New Web Address

Please check out my new blog site:

www.werquilters.com

My son has been doing some site work for me.  The new site has some better features for me....plus a catchy new url we all can remember!

Here's to a Happy New Year full of positive changes.

Later,
Lorrie

Interesting...yet Creepy

When I opened my e-mail this morning, I found this in an e-mail from google:

Check it out...a synopsis of all the photos from my blog in a very short movie

(If the movie doesn't play, click here...maybe it will work!) .https://plus.google.com/photos/113579182059625772324/yearinphotos2014authkey=CLGd26LDwImUrwE

Enjoy your day!  Drive carefully!  Be full of the Christmas Spirit...not just wine, either.

Have a great day!

Later,
Lorrie

Look What I found!

Remember the saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure"? 

Yesterday, on the way home from visiting family, we stopped at Hokie Gee's flea market in Everett, PA.  I needed some "dental" tools to use for sewing.  

These sharp little instruments are great for reaching threads in places where fingers just won't fit.  They set me back $1.49 each.  The tweezers are especially wicked.

I wish they still had the straight "picks".  I use one of those that I bought about five years ago...best stiletto ever.   That one cost a $1.00.

We decided to roam around for a few minutes.  We looked at furniture, etc.  I found a wool crazy quilt top in one of the stalls.  It is a good size quilt top.  I have not measured it yet. Looks like a small queen size...great for on the sofa while I am watching TV on a cold winter evening or better yet a snow day from school.

Merry Christmas to me!  It only cost $30.  I always feel sad to see things like this at flea markets.  Someone's Grandma or Auntie put a lot of work into this and no family member wanted it.

There were no markings to indicate the maker or origin.  It is on a cotton foundation.  Most of the patches are wool, so I know it will wear very well.  It has herring bone embroidery around all of the patches.  The stitches are nice and even.  The maker used a variety of colors for the embroidery.

I plan on using the big spaces to do practice machine embroidery before I finish it to be used.  The picture looks so much brighter color wise than the actual quilt.  The patches that are gray or tan in the photo are small plaid, like that found in wool women's suits and skirts.  Even that bright blue border is some kind of wool blend.

What treasure did you find in your life today?  Sometimes we all need to find joy in the littlest things in our lives....even if it is only a dental implement.

Time to go play with fabric and thread!

Have a great Sunday...find the time to find your inner peace away from the stress of the holidays.

Later,

Lorrie

Are you a Christmas Elf?

I think I have about lost my mind.  There are Christmas stockings stacked everywhere...here a pile...there a pile....everywhere a pile.  The piles seem to be growing and growing and growing.

Usually during the week of Thanksgiving, I machine embroider the names of all of the students on my team at school on to Dollar Tree stockings that I buy for 50 cents each the year before while they are on clearance sale.  For the past several years that has been about 75 students.  This year we increased that number by one more class.  Make that 102 stockings.  Still no big deal if we A) hadn't traveled over most of Thanksgiving vacation (It was worth every mile.), B) my original embroidery machine that I bought back in 2003 died.  (DH wanted to know if I wanted to bury it in the back yard...hahaha.  I told him it would be a great door stop.), AND C) the new one was delayed in shipping for 3 days because of bad weather across the Mid-west.

The new machine has finally arrived.  I have the embroidery done on 92 stockings. 10 to go.  Then the sewing begins.

There are three methods for getting an embroidered name on a stocking.  I feel the need to share this because these stockings look better than $1 (unless you look too closely...5th graders don't know any better so looks count for everything...that and jingle bells and gold thread!)  I could not buy the fabric and trim that goes into making these stockings from scratch for $1.

Method #1 (I only had 8 stockings that I could use this method with this year.)  If the stocking has a nice, loose flippy flap, flip it and embroider.  These needed soluble stabilizer because they had a fuzzy pile.

Method #2  Remove some stitches to make a flap.  Unfortunately most of the stockings fell into this category.  I am grateful for the loose stitching on Dollar Tree stockings for this very reason.  After all of the stockings are embroidered I will have a sewing party to reassemble them by stitching up the side seam.  I turned them inside out as I pulled them off of the embroidery machine.  Eventually the pile was higher than my head! (Not a great big thing because I am short.)

