Birthday Tea Party

It's tea party time! What fun the grandgirls had with a birthday (Ilena turned 4) tea party! (Isabel is 7.) They dressed in their party dresses and ate lovely almond birthday cake and drank "tea." With a little nudge from Grandma and Mom, they took turns pouring tea . Such fun!!!!

I made the tablecloth and four napkins----you can see where there were some spills!!!

Let tea parties help you make someone smile!

Jan

Mystery Quilt Fabrics!

A trip to Austin to see our grandsons usually means a stop at The Sewing Basket quilt shop in Salado and this time was no different! Since they were having an awesome sale of 30% off all fabric in the store (25% off +5% more if you gave a donation to the Animal Shelter), I just had to get my fabrics for the Mystery Round Robin quilt that my friend, Debi is doing for this coming year 2008! It will be done nesting style, so the fabrics will never leave home--quite a saving on postage--right??!! I had decided to do it in Christmas fabrics and love what I got! The first block will be posted around January 1st with instructions on her blog. Sounds like it will be lots of fun!

We had a great time in Austin with the grandboys and seeing our son-in-law's parents from Ohio. Evan had lots of fun calling us his "Texas grandma and grandpa" and his "Ohio grammy and grandpa!" Nathan just grinned at us with his 16 month old grin, but I'm just sure I heard him say "grandma" once or twice!! Such treasures. There's nothing like giving a grandson a kiss on the cheek and getting one in return!!! What a blessing!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Ode to Dear Jane Sampler

After several years of working on some Dear Jane blocks and coming to the conclusion that I was doing too many alternate blocks because I couldn't do the original blocks (too hard!), I decided to call it quits and use the blocks that I had and make a sampler. I named it "Ode to Dear Jane." I'm very happy with the way that it turned out and only have to decide how to quilt it now! I truly admire those that have finished a Dear Jane quilt and those that have finished more than one!!!! Quilting is supposed to be fun and this just wasn't fun for me anymore, so it was time to turn to other things. It's good to know when to say no to some things and I feel much better now that I have made this decision!

Also I finished the Block of the Week from Crazy Mom Quilts blog. These are so much fun to do and I thank her for doing this!

I'll be off to visit my grandgirls in Ohio for the next few days so will be away from my computer, so therefore no blog messages. Instead I'll be playing 5 and 2 year old games!!!!!! And some visiting with their mom and dad, too!!! We're hoping we don't run into the big storm that is supposedly headed that way--maybe it will stay north of them!!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

From Start to Finish!

This is probably a repeat and I'm sorry, but I wanted to show this from start to finish all in one place--it was so much fun to lay out the blocks with Isabel and Ilena (the grandgirls) and then bring home the blocks and make them into quilts! I still have the binding to do on the green one and they will be ready to go in the Christmas box. The girls had a wonderful time laying out the blocks (and at times throwing them up in the air!!!!!) Ilena had a good time laying them on Grandma's arm in rows!! We made up a matching game and we found our favorites. Just generally had fun looking at them. They were all so pretty 1930's reproduction fabrics. Thanks to my friend Debi for giving me the squares! We added pictures of the girls and formed a big initial "I" in the center, added a border and quilted them with a scroll pantogram. All in all a fun, satisfying project!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan