Introducing: Sweet Mister Aylen John!

Here he is!!! My sweeeet little Aylen. He is a lovely, sweet little boy and we love and adore him! He is already 4 months old. He has been a busy little guy since the moment he was born...instantly held his head up and LOVES to stand up (with a wee bit of assistance). He has definately shown his mommy and daddy who the boss is in the house! Funny how little, tiny babies have this power! I am off to have a little grammy time with Aylen in a couple of days...kiss, kiss, kiss!

I cannot believe it has been almost 5 months since I posted!!!! AND I HAVE A NEW GRANDSON TO BOAST ABOUT, TOO!

Okay then, let me first say, welcome to this earth and our family, sweet Aylen John! He is absolutely adorable, born June 21, 2010 to my loving son, Russ and his sweet wife, Megan. Yeppers, I am 5 MONTHS LATE WITH THIS ANNOUNCEMENT! AACCHH!

Okay, I am going to get past this.

Megan and Russ have been just fabulous preggo-parents and even more fabulous new parents. Aylen had a little time of giving his tired mommy and daddy some sleepless nights but now that he is almost 4 months old, he has learned how to live outside the womb and is doing better!

We had the pleasure of having Russ, Meg, Aylen and their dear friends, Josh and Hunter, come to the country for a weekend of (hopefully) relaxation. We ate country food, took them target practicing with Mark's awesome sharing of his guns and ammo, visited briefly with our dear friends, Karen and Don Fox (he was on the run during harvest), visited with Gram and Grandad, stopped for lunch at Wally's (sports bar recently opened in the old Walmart Store in Fairbury!) and watched our beloved Huskers get tromped by Texas. Then there was hot tub, backyard fire in the fire pit, ONE game of quadruple solitaire and all around great camaraderie.

I have been having computer issues and lost all of my pictures in my old laptop so will have to beg my pardon from Russ and Meg until I figure out how to download a pix of Aylen to proudly share.

I will wait with further sharing of anything fun until I get this picture uploaded. I can't believe Grammy has been soooo negligent with this introduction! I promise you, sweet Aylen, Grammy loves you!

Memorial Day tomorrow!!

This is my lovely daughter, Laurel, holding her precious daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle is now 9 months old! I can't believe it! I am soon to be grammy again...my oldest son, Russell and his lovely wife Megan, are expecting their first child in three weeks. We are all excited! It is such a pleasure and treasure to see your kids grow into adults and to watch them in their lives and interests is immensely satisfying as a mother.

The CQ RR I spoke of last time I posted is almost complete. I have just today finished the last block and I will now mail it back to its owner. It is always fun to begin these swaps and RRs but it is equally fun to finish them!

The following pix is a block owned by LRMart from the HGTV board. My portion is the large purple and pink flower vining across the top of the block, the crown of roses and ribbon on the little girl pictured in the middle, and the lower right hand corner with beads, lace, embroidery. This block was fun to work on...a bit out of my usual with the floweriness of it.

This next block was made by LadyJ66. My additions are the golden angel and stitching to the left of the middle picture, the floral SRE and embroidery just below the middle picture, the white tatted basket with bright pink roses in it to the lower right of the middle picture and the floral spray to the upper right of the middle picture. The gold colored flowers are actually paper and the little white flowers are made by a new (to me) technique shared by everythingquilts. I am so grateful to her for sharing this...LOVE them! This is a very pretty block. Again, a bit out of my usual with all of the floweriness of it but I enjoyed working on it.

This next block is part of a "faces" DYOB RR that I am involved in through the CQI board. In this RR all participants make 6/6" blocks and in this particular swap, we are all sending different faces around with our blocks to be used on the blocks. Everyone picks one face and one block and works the entire block and then sends it on to the next person in the rotation. This block belongs to Cathy L. and she made all of her blocks to represent different countries and cultures. I chose the African themed block she had sent. She made the face and I just used it to complete my block.

Thank you for coming by my blog...I will try to be a little more current with my postings!!!!

CQ RR 2010

I am really enjoying working on ToRyAm's block from our HGTV CQ 2010 RR. There are 25 stitch artists participating. We are divided into 5 groups with 5 stitchers in each group so it is manageable and not so overwhelming. I am the Group Mamma for my group~Crazy Ladies Equal Crazy Jewels~which is an acronym for our names~Colleen, Lisa, Ely, Charlyn, and Julie. We each made a naked block and mailed it out to begin our group rotation and thus begin the FUN!

First I am posting a picture of my naked block which I sent off to Ely. When it returns home in several months I am planning to make a sewing machine cover for my dear friend Karen Fox. She and her husband built a new home and are moving in this month. Her sewing room is yellow and she also loves aqua. French country? is the theme of this block. I thought this might be the perfect use for this block.

The next picture is of the block which has come to me for stitching. It is made and owned by Carlyn King, aka~ToRyAm. She loves horses and actually hand painted the horse on this fabric!!! OMG! No pressure to not ruin it or anything!!! Anyway, I have my stitching almost complete...just a few more tidbits and then ready to mail off March 10 in time to receive the next one. Velvet ribbon and SRE motif as well as the green trim were my contributions along with

this French knot row of flowers, rickrack and hand dyed lace trim on the lower right hand corner of the piece.

Now, it isn't like I don't have enough of my own projects to do...WE ALL KNOW THAT!..but these RRs and swaps keep me very interested because I get to see someone elses work and work on all different colors and styles. I think I would get kind of bogged down working on only my own stuff...always using the same colors and stitches, etc. Anyway, love being in these swaps and RRs.

