Day #60 - Home from 3 days in PA!

I have to be honest, all, I spent the last 3 days on the road to and from Pennsylvania, watching my beautiful, wonderful daughter graduate from college.  We made that 8 hour drive out there one more time.  It was bittersweet in some ways. 

5 years ago we made a trip out there in April and I hoped to no end that she wouldn't choose that school.  It rained most of the trip, she won a T-Shirt for having traveled the farthest, and on the way home we broke down!  I mean DEAD in the road, just outside of Harrisburg!  We had to be towed to Wilkes-Barre, stay the night there and then do our best to get back to NH for a game Monday night!!  We joked for 5 years that was a $500 T-Shirt, between the hotel, extra meals and car parts! 

Despite it all, Shippensburg University was her #1 choice and beat out Ithaca and Quinnipeac when it came right down to it.  That July we went out again for her to attend field hockey camp.  We hung out in Hershey and Lancaster, visiting the sites and shopping in Amish country.  August we drove her out again for pre-season.  Leaving her 500 miles away from us made ALL of us cry!

I will NEVER forget the phone call that first week.  We had just finished morning session practice and my phone rang.  It was her.  She was sobbing.  "Are you okay?"  "Are you hurt?"  "What is the matter?"  After a few minutes we determined she had accidentally dropped her phone in the toilet and the screen was going green.  Before the call could finish the phone went dead.  That phone was her link to everyone and everything she knew.

I zipped home that morning, Googled the problem, found the Wiki answer and emailed her the solution!  It worked, for a bit, but she did have to go buy herself a new phone.  Survived crisis #1.

A few weeks later, I think it was, I got an email sent in the wee hours of the morning telling us how much she loved us and how glad she was we raised her how we did.  She had to deal with an alcohol issue and it was pretty scary for her.

There were many other phone calls both good and bad.  Tears and laughter!

There was that trip we made and surprised her by showing up (to deliver her cell phone!) at a tournament in West Virginia!  Yes, we drove ALL THE WAY and she had no idea we were coming!

That chapter of our lives (and I do say "our" because it's her life, but we are along for the ride!!) is now closed.  I teared up during graduation and her dad did as we tanked up at Rutter's one last time... Thanks for taking us along on the journey, Kelly!  Luv yah!  Muah! ~ Momsie doodle

Day #59 - Happy Mother's Day Weekend!

Good morning, everyone!

I wanted to wish all the mom's out there a wonderful and happy Mother's Day!  Yesterdays creativity was working on a super cool project for a Fairy House Festival coming in July at the Historical Society where I work and then sharing creative work with my family!

Because we won't be able to be with our son and his family on Mother's Day, I brought the hand print goodies down to my DIL last night.  Needless to say, she loved it and my son was astonished to see how small his hands once were!  My grandson was good enough to open his mom's present, and see HIS hands there!  :o)

They, in turn, gave me a wonderful photo calendar with ALL my favorite family photos off Facebook!  Lol!!  It is filled with many of my past profile pix over the last 2 years!! 

Need a recipe for something light and yummy for Sunday? Check out this GREAT angelfood cupcake recipe I found from Gina at Skinny Recipes.com: Just click on the Skinny Recipes link!

Photo from Gina's Website at skinnyrecipes.com  - Yummy!

I will finish today with a pretty fun picture of my mom and some crazying looking chick! I believe it was an Easter Sunday, and we are talking about the late 1960's here.  Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I love yah!  (PS.  Don't you love my white gloves?)

Have a great day!
Carrie

Day #58 - Some embroidery and such...

Good morning, all!

Things got rained out in our world yesterday... again... We have fingers crossed that the girls can play their game today!  It definitely is getting VERY green out there!  YEA!!  The sunshine will come sooner or later.

I was able to squeak in a few creative endeavors yesterday.  My youngest is a junior in high school, so there are evenings that she and I spend a great deal of time on the computer, looking at colleges - last night was one of those!  Anyone out there from St. Louis area?  She's interested in Lindenwood University ....

I found a GREAT embroidery design from Embroidery Library - you all KNOW what I think of them!!

