Hard to believe that it has been a month since I wrote a blog entry - falling back into my old ways! Last month I babysat for 3 grands while their mom and dad took a well-deserved trip to NYC. After they went to bed I was able to do some sewing on my Christmas version of Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesties that I started at her workshop in VA earlier in the month. I've sewn two rows of blocks together, but not the rows to each other. Here are those two rows at the top and some other blocks that I have tentatively put together.
I think I will make it at least 2 more blocks wider than I had originally planned to make it a full size. I've added in some lights that are more patterned than what I started out with, and have to look at it awhile to see if I really like it. I think when I get more blocks sewn together I'll like it better because the two blocks that are mirror images of each other can be more separated.
When I got home from the babysitting I had a packet from Erin that had 4 light background Christmas blocks in it, so I will definitely be adding them to my design. Thanks again Erin!
The day after I got home from the babysitting DH and I drove to FL for a week of Braves spring training games. We saw games in Kissimmee, Ft Myers, 2 at the Braves home ball park at Disney World, and Viera near Cocoa Beach. 
Also spent time with DH's sister and BIL, one of his cousins and her DH that he hadn't seen in years, one of my cousins and her DH, and my DH's brother and his family who live in the ATL area but just happened to be in FL the same week that we were. Besides 5 games and visiting relatives we had time to spend one day at Universal seeing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, rode the River Adventure at Jurassic Park, ate dinner at Mel's Drive-in, saw a Mardi Gras parade and a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. You can see more pictures from that week on my Flickr page. Since that time I feel like I've just been catching up on non-quilty things here at home.
I did finally put a hanging sleeve on Celtic Sunrise, a wall hanging I made as a challenge quilt while in the guild in Lexington, so it is now hanging in my quilting room. 
This pattern is from Quilter's Cache, and is a tribute to my DH's Irish roots. While we were traveling to, from and around FL I worked some more on my Grandmother's Flower Garden hexagons. 
I still need to make 13 more whole flowers and 10 halves to fill in at the top and bottom of the 5 shorter rows, but after almost 4 years of working on it now and then I can see the end of the piecing. When I finish I will have 95 whole flowers and 10 halves. The centers are the same but the outer rings are different in each one, and all are florals.
I've signed up for the Stashbusters Club at A Scarlet Thread, my LQS, next Wednesday. The quilt for this month is called "Simple Simon" 
The idea of course is to use some of our stash to make the quilt, so I've got to decide which of my fabrics I want to use for this one - I'll be trying hard to not buy more fabric to make it. And you all know I need another project started!
The frayed edge quilt for Lily has just come out of the dryer after two rounds of washing and drying to make sure it is nice and fluffy. All it needs now is the label and I am waiting confirmation on her full name before printing it on the label material. Here it is when I was still snipping. 
I had hoped to get it finished by Friday so I could deliver it to the grandparents yesterday but that didn't happen. We'll see them again Wednesday so I'll deliver it then. While I was making this one I kept thinking that I wanted to make a big one for us. I have a lot of the squares cut for one similar to this one 
that I made for the most cold-natured of our daughters and her hubby 2 years ago. In fact, since I started this blog entry I have laid out the front of a slightly smaller one for us. The big challenge will be what to put on the back of ours since I have run out of some of the fabrics I used on the front. In fact, with two of the diagonal lines I alternated two similar fabrics on the front. Can you tell which ones they are? This is the top part of the quilt 
and here is the bottom part of it - my table is in the way of putting it all together in one place. 
This one is on my "design floor" since my "design bed" in the guest room still has the orange crush quilt on it and the design wall I plan to hang up has the quilt from a retreat I went to in November still on it. How many more spaces can I find to lay out quilts on before I finish up some of them? Well, the plan is to work on this frayed edge quilt this week, then finish the top of the orange crush the next week. As long as I have it finished in time for the Bonnie Hunter workshop I'm taking with my old guild in Virginia of February 11 and 12 I'll be fine.
As I look at the pictures above, I see that I have a couple of blocks out of place - why is it that you can see errors in a picture easier than you can see it just looking at it?
