I'm getting a little tired of blue!

With all the leftover strips from the blue braid quilts I decided I needed to work on a string quilt. Pulled a bunch of blue strings out and tossed them with the strips and started making these string blocks.

I went looking for some ideas on layout and saw a pattern in the book Liberated Strings for the hourglass blocks and just had to try that with a few of my string blocks. So now I really like how the hourglass blocks look but I also like the string blocks I started with.

I decided that I'll make both quilts. I have plenty of strips and strings for two and so I've been working on both sets of blocks for the last couple days. The pictures were taken at different times so the colors look off but they ARE the same set of blocks.


I'm about halfway done with both sets but am off to Virginia for a few days for a visit with my Mom so they'll be waiting for me when I get back.

I won't have computer access while I'm gone because my Mom's computer got fried when she had a power surge last week but will check in on Sunday night when I get home. Hope you all get lots of quilting done this weekend.

Request for donations

I hope no one is offended by this post but I'd blogged recently about registering for the Beast Cancer 3 day to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research.

In that post I did not say why this was an important event for me. I lost my Aunt last spring to breast cancer and 2 of my sisters have struggled with this disease. I'm ready to help fund research to eliminate breast cancer before any more of my family is affected.

I'll be walking in memory of my Aunt Lillian and would appreciate the support of anyone who has had to face this struggle in their own family.

Since training for the 3 day - 60 mile walk is going to be such a big part of my life over the next few months I will be blogging about my progress and posting the link for donations. This link is also posted in my sidebar.

To make a contribution please follow this link:
Atlanta 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk - Mary Johnson

For questions or comments feel free to email me directly.

I'm well ahead of the suggested training schedule for the 3 day event so I'm feeling good about my miles logged.

Miles walked last week = 33
Miles walked this week = 34

The vote is in

Well the overwhelming majority said they'd just finish off the blue braid with a dark binding so I'm going to go with that. The size is fine for 2 of the organizations I donate to so I don't need another border to make it bigger. I'll call the top finished and put it on the shelf to age a bit.

I pulled some blue strings from my bins, added them to the leftover strips from the braid quilts, and started some string blocks. I'll make 48 and sash them and have another donation quilt. I've already made 24 of the blocks so when I get back home I'll finish them up.

We're back at Big Canoe for the weekend and spring is starting to come to the North Georgia Mountains. We enjoyed our deck this afternoon before going out to dinner and are now ready to relax for the evening. Tomorrow we'll take a long *training* hike.

Another border?

Almost done - I think it could use another border of the dark blue to reframe the quilt. Yes? No? If yes, what size? The braids and pieced border finish at 4 inches and the dark blue border is 3 inches.

Chesty's up on the chair studying the quilt but didn't express his opinion one way or the other.

See all the blue strips still on the floor? A blue string quilt?

Braids

I got disgusted with the braids and decided I was done. Instead of one larger quilt I cut the braids I'd made in half and am making 2 smaller donation quilts. I will never use the foundation by the yard muslin for making braids again.

I need to THINK when I pull out a UFO and not just do what was planned. Some of these have been sitting around a while and there may be changes I need to make or a better way to do something - like the braid!

I put a top and bottom border on the smallest quilt pictured above and am in the process of adding a piano key border. Neither of them will get quilted right away - I'll let them *age* a little on the shelf.

Challenge Quilts

In rebuilding my computer files I came across this picture of a quilt I made for a family challenge. We're not very consistent but periodically I do a quilt challenge with my Mom and 3 sisters.

This time around my sister Debbie got to pick the rules which were 1) only 3 fabrics allowed 2) it had to be at least 75x75 and 3) there had to be applique. I usually make scrap quilts so this was a difficult challenge for me. I'd rather work with 2 fabrics or MANY!

The pattern is based on a quilt in the book Bed and Breakfast quilts and I hated the quilt in the book but felt like the pattern would showcase the toile and that it would go together quickly. The idea for applique border came from a magazine.

In the end I really liked the result and rather than exchanging finished quilts as we usually did, I suggested we each keep our own so I could use it for one of my guest beds.

