Well, the 4th of July is over.  I'm still up to my eye balls with 'things to do'.

Blogging has been hit or miss, mostly I'm lurking leaving a comment occasionally but mostly lurking. 

Meghan graduated from nursing school last Thursday evening.

You can't tell in this picture but she's bawling.  The picture is bad for two reasons:

1. I'm a crappola photographer 

2.  I'm bawling too.

This picture is Meg and 3 of her classmates, they have all been hired in the CV/ICU unit at Mercy hospital.

Then on Saturday we partied. 

  

The 4th of July was quiet.  Just my mom and dad. 

Today was my day off so I finally finished the binding on 

Scrappy Happy.

still not 'thrilled' with this one.  Oh well, it's done.

And I started and finished the binding on OBW #3

60 x 51

I'm also nearly finished quilting Fire Escape. I'm doing 'water ripples' on it and have 1 full pass and then another 5 inches to finish it.  It will be done tonight.
She says hopefully.

And then the binding....can't seem to get away from that lately.


Is it hot where you are?
It's in the high 90's here, humid.  I remember when we moved here.  
No A/C for the first couple years.  


So spoiled now it's embarrassing.

Shop Hop 2012 is in the history books

and will go down as a very successful one-for us anyway!

Libby picked me up after work yesterday and we headed straight to Panera's.  One can't shop on an empty stomach!  Also, we needed to let the rush hour traffic subside a little.  We arrived at Quilters Corner.  From the outside you are deceived into thinking this is a small shop.  You would be wrong. Over 7,500 bolts of fabric!  Complete lines of many new fabrics.  An amazing CW repro section, Kaffe Fassett, Batiks....ahhggg my brain just overloaded.

And samples (always many new ones) everywhere.

My wallet was correct in being nervous.
(don't tell Paul)  ;)

day 2 loot!

Rick rack for my watermelon banner (Libby got some too) we got way too much and I auditioned it last night, um it's too wide.  I'm not going to use it.  oh well.

A charm pack from Primitive gatherings, and yardage from them too -for the quilt in the magazine I have opened there.  It's from the summer issue of

which for some reason Google isn't letting me get a to link.
Anyway, I have all the other fabrics in stash, just needed the background yardage and the yardage for the hst's.  I'm not holding my breath on this one but now that I've dropped decent $$ into it -that should help the motivation department.

I also got yardage of Sweetwater's 'reunion' line to go with a charm pack I picked up at another shop on Wednesday.
And at the last shop I bought some Superior threads.
I've never used So Fine #40 -the one I got is a variegated.
Oh and finally, this year each shop gave a charm to go with the charm bracelet we received for buying our passport in April at the 'kick off' and getting a "VIQ" sticker on our passports.  We thought it was a great idea. In the past, VIQ meant at many of the shops getting a crappy FQ from ancient times, sorta like the fruit cake jokes at Christmas.  The FQ you just pass on to some unsuspecting person....
So this change was welcomed and the bracelet is too cute.

I will be wearing it to guild meetings and other quilt-y events for sure.
click on the pic to enlarge-they are really cute charms.

Shop Hopping 2012

Libby and I left at 8:30am. 

We got home at 10:30 pm.

In between we visited 8 of the 10 shops!!!

I drove 323 miles.

We laughed until our sides hurt.

I took no pictures. I had my camera but -duh-never remembered to take it out of the car.

Here is a picture I 'borrowed' from one of the shops.

It is their version of the progressive quilt.

It was my favorite one so far-love that border.  

The loot: 

I must say I was a very good girl. I didn't have a list--always a dangerous thing.

Some yardage, 2 charm packs, 3 patterns...

There are 2 shops left and depending on Libby's schedule we will either go to them Friday evening or Saturday morning.  Quilter's Corners is one of the two we couldn't get too.  It is a 'too die for' kind of quilt shop.  It was in Quilt Sampler Magazine in 2009.  

I'm looking forward to that visit-my wallet is nervous.

I will try to share now one funny story from yesterday.

Each shop had a block from the quilt and built their 'theme' around that. This year it's "Around the Town". We arrived at The Quilt Patch and their block was the hospital.

They had a room designated as a nursery with 2 cute dolls in a cradle.  The 'babies' had just been born that morning-twins a boy and a girl. Their last name was "Dresden" and we were given a slip of paper to write the babies names, first and middle on. It would go into a drawing. 

Now of course, there were other women in the room and we were also being told about other things pretty much at the same time and I was focused (as always) on

 1. where the rest room is and

 2. what little snack-y goodies they're offering.  :)

I got my little paper and sorta noticed how others were REALLY taking time to pick names for these dolls, I mean babies.  

In my head I'm thinking:

"Hello" how hard can this be...for goodness sake....it's a contest for a drawing...not brain surgery...."

So I wrote

"Amanda Jean"

and 

"Adam Joshua"

The names just popped into my head and I thought I was quite clever in having the first letters the same. I put it in the basket and forgot about it.

Fast forward a few hours.  

We're on our way home on the interstate and talking about the shops, what we liked, didn't, what's different etc, etc.

Somehow the subject of the names came up. I asked Libby what she picked. She said she didn't, she couldn't think of anything.

ME:  REALLY???

Libby: Well, it was too hard to think of 'quilting related' names. So I didn't do it.

ME: WHAT??

Libby:  Didn't you see the little story about the babies and how important quilting is to the family and the names were to reflect that.