My oldest daughter has started working on her first quilt and we are planning to get together to sew on Thursday. She is an attorney who works from home on a contract basis with other attorneys. The work is not as steady as working in a firm, which she did for several years, but her time is much more flexible, and allows her to volunteer in her son's kindergarten class. Her two younger ones go to day-care, so we should have some uninterrupted time to sew, then time to visit with them when they come home from school. Sounds like great fun to me. If I can get at least some of my rows of this quilt sewn together by then I could begin sewing the rows to each other while I am there. Always helps to have a goal, even if sometimes you don't reach it.
We were with this daughter and her family Friday night and Saturday morning. It takes a little more than an hour on a good traffic day to get from our house to theirs on the north side of Atlanta. My hubby and my daughter and all of her family participated in the Polar Bear Run (5K for Dave and Becky, 2K for her husband and son, cub runs for the little girls) Saturday morning at a church near her house. It was the first time our family had done anything like that with 3 generations participating - we hope it won't be the last! 
After the run we came back down to our county to go to our nephew's wrestling match. He is a high school senior, and we have been attending several of his matches. We are all hoping he makes it to the state championships.
Friday I was able to help out the daughter who lives about 10 minutes from us. Their heat went out Thursday night, and I was able to go over to the house to let in the repairman on Friday so they didn't have to take off from work. Then that afternoon I picked up their 18-month old from her babysitter and met her mom at the doctor's office for her well-baby check-up so she didn't have to try to leave early from her teaching job to get to the appointment on time.
I am SO glad that we are able to do all these things for and with our family down here!
In the last 6 weeks or so I have been out of town 4 times - Beach Week for our family the 2nd week in June, a 5-day cruise with DH's brother's family the last week in June, a great-nephew's christening July 11-12, and now I am in GA to help middle daughter with her new baby daughter. I am feeling like I will never get caught up on email, blogs, Yahoo groups, etc. However, I have a quilting friend who is way busier than I am and she posts blog entries much more frequently (EH, you know who you are), so I am finally posting a contribution to Blogland.
In the last few weeks I have had two encounters with Quilters - Capital "Q" because both of them have published patterns that I have used or had some relationship to. First of all, a few weeks back I had a whole Friday all to myself - doesn't seem like such a big deal for a retiree, but trust me, it is! I wanted to get some serious work done on new granddaughter's quilt. Her parents picked out Squarin' Around after looking at hundreds of patterns that I showed them in books, magazines, and my stash of singles. We finally settled on some of the fabrics from the "Backporch Bouquet" collection from Maywood Studios, with other fabrics added in. I made a few blocks, which don't look anything like I thought they would when I looked at the pattern, and took them to the beach with us so they could see what I had done so far. We tweaked the fabric selection a bit so I was ready to roll the Friday after the beach trip. I cut out enough pieces to get started on and began sewing them together, did the trimming of the blocks, etc -- and had real trouble getting them to come out right. Such trouble that I felt like I could only use about 10 of the first 20 blocks I made. By the afternoon I was wondering what my problem was, and what I could do differently and was getting pretty frustrated and worried. In desparation I googled the designer of the pattern - Karla Alexander - to see if I could find a link or email address for her. I did find her listed on a webpage with a place to send her an email message. So I did that, describing my problem. As I was thinking about which of my MANY UFO's I wanted to work on while I waited to hear from her in the next few days my phone rings - and it is Karla!! This was not more than 5 minutes after I pressed "Send!!" She said she had just turned on her computer and saw my message so thought she would just give me a call. She gave me some good advice about the situation and encouraged me to continue. I am still amazed that she responded so quickly. Too bad she lives in Oregon and I live in VA - I am the Program Co-chair for my guild and I'd suggest her in a heartbeat for a program but I don't think our program budget could swing airfare for a trip from Oregon! A couple of weeks ago I had a message from Christine Thresh, who designed the Going Around in Circles Again quilt that our daughter Allie made for the niece of her employers. She was very complimentary of Allie's work on the quilt and we emailed back and forth a couple of times. I was happy to hear the compliments, and gladly forwarded her messages to Allie. Pretty cool!
My quilting has taken a back seat since August 13 when I left here to go to Johnson City, TN to visit my mom for the night, then on to Marietta, GA to stay with our oldest daughter and her family. They were expecting their 3rd child on August 16 and needed some help getting ready and someone to stay with the older two while they were at the hospital. Lillian arrives Saturday afternoon just a few minutes before I got to the hospital. I would have loved to be there for the arrival, but was staying with the siblings. Our middle daughter and her husband came up to help with the kids, but I didn't leave quite soon enough after they got there. I did get to hold Lillian a few minutes after I got there and later that afternoon this picture was taken of me with the three siblings. 