No quilting this weekend

I spent the weekend up in the mountains and didn't get any piecing or quilting done. It was cold so the evenings were spent curled up in front of the fire and watching movies or playing scrabble and the days were spent hiking. I did work a little on a knitted baby blanket that I keep up at the condo to work on but I've still got about half of it to go.

Since signing up for the 3 day Breast Cancer Walk that will be held in Atlanta in October I decided I'd start keeping track of my mileage. I'm already ahead of their suggested training schedule and it shouldn't be too difficult for me until about 10 - 11 weeks before the event. As an added bonus, the walking and hiking should help with my weight loss goals.

More good news/bad news
The good news is that I finally found my backup DVD's so I can recover files lost when my hard drive crashed. The bad news is that the last time I backed my files was August so I still lost 6 months worth of files. At least I don't have to reload all my albums on iTunes! Once I reload my files I'll back them up on the new external hard drive. Too bad I hadn't bought that before this last crash.

Organizing and Cleaning my Studio

Once again the mess in my sewing studio has gotten out of control. I cleaned it up completely last October before having a Bee group from my guild meet at my house and since then it's been piling back up. Now it's to the point I can't even stand to be in the room.

I hate spending quilting time cleaning especially when I've been out of town. When I come home I want to get right back to work and not *waste* time straightening and cleaning.

Disscusion on the Stashbuster list about how others approach their quilting spaces and some direct feedback to me from a posting I made has been really helpful.

I've decided that prior to doing any quilting I'll clean up one area in the room. Yesterday I cleared out the floor by my desk. I couldn't even move my chair back without bumping into stacks of books or one of two filing boxes I had sitting in this area. Now I can move my chair or walk through this area without bumping into things.

I won't get any sewing done today because we're heading off to the mountains in a hour but I did clean off my cutting table. I'm going to keep at it and by the time I have my Bee group here again in May I won't have to worry about the mess.

Atlanta 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk

I spent the day running around starting with my Weight Watchers meeting - I just finished week 9 and have lost 15.4 lbs - yeah! It's slow but steady. To celebrate I went for a hike up Kennesaw Mountain - just 2 and 1/2 miles but the climb is strenuous.

This evening I went to an information meeting for the Atlanta 3 day Breast Cancer Walk. For years I've thought this would be a neat thing to do but at first we didn't live in a city hosting one and I really hadn't seen information about one since we moved to the Atlanta area. After reading on the website that it is 60 miles in 3 days I was hesitant but decided to go to the information meeting anyway.

After the presentation I decided to go ahead and sign up. I do a lot of walking and hiking now so it's not like I'll be starting from scratch but I'll have to crank up the miles to train for the event that is October 20-22. I was also nervous because this is the weekend before my son's wedding but it's not like that is a reason I can't do it. There's nothing scheduled for that weekend anyway.

To top off my day - I was in downtown Atlanta at night (coming home from the meeting) and got a flat tire. I never go into town at night so I was pretty upset about being in a strange area with a flat. I called AAA and my husband but it was going to be 40 minutes before Keith could get there and an hour and a half before AAA was going to arrive. Anyway, a man using the pay phone at the gas station I'd pulled into offered to change the tire - I was nervous about accepting but he got the tire changed for me and I was able to call Keith and tell him I'd meet him back near the house for dinner. The drive on I75 at night, in a hard rain, with a fake (spare) tire was pretty scary but I got home safe.

Just goes to show there are Good Samaritans out there - sometimes where you don't expect to find them.

UFO #8 Finished

I finished up the binding on the Crayon quilt tonight and embroidered my initials and the year on the back. Not my favorite but it's done. You can see a close-up picture of the quilting in the picture I posted the other day.

I had planned to work some on the braid quilt today but Keith and I went for a 10 mile hike instead. It was a cool drizzly day but it was nice to be outside.

Adam's Birthday

We just got home from seeing Adam for his birthday. We had dinner at the Ritz Carlton where he's working now and got to meet his girlfriend too. She was able to join us for dinner and we had a wonderful time.

Here's a picture of Adam with his quilt. He'd asked me for a quilt from all his old jeans a while ago - maybe as long as a couple years ago. A few months ago he asked when I was going to get around to making it - Since I'd had most of the squares cut I figured I could finish a UFO and give it to him for his birthday.

The appliques are all from the jeans - even the nasty looking snake in the middle of the quilt.

The quilt that DIDN'T get the crayon border

This is the quilt that I intended to use the Crayon border for - I liked how this circle print looked a lot better. My sister quilted this one and it will be donated to the local Ronald McDonald house through my guild.

Chesty

Chesty had his final post-op checkup Tuesday and can return to all his regular activities. To celebrate he went to the Beauty Parlor yesterday - isn't he cute?

Bad luck/good luck

The bad luck is that I had a power outage that killed my computer so I went out yesterday and bought a new CPU and have been setting it up with all my programs. More bad news - I've lost a significant number of files because although I do back them up periodically its been a few months AND right now I can't even find the last backup copy. So having learned my lesson (again) I bought a external hard drive to do routine backups of my computer data.

The good news is that I was quilting at the time of the power outage and my longarm is fine - no damage there. This picture is the quilt I was finishing up at the time. Not my favorite but I had this crayon print that was supposed to have been a border on another quilt but I decided it was too busy. I had hoped that the flying geese would calm this down some.

Bottom line is that it's kind of cute and it's bright so I'm sure some kid will love it. It is donation quilt but I'm not sure where it will go. I still have to bind it but with trying to get my computer up and running again I haven't worked on it today.

My current project

Since I've been home I started working on another UFO. My Mom cut a bunch of strips for me at least 2 years ago for this braid quilt. I no longer intend to do the original quilt I'd planned (that one had applique) but I want to get this one off my list of projects so I'm making the braids and will decide on the finished quilt by the time I'm done.

I'm working on a vertical strippie pattern in EQ5 but I'm just not sure how wide my alternate strips will be and whether I am going to use a light blue or a red fabric as an accent between the braids and strips.

I've got two of these braids completed and I think I'll need 5 for the finished quilt. They're being pieced on the foundation by the yard muslin and I'm hating it. Next time I'm piecing braids without a foundation.

Hopefully, I'll load a top on the longarm today so I'll be working on two UFO's this week.

What I'm reading

WHAT REMAINS
by Carole Radziwill

Sad but I didn't think it was a great book like the review I'd read said.








TURNING ANGEL
by Greg Iles

Good murder mystery - much better than the last one of his I'd read.








A WEDDING IN DECEMBER
by Anita Shreve

Good - I like reading about the relationships in her books.

Some pictures from Boston

My son chastised me for not updating my blog in a couple days so I pulled out the camera to post some pictures from my Boston trip.

My two favorite things about this trip were #1 staying across the harbor from Boston - we had this wonderful view from our hotel window (I've included a picture of the view both during the day and at night) and took a water taxi back and forth into the city and #2 walking the Freedom Trail.

T-shirt quilts

There's been some discussion on T-shirt quilts on the Stashbusters list so I thought I'd post the one I made (my Mom helped with the piecing) for my son Chris for his graduation from college.

I know a lot of people hate these quilts and think they're ugly but I think they can be special for the recipient. Chris was thrilled with his and although it isn't anything fancy it was the quilt HE wanted for graduation.

Walking the Freedom Trail

Most of my day today was spent along the Freedom Trail in Boston. I did NOT go in each site along the trail, my main goal was to walk the Trail and back to the water taxi location to return to my hotel. I did however go into the Paul Revere house and I admit into a Borders I came across while walking. I'm sure that won't surprise those who have been reading my blog and know that reading is a favorite activity for me. I'm feeling a little guilty for making time for the book store while passing up going into some of the sites that make up the Trail but I'd do it again so I guess I'm not too guilty.

After taking a water taxi to Long Wharf I took my first ride on the T. I wanted to visit Trinity Church and go by the Hard Rock Cafe (to pick up a T-shirt for Adam - he collects them) before starting my walk. After picking up the T-shirt, I walked to Boston Commons and began walking.

Tomorrow we head for home.

Traveling

Pam asked do I keep a suitcase packed near the door - the answer is no but I frequently don't get completely unpacked before having to pack for another trip. One of the advantages to having a husband who travels and kids who are grown is the ability to tag along on his trips when I want to. Keith will work while we're here but I'll spend my days exploring the city. I don't mind being on my own while he's working - in fact I really enjoy it.

