Driving Miss Stacey: May 2012

Memorial Day 2012

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines

Today in the United States we honor veterans of today and generations past who have given their lives for our country. There is nothing deeper in my heart than taking care of our military families wherever they may be. In fact, I am currently out of the United States spending time with daughter, son-in-law and grandchild who serve our country proudly in the United Kingdom.

I am missing my annual downtown wreath laying ceremony and visit to our hometown veteran's memorial park. So I marched right over to a special spot here and paid my respects to these fine men.

You can visit my previous years postings here and here.

Cathedral Stars!

In October of 2009 I was fortunate to attend a workshop here in Raleigh, NC put on by our local quilt guild with Bonnie Hunter. She is such a fantastic teacher. So down to earth and an absolute pleasure to have met and taken a class from. I have learned so much from Bonnie.

If you haven't been to her blog you need to. She has a load of information there, tons of quilt patterns and plenty ways to tame and use your stash.

Quiltville found here

The workshop I attended was to make this Cathedral Star quilt.

This quilt consists of two blocks.

A modified "54-40 or Fight" star block

and a modified "Jacob's Ladder".

There are 32 pieces per each star block

There are 28 pieces to each Jacob's Ladder blocks

There are 1852 pieces just for the blocks

The blocks finish at 9 inches each.

I just finished mine this morning.

It is 91 x 91 inches.

I found some scrappy houses from a project that I abandoned and used them for part of the backing.

I am trying to get 4 quilts done a month and get my UFO pile down a bit. I have 22 listed in a UFO challenge that I am participating in. Of course I have plenty more than the 22. Any more than that, I'd go broke with the quilting charges. I do quilt some of the smaller ones myself.

Everyday day Bonnie sends updates to her blog & facebook page. Multiple times a day. She has quite a travel schedule. To be honest with ya'll, I am exhausted for her just seeing it.

Screen shot of where she's been and where she's headed to.

See what I mean about being busy and on the road?

In Full Bloom

I missed all the flowers in bloom at home this spring because I was enjoying this little guy over here in my last post.

My front planter while I was away.

Photo courtesy of youngest daughter

The next best thing for me was to take out all my flower quilts and have a little quilt show. It's also been raining cats and dogs here along the eastern coast for the last 5 days. The sun only peeking out around 5 o'clock in the evening. Every time I wanted to go out and hang some quilts and take pictures, there was a thunder storm.

Hollyhocks and Foxglove flowers are two of my favorite flowers. I planted some the year that I made these quilts. They never came back up. I do have kind of a brown thumb when it comes to growing things in the ground. Pots on the deck, well that's another thing. I'll show you in another post when they get to their full potential.

I love flower quilts. I need to make more. These two quilts were made when I was a fairly new quilter. I made the purple Hollyhock quilt first. When I finished it, I had to make another one in my favorite color...PINK...

This is Tulip Time. It's a free pattern that I give away in my store.
Another one of my favorites ✿

The following are pictures from Abbey Gardens in Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom when I was there in April. Also some pics from the open air market which is open every Wednesday and Saturday.

It was amazing how bright and vibrant everything was considering how cold and wet everything is over there. Taken on the only sunny day I saw in three weeks.

It's been a while since I posted to my Tuesday Treasure group also.

I am back and I've got my sewing machine foot pedal to the metal.

Between Mother & Daughter

Sharing a bit of myself self with y'all. My email exchange with my daughter today.

Her First Mothers Day. A continent away.

From: Jessica
Date: May 13, 2012 12:01:56 PM EDT
To: Stacey>
Subject: From one mother to the other

Hi mom!

Thanks for such a sweet email! Being a mother makes me appreciate what you had to go through over the years. It's tough work!

And I'm not sure how positive I am these days but I know it'll get better ;)

Thank you for all of your help and support! I would be completely lost over here in England without it.

Happy mothers day to you! I still have to mail your gift so hold tight.

Love ya!

Jess

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 May 2012, at 03:53 PM, >stacey wrote:

Hi honey, I hope you are having a nice day today. I just wanted to let you know how proud I am of you. There is not a day that passes where I don't think your accomplishments, your poise, generosity, caring of other people who are important to you, strengths, beauty in seeing positive things, creativity, and so many other fine qualities. I love you very much.

Happy Day to you.

Love Mom
sent from my iPad

My first grandchild. A boy born on April 1st.

The following quilt was quite an interesting project for me. OMG, I made so many mistakes. Cutting my fabrics rights side together and not getting the angles correct, trimming up my block too small for my planned pinwheel cornerstones with sashing. You name it, it happened.

My red and aqua stash

Something went wrong every step of the way. My tension was loose, then it was too tight, my machine kept skipping stitches. Every inch! Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I let my youngest daughter come home and try her free motion quilting skills on it (fabric painting according to her), mess with the tension, the bobbin holder screw, use incredible amounts of strange thread. Broken needles. The real culprit most of all was ~ Pressure ~ Pressure to get it done before this little guy made his debut. All before I got my rear-end on a plane heading across the pond to the UK.