The Place with Eyes

     I made this long ago for my father.  Ice cream is in our family. Our entire lives, no matter the event, we went out for ice cream.  Lazy Sunday afternoon, my dad would say, "Hey Elaine, Let's go for a ride." Off we'd shoot to look at boring boats, cars, or other things kids "love."  However, after the boredom, we'd end up at one or another place for ice cream.  "Want to go out for ice cream?"  Or as we said in front of the dog, because she knew what it was or my little brother before he caught on....I-C-E Cream.  Buy a new car? Ice cream. Recital, Band concert? Ice cream.  

       After the girls were born, an ice cream shop opened  that put little candy eyes on the cones.  They loved to go to the "place with eyes with grandma and grandpa!" The ice cream tradition continued through their recitals and concerts.  Sometimes the place with eyes, sometimes not.  A number of years ago, as adults, they went to Ohio for a visit. Naturally grandpa had to take them to the place with eyes! 

When I bought my first sewing machine that "made letters," I made this little quilt for my dad.  It's interesting to see my attempt at binding and how I attached the one border the wrong way but, he happily hung it in his work room for years!  The outer edge has all of the reasons and places we went for ice cream.  Of course, the cones all have eyes!

It makes me sad that this little wall hanging lives at my house now but, in a way, also happy.  I know my dad enjoyed looking at it as much as I do now.

Super Sized Nine Patch

I have wanted to make this simple fun quilt for quite a while.  The problem was I had no excuse to make a baby quilt! Luckily a friend and coworker decided it was time to have a baby! It was super simple.  My only criticism is of myself.  I made it from flannel, quilted the first one  too tight and caused the quilt to ripple a bit.  I decided it made no difference as this sweet baby won't care too much!

Design Wall

Finally, finally finsished!!! Yippee, Yappee, Yahoooeee!!!! This has been languishing in my UFO box for almost 2 years. DH COULD. NOT. start the new football season with a golf quilt on the back of his chair now could he?? Now he has a Cleveland Cavs quilt and a Cleveland Browns and a generic golf quilt ready to adorn the back of his chair during the appropriate season! Perhaps this will help the final score for our Ohio teams????

This will have to qualify as my design wall as I finished it last night and my wall is now empty!!!

What's that strip at the top of the quilt you ask? Why it's the only piece of paw print fabric I own....hence, it's the dog pound....or if you are a Browns fan and get the reference, it's the dawg pound!!!! It cracks me up!!! (in case you are not a football fan, the dog pound is the area under the end zone at the stadium.)





Some poor color shots but you can kinda see the quilting. I used a panto called popcorn and I love it!





Click on over to Judy's blog and see what the rest of the quilters are working on this week!

Stash report/Catching up

******YEAH!!!! I'M BACK ON!!! COULDN'T LOG IN! ACTUALLY FOLLOWED DIRECTIONS AND CLEARED COOKIES AND VIOLA!! HERE I AM AGAIN!! WHOOHOO!!!!

So funny, I haven't blogged in two months, the urge hits me, blogger is down and it drove me nuts! I guess I'm really NOT ready to quit blogging!!!

Lots to catch up on…
In the department of stash busting….

INCOMING- I bought 5 yards of oriental prints to make an anniversary quilt for my daughter Serena and her husband Chris. I had NOTHING in my stash that would even remotely qualify for oriental. Since it’s their quilt, I figured I’d use fabric they would like!

*****EDIT SINCE THIS MORNING******Went to a friends "getting rid of my fabric" sale. Bought 5 lbs at $3/lb.....equals 20 yards!! I'll take pics of it later and show.....I'll take the "hit" as I got a bunch of wool felt, a few nearly finished projects, and all blenders,neutrals, and tone on tones, mostly pieces but a few bits same as or bigger than fat quarters...things I need!


OUTGOING-I finally finished my April UFO! I used 10 yards of fabric on this! Aviva has a whole room devoted to the Simpsons and I knew she would love this.



Individual blocks.





Doesn't this fabric just scream the Simpsons!



Plus I finished this little cutie! It’s a doorstopper. It didn’t use much fabric but something is something. I used a pattern from Thimbleberries but the door stopper was my idea. It didn’t quite work as planned and it ended up like a big pillow but I still love it!



Used this period: 11
Used year to Date: 59
Added this Week: 25
Added Year to Date: 101.5
Ahead or behind 2011: 42.5 purchased...therefore behind

The Flip Flop Quilt

I could have sworn that I'd already posted this quilt. (if you've already seen this, sorry. I just couldn't find it. Point me to the right spot so I can stop pulling out tufts of hair!) I would have been willing to bet on it! I searched and searched my blog to no avail. Thanks to Sandy I was able to add my webshots photos to the blog. Bloggers are the best!!!





This quilt was a total labor of love. It is also one that I entered into a quilt show a few years ago. Not such fabulous comments from the judges but that's ok. I really didn't enter it to be judged, just to be seen.

