Never too late.

The following is part of a note I received from a friend of mine in Phoenix. This is something worth sharing...........
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Oh ... I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you this: My mother was out here with Claudia and I since December, and recently returned on March 10th. Since living in NJ she has been attending a Christian Church, and had come to the realization that she should be baptized by immersion (she was sprinkled as a child). So, we made arrangements for her baptism. Wouldn't you know it, my sister decided she wanted to be baptized as well, so she flew out her for the baptism. But before their baptism, Claudia and Albert decided they wanted to re-affirm their faith and be baptized as well. So, on Saturday, March 7th, I had the privilege of baptizing my mother, my sister, my wife, Albert ... and at the last minute a fellow from our Monday night Prayer Group decided he wanted to be re-baptized as well ... so I also baptized Richard ------. There were about 24 people that came from the church to witness the baptisms. What an incredible evening that was. Mom will be 90 this year ... which goes to show you it's never too late to get baptized!

Let's start at the very beginning......

I have discovered, after making maybe three crazy quilts and starting in a fourth, that I LOVE making crazy quilts. I told a friend of mine in TN the other day that these are the reasons I enjoy making crazy quilts but not the structured ones.


1. I am accomplishing something with a goal in mind
2. I am very GREEN! I never throw away scraps of material. I make them into quilts
3. It is not repetitive. It is a different thing with every seam sewed.
4. It is like watching a flower bloom. You don't know what it is going to look
like until it is completed.

If you are a neat freak this would drive you batty. It doesn't bother me. I don't
expect any company. Only those around me who love and accept me the way they find me



The mess you see in the first picture is a pile of scraps and threads that is only about 1/3 the heap it was in the beginning. I emptied my 3 boxes of scraps, sorted double knit from woven and light weight from heavy. Then started matching sides and sizes.





I love my Baby Lock machine when it is behaving. It is very tempermental and sometime I would love to toss it through the window but it is working beautifully right now.

The first seam goes together on the Babylock which works with 4 threads and trims every seam very nicely at the same time.



The next step is ironing the seam but I know you don't need to see my beautiful new iron I bought at a yard sale a few weeks ago. It is the greatest iron I have ever had. I love it.

After ironing the first seam I head for my Bernina and top stitch with the Chicken Foot stitch Then back to the ironing board and then the cutting table to match up where the new seam is going to be, trim it on my new table. Well, maybe not so new. The school where BB works discarded it and he brought it home to me. Great cutting table. Keeps the mess out of my big kitchen.




This is all repeated over and over and ..... until the quilt is completed.

The last two pictures are of the block growing and growing, soon to become my Summer Crazy Quilt. It will be nothing more than the top of the quilt which is light weight and backed with a sheet. That is all I will need on the bed all Summer. I will take a picture of it when I am finished.

Hope most of you didn't get too bored with this blog.

Too Funny

After seeing all the PJ bottoms and pairs I made for me and Kala, BB decided he would like a pair. He chose the material from my stash. He thought the blue denim stripe looked pretty OK for himself. I made them yesterday. Problem: Most of the stuff in my stash came from garage sales, thrift stores, yard sales. You get the picture. When I laid the material out I found there was not enough to make the PJ pants unless... :-) You can see. :-D :-D We all thought they were hilarious. I decided to go ahead and make them up anyway because I didn't have a man pattern. I cut them from my pattern, took out some of the curvey hip, made them for straight up and down and longer. I needed to make them up to see what I need to do to make the next pair. Everyone was over here for dinner last night (huge, everything in it, salad and Pasta with the sauce on it that I call 'heart attack on a plate' I never remember the name of that sauce. All butter, cream and something Regiano cheese. I have holes in my mind. Not to worry, I have had those holes for a long time. It just involves proper names. ANYWAY, BB put on the PJ pants, we all had our guffaws, son-in-law had his trusty whatchamacallit phone with all the bells and whistles, as he always does and took the picture, zipped it right back to me as soon as he got home and now you can see the reason for all the laughter. I will make BB another pair (or two) with enough yardage for a better pair, I will make the adjustments to make them fit a bit better and he will be all comfy when he kicks

back for the evening.

Best Birthday Party EVER!

