Pretty Patriotic Table Runner

I think this has become my latest favorite red and blue piece! I dont know what it is about the red and blue but it is by far my favorite!

Another orphan block table runner. Yes these are orphans from my finish last week!!!

I picked out the r4 happy red and blue ones, added some white corners

I

Quilted it with my favorite close straight line quilting... is this matchstick? I dont know what to call it... and put my favorite red and white striped binding on it (going to have to buy more im almost out!)

It was a really hard photo shoot to do with little sophie, she liked the new blankee and kept trying to steal it as i was photographing it! 

Update on family.....

Ralph is doing much better. He is able to resume some of his activities although were not letting him horseshoe yet. He gets tired easily and Im sure he needs to keep working to build up endurance again. (if you didn't see last weeks post, he had a heart attack friday night caused by stress, his children literally broke his heart!!) 

Buck seems to be doing better, he and his family have moved in with us. Caty has finally hired other people for zippys so Ralph and I shouldn't have to work as much for her. I think she realized that she cant work us to death anymore! 

I did open a 2nd etsy store. I had so many patterns and they didn't fit in with my vintage sheets and quilts so I decided to just do a store for them. I got several in over the weekend while at the hospital but they are selling so fast! Now that im not working so hard I should be able to keep up. I have over 150 sewing patterns to add!!!

www.etsy.com/uneedapattern

linking up with 

Finish it up Friday at crazy moms quilts 

Can I get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

a finish for a friend

Ralph and I have a friend fighting crohns disease and shes not doing well lately. I thought she needed a quilted hug!

I had started it over a year ago... It was in my ufo pile all this time. Lately when she had to have surgery I pulled it out to finish it.

This wasn't the original layout plan. I had planned on putting 9 patches where the whole squares are... well, maybe not even that, LOL i dont really know what i had planned but I have a BUNCH of 9 patches I didn't use.

(ok.  you caught me... there is about 1/4 of the binding not finished on this one yet!!!)

Family news: please keep our family in your prayers. Ralph my husband had a heart attack last night. We are in the hospital this morning waiting for the cath thing to figure out if he has blockage and how bad it is. He is doing ok and will be ok in the end but what lays between then and now is scary. He is a farrier (blacksmith) and we dont know if and when he can go back to work! 

Life has been stressful. I mentioned buck last time seemed to have a drug problem too. Well tuesday he was arrested for stealing copper. We dont know if he stole it or not, but he also had drugs on him. This breaks both of our hearts, he had the world in the palm of his hand a few moths ago! I really thought he was doing ok. The other son with the problem has been full of drama lately. Ralph is going to have to ignore his drama... i dont know how he will do that, but after last night, he HAS to!

UPDATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON: Ralph is out of the heart cath and he doesnt have any blockage. This is apical ballooning syndrom also called broken heart disease because it is cause ENTIRELY by stress. I pretty much called it when i said all of this with the boys is breaking his heart.

Bucks wife and three kids have moved in with us. Everyone keeps talking about the stress of all the grandkids. We keep saying its not the grandchildren that are stressful. the are a piece of cake and a joy to have around! Its the children who we worry about and cause the stress!

But... its sat morning and im hurrying to link up to finish it up friday at crazy mom's quilts and can I get a Whoop Whoop? at confessions of a fabric addict and TGIFF at What a Hootand make my goal of 3 times a month! hope yall have a good week, i will see you next week with another finish!

a new Friday goal

Ive posted the last couple "Finish It Up Fridays" at Amanda Jeans and it has given me something to work towards and to shoot for... so... I am setting the goal of posting something at least 3 fridays out of the month!

Today it is another orphan table runner. The pinwheel blocks were for a baby quilt for a little boy who is now a teen and when I was unpacking some fabric I found the blocks. Opps... that was a long ago UFO. Now it is a pretty table runner (and I made a table topper)!

The denim looking fabric, im not sure where it came from, either a yard sale or someone gave it to me... the yellow was a recent stash acquisition.. I needed some yellow.

The back is a piece of sheet that I had.

Be sure to check out Amanda Jean's Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up friday posts

On the family front. We have had Dallas' family visiting from Alabama this past week. Dallas is Ralph's oldest daughter. The grand children are getting older, Leah towers over me now! It was a nice visit, mostly here at the restaurant. I like dallas and the kids. Maybe because they are drama free for us, we aren't all involved in the day to day workings of their lives like the kids that live here! lol.

Travis is doing better. He is going to counseling now and he said the guy is teaching him coping skills. Im not sure if hes telling us what we want to hear or if he is really being reached by the counseling. He still seems to be doing better and I am hopeful that trend will continue!

Im probably going to have the other three grand children again for some time this week. Buck still hasn't found a job. I think this situation is going to get alot worse before it gets better.... I am praying he pulls himself out of the tailspin.

Caty is stressed running the restaurant. The electric company gave her a whopper of a bill this month (last month was only 14 days, this month they billed for 44... does that seem crazy?) So im worried about her. She is making some of the mistakes i made and i don't want to see her do that! But she is also her fathers daughter and you cant tell her anything!!! lol! so we are sitting back watching her struggle. The mistakes aren't earth shattering thank goodness, she can recover from them... its just hard to watch someone you love so stressed out and you cant help.

sweet shazam!

With the holiday and the grand children, I slowed down on the ufo progress but I did finish one more cutie.

I made this one from my vintage sheet scraps (most of them are for sale in my etsy store) I really wanted this one to be a bigger quilt but I couldn't find the rest of the HST pieces!! Since i was in the process of tidying up when I decided to finish it, doesn't surprise me! It was big enough for a baby quilt so I pieced together what i had and went with it. Since it wasn't what i planned, i really didn't have a name for it.... till i was quilting it. Im showing my age with the name "Sweet Shazam" the zig zag reminded me of shazam for some reason but it was so pretty it had to be sweet shazam!

for those of you too young or old to remember shazam... here you go.... it was about 1974....

I also made curtains and a dish mat for my kitchen but no pictures yet of those!

Not bad for having 4 grandchildren staying with me all week. I didn't quite finish as much as i wanted but I did get more organizing and cleaning done!

I am linking up to finish it up friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

tidying up

I pulled out a bunch of fabric to work with the other day that wasn't my normal pallet. It is bright and happy and colorful, very kid like.... I have been adding and taking away from it and this pile has become my "reward" for finishing some ufo's! I have a basket with the most recent (so no not even ALL of them) that i want to finish before I can cut into this pretty pile. I am actually going to make 2 very scrappy quilts from it. . 

First was this disappearing 9 patch. I finished it off as a twin quilt. I have not liked most of the disappearing 9 patch quilts I have seen but this allowed me to play with blue and red, my go to colors. I started it on one of my creative days, i wanted to see what would happen "if"... and then i had half a quilt finished. I liked the little satellites it created so its named "Space Race"

This quilt honestly is one that makes me want to try to free motion quilt some more.... I really wish I could have highlighted the satellites in the quilting but I just wasn't brave enough to "practice" on this quilt. So I think I had better spend some time each week practicing till Im brave enough to FMQ on an actual quilt!!

Then the striped monster. I started it to be a queen quilt for Ralph and I but I pulled some squares out to make my first "for sale" item. A small baby quilt out of blue, tan and yellow square but I ripped the backing while quilting it and it didn't end up for sale... it ended up being Tristan's favorite quilt that he uses daily at our house. OH, and i used some squares to make the squishy blocks that the grand kids love.... So I still had a gazillion more squares to cut to make our quilt and I just wasn't as in love with the idea... I made this instead, a baby quilt that i will put in the shop. Just have to quilt it yet. (LOL funny how the pieces to this quilt keep being my test for should I start making stuff and selling it. It took everyone 6 months to convince me that i should! Ralph is still mad I haven't put the squishy blocks in the store but honestly the grand kids keep stealing them and I haven't had a set to put in there!)

Here are some of the other things i have finished recently....

some napkins...

a table runner....

A table topper....

This is kinda cool... a bathmat for our bathroom! I quilted it on an old towel!

So I had talked about goals in my last post and YES I have met them! woo hoo...

my goals for the coming week:

I have two vintage sheet quilts to finish, a twister quilt and a string quilt. Add borders to two other quilts... buy some batting and finish some more.

Now on the family stuff...

Caty is reuniting with her baby's father. This is a good thing, they have been together for 8 years and I think they do love each other... I told her if she thinks she can work it out and she thinks they will be happy to fight for the relationship to work. I know this is what Lydia her other mother (my husbands previous wife) would have said. Honestly.. what do i think? I asked if she was happy with him? I just want her to be happy. But what do I know...  when it comes to marriage and love... my generation (im 45) is really screwed up. We grew up with the fantasy of happily ever after, our parents didn't divorce but our older siblings, cousins and counterparts... well they decided that the ever after part rarely included happy and we watched divorce happen, for me it was like a horror film. I went to their weddings as a child and by the time i was dating they were all divorced. Hmmm wasn't the best advertisement for committing to a serious relationship! Add to that all of the "you cant have everything" movies of the early 80's where we were taught we had to choose career or love and well, all that marriage stuff seemed like the raw end of the deal. So.. yes, i was 44 before I got married. (between you and me I think i picked a winner... it just took me a while to find him!!)

