Hopefully, here is a picture of my sister Carol and my grandson, Ben, sweeping leaves on the deck. Also a picture of the tree skirt and handmade ornaments and the chocolate and special tin of carmel corn from Ellen. This was our 2007 Christmas Swap, and was great fun. Thanks, Ellen.

Hello to all. I can't beleive it has been a month since I added anything to this! I have been very busy with my sister, Carol,one of my quilting sisters. She fell and broke both her femurs aboiut 2 weeks ago. Of course needed surgery to pin everything back together. Would you beleive they kicked her out of the hospital after 2 days?! She went home with her son and DIL, bedfast at the time. She now has a wheelchair and linited ability to use it. She has huge incisions on both legs. I feel so sorry for her. Of course my Dad ,who is 82, is worried to death about her. I hate that too.
On a happier note, I got my Hometown Christmas quilt quilted, and bound, and gift wrapped! Also matching pillowcases. Also finished my Goshen Star quilt, bound and all. My quilter, which I was cussing recently, is behaving nicely, moody thing that it is, so I am going to get another quilt on it quick before it changes moods again!LOL I have all my Christmas presents wrapped except two I don't have yet. I have to get everything done up as I'm gaving hernia surgery on the 20th. I'm going to put the tree up on the evening of the 19th.DH is having nervous jitters. I just want it over with,I've got better things to do!!!
My camera has been giving me fits, but seems to be working some tonight, so I will try to get some pictures poosted soon. I got a lovely little tree skirt from Ellen, my secret Santa at the Hollow,I want to post a pic of it. Till next time, hopefully in just a few days. hugs, Cathy

I did it, I did it!!After much teeth-gnashing and tearing of hair, I managed to arrive a boarders I like

on my first, non-TB Hometown Christmas quilt.It finished at 96x106, I think it was. The second picture is of a little block I made, a fireplace with felt stockings with the names on them, and one blank to grow on. Do you think I am too blatent about being ready for grandchild number two?! Now I need to get a quilt off my frame so I can start on this monster. I think I will all-over meander it with a golden-taupe varigated thread. I have one last block to make for the other HC, the all TB one that I am making for myself, then I can set it together and clean up the sewing room.

Here is a picture of a combine working in the soybean field across the road from my house. See all the dust it is making? Now see the dust in my house!LOL Also. I got one of my Hometown Christmas tops put together, except for the boarders. It is for my DDIL, and is obviously not all TB fabrics,but includes other playful fabrics to keep grandson entertained. It is 1/2 in out of square which is bugging me, so I will have to fix that with the boarders,sigh. Why can't things just go together the way they are supposed to?! I have one more block to make for the other

HC top, the one that is all TB, for me, then I can put the lattice strips and boarders on it, too. I hope I can get the first one done by Thanksgiving. The second one,mine, can wait for a while. I have a pile of tops wanting to be quilted, but that quilter of mine, a Viking Megaquilter on the Inspira frame, is getting on my last nerve with it's constant thread breakage problems. I sure wish I had gotten a mid-arm instead. Oh well, some day. Now back to putting on boarders and squaring things up instead of playing on the computer! Have a great day. Cathy

Here is a picture of my sewing room and the fabrics spread out to make the Hometown Christmas quilts. You can barely tell my poor Featherweight is under there!
The above picture is of the three rows I have finished, the two top rows, one for each quilt, and the second row for one of them. I love the little school house block, but don't know what on earth posessed me to use a blue background!! I am already remaking it with a neutral background. A little un-stitching will have to be done!I used it as DDIK, the intended recipient, is a teacher, and I even stamped the school name on it.Now to make the house and tree blocks for the other quilt. Am I confusing you? I'm confusing me!!LOL

I hadn't realized it had been so long since I posted. I've got the top row of each of the two Hometown Christmas quilts I'm making done. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow. I found a ppp of a schoolhouse on the new software I got for my birthday. My DDIL is a teacher, so I am going to make it to substitute for one of the houses in the original pattern. Should be fun.I also found a pattern for a fireplace. I am going to make it and hang personalized stockings on the mantle. I am having fun with this, but my sewing room is a mess!LOL

