kids

D has been in the hospital this week. Home now, but scary for me for a bit. It is amazing how every bad thing that you have ever heard, seen, or imagined comes into your head at 3:30 in the morning as you sit in the hospital looking at your child. Once again, we are so fortunate. Thank you to E for staying with D in the hospital.

On another front, D and I are missing K's graduation from med school today. Yes, she was the first phone call on Thursday morning. We are so proud of her and her achievements. She has managed alot while in med school and will continue to be challenged (especially for the next year) but we are positive that she is totally up to it. I am pleased that the rest of the family can be there with her and T to share today. I know C is taking photos, I'm just sorry that D and I aren't there to join the fun. I don't have enough words to express the gratefulness that I feel for all my children this weekend. Thanks so much to all of you. I love you.

Amy's Creative Side: Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

Amy's Creative Side: Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

bloggers quilt festival - K's wedding quilt

Thanks to Amy at this site, http://www.amyscreativeside.com/2010/05/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2010.html, for the chance to talk about K's wedding quilt. K was the first one of five to get married, and I really wanted to do something special to celebrate hers and T's marriage. I hadn't been making quilts very long, only about 6 months, and had never done applique before, but I started looking at books, and the quilt had to be applique. I really couldn't imagine a more perfect wedding quilt.

These are some of my favorite squares and border pieces in the quilt. The wedding was planned for April 2009 at a little church in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I explored several ways to do applique. I did some zigzag stitch by machine, but wasn't crazy about how it looked, and I wanted this to be an heirloom. I also tried fusible, but again, it was too stiff and didn't have the old-fashioned feel that I was going for. I suspect that it still seems odd that I quilt to folks who knew me as a young woman. I never willingly picked up a needle and was totally lost in home ec classes as a kid (yes, I am old enought to not have had options in the 8th grade, it was home ec, period). I had resisted for a long time. I have friends that quilt and they had wanted me to try it, but I couldn't imagine myself really liking it (I was wrong). I was hooked when I saw a Laurel Burch panel of a mermaid and since C is a scuba diver and part fish, I knew she had to have a quilt that included that panel. My friends said that I had to do it myself, they weren't going to make it for me. But back to K's quilt... the wedding date was set and I still didn't really know how to applique, so I bought books, many of them, Elly Sienkiewicz mostly, of course the most complicated, and then took a 2 hour class to learn how to hand applique. Ok, I can do this, I just have to modify it for me. I didn't like the glue or the overlay, so I just eyeballed the placement and started in the middle of the square. I had no idea how long it would take, but I bought about 25 yards (yeah, I know, way to much) of fabric for the front and started. I (really) simplified patterns from the many books and I had made about 3 squares when I decided that I really didn't like the colors very much so I bought more fabric and redid them. I know I made every square at least twice, some of them 3 or 4 times. I started in March 2008 and after a couple false starts, appliqued like a demon all summer. Every night, I would work on it, many Sundays I worked all day. I was slow and not very good at the start, but by vacation time in August I was much better and faster. I appliqued all week of vacation and finished in September. It was a blast to think about K and put things into the quilt that I knew she would like. She had always wanted a bunny as a kid, so it had to include a rabbit, and then a squirrel and several birds, including the funky red one with the golden topknot. She also loves green acorns, so the acorns with the oak leaves had to be green. I knew that I didn't want a formal border so I just appliqued a vine with lots of leaves and different kinds of flowers and birds on the edge. I took it to a machine quilter (I know, all real quilters need air at this point in the conversation), but it really never occurred to me that I could hand quilt it too. Now I know better. The machine quilter said that she would be done the first of January. I called the middle of January to ask if she needed anything and then stopped over the end of January. It was still in the same pile it had been in October. Not a good sign. I called my friend, the real quilter, and she found a machine quilter who could get it in right away. It is beautiful and the machine quilting hid any piecing imperfections. Of course, I wish now that I had hand quilted it, but there are two more daughters and two sons, so I'm positive that I will get the chance.

