Where are you, Christmas?

Glen emailed this week and asked if I was doing okay because he has not heard from me in a while. Yes, I am doing fine. Everything is going good. I work in the sewing retail world and it is busy, busy, busy. I have not been doing much sewing because all I want to do is go home and not look at people.

Retail has a way of taking Christmas out of a person. Before I started working retail some 7 years ago I would put up something like seven trees. Had lights on the outside of the house. I used to love Christmas. I would throw the holiday party and send out cards. Now that I am in the retail world and am around people that do not even care about one another and will fight for the last item. Will bitch at you because something is now on sale and when they bought it over a month ago it was not and now they want a price adjustment that we can't give. The true meaning is no longer there. It makes me not want to do anything Christmas related and my BH gets screwed every year because I do not want to put up a tree, lights or for that matter do anything Christmas related. Corporate America has molded Christmas to fit what they feel it should be and made people into this beast of a person. Do kids of today even know the true meaning of Christmas or just what corporate America told them it is?

I think it is time for change and this year I am not going to let the commercialism of Christmas get to me. I am going to put up a tree with my BH so that we might both have a little bit of Christmas and togetherness in our house. Christmas is not about having all the latest and greatest under the tree, but about spending time with the ones that we love. I just need to remember this and not let it get to me. It all about mind over matter. Christmas comes from the heart not the pocketbook.

May each and everyone of you keep the true meaning of Christmas in your heart and not let corporate America take it away.

Charlie

Work of Art

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! It's my ALQS quilt. Don't you just love all the green colors of this little work of art? It is made by Barb of CatsnQuilts. Check out her blog and post a comment on what you think of this beauty. When I first saw this quilt on the ALQS blog I had commented that the greens of this quilt seem to be calling to me. Little did I know then that it was being sent to me. I can not thank Barb enough for all her hard work on this quilt.

Now I am just waiting to hear from the person I made a quilt for. It might be a few days as it's being sent to Canada.

This was a very fun swap to be a part of. I did have fun making the quilt. I would not mind doing this again. In fact I have a few idea's for the next quilt. I think it's going to be a B&W one.


I also wanted to show you a quilt that I had done a few months back. I got the idea from Quilt in a day. The pattern came from the book It's "El" ementary. I pieced and quilted this one all myself. This book has a lot of great time savers in it. this would be a good book to check out if your doing some quilt swaps.


It seems that I have a lot of quilting projects going on and it's hard to keep track of them all. Right now I am working on a black and red quilt called Bits and Pieces and is from a book entitled Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. It's all pieced and I am quilting it now. I am doing straight lines for the quilting. I plan to use this one on my bed. I will get you a picture of it once I am done. Right now it is rolled up in a ball under the sewing machine. Hehe. It's just a twin size quilt, but I find that it's hard getting it all under the machine. Now I know why people send their quilts out. Most of the time I do also, but wanted to do this simple one all on my own.


Charlie

Special Comment

I never thought I would be posting something like this on my blog, but I think it says it all.

Tokyo's Triangles

I was reading John's blog today and he has started on another project called Tokyo's Triangles. The inspiration is based on this quilt from the Tokyo International Quilt Festival. This idea comes from Sarah and Amanda Jean and they have started a flicker group and invite anyone that would like to make this quilt to join in on this great madness. I think I am going to follow them and make this quilt as well. It looks like it will be a lot of fun and will go together kinda quick, but will use many geese of all sizes. Leave a comment and let me know if you too join this fun and adventurous project.

The quilt is made up entirely of flying geese, but some of them are tall & skinny while others are short and fat, resulting in a beautiful forest-like effect. I am going to use the plaid fabrics that I have talked about in my past post and just add a background fabric to it. This would be a great way to use this fabric. I love flying geese, they are my favorite block to make. Here is a tutorial on how I make my flying geese. They are so quick and easy. You get four geese out one square. I wish I could have come up with this idea. This will be a great use for my new tall triangle or even the triangle in a square ruler and then again maybe not. The tall triangle ruler I am thinking I could fold my fabric in half and get a fat triangle out of it. Keep watching and I will let you know how that works out for me.

Next week, I plan on making a run to the quilt shop to buy some background fabric for this group of plaid fabrics. What color do you think will set these fabrics off? Please let me know what you think.

Be sure to check back often for more updates on this project. This quilt is going to a long term project.

Sorry for all the links in this post. I know there are a lot.

Charlie

Quilts of Honor

Just think, there are only 53 days till Christmas. Has anyone got their Christmas shopping done yet or even have their tree up yet? It just seems that Christmas will be here before we know it. I have not thought about either one yet. I guess I should start.

Woke up this morning and it was foggy outside and it made me think of Foggy Day in London Town by Gershwin. Guess I am just a hopeless romantic. With it being foggy out and not much else to do I was able to work on the Through the Woods quilt that I had started a while back. I just about have all the flying geese sewn together and then I can sew all the border strips together. The fabrics in this quilt are fun and got me out of my color realm with it's "Bright and Merry" colors.

It's going to be a great fall day here in Kansas City. I think the BH and I are going to head over to Blue Spring and do some hiking. They have this great one mile tail that has some awesome cliffs that we get to pass by. I love how there is always beauty in nature. One just has to take the time and look for it.

A few weeks back Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio did a blog about her father. Click here to view this post. I thought I would copy her idea (to copy someone is the great sign of flattery) and tell you about my father and how he has embraced my love for quilting. Quilting has always been in his family. His sister and mother used to quilt. I can remember stories of how my aunts would pick out quilt patterns for my grandmother when she was older just so she could keep her hands active. My Grandmother would hand piece every quilt top and my aunt would machine quilt them. I am lucky to have three quilts my grandmother made before she died and my aunt give up quilting because of heath reasons.

My Father loves woodworking. He has made me three quilt racks. One that is free standing and the other two hang on the wall. All three are made out of cedar. His favorite kind of wood to work with. He saw them in a magazine and made them for me. They are a gift of love. I always keep quilts on them. The free standing quilt rack has the three quilts my grandmother made. I love how she did not always use cotton fabrics for the quilts, but bits of what ever she would have laying around. As you can see the red quilt is very well loved as some of the pieces are coming apart.

The wall hanging rack has a quilt that my BH made. It is his first quilt. I love all the plaids he used in this. It is a very masculine.

As you can see only quilts that have some meaning to me get to hung in a spot of honor.

Charlie