Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas.
 May your day be joyous and may you find peace in your heart.

HELP!

So I switch over to bloglovin. Now, I can not figure out how to post to it. One more day till blogger is gone and here I sit, at the last minute, of course, trying to figure this out.  HELP!

HA! Boy do I feel dumb. I can still use my blogger. Thanks for the help ladies.
I guess I paniced when I read another blog and she was having the same problem and was in a panic. whew!

I left you on hold!

Oh My! I left you on hold for over 2 months! Shame on me!

Life is settling down for me and changes are going well. Hubby guys diet for his diabetes is going well and he has lost 30 pounds in the process. At this time he is not having to take medication. He is controlling it through diet. I am so proud of him. He was always a man that loved his sweets. Chocolate was a vegetable to him and the more he ate the happier he was. He has not had one little bit of candy since his diagnosis's. I am also following his diet with him but with some modifications.
I am hypoglycemic so I need a few more carbs than he. Although he has lost 30+ pounds I have not. I found some of his loss but I did lose 2 pounds this past week. Woohoo! Why is it that men can think about losing weight and drop 5 pounds and us women find it?

Enough of that! On to some quilting.

Linda and I finished our BOM quilts. As mentioned before, we came across many mistakes but the worst was when we went squaring up the blocks. They were all different sizes and off by almost an inch!  We lost some points in that process. Here is a picture of the finished flimsy.

Not a great picture but you get the idea.  I will get it on the long arm soon. 

After that was done I wanted to play so I sat down and created this.

I was playing with my Easy Dresden ruler and came up with this. I went on the Internet to look at pictures of sunflower leaves and then drew them out and appliqued them and the stem on.  I am thinking about how I want to quilt this.

This past May a few friends and I went to Nancy's Notions sale. What sale! We found many good deals and had a great time. We even met some famous people. Eleanor Burns was one of them. what a hoot she is.

Here we are.

Linda, me and Karen. Karen is new to quilting. Last summer she wanted me to show her how to paper piece. She loved it and is now not only paper piecing but quilting away. She is a fiber artist weaver. She makes the most wonderful rag rugs and kitchen towels. You can check out her esty shop here....http://kareninthewoods.etsy.com/

Once we unloaded our wallets we off to do the SE Wisconsin Shop Hop. Don't worry, we left money in those wallets for the hop. I will show you my loot next time. OH! One of the shops was Primitive Gatherings. Love, love love that shop.

Till then....Piece!
Hugs

Follow me here

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5121347/?claim=3hhxk6k9qsh">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

A Fork in the Road

The past week has been a whirlwind. I had planned on showing you pictures of mine and Linda's finished BOM quilt. That got pushed to the back burner. A week ago I was hit at the fork in the road. I got a call that my uncle was in the "dying process". If you remember last year while we were snowbirding he got gravely ill, was hospitalized, then to a nursing home, then a Rehab center and then it was decided he needed Assisted Living. We found a nice facility and I moved him in. All was going well until, in January, he decided was NOT going to take his medications anymore! He was on heart medications, insulin, water pills, well you get the idea. He just kept going down hill. Last week he was having difficulty breathing, walking and was confused. He would turn on the stove in his apartment and then turn on the air conditioner. He was also under Hospice care. I had a Hospice worker call late Saturday night and tell me that his confusion was worse, he had fallen and cut his head open, along with he could not find his dentures. Hospice was there 24/7 until the time of death on Monday, March 25. I am so very "Thankful" to all the Hospice workers for making him as comfortable as possible. I got all the arrangement made and now I am in the process of moving his things out of the  Assisted Living Center. I have to have them out by the end of the month. I have been spending whatever time I can packing and purging. Today we are down to furniture. Our son and grandson will be helping me move it out. Then I just have to clean out his refrigerator and I am done. Whew!
That is not all that has happened this week. Hubby guy has been having many health issues. He has COPD, Congestive Heart Failure, and a  form of rheumatoid arthritis which has been causing him much pain. We went to see his doctor yesterday and had blood work done. He has Diabetes! He has been having some depression issues but this has taken it over the top. It has been a very difficult week. Please pray for him.

I will be back with those pictures...soon.

Till then...Piece!
Paula

Going through the "Change".

Did you notice I have gone through the change? Whew! It was tough. The sweating, the hot flashes, the memory loss, then....it came to me  Hugs and Stitches! I wasn't really liking my blog name and had some nasty comments about it. So, I went through the change and came up with a whole new title. Whatda think? Family says it is so me. You see, I am a hugger. I love to get hugs and I love to give them.

It has been a busy couple of weeks and lots sewing has gotten done. You see, about 2 years ago my friend, Linda talked me into doing a BOM with her. We got off to wonderful start but came to screeching halt at block 4. Why? She was in school, doubling up on classes to finish sooner. I was south for the winter and didn't want to go ahead without her. Needless to say, it got stuffed away. When we got home early this year I was going through UFO's. I came up with a plan. Called Linda and she liked my idea of, let's get together once a week and sew a block. We can have this baby done by May. It was agreed that she would come over every Thursday evening and we would each do a block. The last week of Febuary is her husband birthday and that would fall on our Thursday night sewing time. So we decide to get together on Tuesday. Thursday evening Linda calls and her husband was tired and went to bed right after his birthday dinner so she wanted to come and sew. Alrighty! She had a long week-end off from work. Also, her birthday is Feb 29! A leap year baby she is. As it turned out we sewed Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! We got down to 2 blocks to go. We have been having a great ime doing this and having many fun talks and many serious talks. We also discovered many errors in our pattern. Mostly cutting errors. In most cases we were lucky and one of us would catch it but 1 or 2 still slipped by us. We sewed our last block this past Thursday and now we are down to squaring them up and stitching them all together.
Here are a few pictures of us while on our mission. We even had Mary from our group come and play one night while she worked on a baby quilt.

Linda looks Sew Serious!

 

 

Matching up those seams and flapping my jaw, as usual!

 

Laying out blocks! A very scrappy quilt. Not sure if this is mine or Linda's. But they look the same.

Got a haircut! She doesn't like it but I think she looks fabulous!

Mary working on her baby blanket.

Getting ready to square it all up. We had to of have had a good time...look at the mess!

In between the sewing I did some cleaning and re-organized  a closet. You are  lucky I don't have a picture of the before.

Look at the room I have to go buy new clothes!

I have hardly any sweatshirts left! Why are hubby guys socks on MY shelf?

We had a rainy, sleety snowy night and woke to this.

A beautiful winter wonderland, if was December! I am thankful for our neighbor who plows out our driveway. That leaves the front walk for me to do. Man! That snow was heavy. Just look at these poor trees from all that weight.

We have 6 of these in the back and all of them look like this.

Went the doctor today to get lab results. Looks like I need to change my eating habits. Rabbit food diet for me.  :(

Have a great day!

Hugs

 

Are you still there?

If you are still there, all I can say is, Sorry I left you waiting in the cold. It has been a loooonnnnggg time since I posted and I will tell you all about it.

First. When we travel we use a WIFI Hotspot thingie bob from our cell phone company. We seem to use up our allotted 4G way to fast. If I post pictures I use up much of that 4G. What fun is a blog without pictures?

Second. I didn't get whole lot of sewing done. Why? When we travel in the RV during the winter I have to set everything up on the table, counter and wherever else. When it is time for lunch or dinner, I have to put it all away. Away is usually putting it all on the bed. Then after lunch, let's say, my husband will want to go somewhere. So we go and everything is still piled up on the bed. We usually end up eating dinner out somewhere and by the time we get back, it is late and now I have pack everything away so we can go to bed because we have palns for the next day that do not include sewing.

Sew, what is a girl to do?  Hand stitchin! I started an applique project. (no picture). I started an hexagon project. ( no picture) Boring isn't it?

While in Waco, TX., I discovered Texas was having a "One Stop Shop Hop" Located at the convention center in Waco! How cool is that? 30 shops set up, in one place. Five dollars to get in. (cheaper than gas to drive to them all.) I picked up some chram packs, some yardage, and a book.
Again, no pictures! I had pre-purchased my ticket from the LQS. When I gave my ticket at the door I got a lei. The hawaian type. LOL! On the lei was a ticket with a number on it. They called out numbers every 15 minutes. First I went around to each shop, took mental notes and then went back and bought my treasures. They had a Wine and Potato Bar set up. Wine? At 9:00 in the morning????? I guess they wanted us buy more. I passed on the wine and the potato bar. As I walking around I would check my number as they called them out. Just as I was about to leave they called my number! Mine! I doubled checked it. Yup, MINE!!!! I won!!!! Something!!! A won a thermo drink cup that says "Quilt Happy". It also has a star quilt pattern on it.  I about wet myself with joy! I skipped my way out to the lobby to wait for hubby to pick me up. We had arranged a time for him to come back and I had an hour to wait. So I settled into a comfy chair and checked out my loot. A lady asked if she could sit by me. Of course. She was from Georgetown, TX.. She came on a bus that was not leaving for another 3 hours and she was done shopping. We had a great conversation about quilting, living in Texas, (she just moved there 3 months ago from CA..) and what projects we aere working on. Before I knew it hubby guy pulled up and I left. What a wonderful time I had.

We left Waco on Feb1 to meet up with friends further south. This is where our plans got changed big time. When we arrived at the campground we were told they had an Argentine Ant infestation. OK. We were to spray around our tires, jacks and connections to the RV, or sprinkle Comet around all of them. OK. We had Comet so I sprinkled it around the tires, around the jacks and on and around our electric cord and water hose. On Saturday just before leaving to go get some groceries I noticed 2 ants on the counter. Killed them and alway we went. We came back, put our griceries away and we noticed a few more ants. So, back into town to get ant spray. We were gone about an hour and a half because we got a sandwich while in town. I entered the RV, turned on the kitchen light and the counter top was ALIVE!!!! I mean ALIVE! I could barley see the counter top, just ants. My husband grabbed the can of spray out of the bag and just started spraying the whole counter top. They died instantly. I looked under the sink and we had tons more. Spray more. We went outside and our water hose was totally black with ants. Opened up the basement compartments and ants.....EVERYWHERE! More Spray. Once we felt it comfortable that we had it under control we called our son. He looked them up on the computer and we found out they a warm climate ant. They have colonies over a million. The only way to really get rid of them was cold, cold tempuatures. Under 64 for the eggs to die and under freezing to kill the rest. Dang! So the decision was made right then and there that we would head for home in the morning. In the morning we found more ants in the kitchen spice cabinet, around the door and on the table. Afer taking care of them we packed up and  headed out. On our way home we stopped in MS at a campground for the night. We took everyting out of the basement compartments. Checked all the totes and sprayed the heck out of that area. We had not seen an ant since the day before inside the coach. Of course, winter storm Nemo was heading right for our path to home. On Thursday morning we watched weather and it said it would hit Chicago late afternoon and WI was cloudy but clear. So, we knew we would be through northern IL by noon soon we headed home. Never believe the weather. We hit rain just north of Bloomington, sleet in Rcokford and by the time we crossed into WI we had snow! It was a horrble driving day and the snow just kept getting worse. Don't even think of telling a man that maybe we should stop.  We made it home by 4:30 that afternoon. What a relief! We unhooked the tow car and as I was pulling it into the driveway, slowly, I completely spun around. Then we decided to get the car washed because it was a total mess from drive. I almost lost it on a curve but got cntrol. WHEW! Got the car washed and headed back home. Same curve, not so lucky. I did a 180 and ended up in the other lane going the right way. I think I need to sharpen my winter driving skills, ya think? It has been 11 years since I drove in the snow. I think I will let hubby do the driving.

Once home then the work began. Getting eceryting into the house without any ants. I wiped every food item down with Clorox wipes. Shook every piece of clothing  and cloth and washed it all. I think I did 24 loads of wash. I never saw an ant on anything. I checked the washer after each load and the lint filter after each load and no ants. Now we just have to let the coach sit and get COLD! BRRRRR!
Do you know I do not own a winter jacket and I live in Wisconsin! Haven't had a need for one for 11 years. Good thing... they are all on sale now.

Well I think I have bored you to death and I still have NO PICTURES! Makes for a dull post, doesn't it?

I will be bcak to show you the 2 things I did get done while snowbirding for short time we had. Till then...

Piece!
Paula

Murphy's Law

I wanted to get a post done before Stitchin on the Lake had the Let's go Visiting! Guess what? The dang thing would not load. I lost my post! So of course, here I am a day late trying it again and we will see what happens. I do hope people come back!

Anyway my post was many questions. I want to get opinions. Now where is that list of questions????

I wonder how many people starch their fabric as they sew their blocks?
 I just started doing this and I am really liking the results. I press and starch before cutting and then when my block is finished, before squaring it up, I press and starch it again.

Do you stitch your blocks together as you finish them or lay them out when they are all finished and then sew them together?
I wait till all the blocks are done, lay them out, and then stitch them together.

Do you label all your quilts?
I really need to do this. I have on a few but not all of them.

Do you take pictures of your quilts when they are finished?
I take a picture and have intentions of putting them into an album.  So far I haven't. I do take notes of the fabric I use and dates I made them and plan to add that to the picture in the album, when I get the album going! LOL!

What is your favorite thread for piecing?
I usually use thread from Connecting Threads.

Do you quilt your own quilts?
Yes.

Do you quilt on your sewing machine or do you have a long arm?
I quilt on both. I do have a longarm and I am learning just what I can do. It is a big learning curve.

Are you primary colors or pastel?
I love both but I have noticed I use mostly primary colors. I need to make something using pastels.

I hope you will comment on my questions.

We are traveling and I am on a limited gigabyte, so I can't post many pictures.

Piece!
Paula