More T-shirt quilts

T-shirt quilts are full of such memories for people.

The t-shirt squares below symbolize am important moments in the quiltmakers life.

I had the pleasure of quilting this top that the quiltmaker pieced.

This lady graduated in 1955. Hence the Disney 55 shirt.

She is a grandmother, plays bunko, loves to shop, and used to work at a firecracker booth in Oklahoma when she was growing up.

There is a square to symbolize all of these events.

She has a 2 squares to show where she has worked.

She has a square that shows the popular song when she was a teenager. There is a square that shows the re-enactment of the Oklahoma Land rush that reminds her that her grandfather participated in the ACTUAL land rush.

Numerous sports teams are included.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

It was a great quilt.

This next quilt is one that I did pieced, appliqued and quilted.

A mom came to me and asked me to make a quilt from her daughters cheerleading shirts.

The shirts start out in Junior high and end up with college.

Truly a timeline of this girls life.

I stabalized each shirt with interfacing, then cut them into squares.

Many of the shirts were not big enough to fill the square so I appliqued many of them onto a foundation square. (It seems as the girl got older her shirts got smaller........go figure!)

One of the squares feature both the little souffe shorts AND the top that was worn!

My client wanted the quilt to be quilted in an all-over pattern instead of

each square being quilted individually. So this is what the back of the quilt looks like:

I spent the morning in my garden.

It is a glorious day here in Phoenix today.

T-shirt memory quilts

One of my favorite quilts to make and quilt are t-shirt quilts.

Awhile back I wrote about a lady who called me early one Saturday morning and asked me what I would charge to quilt a quilt. Well......that is a really hard question to answer without seeing the size of the quilt and without knowing how much quilting a person wants. So I started asking questions.......like "What are the demensions of the quilt?", "Do you like alot of quilting or just a little?", "What type of quilt is it?, "Is it contemporary or traditional?"

Well, it turned out that this woman had not even started the quilt yet. She was taking her very first quilting class THAT VERY DAY! So I gave her a ballpark low and high cost estimate and figured that I'd never hear from her again.

So the story goes................she called me the very next evening and had her quilt ALMOST FINISHED! and needed some guidance on what I required for quilting it! As you might imagine, I was very surprised!

When she brought me the quilt she said "This might be the only quilt I ever make"................ WELL! She just picked up her 4th quilt yesterday! and when she did she brought me pictures of one of the finished quilts on her daughter's bed.

She also took it a step further and made pillow shams to match. I know that I have already posted pictures of the flat shams that I quilted, but I wanted to post the completed shams with the quilt on the bed.

It just looks so cool!

It's been awhile since I've written...........

so I have lots of stuff to write about now!

We celebrated Brian's 25th birthday by going to a wine tasting at Bacchus. I made Mint brownies to share with the group.

The picture below was AFTER we did the tasting! See how

all of our faces are a little flushed? See how RED my face and neck are? I can't ever have a drink without getting super red! Oh! and it gets that way after only ONE drink!

What a lightweight!

The night before Easter Mike and I had all of the kids over to celebrate.

We did the traditional Ham dinner.

And while the boys watched TV and drank wine............

The girls colored Easter eggs.

We started a new tradition.

Actually it is a tradition that Ed used to do.

He always colored the very last egg and it was an

Everything Egg.

He dunked the egg into every single dye bath color.

You never knew quite what color the egg would end up.

But that mystery was part of the fun.

Jen finished sewing the last bit of binding on the baby quilt she was making.

Here is the finished product:

Jen learned how to do piecing and applique on this quilt.

She also quilted it on the longarm and applied a piped binding by machine, but finished it up by hand sewing it in place and hand sewing a label.

She really learned alot and is ready for the next project!

We started out our Easter Sunday by going to a sunrise service, taking a carload of stuff over to the new house, having a scrumptious breakfast outside in the beautiful weather, taking another load over, searching for Easter eggs and then going over to Darcy's to have Easter dinner with the extended family.

Tammy, Jenny, Rafael, Jen
Mike & Brian

Easter Sunday April 2009

What a beautiful family!

I am so lucky!

Don't you agree?

We ended the day by moving the last load over to the kids' new house. The kids spent the first night in thier new house on Easter Sunday.

Here are the proud homeowners:

My last post said that we had a case of chicken pox in the house. Well, the Urgent care doc was wrong. After a couple of days of the anti-viral meds Rafael's rash did NOT get any better.......it got WORSE. So I got him into our regular doc and it was diagnosed as another type of rash. He seems to be getting better now. We think it might have come from contact with a rug he was taking out of his NEW HOUSE!

I've been doing alot of quilting lately, but have not taken pictures as of yet. This quilt pictured below is one of a series of three that this quilter has made. The quilt top is made from Route 66 fabric and the quiltmaker wanted me to quilt things on this top that would represent things seen on the road, like cactus, sun, mountains, etc. I added a palm tree, cars, road signs, clouds, birds, a hot air balloon and a couple of "big rigs". Unfortunately on the picture below you cannot see these details.

But here is a detail shot of the back of the quilt:

I have been really monitoring my quilting time.

I finally got word back from my doctor and it seems that I have some disc problems in my neck and back and he wants me to see a specialist.

