Challenge Update..watch your email!

Ulla and I have been thinking and talking about this. If we would have kept to ourselves when we first agreed to challenge each other to make a quilt over the summer only using things from our stash, the finished quilts would have been the only prize we needed. But since we have opened it up for all to join us, we feel everyone who finishes should get some sort of a reward. So we put our heads together and came up with something. No, you don't get one of our quilts. But we did make a special badge saying “I Finished the Summer Stash” that you can proudly post in your own blog if you want. I'm not going to show it here, but we will be emailing it to everyone who has finished at least one quilt within the guidelines. And when they display it in their blogs.. then everyone can see.

We have been trying to keep track of everyone who is posting progress reports and who have finished their quilts. But if we have missed you, or made a mistake in a link or something, PLEASE email one of us and we will hurry to try and make it right. Since the last update, we have found these...

• Betsy at Quilting Fiesta - This one ...and This one is finished.
  
• Kathleen at Creative Urges has started this and finished this.
  
• Beth at Simply Sewn - Finished this one! and THIS one too.
  
• Beth at Auntie's With Advice has a very cute beginning!
  
• Sarah at Anyone Can Quilt is almost done..
  
• Messy Karen finished this one!!
  
• Melanie at Jellybean Angel finished this one!
  
• Maija -Ulla's sis is working on this one..
  
• Amy at All My Stuff has this going on..
  
• Sandi at Piecemeal Quilts is just starting this one..
  
• Anne Marie has finished this one!
  
• Caitty finished this one!

NOW! For ALL those who have finished. We will be sending the badge to your email address, so you can replace the old badge with the new one. And I'll be adding ** beside your name on the sidebar. If you finished a quilt and do not have the **, please let either Ulla or myself know.. we will get you a badge! We don't want to leave anyone out.

This has been so much fun. We never expected this great of enthusiasm.. and success in using our fabrics that we keep hoarding.. I mean collecting. I truly do intend on finishing my own quilt.. by the end of August!

Meme me

Ok. I am going to try to catch about 8 birds with one net. It has probably been a month that I've been getting these tags and such.. and putting them off till I have more time.. which obviously is not going to happen. So let me just do them all in one post.

First off.. I am totally honored, humbled and flattered to have this little blog of mine featured in Jackie's newlsetter for the month of August. Jackie of Canton Village Quilt Works always has the most inspiring quilts in her blog, and is a very accomplished quilter. I love everything she shows and talks about. If you don't have her on your blogroll already, you need to add her. Thank You Jackie!!!

Then here is another REALLY fun one. This has me smiling from ear to ear, and along with Jackie's honor, these have made my entire week...
Anne Marie and Ulla have both sent me the "You Make me Smile" badge.. which I will cheerfully display in my sidebar. I wish I could give it back to both of them, because they are such dear friends of mine that both make me smile. But there are others also. So I am delighted to pass this on to:

• Stephanie of Loft Creations (one day we are going to meet up!)
• Threeundertwo of Lit and Laundry (love her wit and wisdom!)
• T of Purple&Paisley (her dad is guest blogger this week.. he is FUN)
• Erna of Blij Als Mij (this one is eye candy! VERY pretty blog)
• Mary Kate of La Vie Est Belle (My sweet friend in Malaysia ;-))
• Nanette of Freda's Hive (we share a lot)

There are so many more. But I'll leave some for somebody else to send the badge to. And since I wasn't really given any rules, I guess you can pass it to whomever you want that makes you smile.

Anne Marie has also given me the Premio award which I received once before.. so it is already in my blog somewhere here.. but thank you again Anne Marie!

Then Melanie.. who also gives me a HUGE smile but she already got the award.. has tagged me with the 7 songs that are inspiring you this summer. And since I have just finished spending a week with the children at Bible School.. these are the songs that have been playing in my head. Even though they are children singing them in the videos, the words are really meaningful to me, and I love the tunes. I think actually they are sung by other artists.. so I'll have to look them up sometime too. There are only 4 listed here.. but my brain is small and its hard to fit more than four songs in there at one time. You can hear them on YouTube:

Thankful
You Never Let Go
God of Wonder
At the name of Jesus



Then both Peggy at color du jour and Melanie have also tagged me with the "random things" meme. I have played this one before, and I'm running out of people to tag that haven't already received it. But I'll go ahead and try to think of 6 or 7 new random things. Peggy has actually linked me up with one of my distant relatives.. I had no idea anyone even could find my genealogy site from here.. but I guess she is a pretty good sleuth! Anyways.. here are my 7 things.

