What's been happening since last time

Well, my purse didn't make it to my online store.  I took it for show-and-tell to our weekly lunch/prayer meeting/Bible study with friends.  Our friend's daughter wanted it and it was gone.  Now the gals she works with are interested in purses as well.................I made a purple one (pictures next time).  We will see if this one sells at lunch on Thursday.  Our other friend said she might want it for her daughter's birthday.  Daughter Jen says she wants a black and red one with ladybugs.  It looks like I will be making a few more.

Rainy Daze Quilt Guild (that I joined) had their annual picnic.  Verna and I took our guys along so they could get fed, LOL.  Ladies brought quilts to be judged, but I just brought mine and the purse for show-and-tell.  My quilting stitches are not good enough to be judged. Verna (Roger's mom) and Carol (Roger's sister) each brought a quilt to put in the judging.  The guys were just waiting for food.

Carol made this quilt for her new grandson.  Each block is different and unique.  It is really cute.

This is a close-up of the hippy guy beading.

This is Verna's cute little quilt hanging.  It will be entered in the fair under the fair theme "Cream of the Crop."

That is a lot of applique. 

Here are a few more that were there.

just blocks

Saturday we celebrated our great grandson's 1st birthday.  This is our goofy daughter, Jen.

                                       

This is a much better picture of her while she was out fishing.

I had to put that picture of Jen in.....she is so beautiful in that picture.

Here is the little birthday boy.  I love those blond curls.

He likes his new trike.....mom and dad will be getting some exercise for sure.

Time to blow out the candles....he just needed a little bit of help.

It took him a bit to get into the cake, but he managed.

I think he liked the cake.

He managed to get cake in his mom's hair, on her face, and by the time he was done, Brit looked like she had been swimming in the cake.  It was up to her elbows, LOL.  He even tried to share with the dog.

He got lots of toys and clothes.  He had a wonderful time with the wrapping paper.

He had to read his card, which totally engrossed him while his mom was trying to get his attention.  He is so talented, he can read upside down!

We had fun with the little prince.  Can't wait to see him again.

Sunday we went to the fair....it was 1/2 price day.  They had an old cream separater and a small butter churn like the ones Roger used to use when he was small and they had a cow to milk.  His parents gave it a whirl.  They had fun with it.

There also was a Christian concert that was free.  We sat through the Voetbergs and then the next band we weren't real into their first 2 songs, so we walked around and looked at things.  Roger's brother, Jim, won ribbons in photography, as usual, and his mom and sister won ribbons in the quilting division, again, as usual.  They are so talented.

We went back to the concert to hear the Voetbergs again.  They are a local band made up of siblings.  There are 10 children and they all play multiple instruments and sing.  The last band was Ernie Haas and the Signature Sound.  They were really good.  I have seen them on TV before as well.  They put so much feeling into their singing.  It was totally amazing.  You could physically feel the presence of the Holy Spirit there.  People were standing up and singing and raising their hands to the Lord.  It was a feeling of spiritual fullness.  

Yesterday Roger had his annual Dr. appointment to check for bladder cancer.  They told him it usually comes back in 2-3 years, but he has been cancer-free for 12 years!  Praise the Lord!  

Little Amiya's ( she is in heaven now) other great grandparents were in Olympia visiting their daughter and had invited us to come by for a visit.  They live in Kingman, AZ.  We met them online and stopped and spent a weekend with them on our trip north last spring.   Their daughter was full of funny stories about things that had happened in her life, but one of them had us laughing for several minutes.  Apparently a dog she once had liked to pop and eat balloons.  Well, one day she saw a white string hanging out of the back end of the dog.  She grabbed the end of it and the dog took off running and the string just kept getting longer and longer till..............the balloon came out and flipped back towards her.  She screamed and dropped it, of course, but  what a mental picture!  I still laugh when I think about it.  They were wonderful people and we had a wonderful visit.  We went to a Chinese buffet for dinner and managed to get home a little before bedtime.  

This coming weekend Verna, Jen and I will be going to a Christian women's retreat at Illwaco on the Washington coast.  I am so looking forward to it.  Last year Verna and I went and had a great time.  I will be taking my camera so all I need to do is remember to take pictures.  Sometimes I forget when I am having a good time.  

Until next time, God bless.

Lila

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I finally finished it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last year I started a quilt for my sister for her birthday..................it's a good thing I didn't say what year she would get it for her birthday.  She will be getting it this year instead.  Her birthday is this month.  If I were a real quilter, I wouldn't have chosen the design that I did, because............IT IS DIFFICULT TO DO!!!!!  Obviously no one told me that. Here it is while I was still working on the top.

That was last year.  The next picture is this year while I was hand quilting it.  That big hoop is not easy to hold on to....I slouched a lot trying to hold on to it while using both hands to quilt.  And the ends of two of my fingers that I used to tell if my needle was all the way through the layers almost turned to hamburger......well maybe it just felt like it.  My arthritic fingers don't like hand quilting.

My dear sweet husband and mother-in-law said I have to take it to the quilt club meeting next week Tuesday for show-and-tell.  If a real quilter looks at my stitching, they would be mortified.  My finger just won't do teeny tiny stitches any more.  But it is a quilt and it is done.

Here is the front.

And here is the back.  I used up a lot of small pieces of fabric.

For my next project I decided to make a quilted purse.  I thought this would be easy since I had  made a quilted bag and it turned out pretty good.  So I cut out some squares of 5 different flower fabric and started sewing.  This is the front with 2 pickets.

This is the back with one larger picket.  I put the pocket off center because I wanted to bead that red rose on the right.  Actually, I intended to highlight a lot of the flowers with beads.

And this is the lining.

Some quilts are "tied" with yarn to quilt them, some are quilted by hand like I did on my sister's quilt and some are quilted on a quilting machine that takes up a whole room and can be programmed.......or manipulated by hand.  I did the tied version except I used buttons and sewed all the way through all the layers to put the buttons on.  I also put buttons on the pockets.

This is the front of the finished purse.

I put a magnetic clasp on the purse under the yellow flower.  I beaded around and in the flower.  

Here is a closeup of the flower.

And a picture of the back of the finished bag.

Whew!  All finished........................and smaller that I wanted it to be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So......................I had to start over.  I did have enough fabric and fusible fleece to make another one a little bigger. I have each piece ready to assemble, but I need a magnetic clasp before I can assemble it.  We will be going to town Friday, so I will get a clasp and some fabric to make our youngest grandson his Cars quilt.

I am thinking of putting the smaller purse in my online store.  I just have to do a little beading on it and decide on a price.  I think it is seriously cute and my mother-in-law thinks it is beautiful.  

Until next time.............God bless.

Lila

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(E-Store) ontheroadcreations.etsy.com

(beading, traveling blog) ontheroadcreations.blogspot.com

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