Gram Mode

 It was so sweet when my DIL and E flew in for our girl's baby shower.  While we were all together, I was in Gram Mode. Time together is so precious and it's hard when everyone lives in a different state. I keep saying that we need to find a couple hundred acres and everyone can build a house on a corner with separate entrances. That way we can all have our privacy, yet we're just a yodel away if someone needs something and we'd have a fishing pond, firepit, and outdoor kitchen in the middle for gatherings. It's a goal and yes, I've taken it to God in prayer 😉

For now, I try to soak up the treasured moments

She loves her Uncle Kenny - we all do -he's easy to love!

After the shower we stopped in at a great independent bookstore so my DIL could use the gift certificate she won at the shower. Smart owner had this amazing train table set up in the children's section...I want one!

Kenny raises and fits pigs for FFA and 4-H kids and he happened to have a couple of little ones at the house so he introduced E to one of them

She wasn't quite sure what to think, but it was so cute...she said "Hi pig!" and tried to shake it's hand.😂

                                             

We all call Kenny and our girl's place the Funny Farm  and it was fun to introduce E to farm life                                          

                                           

Our little nugget is growing so fast

We stayed in this really nice hunting cabin that belongs to a friend of Kenny's

All snuggled in

Nothing beats time with family

How many toddlers love broccoli?! This one! It's her favorite...along with green beans.

Our girl captured some wonderful shots of E playing in the leaves on the morning we packed up.

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. 

~Nathanial Hawthorne

And above all; watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

~Roald Dahl

If we could see the world through the eyes of a child, we would see the magic in everything. 

I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than nature. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

~Winnie the Pooh

Children really know how to immerse themselves into the moment - a good lesson for us adults - may you always be a child at heart!

Baby Shower

 So last Thursday I drove to Oklahoma for our girl's baby shower and our DIL and granddaughter flew in to help celebrate. When they reached the bottom of the elevator, E ran to me squealing, "Gram! Gram!" Made my heart leap with joy and melt into a puddle all at the same time,

We are all avid readers and we treasure books so we based the shower around books and everyone brought a book instead of a card. 

Kenny's sister had access to this incredible book-wall and her husband and a few friends set it up

So clever the way some of the pages were folded

It was stunning and made the perfect photo-backdrop

Kenny's sister is so talented and she brought the wall to life with the addition of these beautiful floral accents

                                           

Her arrangements were stunning

And the girls pulled off another gorgeous grazing table

We had lemon blueberry cupcakes from a local bakery

And a table with metal bookmarks for favors

Kenny is a big baseball fan so that too was incorporated into our theme - the prize was a gift certificate to a local bookstore

Such a lovely afternoon of fun and fellowship and a sweet time of celebration!

And the countdown continues!

You're Just Ducky Baby Quilt

 We're adding to the family! 

And it's a boy! Let the baby quilt making commence! Our girl said they wanted to decorate the baby's room with a few antique duck decoys so I went on a duck hunt. 😉When I saw this print I was smitten, Alas, it's a spoonflower print and those are pricey, but I simply could not get it out of my head so I splurged.

I decided to recreate a quilt I designed a few years ago

I didn't keep notes so this time I tried to document my process because I really like this design for novelty prints and I'll have something to refer back to when I make it again. 

                                         

I wanted it bigger so I started with 6 1/2" squares  (25). I pulled 3 fabrics from my stash that I thought coordinated well.

I cut 7 1/4" squares: 10 plaid cream

                                   8 green dot

                                   6 brown stitch

Then I made HSTs:  12 cream/green

                                   8 cream/brown

                                   4 green/brown

Next, I turned those into QSTs: 16 of these

And 8 of these:

I added a 1-1/2" brown border and a 5" outer border with cornerstones, resulting in a 50"x50" quilt

I backed it with this minky which is the perfect color, but I'm not going to recommend it because I'm pretty sure it was horrible to quilt. 

Sandy is a saint to have tackled it. I wish she'd of said something though because I would have chosen something else had I known. I felt awful. I use minky on baby quilts a lot and yes, there is some fuzz, but this stuff was EVERYWHERE. It's a Cuddle - so not an off-brand. Once I stitched on the binding I cleaned out my machine. That green fuzz is like glitter and I'll probably be finding poofs of it forever. 

                                                                                     

  And it seems even thicker than regular Minky - I had to cut a 3" binding to insure everything was secured. 

                                              

Horrible stuff to work with, but it will be the cuddliest quilt ever!

    

Sandy worked her magic with a design called Happy Times

                                           

The baby shower was this weekend

And we're counting the days until Baby W's arrival!

                             

A Sewing Day

 On Saturday, DH left at 5 to help his dad and a friend of his dad's work a handful of cows. I got up at 4 to fix him breakfast and then contemplated what to do with an entire day to myself. I had cleaned the chicken coop a few days earlier, mowed on Friday, washed all the laundry, cleaned my floors...looks like I had a day to sew! I still had to make a concerted effort to get into my sewing room because I always feel like I ought to be doing something else...my windows REALLY need to be washed, but I talked myself out of that. 😉

A sewing day it is! I began by sorting a few piles in order to make room for more piles when I picked up my Songbook stack of fabrics. 

I made this quilt with it 2 years ago for a friend's daughter who was embarking on her college adventure

And I've been wanting to make something else with it ever since. I had cut out the panels back then and I have an idea for a scrappy quilt, but I'll need to border them to make them all 6x8 and I wasn't ready to tackle that.

I also had a FQ pack of her second collection Songbook: A New Page so I spent some time pressing all of those. This text print is my favorite

I'd love to have some yardage of it. I had a hard time finding any, but finally tracked some down so this print will probably be in every quilt from now on. LOL. Then I cut a huge stack of squares from both collections and starched them in preparation for making this quilt by Kitchen Table Quilting

She also had a great free pattern for a Plaid-ish quilt that has been calling my name for some time.

I love the scrappiness of this quilt - I guess it's more of a controlled scrappiness since I'm using a couple of different collections instead of scraps, but I happily stitched the day away while listening to Jimmy Buffet. I'm a huge fan and was so sad to hear of his passing. In fact, 2 days before, I had started a post about my 3rd blue green quilt (still in progress) and I have been calling it my Meet Me in Margaritaville Quilt. I thought it needed a parrot in it and had gone in search of parrot fabric. LOL 

And yes, I realize that listening to Jimmy Buffet's songbook while sewing with a Songbook of hymns is a study in contrast. Let's not analyze that too closely. 😎

My day of stitching and pressing and trimming yielded a nice stack of blocks that'll be a good start, but I've got a lot of trimming ahead of me

Yes, I think this is going to work

I can already tell that it would be easy to spend A LOT of time moving blocks around, but I'm not even going to go there. Making quilts brings me joy and fussing over placement is counterproductive to that for me so everything is just going to sit where it lands. I'm off to cut more squares because I'm going to want to make this bigger. 😉