A terrible sadness

I returned home from a wonderful retreat this afternoon to some terrible news. My dear friend Gina was on a wonderful, well desesrved vacation with her husband Walt. They are now struggling to find a flight home. Their 2 sons were in a car accident last night. One died, the other is in ICU.

I cannot begin to tell you how my heart aches for her. there are just no words other than these...

Gina my friend, I love you you. I can't begin to understand what you are going thru right now, but I want you to know that I am sending you all my love and strength.

Send her your thoughts and prayers. She will need us all to get through this terrible time.

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I'm off to retreat!

At sunrise tomorrow, I'm off to retreat! 2 days in a beautiful location about an hour north of here. I'm packed; have my challenge block done; and my 80-6" squares cut! And all the stuff to make my calss sample...due next week..LOL!!

My suitcase is packed too. But my Harry, is very sad as you can see in the photo. He is very much a Mommy's boy. Don calls him my shadow. He does not like me out of his sight. He senses that I'm going away, and is even more clingy than normal. Maybe I should take him with me! Unfortunately, I don't think that would go over to well. But Don will be home with him (and Chloe ) the 2 days I'm gone. He'll either be very happy to see me when I come home; or he'll be very pissed! Bad Mommy!
Chloe, on the other hand, is a little more independent. As long as one of us are home, she's fine with that.

I'm taking the laptop, but don't know if I'll have internet. So, it might be a couple days. Have good ones!

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Better than Christmas!

My Circle Lord arrived today!! Yippee! I have been meaning to get this for a LONG time, but as things go, I just never got around to ordering. Finally, last week I did. Why did I wait so long? For the past few years I have been using the Quilt E-Z templates....what a wonderful step up this will be!

In addition to the basic unit; the templates I chose to start with are the spiral, starz ,tiles, and stella.
Since I do mostly custom work, and my own work leans to the contemporary, the only 2 giant templates I got are below: the zig-zag and the cable. These 2 will lend themselves to creating wonderful spaces for creative custom.

My husband had it assembled in no time flat. Even got the stylus and my laser light changed over!

Thanks Michael and Kay for all your patience and help, you are the best! Be sure to visit their blog for tons of info and inspiration.

I have a busy weekend, and then bright and early Monday I'm off to a guild retreat, so playing with my new toys will have to wait until later next week. But it's all ready to go when I get home!

Have a great weekend!

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We've been certified!

Today in our yard, I added a bird feeder and a bird bath. Within 2 hours our resident male cardinal had found them and was calling his mate.

Also today, the county officer came to inspect our new yard, and we were recognized as a "Florida friendly landscape" That relates to green friendly, as in low water requirements, native plants that don't require fertilizers, trees, and plants that attract and feed wildlife.
And to top it off, I got a new postcard from Mary, commemorating her trip to visit me!

The only negative today was that I still didn't get my issue of "On Track" :( Maybe tomorrow!

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Secret Sister Reveal

Today I got my final package from my MQR secret sister. And I found out who she is...Thearica Burroughs! Thank you so much Thearica for 6 months of suspense and great fun! Your surpise packages were great; and such fun to look forward too!

This last package is WAY over the top! A complete BOM pattern with all the fabric! Thank you so much Thearica..it has been loads of fun...you're the best!!

Also on the MQR front; a new postcard swap is getting started. Mary, won't you play this time??? It'll loads of fun! And you know you love the postcards...........

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More of yesterday's fun

Today I finished up the SID on the current quilt loaded. I'm always glad when that part is done!
So since I have no quilts finished to show, I'll show you a couple more of the postcards I made yesterday. I made 16 in all.

So this is a pretty lame post for tonight, but some days are like that. Now I'm off to keep my honey company for the super bowl! Later, Gators!

I'm making new postcards

I started out today working on a client quilt. And as always, SID is always the first step for me. After a couple hours of that, I NEED a break. So, first I contacted Michael of Circle Lord and finally placed my order. Then I started working on Valentine postcards. I had bought a bunch of new stuff while Mary was here, and was anxious to use it.



This first one is for Mary. After I had finished, I realized the letters would have looked better with seed beads between them. OK, I'll do that on the next one! So Mary, you're the guinea pig. The other point I would mention about this one is ...don't overlook the scrapbooking isle for things to use. Those hearts around the edges are brads from the scrapbook aisle of JoAnn's. You just poke a hole (I used the eyelet punch that came with my embroidery machine) and put them thru. You do need to add a thin batting between them and the backing fabric...I used fusible batting and it worked fine.



This one is for my oldest granddaughter, and as you can see I added 2 seed beeds between each letter. The heart is made from a sheet a Angelina fibers I fused and then free cut into the shape. I attached it with a machine blanket stitch.

And this is for Fiona, my youngest granddaughter. Again, I separated the letters with seed beads. The heart in this one is cut from "fun foam" from walmart. I painted it with Jacquard Lumiere 'halo pink gold' and stitched it to the postcard with a machine blanket stitch. This stuff is ~1/4" foam and sews beautifully. The star on the heart is another brad from the scrapbook aisle.

This one is my middle granddaughter's. A little blurry, sorry. Again, I used the seed beads between the letters. That looks much better.

And this last one is for one of our adult children. I found a Laurel Burch panel in my stash that had blocks of cat families. I had one to fit each of our 4 kids' . I just added a charm to each one. in this case "Love". I matched the number of kittens to the number of children , or people in each family.

So tomorrow I'll finish the edges on the kids and grandkids cards. Then I'll go back to the SID. And maybe make a few more postcards when I need a break.


Mary called me to let me know she got the latest issue of "On Track" that had my Frog quilt in their new "creative Lines" feature. She says it is good...I haven't gotten my magazine yet, so now I'm really anxious for it.

Have a great weekend!

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