thirty years in the making

I finally finished it! A quilt that I started about 30 years ago. I don't know the exact date, but I do know that it was started sometime in late 1978 or early 1979. I started it shortly after I quit working after my second son was born and I decided to become a full time mom. I had no teacher, no classes, no Internet, only an article in a magazine and inspiration from my grandmothers' quilts I had around the house.

So much has happened since then so the quilt brings history with it.

I have raised two sons, seen them through college, and celebrated their marriages

I have three wonderful grandchildren

We built a house - did the plumbing, electric, sheetrock, hanging cabinets, etc. on our own

I dabbled in many crafts then decided that quilting was really for me

I earned a master's then a doctorate

I was a teacher and school administrator

I was a college profesor

I wrote and published two books

I bought lots of quilting books and took a couple of classes

I made 10+ twin, full, or queen sized quilts

I made lots of wall hangings, baby quilts, and table toppers

We bought, fixed up, and sold a second house while keeping the first

We retired and moved to Delaware

I gained lots of quilting friends

I often wonder why I never finished it...all it needed was a few quilting stitches and the binding...maybe some psychological reason???

It was hand pieced and hand quilted. There are lots of mistakes.
I have learned so much about quilting since I started this quilt!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

finished cottage

I finished my cottage quilt on Christmas Eve and finally had a chance to take some pictures. My son and daughter in law gave me a lovely quilt stand for Christmas that I put the quilt on. Perhaps next year I will hang it. (Not temporarily like in the second picture!!!!!) It turned out so lovely. It was long arm quilted by a guild member (Jackie Herbert) who customized the quilting to fit the design.

Love this weather

I just have to share pictures of the beach that I took yesterday. We went for a long walk and then visited the marina. It was 68 degrees and sunny. This is why I love living at the beach. In the summer it is hot and crowded but the winter is so relaxing!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wow ...have we been busy with working and getting ready for the holidays. I am attaching some pictures of some of the last minute gifts I made. The pictures were taken before the pieces were pressed and blocked but I wanted to give you an idea of what they were like.

The first is a sugar plum fairy wall hanging inspired by a pattern in Pat Sloan's book, Folksy Favorites.
The second is a checkerboard inspired by a pattern in Debbie Mumm's Quick Country Quilts for Every Room. The red and green candies can be used as checkers and the gold ones can be prizes or the recipient can just eat the candy!!




The third is one that I designed myself. The sugar plum fairy and the tree are embellished with beads from my stash.

Last week my hubby and I had another visit to an ER...this time it was him. He had a soreness in his chest so we decided to be on the safe side. It turned out well. The diagnosis was an esophageal spasm. The symptoms do mimic a heart attack. The spasm can be related to GERD (gastro reflux disease). The ER was great but it was a long night.

Friday, my good friend PAT and her hubby came for dinner and we had a lovely, relaxing evening. She also gave me a couple of the gifts she shows on her December 21 post. The towel with the blue goes so well with my Christmas Star wall hanging! She showed me a quick way to make quarter square triangle blocks and our hubbies talked cars and computers. Her husband created a wonderful light display for their yard that is coordinated with music. He bought a transmitter that broadcasts music over a limited-range radio station. Viewers who are inspired can leave food bank donations. Pat has delivered quite a bit of food to a local food bank! As for the quarter square block...Pat asked me how the math of the block works. It took a little figuring but it does relate to triangle geometry! I am going to try to write out a formula... it's been a while since I taught any geometry!

Pat also shared her quilter's resolutions for 2009. I think mine will be to quilt the hand pieced queen sized top I made three years ago. I also liked her idea of making things from the pattern books on her shelf. I love quilting books so that resolution appealed to me.

Pat blogged about our guilds UFO contracts. I am one of those who signed up for a contract so I need to get finished. I have two of my four completed and the other two shouldn't take too much longer. I only have a couple of weeks so I'd better get busy!!!

Yesterday, we had our family Christmas. Since my sons' jobs (environmental protection and medevac nursing) are such that they work around the holidays, Sunday was the day we could all get together.. ...so MERRY CHRISTMAS from all of us

Restful Day

Today my hubby(that's him in the picture) and I decided to take a quick ride to the beach (it's only about 3 miles away). It was a comfortable 55 degrees and there wasn't much wind.

There weren't too many people at the beach so we had a wonderful walk.

Crazy Days, Crazy Topper

It's been quite a week with working and getting ready for Christmas. Thursday we put up our tree and set out all the decorations. Friday, our grandson was to come here but we decided to go to their house to babysit. We figured it would be easier all around. When we got to my son's house, the tv was on, the aide for my daughter-in-law's father was just coming to the house, her father was still upstairs, and my daughter-in-law and grandson were nowhere in sight. Hmmm, we thought, maybe she ran to get some milk at the store which is just about a block away.


