NY and we regularly went to Lancaster, PA to eat at Good N' Plenty and Fine and Fancy. When I became a quilter Lancaster took on a different meaning. I wandered into one of the Amish stores with fabric with a quilt for my nephew in my plans. This was another step out for me in my quilting skills. Sadly my nephew's mother abandoned this quilt when she took my nephew and left my brother. My mother grabbed it and offered it back. I asked her to hold onto it until he has his own child and then we will give it back to him. The light is a pale lavendar.

This quilt is my first "art" quilt. My friends were having a boy and chose Noah's Ark. If you look closely you will see the animals are felt and removable from little pockets. This was a fun quilt to do.

This is it for now. I have to find more pictures to share. I do have quilts in my Flickr account. See the "My Quilts" link on the left of the blog. Hope you enjoyed looking!

More of My Quilts This quilt is the second pattern I tried. Donna Poster gave out this handout and I winged it. This is my all time favorite quilt. I just love the colors. I have been collecting reds and whites to make one for myself. This was a gift to my childhood friend for the birth of her first child. I told her I loved this quilt so much and how hard it was to let go. She said she would send it back. What a sweet gal!





This is the first quilt I made as a result of someone asking me to. I told them if they bought the materials I would do it. I was unsure of the colors and I think these were even poly blends (hmmm have to check those scraps!!). It taught me to be more specific when telling people what they needed to buy.





This quilt I made for a good friend that I worked with a lot. I was so happy to present it to her. When she opened it she said something to the effect that her son could use this as his "suck" blanket. I wasn't quite sure how to take that comment. As a result I am more particular about who I gift quilts to.





More pictures to come! Enjoy!!

Found Treasures. I have been working on decluttering and organizing my sewing room. Things are much improved but I still have a ways to go. When I was working in there this past weekend I unearthed what I thought to be a journal. It was kind of hard to grab but I finally decided to just get it up and off the floor. It wasn't a journal but a photo album of my first quilts and a quilt show I had attended.

This quilt is a queen size log cabin that I made for my mother. She washed it into tatters. I meant to look at it when I was up there this summer but forgot about it until the day before I was leaving. No time to deal with it. She is supposed to come down for a visit and I will ask her to bring the quilt to see if it is worth saving. This is from Eleanor Burns Quilt in a Day log cabin. If you remember a previous post I used 5/8" seams. Oops!

This quilt is a double size log cabin that I made for myself. I had it on a bed and a dog that I had at the time nibbled a hole in the border. I have the fabric scraps pulled and ready to repair it. I just need to do it. Darn that dog! This is very country. There are farm animals on the light side and the reds and blues have hearts on them. Another quilt that I used a 5/8" seam on. These are the only two....I swear it!

After these two quilts I took a class from a quilt store. I am trying to remember the name of it at this point. They closed the store and moved to PA. It was owned by Donna Poster. I think she is pretty well known in the quilting world. I took a class for Magnolia and Tumbling Blocks from her. She gave us the handouts for other strip quilts one of which was a Double Irish Chain. I have made a LOT of quilts from that pattern. She also allowed me to make the Peacock which is a model in one of her books. This pattern was only in the first edition of her book and not in the reprints.

As I unearth other photos I will share more pictures with you. Happy Quilting!

Waiting. Have been doing a lot of waiting this month. Waiting to get through all of dh's dental work which is sort of done. He needs to have some cavities addresssed but the critical work is done. DH had a blood test to see where he was on the liver issues. His score improved. I have calls into several doctors to find out what is next and what all this means. Hurry up and wait.... They scare the bejeebers out of you to tell you to hurry but they sure don't seem to be in a hurry. I must say that dh is getting around a bit better and acts as though he feels better. Amazing what taking care of your teeth can do for you!

More waiting. DS made the golf team! Yeah! Then we had to wait about two weeks for the schedule change. How aggravating to just be out in limbo. I like to be able to get a "status" on these things but school red tape isn't setup to accomodate that. I was a little disappointed that he dropped Jr ROTC but he did keep his language, Spanish. I think he is frustrated with me because he comes home trying to top me and asks how do you say some word in Spanish. So far I have known the answer. Sorry kiddo! Love ya!

While I am on the topic of waiting DD ordered gym clothes for athletics. First they lost her order. Then they found it and all the others that were lost. They turned them in and the store ran into some quality control issues with the fabrics. One of the coaches was so frustrated by the delay that she insisted the parents go to the store to pick up orders. Of course they were not ready but coincidentally they now had all they needed to complete them. So all this pressure made those folks stay late to fill all these gals orders. I was sick at the time and didn't appreciate being a pawn in her game. Such is life.