If you look closely you can see that Jack and Reba were just as interested in Mom's crackers as in Lillian! After Lillian and her mom came home from the hospital my son and his son, Atticus, came from Athens, GA to visit - here are cousins Atticus and Jack in the Disneyland t-shirts we bought them 
. Reba wanted me to take pictures of her too, so here is one of the best ones - 
.
I had time for dinner at a cute little restaurant, The Fickle Pickle in Roswell, with my nephew, his wife and their new baby, Sofie. Here they are with the quilt I had just given them for her - 
Yes, Sofie has red hair - hopefully it will be as beautiful as her mom's!
I did get a little quilting done while I was in GA. I have started a quilt for Lillian - 
I have eight more stars to piece and the outside border to finish piecing. Those stars are hard for me to get just right, so I have taken a little break from it and have been working on my Grandmother's Flower Garden. I now have 25 out of probably 91 flowers - 
with this on our bed I have a better idea of how far I have to go! I am sure after this weekend I will be getting back to Lillian's quilt, but this weekend we are going to DC to see 2 Braves' games, then back home Sunday night and the probably to Richmond for the last Richmond Braves' game Monday afternoon. I see more GFG flowers being made on these trips!
We left here Tuesday, May 6, after work and went to Johnson City, TN, for a night with my mom, then on to Atlanta on Wed. We checked into our hotel and met one DD and her husband at the Braves game - a tradition for us whenever possible when we are in ATL. Thursday morning (while DH was attending his conference) I met oldest DD to get her son, and his carseat; he and I drove to Zoo Atlanta and met DS and his son there for several hours at the zoo with the boys - 4 yr old and a 3 1/2 yr old. Fun, fun, fun, and very heartwarming to see my son's parenting in action. He is a stay-at-home dad and very good at it! Here he helps Jack and Atticus share some "fluff" - I think this was the highlight of the zoo visit for the boys! 
Thursday evening there was a reception for the conference where we managed to get enough food to count as dinner. Friday morning I relaxed around the hotel a bit, then DH was thru with the conference and we sat out to explore. He grew up in Chamblee, and we are back there several times a year, so the area is not all that new to us, but it keeps changing! We went up to the Perimeter Mall area, detouring by the house in Chamblee that his family used to live in. Then we decided to try to get to Marietta without going on I-285 ---- and discovered that there may be a way, but the way we went was not quick and might not be the best way! We did eventually find our way to Red Hen Fabrics, after being on Marietta Parkway much longer than was necessary. I've been to Red Hen several times, and like to go back there frequently when I am in the area. They will be moving their shop to another location about 1 mile away at the end of the month. Oldest DD and her family live in Marietta and we spent Friday night and Saturday morning with them - even got to babysit her 2 while she and DSIL did a little shopping. Here I am with Reba and Jack 
Then to McDonough to visit middle DD and her hubby. Marietta DD and her family followed us there, and DH's mom and one of his sisters came down from Flowery Branch, plus McDonough's DSIL's parents, grandparents and sister were also there. Good times, great food from the grill; we spent the night there and then it was back to Lexington on Mother's Day. We got home just in time to quickly grill some steaks for dinner. I've posted quite a few pictures from our trip on our Flickr page.Quilt-wise I worked only on my Grandmother's Flower Garden -- it is so portable when you are working on the individual flowers. Here it is now - 18 sewn together and 3 (far left ones on rows 1, 3 and 4) ready to sew on. 
I've now had a few days to get re-oriented to being at home and trying to catch up a bit on stuff.
Thursday I got off my part-time job a bit early, and spent some good time working on the OC quilt. It will soon be time for Clue #5, and I was still working on #2. Last night I finished Clue #2 
and got all the pieces cut for #3. Last week I jumped ahead to make one block of Clue #4 to see if I still like the fabric I selected for Bonnie's "red" - I do like it! 
Can't post it on the Quiltville Group yet since I don't have but one made - but I can post it here! I'm hoping to get all of Clue #3 done today.