I brought my small digital camera but can't transfer the photo's to the computer so here is one I took with the phone. The skyline appears more distant in the picture than it actually is. I'm looking forward to taking a water taxi across the harbor tomorrow and spending my day wandering around.

Boston

We're off to Boston in the morning. I'm taking along my knitting and the blocks for my Cathedral Windows but finishing the baby afghan I'm working on will be my priority while I'm gone.

I hope it's not too cold - we've had wonderful weather the last week and I'm already in Spring mode.

Baby Stripes

I've mentioned before that I like to cut out more than one scrap quilt at a time. This top was a quick one to piece from strips cut when I was cutting for the Baby Cabin. I started piecing some blocks on Thursday and Saturday nights and finished the top up today.

Initially I thought I'd do a string quilt but decided that with all the strips the same width that a Roman Stripe would be a better choice. I cut my muslin squares oversized and foundation pieced the strips to half the block and trimmed to size.

The quilt is 38x45.

It's Friday

Thanks for all the comments on the house and yard. I'm beginning to appreciate living in this area more. I'd always viewed our move here as temporary expecting to stay 3-5 years but it's starting to grow on me especially now that we have our mountain getaway nearby. We drove up this afternoon for a quick overnight visit. I can't wait to see the mountains in bloom this spring.

I finished the binding on Adam's jeans quilt on the drive up so I just have to label it and it will be ready to present to him on the 18th. I won't post a final picture now but will wait and take one of Adam with the quilt and post that.

I wrote Wednesday about working in the yard for my Weight Watchers activity points and did the same on Thursday and today. We are having BEAUTIFUL weather and even though yard work is not my favorite I'm enjoying being outside.

Amy has been posting some pictures of quilts from the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival so I thought I would post the quilt I liked the most from the show. I didn't take my camera but my sister Debbie took a bunch of pictures of the quilts and emailed this one to me.

Where I live

I decided to do some yard work today instead of walking to *earn* my weight watchers activity points. Normally slave boy (Adam) would be doing this but since he moved out in November it's left to me to rake all the pine staw out of the mondo grass.

While I was taking a picture of the work I was doing I decided to take some pictures of my daffodils in bloom (near the rocks). From there I figured I'd take some pictures of the house to share with everyone in blogland.

We live in an older neighborhood outside of Atlanta and have a beautiful corner lot. Our living room is on the second floor so between that and living up on the hill we look out over the tree tops NOT the other houses in the neighborhood.

As you can see I have plenty of raking left to do.

Project Linus

Today I took quilts and afghans to the local Project Linus chapter. I had two of each to donate this time. The top pink afghan is crocheted in a shell pattern that is very pretty. The green and yellow quilt alternates a cute cat print block with pinwheel blocks and the blue and pink quilt has a butterfly print in a twisted block setting.

I'm still working on quilting Adam's jeans quilt. I've run into some problems with thread breaking and although I have tried different needles and different threads I'm still having some problems.

I had planned to meander it but the thread kept breaking when I went around a curve so I'm just quilting back and forth across the blocks very SLOWLY. I've only got the final round of black blocks to quilt and then it will be ready for binding.

Back to work

I have a week until my next trip so I'm set to get back to work. I've made good progress on another knitted baby afghan while I was away but didn't work on my Cathedral Windows at all. I need to iron some more of the muslin squares and I'll take both the knitting and the Cathedral Windows with me when I go to Boston next week.

Today I plan on loading Adam's quilt on the longarm and to start piecing on another UFO. I'm just not sure which UFO I'm going to work on next so I'll load Adam's jean quilt first.

What I'm reading

Machine Quilting Guidebook Diane Gaudynski

Can you tell I'm traveling again? I'm getting some reading done since I can't be at home quilting.

I bought this book at the quilt show Wednesday and stayed up last night reading it from cover to cover. Lots of helpful information on machine quilting and some really neat quilting designs. I can't wait to try some of the techniques and designs.

What I'm reading

A Thread of Grace Mary Doria Russell

I love historical fiction and found this book fascinating. Although I've read many books both fiction and non fiction about WW2 I'd never read anything set in Italy during this time period.

The book is a fictional account of Jews and Italians during WW2.