I made a couple of these and am going to sew these onto the outside of some of my grocery totes - you know the ones to replace the plastic at the grocery store?  I thought they would look fun with this!  I have to admit that I had the hardest time making the habit of bringing them IN the store!!  Years of "paper or plastic" are hard to break, but I am trying!  :o) 

I also put together a special gift for my DIL for Mother's Day.  I am hoping she is too busy to read my blog today (finger's crossed!!) because I wanted to show you all this so if you needed something quick for Sunday, you could use it!!

You need white paper, kid friendly paint, scrapbook paper for background, white paper for the saying (I printed in on my printer), glue stick and a frame

1. I started by painting my grandson's hands on Tuesday, when we had the boys.  He'd never played in paint before, so that was interesting!  We'll be doing that MORE when I am NOT in a rush to get his hand prints!!  (toddled him right off to the bathroom for a tub and he was happy as a clam!)
2. I had him put each hand on a HUGE sheet of paper, for me, so that if it got crazy, it was all good!  We used Crayola Washable Kid Paint.
3. It needed to dry, so then last night I cut the hands out.
4. I cut the scrapbook paper to fit the frame.
5. Finding a quote is always fun - found one I liked, typed it in Word and printed it on white cardstock.
6. I trimmed everything to fit the frame and glued it on.
7. The final piece was to write his name and the date and pop it in a frame!  I think she'll like it!

Want an "awwww...." moment?  Check out the picture below.  The orange hands?  Those are his daddy's from about 22 years ago!!  His hands are a wee bit bigger as he's a 6' tall daddy!  :o)

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Carrie 

Day #57 - Crazy creating day!

Good morning!

I feel a bit like I ran the creative Boston Marathon yesterday! :o)  It was multi-tasking at it's finest!

I had all of the normal things to do in my typical day (blogging, dishes, laundry...you know the drill...) and at the same time the sewing machine and the embriodery machine were humming!  I must have trotted off POUNDS while trekking from the living room (where I was laying out the rag quilt), my "office" (where the embroidery machine is) and my "studio" (where I was sewing)!  Ah, a girl can dream about a space where you could do all 3 at the same time!!

Yesterday was my wonderful DIL's birthday.  I decided to make her a rag quilt and it came out lovely! The orange one I posted yesterday was 8" squares. This one has 10" blocks. These are definitely a great project if you need something quick! The other piece I love is that the backing is DONE when the blocks are all sewed together! Backing a quilt is the toughest part for me - so I love this method!  :o)

While I was creating the blue and brown baby, the embroidery machine was creating this banner for her (okay, it was creating the designs, I turned it into a banner...JUST before they came back to pick up the boys, after a yummy dinner at Olive Garden!)

Both designs are from Embroidery Library.  I apologize for the blurry-ness - my camera is acting badly, so you can't really see the designs very well.  If you click on the link, you can see the cupcake here.  Click on this link to see the wording.  They came out very colorful!

There were LOADS of thread changes, as you can see if you follow the links, as well as one "Oopsie" while I'd stepped away and the thread bound, the needle broke and there was suddenly a HOLE in the design!  The good news: it was a balloon, so I reinforced with another small piece of cut-away, and continued on!  Can't even tell!  I used a variety of colors so it would be good for ANY birthday in the future for her!

Creating the banner was pretty easy!  I don't have pictures because, as I mentioned, my camera is acting VERY badly!  I hope this description works for you!

1. Create your designs on the embroidery machine.
2. Trim the "Happy Birthday" sign to the size you want.
3. Cut out a backing the same size.
4. Put the 2 pieces wrong sides together and sew with a zigzag stitch.
5. Trim the cupcake design into a triangle shape and cut out triangles from a fun fabric the same size.
6. Put the wrong sides together and zigzag stitch.
7. Make as many extra triangle flags from coordinating fabric as you want to create the length you desire, sewing them together with a zigzag stitch as well.  The more you make, the longer the banner!
8. Taking a piece of ribbon, fold it in half and slip the flags into the opening, pinning them down. 
9. Sew over the ribbon to keep it together and hold the flags in place.

I had one more project going, but I can't share that until Monday (Mother's Day gift and all....just in case the recipient is reading this...)

Have a wonderful day,
Carrie

Day #56 - Binding DONE and a Rag Quilt!

Good morning friends in Cyberland!

I was able to finish stitching the special quilt (photos NEXT week!) while waiting for the softball game to start last night.  Congrats to the CV Girls Softball Team: 6-2 over Conant!  Let's hope the weather doesn't bump anymore games around...

