Five Shadows

ends with daughter turning 21!  We Schutts have 7 birthdays between Febuary 23 and April 13th. We celebrated our daughter Janelle’s birthday Monday night, a day early, as she had plans with friends the evening of her 21st birthday. Here are just a few pictures of the celebration.

Sorry to friends and family that a cropped out of this picture! I just wanted to zoom in on the birthday girl with her goofy smile!

Yummy Ginger ShortCake with fresh fruit and candles.

The blowing out of candles. (The picture singing was just too goofy to show!) We have here boy friend Luke B. Hall, sister Anna, friend Joel, Mom, Dad, and sister Charis round the birthday girl. Brothers Luke and Noel are present but not in picture.

There are also many of our extented family members celebrating in Feb – April. I think I have counted at least nine more of us celebrating birthdays during this time! So Happy Birthday to all of you!

Here is my block for the 3 Creative Studios BOM. The 7th block is called Five Spot.

I’m running late at meeting a friend for lunch – so I’ll post more later!

I have a big ZERO completed for March for the One Project a Month. Oh well. But I have been working on other projects. That means sometime this year I’ll have several completed quilts. Maybe I should just plan a few small projects a month so as to have something completed to show when the end of the month rolls around!

The is a sneak peak of an idea I’m playing with for a quilt challenge. Three Creative Studios: Passage.

The are a few of the many blocks my daughter has sewn for a bed size quilt she is working on. She is being very diligent!

First off, here is my Block of the Month (BOM) for Three Creative Studios. It’s called Amish  Star.

Next are some blocks I’m working on for a quilt for my middle daughter. She chose the pattern – Goose Tracks and asked that the quilt be very blended. Blended, meaning that you can’t tell where one block ends and another starts. She also chose the fabrics – Ginger Blossom collection which are mostly large scale prints, and she added some smaller scale coordinating fabrics. This will be a very hot pink quilt once completed!  The Goose Tracks block have 29 pieces in each 10″ block. We decided to alter some of the corners, making some of the construction easier. Here are two blocks leaving out the pieced corners and two Goose Tracks Blocks with the pieced corners. The alter blocks will have one – three pieced corners.  We think it will blend very well this way!

And this last set of blocks is for a charity quilt. Chevron pattern in brights.

My two youngest girls both just started quilts. But I forgot to take pictures! Next time!

Of the seven Schutts there are 5 birthdays in March! 5 of us! Plus one in February and one in April! Tis busier around here now than at Christmas time! And we are a goofy bunch. So here are some pictures from my hubby’s birthday and mine.

The lighting of many candles for Hubby’s cake! It took four kids – with me on the side line giving instructions! And the eldest snapping the photos.

Goofy Hubby and the five kids behind him. Me snapping the photo this time. DH said you should have felt the heat coming off of all those candles!

Look at all that smoke coming off of those candles! Happy Birthday John! (March 4th)

And now my birthday – today – March 7th!

The goofiest of all photos! That’s me – who is very un-photogenic, but actually looking pretty good here! Sorry to the rest of the family who are looking …. well … poor.

And here I am (not so photogenic here) holding one of my wonderful gifts! This is a collage by Sarah Wyman, as seen in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. I love that magazine and LOVE Sarah’s art! I made up an Etsy wish list and DH bought this for me!

My middle daughter planned a wonderful meal for me using the cookbook Food to Live By, by Myra Goodman. She pulled some of her siblings in to help prepare the meal. We had Tuscan White Bean Stew, Spicy Chicken Lettuce Wraps, and Creamy Shells & Three Cheeses. Dessert was a chocolate cake from Whole Foods for the Whole Family. YUM!

After lunch we headed to a county park for some pre-spring walking. Lovely day to be outside! Son #1 was on the look out for a sign of Spring – and he found it in one of the first plants to stick it’s leafy head up through the ground with snow still on the ground in NE Indiana – - Skunk Cabbage!

The girls actually found several in a valley on the banks of a stream.  Here we are in the great out-of-doors. Goofiness!

Me with youngest daughter, Charis.

Me with daughter, Anna.

Me with daughter, Janelle.  That is snow in the background!!! (Wish you could see all the goofiness going on between each photo! We would need a video camera for that!)

Dear Husband, John.

Me with John.

Son, Noel. And once again son Luke has evaded the camera! (But Luke is in the photos at the top of the post, with sibling behind the parents!)

I had five finishes for February and you can tell I’m running behind as I post about them in March! One bed size quilt, three journal totes, and one small quilt.

Here is the quilt I started in December all complete with a proper binding. My 14 year old asked who the quilt would be for when complete, and this quilt was one I was just making for  the fun of it. No plans on who would be gifted with it! So Dear Daughter claimed it!  It did my little heart good to know that she was ‘taken’ by the quilt and looked forward to it being completed and on her bed!

