Dancing at the Movies - Music Video

Ok...I admit I cannot dance, but I love to watch anything that has to do with dancing. Yup...I love Dancing With the Stars, and I am a Gleek. This video has so many of my favorite dancing movies and is set together so well.

So take a break, and enjoy!

Back from AQS quilt show



I love this one because of the scriptures quilted into it.  I know you really cannot see it, but it is wonderful!





Love this use of strings!





I thought of all of you bloggers that have been making hexagons when I took this photo!



The AQS quilt show in Des Moines was wonderful!  Lots of beautiful quilts and 197 vendors to intice me with all kinds of new projects!  Here are a few pictures of some of the quilts I drooled over.  And I got to meet a fellow blogger, Carolyn from Lee Prairie Designs.  She is adorable, and so sweet....just like her blog. 

Well...I am off to decide which project I want to start on!  Hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful fall day!

Broken Pottery

I finished my little broken dishes blocks, and sewed up this little quilt.  It is hard to decide what to name it...so I decided on Broken Pottery for lack of a better name.  The blocks are finished at 3inches, so the quilt measures out at about 24 inches square. I machine quilted it with a cross-hatch  and put a vine in the border.  It does not show up at all, but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Sometimes it is fun to just start sewing blocks with no idea of what I will do with them...play time!

And the quilt below is a better picture of the quilt on my dining room wall....Starry Night from Jo Morton's book Hearthside Stars.  This was a project at a quilt retreat a few years ago.  Perfect for fall decorating!

On Friday, I am off to Des Moines to the AQS show.  Anyone else going?  It would be fun to meet up!

Looks like another beautiful fall day...enjoy!

Autumn is the hush before winter....

I love to decorate for fall!  Probably more than Christmas....I have started to pull things out and hope to add some Halloween this weekend.

Wish I could take "magazine" photo shoots....oh well.  This is our dining room. 

Today, I am spending most of the day in the sewing room...machine quilting.  Trying to decide if I like using the nylon invisible thread...it hides a multitude of mistakes, but I am not sure I like the look.  I think I will do my next one with some other thread...any suggestions?   Hope to have a picture at the end of the weekend of the little quilt I made with the Broken Dishes blocks I made.  It turned out better than I had originally thought!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic fall day...there might be a light frost on the pumpkins tonight!

Vacation is over

Bummer...vacation is over!  We visited Disney World last week...a first for me! We stayed at one of the Disney resorts, Port Orleans.  It was a lovely place, and it was great to be able to ride the bus or the water taxi around to whatever we were planning to do.  Favorite rides...Tower of Terror,  Aerosmith rollercoaster, and Soarin'..... I loved it, wore myself out and managed to come down with a cold on Saturday.  So today is going to be a quiet day for me...maybe get a little sewing in once my headache calms down. 

This is what is on my sewing table, a small quilt using 3"  Broken Dishes blocks.  Hope everyone is enjoying a nice fall day!



Thought for the day

I recieved this in an email today, and wanted to share...it is so true!

Lisa Beamer on Good Morning America - If you remember, she's the wife of Todd Beamer who said 'Let's Roll!' and helped take down the plane over Pennnsylvania that was heading for Washington DC back on 9/11.
She said it's the little things that she misses most about Todd, such as hearing the garage door open as he came home, and her children running to meet him. She's now the Mom of a beautiful little girl, Mary.
Lisa recalled this story:


"I had a very special teacher in high school many years ago whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week after his death, she shared some of her insight with a classroom of students. As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things aside on the edge of her desk and sat down there.
With a gentle look of reflection on her face, she paused and said, ' Class is over, I would like to share with all of you, a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I feel is very important. Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It can be taken away at any moment.
Perhaps this is the powers way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day. Her eyes, beginning to water, she went on, 'So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice.
It doesn't have to be something you see, it could be a scent, perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's house, or it could be the sound of the breeze slightly rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground. Please look for these things, and cherish them. For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are the "stuff" of life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted.
The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester. Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that sometimes we all overlook.
Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do.

Quilting the Quilt

This month, our Charming Gals Club is focusing on quilting...so far this is what I have finished.   This one is Reveille, made with Barbara Brackman's Civil War Homefront.  I quilted it with straight line grid quilting and put a small ric-rak border around the edge.  I decided that these little quilts are the perfect thing to practice my machine quilting skills with.  For this one, I used YLI Invisible Nylon thread on the top and cotton on the bottom.  I think I like the silk finish threads better for the bobbin thread, and will try that on the next quilt. To mark the quilt, I used the Golden Threads paper, and I do like that because it is easy to see and comes off easily.  Last week I ordered a new packet of border designs from them, and I am anxious to give them a try. 

And here is a little charity strippy quilt that I practiced machine quilting on.  Once again, I used the nylon thread for the top thread.  For some of the designs I used a washable blue marker and some I used the Golden Threads paper.  It turned out better than I had imagined it would...practice helps!

Jack decided he needed to model the quilt for me.  He likes to play in my sewing room while I am sewing, just give him some crayons and paper and he is a happy little guy!

This morning, I went to Caleb's school for breakfast, and to visit his classroom.  It was fun to see meet his teacher and tour his classroom.  I am very blessed to be able to participate in activities like this!

Hope everyone is having a blessed day...off to make an apple walnut cake and a pie or two...the apple trees are FULL of apples this year!