>Where were you…
11 Sep 2009 4 Comments
>I was at the doctors office in the waiting room when I saw it on a little tv. Then I went to see the doctor to be told I had to be on bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy. What have you done to make the world better because of this. I have become more God centered and more patriotic much more than I ever thought I would be from the point of view I had as a teenager.
>School Play
28 Feb 2009 5 Comments
in family, holiday:patriotic, kids art, video
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My oldest daughter played Martha Washington in the school play last week. I think she did great she memorized her part all on her own. 
You know the scary thing about these photos is I just realized how tall my oldest daughter is getting. She is almost up to my chin and is up to her Pai’s neck. Make her stop growing; I am not ready for this!
Here she is doing her mono-logue. She is pretending to read a letter from George Washington, but the paper is actually blank; this is all memorized. Not a very good video, but the idea is there for family who are far away from us.>Substitute teaching & back roads
17 Feb 2009 1 Comment
in crochet, holiday:patriotic, holiday:school/misc, nature
>I get to teach one of the one of three 1st Grade classes at my kids’ school today. Just happens to be one of the two without my daughter in it, probably a good thing.
Yesterday on Presidents’ Day my husband wanted to go on some back roads just to see what we could see on the old snow covered trails. We saw quiet a few pretty sights.
My oldest daughter likes horses and wanted a picture of this one with its winter coat.
My second daughter is born near the 4th of July and likes all things patriotic and she found this flag and wanted a picture of it.
The last daughter likes deer (well, we all do) and wanted a picture of these mule deer.
>Handmade suit and a Flintlock
21 Jan 2009 4 Comments
in family, holiday:patriotic, holiday:school/misc
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The 5th graders are learning about the revolutionary war this year and are even putting on a school play about it; my oldest is playing Martha Washington. So one of their lessons was hands- on, so to speak.
The suit Mr. Cornell is wearing, a revolutionary- type suit, is all hand stitched. How cool is that and all his weapons and other stuff are handmade, too. He demonstrated to the class how to load and fire a flintlock (no ball, of course, just black power and wad). He showed them how the ram rod works and how to bite the bullet. Those sayings have almost no meaning any more, but the kids learned the original meanings and from where they came. He also explained that the gun weighs about 10 pounds and that it is roughly 5 feet 4 inches tall, about the height of some of the children in class. When this type of gun was originally in use, the average man was about the same height as the gun. This surprised the children because they couldn’t believe that they are the height of an adult who lived 200 years ago.
There are a few more photos from this in my flickr photos.
>Quilt All done
25 Oct 2008 5 Comments
in holiday:patriotic, kids art, MIL's art, quilts
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So, this is a post I was going to do yesterday but ran out of time and energy (I was awake for about 41 hours straight to get this done in time). Deadline for sign up items into the auction was Tuesday, deadline to have them turned into school was Friday. I got up Thursday at 5 am, quilted all day and all night, didn’t go to bed. Mother-in-law and daughter stayed up late quilting with me. My mother-in-law is just so great; she stayed ’till 3 in the morning helping me get this done for the auction. My daughter, who is 11, stayed up an hour past her bed time so she could quilt one block to help out. I put the binding on the quilt at 6:45 Friday morning. Still no sleep: still more quilting to do, but not around the edges, so the binding went on because that would be hard to do at work. Went to work, quilted at lunch time, and finished quilting.
Turned it in to the auction. Went to the fall harvest festival, stayed till about 9 p.m., got home around 10 and crashed. (There is more to this story than I am posting, but it would take way to long to post). Long story short, people don’t understand the pricing of hand work. So I paid for my own quilt and brought it back home. I will enjoy it on my foyer wall and think of the wonderful 4th Grade children I taught, and my lovely mother-in-law, and my beautiful daughters for all their help in making such a wonderful memory for me (daughters: one helped quilt and another help cut, the last one watched and didn’t touch) . From the start of the quilt to finish of the quilting, it was 7 days total; I don’t usually make a quilt quite that fast. Thanks, everyone!
>Three thimbles…Not normal
19 Oct 2008 9 Comments
in holiday:patriotic, holiday:school/misc, quilts
>It is not normal for me to post on Sunday. But my oldest daughter took this picture while I was quilting, and I thought I would share it. I thought it was a good photo.
I think I am the only person I know who quilts with two, three, and four thimbles on one hand at a time; here I am wearing three. Sometimes when wearing three I have one or two on the other hand as well, but not today. My favorite is the leather one on my thumb; I have had it for about 15 1/2 years. Side note: my husband bought it for me (while we were engaged) when I was making his wedding gift. Yes, it was a quilt and I had lost my thimble; this is what he found. I wish I had about 4 more of them, but I have never found another like it. If anyone has one they don’t want, I will gladly trade you some hand-made crochet lace, made by me, for it. It is adjustable (thus it fits every finger), and my fingers don’t get sweaty in it. The stitches are purposely uneven in this quilt because I want it to look like the 4th Graders drawings: rough around the edges, so to speak. I don’t know if other people think it works that way, but it does for me. I usually quilt with a quilters between needle; this is definitely not that. This is massive on purpose to hold the size of the thread and to cause my stitches to be more uneven because I usually have very regular stitches. This forces me to be a little more sporadic. I decided to do a mixture of quilting and tying. I am using size 20 omega crochet thread in a variegated red to white thread.
The reason I say a mixture is, this is definitely not quilting thread or small stitched, but it isn’t truly tying a quilt, either. It is a toss up between the two.
(Bottom of quilt looking up: this has a cotton bat, I was afraid to bring any more wool into my home right now.)
>Progress on auction quilt for 4th grade
18 Oct 2008 3 Comments
in holiday:patriotic, holiday:school/misc, kids art, quilts
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The stars are now on the quilt. I have the quilting or tying left to do, I haven’t decided which yet, and the binding. Sorry, it was about 7 pm when I took this photo, and the lighting was bad; I will take a better photo later. Still have two days left of the fall break to get this done. I hope I can do it. Each star has a drawing on it; it’s hard to see in the bad lighting.
>A quilt in a weekend
17 Oct 2008 4 Comments
in holiday:patriotic, holiday:school/misc, kids art, quilts
>This is one of the projects I was doing with the 4th Grade art class. They cut out Betsy Ross stars (5 pointed stars) by folding and, with one snip of the scissors, you have a five pointed star. Pretty cool technique. After that they drew on their paper stars. Then, after they had their designs figured out on paper, I handed them fabric stars that I cut using the same technique. They transferred their images and returned them to me. Now I have ’till Tuesday to turn them into a quilt.
The top is pieced, 50 squares for 50 states in the Union. This is meant to be a sofa quilt, long and skinny so that you can pull it over you while laying on the sofa, but not have it drag on the ground. This will be for the kids’ Fall Harvest Party at school; they have an auction every year to raise money for field trips and playground equipment. So, I explained to the kids, not only are they helping to raise money for their school and get neat things to play on, they are also selling their art like other artists do.
There are 45 stars spread evenly over the top; all but 12 are now sewn on.
I have to finish sewing on the 12, quilt or tie and bind it still by Tuesday. I will let you know how it goes. The kids are on fall break from school; I only had yesterday off of work (at the flower shop), so I tried to get as much done in one day as possible. I think I did pretty well.
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