Retreat 2010-part 2

My friend's quilts: one for a baby. The blue has tiny little bees on it - so cute! She gave me some of her flying geese flip corners to make a mini Sister's Choice block for my collection. I have some scraps to do one for her too.
Gave her my double of the 60 degree ruller runner. She made her own "striped" fabric and the runner since she wanted to make one anyways. The scraps from her discard pieces she put together and gave me in trade for the pattern. It ended up the backing of my Halloween hexagon. The red has really subtle leaf pattern in gold and the gold fabric also had leaves. It looks so rich!

She was making fun of me for climbing under the tableto plug everything in and snapped my picture. Had to get her back! LOL!

Post Retreat Post

Well, got home from quilt retreat nearly a month ago and still haven't posted photos! Here are my projects. Most have pics, but some don't. Quilts form other people will be in the next post.

I finished:
At least 16 4-patch blocks for the groups charity quilts. (no photos)

7 Table toppers/runners
6 of them were one-sided and one was reversible

5 miscellaneous gifts

4 of the gifts were doll diapers
3 Tiny Sister's Choice blocks (5 inch finished)

2 Christmas gift bags

1 Advent Calendar
1 BOM for the 12 Days of Christmas Quilt (no photo until i do the embroidery)
And 1 dog pillow filled with scraps for the local dog rescue (donated already)

Also started working on a bag for my friend, but with the directional stripes, there isn't enough fabric to do matched fabric straps. Have to rethink that project a little. Might do cording straps out of one of the contrasting colors she bought. That will be interesting.

Grandma and Christmas

This photo is from Gram's surprise 90th b-day party. She was moved to tears to see her nearly 100-year old sister-in-law. :)

Almost caught up to current time. I need to take a few pics of gifts, but I really haven't had time to work on much of anything.

After my niece's birthday party, my son's birthday party and my cousin's baby shower, my amazing grandmother of 92 years passed away from a massive stroke. She waited to fully leave this word until all her grandkids had left the hospital room. While she was completely unconscious, I'm sure she was watching out for us. She passed quietly with only my mom and my aunt in the room. She was dearly loved by many, many people. I had the sincere honor of delivering her euology. Though I did ask for her help to get me through it without messing up or breaking down!

Gram would never have complained or inconvenienced anyone.
She remarkably visited each of our homes for birthday parties and saw the Christmas decorations. She also laughed and cried throughout the baby shower! We have amazing pictures of her glowing face until practically the day before she died! I am waiting for a few electronic pics so I can add them to this page.

This rainbow showed on the way to Grandma's house (and my folks' house) Christmas day.

Holly glasses from Santa. My dh LOVES to decorate and eat the holly shaped cookies. I think that's the only shape we made this year. We had a deal that I only had to decorate anything not holly shaped... LOL - worked for me!
Our tree. Yes, there is a strand of lights out. Of course, this week it is working.

Haven't seen my brother or his wife in quite a long time, but they were able to drive up to attend Gram's funeral. My hubby and me, then my bil and sister, then my sil and brother.

The three kids. Can you tell we are related?!? lol

Our furkids and pink-kids, as one of my friends would say.

Mid December

Getting down to the wire! I still have a bunch of Christmas gifts to finish! I didn't take pics of some of them, but I can sneak some later on at my sister's house. The kids had fun building forts...
birthday party still happened even though birthday boy landed in ER that morning... turns out he had croup. They gave him a breathing treatment and cough medecine. WE followed up with his dr later that week and got more meds for a sinus infection. Or course Mom (me) got it too and I'l STILL coughing!

My own pattern. Made it for my cousin's baby shower. It's based on our great grandmother's quilt from the 30's or 40's.

December

No photos from Thanksgiving, but we did all have fun! Early December had a Tae Kwon Do demonstration at a Mui Thai fight night. The opposit end of the spectrum was the final Christmas pageant at the daycare/preschool our kids attended. DS graduates from kindergarten this year!

Early November

These are actually from two trips out! I can't believe the weather we've had so far this fall!

I remember hiking here as a kid. Everything seems so much smaller now :) A friendly family with a huge dog took this pic for us.

Steelers Game

We bought tickets from a charity auction and went to an early season Steelers game. We had more fun before the game doing all kinds of goofy games! The Steelers did win and we had fun during the game too. The park is amazing - it was our first time there.