I created a rag quilt for another special person in our world yesterday - rag quilts are so fun!

I went with a color choice (orange) and cut out 25 - 8" block of various fabrics.  Next, it was 25 blocks of flannel and 25 blocks of several greens.

1. I laid them out to find a sequence I liked, separating the ones I used several times.

2. Repeated with the greens.

Here are the greens I used and the flannel "batting".

3. Created "sandwiches" with all 3 layers and pinned them together.
4. Sewed "X's" on each one, by row, keeping the sequence together.  I used Eleanor Burns method - continuous stitching, all one way, then snipping and repeated going the opposite way to make the "X".

5. Sewed the sandwiches together making rows with a 1/2" seam.

6. Sewed the rows together, being careful to match seams.
7. Sewed around the outside of the entire quilt, at 1/2".
8. Snipped...and snipped... and snipped about 3/8" of the way in to each and every seam, 1/4" to 3/8" wide. (*NOTE: Scissors make ALL the difference in the world!  I've done this with just regular fabric scissors, NOT great for the hand!  USE ones with a spring!!!)

9. Tossed it in the wash.
10.  Cleaned out my filters...
11. Viola!!

It went together rather quickly, so I may find myself having to do another today!!!  Gotta love May and June birthdays and celebrations in our family!!

Have a wonderful day, all!
Carrie

Day #55 - Still stitchin' so... some sites I like!

Good morning, all!

Happy Monday!  I was handstitching the quilt binding (does take time...) so I thought I'd share some of my favorites sites for your perusal this morning.

If you are a Facebook fan, you should stop by StitchTalk! It is Facebook for stitchers!  They are very pleasant folks with albums of beautiful work you can view and ask questions about, connections to blogs, forums and groups about all sorts of stitching topics - it's loads of fun!

Looking for handcrafted gifts or ideas?  Etsy is the place to stop!  I have a shop there with some of my items called Whitt's Kits Fabrics.  It's one of the best places to get ideas for things to try and to appreciate the artistic talent of others around the world!  If you decide to go "handmade" for Christmas and want to purchase truly wonderful handcrafted gifts, I highly recommend checking it out.  The "treasury" feature is a great way to search by themes.  My latest one is Tutorial Time and I filled it with cool tutorials from the site.

Do you machine embroider?  Have you visited Embroidery Library?  They have some of the highest quality designs I've found at the most reasonable prices!  There are new free designs each month and continuous sales!  My hint to you: go through the site and put ANY you like on your Wish List - they have GREAT sales and you can pop them directly from the Wish List to your basket as you want them!  Recently they had a special of $5 off $10 up to $25 off $50 and if you did 3 you got 5 designs of your choice free!  Yup... did that one!  They have some beautiful lily of the valleys right now.

Need some inspiration?  Stop by Craftgawker!  Name an art or craft and you'll find beautiful work to inspire you there!  No matter what your medium, you can't help by get ideas!!

Need a bit of internal inspiration?  Visit The Quotations page of daily motivation! One of todays was:

Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. - Lord Chesterfield



Sounds like GREAT advice to me!

Time for a bit of breakfast and seeing about finishing up the stitching on that quilt!  Toodles, all!
Carrie

Day #54 - Machine quilting that special quilt!!

Good afternoon, friends!

After a day of field hockey (GO, GSE!!) and softball (GO, SMASH!!) we are home and starting dinner!  What a beautiful New England day ~ THIS is why we live here!  (I do have to admit, there were a few black flies out there cruising around... ARGH!)

The quilt it coming along nicely ~ I finished the machine quilting last night. I have to say I love the ability to do that with my machine! Very cool and very fun! The only down-side is the fact there isn't much room for turning things, but that's the way it goes.

Machine quilting in process - can you see the pink thread?  Fabric on right is the backing.

Lots of teal in it, so plenty of bobbins and then some quilting with this, too.

Fabric on one end.

Next row up from the waves.



This is the other end - I LOVE purple and teal!!



This is the backing - Thimbleberries Fancy Free.

 

This is the backing, where I've turned it over to start handstitiching
the binding and a bit of one of the front fabrics too!


Tonight it's all about the binding - I'm off to start stitching!  Later, Friends!

Carrie