photo shoot

Sunday was a cloudy day, perfect for outdoor photography, so hubby & I headed to the local playground. It's one of my favorite places to take outdoor photos of my quilts.

climbing! not something I could easily do a year ago.

I had brought several of my recent quilt finishes, including my Solid Seven Gnome in the Christmas Forest quilt.

My Improv Round Robin Quilt...

And my most recent finish, Take Note...

After a while, the wind kicked up, making quilt photography very difficult...

Ah well, it was a fun day nonetheless!

bears in the wild

Another baby quilt is done.... Bjorn Bear from Elizabeth Hartman's Woodland Animals Craftsy class. This was so much fun to make! Each bear had a zillion little pieces, but with her awesome tips & tricks, it was easy to keep them all sorted and labelled.

seriously, EACH ear has 10 pieces alone!

Ally chose all of the fabrics, a mix of blue/green/brown grunge & I love them all together!

My friend Sandy quilted paw prints which is just perfect! 

Today we have a nice cloud cover but no rain, so we headed to a nearby park with Hubby's truck to snap a few pictures. It was a bit frustrating as there was quite a bit of wind...

Poor Hubby's arms were getting tired holding up the bears & waiting for the wind to die down! 

But we did manage to get some fun shots!

throwback Thursday

Early last month, when Leigh Anne visited for my birthday, we took a trip to the Perot museum in downtown Dallas. As I wandered through the dinosaur exhibit (as one does) this display caught my eye....

I clearly remembered owning some of those plastic dinosaurs when I was a little girl! And no, I was never a tom boy. I was one of those little girls who changed her dolls clothes a hundred times a day, took them for walks in their buggy and tucked them into bed every night. But those dinosaurs? I knew right away that I had owned them!

Upon further reading, I learned that they had been souvenirs at the 1964-1965 World's Fair in New York City (which, by the way, I did not attend!) There were giant dinosaur figures at the fair which later traveled to Sinclair gas stations. I remembered going to see them. And when I asked my mom about it, she sent me these photos from 1966...

That's my beautiful mom, with me and my baby sister, Diane, wearing dresses she probably made for us.  We were lucky girls! I would have been five at the time, and Diane 2. I wish I still had the little plastic dinosaurs, but I'm thrilled to have these photos to keep forever! Thanks for indulging me in this little trip down memory lane...

NYC Adventure 2015

Sorry so quiet over here. This handsome guy and I took a little vacation... 

We headed off to New York City for a few days. So many fun things to do in New York, best of all, meeting up with Leigh Anne, our oldest who is living her dream life there....

We crammed a lot of adventure into just a couple of days. Top on our list was visiting the Freedom Tower. I took this picture of the tower from a park along the Hudson River, just behind our Soho hotel....

And this picture of the park on the Hudson from the top of the Freedom Tower!

If you are in New York, do head up to the top of the tower. The views are amazing!

I'm happy to be back home.... I'll share more later, but now I am off to tackle piles of laundry. Such a glamorous life I lead!

empty nesters

Ally is happily moved into her college dorm & hubby and I find ourselves with time alone together. Our first stop after dropping her off on Saturday? Buc-cee's....

If you're not a Texan (we're not but we've lived here long enough I guess some people consider us Texans) you may not be familiar with Buc-cee's... an enormous gas station/gift shop/snack bar. If we're being honest here, we mostly stopped because they have large, clean restrooms & after an hour or so in the car and large diet pepsis, we were in need of those! We also took advantage of one of the 40 gazillion gas pumps.

But that wasn't the most exciting stop of the day (nor was it a planned stop! ha!). Halfway home is Waco, TX, home of Chip & Joanna Gaines of HGTV/Fixer Upper fame. I had been dying to stop at their home store, Magnolia Market.

Truthfully it's a teeny tiny shop, but there was a nice assortment of home dec goodies & the staff was friendly & helpful. Hubby & I wanted to buy one of their well known metal quote signs and spent a few minutes mulling them over. In the end we chose this one, because it defines our marriage to a tee...

I love it propped up on our mantel!

After we visited the shop we set out to find "the Silos" which Chip & Joanna are renovating. Soon it will be the new location for their shop and their business (I'm already plotting a return visit!). It's under construction now, but I got some pretty good pictures (with my phone, from the car!)

