Fish

Thought I'd post a picture of the bass hubby caught today......

Bear Country

I started sewing after dinner and just finished the Bear Country Quilt.  It will probably be a gift to a family member who just moved into a log cabin.  I plan to quilt it tomorrow. The directions called for paper piecing the flying geese.  I did one section, but just didn't see the advantage.  I ended up putting them together the normal way and cutting them down to the right size.  That was my first experience with paper piecing and I am not impressed.

We aren't big on partying the new year in.  I prefer to quilt the new year in!  The hubby prefers to fish the new year in.

Happy New Year!! (early)

Wonderful day today.  Just piddlin around.  Walked with my best walking bud; exercised on the Wii Fit I received for Christmas (Love it! Love it!); made some bread; did a little cleaning and organizing, and made some homemade noodles!  I've always wanted to make some and I found a recipe on one of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman.

They don't look that appetizing but they were good.  I made some Alfredo sauce to go on them.  They were just a bit tough, so I may have cooked them too long, but still good.

I am working on my "Bear Country" quilt that I bought when we were on vacation in Kalispell, Montana.  Maybe I'll get it finished tomorrow and post a picture.

Hope all of you have a wonderful New Year full of love, laughter and God's blessings.

Baby Star Quilt

I've had this little one cut out for a year or so now.  Decided yesterday to put it together.  It will go in my stash for gifts.

Another quilt to hang

I always take my Christmas decorations down on Christmas day.  Hope that doesn't make me a Scrooge!  Once the presents are opened, I just don't like to have the stuff out.  So, I even hung a different quilt on my hanging rod. This is my scrap string quilt.

Merry Christmas

This is the McDaniel family Christmas, but we are missing Elijah and Katie this year.  They couldn't come home for Christmas.  The fun is still going on.  The annual Go-Fish tournament is in full heat around the dining table.

Curtain Rod

My sweet brother-in-law hung this rod that my sweet friend gave me!  Yippee, now I can display another quilt.

Paper snowflakes

I may have gotten a little carried away with making paper snowflakes.......

Finished

Quilted with stippling, continuous curves, feathers, ziggles, stitch in the ditch, and other free hand designs.

Quiltathon

Except for a couple of hours at the Walmart for groceries today, I have been at my machine quilting the ''monster" civil war quilt.  I finally finished this evening and after supper started the binding.  I have gotten two sides done, but my fingers and wrists are getting sore. I should get it finished tomorrow, then I'll post a picture.

I am glad that my custom quilting mistakes really don't bother me much.  And I am glad that I tackled it with custom quilting, even though I am not thrilled with the results, but I've learned a lot in doing so.  The imperfections only make it truly my work.

I think what helps me to not worry about the quality of my work, is looking at my grandmother's and my mother-in-law's quilts.  They are not perfect, but functional, beautiful, and made with loving hands. That is my goal for my work.

Decorations

This is the prettiest little crackled vase.  I bought it at the Yankee Candle store and inside I have the Mistletoe candle.  Really makes the house smell like Christmas.

Free Day off Work

It is hard to believe, but we've had two snow days this week from work!  In all my thirty years there it has been very rare for them to cancel work due to weather.  I've made muffins and meat loaf for the freezer, in preparation for my sister and brother-in-law's visit next week.  I've made paper snowflakes all afternoon, and had so much fun.  Hope to get to work on my quilt either later tonight or in the morning.  I hope to have the quilting done by tomorrow evening.

I've made 20 of these snowflakes.  I saw them in a favorite blog, "Trends and Traditions" and looked up how to make them on Utube.

Visit with the Kids

We got in a quick visit to Louisville to see Elijah and Katie.  It was great, except way too short.  We went out to eat, saw a movie, exchanged gifts, played the Wii, and went to church with them this morning.  Then we had to come back.....I teared up when we left.  I miss them so much.

Exchanging gifts

We went out to eat at Olive Garden.  Yummy!

Beautiful lobby of the Legacy Hotel on SBTS Campus

Decisions, decisions.....