1. I love Butter Pecan Ice Cream
2. I wear polish on my toes but not on my fingers
3. I love dogs and farm animals
4. I get terrible motion sickness, and can't even watch home movies.
5. I love standing beside a fire when it's cold ouside, and poking it with a stick.
6. I still climb trees and would love to hide in them.
7. I don't like to swim

And there was also another one I got tagged with a while ago.. it was "The Alphabet" Meme.. but now I can't remember who it was! I have been looking through all my emails, and simply cannot find it. So whoever that was.. if you are still reading.. would you please let me know? I don't like to leave loose strings.

A Challenge Update is in the works.. watch for it!

Hitty Day Fun

I feel like I have been gone from blogland forever. There are so many things to catch up on.. where did the week go? Well a bit of it went to working on my project for Hitty. We changed our get-together to Friday instead of Saturday, so I really had to crash course to get my little dresses done in time. This is what I've been working on. The dresses here are in different stages of smocking and being sewn together..

I got them finished all but the hems and the little yo-yos.. and then it was time to bake some cookies and go. This month we are having ice cream cones.. they are sideways, I know.. but just use you vivid imagination.

We snacked on these with our coffee, then had show and tell. Two new guests were in attendance and had things to show us that we had not seen before.. This adorable spinning wheel and rocking chair sized for Hitty...
a yo-yo quilt made from repro 30's fabrics.. ..and one of the girls had a quilt along that I had made one year for the gift exchange. I had forgotten about it and was delighted to see it again because I never took a picture of it before.
During show 'n' tell I worked on making the little yo-yos to sew on the dresses. Then we stopped for lunch. We always have such a lovely spread. The tables were set up out on the patio.. fresh flowers in tea cups were the center pieces.. and delicious beautiful food.
After lunch we worked on "the project". Everyone hemmed a dress and added their yo-yos where they wanted them placed. I'll remind you.. Hitty is a 6" wooden carved doll.
And the new guests had brought a stack of FQ's for us to each take from. These were my picks. I even waited until everyone else had chosen, because I didn't want to look like a piggy. But look what they let me have. SO Sweet! Now I have a 134 new posts in my Google Reader(and counting as I wrote..) twelve unread messages in my email to answer, and a snack to eat. It is going to take me a week to catch up! I hope everyone is doing ok. Sometimes I can't decide what I love the most.. my creative time alone.. or my time in fellowship with my family and friends. Both are vital.

And as far as my Challenge Stash quilt.. here it sits saying.."August is around the corner..." I KNOW I didn't forget you! Also a new update post is coming.

Oh.. a little hint about my new project... that swatch I showed in the last post.. that is my "treasure hunt". I am now carrying in my purse.. I found three of them already. More later.

fleeting moment

As I was sitting here enjoying my morning routine of reading blogs and sipping my coffee, a light from the window caught the corner of my eye. We never usually get to see much of a sunrise here in town, but this one could not escape.

I can't believe a picture actually turned out. In only a matter of seconds, this almost entirely disappeared.

And just a sneak peek of one of my next projects.. I'll explain about it later.. ...in the meanwhile.. this week I am getting things ready for Saturday.. my day with my Hitty friends. I can't even show anything ahead of time.. because you never know who might be reading.. and we all like surprises.

Happiness is.. a Good Yesterday

It was sweet. Full of lots of good emails.. from family.. lovely comments from blogland, and even some unexpected treasures. But first here are some summer stash challenge posts that didn't get put here yesterday. Thank you friends for letting me know!

• Kathleen
  
• Becky
  
• Amy
  
• Beth - Aunties With Advice

Even though I usually do not go to Salem on Wednesday because number one I don't have any money to spend until Friday and number two it takes a gallon of gas to get there and back so I try to do everyting in one trip when I do have money, I had to go because we needed some supplies for our evening children's program that we couldn't get anywhere else. So I volunteered to do the errand. The bookstore was one place I needed to stop, and oh my.. it is located right next door to the Good Will Thrift Shop. Can't pass up just checking the fabric bin in the back.. one never knows.. someone may have just cleaned out their granny's attic...
..and I found this adorable fabric panel with mice and the cutest little house! I am so tempted to make it and play with it! But I know these are worth more uncut. Such a dilema!
Then on the way home I stopped at the post office. Two of these items are VERY special additions to my Fern Peat collection.. and I will tell you about that maybe some other day. But along with the mouse panel, the fabric bin also had a lovely piece of colorful corduroy probably big enough for a bag.. some vintage white cotton.. and a WONDERFUL 3 yard piece of vintage cotton gingham with the price tag still on it.. 69 cents a yard. And oh. A Little Golden Book that I didn't have yet. I collect those too. So all in all it was a very fun day so far. Then last night the children finished their kaleidoscopes which turned out very cute, and we started on a new project. Each child made a "buddy" that will be threaded onto some yarn that the kids will decorate with beads and take home. I just love the way some of these turned out!
And lastly, I received this lovely award from Nancy at Patchwork Penguin .THANK YOU Nancy!