Method #3  If a stocking is way too fuzzy to embroider on OR it will not remain intact when a side seam is removed, names can be embroidered on felt and added later.  There were a good many of these, too. (40 to be exact.)  I discovered and used this method last year.  It was a time saver  and a sanity saver.

All done!  Check out the finished stockings below!

102 stockings...all ready to go!

Have a great weekend!  Don't do anything too crazy!  Keep in mind that one hundred of any one thing is not done in "moderation".  What kind of crazy Christmas thing did you get yourself into this year?

Later,
Lorrie

Traveling...just a bit...

Over the week of Thanksgiving, we drove to Denver, Colorado to visit with our son.  Yes...from West Virginia to Denver.  We drove.  It took 3 days to get there.  We visited.  It took 3 days to drive home.  It is all about the journey.  

This was Kansas.

Okay...this is the Tom Tom version of Kansas.  I couldn't get a good picture of the herds of tumbleweeds crossing the road.  How unlucky are the animals that get hit on I-70 when you can see for 10 or more miles?  Just saying.

Our son, Jeremiah, found us some fun, free things to do while we were there.

We went to the Red Rock Amphitheater.  Impressive.

 

This is my DH, Dan, braving the wind and cold.

The view of Denver...also impressive.

More huge, red rocks...

More red rocks...

The Coors brewery tour...Let me say, "Wow!"  They make a lot of beer.  I was looking for oompa-loompa type workers to appear, but they never did.

 This was the Tom Tom on the road up to Look Out Mountain.  A few curves, eh?

 Here is what we saw in Kansas City, Missouri...for about 20 miles...yikes.  We timed that all wrong.  Rush hour on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving!  Ugh!

More about sewing next time!  Hope you had safe travels over the holidays!

Later,

Lorrie

What makes a blog interesting?

I read lots and lots of other people's blogs.  They are about a variety of topics.  The ones that I like best are the ones that talk about a variety of topics...quilting, cooking, sewing, their lives in general. These blogs are posted often...at least once a week.  I feel like I know these authors.  They are friends.  I want my blog to make readers feel that way, too.

I am going to continue to talk about quilting.  Sewing is not always quilting, so I will be talking about that, too.  I wish that I cooked often enough to talk about that.  I like food.  I think I will promote and talk about my favorite places to eat.  I think I will talk more about traveling.

Now for some pictures!  Everyone loves pictures on a blog!

This picture was taken in my front yard the weekend before Thanksgiving.  The sun was setting as we were finishing up some yard work and I couldn't resist running for the camera.  The colors are gorgeous.

 Here are some pictures that I took as we drove around the Denver, Colorado area right before Thanksgiving.  Never fail!  Every time I tried to snap a picture of the beautiful mountains in the distance, there was a sign or a truck....argh!

And then there was a mountain....tada!  The mountains are soooo much bigger here in the West.  (I still love the tree covered mountains of the East, too.)

Parting picture for today.  This is the sunrise as we were leaving Colorado.  The mountains were well behind us.  The dawn of a new day.  The colors were a little past the peak in this picture, but it was a feast for the eyes.  Homeward bound...

I am glad to be home so I can do some sewing!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. 

Later,

Lorrie

Betweens

I always have way too many projects in progress...between the first and last step.  I recently bought a box of fabric at a yard sale for $10.  The lady running the yard sale said she was not a quilter...She had been making square dance costumes.  Out of quilting cotton fabric?  Who knew!

When I was taking a break from ironing the monstrous pile of scraps (I am still not finished!), I came across a very nice sister's choice quilt picture.  My sisters (5 of them) have been politely requesting quilts for a couple of years.  I decided that I would use a bunch of the scraps to do just that!  Here is my beginning....

'

The background fabric is an off white with peach and light green designs all over it...very 80's.  My sisters will love it because I said so. (From a distance it is just another background).  There was about 3 yards of this in the box.