We looked and there were goldfish crackers all over the living room floor so being the nana that I am, I started sweeping them up. I remembered that I had turned my cell phone off while I was at work Thursday night so I turned it back on. No sooner was it on that my son called and asked where we were. We told him we were standing in their living room and he informed us that our daughter-in-law had taken our grandson to the ER....he had climbed up on top of the kitchen counter reached into the top cabinet and had gotten into his grandfather's medicine.

My grandson and daughter in law had been sitting in the living room waiting for us when he went out to the kitchen (she thought to get his juice cup). When she heard him, she jumped, hit the coffee table and the goldfish went everywhere.

To make a long story short, he was fine. They figured he only got one pill from the container and it was one that probably wouldn't hurt him. However, the doctor monitored him for about three hours before discharging him. I can't say enough good about the

Dupont Children's Hospital
in Wilimington, DE.

They were wonderful. Caring, child friendly, and family friendly too.
My son now bought a lock box for the medicine. Since personal care aides aren't supposed to dispense medicines, they always kept the pills in plastic containers that could be handed to her father so he could take the meds himself, thus they weren't using the child-proof containers. They thought that they had stored the pills in a safe place on the very top shelf. Who would have dreamed that a small child not yet three years old would have been able to get at them? Hopefully, by sharing this, I can help others think about the issue.

We came home after he was discharged and had dinner guests until 12:45 a.m. My hubby cleaned up the dishes and we went to bed. Saturday morning we awoke to find the sink clogged. Hmm, it appears that he put a bunch of stuff down the garbage disposal...perhaps too much! He worked on that and I went to work.

He worked on the drain Saturday and Sunday...do it yourselfer that he is...and finally this morning he relented and called a plumber. Meanwhile, I tried to keep my mouth shut.... no I told you so from me!

Now to the Crazy Topper. I made a crazy quilt design table topper for my kitchen that used scraps from the Christmas projects I made this year. One thing that I learned is that crazy quilting isn't as easy as it looks. I didn't do the embroidery that usually is found on crazy quilts but I echo quilted each piece.

BUCK DAY UPDATE

My friend Pat (in real life and bloggerland) just nominated me for a blog award.

1. The winner may put the logo on her blog.
2. Put a link to the person you got the award from in your blog.
3. Nominate 5 blogs.

4. Put links to the blogs.
5. Leave a message for your nominees.

It was so hard to make picks for this...I visit so many blogs but here goes.

Eileen's Attic - she has been so supportive and we share many interests

Purple and Paisley - I love her ideas

Hanging On by a Needle and Thread - she lives not far from where I used to live and I actually visited her guild's quilt show several years ago

MessyKaren - she's not really messy - her ideas are creative

Freda's Hive - I love the way she posts pictures of not only her work but work of her friends and guild members!

BUCK DAY

Those of you who may be from some areas of PA may recognize this term. It is not a day to count the bucks we spent on Black Friday. The Monday after Thanksgiving is Buck Day - The first day of hunting season. The schools are closed and even the place where my husband worked chose this day as one of the yearly paid holidays. There is no use holding school as most of the students and many of the teachers take off anyway to go hunting. I remember once though, when I was a grad student at Penn State saying something about Buck Day and fellow students and even my professor looked at me crazily...they had never heard of such a thing.

In our household we used the day for other things. Since my husband didn't hunt and I didn't have to work at school, we started our Christmas decorations. This was the day that our tree was erected and decorated and weather permitting (alas sometimes we had snow drifts) we put out our outside lights. I got out my Christmas shirts, sweaters, and jewelry. (In my classroom and office people would wait to see what I was going to wear each day between Thanksgiving and Christmas!) We had such fun family time.

I miss Buck Day times now that my children are gone and we are empty nesters. We still talk about getting the decorations done but it takes us much longer. This year I did get the Thanksgiving things put away, the fall door decoration is down, and my winter quilt hung on the wall. The red placemats are on the dining room table and furniture is moved to make room for the tree.

This year I did get the Christmas spirit because our guild had our auction and pot luck this morning. There were so many wonderful Christmas gifts auctioned off today! And I am still stuffed from the lunch we had. This was also the first month of our Secret Sisters so I got my first Christmas present. A gift certificate from one of the quilt shops I haunt. What a wonderful gift...now the fun of guessing who my secret sister is begins!

Well since I didn't get everything done on Buck Day that I hoped I can still be optomistic. In two weeks it will be DOE DAY.