Seventeen year Cidadas and quilting

You know it's summer when you can hear the outdoors. Like the purr of your sewing machine, busily pushing material, the cicadas are buzzing or whatever they do to make their familiar sound, as they push their way up and out of the ground. This is the year for the 17 year cicadas to emerge from the ground here in Oldham County, Kentucky, Crestwood, to be sort of exact. We are about 20 miles north of Louisville. Different parts of the country have broods that come out on particular summers. The sound is defining. I don't know how to describe it.

I'm still quilting as I await the outcome of the Democratic National Committee rules hearing. They are probably deciding the presidential election with their vote to allow, or not to allow the delegates. Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they left the TV room and went behind closed doors? I wonder what they said.

Movie, Book and DVD rental reviews...

Besides making my Grandmother's flower garden/Tillie's Mosaic quilt, which is the best hand sewing project I can recommend for waiting on Doctors, and at bedsides in hospitals, I've been enjoying other sensory perceptions.

The new Indiana Jones movie was like being on a ride at an amusement park. I never really engaged with the movie-action or script. But, you got to see it, because it's picks up somewhat from the original movie and I guess it's okay. If nothing else, they brought back Karen Allen who, a while back was a really great actress that seemed to drop off the planet for a while, but, now we can see her again. She's knitting, I understand, so she must be a great person, maybe could have been a little better if she's a quilter, but, knitting is good...smile.

A better afternoon spent is watching a French film with subtitles, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's about the editor of Elle Magazine who has a stroke at the age of 42 and how he writes a book just by blinking it out to a nurse. The French really are cutting edge movie makers and some of the scenes in this movie are impossible-I won't give away anything. This is an interesting movie and the soundtrack is awesome-I recommend buying that, the variety is wonderful, U2 to Tom Waits, luscious.

The book I was given as some fluff reading is Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper. It's a nice page turner with detective/psychic/serial killer finder/person...you know what I mean. The book is a romantic thriller and I usually shy away from this type of thing, but, I started reading it and couldn't stop.

So, there you have, may while away the time while I while away the time ideas for you.

Ain't Life grand...smile

Baby Quilt for the new Boomer Sooner

Well, cancer has not completely got me down. I have had a lot of down time, running my DD #1 back and forth to radiation everyday and will for the next 6 weeks, while going through chemotherapy every 2 weeks. This stuff is way not fun. I'm not even in the ballpark of no fun, compared with Jennifer. Ah well, this time next year, it should all be a bad memory.


Someone called from our wonderful church today. They got my name mixed up with Jennifer and said they'd keep us in their prayers. I guess God knows which is which, so it okay. Our church is getting so large, I know it's impossible for someone to remember all however many thousands are now attending. But, I've never met this new minister and have been attending said church for 12 years now. I don't go every time the doors are open, but, I was going every Tuesday to lead our church quilt group, Northeast Quilting Friends. I haven't attend but, once in the last several months because I don't want to be a downer to the group. The last time I came to the meeting I cried. The ladies have managed quite well without me. What did I expect? Helplessness? A complete loss of quilt abilities? Nope, they did just fine, when I came back the one time. Ah well, what will be, will be and the quilting group goes on.

Anywho, here's Jennifer in her radiation session. It's quite the science fiction setting, but, it's no fiction...lots of science. Life does go on, everyone has their own soap operas to manage. Speaking of newest, my niece had a baby boy, Daxton. She sent pictures of him dressing in his Oklahoma State University outfit, of which Boomer Sooner is the mascot. So, in honor of our new Boomer Sooner, here is my original design of an OU baby quilt! Hah! Who needs a pattern. I tried a new boarder technique where I made the center blocks and then laid the border on top of the red blocks then did a raw edge appilque curving to add some visual texture to the straight blocks. And everyone wants to the back, so here it is, flannel.

Here's a great blog about Portland Quilt Market

I don't always feel like blogging, but, I still like to read them. Here is a blog I found that has lots of interesting information about the Portland Quilt Market. Blue Moon River is written by a budding new artist in the quilt world, that I'm sure will become one of the newest sensations.