Kid's Craft Week & Stash Challenge Update

I know I am behind with reading and commenting on blogs, answering emails, and posting the challenge update. But this week I'm running the craft station at our church's Summer VBS program. 40-50 kids come every evening for stories, singing, games and crafts. It is a lot of fun, but also takes a lot of time and preperation.
The first night we made glitter filled key rings, and last night we started making kaleidoscopes. We'll finish those tonight. The "atoms" are balls of playdough with the felt-tipped markers stuck in them. The children were instructed not to play with the dough, and to replace the markers neatly for the next group. They did pretty good, except for one cluster of little boys who were not being watched by their helpers closely enough. I had to remake two of the atoms. But oh well. It's all for fun!

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Over the past week there has been some WONDERFUL progress on the Challenge Quilts. I know I have really skipped over some because they are getting finished faster than I can keep up with the updates. And I am probably missing some. Let me know if I didn't get yours here, and I'll start another post. It is pretty time consuming trying to keep up with all the bloggers that are involved with this challenge, and try to decide whether or not they are actually working on a quilt for this challenge or for one of the other ones. If it doesn't say "Summer Stash" in the post somewhere, then I don't really know for sure.

Anyways, some are new who have joined us, and just getting started. And some have already finished quilts! It is so much fun to see such enthusiasm. Ulla and I think that everyone who finishes a quilt by the end of August deserves a badge. I'll post more about that later. But for now.. go look and see what everyone is doing!

• Natalie
• Nancy One finished!
• Lisa
• Beth-Aunties With Advice
• Nanette One finished!
• Jenny
• Heather B
• Nedra
• Melanie
• Beth- Simply Sewn
• Elizabeth
• Another one from Nanette

And for some reason Picasso/Blogger is having some glitches uploading photos. So if mine show up as little x's.. boooo!.. but I hope they have it fixed by now.

Summer Stash Update

Just thought I would decorate this post a little with the Day Lilies that are gloriously parading in our back yard.

I confess I have not worked a whole lot more on my Summer Stash Challenge quilt since the last update. But there are at least 1/3 of the bloggers who signed up that HAVE.. and I want everyone to check out what they've been doing. Some of it is breathtaking! We have two Beth's, so I'm specifying them with their blog titles. We have two Amy's as well, but one of them has not given us her blog url as of yet.

• Amy- All My Stuff
• Anne Marie
• Beth- Simply Sewn
• Betsy
• Cheryl
• Jackie
• Juliann
• Karen
• Melanie
• Nanette
• Nedra
• Niki
• Suzie
• Ulla

Wonderful stuff going on here! Make sure you look and become inspired. And if I missed anyone's current update on your blog, please let me know!

Just a few thoughts about the challenge that we need to note. Please.. check over on the sidebar.. and if your name is not linked to your blog, it is because you have not given it to us yet and/or you are listed as a no-reply blogger, and we have absolutely no way of contacting you or even seeing what you are working on. We do want to include EVERYone who has signed up.. so please contact us either myself or Ulla. you can do that by either emailing us, or signing one of our blogs. Thanks!

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And a few weeks ago, I blogged about the blueberry bushes that we planted in the back yard. Here they are! Blue berries! I took a picture before eating them.

And one more Lily. This one was adopted from the neighbor's.. it was growing outside of their fence so it came here to live with the rest of the other lilies here. shhh.. don't tell her she looks a little different.

A Little Bit of Dutch Today

Anymore it is a TREAT to go to the post office. When I first started blogging in February, one of the first places I visited and put in my sidebar as a favorite was Heleen's at Dutch Colours. I love everything about her blog. Her crafty matroushka, her colorful pictures, her gorgeous bags, even her background wallpaper. She and her sister Corry of Dutch Blue have a beautiful shop over on Etsy called Dutch Sisters.. I always wish to buy something from them. One day I will. Well a couple of weeks ago Heleen had a contest for her 50th post, and since I always sign her blog anyways, I did this time too. And I must have been on a real lucky streak, because out of the bowl she drew my name! This is what I received from her...

