Tommy's Crib Quilt

The end of February I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my blog of quilts I've made in the last several months. I'm finally getting around to writing about them and posting.

Today's quilt is the crib quilt I made for my grandson. I was told the color scheme of the nursery and gave my daughter-in-law and son some choices of a pattern. I found this pattern on Pinterest. I modified it a bit by making it smaller and leaving off the borders.

I had it quilted with a meandering star pattern.

Whenever I make a quilt for my grandchildren I like to put a label on the back that has a Bible verse. My intention is to pray the verse for the grandchild.

And of course, there has to be a label with the child's name and date of birth.

I was so excited when I found this backing fabric. The theme for the nursery is "I love you to the moon and back". Isn't this just the cutest?

I didn't get the quilt finished until after Tommy was born, so I mailed it to him.  When they received it I got this the picture from my son.

He's a goof.

This feels like an awkwardly worded post. I struggle with how to write more than 'Look! I made a quilt for my grandbaby!' and somehow make it sound interesting.

Bullet Points

"Okay, today I will sit down and write a blog post..."

...said me about a dozen times over the last two plus months since I last wrote. I have barely started about four posts and none seemed to get flowing, so none got published. I think that bullet points with brief, un-jointed thoughts with a brief summary of the last two months will work best. Here I go!!!

•  We took a two week trip the end of December to the Midwest to see our kids. Oh, who am I kidding? It was really to see our grandkids! Our newest granddaughter was born eleven days before Christmas Day. She looks a lot like her mommy and that just melt's my heart. We spent a week at our daughter's house and then a week at our son's house. And now I feel obligated to insert some pictures of those sweet babies:

 

Annabelle Rose

Lydia Mae

Thomas Isaac

• I miss those grandbabies so much it hurts. I am thankful for video chatting and being able to see and hear them through the computer. Whenever I see a baby at church or out and about I have a desire to grab that baby and love on it. I haven't done that, though. Probably a good thing. 

• We finished off our long trip with celebrating my mom's 85th birthday. We flew back to North Carolina where they live now. We arrived there a day before the rest of the family. (Most of them were at the beach celebrating New Year's.) As we waited for the rest of the family, on New Year's Day Hubby arranged to have lunch with his uncle who lives in the area and I had lunch with a childhood friend. (She and I met in the 6th grade. We have been out of touch for 30ish years and just recently discovered each other again. Imagine my surprise to learn she lives near my parents! It's been so good to get reacquainted!)

• I really do like the weather here in South Carolina. When the weather turns from a nice 70s to a "cold" 50s? Eh, not so bad! We had ONE weekend of snow and ice. I can deal with that! It was -6 when we landed in Iowa in December! Brrrr!  

•  Hubby and I celebrated my birthday in early January with a couple day stay at a downtown hotel. It was kinda fun to pretend we were somewhere else, but not be far from home.  We discovered a yummy taco place that serves THE best lime gelato I have ever had! Hubby was sweet and spoiled me with lots of presents and dinner out and I thoroughly enjoyed video chat sessions with both kids.

• The end of January we had a wonderful reunion with some friends from college days. We all arranged to meet at my sister's beach house in North Carolina. It was such a fun weekend of reconnecting, memories and sharing about our lives in the years since college.  Two of us girls were bridesmaids in the other girl's wedding. I roomed with one of the girls for two years, the other two girls roomed together for a year. Hubby and one of the guys shared an apartment. I met one of the guys when he followed my roommate back to our dorm room. Did you follow all that? We all met in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

 

• I have subscribed to Shipt and order my groceries through an app on my phone and have them delivered TO MY HOUSE. Amazing! Grocery shopping has grown to be one of my least favorite jobs over the years and I have enjoyed handing it off to someone else. The $49 subscription fee has been more than worth it.

• I am finishing up Annabelle's quilt this weekend. I have loved making quilts for my grandbabies over the last two plus years, but I am excited to make some quilts just for me. I'm working on plans for a really bright one.

Well, I think that's all I can come up with for now. Hopefully posts will be more frequent from now on...

A Wall Hanging

I thought I'd show a picture of the wall hanging quilt I made for Grandson's room.

It's a Missouri Star, a nod to the state he was born in.

Even though all those triangle points gave me fits, I finally got it right and really like how it turned out. it's about 26" square. I only did quilting in the white background. The orange binding frames it nicely.

Today I am thankful for...

...my mom teaching me how to sew when I was 9 years old
...PJs on at 7pm, popcorn and a movie with Hubby
...the challenge in the sermon this morning to be more generous

The Saturday Evening Post

Well, I blew it. Last night I was especially tired and climbed in to bed early. After I read for a while, I turned off my light and snuggled in. Then I remembered I forgot to write my thankful post for the day. Oops!

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me. I finally finished the quilt for Grandson (Thomas). Holy cow, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to get that thing done! (I'll show a picture after it reaches its destination next week.) I finished the label, sewed it on and tossed it in the washing machine. Then pinned it on my design wall and took a bunch of pictures to make sure I documented it. I packed it in the box the quilter sent it to me in and taped it up, slapped on the mailing label and have it all ready to go to take to the post office on Monday.

When that task was done I rewarded myself with a trip to Target (yay!) and a pedicure.

