I attended the Arizona Quilters Guild quilt show on Friday March 28th and bought the pattern, Ellie the Elephant designed by Barbara Jones. http://www.bjdesignsandpatterns.com
I loved the whimsical patchwork elephant. I decided to make Ellie and challenged myself to only use batik fabrics from my stash and I was able to complete Ellie in just 2 days. Ellie is constructed using raw edged appliqué, I used a dense satin stitch to appliqué each piece to the background. Ellie was given to Jessica Jones Gamez on Tuesday April 1 to be machine quilted.

AQS, American Quilter's Society, held their first show in Phoenix this year and my quilting buddy from Henderson Nevada traveled to Phoenix to attend the AQS show February. We alway have a great time when we attend quilt shows and take classes. I signed up for an appliqué class with Karen Kay Buckley, the class project was one block from Karen's award winning quilt, Fiesta Mexico.

I finished the center of block and have started on the borders.



This a picture of Karen's finished class project. As you can see, I have a lot of work to finish my class project.

I am behind in posting my completed Bird Dance top. I had a total knee replacement on January 14, 2014, life is slowly getting back to normal. Last Tuesday, I took Bird Dance to Jessica Jones Gamez to be machine quilted, I can't wait to get it back. Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading, physical therapy and generally just relaxing, something I probably don't do very often.

All the blocks are now complete and sewn together. I have really enjoyed stitching the bird blocks and learning some new stitches. I am working on the borders and I can't wait to sew them on the top.

It all started with Mistletoe Magic, a pattern by Debbie Busby of Wooden Spools Designs. I completed the kissing ball stamp pillow in 2011 and but the finishing the wooly green mistletoe was bit more elusive. Debbie Busby's pattern instruction called for buttons on the hanging mistletoe. While I was at the 2011 Houston Quilt Show I saw small wool balls and decided I would use wool ball rather than buttons. It was not easy to find about 70 cream wool balls but I did it. When I got home, I began sewing on all the wool balls. Much to surprise Katie, my standard poodle, decided that these wool ball were quite tasty. Katie was stealing the wool balls from the bowl as I was trying to sew them on the mistletoe sprigs but I finally sewed all the wool balls on the wool mistletoe sprigs. I left the almost finished mistletoe ball in a project bag and left the house for an appointment. A few hours later, I came back home and I discovered a ripped and torn project bag in the back yard, mistletoe sprigs minus wool balls strewn around the yard. Lucky for Katie, I was able to buy more wool balls on line, then the bow was the only thing missing. I may be able to do a lot of things but making a wired floral bow is not something I can do. Last week, my friend Wanda Seal, came to my rescue. The bow she made is beautiful. So 2 years later, the pillow and the mistletoe ball are now complete.

It is that time of year, time to unpack all the Christmas decoration. I put up my tree on the day after Thanksgiving and have been busy putting up over 400 ornaments. I have a 9 foot tree and really struggle to get all my ornaments hung. I began collecting and making Christmas ornaments in 1969. I have 33 years of Hallmark Frosty Friends ornaments, who would have guess that Hallmark would continue that series. There are needlepoint, crewel, counted cross stitch, felt, and wool appliqué, and bread dough/femo ornaments made by myself, Lucie, my mother and other crafters. I hang my ornaments and reflect on Christmases past and family no longer with me. Each ornament has some special meaning.

Christmas stocking are hung on the fireplace place, no easy task since I removed the mantle during the remodel.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season.

I finished stitching Bird Dance blocks 25, 26, 27. I have begun to stitch blocks 28, 29 and 30 which are the final birds. I received the border for the quilt last week which has 96 circles to stitch along a vine. Just cutting 96 1" circles seems overwhelming.



I continue to get my house organized after my remodel. Molly had the difficult job of testing out my new sectional. We all should have such a difficult life.

I am finally getting caught up after my trip to the Houston Quilt Show. I flew to Houston on Wednesday, October 30 with my quilting buddy from Henderson Nevada. Can you imagine about a thousand quilt vendors in one place plus hundreds of spectacular award winning quilts, the Houston Quilt Show is simply overwhelming. I became fascinated with the World of Mother’s Dream quilts by Reiko Kato. The quilts are exquisitely hand appliquéd and so charming.
This is one of Reiko Kato's quilts from the show.

Starting with blank walls has given me a great opportunity to arrange new groupings of my quilts and pictures. I moved my desk into the great room, in an area formerly know as the family room. Today, I hung the Funky Baltimore Album quilt plus two of my watercolors. The cactus watercolor use to hang on the living room side of my fireplace.


This is a corner in my living room. Lucie and John bear are sitting on the Victorian marble top table. Fang, a bear made from Lucie's wolf parka, is on the audio/video component cabinet. The Japanese needlepoints were done my mother. The wall with the rose watercolor will also have a grouping of some painted china, which I hope will be hung soon.


My blue and yellow hunter's star is hanging above the atrium window, it has always hung there. Lucie did the seagull stain glass.


I hung my wool appliqué quilt above the player piano.

Life has been quite hectic. The remodel/construction finished Saturday, October 12, 2013 but the clean up was just beginning. Closets, everything in the kitchen, basically everything in the house needed cleaning. I am beginning to place furniture and rehang everything on my walls. Last Saturday was the first time I was able to stitch on my Bird Dance blocks. Before the remodel began, I was almost finished stitching the August blocks, blocks 22, 23 and 24. Last night, I finished the blocks and placed them on my design wall. It really felt good to do something besides cleaning and organizing. I will really have to concentrate on finishing September, blocks 25, 26, 27 and October blocks 28, 29, and 30.