So now you are all done waiting for me to blog! Yeah! I am here!

Ok Debi L got sick of waiting for me to blog so she tagged me! That evil gal! LOL ! Well she also awarded me the "Make Me Smile award so she must not be too bad ;).

Here is the Meme....I have to use the letters of my name to share something about me.

S - smart



U - unusual ( see the W in swooze...synonym...weird)



Z - zany



E - effusive (I gush...can't help it)



T - tall



T - technical (work with computers...if I had an L I would have said logical)



E - exuberant

I have a funny, whacky, weird sense of humor. If you knew me you would understand! I won't tag anyone in particular for the Meme but I will say that the whole Stashbuster webring deserves the "Make Me Smile" award. I am so happy to have all of you particpate in our little webring and I love to read all of your blogs.

All grown up....or so they think Son is in JROTC this year. He had to wear his uniform today for the first time for inspection. Doesn't he look handsome? JROTC has been a big source of contention at our house. Hubby being a vet I thought he would be thrilled and supportive. That has not been the case. I am just trying to support my son in what he wants to do.

DD has not been a girly girl for a few years now. Jeans and T are the standard wear. Well that hasn't changed but now she wears contacts, makeup and fusses with her hair constantly. She is very independent and outspoken. Tough kid to parent but a great personality for making it in the world.

Still decluttering! Still FMQing! I have really been trying to figure out how I was going to shift all my stuff without spreading it everywhere in the house. I went in my room last night and started pulling the layers away. I sorted, filed and trashed as I went. I was happy to see that most of what I wanted to keep was containerized and would be easy to move. Two drawers of the dresser are empty and the other drawers don't have too much in them. I will get the new cabinets in there easily! Yeah!!

I am plugging away at my free motion quilting. I have one more little section to do before I can finish up the outside border. That border is confetti covered. I was going to try to loop around each piece but I think that will be too much. I am think of just choosing a certain shape and/or color to loop around to simplify it. So close to a finish! I am learning so much. I am having some issues with restarting once I stop. I either skip stitches or wobble. I shared my woes on quiltchat and got some suggestions. I even got a suggestion to chew gum to help with my rythm. What a great idea! I will report back on that one!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. I have really been working on my organization in my sewing room. If you recall my previous post my sewing had oozed out into the rest of the house. Now I have most of that semi-organized on a 5 tier bakers rack that my best friend bought me for my birthday. It is a lot better but I can still improve. So I pick away at things a little everytime I sew. I will post "after" pics soon. They will be more along my journey pics though....



Saturday a.m. I was thrilled when I went to Wal-mart and found some cabinets that I really wanted marked about 45% off. They are the big white cabinets with doors. About 30" wide 20" deep and 72" high. I bought two. I am now working hard to clear the spot where these will go. This will help get so much more stuff up and put away! Yeah! Dang, each cabinet weighs 130 lbs. I got ds out there to help me get them out of the truck and onto the patio. I was toying with the idea of setting them up in one area and loading them to get a space cleared, then moving them to their final place. NOT! Just gotta clean out. That is all there is to it.



You saw my RR row that I added. My next project was to practice FMQ on my Janome 6500. I had bought bolts of baby panels and muslin and thought they would be perfect for this type of practice. I started Saturday and am almost done with the first one. I will just say I suck less at FMQ now! LOL! I think it looks pretty good. I vowed to not unpick any of it but had to go back on that and pick out a thread nest that happened at the end of the bobbin. Not too bad. I am ready to move onto a "love" quilt that I inherited to finish. My confidence is high. I am getting a little bored with the baby panel but will persevere on the panel since the love quilt will take a lot of thread changes. I just have to relax and enjoy my journey.

The 300 Pound Gorilla in my house. I have not blogged about this before but may have hinted at it a bit. It is depressing so just feel free to pass this by.

In 1990 my husband had donated blood while in college. We got a notice from them that my husband was deferred. He had Hepatitis C. We didn't really understand the impact at the time and I am not sure we did anything about it at the time. I think we may have heard there really wasn't a cure or that is was only 50% effective at the time.

Fast forward 10 years to 1998. My husband had blood in his urine. We went to a urologist and they did surgery. They pushed us to go to a gastroenterologist about the Hep C so we did. He went and had a liver biopsy. Diagnosed with cirrhosis. They talked about varicies and wanted to do an endoscope and banding. Hubby declined that procedure. We went to the gastroenterologist to see about treatment for the Hep C. They told us the process and said they were now seeing about a 66% cure rate. Hubby decided that he didn't have time to devote to a year long treatment that would have meant weekly doc visits and lab work.

