Oh, This and That

The is one of the fabrics from The Garden of Earthly Delights line by KM Studios. No, I have no idea whatsoever what I will do with it. I just wanted it, so I bought it. I read about the fabric line on the Material Obsession blog and went to my friend ebay to see if I could find some. This one just leaped out at me and into my basket. I do like it. It's on my design wall now looking back at me while I sew.

When our unassembled storage shed was delivered several weeks ago, it came on a very large truck. My friend and neighbor Sandy had to tell me that she had asked her husband what he thought might be on that truck. His reply just cracked me up - he said, "Oh, it's probably just more fabric."  All joking aside, I do not apologize for my fabric acquisitions. It's just more fun to color when you have a bigger box of crayons.

I finally got the binding sewn on this one last night, and here it is all washed and dried and ready to go.

The backing is the mustang fabric. This one went to the USO lounge at the airport today.

Sandy made this one. It's from Mary Johnson's free pattern, Patriotic Rail Fence. Didn't she do a beautiful job making it! I want to make one (at least!) of these, too.

Sandy went with me this afternoon to deliver these six quilts to the sweet ladies at the USO-IAH.  They liked them a lot, and said the ones we had taken earlier really brightened up the place. We are just thankful they will be used and enjoyed.

This is the last picture I had taken of the baby quilt I'm making for Mr. Muddling's co-worker's daughter. It's a lot further along now, but this is the layout. I like it. I wasn't sure I would - it's not my normal color palette, but it's pretty anyway.

And since inquiring minds want to know, here's the recipe:

Blueberry Banana Pie

Two baked pie shells.

2 envelopes Dream Whip

1 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla

8 oz. cream cheese

1/2 cup sugar

2 bananas

1 can blueberry pie filling

Cream together cream cheese and sugar.  In separate bowl mix Dream Whip with milk and vanilla.  When whipped to peaks, fold in cream cheese mixture.

Line bottoms of pie shells with sliced bananas. Fill with creamed mixture.  Top with blueberry filling.  Chill and serve.

It really is stunningly easy to make and delicious. If you try it, let me know how you liked it.

Meantime, tomorrow is Friday and I know that makes a lot of you very happy!  Have a great weekend!

Hugs and kisses,

A Quilt for a Pretty Lady

This quilt is finished for a beautiful woman we know and love. I surely hope she likes it. It's a surprise!

The backing and binding.

And always my favorite shot of any quilt - freshly washed and dried and all crinkly and cuddly.

There were cookies involved in the making of this quilt. It was necessary.

Last night I processed some of our abundant fig harvest. This has now developed into fig preserves which are nicely canned. Mr. Muddling and our children have absolutely no use for figs, but my mother and my siblings and I love them. So. More for us!

Mr. Muddling's partner at work has a daughter who is expecting her first baby soon. The colors she wants are yellow, gray and soft green. I used the Go! cutter to cut lots and lots of half square triangles.

So far, it is looking like this on the design wall. What do you think?

Yesterday was my darling Mr. Muddling's birthday. He spent the morning and into the afternoon up on the roof of the storage shed, along with our son, putting shingles on the roof.  But don't feel too bad for him. I grilled steaks. By then our son's lovely wife, along with their new boxer puppy (!!!) had arrived and we had a really good time of food and fellowship. Instead of birthday cake, Mr. Muddling wanted pie. Not just any old pie, but Blueberry Banana Pie. We all enjoyed that a LOT!

We've had showers here today. The roof is still not finished on the shed, but it is weathered in, so all is well. We are taking the day off today!

I do hope you are having a wonderful weekend. We are celebrating the Independence Day holiday quietly (for now, later we will be treated to fireworks going off all over the neighborhood!) and resting a bit. I do love our country. I pray for so many things for our dear United States, mostly for a return to our roots of honoring God and His rules for living. 

Hugs and kisses and lots of love,

A Tumbler Finish

I've had this tumbler quilted for a while now, just couldn't quite seem to get the binding done.

But today I've remedied that situation and it is done! How about these classic Thunderbirds for backing?

This Dancing Nines got quilted last night. I still need to trim and bind it.

I started work on this one, had it all laid out on the design wall, but a visitor to the sewing room decided to walk behind the design wall (Doesn't that sound fancy? It's just a piece of builders foam with batting on it. LOL!).  Those pieces are now webbed together so there will be no more accidents like this.

In case you wonder, the visitor was one of these innocent looking little darlings. 

And, if you look past the quilt you can see that the storage shed is coming along quite nicely. Mr. Muddling does good work! Maybe we can get the roof done next weekend. It has been a bigger job than we thought it would be. Isn't that always the way of things! It is going to be a wonderful thing for us though. We'll keep the yard tools in there instead of the garage. I had to sacrifice part of the fig tree. There just was not room for all of it and the shed, too. It seems to have forgiven me for the pruning it got. I just finished eating some fresh figs!

I'm trying to get quilts finished for both the USO and Quilts of Compassion.  My friend Sandy and I have a total of nine completed. Hopefully we'll finish a few more and get them out of here! It IS a blessing to me to have the means and opportunity to bless others with the work we do. I'm thankful for that.

I hope you're having a really good weekend and that there are things in your world that are making you happy!

