Whirl Into Winter Give-Away!!

The winner is BARB from American Samoa!!! If you will e-mail your address, I will get your prize out to you as soon as possible! CONGRATULATIONS!!! Thanks to everyone who entered--I enjoyed all your comments!

It's time to post the Whirl-Into-Winter-Give-Away and here is mine! A Portobello Market jelly roll and a little tin to hold it in! You need to leave a comment starting tomorrow -- the first--and not before--others will be omitted from the drawing. You need to answer this question: "What was the best present you GAVE for Christmas?" and be SURE that you leave an e-mail where I can reach you if you win if you don't have a blog. Thank you to Lucy for pointing out that I didn't put down the deadline--it will be January 15th that a name will be drawn! Short and simple!!

Have fun everyone!

Jan

Redwork Wall Hanging

This little girl and her puppy are very busy doing all kinds of things in this little redwork wall hanging. I just love that puppy dog because it reminds me so much of my little Cleo---a Bichon Friche that we lost this last summer because of a brain tumor. He was 18 years old. That's a good long life for a dog, but I still miss him terribly. We get very attached to our pets, don't we?

The weather has been nice enough for walks around the block and our little poodle loves to go, anytime he sees me putting on my shoes for any reason, he prances around and barks, and is so upset if we end up not going for a walk. I do let him outside, but a fenced in yard is just not the same, he says!!!

I'm working on the quilt that is not supposed to be, I think! First I cut the pieces wrong for the half squares trianges (too small) and didn't discover it until I had all the half squares triangles made (102 of them), so I had to go get new fabric for that. Then I cut one of the new pieces wrong, but I went stash digging for a piece that would work and lucky me, I had one that would do. Now I'm working on the half square triangles again and measuring and comparing every so often and everything seems to be right so far (knock on wood!!!) Sometimes things just go that way, don't they!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Teapot and Cup for Block 6 Polka Dot Girls

Finished another embroidery block for the Polka Dot Girls--2 more to do on this Block---#6 since it has 3 embroidered blocks this time. This one seemed to go quite quickly and I finished it in one session of Sit n Sew last Tuesday.

Did everyone have a good Christmas Day? I hope so. We had a nice visit to Austin where we saw Evan, 5 yo and Nathan 2 yo, plus their Mom and Dad, of course, and our Son-in-law's parents from Ohio, lots of laughs and a good time was had by all! My son-in-law had my name in the gift exchange and got me a book of jelly roll patterns and a jelly roll--Charisma! What a good job he did!!!!

This is the latest one I'm working on--a friend of mine gave me the panel which has the Christmas Alaphabet on it and I am making it into this quilt called Christmas X-citment. It's from Pieces From My Heart. So far I have the many, many half square triangles done for it!!!! You get a really neat tumbling block effect when it is all done which doesn't show up too well in the picture.

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Polka Dot Girls Blocks Four and Five

Finished the entire blocks of Polka Dot Girls 4 and 5 traced the embroidery blocks for block 6 and am ready to go on that. Block 6 has 3 embroidery blocks with a repeat of the teapot border from block number 1. This is so much fun to do and so relaxing to work on. I'm also starting to work on Christmas panel (just a little late for this year, ya think????!!) that my friend, Jackie gave me. It is tumbling blocks with a Christmas alphabet. It is very cute and I am anxious to get going on it---needless to say I'm getting a jump on next year!


We leave at noon to today to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our grandsons and family in Austin. Should be lots of fun and excitement!


Merry Christmas to all of you!!!


Let quilting help you make someone smile!
(Blogger is doing funny things with my html code this morning so not sure how this is going to look when I release it--hoping it will be OK!!!!)

Jan

NASCAR and Birdhouse--What????

I finished the 5th small block for the Polka Dot Girls with birds and birdhouse. Wonder if they will all fit???!!! LOL!! Need to get Block 4 and Block 5 sewn together, ---will do that before I start on block 6--although I do need to trace block 6 so I have something to work on at Sit N Sew Frayed Edges tomorrow! Two days before Christmas and we decided we still need a break and so we are going to meet--the quilt store is open and we will be there!!!!!

Also finished a quilt top that I'm calling NASCAR--when it's quilted and done some little boy ought to love it--lots of cars in the middle and flags around the outside. Fun to make!

Have one more "quilty" gift to buy for Christmas and I will pick that up at the quilt store tomorrow and then I will be finished! Whew! Somethings came up last minute, but we got that covered! Did a little baking--made "Kringla"--an old fashioned pretzel shaped, soft, sweet dough cookie--yummy! A friend of ours made them some 30 years ago and while mine never quite measure up to hers, I still try every few years to make them.

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

A Big Civil War Quilt and A Little Civil War Quilt!

The Strippy Civil War quilt is finished and ready to be quilted--I'm so happy to have the top finished. Now it will wait in line with the others to be quilted!!! It is bigger than I envisioned it and yes, as you probably noticed, it is being held upside down in the picture, but I didn't want to bother my quilt holder to stand on the chair and hold it again!!!!