The prize I saw on her blog was the precious little knitted heart with the gingham ruffle all around it. So neatly made.. I just LOVE it. But she also added a pretty card, a swatch of wonderful fabric, and two pieces of trim with windmills. Thank you Heleen! I am so delighted with my gift.

I absolutley ADORE anything Dutch. So I thought I might also show some of the things I have. This is my little handpainted Delft Amsterdam Canal House planter. It belonged to my mother-in-law.. I'm not sure where she got it. I have always loved this. Wish I had tulips in there instead of geraniums. And the following are from a piece of fabric.. each square is next to another one, and it looks like maybe it was originally made to form a little cloth book when folded just right.

So cute!
I want one of these in my yard...
And this is a treasure I found once at a rummage sale. It was not sewn together at all.. I did the black stitching. There are several of these 14" blocks, and I do plan on finishing them one day. It is very old, probably dating 1920's-30's or around then.. if anyone can help me with this I would greatly appreciate it. The pattern of the little dutch girl is stamped on, and there are stamped applique' pieces in blue and yellow of her dress, shoes and hat. I'm guessing the rest of her gets outlined in embroidery, at least that is what I'm doing with it. Click picture to see details.
Here is what is printed on the bottom corner. So if anyone has information about this.. I would love it if you'd let me know.
Hope you are all doing good on your Monday thing. I'm turning the air on in a minute..

Soft&Pretty Turbans and The Award

The past few days have been kind of busy here, but isn't that how it is most of the time? With most of us? The summer is filled with birthday parties, picnics, weddings and vacations. All fun things, especially if the weather is sunny and nice.

Well in between all of that, along with the challenge quilt I've been working on these.

My mother's hairdresser came up to me a couple weeks ago and asked if I still make the soft stretch knit turbans that women can wear while they are going through chemotherapy. She remembered that I had made some for Mom several years ago, and she had a client now who was losing her hair, and she thought of me. I said I think I still have the pattern, and I would be happy to make some for her to put in her shop for such a time as this.

They are very easy to make, and you can get the Free Pattern Here.

I just hope this makes things a little nicer for people who are going through a very rough time.

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And I receive the arte y pico award for blog excellence from T at

Purple & Paisley. T has one of my favorite blogs, always something interesting, inspiring, funny, and she is very real. I am totally honored that she would pass this on to me. I'm supposed to pass it on too. So I am going to give this award to all the ones whose names are listed on the sidebar in the Summer Stash Challenge. It has been so wonderful following along with all the progress, and every one's enthusiasm is terrific! You all deserve this award. So take it for yourselves!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

July 4th

Wishing everyone a joyful weekend full of whatever makes you happy.

(picture by Diane Phalen)

Summer Stash Update~New Flickr Group!

Check out what Ulla set up for us. This was such a smart idea! You will get to look at some of her cute little softies, and read about some awesome shopping bags before you get to the link.. so scroll on down... it's all good stuff! Thanks Ulla.

Feedsack Love

Ha-ha.. did I fool you? I didn't think so. That top piece isn't a feedsack, but don't the crafty folk in Japan know how to make a good repro? There ARE actually some vintage treasures buried down in that stack, and I'll show you...

That lovely bundle of 8 1/2" squares all tied up in a pretty ribbon with a card on the top came for me in the mail yesterday. I knew it was on it's way, and I knew it would be wonderful! It all came from Freda's Hive, where Nanette builds her lovely quilts. For those of you who follow her blog, you KNOW this stuff just oozes her love for vintage kitchen novelty prints. And now I get to share in some of that!
A couple weeks ago we were talking, and we decided it would be fun to trade some of our stash with each other. I had some feedsacks and other vintage stuff, plus some Every Iota left over from the last three quilts I made. She said she was cutting some charms packets that she was getting ready for her trunk show, and it would work out for her too. So I made up a bundle for Nanette, and she did the same for me.
Hers to me included absolutely delightful vintage feedsack squares, those are the ones fanned out across the back up there. And also stacks and stacks of the cutest Japanese fabrics.. I could never imagine. I am definitely enjoying these! No two squares are the same, and I don't have any of them in my stash. I just adore that Japanese fabric. This has been so much fun. But how can I ever cut them? I just want to keep laying them out and enjoying each piece. But I'll have to make a quilt one day for sure!
More and more vintage kitchy prints.. I just LOVE them. I think that one with the green fruit was the one she was talking about with the sheen to it. Actually, there are a couple of those shiny ones. Plus more Japanese and other cute prints.

And here is one last look at the feedsacks.. these are some of my favorites. Thank you Nanette!