When Hubby got home from work we headed downtown to one of our favorite restaurants and ended up with a 45 minute wait. Fortunately, the restaurant sends you a text when a table is available so we were able to wander around a few nearby stores. There is a really cool toy store downtown that I have a feeling we'll visit often to find things for our grandbabies.

Today was spent mostly at home. Hubby is working on the daunting task of organizing and sorting through the stuff in our storage room. You know, that stuff that you keep because maybe.... or we've had it for so long we might as well hang on to it... We are getting a little better at tossing things that we realize we haven't used for a long time like the uncomfortable metal folding chair we've had our whole married life and maybe we might need it for extra seating but really we have used to for probably over 20 years but have moved it 6 or 7 times and besides we have a real dining room table set with 10 chairs so we really don't need the uncomfortable chair. (It's gone now.)

I talked with Daughter on the phone for a bit this morning and we video chatted with Son and Daughter-in-law and Grandson. We got to witness Thomas working so hard to hold his head up while laying on his tummy. It was so cute to see!

Son sent me this adorable picture earlier this week. Such a cute smile and such a bald head! Love them both!!! (Thomas looks so much like his daddy.)

I worked on grandbaby #3's (!!!) quilt this afternoon. She's due in just a few weeks, so yeah, I'm already behind on that. Sigh. It's really different from anything I've made and I'm only going from a picture.

After Hubby was done watching football we went to explore an antique store. We love looking around, but rarely buy anything. Supper was at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, then a stop at the grocery store for one thing that ended up being three bags worth of stuff.

Today I am thankful for...

...a smiling grandson
...finishing his quilt
...pedicures
...a good night's sleep last night
...keeping in touch with our kids

Another One of Those Trips

A couple of weeks ago hubby and I made a trip back to the Midwest. As we were driving along Interstate 35 somewhere in Kansas or Missouri or Iowa, I told Hubby I felt like we have two lives, one in the Midwest where our family is and another in South Carolina where people just know us as the two of us. It's weird for me to know that the people we interact with here don't know our kids and don't know us as a family.

Anyway.....back to our trip.

We flew to Wichita, Kansas late on a Thursday. Wichita is where we lived when we were first married. It's where our first born was born. While being there is quite nostalgic for us, we flew there in order to be able to visit hubby's aunt and uncle who are living about an hour from there. They have spent the last 51 years on the mission field in Peru and a few months ago retired and moved back to the USA because of health (aging) issues and to be near their two children. It had been 25 years since we last saw them. We had a really good visit with them even though Uncle was in the hospital. Thankfully, he was having a pretty good day and we were able to talk and catch up with each other for several hours. Aunt was very sweet and I got a kick out of seeing her similar mannerisms as my mother-in-law. We also enjoyed a fun dinner out with Hubby's cousins. We haven't seen them much over the years, but the family bond and the common faith in Jesus makes it easy to connect. We found out later that next week that Uncle has serious cancer and we are even more grateful we were able to spend some time with him.

We hopped in the car and headed north on Interstate 35 to spend some days with our son and daughter-in-law. On the drive, I was quite struck by the beauty and expanse of the Kansas countryside. Funny how I used to think it was a boring drive. But somehow living in South Carolina where one doesn't see the countryside when driving because of the trees and hilly terrain, I have a new appreciation for the expanse of the Midwest.

We had a great few days in Kansas City with our son and daughter-in-law. Hubby worked on painting (he's good at it -- he painted the stripes and hexagons in the nursery),

I helped sort baby clothes and played with their puppy.

I learned through Facebook that my cousin and his wife were in Kansas City, so I invited them over to my son's house the morning of the 4th. It had been a couple of years since we had seen them. She has always been one of my favorite people. She married my cousin when I was 11 years old and I remember trying to sit by her whenever the family was together. She always talked to me and made me feel important. As the youngest, that meant a lot to me.

We spent the 4th of July with another aunt and cousin of Hubby's.

Can you believe she's 84? Me neither. We always enjoy our time with this aunt.

We did a little sight-seeing at Union Station in Kansas City. The history of this place is so interesting. And it's huge.

We had such a good time with our son and daughter-in-law. It's always hard to say goodbye. But we were super anxious for our next stop.

We were headed to Iowa to spend five days taking care of our granddaughter!!! Her mommy and daddy went on a vacation to Seattle to visit friends.

Next post: lots and lots and lots of pictures of Lydia.  Wheeeeee!

A Baby Quilt

With two more grandbabies on the way, that means more baby quilts to make!

I put this 38"x44" quilt together quickly since we had planned a trip to see our son and daughter-in-law and I wanted to take it to them rather than mail it or wait until after the baby is here.

I used black and white fabrics with a splash of orange.

I will say that I enjoy the piecing part of quilting a whole lot more than the actual quilting. Once in a while I'll tackle the quilting myself and when I do, I always use some blue painters tape to help me. I thought this quilt would look good with some straight-line quilting. That sure did take a lot of tape! I think it took me 30-40 minutes to tape this all up.

 I just sewed in the space between the strips of tape.

It worked pretty well!

I found on-line a pretty gray flannel with tiny stars for the backing.

But just wait and see how it looks in the nursery of our soon-to-be grandson!

Isn't the paint on the wall awesome? My son dreamed up the idea and my hubby did the taping and painting. I love how it turned out! And the quilt looks so good in there. I am happy with my choice of the orange for the binding!