Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

I decided to write a list of things I am thankful for this year. So in the spirit of the Holiday I am thankful:

• For being healthy. A full appreciation for the gift of life didn't hit me until being faced with the possibility of my death. Now almost 3 years later I am ever so thankful for life
• For my husband who works tirelessly to not only support our family but to keep things functioning at our home. Who without to much complaining allows me to pursue my interests.
• For the big boy who is so smart and caring
• For the little boy who is so loving and funny.
• For the 5000 goofy faces the little boy makes
• For the ability to get my boys out of bed every morning and be at home with them every day, watching them as they grow
• For lots of room for the boys to play and explore
• For cows because I just love them
• for pumpkin, pumpkin pies, pumpkin whoopee pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, you get the point...
• For Family
• For a coal stove that keeps us very warm in the winter because I really don't like the cold (is it spring yet?)
• For my home
• For eggs fresh right from the chicken
• For friends

I could go on and on, but I need to get back to working on Christmas presents. I hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving!

Experimenting

The other day I was looking on the Sew Mama Sew website and saw a tutorial for this bag listed. I thought it was pretty cute and decided to give it a whirl. Thankfully there is still plenty of cheap Moda fabric to be bought at Fabric Mart so it makes trying something new affordable in case you don't like it. However this turned out adorable!

A big thank you!

Thanks to Anya from over at the Hills Creek Quilter! I signed up on her Pay it Forward post. Last week I recieved a box in the mail. Apparently the box alone was enough of a gift because my youngest played in it for a long time.

Anya made me this beautiful bag out of my favorite colors! She also included a pillowcase for each of the boys. They were very excited!

The bag has now become the "Grandmother's flower garden quilt bag". I can easily carry it with me so that whenever i am somewhere and have a few minutes for hand sewing I can work on it. Hopefully it will inspire me to maybe finish it.

So thank you so much for your kindness, it is greatly appreciated.

Finally sewing again

Time to sew just hasn't been plentiful of late due to all the other things going on and the lack of sewing space. Last week I recieved a second email about the quilting fabric sale at Fabric Mart and finally made it on Monday. The sale has been going on for a while so there is much less fabric now then there was at the beginning. I wouldn't know that but I saw a picture on a blog I follow. They still had enough fabric that I was able to find something to buy. The new fabric gave me a renewed enthusiasm for projecting. I tend to go long stretches where I work on nothing because I don't have an actual sewing space. Maybe this winter my sewing room will get started. But anyway, here are my purchases:

a little christmas fabric

and some bag fabric

And look I even managed to knock out a bag in a couple hours. I was pretty proud of myself for actually making something that I bought the fabric for. I tend to have a bad habit of buying something with a purpose in mind and then getting sidetracked by another project. Not this time!

May 29th

Guinea keets I hatched for my dad. This is one fowl I have no interest in, although the keets are cute when they hatch.




Another quilted bag I am working on. I like the stripes with the floral.



And fabric for another. I'm currently addicted to making quilted purses. I wouldn't say I have a clue as t what I am doing, but it's fun!

I found it!

After at least three years I finally found the grandmother's flower garden project I had started. The good news is I found it in a rubbermaid container in the attic. The bad news is that the box was full of other unfinished project that I had completely forgotten about. Now I have even more things to complete. I loved working on this project for several reasons. Mainly it is completely hand sewn so I could take it where ever I went to work on it. Hand sewing or quilting is relaxing to me. Now that it's made it to the light of day again maybe I'll actually finish it.


I started a bag while I was down at my Aunt's over the weekend. Unfortunately I didn't have enough fabric to finish it. I had to run to the fabric store to pick up a yard of fabric for my aunt, and of course I had to look around. I bought a few pieces I saw that I liked. I made this bag this afternoon out of some of it. So now this is the first bag I made, and the other will have to wait until I get the fat quarter I need. It's certainly not great, but I have a pretty good idea of the process now. If I made this bag over I'd make the handles slightly smaller just because the bag turned out a little smaller than I planned since I didn't use a pattern. I did manage to put a pocket in it for keys or a cell phone.

Christmas Projects continued

I'm making a little progress on my Christmas projects. All the small ones are quilted. My mom came yesterday and helped me out by machine sewing the bindings on. Now I just have to hand sew them to the back, so that should go pretty quickly. I took the rag quilt I made for my friend to the laundromat, and now that it is finished it looks really nice. I want to make myself one just like it.

Here it is all finished: