CUTE TEDDY BEARS, ETC.

For several years there has been a vendor at lots of the same craft shows where I am a vendor selling teddy bears that she makes.  These teddy bears are just adorable and so snuggly!  I was able to get these two!  Jeanne Weirich's motto is "comforting hearts one bear at a time" and her Dad, who is in assisted living, helps her stuff them.

While at my quilt guild meeting last month, one of the members had some fabrics that she was giving away and I couldn't resist this fabric with children showing their teeth.  I decided to make a small wall hanging for my dentist and I put a large tooth in the middle as you can see.  I will take this to the dentist on my next appointment in March.  I hope they like it.

The Oregon Quilt Festival is coming soon - February 15-17, 2024.  I will be a vendor and have been making items to sell. If you live in Oregon or near enough to Salem I hope you will come to it!  It will be held at the Oregon State Fair Grounds, 10AM - 5PM (until 4PM on Saturday).  Admission is $12 for adults and $8 for children under 12.  Go to Oregon Quilt Festival for more information.  And, I hope to see you there!

 January is almost gone already!  Time to get the Valentine decorations out.

FIRST FINISH OF 2024!!

 This quilt was the BOM (block of the month) of the Willamette Valley Quilters for 2023 and I kept up with it and it is now finished!  As soon as I saw the pattern, I knew I would make it.  I even bought all the coordinating fabric needed right away, which is very unusual for me.  Most of the quilts that I make are made from what I have in my stash.  

Here it is!  The official name of it is "Vinyard Stroll" but since I didn't appliqué grapes in the corners, I put birds there instead, I changed name to "Garden Stroll."

 The quilt is 76" square and since I needed a picture so I could enter it in the quilt show coming up in February and it was just the hubby and me at home, neither one of us could hold it up by ourselves and I couldn't hang it outside on the clothesline since it would drag onto the ground, which was very wet and muddy, so we hung it on the TV with clamps.  I plan to take a picture of it hanging at the quilt show where it should be totally flat and will take a better picture.

I'm trying to get my sewing room more organized and cleaned up.  It is one of those jobs that never gets finished.  I know it won't ever be perfect.  We have been staying home mostly since Sunday because of the snow and ice.  Church was cancelled, meetings were cancelled and my eye appointment was cancelled.  So I have had more time to do some sewing and organizing, with a little cleaning thrown in!

The ice is melting, but there is still a lot on the ground.  I did go out to get my mail and saw that my garbage hadn't been picked up.  Hope you are keeping warm!

GETTING BACK TO BLOGGING!

I  have things that I want to share, which I have neglected so much the last couple years.  I will be making some changes in my life this year.  First of all, I won't be taking any more jobs as a board member of any quilt guild.  I have been secretary of Gone to Pieces Quilt Guild in McMinnville Oregon for the last 2 years and I am done!  I enjoyed it, but I also took on the preparation of the newsletter each month and that was a pretty big job.  I just finished the last one!  Yea!

I have one more vender job which will be at the Oregon Quilt Festival in February and then I will not be doing any more in person vending.  I will try to sell the rest of my inventory in my Etsy shop.  Of course, I will still keep on sewing, for myself, gifts and donations. I also plan to do some serious work on my family tree and possibly write up the history of our lives.  I have cassette tapes that I want to transcribe because they have some family history, etc.  That takes time.  But I want to dedicate some time to it.

I have several quilts that I have started, a couple of which will be scrappy donation quilts and another that I started for myself which is also scrappy.  I'm sure there are more, but I haven't seriously looked yet.

My oldest grandson is now a student at Notre Dame and is working on a master's degree in architecture.  He is very smart and loves to read and drink tea.  When I was browsing the Etsy site of Elefantz I came across this pattern, which fits my DGS to a tea!!  Notice the "author" of the book that the cup of tea is sitting on - Yes, it is C. S. Lewis.  He loves the books written by C. S. Lewis, which my son read to his children and which we read to ours:  Namely the Narnia series.  This is a quote by Mr. Lewis.  Don't look too close at the embroidery - I was making this the day before Christmas!  The design is by Jenny of Elefantz.  She has an Etsy shop with lots & lots of lovely embroidery patterns.

This week I will get all the Christmas decorations put away and have to finish a quilt that I will be entering in the quilt show.  Here is a picture of part of it as I am quilting it now.  I need to send a picture and registration which is due Jan. 15.

The center medallion (on the left above) is quilted and I'm about to start on the darker triangle on the right side (there are 8 of those).  

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to post the finished quilt in a few days!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2024!

I buy threads from Connecting Threads and a while back when they had some things on sale, I saw this puzzle at a reduced price.  I like making puzzles, so I ordered it, even though I prefer 500 piece puzzles and this one is 1000 pieces.  The name of it is "Kaffe Fassett's Fabulous Florals Quilt."  The design is actually a copy of a quilt made by him using his fabric patterns.  There are 72 different 9 piece floral designs.  Around each flower is a border consisting of 12 flowers.  These borders are not all different.  I started it right before Thanksgiving and by December 10 I was as far as the second picture.  I then decided that I would never have it finished by Christmas.  We have a small living room and I set up puzzles on a card table in the living room, so it takes up quite a bit of space.  I had to put it away so I could get my Christmas decorations put up and have some room for company on Christmas day.

This is how much I had accomplished by the time I put it away.  Maybe, some day when I don't have anything else to do I will set it up again.

On to more interesting matters.  I belong to the Willamette Valley Quilters that meets in Dayton, OR.  They had people that will register quilts that are "living" in Oregon, so I brought an antique quilt that belonged to my MIL.  It had been given to her mother (DH's grandmother) sometime around 1890.  I may have posted it on the blog before.  

This is a table runner that I made and I just love it.  I plan to make more of them for next year to either sell or give away.  The saw tooth star is my favorite and some day I want to make a large quilt with all saw tooth stars covering it.

I also belong to the Gone to Pieces Quilt Guild (that meets in McMinnville) and during 2023 we had a "Round Robin" program for those who wanted to join.  It was ended on time to finish the quilt and bring it to our December meeting.  This is my RR.  I did the square in the middle last January and other members of the guild added a border when they received the quilt at the next meeting.  Every participant added a border when the quilt rotated to them.  It is really amazing to see the finished products!  I quilted mine just in time to take to the meeting where we showed them

I walk with 2 neighbors in the mornings, monday through friday and on a recent foggy morning I took these pictures because I loved how the trees looked in the fog.  I just love the hugh trees that have grown in this area for centuries! I couldn't get the whole trees in the photos.

The area behind this tree goes down to a ravine and creek.  We've had a lot of rain lately, so the creek has been larger than usual.  A lot of deer live in this ravine and come up to visit us and eat our flowers from time to time.  We love to see them.

This picture was taken in between 2 houses around the bend from the other tree.  One of the houses was built by the people who lived in the other house because they wanted to be sure that the large trees were not cut down if someone bought the lot and decided to cut down the large trees when they had a house built.  These huge trees are over 100 years old and we live in the middle of McMinnville,

This piece of fabric was put on a table at my guild meeting along with other pieces of fabric that this member wanted to give away. I thought this was so cute and decided to make a small wall hanging for my dentist.  I hope it will turn out good and that they will like it.  I will post it when I get it made.

Thank you, dear readers, for visiting my blog!  I hope you have a wonderful 2024!