Reluctantly I made the appointment, but also got on the internet and got more information about this condition.

Looks like the next step is shots and then surgery.

Since I"m not wild about either of these options,

I have been trying to follow some steps to "heal" this bulging disc problem.

I found a site where this chiropractic doctor lists specific steps to do this.

The first being to ice the area frequently.

(I'm icing as I write this post!)

So I have been faithfully icing about 3-4 times a day!

and doing one of the exercises he recommends.

It has made a difference! I quilt for awhile, then ice for 20 minutes, quilt some more, ice some more.

Since I can't see the specialist for another 2 weeks I figure that I have nothing to lose by trying these steps!

AND since I've had to spend a chunk of time sitting and icing.........I READ! A win-win situation in my book! I just finished up the 3rd in the "Twilight" series. I think it might be time to go to the library and get the last of the series!

Phew, I guess I'm done for now!

The Pox

I am trying really hard to get motivated to work today.

It is almost 2:30pm and I have not accomplished much so far.

The morning started at 6:30am

with a vigorous hike on the mountain,

a stop at Jenny and Rafael's house to let in the tile man,

then back home to work/water my garden.

So I am puttering around in the garden when I hear......

"mom? are you out there?"

It was Rafael. His boss had sent him home from work strongly suggesting that he go to Urgent Care to have those suspicious spots on his arms checked out.

The spots had shown up yesterday, but I advised him to just sleep on it and see what happened.

Well, today they really started looking like Chicken Pox.

Sure enough, when we went to urgent care,

that's what the doc confirmed.

I'm keeping my hopes up that all I have heard

about chicken pox as an adult

are not true!

We had an extrememly busy weekend filled with

new house stuff, quilting stuff,

attending a wedding of a dear friend,

celebrating the birthday of a dear friend,

and

celebrating the birthday of my dear son!

who somehow turned 25 this year.

I sure don't know how this can be

when I am only a couple of

years older than that!

Good things come in LARGE packages sometimes!

I am starting on a yucky subject,

but I've kept the best news for last!

After reviewing the results of my MRI my doctor left me a message last week instructing me to go and see a spine specialist. Unfortunately he didn't give me any indication as the WHY he wanted me to see the specialist, so I called his office and left a message asking "WHY?". I really don't want to call this spine specialist without knowing why I need to see him. I've been getting a little disgruntled since there has been no calls returned by the doc, even after I called twice. So I have a decision to make...........Call again with an even firmer request.........Find a new doctor and get my records transferred........Take matters into my own hands and stretch, exercise and take pain pills. For now I think I've taken the third option, but since this problem keeps coming back I think I won't be able to ignore it for very long.

I am slowly working thru the pile of quilts that I have hanging in my closet to do. I"ve been pacing myself by working on the longarm frame and mixing that up with sitting at the sewing machine or doing household chores.

This was a fun quilt to work on:

This is what the back of the quilt looked like: Detail shot:







This quilt had a very traditional feel to it:
Each block had a different beautiful floral embroidery.

Ending on the happiest note possible.............

Jenny and Rafael got the keys to thier new house last night!

They bought a very nice house that is located right next to the mountain that I hike on. It is a sweet little house and will just perfect for them.

Mike gave them thier first housewarming gift:
Every new house needs toilet paper, right?

I know they probably can't wait for work to end today!

Beautiful Christian Sister

BEAUTIFUL CHRISTIAN SISTER

By Maya Angelou

'A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ

That a man should have to seek Him first to find her.

'When I say... 'I am a Christian' I'm not shouting 'I'm clean living,

' I'm whispering 'I was lost, Now I'm found and forgiven.

' When I say... 'I am a Christian' I don't speak of this with pride.

I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say... 'I am a Christian' I'm not trying to be strong.

I'm professing that I'm weak and need His strength to carry on.

When I say.. 'I am a Christian' I'm not bragging of success.

I'm admitting I have failed and need God to clean my mess.

When I say... 'I am a Christian' I'm not claiming to be perfect,

My flaws are far too visible, but God believes I am worth it.

When I say... 'I am a Christian' I still feel the sting of pain...

I have my share of heartaches, so I call upon His name.

When I say... 'I am a Christian' I'm not holier than thou,

I'm just a simple sinner Who received God's good grace, somehow!

I've sat down a couple of times to write a new post and every single time I"ve had computer malfunctions. (or maybe it was operator error?) This

site wouldn't seem to let me post pictures all of a sudden. I'm not sure what's up with that! But it seems to be working (Kinda) today! So here goes.....

I've been busy. I've managed to finish two quilts and am working on a third. Pictures to come later.

My godson came for a visit over the weekend and we made homemade pizza, went to the airshow at Luke Airforce base, went to a Coyote's hockey game. He showed me some things on my phone I didn't know how to do AND he brought his ukele and played for us.

I've been teaching my daughter-in-law how to quilt. She is making a quilt for her new neice. At the baby shower we took squares for all of the attendees to sign, the Jen and Jenny worked on sewing them together. The next weekend Jen learned how to do applique and then last weekend she learned how to quilt on my longarm machine. Next weekend is a lesson on binding. I am really enjoying teaching her. I feel like I am passing on this quilting legacy that was passed on to me.