Trying to decide on the patterns to quilt in the various blocks.  Think I've got the smaller blocks figured out.  It is the larger ones that I am having trouble with.  I did start with the little ziggle in the outermost border and the feathers in the next border.

Finished

I am so excited!  I finished the borders on the civil war quilt so it is ready to load on the machine.  I have decided to custom quilt it and do a particular design for each block. Any suggestions for the quilting?

Coming Along

This, surprisingly, didn't take as long to put together as I had expected.  I've only got one more row to sew on.  I'll do that after dinner.  Today was a nice, productive day.  Now, I need to figure out what I am going to use for the backing.  Then, I've got to convince myself that I can custom quilt it.  That scares me a bit.  I am not that good, but this quilt seems to scream "custom quilt me, no pantograph!"

Black Friday

Black Friday - a great day to sew!  I don't do the shopping thing, but prefer to shop online and spend my time working on my favorite hobby - quilting.  These are some of today's projects.  These are the completed blocks from #10 of the batik beauty BOM. Next on my list for today is putting some of the Civil War blocks together. 

Thanksgiving Turkeys!

My nephew requested these for Thanksgiving.  Easy to do with oreos, chocolate frosting, candy corn, malted milk balls, little reece's cups, and some white and black frosting gel. I mixed up some yellow and red food coloring in the white to attempt some orange feet.  You could even do a red gobbler! My poor turkeys aren't that great!

Eleven months work

Tonight I finished up the blocks for the civil war BOM quilt,  Block 11 had some mistakes in the directions but I finally figured it out. I just had to lay them all out.  It is so big I barely found a place big enough.  It is supposed to have two borders and a final border of half square triangles.  Don't think I'll do those.

October Civil War Blocks

I finally got the October Civil War blocks finished.  These are my worst!  I am terrible with the set-in seams. Going to work on the November block tonight and tomorrow.  It is a big 36 inch block.

I've made homemade bread today, banana bread, and I have some PF Chaing's chicken on the stove for supper. Yummy.  I feel so blessed today. My son called and he got an A in his Text Criticism class at seminary.  He is on cloud nine! And like all Mamma's, when my son is happy, I am happy.

Going to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner with family next week.  Since Elijah and Katie weren't coming home, I almost didn't want to have Thanksgiving, but it just didn't seem the right thing to do.  After all, I do have so much to be thankful for, and we don't see my brother and his family nearly enough. I am excited about cooking and us getting to eat with them next week.

Batik BOM

This one is coming along. I've layed some of the blocks out in the picture. I've done a lot of things, not exactly like the instructions, but I think it will still turn out to be a beautiful quilt.  That is what I love about quilting -  can really mess up, but when you put it all together, you see the overall picture and almost always, it is beautiful. Kind of like our lives.  We have so many mess-ups, but in the big scheme of things, you can see the work of a loving God, working our mess-ups into a beautiful quilt of life....

Mistakes

Anybody make a lot of mistakes sewing when they feel bad?  I've got some kind of congestion, coughing thing going on and I.'ve made so many mistakes on my sewing today!  Check out the picture.

The border piece on the right is the correct one, the others are wrong,...phooey.  But....I kind of like the way the others look, I might only take the right one off and change it, rather than all the others.  That way, this quilt would definately be uniquely mine. I think I'll lay out all the pieces around it and see what it looks like.  Anyone else ever done something like that?  This one is definately NOT some of my better work - bad y-seams, curvy borders, bad points......

Back to sewing.....

Such a beautiful day here in East Tennessee!  Got all my errands done, so tonight and the rest of the weekend, I get to sew!  My goal for the weekend is to get caught up with my BOMs.  I have Octobers to do, and I have one of the Novembers.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

Turkeys

We had sixteen turkeys passing through the back yard this morning!

Vienna, Austria

I've been in Vienna this week for work at the IAEA.  Beautiful European city, but I am so glad to be home after 26 hours of travel and no luggage.

The flags inside the Vienna International Centre (VIC)

A view of the tile work on the roof of St. Stephens cathedral.

One of the buildings in a museum complex.  I think this is some kind of library.

