Quilt Therapy

It’s that time of year again – time to start thinking about Christmas!  This year, we’re doing something just a little different - we’re going to make a Countdown to Christmas fauz flower arrangement!  Essentially, it’ll be Christmas shapes (stocking, Christmas trees, angels, etc.) that will be attached to “stems” and “planted” in a flower pot.  We’ll make one per day, with the pattern provided each day.  By the time Christmas comes around, you should have 25 different “flowers”!

So, get ready for some sewing & crafting fun with me – starting tomorrow, December 1, 2009! 

Here are the supplies you will need:

1. Flower pot
2. 25 round craft sticks, cut to various lengths (longest is 6″)
3. Floral tape
4. Fusible Peltex or Temtex
5. Hot Glue Gun & Glue
6. Fabirc – we are using an assortment of Wintergraphix II from AbbiMays.com to decorate the outside of the pot and to make the “flowers”
7. Floral foam for inside the pot
8. A touch of garland to decorate the inside of the pot
9. Embellishments for your “flowers” such as beads, buttons, ric-rak, etc.

Thanksgiving was a lovely affair at Mama Lu’s house, turkey, ham and all the trimmings.  We came home STUFFED as that turkey was, for a lovely little nap before everyone went back up to enjoy the pies. 

After we went back home at 10 pm, I heard that others in the family were going back for seconds.  Ugh, I was STILL stuffed!

I did cook the ham and green bean casserole in my oven, so of COURSE I *had to* stay home to make sure the oven didn’t burn the house down — and lo-and-behold, my sewing room is right off of our dining room.  It’s perfectly ok to cook AND sew.  Right?

Of COURSE!  hehe

Our church service on Sunday has left me singing “Give Thanks with a Thankful Heart” over and over all week.  And with that, I’ve been trying to come up with a list of thanks for tomorrow’s upcoming Thanksgiving holiday:

1.  I am thankful to God – who is the One who has made me what I am today, through His many blessings.

2.  I am thankful to my parents, who gave me life:

3.  I am thankful for the love of my husband, who loves me (and still talks to me) despite all of my faults.

4.  I am thankful for my children, four of the brightest, funniest, lovable, huggable and trying little people in my home…who give and accept love so freely - they make me thirst for more of their love and talents.

5.  I am thankful for the extended friends and family that have enriched my life, kept me grounded and shared of themselves with me – some for many, many years.

6.  I am thankful for my quilting talents, that I am able to share them with others and live a life filled with a passion for the traditional art of quilting.

7.  I am thankful for my clients, who send me work and help me feed my family.

8.  I am thankful for being able to have a thankful, loving heart – at one time in my life, I was told I wasn’t capable of having and showing emotions – they were wrong.  So.  Very.  Wrong.

9.  I am thankful for our pets, who give unconditional love and little doggie moochies.

10.  I am thankful for YOU – who come to visit me and my lil’ ole’ life here in the hills of nowhere, Texas.  You brighten my days and help fuel my creativity.

I had to make this quilt for my SIL’s boyfriend.  He chose two colors for the quilt.  That’s it.  TWO colors.  UGH  I’m just not a two-color quilter, that’s for sure. 

But, this post isn’t about his color choices (or lack thereof) – it’s about variation on a theme.  I wanted to do SIMPLE (he’s a MAN, afterall), yet needed to try to create depth and some design fun. 

And then I ran out of fabric – which is totally amazing in and of itself!  And I live 45 min. away from the nearest quilt shop.  <thud>

So, I did what any quilter would do in the face of adversity – I punted!

Five of the blocks are simply pieced nine-patch blocks, with a border around the nine-patch. 

The center block is a 25-square pieced block.

Four of the blocks are raw-edge applique, on top of the background fabric – giving the illusion that I’ve pieced them!

Once my quilter is finished with her part, the appliqued fabrics will be stabilized and no one will know that I ran out of fabric and took a short-cut to get this quilt pieced!  Plus, I like the final results, a variation of pieced and raw-edge applique – gives a MAN quilt much more funshine than just pieced blocks.

Try it – and have FUN in designing or making a quilt that isn’t the norm!

One of the (numerous) things I do is search the Internet for free quilt patterns for BOMquilts.com.   In addition, I have other categories listed there, one that is just for quilted gift ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, a visitor to the site asked for some pincusion patterns, and I was happy to oblige and find some fun ones and add them to that category.

