Five Shadows

No sewing yesterday, but I did pull out fabric for the white quilties I have to get cracking on for the swap at Lenna’s. She has several new swaps listed. So check out her blog and see if you are interesting in joining one!

I’m up and running again today - a continuation for yesterday. After running my daughter to work, I came home and baked to cream pies, brownies, and two pans of manicotti. I had help with the manicotti (thanks Charis and Noel!) as I was running out of time before heading back to pick up Anna. Then we met up with my ‘boss’ so to speak. I have a temporary job sewing for a company that makes items for autistic people called Sensory Critters. And I had items to deliver and new kits to pick up. Then Anna and I went out for lunch. It was her birthday and it’s a tradition that either John or I take each of our children out for lunch. Next was our monthly 4-H meeting and my youngest had a little report to give - she applied for and was awarded a $750 grant through Youth As Resources for our 4-H group to use to help a inner city camp we support. We will be building a privacy fence on the camp property this summer with the funds awarded through the grant!

Next was back to our house with friends for a birthday dinner. Smiles and laughs. And then out the door again for several kids heading to different parties. And finally back home with too many 15-16 year olds in tow for a sleepover. Why are they called sleepovers? No one ever sleeps, and the parents don’t seem to be able to catch much sleep either!

That was my busy day! And today I’m off running again to pick up kids, drop kids off to various places.

These are the pretty Valentines I received in the swap at Lenna’s. Sorry I’m so late posting them! The blue one is from Mercedes, the red one is from Lenna, and the white one is from Michele.

Which month is the busiest at your house? March is at mine, with April a close second, and then I’d say December. With March already at the top of my list, I have somehow once again over committed to other things I should have said no to! But it is all working out - by skipping the Thursday night class at my church for this month. I promised myself I’ll do the reading and assignments over the summer…. hope that works out! So one happy little thing I have completed this week is the ATC for Susan Lenz’s Cyber Fyber Exhibit. I confess this is my first ATC! I really like how it turned out. On the left is my ATC. The background and back are my hand painted fabric, the squares are batiks, and then there is some beading. Susan’s ATC is on the right. This trade has been so much fun. If you have not visited her site yet - do check out the exhibit here.

And here is my postcard. The background is a log cabin block in creams with a pieced heart machine appliqued on top. The heart is one half a vintage Valentine I printed on fabric and the other half a pretty red fabric. Then I covered the card with a red netting from a tomato bag and zigzagged around the heart. Then threaded ribbon through the zigzag stitch and tied a knot every couple of stitches. Take a look here at the card I received from Susan.

Look what was delivered to me last Thursday! Aren’t they beautiful? And a total surprise! A sweet young couple sent them to me as a “thank you” for the quilt I made for their wedding gift! How about that! I didn’t get just a card but a nice bouquet of fresh flowers!

The other fun thing about getting the flowers was they arrived the day before my birthday! I had gone out to lunch with friends, so the celebrating started a day early!

On Friday my husband and I ate at Flat Top Grill. He gave me a Husky Embellisher and a box of DeBrands Chocolates. Isn’t he a sweet heart!?

My daughter and I made the postcard using the embellisher. We will have more to show later!

Here are the two other quilts I made from clothing. This one is a golfing theme with the four patches going diagonally across the quilt. The diagonal from top left to bottom right has theme fabric with golf balls and tees in it.

And this one is the handy-man quilt. Notice the Binford tool shirt logo in the upper left corner. I used a theme fabric of power tools in this quilt.

Last summer I was contacted by a lady who wanted me to make several quilts for her from the clothing of her late husband. She planned on giving the quilts to her children for Christmas. She divided the clothing up by theme - softball, golf, and maintenance. Her husband had been the coach for their youngest daughters softball team. In this bag of clothing was several team t-shirts with team signatures, team sponsor t-shirts. etc. Besides the theme clothing, she also had a bag of shirts, slack, and jackets that she wanted included in each quilt. I initially agonized over just what to do with this rather miscellaneous collection of clothes. After some brain storming I thought I’d see if she would mind if I added a theme fabric for each of the quilts. She agreed, and the search for just the right fabric began. Since my family was planning a trip out of state, we made a day of stopping at several quilt shops in towns as we progressed on our way. I found a great golf fabric, a tool fabric and one that kind of looked like paint splatters. When we returned home, I took to searching the web and found the perfect softball fabric. And here is the first of three quilts, the softball quilt. On the back of the quilt I sashed the large pieces of the t-shirts with team member signatures. I really like how it turned out. And this sweet lady all but cried when she picked the quilts up. She said the quilts were even better than she imaged. Phew, I’m glad I got these quilts right for her! 

Today I came across Lisa Oceandreamer’s Event sponsoring a way for bloggers to meet and participate in a art give-a-way/trade. Since I’m kind of new to this world of blogging, I thought I’d join in! Now, what to offer as a trade? I’m starting with this little amulet pouch, and since I do far more quilting than fiber arts at this time in my life, I’ll add some fat quarters. Pictured is the back of the amulet. I’ll hopefully add the fat quarters photo later today.But even without the fat quarters photo, I hope others will want to enter their name in my give-away!

Sigh, the bobbin tension on my Bernina has been acting up. I did a search to find the closest dealer/repair service, since the shop in my town has closed. Upside of the story is my husband and I took a trip to Shipshewana to the Bernina Dealer today. It’s a fun town to visit. I imagine it was once a quiet Amish community but now caters to tourists, with museums, buggy rides, convention center, lots of shopping, etc. We ate at the Blue Gate Restaurant. Yummy homemade bread and pies! We split a sampler platter and shared a piece of apple crumb pie. We (OK, I tee hee) shopped at several quilting stores, and the B&N bulk food store. And we will have to return next week to pick up the repaired sewing machine. Today I limited myself to just buying items for the white quilties swap I signed up for through Lenna’s swap blog. While at the Bernina shop I learned that they sell attachments to turn a Bernina into an embellishing machine! I’ll have to think about the pros and cons of that over buying a separate machine just for embellishing. Any thoughts anyone?

I found the picture of the quilt my friend Twila made for Shanette the current director of Kibbutz el-Shammah. So I happily share it with you! This past weekend I attended a quilt retreat held at StillWater Retreat in Yoder, IN. Their website is not up at this time. But they are just back from a mission trip to South Africa. They took three more quilts to the Kibbutz for us. And they brought back video of presenting the quilts to their owners. It is so cool to see the faces of the people we have made the quilts for, as previously they were just names.  I don’t know if I can get the clip to play on my blog - will have to look into that. 

Today I wanted to share the quilt my friend Twila made for the current director of Kibbutz el-Shammah. But alas, I can’t find a photo of it.  So since I was thinking about the Kibbutz, I’ll share two other quilts sent to staff members. The two quilts shown came to me as one king size quilt top. I seamed ripped it in half, removed parts and then did new piecing in coordinating fabrics for the outside borders. I’m pleased with them. And I still have the parts I removed to start another quilt. 

This is the first of several quilts I will share that I’ve made for the staff of Kibbutz el-Shammah in Worcester, South Africa. This quilt was made for Erena who developed this Christian Kibbutz as a home for street children in the Roodewal area. The ministry has grown and changed over the years and Erena is no longer the director. But, on one of her visits to Indiana, she asked if I would make quilts for the staff. Over the past few years I have made many such quilts along with the help of several friends. I will show their quilts in upcoming posts.