What I'm reading

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson

I enjoy hiking so this book on hiking the Appalachian trail was very interesting to me. I know now I don't want to hike the entire thing but I still plan to do some day hikes on the trail one day.

Just checking in

I'm having a great time visiting with my mom, sister, and aunt. We went to the quilt show yesterday and my sister and I ran back today to shop some more.

I bought a few fat quarter bundles and the new foot for curved piecing - well it's been out a while but I'm just getting it now.

Also bought the new quilt calculator. I've been working on patterns for my aunt and the calculator came in handy for figuring the yardage she needed to purchase.

I get home Sunday so I'll write more then.

Bound and labeled

This one makes 6 UFO's finished this year. Not the best picture but I'm heading out of town first thing in the morning and I still have to pack.

I'll be visiting with my mom, sister, and aunt and going to the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival. While I'm very focused this year on reducing my stash - I will be picking up some fat quarter bundles. They always have great fat quarters at this show.

Butterfly Quilting

Click on the pictures to see the quilting detail

It's done. I quilted a mixture of leaves and butterflies and I guess it looks OK. Once it's bound I'll post a picture of the whole quilt but here are a couple shots of the quilting. You can still see some of my marking on the butterfly picture. I used template plastic to trace the outline of the butterfly and scattered them in the border.

Technically I should do some ditch stitching but I hate to stitch in the ditch on the longarm. It's a donation quilt not a show quilt so I'm going to allow myself to not ditch stitch.

Of course, in case you get the wrong idea - I don't make show quilts. The quilts I make for myself are scrap quilts and I quilt pantographs on them.

If it wasn't for quilting my Mom's quilts I probably wouldn't be able to quilt anything but overall meandering or pantographs. She always seems to make quilts that need something other than pantographs.

Thanks for all the input.

Blocks Quilted

OK, the blocks are done now onto to the borders.

I also have to decide if I'm going to do any quilting between the blocks. For now I'm not planning to - we'll see what I think when the rest of the quilting is done.

Do I like it? Not sure yet.

Ready to start

OK - I've decided to freehand quilt this quilt - I hope I don't regret it. I don't know why I'm stressing over this maybe because I'll actually be showing the outcome on the blog. So be nice to me - this is why I don't quilt for other people except family members and they get what they pay for.

I'm going to use the variegated thread and I'll start with the square in a square blocks. I played around with different variations and this is the one I'm going to try. Can you tell I can't draw. I printed a bunch of blank blocks off EQ5 and drew different patterns until I came up with one I like.

I'm still not sure what I'll do in the 4 patch blocks but I'm leaning toward some loops and butterflies in the final border.

I printed a butterfly motif off of the McCalls site and I can trace it on template plastic and just use the outline on the top so I can place the butterflies where I want them. I'll just do loops in between the butterflies.

Decisions

I've loaded the butterfly quilt and intended to start quilting it tonight but since I'm not sure about the quilting I'm going to sleep on it and start tomorrow afternoon.

I'm in such a pantograph mode - I haven't quilted anything freehand this year. I'm debating between freehand quilting a Line Dancing pattern with leaves or this pantograph - Rhapsody. The lazy way would be to just do the pantograph.

Second I'm debating thread color. An olive green that matches the *dark* fabric in the quilt or a variegated with greens, golds, and oranges.

Click on the picture to get a larger view.

I'll probably start quilting in the afternoon so if you have any thoughts for me - leave me a comment before then otherwise it will be too late because I AM going to make a decision and quilt this tomorrow!

Adam's top finished

I was determined NOT to go to bed tonight before finishing this top. I did not want to wake up and have to face it in the morning. It's turning out better than I expected it and I know Adam will love it.

Now I'll put it aside until I get back from the Mid Atlantic Quilt Show next week. We visit Adam on his birthday (March 18th) so I'll have plenty of time to quilt it before our visit.

Stashbuster's retreat weekend

I'm participating in a stay at home retreat this weekend with the Stashbuster group and working on a birthday quilt for my son Adam.

This is another UFO - I've had 3/4 of the squares cut out for this quilt for months maybe even more than a year. My intention was to make a rag quilt but then I made the mistake of describing the quilt to him. He said NO ragged edges. So with most of the squares cut out I was limited to what I make.