Quilting, ironing and the Dollar Store

Don't you just love to find bargains? Now we quilters won't skimp a lot on our fabrics, but, finding good quality quilting material on sale is always a good thing. Nope, there was no fabric at the Dollar Store, Dollar Tree to be exact, my favorite of the dollar stores, in this area at least. There was, for me a repurposed item. It's original purpose was for scrap booking, that much maligned big competition for the quilters disposable income. Maligned because there's probably only so much in the way of hobby money to choose by each of us to spend on entertainment. All you scrappers know, you can rack up a lot of expense in the paper products/decorative items to be added to your lovely legacies of albums for the family. Like us quilters, you can drop a small country's national budget on your said hobby as well, but, oh what a legacy we both can leave. Maligned might be too strong a word, maybe to our treasured quilt shop owners, because they wish you were buying fabric instead...smile.

Anyway, this is what I found, a Scrapbook Envelope. It's original purpose I suppose was for holding delicately cut pieces of papers, pictures, or any other paper product so it wouldn't be crinkled-wrinkled..eh?...eh? Do you see where I'm going with this? You guessed it,after doing all that piecing and carefully ironing the seams all in the same direction, there's nothing more irritating than having to do all that work over again, because it got wrinkled while awaiting completion of the other blocks! So, I repurposed, a scrapbook envelope, which is a little larger than 12 inches, which is a pretty common size for a lot of patterns. Besides rigid and clear, it also has about a 3/4 inch depth so you can store several. So I bought several to hold my blocks in the various stages of completion. And it fits nicely in my Elenore Burns' project bag!


One last thing I got was the cute little box to hold my one inch hexagons-not a brilliant find like the block holder/scrapbook envelope, but they were cute and I must have been in hyper organizing mode...smile.

AND THEY ALL COST $1.00...double smile....

Turtles, Clifty Falls and Madison Indiana, Quilting

We found a turtle in our yard. Yep, my hubby almost hit it with a lawn mower, but instead he jumped off the mower and brought it inside. What else could we do, but, bring it to wilderness where this would not happen-mowers-YIKES!

So, we put it in a box, belted it into the Honda backseat and I got to ride with the stench for an hour on our trip to Madison Indiana! It was worth it. We found a great place where it could frolic or whatever turtles do...smile


We decided to make a trip with our second daughter, the geologist, can you tell?Chelsea, who seems to get the short end of our attention, because we are, rightfully so, consumed with our oldest daughter, Jennifer and her cancer. Chelsea is certainly understanding and does not demand anything of us. But, we felt like we needed to spend some time with her today. So, upon finding our turtle we made a day of the rescue operation and brought said terrapin to the Clifty Falls State Park in Indiana.

This is a beautiful state park with some wonderful, but not easy, trails and scenery, including several 60 feet and over cascading waterfalls. The park is not huge, but, it seems to be spread out nicely, with campgrounds and picnic tables for a great day out with the family.

Here is our daughter and us on some of the trails. Chelsea had to get home pretty early, so we did not get to explore as much as I had liked, but, trail 2 seems to follow the creek bed, which is where I'd like to go next time. My plan would be to start at the North Gate at the trail head and walk to the South Gate trail head and maybe hitchhike back to my car. But, even if we need to walk back, it's not that far.

Madison Indiana was our stop on the way home for some great burgers at Hinkles and ice cream at Rogers Corner. I've scoped out a couple of fabric stores for quilting habits to be fulfills later on.

Btw, I think the Mommy bird has had an encounter with something bad. She has not been seen on the eggs in quite a few days.

Hand sewing and bird nests...smile

The nature experience continues with a daily update. Finally the little bird flew away from my front porch fern and I wa s able to hold my camera high and sneak a picture with the flash on. It looks like we are expecting 2 little babies.

I've still not watered the plant, but, will attempt to do so tomorrow. We spend about 16 days a month for 7 months total in the hospital. My DD #1 Jennifer has Ewings Sarcoma in her right jaw. She gets chemo and on those overnight stays in the hospital and I stay with her. So, needless to say there's lots of down time for me. The good news is we are half way through, 7 out of 14 and so far all the scans indicate that the cancer is local and not spread.

I've found the perfect hand sewing project for me. It's the old grandmother's flower garden or also known, in earlier years as the mosaic pattern. There's no room for an olfa cutting board and I don't think it would be an easy pattern to cut, all the five sides of a one and one half inch hexagon. Karen Witt used a stamp for the

Preview

Preview

hex's and I thought that would be perfect, and it was. Stamp, cut sew, that all there is to it. Then after attending Elenore Burns' Show and Tell at Paducah, I got this lovely clear project bag, in which I can put my fabric and supplies. It really goes surprisingly fast. I've made about 15 blocks and depending how large I make the quilt, I have a king size bed, so it could be large. I think I'll work on it until Jeni is out of the treatments and that's how big it is. At this rate, it might be a really large quilt!