MORE FLORIDA TRIP PICTURES

Our whole family gathered for our anniversary and that included our 3 sons and their wives, plus 5 grandchildren.  Here are a couple more pictures of our time together.

Our oldest grandson building a sand castle with Abby's help.

Johnson Beach, Florida

Our cake - Yum Yum!!

Butterfly Cottage where we all stayed.

Jonah stayed overnight in the camper with us at Ft. Toulouse Park in Alabama.

Eli picking up stones.

It's always hard to leave the grandkids, but we continue on our anniversary trip heading for the northeast and looking for cooler weather!

ALL BECAUSE TWO PEOPLE FELL IN LOVE

It doesn't seem possible, but 50 years ago, on August 18, 1962, two very young kids got married.  DH's mother had to sign for him because back then in Illinois, the man had to be 21 years old and he was only 20.  As a 19 year old bride, no one had to sign for me.

Fifty years, three sons, three DILs and 5 grandchildren later.  Yikes!  I guess it has been 50 years!  How can it be?  Yet when we look in the mirror, we can see it's true.

This past weekend, we got together with our sons, DILs and grandchildren in Florida to celebrate and had a wonderful time.  We went to the beach, ate food, cooked, played and just enjoyed all of us being together for the first time in several years.  Grandchildren met each other for the first time and had so much fun together

Little did we know when we first got married that we would live long enough to celebrate 50 years.  Little did we know that we would go through good times and sad times, but our love would carry us through.

We will continue to celebrate by taking a trip to the New England States in our camper and I'll post pictures as we travel, so be sure to check back.

Here's a picture of our two youngest grandchildren.  Abby and Eli met for the first time this weekend.  More pictures will follow when we get them loaded into the computer.

Eli (1 1/2) & Abby (3 1/2)

THIS AND THAT

Here is a better picture of the table runner that I posted about yesterday.  It's 44" x 16 1/2" which is longer than I usually make them.

I just finished hand quilting this doll quilt, which I will give to Abby sometime in the future.  She already has a doll quilt, but this one is made from leftover fabrics from a quilt I made for her Mommy & Daddy.

Recently, I started sewing leftover triangles together and decided to make pinwheels from them.  I plan to make a donation quilt with lots of pinwheels.

Here are some more in process.  Some of the pinwheels are smaller, so I plan to add white fabric around them to bring them up to 4" finished squares.  I don't know what I will use for the alternating blocks yet. I will find something in my stash, I'm sure.  It's kind of a challenge to make something from scraps.  I really like the way the pinwheels look - they are just randomly placed on my "design door" so it won't stay that way.

Happy quilting!

AUGUST FMQ CHALLENGE

SewCalGal hosts the FMQ (free motion quilting) each month of the year and I decided to get the August quilting finished early.  The tutorial was done by Wendy Sheppard, who is an outstanding quilter and designer.  She has had her designs published in lots of quilting magazines.  The design she taught is called "Jester's Hat."  I should have practiced more before taking a picture of it, but this will have to do for this month.   I will definitely try to utilize this in a quilt - after I have perfected it!

Another small project is this table runner made out of civil war reproduction fabrics.

I have been keeping busy, but nothing else that I can share for now.  Hope you are keeping cool.  It's been over 100 for at least a week here,

APQ BLOCK SWAP TOP PUT TOGETHER!

In 2010, a group of ladies who had started blogging on the American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine's web site (allpeoplequilt.com), decided to join together for a block swap.  We ended up with 13 participants and each month we sent 2 blocks to 2 different people.  Finally, I have gotten my blocks put together.  I don't know if I will put a border on it or not, but at least the top is done!   Am I the last one to get mine put together?   It was a lot of fun to participate in and most of us are still following each others' blogs.  

DH & I went to the Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth this week.  I just took a few pictures.

Log Cabin quilt - it had embroidery stitches along each seam - made in the 1840s.

Some civil war era clothes.

What a pretty blouse!

Look at the antique sewing machine.

That was a horrible time in our nation's history.  It's hard to even imagine what the people went through during that time.  I participated in the civil war block series last year and now I have another quilt top to put together!  I hope to get to that before the end of the year.  

Thanks for visiting!  And thanks for so many comments - I'm sorry that I haven't replied to all of them.