Also finished is a mini (16"x21") Civil War fabric quilt. The second picture shows the front top and the third picture shows the pieced back done with the left-over fabrics. This one was fun to do, even if those were little, tiny squares!

Everyone have their Christmas shopping done and presents all made? I'm still waiting for a few things to be delivered from Amazon, but I think they are going to make it on time---sitting here on pins and needles!!! Shouldn't have let the time slip away from me like it did!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Polka Dot Girls Block Five and Laptops

Here is Block number 5 from the Polka Dot Girls. This is the big block and I have the little one to do. I will work on it tomorrow at our Sit N Sew. It has a nice saying on it--- "A good friend is like Spring blossoming in the Heart." I still need to sew together the Blocks from Number 4--maybe I can do that this afternoon.


My oldest daughter has been volunteering her time with an organization called One Laptop Per Child---I'm sure some of you have heard of it. Well, they have now written a manual to go with it and she helped write that, too. She is a technical writer, so this was a wonderful opportunity for her! I had her write a little explanation of what these programs are all about and this is what she said: "The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. They've created the XO laptop, which you can buy on amazon.com/xo through their Give One Get One program. There's also a manual about how to use the laptop for sale at http://www.lulu.com/content/4439260. The OLPC Laptop Guide has a simple, clean cover design and the content inside was written by a community of professional writers, editors open source experts, and OLPC staff. This book contains 240 pages of how-to information for your XO laptop and the operating system that kids love, Sugar. This book was written by a group of people in the unique wiki tool offered by FLOSS Manuals. Much of the content was written in a five-day collaborative BookSprint. In it you'll find instructions for connecting with and caring for this unique little laptop. The neat thing is, once you're done with a real book, you can pass it on to the next person who wants to learn about their XO. Get a book and pass it on."


As you can see, I am very proud of my daughter and what she has done! Hope you visit these links and see what this is all about!


Let quilting help you make someone smile!


Jan

More Civil War Blocks

King's Crown, Cake Stand, and Double Pinwheels finish up the blocks for the Civil War quilt. Now to put the setting triangles on each one and then to sew them to the strippy sashing and they will be done! This one was another fun one to do --the blocks were all familiar and you only had to do 5 of each one--I'm anxious to get it together, but I must admit sewing the setting triangles is the boring part--but there's boring parts to everything isn't there???!!!

Also there's a picture of a Project Linus quilt that I just finished putting the binding on. It is made with April Cornell's fabric called "Portugal". I love this fabric. Wish I could remember the name of the pattern to tell you that, but, alas it has left my memory bank. Sorry!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Looking for this fabric.....

We are looking for the navy/black check fabric in the pictures. It is Bound to the Prairie # 9187-25 by Moda and my friend could use at least 1/2 yard or more if she can find it. She has looked everywhere on the web and in the Dallas area and has had no luck so I said I would post it on my blog and see if anyone had seen it . One never knows!!!!! Thanks in advance for looking!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

More Blocks for Civil War Quilt!

Finished up 2 more sets of 5 blocks for the Civil War quilt, moving right along on this one, it's going more quickly than I thought it would. Perhaps because these are familar blocks! The ones on top of course are Churn Dash and the others are the ever familiar Friendship Star. This quilt is another one that is like a sampler quilt, but you do 5 blocks of 9 different ones and then set them together on point. Setting on point should be interesting.

We had our DFW Gang Christmas get together on Saturday and had a wonderful time. We played games, and talked and laughed and shopped and did a little bit of sewing. I think Jackie and Debi got the most sewing done!!! Kudos go to them! I spent a lot of time talking until my voice gave out to laringitis! What a great group of gals. We met online at the Quilting Passion forum and all live in the greater Dallas area. Each time we get together we have a contest and make blocks for Project Linus--such a neat thing to do! We played Left, Right and Center--a game where roll special dice and pass around Fat Quarters and this time we were to bring ugly ones and guess who won all 72 of them---yup, you guessed it!!! So last night I worked at pairing them off into bundles of 6 to make Yellow Brick Roads for Project Linus---they don't seem so ugly when used together!!!! I'm sure there's a life lesson there somewhere!!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Great Thanksgiving Time !

Aren't grandkids just the best? We have 4 of them and wouldn't trade them for anything! This is a picture of the girls age 6 and 2. We celebrated the 6 year-old's birthday while we were at their house for Thanksgiving last week. We had Grandmas from both sides and Nana, Grandpa, Uncle and Great Grandma, whew--we did it right!!!! Hello Kitty was the theme and was a big hit! What fun!!!!!!

Visits are never long enough and yet, it is good to come home---what's the deal with that double thinking?! When we left Columbus, it was 37 degrees--we came home to Northern Texas to 67 degree weather--nice change!!! That was before the cold front came through last night and left us colder temps---ahhh, the changeable weather!!! It's that way everywhere, I guess!

Now to get back into the quilting mode---I'm working on some friendship stars for the Civil War quilt this afternoon and have traced off 2 more pictures for the Polka Dot Girls blocks. Now just need to get busy!!!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan