Vote for Your Favorite Baby Quilts

You have three short days, as the baby quilt contest ends Sunday evening, March 18.  The Quilting Gallery hosts a weekly online quilt show and contest and the theme this week is baby quilts.  I entered the baby quilt I made for Willa Rose.  So check out the website and vote.

 http://quiltinggallery.com/2012/03/16/vote-now-quilts-babies/

Nearly Two!

It's hard to believe but Penelope Jane is nearly two!  Born in May, just days before her Aunt Molly's wedding, PJ makes her presence known.  A wisp of a girl, she is enchanted with dance, running naked and night time nursings.  Her hair surrounds her face like a halo and her impish smile assures you that her halo is a wee bit lopsided.

I enjoyed making her birth day quilt in over-sized purple flowers.  I only wish I lived close by so I could cuddle her in her quilt.

The Road Back Home

I've been away....not gone, just away.  For the past year I've focused on Bill and the cancer that ruled his body like a tyrant.  Together we went through the diagnosis, lung cancer.  Then we faced the surgeon's knife and the news that he had clean margins.  Great news for us but someone forgot to tell his lymph nodes for they were harboring microscopic cancer cells.  So the chemo began, icy cold cocktails poured into his vein through a port in his chest.  The white blood cells played hide-n-seek, constantly disappearing and causing neutrapenia. Over a course of 5 months Bill had 14 treatments.  Then we changed offices and ended up at the radiologist office where they zapped him 33 times!  By then, what was left of my Bill was a mere shadow of the man who laid down on the surgeon's table in October.  He walked out of the radiology center in August, ten months later, leaning on the support of his family, those who love him most. Now we don't think much about cancer.  No, that's not quite true, we just choose not to think about it.  Monday is the day however, that we have to think about it again.  It is the day for the next CT scan.  We wait.

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Charlie is my brother, the only boy in a family of six girls, two mothers, and two fathers. Actually it took that many adults to create our hodge-podge of a family. .

For Christmas this year I quilted a table runner with a native American theme. It was fun to do and I found the perfect leftover fabric to make the binding, a Kaffe Fassett piece. The only problem was that I didn't have enough and ended up sewing tiny strips together to complete the quilt.

July 24 is Charlie's Birthday. He now lives in Nevada and is also my friend. I'm imagining a birthday celebration that includes a traditional family barbecue; chicken, sarsa, beans, garlic bread and corn on the cob. Topped off with an angel food cake slathered in strawberries and whipped cream. We'll end the night with a fun game of cards before he returns home. Happy Birthday Charlie!

P.S. Well, my imagination played a trick on me and that lovely strawberry covered angel food cake proved disastrous. Fortunately we still enjoyed it and it brought laughter to the party as well.

For Rachael

When Rachael was in labor with her last child, she also labored on a quilt. As I cut and pressed, she sewed and by the end of the labor had two wonderful creations to celebrate; Ivan Joseph and their Laboring Quilt. I machine quilted her quilt and had a great time adding flowers and their pollinators.

Rachael celebrates life. She always welcomes people around her table to celebrate milestones - a birthday, moving from the highchair to the "big table", an award or achievement.... To celebrate her gift, I made a celebration cloth to grace the table. A place to set the vase of flowers, the cupcakes or towering creation of strawberries, shortcake and whipped cream.
Now that the Levy's have relocated to a small home in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, we won't be able to celebrate with them as frequently as we did when they lived in Reno. But the cloth will be there, representing the love we have for Rachael, Marcel and their family. I know they will keep up the celebrations, for it is in her blood, and they will have the Moser Family gathering with them around the table. Blessings!

For Molly and Luke

This tablerunner was a Christmas gift for Molly and Luke. I
loved the colors and they had fun using it when they enjoyed their Christmas feast with Luke's family from Idaho. With fabric left over, I made an apron for Molly as a shower gift. I still have more fabric....what to do?

Quit Buggin' Me

I made this quilt for Dagan, my grandson in Seattle, who loves to squish bugs. (Much to my dismay!) It's just that they look so completely different once he removes his little foot. Of course the bugs quickly loose their appeal once they no longer move. Since Dagan is only three years old, he has a lot of time to explore bugs.