Here's my progress so far. The appliques are from the old jeans and I'm just trying to sprinkle them through the quilt.

I have two more rounds of squares - one blue and a final black.

Does anyone have ideas on how to quilt this?

UFO #5 finished

Here are the final pictures. I finished the binding up at my Bee group this morning. I didn't have enough of the border fabric to bind the quilt so I made a scrappy binding out of the leftover red and purple strips.

Next up is a jean's quilt for my son's birthday. He told me he did NOT want a rag quilt after I had most of the squares cut so this one won't be very interesting.

Labeling quilts to be donated

While it was good to get a lot done last night when I couldn't sleep - I made up for it and slept in this morning. Now I'm not tired tonight so I'm working again.

I finished the quilting on the Red and Purple rail fence, took it off the machine, trimmed it, sewed the binding on, and still not tired. So I decided to embroider my initials and the year on the back as my label.

I'd been using my sewing machine alphabet to sew initials and the year on some of my donation quilts but wasn't crazy about how it looked. So when I saw a post by Jeanne with her morning has broken embroidery I decided that I'd label one of these next quilts by hand.

Even though my lettering needs a lot of practice I'm happier with these results than the machine lettering. This has more character!

I'll work on hand stitching the binding down tomorrow night while I'm watching the Olympics and this will be UFO #5 finished.

Quilting makes the quilt

Yesterday was taken up with errands and hiking and I never did get back to my quilting. I couldn't sleep last night so around 2AM I decided to load a quilt and start quilting the red and purple rail fence.

With all the lights on in my studio I couldn't see the quilting very well and the red thread blended in with the top. So I came downstairs this afternoon and with just the light from the windows I could see the detail of the quilting and I love it.

It's a pantograph - the large version of Fay Feathers from Lorien Quilting and I think it looks wonderful.

Journaling

I'm curious if other bloggers print a hard copy of their blogs. I've always wanted to keep a journal but never got beyond a few entries. I've been printing my blog in sections thinking that I'll put them together in a binder so I'll have a permanent written record of what's going on in my life - quilting, travels, even what I'm reading.

How about the rest of you? Are you keeping a printed copy of your blogs?

Weight loss update
I went to my Weight Watchers meeting today and in spite of being out of town for 11 days and having to eat out I lost 3 lbs in the last two weeks. That's a total of 8.8 lbs in 4 weeks. I celebrated by going for a long hike at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

Afghans

I finished another crocheted afghan tonight. Most of it was done in the car on my trip but it was started in October and finished up tonight watching the Olympics.

Pictured above are the three afghans I've finished this year. The white one is the one I just finished up.

I always have trouble taking a good picture of these - I never seem to get them to drape across something the right way so this time I just folded and stacked them together.

All three will be donated.

String Quilts

While I was in Florida there was more discussion on the stashbuster list about string quilts so I thought I'd post 2 more string quilts that I'd made.

The lap quilt was the first one I did and after the blocks were made I sashed them with a blue fabric. The second one on the bed is a what I call self sashing. The first string placed on each block is the same blue fabric so when the blocks are sewn together it appears sashed.

I have 2 more string quilts on my UFO list that I'm anxious to work on but there are a few other projects ahead of them.

Walking

The weather is beautiful here in South Florida. We're having a great time walking along the beach and visiting with family.

Friday we walked the boardwalk at Hollywood beach - lots of construction going on there and half the boardwalk was roped off with the path being redone. We were able to walk from one end to the other - 4 miles. Saturday we went to Ft. Lauderdale beach and walked another 4 miles along the boardwalk and then had lunch at a place overlooking the water.

We lived in South Florida for over 9 years and in Tampa for 3 but have been in the Atlanta area for almost 4 years now. It's interesting seeing the changes in both areas.

Today we went to Keith's nephew's soccer game - they lost 2-1 but his nephew scored their only goal so we got to cheer loudly. It is a beautiful day and I had a long walk with my sister-in-law after the game.

Hopefully all these walks are going to help with my weight loss goals!

What I'm reading

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters Elisabeth Robinson

It's now 1:50AM and instead of sleeping I just finished this book.