This is a double size quilt and coordinates with two pillows I also made. The photos of the pillows are much more accurate color wise.

I told Dear Daughter, if she got her room cleaned up – we could take a picture with the quilt and pillows on her bed! Ha ha! I don’t think I see that posted too soon!

Other finishes for February was the 3 Creative Studios Quilt Challenge quilt. Make a quilt using the word ‘puzzle’ as a prompt. See that quilt here. And the journals totes are here.

3 Creative Studios is hosting a quilt challenge all year long. Every other month they will post a word and the challenge is to interpret that word in the form of a quilt. The first word was “Puzzle.”

When reading the word puzzle, my thoughts went immediately to Autism. A puzzle piece is often associated with autism – used as a logo. Several years ago I briefly worked with a local company, Sensory Critters, who create items to help those with autism. The little fellow below is part of Sensory Critters’ logo. I had visions of using him (stitched here in outline form) along with the fabric pictured in my puzzle quilt.

But alas, sometimes things happen in life that take us off our course. That happened to me last week. Instead of happily working on the puzzle quilt, I found myself dealing with a group I belong to with issues I can not discuss here. I found myself puzzling over people’s behavior, dealing with strained and frayed relationships, and looking for answers to money issues. As these are being resolved and now thankfully working towards closure, I found myself thinking of a new Puzzle quilt for the challenge. It is with great joy that I share this little creation! It was so fun to make and very healing after all the stress of the past week and a half!

I have either a very long title for it, or a choice of three titles: Missing Pieces, Too Many People & Not Enough Money, or Where Does All the Money Go?  Notice the frayed edges of the ‘people’ fabric and the striped fabric. I left the raw edges on purpose. If I had the time to shop for fabric, I would have liked to use novelty fabric printed with bills – $5, $10, $20s. But, I happened to have the coin fabric in my stash, so that is what I used!  It was called “Mrs. Nelson’s 2nd Grade.” I loved that!! And had to include the selvage in the quilt!  The quilt is bound with ribbon and tomato bag netting.  This was a great challenge and I look forward to the next word being revealed!  Oh! And I do hope to get back to the Sensory Critters quilt in the near future.

Last week I attended a 5 day quilting retreat. Late nights! Laughs! Good food! And sewing! Here are a few pictures of gals with their projects.

Dody and her quilted bag. Class taught by Twila. Dody used the charm pack/door prize she won to make this bag.

Norma and her quilted bag. She used strips instead of squares.

Cynthia and one of two bunk bed quilts she is piecing for her two sons.

Mary and the table runner she made. Class taught by me! Isn’t it cute how she set it up with the candle she won as a door prize?

Mary and the pillow she made for a friend.

This is a pile of baby quilts Twila made and brought to the quilting retreat that needed tying to finish them. She brought 19 quilts! And I believe other ladies made 3 more while at the retreat! These will be donated to charities.

This is Twila! She taught several classes at the retreat. And she made the 19 baby quilts! This is another quilt she made for her neice while at the retreat.

Here is Marty holding one of the quilts she is tying. Several other ladies worked on the baby quilts too. Sorry I do not have pictures of everyone!  And I did not get pictures of all the other projects ladies worked on! I wish I had! We should have kept count of how many projects were completed in 5 days! It would have been interesting to see!

I worked away on a quilt for my teen daughter. I promise a picture soon.

And here is the group of ladies holding many of the quilts that Twila made. Do you see Mary in the middle holding her dog Molly?

Here are three more totes I’ve created for my quilting friends. That makes 4 down and 4 to go! The first is for my friend Mary. The picture is of Mary with her sister in a red Radio Flyer Wagon from their childhood. Mary loves to travel so that is the theme I aimed for on the journal tote cover. I used two small pieces of fabric printed with maps that I had saved in my scrap pile. I hope Mary has fun on her travels!

Next is a bird house theme for my friend who has her kitchen decorated with birds and birdhouses. I picked up the little bird on the birdbath during a shop hop last summer in Ohio.

This girly version is for a friend who is all things pink, purple and feminine. She recently moved to SC and I hope  this friendship theme suits her.

These three totes make three finishes for OPAM so far for February. I have a quilt that is almost complete. I’m working on hand stitching down the binding. Here is a snick peek. I’ll show the whole quilt once it’s complete!

This weekend I’m off to a quilting retreat! I’ll be teaching a few projects using strip quilting. And a friend will be teaching the above quilt and another version of it. I hope to take pictures to show all the goodness of the weekend – - but I’ll warn you that I usually forget to take pictures while I’m busy sewing!

Liz is offering these snazzy earrings in her “Keep the Flow Going” giveaway. Go throw your name in the hat! Very Pretty Earrings!  Hope I win!