Hugs and kisses,

A Comfort Quilt for My Friend's Friend

My friend Darla asked me to make a comfort quilt for a friend of hers whose husband had passed away in December. She wanted this quilt to be made of some of his shirts and she wanted flannel on the back.

I will just confess to you that I did not want to make this quilt, but I did repent and I got it made. Look at those two big "bumps" in the backing.

I included two of the shirt pockets, and for them to be functional they could not be quilted.

This is how I reminded myself NOT to quilt them!  Masking tape.

Inside one of the pockets I put a little heart made from fabric from two of the shirts. This is one side.

This is the other side. 

A collage of the design process. By the way, that little lazy Susan type cutting mat helped SO much! There were lots of wonky blocks needing trimming. There was not enough fabric in the shirts provided to do what I wanted, so I added in some gold with white stars. It and the backing, a pretty gold-y/yellow flannel are both from Connecting Threads. I like their flannel a lot, it's been the best quality I've found.

 

A not great picture, but still the natural light coming in the window this morning gives you an idea how very cuddly this one is.  I hope it is a comfort to Darla's friend.

 

Our weekend is over and Mr. Muddling heads back to work bright and early in the morning. It sure will be lonely around here without him, but he'll be back!

 

I do hope your week is exceptionally good in every way!

 

Hugs and kisses,

Another One Ready for the USO

This little happy quilt is all ready to go with the next bunch of quilts to the  USO lounge for our soldiers at the  local airport.  It was made with some of those four patches I have made as leader/enders, and since those finished at 4 1/2 inches, I used rectangle squares that were the same size. (Wanda gave a very clear tutorial of how to make these simple blocks here.) I combined four of each of those units to make a bigger four patch and alternated them. I like it!

And here's a shot of the backing - a pretty Jinny Beyer print setting off a row of patriotic teddy bears.

You can get a little better look at what the backing fabric is like in this inside shot.  The binding is a red/blue ombre stripe. 

I have two more quilted that I need to get the binding sewn on. Mr. Muddling has been on vacation this week, though it hasn't been much of one for him. He had intended to fabricate a storage building we had delivered here as a kit, but then the rains came.  Our son came yesterday and helped (a LOT), and it has made good progress. There just seem to be a lot of things unexpectedly not included in the kit that necessitate trips to the hardware store, which in turn always seems to include more necessary purchases. Since I, oh so often, find that to be the case with fabric and related purchases, I understand. I'm just thankful Mr. Muddling also understands the valid need (LOL!!) for a large cache of fabric.

I do hope the rainy weather has not impacted you badly and that you are having a wonderful weekend!

Hugs and kisses,

Three More Finished!

Does that feel good or what! Yes, it definitely does feel good. These three are all finished and stacked up waiting for a bigger pile to donate. I told a bit more about them in this blog post.

The churn dash blocks Deb, aka Wonky Girl, sent. I bordered this with a shades of blue stripe, which I also ran through the backing. You can see that in the picture above, bottom right.  This one will go to the USO at the airport here in Houston. 

This is one I made quite a while back, now it has its binding and is ready to go It will go to Quilts of Compassion for their next "deployment".

The backing is a funny kind of print, but I like it. You can see the nice feathers Peggy quilted in this shot.

This one is Mary Johnson's pattern "Four Patch Stars". The link will take you to the page for that pattern. She has lots of patterns and they are free, and more importantly they are very clearly written and easy to use. She is a generous blogger!

I like everything about this one. The border is a red, white and blue print given to me by Wonky Girl, another very generous blogger, and there's even a red, white and blue stripe for the binding.

The backing is a pretty blue on blue print, don't remember where I got it, but I had a lot. I also backed Deb's churn dash blocks with it.

I have more on the quilt assembly line (I don't really have one, it just seems as if I do sometimes!) I'll let you know when there's another finish. 

It is a beautiful, sunny and very hot day here in Houston. Summer has arrived.  I'm not tired of seeing the sun yet. All those rainy days made me appreciate dry weather. Of course I'm also really thankful for air conditioning!

I hope your week is starting off well and that it's a good one for you!

Hugs and kisses,

The Saga of a Little Quilt

This little quilt (49 1/2" by 58") has had quite a few hands involved in the making of it. I had made a lot of the rail fence blocks last year from 2 1/2" strips I'd cut from all sorts of fabrics.

You might remember I made "Chicken Strips" from some of those rail fence blocks alternating with framed chicken print fabrics. (You know I really LIKE this one!)

Then my friend Phyllis took a stack of those rail fence blocks and put them together into this one. Both of those quilts went to Quilts of Compassion last year.

I had given my friend Sandy a stack of those same blocks (yes, I do get carried away making blocks sometimes) when she took a quilt top I had made to have her sister Peggy quilt it for me. 

Peggy sewed the rail fence blocks together (You can see she put one of my sixteen patch blocks in there, too!)  and quilted it!  I got the binding sewn on and now this one will be going to Quilts of Compassion when we get a stack of quilts ready.   Wasn't that a fun little journey of lots of people working to finish one little simple quilt. I believe it will really be a blessing to whoever gets it!

Peggy added this pretty Maywood Studios fabric for a backing and did a beautiful job of quilting it!

Meanwhile at Muddle Manor, the skies are gloriously clear and everything is growing like wild. Of course, it's hot, too, but I'm not even going to complain. I am so happy to see the sun again!

I do hope you are finding plenty that makes you thankful!

Hugs and kisses,