You have to read the label in order to understand the quilt. The label give both an explaination of the quilt and a legend to explain each block. I freemotion quilted it on my home machine. You can't really tell but I echo quilted the flip flops to look like they were in the sand. The blue fabric looks like bubbles. The fabric from the quilt came from my stash. Frugal. The flip flop trims were purchased. Very expensive!

the quilting

The finished quilt from Auntie Camp. I used this quilt to practice my machine quilting. I love quilting on the longarm but I love quilting on my DSM also. Here are the various patterns I worked on. I really had fun and I worked on lots of feathers.


LOVED working on these feathers!

The truth behind the quilt

You saw the finished product of Ms. A's quilt. What you didn't see was the horrid thing it was before it became Ms. A's quilt!

I don't know how Ms. CCCat managed to get this thing in shape but she is the pinning QUEEN! She measures and pins and measures and pins and my uneven, poorly sewn quilt miraculously became one that was only 1/4" off from top to bottom. To be fair to myself, and my ego, I never planned on this becoming a quilt let alone one as big as it was. It took a few years to finish, I managed to make some sashing 2 1/2" and some 2"! I used mostly Kona Cotton for the sashing but a bit of some realllllly cheapo black came into play at some point. I never really measured correctly and so.....well.....it was a lousy, lousy top.

I couldn't get the borders on correctly and once again, Ms. CCCat fixed it. How, I'll never know. However, when you look at these pictures you will see the wrinkles, bubbles..... mountains even that we mangaged to pin and quilt out! All in all it is an amazing feat that we, and I do use that term veeerrryyyy loosely, managed to finish this and Ms. A is sleeping under it today.

Ms. A's quilt

The name of this quilt is...."I used to be a pillow."

It all started a few years ago..........I had been reading about using scraps and telephone book paper to make blocks. Intriguing idea! I made one block. Ooooooooooooo fun! I made another and as the late painter Bob Ross would say, "It got to feeling good." A few more blocks and I thought, hmmm, "I have these brand new very big pillow forms...I could make a pillow. In walks one or the other daughter and they say, "Hey is that a quilt for me?" Big sigh! A few years and a few hundred blocks later....viola' ! A quilt!

In the course of quilting this monster, (It was shaped something like a trapazoid when we began it........My wizard Ms. CCCat managed to pin it to death and it finished with only a 1/4" variance from top to bottom!), we became slaphappy. We were not sure what to do once we finished the top border.

We knew what I was going to quilt into the body but were looking for some pizzazz!

Ms. CCCat, who by her name loves cats, suggested we quilt cats into it. I was totally against it as Ms. A hates cats! I think my exact words were, "Ms. A hates cats..... HEY, Ms. A HATES cats! Let's do it!!!" I'm such a good mom! So., as a joke, we quilted one cat into the top.

Like Lay's potato chips, that wasn't enough so we quilted cats with each pass of the longarm. It became a game to hide them in the freemotion quilting!!!!

Suddenly, Ms. CCCAt came up with the idea that we needed mice for the cats to chase! Soon we were quilting a mouse AND a cat. Before you knew it, we had the idea to put mice in the entire border!

All and all it came out cute! Ms. A has a great sense of humor and cracked up when she saw the quilting, and we had a great time goofing around with the longarm.
The photos are not the greatest but it really came out cute. I also made her matching pillowcases....no cats!

Another gift

Before I explain the photo, let me tell you something about my family. Without using real names, I'd like to explain the guys here. My husbands name is ABCDE. My sister's husbands name is also ABCDE. My brother's name is LMNOP and DH's brother is named LMNOP. My daughter, Mrs. S is married to PQRST (known as Mr. FancyPants) and my other daughter (Ms. A.) has been dating for a long time now,)a boy named , yes, you got it, PQRST! Now both of the boys, PQRST's names start with the letter C. Therefore, Ms. A's boyfriend will be known forevermore on my blog as C2. Add to the mix that Ms. A goes by her given name at home and for legal purposes but her Hebrew name everywhere else and I use the names interchangeably, you really need to concentrate on the conversation if you want to know which ABCDE, LMNOP or PQRST or daughter we are discussing! (For many years my friends thought I had three girls. Mrs. S, Ms. A by her given name and Ms. A by her Hebrew name!!!!)

Sometime this fall C2 and Ms. A came home. During the course of their visit I heard C2 say,
"What does it take to get a quilt around this family!" I cracked up because in my sewing room was his gift. I made this quilt in record time. Pieced and quilted in 3 weeks.

It is free motion quilted on the longarm. I used an allover patter and was amazed by how even I was able to get it. I used Brytes thread. The picture is a bit fuzzy

I am upset that I didn't get a betert picture. It sat there waiting for me to give it to him and get a picture and then I was sick and could have cared less! This was the best I could do. You'll have to believe me when I say the quilting is pretty cool.

Done & out the door!

Finally! I finished this quilt a while ago but hadn't tacked down the two sides of the label and mended the hole I put in it when quilting.



















I did that yesterday, washed it and it's was slept under last night! Good thing Mrs. S & Mr. Fancypants didn't decide to call it quits after one year of marriage as this is 7 months late!



















As a late payment, I made them pillowcases...yet another project that I've been wanting to do for years but just haven't tackled. Why I have no idea as I made one before I left for work yesterday morning!