The writing style took me a while to adapt to as the book is written as a series of letters from one person. This is another book about sisters - a topic that I mentioned is of interest to me as I have 3 of them. I also have 2 brothers but I have to admit my more *interesting* relationships are with my sisters.

In the novel (which is based on events in the author's life), one of the sisters is diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. I've had a sister survive cancer and I lost my father-in-law 9 months ago to complications of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia so this book hit me on a couple levels.

South Florida

We arrived in South Florida today after a stop in Punta Gorda to visit my sister Debbie. We had a nice lunch and a brief visit with her before climbing back in the car and continuing on our journey. She also gave me a stack of her hand dyed fabrics. I don't know what I'll make with them yet but I'm scouting patterns and I'm sure I'll find something suitable.

I'll have a chance to see Debbie again in a couple weeks when we both go up to Virginia for the Mid Atlantic Quilt Fest. She's flying through Atlanta and I was able to get on the same flights so we'll get to travel together as well as spend a few days at Mom's.

I guess you can tell I'm getting a lot of reading done on this trip from all the book postings. I also made some good progress on the afghan I'm crocheting on the car ride today. Tonight I'll work some more on the Cathedral Windows.

I'm feeling much better yesterday and today - thanks to everyone who wished me well - it seems to have worked.

Keith and I have plans tomorrow or Friday to go to Ft. Lauderdale to walk along the beach and then lunch at one of the sidewalk cafe's. Our hotel is only about 15-20 minutes from the beach but most of our time here will be spent with family.

What I'm reading

Predator Patricia Cornwell

I loved the early books in the Kay Scarpetta series but the last several have been disappointing. Each time she comes out with another one I'm tempted NOT to buy and read it but I guess I'm afraid I'm going to miss something.

I would recommend her early books but not the last few.

Road trip continues

We made it to Tampa this evening and will be here until Wednesday morning. When we leave Tampa we'll stop by my sister's house for lunch on our way to South Florida. We hadn't planned on a visit with her on this trip but it will be nice to see her even briefly.

We were in Orlando since late afternoon Friday. I'm sorry to say that I messed up our plans for the Super Bowl by being sick. On top of the respiratory virus I've been fighting for 2 weeks I got a 48 hr GI bug. Luckily that seems to have passed so hopefully the rest of the trip will be better.

Chesty is doing pretty well in the hotels - he does bark when anyone comes to the door which luckily isn't too often.

I'm making good progress on my crocheted baby afghan which is my car project and a little progress on the Cathedral Windows. I did get another row sewn on the Cathedral Windows and am now making some more blocks for a second row.

What I'm reading

Just Between Us Cathy Kelly

An entertaining and easy to read book about relationships. The main characters are a mother and three daughters.

I love reading about relationships between sisters. I have 3 sisters myself and I'm always interested in how mine compare even with fictional sisters!

What I'm reading

4th of July James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

I just finished this mystery - 4th in the series featuring Lt. Lindsey Boxer.

I didn't realize until I started keeping track of the books I'm reading that I read so many mysteries with female detectives or private investigators. I enjoyed this book and have liked all the ones so far in this series.

Why did I decide I had to make this backing before I left?

One last post before I stop complaining of how much I have to do and just go do it.

I decided I needed to piece this back for the butterfly quilt before I left so I can get right to work on quilting it when I get home.

So I yanked a bunch of coordinating fabrics off the shelf and ripped them into different widths. I had been cutting a bunch of squares over the last several days but decided to save them for another quilt I'm making.

Now back to work!

Panic

I'm pulling out my Cathedral windows project to pack it for my trip and can only find the finished squares - none of the muslin squares or the small *flower* squares. Well of course I don't remember how big to cut them so I go looking for the book with the 1/2 page instructions and can't find it.

Finally, after an hour of throwing books everywhere I find it sitting on the floor under a stack of books I'd already looked through 3 times . You should all be impressed that I even remember which book had my skimpy directions in it after all it's been almost 3 years since I started this project.

Now I just have to cut a new bunch of squares as if I didn't have enough to do tomorrow getting ready to be gone for 11 days!

The good news is that there are about 2 rows of squares finished that aren't sewn together yet that I'd forgotten I'd finished.

Next time I put a project away maybe I should put some kind of instructions with it. That's what I get for not working from patterns.