 The white building with the four high windows is the renovated building.

I just love the rustic silos!

It was a fun first day for us empty nesters for sure!

San Antonio Botanical Gardens

This past weekend was family weekend at Texas State. For most folks this meant football (they lost) and campus activities, but Ally had other things in mind! We decided to spend some time in nearby San Antonio. Ally had found a botanical garden that she wanted to check out, so off we went!

I decided to treat this as an inspiration day. I took my camera along and got some interesting up close shots of berries....

 And flowers....

 But the really cool thing was a special exhibit they had going on with legos! All of the following objects were made with legos and incorporated into the beautiful scenery. Like this huge butterfly....

 a gigantic bumble bee....

 Even a lawn mower!

 This rose stood about 5 feet tall....

 Some birds on a bird feeder (filled with, what else? legos!)....

 And even some cattle (this is Texas after all)...

It was an unusually cool weekend for Texas and a perfect day to walk outside and soak up the beautiful scenery. If you're ever in the San Antonio area, I highly recommend the botanical gardens!

revisiting doors

The other day I was going through some of my supplies and came across these forgotten stitcheries from 2012. After our trip to London (has it really been 2 years? seems like yesterday.) I was infatuated with the beautiful, colorful doorways we had seen. I recreated 2 of the door photos I had taken in fabric. Specifically, wool felt and embroidery on quilting cottons....

 And there they sat, all folded up in a drawer. So I bought two artists canvases & stretched them over, creating some interesting wall art for our house and another wonderful memory of the London trip.

Not exact replicas of the photos, but pretty close I think. Every time I look at them, I fantasize about going back.... ahhhh someday.

pow wow quilt

finally, I have a quilt finish! 

 You can see the awesome quilting better in this next picture. It was quilted by my friend Sandy who just got a new midarm machine. I was her first paying customer! I think she did a wonderful job....

 Hubby was my photo assistant today. When we set out, it was quite cloudy and a perfect photography day.  By the time we got to the park (at the end of our street!) the sun was out. Sigh! Still got some fun shots. I  love the perspective in this next photo....

Quilt stats:
Pow Wow quilt by Cluck Cluck Sew
Lap size, 54x67
Fabric: Bobbins & Bits Batiks by Pat Sloan
Background fabric: Kona White

Easter Sunday and a pattern review

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Ours was fantastic! After church, we went to visit some friends who have a beautiful field of Texas Bluebonnets in their yard. Ally got dressed up all pretty and let me take some pictures of her in the bluebonnets....

Back at home, Ally had made me a basket this year! What a treat (you can see her basket behind mine)

 My basket has a pretty candle, a puzzle, socks and notebooks and pens.

I spent the rest of the day sewing. I had bought the Washi Dress pattern months ago. I confess, I was hesitating to make it because I was afraid of the elastic thread shirring on the back. Silly me! I followed the directions, used all of the hints and tricks in the pattern and it was a breeze. In fact the whole pattern was easy and fun to make. Oh, and it has POCKETS! Yay for pockets!

 My only complaint is the sizing. This pattern is not sized for gals with big busts (like me). Despite the fact that I have lost quite a bit of weight in the last year (and inches just about everywhere) I made a large (which matched my bust measurement). The dress is quite tight in the bust. I let the side seams out as much as I could, but if I make it again I will use an even larger size.

 Also, the cute little scoop cut out in the front is quite revealing on me. I solved that by popping a tank underneath which is fine. Again, next time I make it, I will leave this little detail out. This time around I left off the little cap sleeves and faced the armhole openings with purchased bias tape. Easy as pie!

All in all, I really like this pattern and will probably make it again, using the adjustments shared here. Have you made anything for yourself lately?

Japanese X & + quilt DONE!

I finished my Japanese X & + quilt! I used this tutorial for most of the blocks (which are 7 1/2 inches finished) then I supersized the block to make one block 15 inches. Some days it pays to be good at math!)

 Of course, as soon as I went outside the wind kicked up!

 Finally got this shot... with the quilt turned sideways so you could see all of the blocks (I offset it with different sized borders and I really think that makes it interesting!

And just after I snapped the picture, the quilt fell off the fence. So there you have it! And yes, the sky really is that blue! I hear cold weather is coming soon.... glad I had this pretty, sunny day to go outside and take some pictures.