A week later, I got word that the lady we’d scheduled to teach paper-piecing at our quilt group meeting was unable to do so, therefore, my MIL asked me if I could quickly come up with something for the group to learn or do.  I remembered the pincusion patterns that I’d added to my website, and really thought the (older) ladies in our group would enjoy putting them together – plus, I figured they had teacups at their disposal.

I’m pretty sure everyone enjoyed our fun evening, even if it was a non-quilted project.  Sometimes, it’s just fun to throw out an idea and see how far we can go with it! 

Here’s my completed teacup pincushion:

And here’s where I found the pattern.  Enjoy!

My GS co-leader is also the person in charge of our local food pantry.  They had so many new people come to the last food pantry day that they ran out of food.  Her husband went to the local stop-and-rob and bought food (with his own money) to help those in need….but, they still ran out and all he could do was close and lock the door.

Our Girl Scouts are helping out for Christmas, with donating children’s books so parents can give their child(ren) the gift of reading as gifts.  The girls will also be making “mom and dad” gifts so that the children who come with their parents can perhaps choose a gift to give to them, too.

But, it’s FOOD the pantry needs, not just Christmas gifts.

The local school did a canned food drive contest this past week – gathering over 800 cans of non-perishable food.  I emailed the principal, to find out where the food was going, and he informed me it was going to the food pantry over in our county seat.  Not here.  Not locally, where the children who actually gathered and donated the food will have immediate access to it.  No, it’s going 30 miles away. 

We have approximately 2000 people who live in our little community.  Also in our school district is the Medina Children’s Home, which I’ve spoken of before.  It has two programs, one consists of group homes that have eight children in each parented home.  The other is the single mother’s and children’s portion, where they help to give a lift up for single mothers and their kids.  I’d venture to say one-fourth of these population numbers and half of the school children live at the Home.  So, removing those numbers from the population count, if you figure a family consists of 2-4 children, probably some grandparents, too – then I would guess we have about 250 families in the area.  At *least* 15% of those are needing the LOCAL food pantry right now (they can drive to our county seat to get food at that food pantry, but if they can afford the gas to drive that far, that’s less money they are using to feed their families).

And that doesn’t account for the holidays coming up, where the need always increases. 

Now, I’ve lit a fire under my MIL’s behind, and her church is rising to the occasion and asking for more donations of food and funds to help the food pantry.  Every little bit helps, that’s for sure – and, hey, we’re all in this together.  The more we help out those in need, the better chances that those children will grow up to be giving members of society in the future – just as I have.

I do not understand the school and their decision to send the food they collected out of the immediate area.  But, I’m not about to sit on my behind and do nothing about this problem.  Families, especially those with KIDS, are going hungry.  That is NOT RIGHT, my friends.

I pray that each of you are doing something for the communities you live in.  We don’t have much, but we will certainly do what we can to help out those who are in worse shape than we are.

Come on over to www.QuiltFabricSale.com and see what online quilt shops have on sale this week!  Nothing like indulging in your quilting passion at a discount!

I have been working on an as-needed basis for a lovely restaurant, helping with their catering.  The owner is a dietitian, so most of the food they offer is much healthier than I personally prefer – but, the colors are what really bring the food to the forefront of my fascination with cooking and catering.  There is SO much quilt fabric choice inspiration in foods!  Last week, I took my camera, to really document the colors that we put together in the foods.  Take a look and see if some of these colors don’t just pop out at you as needing to be quilted:

Mrs. Gina Reddin, the lovely and gracious owner of Splinters & Threads, sent me an email and asked if I could help her get the word out about quilters making and donating quilt tops for the troop’s families who recently lost a loved one at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Meloney Funk (my quilt market bag lady) and Gina Reddin, owner of Splinters & Threads

Please click on the image above for more information!

Linda at www.AbbiMays.com was the featured vendor at her quilt guild’s November meeting, and she asked me to send a few of my original designs and quilts to her, so she could display them.  I am so blessed to have such a grand relationship with Linda!  She has really allowed me to bring out the best in my quilting, to really focus on designing quilts intead of waiting until I can buy the fabric to make them.

Here’s a lovely pix of Linda’s vendor booth – you’ll find a few of these patterns at www.BOMquilts.com: