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With all the recent talk about the Swine Flu, I got to thinking about flu shots, and that led to "the patch" that everyone talks about. And of course my twisted mind led me to think about the Quilt Pox and creating a patch for that! So here you are! Immunize your blog with "The Patch"!
I would love it if you saw fit to add this to your blog with a link to my website http://www.patchalotpatterns.com/


Accept no substitutions!

PS: Oh maybe I should throw in a give-away as an incentive! Let me know if you add this badge to your blog and you will be eligible to win a pattern or two of your choice in a drawing to be held June 5th.

FEATHERING MY NEST

Recently I had my bedroom repainted. Have I ever mentioned that I HATE picking out paint? The room was yellow, but kind of had a sharp edge to it, if you know what I mean. It wasn't a nice soft yellow. I had lived with it long enough and so it was off to the paint store. I found a lovely color that looked perfect on the paint chip. Not so hot on the wall, however. I walked in when the room was almost done and said to the nice painter man, "I hate it"! He was so sweet. He encouraged me to go find another color and he would repaint it. It took two more cans of paint before I got it right. The above colors are close to what my walls looked like in the three stages. The final color, Fairmont Lobby Cream, is the final color, and it looks quite lovely. It is from Lowe's. I highly recommend buying the tester jars that they have available now. It costs a small amount and will save you a gallon or two in the end.

Time to change quilts and put on something pretty for summer. This is one I made about ten years ago. It is from a book called Buttermilk Farm, by Black Mountain Quilts. Teri Christopherson is the designer and she creates beautiful quilts. I am sure the book is out of print by now. Becky Krauss of Bellevue, WA quilted this for me. She is a wonderful quilter!
This is how it looks on my bed. Also, notice the framed pictures above the bed. I just added those as well. I photocopied these birds from this old bird book that I have. It is copyrighted in 1896. The pictures are rather odd by today's standards, but that gives them charm. I found frames at Michael's for about $7-8 a piece. They copied very well and I am pleased with the outcome.

Becky made me a new signature! Thanks granddaughter!

PS: Upon further investigation I see that the pattern for the quilt above has been republished in Teri's book, Summertime! Check it out!

WEBSITE WOES

I have an internet problem that is driving me nuts! I spent all yesterday afternoon trying to update my website! My website is a Yahoo Sitebuilder program, and I have been very happy with the ease in which a novice like me can create and operate my own website. I have had it for several years. Recently, while at my daughter's house, I discovered that some of the links I have created don't work. They have an Apple computer and Firefox browser. When I came home I set about correcting the links and they wouldn't correct! Well, I had recently switched from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome. When I went back into IE, everything worked as it should.

So yesterday I needed to add my new pattern to my website. Somehow I was able to load page 5 in my pattern section, and create a couple of new page links. Yay! Then I decided to redo page one, as I thought the pictures needed brightening. I was messing with that all afternoon and could not get the new page to update! I tried again last night before I went to bed. Nothin'.

So, this morning I opened IE and went to my website and there it was! The new page one! I was pleased and puzzled at the same time. So I closed IE and opened Firefox. (Oh, I didn't mention that Granddaughter Becky insisted that I must have Firefox on my computer because it is so much better) Well the blooming page still wasn't there on my website when I opened it in Firefox! What the heck?

So I ask you, am I doing something wrong, or do all these browsers just not play nice together? I could go back to using only Internet Explorer, but then would other people using my website still have trouble connecting to links? Do I need to hire a professional website designer? Would that make a difference?



P.S: Bottom line is that for now, if you want to order the new Honor Guard pattern, click on pattern pages link and when the first page opens click on page four, then on page four click on page five to see Honor Guard. Unless you are on Firefox, then, apparently, you can open it up to the NEW page one and it has a link to page five. This is killin' me! I am a quilter not a techie!

HONOR GUARD

Finally something quilty to show! I was afraid you were going to kick me out the the ol' quilt bloggers club if I didn't post something about quilts soon! Well, things have been in very slow progress. I don't know why I seem to have so many distractions in my life. Part of the blame lies with you other quilt bloggers who distract me with your wonderful posts. I showed a piece of this quilt a while back, and have been waiting until I finished the directions to show the entire quilt. I still need to get the covers printed, but look! I got a photo! That is half the battle for me! Yesterday was an overcast day and perfect for picture taking.
Look how cute this is as a table topper! And each eagle has a word of advice: Honesty, Kindness, Gratitude and Faith. I have struggled with a name for this quilt and today it came to me. HONOR GUARD! What do you think? I hope you can see the quilting. It was beautifully done by Rosemary Skinner of The Quilted Fox in Virginia Beach. Thanks Rosemary! Her quilting is the perfect finish. I love designing and making the tops, but that is as far as my talent goes. I am ever so grateful to each talented quilter who completes my work!

On another note, Granddaughter Becky was talking on Skype with her boyfriend Travis who is in Utah. Becky has still not gotten a job, although I have been thrilled to take advantage of her computer skills in creating better images for my new pattern. Travis remarked to her that maybe she could do batting for me with my quilts. She said, "Do you even know what batting is?" No, he admitted, he did not. I am sorry Travis, if you are reading this, but I keep having fits of hysteria as I imagine what a batting job might entail. Beating the quilts with a bat perhaps? Or maybe me getting to a certain point in the quilt and calling out, "Hey batta-batta-batta-batta"! Got any other suggestions?

Time to go. Batter up!

THE RAVEN AND THE RAVENOUS

THE RAVEN by Edgar Allen Poe - 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Becky hears a tap-tap-tapping! She opens the chamber door into my sewing room and what does she find? The Raven! He came to live with us a few months ago, but he freaks out my husband, so he has taken up residency in the sewing room. Becky looks a little freaked also.

My great grandfather had a raven that would sit on his shoulder or head and walk around with him. When he walked up to the front door of his home the bird would swoop down and land on his shoulder and walk into the house with him. Apparently he was quite talented at hiding shiny objects around the house, like keys or scissors. Don't you wish you had a raven? That is all I need is someone hiding things from me! I do very well with that on my own. (OK fine, I confess that my raven is a fake).

Becky's friend Lauren has gone back home to Arizona. We miss her. Now I am Becky's best friend. Luckily Becky is very good at entertaining herself, and she has decided to set some goals for while she is here. One is to learn to cook, and another is to learn to sew. She has been finding recipes on line and practicing on us. We are happy! We like to be fed! Yes, we are the ravenous!
Becky and friend Lauren (are not Quakers) have an interesting family history connection. They both have ancestors that came over on the Mayflower! Lauren is descended from William Bradford, the well known leader of the Plymouth Colony. Becky is descended from Joseph Rogers, who was 17 years old at the time of the crossing. His father Thomas passed away that first winter and William Bradford took Joseph into his home for several years. Odd that we should even know that, isn't it? But this is all a matter of recorded history. It does make one wonder how many of our ancestors have crossed paths in the past? Or for that matter, with whom of our ancestor's descendants have we crossed paths? That's OK. I can't even keep up with the family I know!

Hope you have all been having a lovely weekend. It has been raining buckets here in Virginia!

TIME WARP

"This is us with Jefferson. He was kind enough to pose for a picture, but I felt a little bad because he was in the middle of writing the Declaration of Independence.
I hope that our going into the past and distracting him during such a crucial time in our history didn't disrupt the future."

I took my granddaughter Becky, and friend Lauren to Williamsburg on Monday. I swiped the above from Becky's blog. I couldn't resist, I had to share!