Things with Travis and Bridgette have settled down and Travis has sobered up and stopped doing drugs. That has been a miracle to watch and I am so proud of him. He has faltered some but he is winning the battle.  Bridgette is still in the nursing home and is still not doing well. I've decided that Child Protective Services is a joke. The other day we needed a phone number to something and we stopped to get it from the  investigator. We were told he wasn't in but his truck was clearly in the parking lot. We waited 20 min for his supervisor to get us the number. The receptionist even put up a sign saying to wait, there was no receptionist on duty, so we were in this waiting room and not a soul around. We left without the number, I had 2 two year olds in the truck who were cranky! when they realized we left the investigator called and said "uhh, i know you saw my truck in the parking lot and she told you i wasn't here. I just wanted you to know i didn't know you were out there and I didn't tell her to lie to you" What ever, CPS is a joke. On a bright side, they did have Landon the 6 yr old this weekend and it was nice seeing him. I miss Landon.

But all the changes means the house is getting empty again. Its quieting down, Im getting more sewing time, ralph is getting bored again and not sure what to do (im hoping he catches the "make stuff and sell it" dream again) But were not going to say any of that too loudly because Buck, one of his other sons is between jobs and staying with another family member. We dont want them moving back in.... that would be 2 adults and 3 children!

Uhhh... i wrote this the other day... here is more updates. Bridgette in in the hospital with an infection... and buck isn't just unemployed he either is doing or has been doing drugs! Not sure where this one is going yet or if we will end up with more grand babies... but dang... didn't he learn something watching his brother go thru that!!

forgot to mention im linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts for the first time!

Modern Mini Challenge Quilt

Normally I don't get lucky ... but today was my lucky day. I started reading my blogs and there were all these beautiful entries to the Modern Mini Challenge Quilts and today i just happened to finish this little cutie and I thought... I'm going to enter it! How lucky is that!

I made this block a couple years ago. It was intended for a twin size quilt for one of my granddaughters. I think I got through 3 blocks and they sat in my UFO pile for a while, then i moved them to the orphan bin. A few weeks ago I had "Play Day at the Orphanage" and I made some of my orphan blocks into table toppers and table runners. This little gem is one of my favorites.

 
The original block was from 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 scrap bins of striped fabrics. I quilted it with straight lines close together which I am stuck on for these table toppers and runners.

The striped fabric was from shirts I bought at a yard sale. I had made an entire queen quilt from for my daughter-in-law. The white is upcycled vintage muslin sheet. Binding was from my stash and the backing was a piece from a yard sale.

I will be placing this one for sale on my etsy store.

Be sure to go to Ellison Lane and look at the other beautiful pieces of work. 

Goal Setting

Amazing when you set goals what happens. I used to be a sales person and it worked the same way there... ok, so i didn't always reach the goals but i did come alot closer than i would have without them!! lol... i really hated being a sales person by the way!!!

The goals I had set:

Finish piecing liberty! It is pieced and it is georgeous. I was going to buy the fabric for the borders but i folded this peice that was upcycled (used to be the living room curtains) and i thought... darn it this is perfect for the border!!  I still have to put that on but i really cant wait to start quilting this one... and yes im still debating hand quilting.

next goal was to finish one of the table toppers or table runners that i started. It took a while because i started and ripped out the quilting... but here we have it. I really need to get over this "matchstick" quilting kick im on because it takes a huge amount of thread and time. But isn't it beautiful... i do love it.

The blocks were left over hst's from a quilt i have pieced but not quilted yet... hmmm maybe a goal should be to finish that!!!

The next goal was to quilt and bind the cowhand quilt....

cowhand is quilted.... binding in process, should be done tomorrow. This is the cowhand quilt because the shirts are just shirts cowhands would wear. I was going to sell this one but I decided to put a scrappy binding on it and use it as our beach blanket because i didn't have one. Now I just need to make a bag from the plaid shirts and i will be all set for summer!

Put new listings on etsy... I said 6 and i put 6, renewed 2 and put a reserve listing for a quilt!! woo hoo i did it!

Goals until we meet again... hmmmm

1. finish another table topper or table runner that is started. Next it is a small striped shirt table topper that is almost finished.

2. put the borders on Liberty... i really dont want to stall on this one because i can't wait to put it on my bed!

3.  make another small table topper or runner and finish it for the store.

4. put 6 more listings on etsy!