Autumn Aster

This is block F-9 Autumn Aster

You have to look carefully, as the color values are fairly close and the pattern doesn't jump out at you. I appliqued this block, and it was enjoyable to sit and stitch on it. I usually struggle with the "melons" but this time they didn't give me any trouble and actually cooperated with me.

Nice to sit and stitch on a cold, windy night, isn't it?

Stay warm~

100 Dear Jane Blocks

This is what 100 blocks and 13 triangles looks like!!! I started this quilt on Dec. 26th, 2007. This evening, I stitched block 100. I'm so excited... I might just finish this baby!

<-- This is block K2 - Grandpa's Chickens... and SO easy!

The one below is F10 - Potholder.

Ahhhh... hand quilting!

I have missed hand quilting SO much! I didn't realize it until this weekend, when I spent some time stitching on my "Circles" quilt. Last night was perfect. It was cold and rainy outside, the wind was blowing hard, and I was snuggled under this quilt, just a stitching away. Perfect! Even though I bought a machine and frame for machine quilting this past summer, I will always continue hand quilting. I find it so relaxing and peaceful. I used to quilt on a frame that my husband made, but I find sitting in a comfy chair with a quilting hoop works better as I'm aging. It doesn't hurt my neck and back so much, and it's more portable.

Just Jen at Quiddity Quilts posted in response to my article about storing stash. OK, Jen and Amanda Jean, you are welcome to come to my house and fix my stash. I'm in stash envy. I probably have more than you do, but I like how yours looks.

Are you a hand quilter or machine quilter?

The Truth, Revealed

I visited Amanda Jean's blog this morning while I drank my first cup of coffee. This is part of my morning ritual... coffee, read quilters' blogs. Amanda Jean's was the first blog entry I happened upon. I looked at it, read it, scratched my head, thought about it, read a few more blogs, then came back to hers. I was baffled. I still am. Before I go any further, please go read her blog entry so my story will make sense to you.

I will wait.

OK. I think by now you have looked at Amanda Jean's "Stash."

Amanda Jean makes some very beautiful quilts. She's a talented lady!

But, in all honesty, (and I love you Amanda Jean), Amanda Jean could make many more quilts if she wasn't so obsessive about folding her stash into neatly arranged 5 by 5 squares. I thought about this for a long while... ok, maybe only five minutes... but the question that popped into my mind is this:

Do most quilters spend so much freaking time

folding their stash into neat little squares?

It may be that I need a psychiatrist who can help me analyze my sewing area and habits and help me grow into a better, more "normal" quilter. Perhaps. So I'm asking my blog-o-sphere quilting friends to give me some honest feedback.

Your comments will be read without any negative reactions. (Yeah, right). On the first day of November, I will send a small part of my stash to a "randomly selected quilter" who has been brave enough to respond. Yes, this is a FREE GIVEAWAY. I will use a number generator to determine the "winner." That person will receive "some stash." It could be a little, it could be a lot. It will probably not be pressed or folded. But then, there is a chance that it will.

So, here is the state of MY stash. Please click on the photos to open them up and see the real, raw honesty portrayed here. Keep in mind, the sun is STILL not up, and I am on my second cup of coffee.

First, a view of my Quilting Studio.

OK, it's the basement. There are no walls containing the studio. I call it "free range quilting."

My stash is kept in several different places. We'll say it "oozes" from one spot to the other. But in my defense, I know (mostly) where my stash is, and can find it in a moment's notice after much digging and swearing. I'll let you enlarge the photos and look around. If you can find the purple paisley fabric I bought recently, please let me know where it is. I want to use it.

Just so you know that this system of stash storage works (kinda), here is the little Dear Jane block I finished yesterday. It is F 7 - Star Struck, free at last.

The Colors of Fall

I love fall. It's my favorite season. In Michigan, you never know if the colors are going to be good; it depends on the weather. This year, the weather has cooperated, and colors are gorgeous, as you can see from these beautiful pictures of our yard that Dean took yesterday.

The first photo is looking out at our pond. It's in our little fenced-in side yard. This time of year, the pond area really needs cleaning up. Looks a little scraggly.

The second pic is looking out over the naturalized portion of our back yard. We live in a subdivision on the very edge of town. We were the first to build here, and because of the beauty behind us, we chose to keep a portion of our yard natural. We like the wildlife, birds, our deer, etc. So we only have grass around the house out back. This picture shows why. It's beautiful!!!

The third pic shows our pergola that Dean built some years ago, and our bird garden to the right of it. We get a LOT of birds, and this is where we have most of our feeders and our backyard birdbath. We can watch the birds from our windows and our deck (that you see peeking out of the left corner of the picture).

The fourth photo shows the very back of our yard, looking down the "deer trail" that goes down the hill to the creek. We own all of that, too. We call it "the flats." It's a pretty steep, narrow trail and the deer use it to go up and down the hill. They like to come up and eat the apples that fall from our ancient apple tree. Colors down there have just started to turn!

Here's a quilt I made some years ago based on the colors of fall. You can't see the small triangles, but there are different greens, golds, blues, rusts...

Fall is definately a big part of my color wheel no matter WHAT season we're in.

Hope you are enjoying a beautiful fall, wherever you might be.

Win a FREE quilt!

This beautiful quilt could be yours. All you have to do is visit her blog and comment on the post to let her know to include you in her giveaway! Click on the photo of the quilt to see more of the beautiful sunflowers, and leave her a comment. While you're there, check it out. It's a GREAT blog!