Let me add as an aside that my dh does not have the best oral hygiene. He goes to the dentist when there is a problem only which usually includes pain. I tried repeatedly to get him in to the dentist for cleanings. While having the other issues addressed they did tell him he had gum disease and would need planing and scaling. Let me tell you, this did not happen.

Along with this lovely issue my hubby has a bad right knee. Over the course of many years since the early 90's until nine he had 6 arthroscopic surgeries to fix meniscus tears. He got to the point where there was no meniscus left. He began courting orthopedic doctors to find one that would do a knee replacement on him since he was so young. A little over two years ago he found one and got his knee replacement. He was told he would need to get his teeth taken care of as the infection could spread to the joint. More unheeded advice.

Hubby made it almost a year in good shape. The knee felt great. He felt great. Good mobility. One day he hopped out of bed and looked down to see a very swollen knee. We went over and over in our minds as to what happened. We could find no good answer. My husband developed a lump on the side of his knee. He went to the family doc and he checked that bump. There was some dry skin there and the doc knocked it off while examining him to expose a sac that had formed. He sent dh straight to the hospital and put him on antibiotics. They cultured it but didn't find anything. The spot responded and went away.

Somehow the message was lost on dh that he needed to be seen by an infectious disease doctor. Long story short(er) the spot came back, we went to the infectious disease doc and they ordered surgery to have a port inserted in his chest. He was then placed on mega antiobiotics. Much of this runs together but the port was removed and the problem recurred.

Back to the ortho doc and he decided to open up the knee, remove the spacer and clean it out. Once that was done they put him on antibiotics to try to kill any infection there might be. The doctor didn't see anything in the joint to indicate infection. As a precaution we did the port again and the mega antibiotics. As soon as he was off our friendly little lump came back.

This time the infectious disease doc opened the wound and encouraged dh to keep it open so it could heal from inside out. They also placed him on an oral antibiotic to be taken daily for the rest of his life. They were suppressing the infection. This started late last year.

Last summer dh went to Baylor to work with the liver transplant team and go through the process of being placed on the list. He was given some things to address and he addressed those. In the meantime they monitored his MELD score and we watched it go up and down with each course of lab work. This score determines your placement on the list and how ill you are.

While going through all this dh was fired from his job. To tell you how bad he is he was declared disabled and now draws social security disability.

This past summer dh was driving and slammed on the brake. Not much longer after this the knee swelled again. Went to the ortho. Ortho told him he had osteolysis which means the bone was growing away from the knee replacement. He wanted to do another surgery but wanted dh to be cleared by the transplant team. We had not heard much from the team until this point except for the letter ordering tests and then the results letter. We went and met the new hepatologist. He had lab work just before we saw her. While we were sitting there she got his labs. His MELD was now a 20 and their sickest person was a 22. She had a lot of questions about his knee and the meds. We had been providing all these details as we are required to do. She told him he needed to get his teeth cleaned immediately to clear the infection. She presented his case and came back to tell us that he would need to have his right leg amputated above the knee since the infection could not be cleared. Both of these need to get him listed and get a liver.

I called our dentist and desparately begged them to take care of him. They did not have room in their schedule. They referred us to an endontist. I called and explained the situation to them. They said their computer was down and they could not help us for a few days until it was resolved. I got a call back almost immediately. The dentist said get him in the next day. We were there with bells on. They did their assessment but could not clean since they needed more info from the transplant team. We went back the next day and had half his mouth done. He has two more appointments and will be done on the 10th. He has to have two teeth pulled as well. Two weeks later the dentist will clear him of infection in his mouth.

We saw the vascular surgeon yesterday. We were resigned to the need for the amputation. Our orthopedic went to bat for us but the hepatologist didn't think we could wait (what have we been doing all this time?). He asked us for the history of the situation. We told him and he asked if we didn't think this was a bit extreme and that he didn't want to do it. We said yes we don't want to either. This doc is going to go to the transplant team and go to bat for us to see if they can try the alternative out orthopedic gave which was to take the hardware out, place a spacer, clear the infection. Get the transplant. Then when he was well enough redo the knee replacement.

I cannot tell you the stress I have been under. There is so much more to this story. I will share more as I know it. Not blogging this topic has kept me from blogging at all. I had to tell about it so I can get on with my blogging.

If you have read this far please collect your gold star! Thanks for listening.

Labor Day Sewing. I had several items I wanted to work on but only managed to finish my row (triangles) on this Round Robin for my friend Beth in MD. I saw a quilt at the Plano quilt show and took my inspiration from the border. And what a small world....that quilt was quilted by our very own Bonnie Hunter! Here is the quilt and quiltmaker that inspired the border for Beth's RR. Karen collected the left over HSTs from her guilds quilts and made this. In fact she said she took everyone's blocks and trimmed them for the quilter in return for getting the HST's. It is truly an awesome quilt!

Please stay tuned. I will be posting this weekend and catch you all up on my going's on. My life is a little upside down right now and have been trying to decide if I tell more or not.....

The Bagsket

Why Did That Baby Irish Chain Become a UFO? I intend to share this info with each UFO I finish but forgot to do so this time around. I actually bought this top off ebay from a gal I know in Maine. She had hand quilted it about half way. I didn't want to finish it by hand so picked all those stitches out and machine quilted it. In fact this is the first quilt I quilted on my new Janome 6500. She quite working on it because she felt it took too long to do and wanted to work on faster things. What a shame. It was so close and her quilting was great!

I will be posting another pic with the recipient of the quilt as soon as I meet him!

We Have a Finish!! I was 4th in line for the Queen of UFOs on Stashbuster. But I had a finish to prevent my reign!

Weekend Accomplishment. Here is my first paper piecing experience. This is for a round robin I am in and belongs to Jane in Kansas. I really enjoyed doing paper piecing and look forward to trying more.

What I did for summer vacation. I went to visit my folks for 8 days. DD went with me. While I was there I made a "Scrappysak", a "Grace Smartbag" with cover, finished a squiggly hotpad and made two helmet hats. To me it was heaven to sit and craft and visit.

Here is my other part of a great vacation. My mother hosted a picnic at her house and invited all my aunts and uncles over. This is her side of the family. There were several cousins and my aunt from my Dad's side as well.

Sorry I am So Quiet. I will be back before too long....

Happy 49th Birthday To My Dear Hubby Mark!! Watch out Salley O'Malley! He is gonna have you next year. Don't think he likes to Kick! Stretch! and Kick! though.

Wow! Where Have I Been? To be honest I am overwhelmed with a lot of things. Last Sunday I had to take hubby to the ER with hiccups. He had them for almost a week and was so weakened by them that he started having breathing troubles. Too add to this poor sleep and almost not eating anything. In addition he had aggravated his knee the week before and it was just becoming worse and worse. They got rid of the hiccups in the ER only to have them come back a few minutes after we left there. The "fix" was Haldol in the ER and Thorazine at home. These are both "psych" drugs. They knocked him for a loop and made him extremely low functioning. He was so bad that I asked permission to either work from home or take leave of absence last week. Boss allowed me to work. It is really hard to be a caretaker. I admire all those that do this full time. To add to all this my son, who is a type 1 diabetic, had a touch of the flu. When it rains it pours.

On the work front it is mid year and that means appraisal writing time. I tried to do that from home last week buit with conference calls and caring for others it just was not possible to complete. Plus I had an overdue proposal to complete. I stayed up until after 11:00 p.m. and got that one done last night. I will have to concentrate and get these appraisals done this week since I have to get them all administered this week.

Then on the crafty front, I have many things I owe. Let me just call them overdue. I spent all weekend working to get a round robin done and to get the prep work done on a second round robin. Here are the fruits of my labor. Scroll through the pictures to see more detail. The picture in this post is the completed RR. Lot's of hand work on this one. The second one is paper piecing. I haven't done this before but have found lot's of great tutorials. Now to get the RR off in the mail.

On a fun note. I joined up for a White Elephant exchange on the Stashbuster yahoo group. I had a moment of regret at first since I felt it was a waste of money from the perspective of the shipping and return of contents in the box. I got the box over the weekend and boy was I pleasantly surprised. There was lots of nice things in there. I chose 6 items that I really liked. Now I have to find at least 6 things to place in the box and send it on to the next person. Assume that a pattern costs $9. I got more than my money's worth. Fun, fun, fun! PLUS! I tracked down Sharon-UK in Oregon and we had a nice chat! She is such a sweetie! Love that gal!

Serendipity

ser·en·dip·i·ty Spelled Pronunciation[ser-uhn-dip-i-tee]

• –noun
  an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.

Four or five years ago I "worked" with a gal at quiltchat.com. We were both OP's in the room. Her nickname was nimblethimble. I loved this gal. We exchanged gifts, did swaps together and chatted our heads off! What a great gal. Then one day she disappeared. I tried her e-mail address and it was no longer active. Just lost touch.

The other day I was surfing the QuiltStudio webring and came upon a gals post about her friend suddenly dying. I posted my condolences. Not long after this I had a comment on my blog from someone who's blog name I didn't recognize. By now you have probably guessed it was from my long lost friend. I am floating on air! She has come to chat with me a few times and we are catching up on lost time. She has an awesome blog and I am in awe of her talents!

Faith, I am glad we happened across one another again! I am so happy to have you back in my life!