Mr. Moose

When I was recently in Detroit my brother and sister-in-law let us stay with them. As a thank you, I've made this moose wallhanging for their vacation home in northern Michigan which has a moose theme. The binding has to be stitched down so it looks kind of odd in this photo.

Hopefully they'll like this!

Charity quilts and leaving town

Here are two quilt tops made by my splinter group for donation to charity.

We pooled fabric and made simple patterns. We ended up with 3 nearly identical quilts out of the fabric in this first quilt.


We used the pattern for this green quilt several times in different colorways. I only have the photo of this green one.



Several members of our group have longarms (quilting machines not physical deformities) and they will quilt these.

After 5 years of not visiting Detroit, I'm returning next week for the 2nd time in a month. My mother recently fell and broke her arm. The break is way up high on the arm - almost to the shoulder. She had surgery to insert pins but the surgery ended up not being successful. In fact, one of the pins fell out and my brother found it on the floor of the hospital room! They were designed to be removed after a month or so, but it's hard to imagine how one worked its way out early.

She is scheduled for additional surgery next Friday to try screws and a plate. If, when the Dr. gets in, they determine that the screws and plate won't work they're going to do a partial shoulder replacement. (this is a new Dr. and a new hospital. Mom didn't like the first hospital very much and we lost confidence in the Dr. after finding pins on the floor!)

So, I'm back up to Detroit to be there for this new surgery. This has been quite an ordeal for my 85 year old mother and she just wants to get it all behind her. Any good thoughts sent her way would be appreciated.

Irises

This is what I worked on for most of the weekend back when the guild had its annual beach retreat. I finally put the borders on yesterday. I really enjoy working on complex paper pieced projects. This one will probably sit for a while until I get around to quilting it.

Family visit

I don't get to see my family often enough. I don't ever seem to get up to Detroit where they all live and they don't get down here to Charleston.

The day before we left Detroit was my nephew Eddie's high school graduation open house. Still not sure why they waited until August to celebrate a June graduation, but because they did wait, I got to attend.

Here's Eddie with his cake. (click photos for larger view)



Me with my two brothers. Ed on the left and Claude on the right. I make sure everyone knows I'm their MUCH younger sister. Actually, I'm 6 years younger than Ed and 4 years younger than Claude.



Here are some of my other nieces and nephews.

Corinne and her husband Dan (Corinne is Ed's oldest daughter)


Eric and his wife Melissa (Eric is Claude's youngest son)



Claude, Jr. and his wife Rhonda (Do I need to say that he's Claude's oldest son)


Colin and his wife Diane (Colin is Ed's oldest son)


Kristin and her husband Brian (Kristin is Ed's youngest daughter)


(l to r) Kevin, Chris and Eddie (Ed's 3 youngest)


Claude's middle son, Paul, wasn't able to attend the party.

It's always fun to see everyone. I really need to visit more often.

There's no place like home

Boy, it's nice to be home! I left on July 23rd and went up to Knoxville, TN with several quilting friends to attend the AQS show being held there. After leaving Knoxville I traveled up to Detroit and just got home from there yesterday. As I mentioned earlier, my mother fell and broke her arm the day before I arrived in Detroit. She had surgery and is now in a rehab center learning on to survive with her dominate arm useless to her right now. She is improving, but has a long way to go.

The quilt show was smaller than I expected, but the quilts were lovely. (click photos for larger view)

This was the Best of Show Quilt "Circles of Life" by Linda French of Ohio.



This is "Feeling Groovy" by Candace West of Florida. There is lots of bling on this quilt which doesn't show in this photo very well. According to a friend of hers that was lurking near the quilt, Candace digitized the quilting design and then added the bling inside the quilting lines.



Here's a closer look at the bling



This is Dresden Galaxy by Mary Ann Herndon of Texas.


I think this may have been my favorite quilt in the show. It's "Silverlight" by Betty Busby of New Mexico.


Knoxville was a nice town and I think the TTT gang will want to attend the show again next year. If we do, we plan to stay longer than overnight so we can enjoy the city.