Hello there!

I've missed my blog!  It has been a very long time since I've been here. 
My last post was April 2012 and I had just finished up the A-Z Blogging challenge.  I stopped blogging mainly because Blogger told me that I had used up my picture quota and well, I really like to post pictures. 
I was able to post the picture above tonight, so I don't know if perhaps I had used the quota for 2012 and maybe I was reset in 2013?  Guess we'll have to see!

My life got a little hectic after April last year.  Without going into a lot of details I'll just say that my dad, who lives in another state, had a major operation and I went to spend some time there with my dad and mom. 
Just before dad's surgery my son and daughter-in-law blessed us with a precious new granddaughter, then my daughter-in-law was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma.
  It's been a long hard road but things seem to be settling into a new normal.  Dad is doing great, my daughter-in-law has finished months of chemo and radiation, looks great, is feeling pretty good AND is growing a beautiful head of hair!  My "new" grandbaby is just a perfect angel and almost 8 months old! 

So blessed!  So thankful to God from whom all blessing flow.

My beautiful granddaughters and I spend

Super Bowl Sunday together and I'll

tell you.............we didn't watch the game!

So what do you think of the picture I posted at the beginning of my ramblings?  It is a quilt that I have made for my NEXT grandbaby whom is due TOMORROW!

Nighty Night,
tammy

Z is for Zumba!

A couple of months ago my dancing group started doing ZUMBA!

We've been dancing for over a year or so and while doing the ChaCha

our instructor thought we all needed help with our "Latin hips", so

we switched to ZUMBA for awhile.

WELL!  I gotta tell ya.........the morning after we switched my American hips told

me in no uncertain terms that they 

DIDN'T WANT TO BE LATIN!

This very morning (so perfect for my Z post) 

I slipped the Zumba DVD into

the player and spent about 45 minutes 

on the Beginning moves tape.

Some of the beginning moves are pretty slow and pokey,

 but some of them,

like the Reggaton moves, 

I am pretty happy to be going through slowly.

While I'm looking forward to graduating to the 

regular dance songs I'm pretty

sure that in the morning my body will 

thank me for moving slowly through these moves.

In the past exercise for me has been in the form of 

hiking the mountain, which I really

enjoy until spring when the rattlers start showing up on the trails.  Snakes scare me!

I like to swim but the pool water is not quite warm enough yet.  

Jazzercise was a lot of fun, but for me it was a 2 hour commitment......1/2 hour before

and after the class for prep and driving time.  

A few years back I walked on a daily basis training 

to participate in the 

Susan G. Koman 3Day Breast Cancer Walk.  

It was fun walking and training with my friend, 

but walking by myself is way to slow for me.  

Biking is more my speed now!

Of course it'll soon be too hot here in AZ to bike.............

Excuses, Excuses!

I'm hoping that I'll enjoy these Zumba workouts!

Do you Zumba?

What do you do to stay in shape?  

or

What are your best excuses NOT to exercise?

Y is for YES!

Yes!  Yippy! Yahoo!

The end is in sight!

I've been participating in the 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge 

for the last 24+ days 

and now with the letter Y the end is in sight!

What have I taken away from this experience?

  Well, first I found some new blogs that I enjoy reading 

and *met* some new friends.

 I learned a lot about how blogspot works 

just by trying some new things.

Also I rather enjoyed having a starting point with the 

alphabet letters every day.

Unfortunately I only visited about 100 blogs out of the 

over 1700 blog writers who

participated.  From what I read I surmised that 

many of the bloggers participating

were/are writers. 

 In the past most of the blogs that I read are of a crafting/quilting/

do it yourself nature so reading blogs 

written by writers was a new experience.

I found my writing to pale by comparison 

but was also encouraged to work a little

harder at writing.  

This I will probably do when I don't have to write EVERY day.

That's the other thing........

while I sorta enjoyed the discipline of writing every day

I'm not sure that I would like HAVE to write every day.    

If you look at this quilt just right you can clearly see the Y.
Well, kinda!
This *might* have been better for "x"!
I love working with black and white geometric fabrics.
This quilt was made as an engagement quilt for my daughter.

Well, I think I may be done yapping 

and spinning this yarn for tonight.

Tune in on Monday for the big finish! 

 *Z*!

God Bless,
tammy

X is for eXchange

One of the things that quilters love to do is eXchange things.

We eXchange fabric........Fat quarters, strips, squares......

We eXchange blocks.....pieced blocks, appliqued blocks, paper-pieced blocks.

Sometimes we even eXchange little quilts!

Hearts in the Cabin
This quilt is made with strips eXchanged with the
Friday Night Quilters.
We all made a Log Cabin quilt with the strips.
The guidelines were to make any log cabin pattern using
a red center square.  It was amazing to see how differend
all of the quilt turned out since we were all using the same
fabric strips.

This was a round robin eXchange quilt.  Each of the ladies made the center square
then passed it on to the next person with certain guidelines.
The first border had to be 3" and have triangles.
In the next round  you had to turn the quilt on point and add applique.
The next round had to contain rectangles and the last
round had to include circles.
It was a great challenge!

As part of a Springtime Mini Quilt swap
I received this sweet quilt from
Bec in Australia.

In another Mini Quilt swap I received this little quilt from
Deb in Kodiak Alaska.
Her family are fishermen!