Here are just a few example blocks.  I really like the teal one and surprisingly the Christmas fabric one.  All my beginning blocks have the maroon star points, same background, and black with roses squares.  The other 4 blocks are from the bin of 2 1/2" pre-cut scraps.  I used anything that was light or bright that had 4 blocks available.

It will probably take me a decade to work on these in "between" all of the other things that I am working on simultaneously.  My level of quilting ADHD brings a whole new meaning to multi-tasking!

Enjoy your Sunday...rest, relax, and sew,..sew...sew...

Later,

Lorrie

If you want people to read your blog, you have to write your blog! DUH!

I did not realize that I had not written a blog post since July.  That is quite a nice little hiatus.  I have been busy.  My father-in-law gave me a new camera.  I have decided that it doesn't matter what camera I am using, we have a love-hate relationship when I add the computer into the equation...like a big ol' frustrating love triangle.  Enough about my problems.  

I hope you have all been well...and busy. Autumn is officially here.  This is a picture of the woods from my back deck.  You can see the salt lick for the deer off to the right.  

DH waited 16 years to buy the truck of his dreams.  It only took me a YEAR to finish the quilt.  I had the blocks already finished and waiting.  It takes me a long time to quilt things, even on the quilting machine.  I tense my shoulders.  I hang on too tight.  That makes it seem like work.  I need to relax, but have trouble doing that with the "big machine".

These are the slasher churn dash blocks that are on my design wall at the moment.  I love this technique.  It takes the disappearing nine patch up a notch to a fantastic new level. (Sorry about the blurry spot on the pictures.  Bandit licked the camera when I took his picture.)

What a handsome, hairy, crazy thing he is!  On that note, it is time to sew...right after I finish the Klondike bar that DH just handed to me!  Yum!

Later,

Lorrie

Design Wall Monday

I have been working on this quilt for a while now...okay, a year and a half.  It will be 104" square when it is completed.  I have been trimming half square triangles for most of the year and a half.  (I sewed them all in 2 Sunday afternoons.  You can tell which part of the process I like best.)

I am going through a phase with two block quilts.  I designed this one on EQ7.  My original design was in all purples and reds.  Then I started searching in my stash.  I had enough teals, but not enough purple or red.  Oh, well.

The center of each block is from a 4 1/2" anything goes swap I ran a while back on my yahoo site.  Some of these blocks are crumb blocks.  I can't help myself.  I am forever making crumb blocks.  They are like free quilt blocks because they are made from scraps that could be garbage.

The small blocks in the four patches are from my stash of 2 1/2" squares.  Every once in a while I have a day that I just cut things into little pieces.  What great stress relief!  (It also makes me safer to be around other humans....maybe.)

I don't have a chance to do this often, but I am going to link to Judy's design wall.

I have some great pictures to share from my "Great Lakes Tour".  That is for another entry.

Have a great day!

Jamestown/ Williamsburg, VA vacation

We recently returned from another trip to theWilliamsburg/ Jamestown, Virginia area.  This area is one of our family favorites.  We found a new activity.  Actually, it is an old activity that went away, but now it is back.  We went on a James River boat tour...the sunset cruise to be more specific.  We had a great time.  Here is a link.

Here are some pictures.

 This is a picture of an osprey on its nest if you look carefully at the big bunch of sticks at the top of the tree.
 A great blue heron stands on a retaining wall.  I have conflicted feelings about a bird that is as tall as I am.  Hmph.

These is the waterside view of the replica boats that first came to Jamestown.  I am amazed that they made it to America.  I can't imagine how stinky everyone was after that trip.  Probably no one noticed because no one bathed.  Ewww!

 My parents:

My sister and nephew:

My brother-in-law and nephew:

  

And the Grand Finale....Sunset!  (I clapped for good luck here...like they do in Key West!)We are home now.  Time to get back to sewing, etc.  What are you doing while you are away from your sewing machine?

Hope you are enjoying your summer days as much as I am!

Later,
Lorrie