Deer and Democracy in America

Four deer tonight, polishing up the apples from our tree. The wind blew a lot of them down last night, so they had a real feast this morning and this evening. You can't see her, but the mom with a broken leg is hiding behind the apple tree. Sure wish I could help her!

Campbell Brown, a journalist with CNN, posted a commentary today that kind of set my teeth to grinding. So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab? I would definately not call myself a racist, and I think if you've been reading my blog regularly, you know that I plan to vote for Obama, who is, by the way, Christian. That's my personal opinion, and you have yours, which I respect. But I AM a Christian, and I grew up with the belief that our country was founded on Christian principles. I know many marvelous people from all over the world, of different races, nationalities and religions. I don't try and push my religion on anyone, but if they ask and open the door to discussion, I will happily let them know that Jesus died to save my sins, and I believe in God.

I am confused. I feel "social studies challenged." I taught elementary school, and not once did I ever read anything that led me to believe that our forefathers were anything BUT Christian. I realize that one of our many freedoms is the freedom of religion, and for that I am grateful. You can be Muslim, Jewish, Baptist, Catholic, Episcopalien, Buddhisy, Islamic, Hinduistic, Lutheran, and the list goes on and on. But statistics show that 76.5 - 78.5% of adults in America identify themselves as Christians. It doesn't make sense to me that we would have anything OTHER than a Christian as our President. The Quakers established the state of Pennsylvania. Roman Catholics settled Maryland. Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled by the Puritans. I could keep going, but I won't.

Reading a quick article in Wikipedia, Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". That may be, but I am still confused.

So what else is new?

Thank You For Commenting

I like to contact people who visit my blog... I love it when you leave comments. It's wonderful to converse and share ideas with other quilters and friends. Sadly, quite often I can't do so because there is no method available for contacting you.

Please make sure you enable your posting of comment to allow me to respond. In your Blogger settings, you do this by going to the Dashboard and clicking on View Profile, then Edit Profile. Make sure there is a check in the box where it says "Share my profile." Make sure that you have filled in the spot that says
"Homepage URL." It's helpful if you check the box that says "Show my email address," but some people are afraid to do that in fear of getting more spam. A way around it is to list your email address in the sidebar in a way that spammers won't be easily able to grab it. By listing your email as your_name at domain dot com (example: caronmosey at gmail dot com) is a good way to do that.

I'd love to contact you... to say thank for visiting!

Sensational Sunday

What a glorious October Sunday!!! It's been warm and sunny this weekend. After going to church this morning, we came home and changed our clothes and went for a drive to see the beautiful changing colors of fall. We drove out to a smaller town through the country, stopped at McDonalds and grabbed a bag of lunch to take with us. Then we went to a small park and sat on the observation deck overlooking the river. It was SO beautiful! I always like to imagine an old birchbark canoe coming through the water... this area was all native american land 150 years ago. More driving and admiring the beauty and then we headed home to get some work done. Dean worked in the yard, and I spent almost TWO hours doing this little fiddly block. I had to paper piece it, and it has 44 pieces in it! The block is M4- Stepping Stones.

Hope your day has been as beautiful as mine!

Circles - It's About Time!

1988. That's the year this quilt top was pieced. It says so in one of the corners in pastel embroidery. I guess it's time to get it quilted! It isn't hugs... 66 inches square. I didn't make it all... several of the blocks were made by other quilters around the country, but I don't know their names anymore. My intent was to create a book of circle block patterns, and this was to be incorporated into the book. If you recognize one of the blocks as yours, PLEASE contact me! I sewed all the blocks together and added the border in bright yellow, marked the quilt, then put it away for future quilting. I marked it in pencil!!! What was I thinking?!?!? So, it's ready to go, and I am longing to hand quilt something, so here goes.

Here are the individual blocks before quilting:

Car crash witnessing blamed on buying quilting fabric

After work today, I went to the Columbus Day sale at JoAnne Fabrics. I spent about an hour gathering my goodies, standing in line and politely arguing with the sales clerk. We won't go into that, because it will just raise my blood pressure.

Coming home, I witnessed first-hand a bad car accident right in front of me. An 85 (almost 86) year old man turned in the intersection and hit a young lady who was alone in her vehicle, doing nothing wrong. He thought he had a green light and could turn left, but actually couldn't.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I saw him pull out, saw her coming, and his car clipped the front passenger corner on her car. She spun around, went up over the curb, hit a sign post (a pretty big one) and ended up on the grass in front of a hardware store a friend of mine owns. His airbags went off, which meant he couldn't see where he was going. He also ended up going in front of the store, but a lot further than she did, and his car hopped over another curb and onto the grass. I pulled in the other driveway to the store, turned the car off and ran to his car. His door had popped open, and he was sitting there stunned. He swung his legs out, and we could see blood seeping through his pants on one knee. He pulled his pant leg up, and his kneecap had been pushed around his leg to the side. It was already very swollen. He was stunned, and wondered what had happened. He said he'd never been in an accident or gotten a ticket. He was found to be at fault, but did not get a ticket. The girl was not hurt, but her car was totaled. Had I not gone for fabric, I wouldn't have witnessed this accident.

NOTE: The car above is not her actual car. I was not goofy enough to pull out my camera phone and snap a photo. Way too tacky!

The event shook me up. The elderly gentlemen is the same age as my father, and I worry about him driving all the time. As the child of an elderly parent, how do you determine when to take the car keys away? I dread that decision.

Someone please do it for me. I don't want this to be my dad...