Art Guild

I am going to art guild tonight. I don't really feel like going, but I should go. It has to do with getting out of the funk of this week. It has been a really long week. The women are friends, the art will be fun, we are having a potluck to celebrate being together, and I have to pay my $10 dues that I have owed and forgotten since January. I have my show and tells, my roving and felting needle from the Maryland fiber fair, my cherry boxes, and a little mosaic piece that I have been working on. I have also decided that I am putting on the loom the beautiful white baby blanket with pink roses that I saw in the magazine. Life does go on. Between the baby blanket and 2 weddings this weekend, and my daughter's graduation from medical school next weekend, I hopefully will not have time for the funk. And I am deadheading the petunias and marigolds. Maybe sunshine will help too. I hope so.

Grief

I know I can't say this eloquently enough, but my friend and her husband don't deserve this. No one deserves this. They are burying their youngest daughter tomorrow, 2 weeks after her 18th birthday. They did everything right, 2 beautiful, talented daughters, the older one in college, the other a senior in high school until last Friday afternoon. The girls excelled in academics and sports. The 18 year old was the captain of the soccer team and had played since she was a tyke. My friend worked with us many years ago, we took turns being pregnant in those days, one after another, bringing home new babies. You worry all the time, but you have to believe, as you sit through recitals, games, concerts, and matches, that everything will be alright. They start kindergarten and then they seem to be driving and going to prom, and all those years of lessons and laughing and age appropriate discussions...where did they go? This was a mom who took photos of everything, who always whipped out the newest picture from her purse when we happened to meet. Today, standing at the funeral home, in front of hundreds of photos tacked onto boards, her words were "let us share our daughter with you" as she pointed out the beautiful blonde with the grin in family photos, photos with her friends, her dogs, and her sister. We pray daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute, that ours that we love will be safe and happy, and I am so grateful that tonight, for mine, that is true, but I am heartbroken for my friend because her heart will never be the same.

A Gardening Weekend

A very fun couple days. D and E, C, H and I went to the Eastern Market on Sat and bought flowers and cheese and ate ribs and pastries, washed down with lots of coffee. We stopped in Birmingham to get dad's special bottle of bourbon in the afternoon and came home to find that the 5 yards of compost had been delivered. Yippee! Since then, we have planted flowerbeds, moved compost, installed fencing, planted herbs and cherry tomatoes, planted raspberries, moved compost, pruned the trees and shrubs, planted the front porch pots, moved hydrangeas, watered everything in sight, rearranged the rocks and mushrooms, moved more compost, planted the back deck pots, and moved lots of brush in the woods. The pink dogwood have been stunning this year.

Tulips and allium,

grape hyacinth, just before they are gone for the year,

ferns at the front door,

japanese grass that the dogs munch on at every opportunity,

the cherry tree garden with snaps, marigolds, mums, daylilies and crane's bill geranium,

perennial bachelor's buttons,

white iris,

helebores,

columbine,

purple iris,









peonies almost out,

raspberries waiting for July,

volunteer chives in the corner of the herb garden,

white lilacs with the absolutely amazing fragrance,








hydrangeas with the boy and goose statue,

ajuga everywhere,

a bed of raspberries, more than enough to make jam...

the 8x50' annual bed planted with several varieties of snaps, marigolds, dahlias, cannas, sweet peas, zinnias, stocks, roses, glads, petunias, morning glories, cosmos, and sunflowers. It is almost perfect now and will be absolutely perfect in about a month (or so I tell all the neighbors who are stopping to admire). Thanks to D, E, C and H for a weekend of really hard, and fun for me, work. PS the white chocolate mousse was great too AND E got to eat her first coney. How cool is that! A wonderful weekend.

Foundations

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." ~~Henry David Thoreau

I came across this quote today and it made me think of you. Your dreams are perfect for you and there is lots of time to build foundations. Onward.