It was raining here today, and I did not have my grandson to babysit, so I spent most of the day sewing. I paper-pieced the little church block from Town and Country Patchwork software that works with Electric Quilt. What tiny pieces are in that block. I made a couple errors in color placement,and may re-do it,but I'll try to post a picture of it and the other paper-pieced 6.5 in blocks I've made to replace some or all of the pinwheels and hourglass blocks. The Evening Star block is 6.5x9,so I will have to make something to space it out to 12in wide. I'm also going to enclose a picture of my grandson, Ben, taking his first steps,just 'cause he's cute! This week is our county fair, it is the largest county fair among the 88 county fairs in Ohio. Schools are out for the week as so many of the rural(that's all of them!) kids have livestock projects to tend to at the fair.The fair started Monday and runs thru Sunday,so I don't have Ben this week, as his Mom is a teacher and is out of school also. This fair is a huge deal around here. I don't know how many categories of competitions there are, must be hundreds. Everything from quilts, to horses and cattle and chickens and bunnies with everything in between. It is always fun to see the biggest veggies, the cake and flower competitions,and of course the couple of dozen quilts on display. There is new farm equipment to see, and the famous pork tenderloin sandwiches that the Pork Producers sell. The Beef Producers sell steak sandwiches, but never sell as much as the Pork Producers do. The stand is the last one on the way to the parking lot, and is is not uncommon for the line to be thousands of feet long. It's a fair tradition, along with the candy apples, fudge, and cotton candy.

Here are the pictures of my two Hometown Christmas quilt blocks that I have done this far. One of them I am going to make some more changes to,take off the light colored ends and put a different fabric there. The Candy Coated Christmas blocks take the place of the holly block in book two, I didn't care for it.

This is a wallhanging I made out of swap blocks from Quilter's Hollow. Each one is signed by a friend. My little year old grandson loves it! Cathy

Here is a picture of a small wall-hanging I made a few weeks ago. t is a Pearl Krush design called "Family Reunion"It was great fun to make, and I am going to give it to a friend for Christmas. I think there is something wrong with the Hometown Christmas pictures. I will have to re-load them and try again. Thanks for your patience.

Testing Pictures

Kim is helping me, so I am going to try to upload some pictures of my Hometown Christmas quilt progress. We'll see.

My GH finially got my camera fixed, so I will try to upload a picture of the Hometown Christmas blocks that I have done. I tried to upload them on the Quilter's Hollow site earlier, and they wouldn't upload. No idea why. I've also been machine embroidering Vintage Stitches images onto kitchen towels for my daughter-in-laws birthday present, and Christmas presents for others. Can you tell I got a real deal on towels?! $1 each at the grocery, of all places.Tomnorrow my sister will have surgery to put two plates in her right arm where she broke it falling out my front door. No, not a flight of steps, just one shallow one. So I will be at the hospital with her son, doing some redwork to keep me busy. This is the same hospital and department where I worked before my nervous breakdown 3 years ago, and I am NOT looking forward to even being there. Maybe noone will know me, I hope.

Hometown Christmas

I got all of the book 1 blocks done today. The cardinals are really pretty. The one I am doing in mostly original fabrics,the second one is scrappy from my TB stash. i did change the windows in the houses from that black print(what's with that?!) to a soft golden color. It is the back of a TB gold print,so still legal! Can't wait to get started on book 2.

Yahoooo! Thank's to Kim's help, I got my links to work, and added Eileen's blog to my links. Now if I could only get my camera to work so I could post pics. Oh, well, one thing at a time. I cut out the pieces for two sets of Hometown Christmas blocks, book one, last night. Whew, I don't know if I'm up for three of them or not!Since I'm babysitting my year old grandson, Benjamin, almost every weekday, I don't get much sewing done during the week, so have to make hay while the sun shines on the weekend,which sometimes puts DHs nose out of joint. Mostly as long as I feed him he is ok, tho.

I have spent the last 10 minutes trying to figure out how to make a list of links to my friends blogs with no success so far. I am going to have to ask someone for help here. Thank you Eileen for the encouragement.I got out my Hometown Christmas kit last night, and spread it out. I got it from Cynthia a long time ago. I also went thru my stash to see if I can make two of them at a time ,one for my daughter-in-law,but not out of original fabrics. I think I can do that,if I can keep the fabrics streight and not get too chaotic. Would it be absolutely crazy to attempt three at once?! A good friend is getting married in Feb., and I will need a substantial present for her. If I made that one it would be from fabrics other than Thimbleberries. Too much confusion? I don't know, I might be able to pull it off.

Sat. Sept 1.2007

I just created this blog for use in a quilt block-of-the-month group project,called Hometown Christmas. HC is a Thimbleberries pattern for a large quilt qith multiple different quilt blocks depicting all things Christmas. Doing it in conjunction with my friends should be fun.