Remembrance Quilts and Painted Rocks

 I made this Remembrance Quilt recently for a sweet widow.  Her husband passed away late in 2019 of pneumonia.  He was 84, they had been married for 62 years.  He had such nice shirts!  She said he was the oldest of 12 children and really liked to have nice clothes.  She was pleased with the quilt, and shed a few tears, which I did too.  I hope it is a blessing to her when she misses him -- to wrap herself up in it and remember the good times.

I haven't painted in quite a while so after the Remembrance quilt I decided to spend a little time with this hobby.  I did another 3D apple.  I love doing these!  So fun.  I watched a youtube video over and over to try to get it right.  I gave this to a school teacher friend who was so excited to get it.  Makes me happy.

I attached my label which is what I do for the rocks I hide in our community for our Rock group.

Amazing, aren't they?

I also tried my hand at a June Bug.

I've noticed a lot of these flying around the pool where I've been taking the grandkids to swim.  I remember them as a kid. I was afraid of them but had neighborhood friends that would tie a string on them.  Poor June Bug :(

I got a few blue rocks with red hearts for a world wide painted rock drop next weekend.  The effort is to bring smiles to people around the world who will find and pick up these rocks. Its called "Paint a rock, hide a rock" day, and people are encouraged to post their finds on facebook.  The blue represents the world and the red heart the smiles in making someone's day brighter.

I wanted to duplicate a painted rock I found online.  Mine isn't nearly as good as the original by Martha Winenger (credit) but I like to try. Those little raccoons are harder to paint than they look.

...and I got in a little canning. I made some caramel apple jam. Tastes a lot like apple butter, in fact may be mostly the same recipe, except bits of the apples are still in tact in this jam.

The year is half over!

 How can that be?  2021 half over!  It's true. We are all enjoying the summer. The fourth of July was no exception.  Kids came over for some fireworks.

And they had some fun down at Grumps and Gigi's too.

This year was their first July 4th holiday fun as they were in the United Kingdom (Scotland/England) the past six years. They thoroughly enjoyed blowing stuff up!

I finished the second Little Miss Sawtooth quilt in blues and did a change out of the quilts on the beds.

Still my favorite room...

Jim "posing" with the new quilt.

Love this room too!

Put the colorful Jagged X on the love seat.  We are still awaiting the arrival of our couch we ordered five months ago!

My porch seemed a little bare this year. I loaned my patriotic quilts to our church for a display.

The display was amazing.

Uniforms from many arms of service and wars. Notebooks detailing top gunners missions, army rations, many photos and stories.  Amazing what the 'finest generation' did for our freedom.

Gift Quilts and other musings

 I decided to give a quilt to all my close friends before I die.  No, I don't have any plans to die soon, but life is short really and we should do things while we are alive and well.  I"ve gifted the Corey Yoder scrap quilt (from my last post) to a dear friend, Kathy.  I have an Edinburgh Square in green I plan to give to another dear friend.

 And I'm contemplating on which one to give to another.  I believe all my other close and dear friends have a quilt made by me. I hope they use them and put some good memories in them.

Life has been busy, as usual at our home.  My DIL and I have been taking the kids to a friend's house to swim and man, have they had a ball.  Our girl has learned to dive, flip, cartwheel, cannonball, toe touch, and handstand off the diving board and swim to the side.

It's such fun to watch them enjoy the pool.  And...Mamole (Mamaw, UK accent) might have done a couple of flips off the diving board herself on one of those pool days.  But at 62, she couldn't quite make it all the way over and ended up a little bit of a back splat -- ha!  Our boy, has progressed too in the pool.  He now jumps off the diving board, and as of yesterday took his swimmie things off to try to swim in the shallow end.  He is just four so we are proud and think in a week or two he may also be going off the board without his swimmies.

I've been on a roll on these Little Miss Sawtooth quilts.  I finished one and have the other ready for a border and quilting. That beautiful backing was on sale at Keepsake Quilting.  I love it.

I used the pantograph Marmalade and it worked so well!

Funny, how I have tons of natural light in my sewing room, but there are some pieces that always look more yellow outside.  They are barely cream inside, even in my room of four large windows

I put some of these Lori Hold low volume prints in my blue/green version.  Aren't those patterns adorable?

Pictures never do this pattern and these fabrics justice. Little shadow or something on the top part.

I also completed this Stars and Stripes kit I purchased from Thimbleblossoms.com.  Quick, easy cute little quilt.

I'm getting better at machine bindings, especially since I started using the glue stick to iron it in place before sewing.  Cute backing!

My neighbor told me how to make ghee, so I just had to try it.  Now, what to do with it?  It has a nuttier taste than plain butter but I like that it can be stored in the pantry.  I've tried it with Amish friendship bread, she also gave me, and it tastes great.

Summer is whizzing by.....hope you are enjoying it like I am...

Quilt Swticheroos

 Time to switch up a few of the bed quilts. This first one is called Idyllic by Corey Yoder,  Made from scraps (what else??).

...and my beautiful bonus room. Just finished the quilt on the right so decided to put it up there.

Another of my new favorite room.

A few closeups of the Jagged X quilt. It is a free pattern online.  I did a Baptist Fan pantograph and I wasn't very good at it.  Was very disappointed as I was doing it, but after it was washed I really like it.

Another switcheroo on the twin bed quilts.  Ring cycles on the left.

I've gotten very behind on making quilt labels.  I made and sewed on five yesterday.

Bonus Room/Retreat Room

Continuing the re-do of the bonus room.  I ended up moving the sconces up so I could put some vacation prints above each bed.  The photos are from Scotland.  A few years ago I traveled there to visit my son and his family.  We went to Skye and visited several castles, the beautiful Eilean Donan being one of them.

I added the little wall desk this past weekend.  I built one that looked more like a floating shelf but it was pretty heavy as the frame was made from 2x4s.  I was afraid it was too heavy for the two studs that held it.  So I bought this pine wood shelf and used some 1x2s I had, to build supports that would screw into the sheetrock studs.  It is a lot lighter and I think looks fine for the space.  The little metal chair is perfect and light for the desk. I found it at Hobby Lobby.

This room is so big, there is still space across from the recliner.  I have a loveseat ordered to go in that spot....maybe even room for a small coffee table.  It is surely going to be a great retreat room. I've had such fun fixing it up!