THINKING OF MOM

Mother's Day, it seems, was always more about my mother than about me.  So I wanted to just write a note about my Mom, who has been gone for 9-1/2 years now. My mother was an amazing woman, and I try not to ever compare myself to her lest I fall short. The above photo was taken in 1944 when Mom was 21 years old. That was the year she married my Dad.
Mom was very artistic. The above little picture is an example of the type of thing she would create as baby gifts for friends. This one she made for me the year I was born, in 1946. It is done in pen and ink with watercolor accents. It is very faded and aged at this point, but I still treasure it. I didn't really realize how much until I was an adult and one of my cousins told my Mom how much she loved hers and that it was still on her wall. I hadn't thought about it for years.  I found mine and hung it up! It is homemade and sweet and sentimental. Recently I wrote a post about my Mom on my family blog, PATCH-IT-ALL, if you are interested.
This picture of Mom was taken a few months before she passed away from breast cancer, January 1, 2000. I wrote a post about her a couple years ago HERE so I won't go into more detail. Just that on Mother's Day I am thinking of her and missing her. She may well be in a better place, but I know she is missing us too.

SCREENING CALLS?

My darling granddaughter Becky (blue) and friend Lauren (yellow) are here for the summer, or most of it. They met in college and became fast friends. They have been running all over looking for jobs, so far to no avail. It is not easy to find jobs I guess, although I expected they would find something as it is very touristy here in Virginia Beach. In fact, each summer the town has quite a number of Russian and Polish students who come on work visas. We enjoy visiting with them when we go out to eat, as they work as waitress's, etc. I have told our girls they need to be a little more aggresive and ask to speak to the manager. Who could resist them? It is fun to have them here. 

Remember seeing big pictures of people and thinking that their eyes are following you everywhere? Well imagine my surprise when I walked past the girls while they were looking at their computer screen and see faces looking up at me! The person on the screen smiles and waves. What? Here I am in my nightgown, ready for bed and carrying my shoes, which I gamely wave toward the smiling face on the computer screen. The girls talk to their friends like this every night. And no long distance charges!
The future is here! The one where they talked about actually seeing the person on the phone while you spoke with them. The one where we all thought, "Oh no! Not for me!" I must be the last person on earth without a camera on my computer.  But now I think I must have one! I talked to my little granddaughter, the Plumpkin, the other day and I watched her as she sang to me and we laughed and blew kisses. 

Thank you Becky, for dragging me into the 21st Century! What a blast!

LOVIN' SPOONFUL

Every time I look at these little hexagons beginning to take shape I am just so happy! I promised myself that I would start with a small project so as not to get discouraged. Ever feel that way? Then I decided to begin adding the filler hexagons, so those didn't seem overwhelming. Sometimes new quilters are overwhelmed with the size of a project. I get that! But with any project, it is breaking it down into smaller components that makes it do-able. I guess I have learned this over time with my many projects. "You only need to make one block at a time", says I. This is the eating an elephant one spoonful at a time philosophy. Which begs the question, "how many elephants have I eaten in my lifetime"? 

I have also learned that persistence pays off. So I decide how much I am willing to finish. Then do it! For this project I am already seeing how darling it will be in the center of my round kitchen table. I was just going to make the star points, then decided I could manage the sides also. I guess the whole thing will be appliqued down. Experimentation will be needed as I have never finished a hexagon project before. How are the rest of you finishing the edges of your hexagons?

Notice I said I never finished one before. I actually made tons of these hexagons long ago and  recently gave them away to Rose Marie at Applique 'n Patch Quilting. Rose Marie has already begun playing with the hexagon blocks and I will love watching what she creates. Those hexagons were a case where I bit off more than I was ready to digest. Again with the elephant thing. 

So I am still stitching away and I know you are too!  Happy Threadtrails!

VARIETY SHOW

Look what I just got back from my quilters! I made this little quilt quite a while ago when I first came out with the Wintergreen pattern. I made a couple extra blocks for teaching the class, and then finished it up for shop display ('cause sometimes they prefer a smaller sample) or for my own use ('cause sometimes my big quilts are on loan and I miss them).
You may remember last summer when I made the above quilt from the Wintergreen pattern, only used Minnick and Simpson's Prairie Paisley line by Moda. I am convinced that anything would look spectacular in that fabric, and this quilt sure does. It is a favorite of mine!