Aunt Sarah Would Be So Proud

Helmet on head

New scooter
Big smile

Aunt Sarah would be so proud!

Nora's pictures

My best girl hula hooping on one side of the camera -

And on the other side of the camera, she's

taking pictures of flowers

and Gran B.

Pretty good for a four--year-old.

Friday Fill-In # 127

I can't remember when I started Friday Fill-Ins but now I always look forward to them.

1. I love home. I love walking in the door at home, waking up at home, hanging out at home. Yep, I'm a homebody.

2. My favorite thing for dinner lately has been potato salad. I needed some for a potluck Sunday but was so.o.o.o tired. I got a few pounds of Amish potato salad at the deli (a little sweet, no onions) and added lots of carrots and celery and hard boiled eggs. It was so good that I made it again later in the week.

3. We heard the sound bark! bark! bark! and my little grandson said, "No barking." Yes, Grandma Janice, he really did.

4. A nice long walk would have been perfect today. After 90 degree temperatures early in the week, we're being blessed with cool nights and daytime temps in the seventies. Love it.

5. An angel brought some good news long ago, and good news comes to us in many forms today.

6. When all is said and done, I'm almost always happy. Choose joy!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm planning to make a list of what to take to the Smokies next week, tomorrow my plans include making the church banner that I need for Sunday, and Sunday I'm looking forward to getting a library book that I've had on reserve and reading at least a few pages.

Happy Friday, everyone.

March Journal Quilt

You've already seen my April journal quilt, but I've just finished the March one, a little out of sequence. One of the downsides to waiting awhile before doing the quilt is that I can't remember what all the fabrics were used for.

The yellow linen with embroidery was from a work project and I had the bobbin in wrong, which meant that there was white showing on top. Couldn't use it. The picture of the old lady and the instructions were from the book I made for Aaron. But the blue fabrics and the dots and the triangles - don't know.

I could go back and look at pictures but it really isn't a concern to me. Someone asked whether I keep a log of what's in these journal quilts and the answer is no. If I were making what I'd call a memory quilt, I'd do that. But to me a journal quilt is more about ending up with a representation of what life was like during that month. Some of it shows through in the colors I was using, some in the shapes, some in new techniques. Some is just in the composition. Looking back at January's quilt, for example, I can pick up on the gloominess and February looks chaotic.

Some of it shows up in little remembrances of what I was doing too. This March quilt has a bracelet from a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo on the first nice Sunday, a sticker from a trip to the Taft Museum to see movie costumes, and a movie ticket from "The Reader," which was a wonderful movie.

And I especially wanted to include a piece of Peggy King's mass card. She was one great lady.

Lesson four

Way back in February, I was feeling pretty uncreative and signed up for a joggles online class, one lesson a week. Now, in June, I've just completed lesson four, which my classmates, I'm sure, finished ages ago. It's not that it was a labor intensive lesson, it was just that I had troubles fitting it in.

And, there was that voice in my head that said, "In this lesson you're supposed to make a bird. You don't know how to draw, you can't make a bird." I wish I could learn to ignore that voice, if not shut it up. Anyway, here's my little quilt, 8" x 11". I haven't looked ahead to see what lesson five will be.

Saturday after work, Steph and I took Aaron to Frisch's for a quick dinner. In this picture, he's concentrating on his crayoning, but he spent lots of time saying "hi" to various people. Including,
note to Grandma Janice, a lady in the next booth with white hair and glasses that he called "grandma." And a pretty blond waitress with a pony tail that was "Aunt Tina."

Back home, here's his new transportation.

You think he likes it?

Quilt Pictures

The camera batteries have charged, and here's my quilt. It's the Husqvarna Viking Embroidery Club for June and I pretty much followed the directions. The picture on the envelope showed the quilt in beige and light pink, though, so this is a cousin once removed.

It has machine applique and is constructed in a quilt-as-you-go technique, which means that once the quilt is constructed, it's finished. I'd love to add some free motion quilting once its life as a sample is over, but I'm not sure. I tried to free motion before once the binding was on and didn't have a great result. We'll see - the quilt is already telling me that it needs some in fluorescent colors.

The quilt measures 31" x 40" and was designed as a lap quilt. You can see the ruffling on each side of the embroidery above and to the left of the big blue flower below.

This was a fun project, from picking out the fabric to doing the embroidery to trying out the ruffler to doing the construction. Quick, too, as quilts go, even machine quilted ones.

Not Enough Juice

Tonight I finished the binding on the quilt with all those ruffles. Only thing is, I don't have enough battery in either of my cameras to upload the pictures. I've got this happy quilt with lots of orange, purple, green, and yellow and no way to show it.

I'm charging the batteries and you'll see the quilt tomorrow. In the meantime, here's my best girl, eating an apple. I love her technique.