Presents for my favorite Nieces

And soon to be great-niece or nephew

I'm Back

I must say after the death of a favorite Aunt I pulled back from creating anything... I guess I was going through one of those, "What's it all about Alfie" phases, but with "A Little Help From my Friends" I'm back. A coworker in another life had worked in a Quilt Shop back in the 70's. She cleaned out her basement this summer and asked if I wanted a bag of strips. Wow, being the closet fabric snivel presser that I am, I said sure. I spent hours untangling through them, categorizing by color, pressing and hanging them. Great Therapy!! So as you can see it's back to Jane and back to sewing, thank you very much.

My Best Mother’s Day Gift to Myself….

I finished all eight photo memory books for my cousins and sister; they are in the mail!!!… Hip Hip Hooray. I scanned all the important family photos belonging to my Aunt, wrote up all of our conversations about the family history, quilted the covers and wrote the eulogy that I would have like to have given in church to include as the narrative. Note to anyone who is old school, and not a fan of the large 4 “X 6” photos from places like Snapfish. I used photo shop to make each 4x6 photo more of a collage of several photographs, then I took a color from the group to act as the background. It worked like a charm, brilliant. On to my next project….

Almost Back in the Game

It’s always a quick fix to make a few doll outfits to get the feel of accomplishment on the way to my goal of making 100 dresses, but here are some of the Top Ten Reasons for not spending much time in the sewing room lately....

4. Just found the show, Hoarding Buried Alive and have been making several runs to the Good Will, and have organized every closet and dresser drawer.

3. Just found the show Hoarding Buried Alive and have decided to embrace change…the Piano’s going and so are all the outdated valances and chair covers…oh and did I also put on the to do list slip covers for the family room and a new look for the living room…. So I’ve been out furniture shopping…

2. Making seven photo memory books for all the nieces and nephews in honor of my Aunt’s life

1. Lovin my new Kindle

Can You Help me Solve this Mystery??

I haven’t had the concentration for quilting lately. The last of my father’s sibling, my Aunt G recently passed away. Although we lived hundreds of miles apart we talked weekly by phone.

Here I am "back in the day", as the kids would say between my mom and my Aunt. G is on the right. When my cousin asked if there was anything I wanted from the house, two things came to mind immediately ….. Surprise Surprise they were both of fabric.

The little pink shawl was made for my great grandmother by her mother who was born in Sicily in 1840. My great grandmother passed it on to her granddaughter G sometime around 1937. G remembers her grandmother telling her to wear it because G was always “fredda” (cold). My Aunt kept it all those years, telling me about it often, and showing it to me whenever I’d visit NJ. The other thing I wanted was a crocheted bedspread.

We only had a small window of time after the funeral and it was hard to search for it, just being in the house for the last time was overwhelming. Anyway I came away with only a few mass cards that where by her bed .

When I got back to Illinois another cousin called telling me he had searched the attic and was sending the two items. When the package arrived, I recognized the shawl, but the bedspread I had never seen before. He remembers Grandma saying we would be the 9^th generation to own it. The tradition was for it to be passed from Mother to oldest daughter and since my Aunt had no children, and I being the oldest niece it was to go to me.

I am so puzzled by that. By the way, don’t make fun of "Billy Mayes Here", because Oxiclean really does work. Can anyone solve this mystery?

It’s heavy, tightly woven, and stiff. My mom had chenille bedspreads in the 1950’s but this is nothing like that. It consists of three panels 27” by 105” hand sewn together to measures 81 x 105.

Anyone out there know of this technique?

Is it early chenille? Thanks for listening.

I hope to get back to sewing real soon.

Andrew Jackson once said...

Andrew Jackson once said, “Never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word”.

He would have loved me, but unfortunately I’ve also never used the same technique twice to bind a quilt before until I met this little device from Fons and Porter…

All the guess work….GONE…. and for only $7.99 what a deal.

While I’m at it here are two other pearls gleaned since my last posting….

To clean all the mineral deposits from the bottom of your tea kettle, boil some water and white vinegar with one of those copper scrubbers and let it sit for a while….Awesome …

And did you know that parchment paper on your pizza peel rather than cornmeal will make it slide to you pizza stone like magic…Just trim the most of the excess paper, and it really won’t burn at 400 degrees.

Sorry, I digress.

Anyway New Year’s resolution to use stash for monthly decorations….February …CHECK.

Hit Or Miss on the results but

The New Year’s resolution is still in tact. Nope, haven’t lost any weight, but an idea did occur to me while doing my annual Christmas pack up this year. When one hits “a certain age” as the French so politely put it, one never knows just how many 'Christmas unpacks and packs' are going to be left on the table, and I do so enjoy that process each year. Hey, I thought... why be glum about it? Why not ritualize it on a monthly basis? Hence the resolution was concocted to use up the stash decorating for the seasons. I do need deadlines, so I scheduled both book clubs chez moi in February. Twelve place mats from the stash that I may or may not use are completed and hopefully the two Valentine Wall hangings, and nine gift candle mats that are left to quilt will be posted shortly…. Hi ho Hi ho it’s off to work I go.