Outside the VIC.

It's been a while....

It has been a while since I posted.  Work has been terribly busy and I will be leaving on Monday for a work trip.  Once I think I am caught up with BOM's, another month rolls around.  So, here it is almost the end of October, and I have yet to finish my September blocks. The best news I have of late, is my son finally got a job after being out of work for four months!  Praise the Lord!!  He is working an evening shift job which is perfect for his school schedule.

I suppose one reason why I haven't finished my BOM's is that I stopped to make two quilts - the batik one that I've already shown and this little baby quilt, for the soon-to-be-born Henry.

Gift Quilt

I made this for a young couple just starting out.  Hope they like it!  Still have to bind it and put a label on it.  I took off work today to try to get caught up with some quilting.

Another pic from the race....

This is me and my walking buddy, Donna, with Abby Hamm.  She is the morning news anchor for WBIR television.  She was on hand at the race to speak and give out the awards.  She is very cute and friendly, and about six months pregnant!

5K

My walking buddy and I walked in the local Lions Club Moonlight for Sight 5k race tonight.  It was lots of fun.  We are so competitive.  They didn't time the walkers but we hustled and finished only behind a couple of MUCH YOUNGER ladies (20 years younger!).  Too bad they didn't time us, we would have finished first in our age groups!

New Project

I love batiks!  I think this is going to be so pretty.

New Project

I had to stop on my batik blocks and now I am feverishly working on a quilt for a wedding shower in two weeks!  I ran out of fabric and thank goodness for ebay!  I was able to order another bali pop and will have it in few days.

I also got good news again.  The followup MRI from my surgery showed nothing!  Yippee. So whatever was there, is now gone.  The doctor still is a little baffled.  The pathology report was not consistent with what we all saw on the prior tests.  I asked him if he believed in prayer!  He said yes, but he was still going to ask the pathologist to take another look.  I celebrated by buying PINK yesterday -- shoes, shirt, sweater, sports bra...afterall October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Never Again

Never again will I take on two difficult block of the month patterns in one year along with working a full time job.  Every month I feel stressed until I can get them caught up.  I have been working on them this weekend since we got back from our vacation.  Still not finished.  I have to make some borders for the batik beauty.  Below is the finished september civil war blocks and the one batik block I have finished.

I'd like to make a baby gift quilt for one due in December.  I also got a wedding invitation today for a wedding the end of October and I'd like to make a lap gift quilt for that couple also.......so much to do. I feel like I wasted a month worrying and stressing.  Got a call from the doctors yesterday and they want me to have more tests, but this time I am not stressing about it.  Whatever will be, will be.



By the way,,,,

I have found two really great quilt shops in Kalispell, Montana.  The Quilt Gallery and Glacier Quilts.  I may have to go back and get one of those great nature quilt kits with the bears and wild animals -- to commemorate this trip.

I got some really great news today.  Three weeks ago I was told that I probably had Ductal Carcinoma In-Situ (DCIS), which is Stage 0 breast cancer.  I had an excisional biopsy two days before we left on this trip, which is basically a lumpectomy.  Got the pathology report today and it was benign!  Praise the Lord, now I think I can really enjoy this trip. 

Found a grizzly!

Too bad it was in the hotel lobby.......

Bear Hunt

Spent the day hunting bears.  This was all we found.

We did see this little guy

And the beautiful yellow trees

More Park Pictures

On the edge of Lake McDonald

The rocks are so pretty and colorful.  This picture doesn't do them justice.

Lake McDonald Lodge and one of the red tour buses.

Glacier National Park, Montana

We headed up to Glacier early this morning even though the weather is pretty cold and damp and cloudy.  However, it cleared up a few times so we could still see some of the beauty here. We drove all day long.  We started in Kalispell and drove all the way across the park on Going To The Sun road, then down and back around the lower part of the park.  Logan's Pass is closing tonight for the season, (about half way across). So we wanted to be sure we got to see that part of the park.  We stopped at about every pull off, lodge, store, etc.  Saw a few deer, no bears or elk.