I was relating this story to a friend a few days (weeks?) ago and decided it would be a good story to put on my blog. Story:
My husband of 40 years died on Dec. 18th 2000. Some time after that, months? I don't remember, I was sitting in the choir loft and had a melt down. I am not a cryer and didn't have the time to grieve in a timely manner ( what is the proper time?) and right there in front of God and everbody, a grief thingie kicked in. I couldn't stop crying. Bad bad. When my birthday came up in the very next week, I was feeling sorry for myself and sitting at the kitchen table feeding my invalid mother, who was not able to do anything at all for herself, a failed casserole. Edible, but definately a failure. I looked up and in the back door came marching all my friends from my Sunday school class, hands full of GOOD food and with smiles on their faces. What a wonderful gift.

Those of you who were there........thank you....you might not know what a wonderful gift and a long standing good memory you provided.

Enjoyable week

I have had a very enjoyable. Last week I put on my favorite pair of pants, wore them all day, came home and slipped into a pair of quickly made cotton pants that I had recently made but not worn yet and vowed to make many more. PLOP, PLOP, FIZZ, FIZZ, OH WHAT A RELIEF IT IS. Some of you who are close to my age might remember that old Alka Selzer commercial. Well, those pants reminded me of that commercial. I made a pattern from the old 'Stretch and Sew' basic pattern. Light weight cotton, ELASTIC WAIST :-) That company came into play back in the days when we all wore that nasty double knit made with polyester. (Someday the future people are going to find that indistructable fabric in the digs and wonder what kind of people lived here). At any rate, I called up CO to the Stretch and Sew company some years ago and was told the patterns are adaptable to woven fabric simply by making 1 size larger. I made two pair of those pants, wore 1 pair to choir practice, got home and MC said, "Oh, I see you have some pajama pants'. I WORE PJ PANTS TO CHURCH! I didn't know I was making pj pants. Don't care. When they get laundried/laundryed??????? I will wear them out again. Those pants got me into my sewing room again. I have been so occupied with yarn I had forgotten thread. I got busy and MADE PJ's. I had such fun making things from my stash. I thought I was making them for me. Don't need them. #1 granddaughter needs them. They get wrapped and put in the mail as soon as this computer will release me.
DON'T TELL KALA, IT IS A SUPRISE. teehee. She will see this anyway. Enjoy Kala. Love you. Grammy

Uninvited guest

Yesterday, as I was closing the shades against the sun, preparing to head for town I looked out my window and on the front porch was this big fellow/girl?? MC has dispatched several of these even though it is illegal to do so in AZ because she has several animal and fowl she wants to keep safe. Most of the time this happens in the early morning when it is still cool and the snakes are a bit slow. This fellow was on the very warm porch (it reached 93 degrees at the peak of the heat yesterday) and snakes are NOT slow when it is not cool. I usually am not unusally afraid of snakes but this one gave me goosebumps...really! It was very large around the middle. Just eaten? Pregnant? We don't know. Becky called the fire department and we stayed and visited with the snake until the fire truck got there. Every time the snake felt safe and started to move I would stamp my feet on the porch or throw a walnut shell (I had not swept up the shells after cracking the CA walnuts my oldest brother had gotten to me) and it would make the snake nervous again and it stayed coiled and ready to strike. It took the firemen about 30-45 minutes to get to my house even though they are only 1/2 mile away. They was fighting a fire someplace and still smelled smokey. By the way Kala, one of them was the cute fireman we hoped were at the fire station. ;-) My oldest granddaughter and I thought about going to the fire house when it was first established, taking cookies to them in welcome and checking out the cute? firemen in uniform. Never did it but I found out our cookies could not have been accepted. They are supposed to take the snake and release it only a mile from where they find it. They took it out to a road just a tiny bite farther than a mile (thank you cute firemen), I left for my errands in town but stopped at a wonderfully yummy Mexican fast food restaurant which is 11 miles from my house and the closest establishment from me. The firemen walked in to get lunch. I walked over to them with a $20 and told them I would like to buy them lunch. I got a BIG AND VERY FIRM "no thank you". Another granddaughter who lives next door to me told me that there were some officials (Police??) visiting their school one time and told them they were allow to accept NO gifts at all.

I hope this uninvited guest doesn't find it's way back here.

I will post something else when I find something you would be interested.

Don't forget to click on the pictures so that you can see the guest a bit better.