Almost There and A nice Surprise

I have been a busy getting ready to move but I took a small time out to look at the Bloggers Quilt Festival and to enter a quilt. The nice surprise is that I won a prize,  a Sarah J Max Designs  Shout, Whisper, Text quilt kit. I am looking forward to receiving it. The prizes were by drawing, not by vote this year; nice for me because I entered on the last day. Even though it is over the quilts are still up for viewing. Click and the link above.
I am almost finished packing. Tomorrow is moving day and I hope I get it all done before midnight tonight. I am down to all the odds and ends that don't fit nicely with other things. The movers are coming at 9AM so I will have to sleep fast and be up and dress and ready to go by 9.

Jack is waiting to pack up my computer so I will not be on my computer for a few days but I hope to be back before too long.

Bloggers Quilt Festival

Fancy Forest is my entry for the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I made this quilt from Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Foret pattern. I do not usually follow patterns exactly but I saw the sample baby quilt in The Quilted Thimble quilt shop and found it so charming I decided to make it for a great grandchild shower gift.

I chose what it consider a neutral green for the background.  This is the backing and binding fabric which had nearly all of the colors in the quilt top.











The pattern was well written and it should have been easy to follow but I am not a good follower of instructions.  I tend to jump ahead and start before reading all the instructions.That made problems for every block. However I hung in there and finished the quilt  and it was well received and it got a standing ovation at the shower. I am presently cutting fabric for another great grandchild quilt.

I did have one near disaster when my daughter called me away from putting the blocks together for the top, to have my eye brows dyed. Without giving any thought at all to what might happen I went right back to the sewing room and started working again. Of course, it had to happen; I got dye on one of the blocks. There was no way I was going to make it over again. I solved the problem with an appliqued leaf and now that is part of the
quilt story.

If you want to read more about the process as I worked on the quilt follow the Fancy Forest link below.

Moving

I am sitting here in the middle of chaos wondering if I will be able to make order out of it. I am packing to move again. In 3 1/2 weeks we will be moving back to the apartment complex where we lived before, only this time it will be on the first floor.  Jack needs to be where there are no stairs. As long as there is a handrail I can handle stairs but I too will be happy with no stairs.

My sewing room is the holding area for all the boxes; so there will be no no sewing going on here. When I get together with my friends I do some cutting for the second Fancy Forest baby quilt but sewing it will have to wait until my sewing room is set up again.

  I am doing most of the packing myself.  I want to be able to find things when we unpack. Jack tapes the moving boxes and can lift the boxes if he doesn't have to carry them  to another room.  He will be packing his stuff that isn't clothing, all 2 boxes of it. Somehow everything else is mine. I do have help companionship while I work; Lucy keeps busy inspecting everything. In between inspecting she takes naps and washes herself.

If there is something different she has to try it out. Here she is napping on a piece of fabric she pulled down from the ironing board, under the shelf, on my cutting table which is piled up with things I was sorting through to pack, in a box I had taped for packing and in a bag of plastic grocery bags I was using to wrap small non breakable objects.

Though she has been considered my cat,(that means I clean the litter box) she will be staying here. I am going to miss her, she is such a fun cat.

Sad News

Early in August our family dog got sick and though he appeared to get better at first, he continued to have some problems. He had some digestive problems and on and off he wouldn't eat his regular food. We started cooking chicken and rice for him which seemed to agree with him and he was more like his old self, wanting to go for walks and fetch with his ball but he was having some bad days. Last Saturday he didn't eat all his dinner and just laid around and wouldn't move but he wagged his tail when we spoke to him. Sunday morning after he stumbled and fell and couldn't get up; my daughter and son in law took him to the vet and they had him put down.
Tux was a 10 years old Black Lab and  a great dog. He had a wonderful disposition and very good manners, he liked everyone, and he was cheerfully obedient from the time he was a puppy . He was amiably tolerant of the cats and visiting and neighbor dogs. He delighted in walking around the yard with his human companions  and in the woods beyond the yard.

Jack and Tux - 2 old dogs

He was happy and content just being around his people.  Everyone is going to miss him.