This was a quilt I sent as part of the Mini Quilt swap to
Angela in England

Another Mini Quilt made for a Wintertime eXchange

Backside w/label

Closeup of Sharon's finished Round Robin eXchange

Closeup of Tammy's Round robin eXchange

Closeup of Linda's Round Robin eXchange

Closeup of Kerry's Round Robin eXchange.

Quilty blessings,

tammy

W is for Words

Words.

Just Words tonight.

Why?  

Well, it seems that my quota for photo storage has been reached!

Imagine that!

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so "they" say.

I enjoy using images to enhance my words.

But tonight you'll just have to use your imagination!

Hopefully I'll be able to paint a picture using only my words.

It's Springtime.

And you know what needs to happen in the Spring, right?

You know, besides birds singing and flowers blooming......

Cleaning......

Spring Cleaning.

Last week I started cleaning my studio so I could host

the Comfort Quilts Sew-In.    Basically I cleaned up the main 

room, just making things tidy, dusting and vacuuming.

~and putting all the overflow in baskets and bins and boxes

and shoving them into another room!~

What?  

That's not cleaning you say?

Ya, I know.

In the days since the Sew-In I've been busy going through those

boxes, bins and baskets and sorting and putting away.

However the main cleaning that I've done in the last 3 days is

sorting though my fabric stash!

(Insert picture here of a closet with fabric overflowing)

(Insert picture of 3 tables, one for ironing, one for sorting 

and one for stacking the sorted fabric)

Can you see it?

Believe me, the picture in my mind's eye was much worse

than it actually was.  And now that the fabric is all sorted

into categories I just can't wait to start using it up!

Now picture if you will a closet with 

fabric neatly folded on one shelf 

and 2 empty shelves below that.

3 tables......the ironing and sorting table is empty

and the sorted fabric stacked in neat little BIG piles

on the 3rd table.  Phew!  All that is left to do is place

the sorted fabric into the 3 empty tubs waiting just for them.

Books and patterns are next...............

Wish me luck!

I miss my pictures...........

Guess I'll be doing some research before "X"!

Wishing you a wild and wonderful day!

tammy

V is for virgin

Here it is almost midnight and nothing is written anything for "V" yet.

I've been vacillating all day long on what to write for V.

And now I'm tired.  

And I want to catch some ZZZZZZZ's.  (But "Z" is several days away!)

So this is going to be a short one.  

And probably not a wonderfully written one either.

So it seems that I will have to write about my visit to the dentist today.

My hygienist told me I was a virgin!  

If I wasn't so tired I could probably make this into a joke of some sort...........

Let's see............a woman walks into a bar  dentist's office........

Nah, I'll just lay it out like I was told today.......

I was worried about my teeth after looking at the new

digital x-rays that they can zoom in and enlarge.

(pretty amazing I might add!)

There were quite a few white patches where there are fillings.

My hygienist looked at me and told me not worry.......

my teeth were in great shape 

and I had many, many teeth that were VIRGINS!

When I looked at her in amazement she remarked......

"Yes,  Virgins.....that's what we call teeth that have never been drilled!"

Who knew?

So there you have it!

Pleasant dreams............

tammy

U is for UFO's

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS?????

Really?????!!!

Nope.......

In the quilting world UFO's are 

Un Finished Objects.

or PIGS.....

  Projects In Grocery Sacks

or MY favorite........ I'm working on my PHD........

Projects Half Done!!!

Seeing how I have been quilting for the last 30+  years AND I'm a little bit of a  hoarder   collector it goes to figure that I have a number of UFO's, PIGS, and PHD's!



I'm in the process of re-organizing my studio and I'm falling in love all over again with some of the fabric and projects that have been stashed away and unseen by human eyes for probably years!


Here are some of the projects that I can't wait to get my hands on again:

Project started in a class with Sharon Shamber

This cool quilt was a FNQ challenge quilt.
(Friday Night Quilters)
Can you believe that EACH one of these squares is
the EXACT same pattern?

This is a Maple Island pattern called "YIKES"

This was a project started in a design class with Lorraine Torrence

Grandmother's Flower Garden
All those little hexies are first sewn over a paper or plastic hexagon shape
then hand pieced together.
I've been working on this one for MANY, MANY MANY years.
Doesn't look like it does it?

This little quilt is a ?............

Here is a PIG
Project in grocery sack, errrr rather it is in one of those zippered bags
that curtains come in.
This was to be a wedding quilt for my son and daughter-in-law.
They were married in 2007!
Maybe a 10 year anniversary gift?

This was a sorta mystery quilt.

Quilt made for a Ricky Tims class.
We were supposed to quilt on this during class
So glad I made it up before class!

Look what I found!
Another little bullseye quilt top.
Project Linus here I come!

I've had the pieces for this quilt hanging around for YEARS!
It is my brother's Pink Flyod t-shirts.
I want to make it really special and I am having trouble
designing it because of those 2 BIG squares.
guess I need to just jump in and DO IT!

This was scraps from another quilt and
I made this guitar applique to go with it

Sample for a class I was teaching

Log Cabin quilt class taken with Sharon Craig

Hummmmm..........think I have enough projects to finish?
At this rate it will take me YEARS to get my PHD!


Blessings,
tammy