Faces DYOB RR

Clay faces and pieced 6" blocks getting ready for the next CQI DYOB faces RR. My CQ friends are going to have "think outside the box" on this one! There are five CQer's involved in this challenge. Each is making or printing faces and piecing 6" blocks to send around for the others to work on. I am really excited to see what everyone does with these faces.

My blocks all have the same fabrics in them...I stacked and cut and stitched them together so they are different yet the same. I have never pieced anything this way before.

I am really enjoying participating in the CQI group...everyone is very interested in CQ and SOOO talented...very inspirational!

Pansy memory block

This is my pansy memory block including a CQ fan and a fabulous vintage shell pin. The block is made to be a part of the CQI 2010 monthly challenge. This month is was fans and curves. I made another piece, a table runner, that I will be using to participate in the challenge this year. February is velvets. I did incorporate two pieces of velvet in my fan, the purple and the off white. I have several curves and velvets on my table runner also. This block is actually multiply purposed...it foremost is a memory block of my precious Jenny who died 8 1/2 years ago on April 26, 2001. I have incorporated a small pix of her wearing a pansy flowered dress that I made for her to wear for her confirmation. I saved the dress all these years thinking I would give it to my daughter, Laurel, for her daughter some day. She now has a daughter, yes...precious Annabelle..., and I just decided that maybe giving her a dress that her dead sister wore wasn't as great an idea as I once thought it was. So instead, cut into the dress and am using bits of it on this block...the pansy fabric in the fan...and I think I will cut more of it up sometime and make a pretty new little dress for Annabelle sometime. I have another grandbaby due this summer and who knows...maybe there will be another little dress made!

Anyway, this block is quite out of my comfort zone in colors and in the floweriness of it. I was a bit nervous to begin but now that I have, I am enjoying it immensely. It is actually kind of fun to be flowery! Who knew!!!

I am really enjoying the CQI group...very focused on CQ...LOVE IT!

Today was also the day I packaged up my AFF project to mail out tomorrow. So fun. I am anxious to get the next project to work on...Nicki mails to me and I am looking forward to doing my best job on these art books. Great group of artists to work with. I enjoy them all.

50 degrees yesterday...snowing today!

Yup...snowing again. We still have a few drifts sitting around but a lot has melted off. Yippee!!! Of course, not to be negative but, my house is in low-country and when it snows a lot and then melts, the water table rises and...when your house is old as the hills and the basement is below the rising water table...no wonder it was a bargain! Oh well, have learned to live with after 15 years and amazingly, most of my fabric is stored in plastic bins down there and it remains just fine!!! I emptied all of the bins about two years ago to sort my stash when I started CQing and was so very pleased and shocked that everything was just fine! I have the bins stacked on moveable scooters...like the kind we used to use in gym class when we were little...10 scooters with bins stacked 3 high. It works well...can move them around to find what I need. I also have 2 scooters in my sewing room with tubs 4 high full of whites, satins, silkies, wool, felt, sparklies. I get into these quite often so it was just easier even though a bit crowded.

Anyhoo, been very busy working on a project with 4 other VERY creative ladies...an art journal RR. I am so very excited about this project...I seem to let loose and just be me while I have been working on it...wish I would be like this with all of the projects! That is my goal...stitch like myself!

So, the first pix is the front cover...supposed to be "My Alter Self".

The second pix is the back cover..."The True Me" and the third pix is both together. This project has been a nervous blessing for me! I was nervous to begin but once I did, LOVED doing it!! Usually I seem to need to have a finished purpose for whatever I make. This time it was truly all about the process of creation and it was such a relief!! The interesting thing is that as I worked, the lines between the front alter self and the back true self blurred more than I thought they would. LOVELY!!! To find out that you actually might be closer in life to who you wish you were than you thought or allowed yourself to be.

Mind you, it has been a long time in coming...my true self. I am 56+ and I still struggle with being true to myself. Anyway, fun project. When it is finished...a few more treasures to attach and roses to stitch...it will travel to the other ladies in turn and they will complete the pages of my book along the same theme as my covers. I am so blessed to have met such creative and lovely women at this point in my life. I will treasure my book when it returns home...I will have a little part of each of these special ladies to keep for my very own.

Thank you my AFFs.

CQ For Me block

This is my CQ For Me Challenge block which I participated in on the HGTV Quilt Chat Board. All of the stitchers involved received a piece of blue silk, green silk and a white lace motif chosen by NickiLee, hostess of the challenge. We all received the same fabric and the same amount of the fabric. We could just as little or as much as we desired but we had to have a recognizable piece of each fabric and we had to incorporate the white lace motif as well.

I hand dyed my lace motif using water based colored pencils and by wetting the lace and then just coloring on it with the pencils, the color bled and it dyed. I like the technique and plan to use it again sometime on something. I started by piecing the block using a multitude of textures and fabric types. Blue is not my favorite color to work with so this was truly a challenge for me. I made a generous rectangle shaped block and after it was pieced and I had started embellishing it I decided it would make a perfect cover for my handmade jewelry display notebook. Currently I am using a tacky plastic binder~not so inspiring for potential jewelry customers to see!

I enjoy combining textures, colors and old and new things together. I am fairly new to CQ and really new to SRE but have become rather partial to making SRE groupings. I usually like to add a bit of "funk" to them though~sometimes not very traditional flower colors, unusual tidbits, etc.

This has been a good challenge...got me thinking and working outside my comfort zone.