I START TO LAUGH.  

It's the laugh of one who has been up since 5:30 am and driving for hours and hours and is tired and can't wait to brush her teeth (seriously I kept thinking ....I can not wait to get home and brush my teeth.  After all day, there comes a point where chewing gum just doesn't cut it anymore).

And I tell Libby how I did not see that, hear that, read that whatever! 

 I just named them and was wondering why those other women were taking it so seriously for goodness sake and I thought I was pretty cute with my names-- Amanda Jean and Adam Joshua...and we laughed for oh about 5 minutes, hysterically, and then kept chuckling about it for the next several after that.  

Oh how I would love to be a fly on the wall when they read MY ENTRY....

FUN TIMES, fun times.

Life is Good.

a new door banner

Yesterday, I should have started the quilting on Libby's 'Many Thanks' quilt.

It's all loaded and ready to go.

But I spied my stack of pulled fabrics for a new door banner and I was distracted!

It was good to spend some quality time cutting and piecing.

18 x 46

All fabrics fro the stash, you may not be able to see but the white 'welcome' fabric has ants on it -- too cute!

:)

Today is shop hop! 

Libby and I leave at 8:30 and we'll try to get as many of the 10 shops done today as possible.  I will try to be good and take pictures.  

We both are SO READY for a day out and dedicated to quilting fun.

The shops we don't get to today will, we'll finish on Saturday.

fun times, fun times!

DWMonday....Father's Day

No pictures of the same ole design wall  but here is a Brown Bear quilt I quilted for Libby yesterday.

and then in the afternoon a picnic at my brother's house to celebrate Fathers Day 

and our John's 27th birthday.

Seriously.

Twenty -SEVEN.

I think we just had this one taken a few years ago.

I guess I'm going to be really whacked out in November when the oldest son turns 

THIRTY!!

In my mind's eye they still look like this:

my fave photo of the 3 desperados 

OBW # 3

(50 x 60)

the back, the strip is the original fabric used

close up of my free hand of the panto Raindrops 

My spacing is not perfect  but I think it's an acceptable interpretation.  The size for 1 pass was 6 inches.  I laid a ruler across top and put a long piece of blue painters tape along it to mark the bottom edge. I did the first 2 rows like that but found the bottom raindrops where a little hard to execute so I tightened the row spacing to 5 1/2 and that was better for me.  It doesn't sound like a half an inch would make a difference but it seemed to. Or perhaps I was just getting more comfortable with the pattern. 

Now that I have the movements memorized I think this would be a cool design to just let go with and do smaller and not linear.  

And finally my dear Annie.  

She will be 11 years old on Wednesday.

A day off

Yesterday I had the day off. 

I had so many things on 'the to do list' it was crazy.

I started doing gardening stuff in the morning and in a patch of myrtle along the AC unit at the side of the house I found the Poison Ivy that started my itching a couple weeks ago.  YIKES!

So into the house all clothes in washer-me in shower.  No new itchies so I guess I got it in time.  

I do believe all the ground cover in this area will be removed and mulch will take it's place.  I will not be doing this again!

*****

The weather was so lovely that I didn't want to be cooped up doing binding in the house.

I found that I hadn't finished sewing the binding to the back of this quilt when I had to move it out of the closet for the carpet install.

The label says finished Sept 2011!

oops!

I also spent some time practicing a new to me E2E quilting design. It's a free panto from Stone House quilting called raindrops. I already had it downloaded on my computer but forgot about it until I saw this post from Kathy over at Tamarack Shack.

Since I haven't taken the time to learn how to do pantos yet and I won't have the time for a while...I'm just going to freehand this one.  

It was fun to practice this and I should be ready to quilt with it this evening after work.

and here is the latest Libby quilt I forgot to post a picture with all the biking fun last week.

It's her Dr. Seuss quilt.  I did a meander with a squiggily ribbon candy type thing-y here and there.  

I found the idea in my Pajama quilter reloaded book. 

and another customer table runner

*****

although I don't like to blog about it (afraid of jinxing ya'know) I need to document a little on my walking routine.

I'm still walking.

that's all. 

ha ha

No seriously, 

I am still walking 3-4 miles most days.  I've also (I'm embarrassed to say) adding a little jogging to the walks.  I'm embarrassed because I was so adamant  that I would 'never run again' and walking was enough. But I'm now in pretty good walking shape and don't feel like I'm getting my heart rate up enough so I jog a little and then walk again.  

And dang it, I like it.  

I bought running shoes...well they were cute and on sale for $16-seriously Asics for $16. I just spied them and they fit and are comfy...sigh, I love a good bargain and I had really no intention of actually running in them.

You see a long, long time ago in a land far, far away (the 80's) I was a runner. I even ran in Pittsburgh's "10K Great Race"- ran the whole thing, which was my goal actually.

Then we moved and I could give you a whole slew of excuses but I twisted my ankle and got out of the habit and that was that.

I have no intention of becoming a runner again. My sister runs half marathons, not me. My other sister ice climbs mountains DEFINITELY not me.

I'm the walker who jogs a bit who has finally got her BMI well into the normal range for her height and is comfortable in her clothes and skin again. 

It's been over a year of walking and eating as healthy as I can without being crazy.

Changing the lifestyle has worked--who'd of thunk it!

Now just to maintain for the rest of my life...

always a catch isn't there.

Fun times, fun times.

Life is Good.