Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day! It has been a beautiful Labor Day weekend here in Kansas. Not too hot, not too cold, bright sunny skies.... perfect weather for a fair or festival! Yesterday Hubby and I hopped over the State Line to Independence MO, they have a big festival every year called Santa-Cali-Gon Days which is always lots of fun. Huge crowds, thousands of people attending on this beautiful day, just look at that one little feather white cloud up there!

Can't go to a festival with out an artery clogging treat! This year I chose the fresh made curly potato chips and they were tasty :)

We walked through many of the arts and crafts tents, I love to see what everyone is making and found a few goodies for Christmas gifts. All the booths were crowded and people were buying which was great to see. Now this booth... I have to tell you, you couldn't help but stop. Life like new born baby dolls, everybody wanted to hold one! Not only do they look real, they felt and posed like a real baby. This vendor was nice enough to allow me to take hubbys picture with one. Awwww, I'd say he still has the touch!

We left baby behind and worked our way back to the car. On the way we passed the Truman home, also known as the Summer White House, this is the home of Harry and Bess Truman. Bess bequeathed the home to the National Park Service and you can purchase tickets to tour their home in small groups. We took the tour several years ago with friends and found it well worth the small admission price.

One last stop on the drive home. I scream, you scream, Hubby wanted Ice cream!

And now I am going to head upstairs for a little sewing time. UPS made a delivery here on Friday, the full line of Toy Box Two fat quarters. So excited, they will look darling on my Annie blocks don't you think?

BFFs, my sewing machine and me

My sewing machine and I have been best of friends this past week. I love it when we get along so well, we have good karma going on and I am feeling quite productive. One of my projects has been sewing some of the Annie stitchery blocks into pillows and I am pleased with how cute they turned out. Here is December Annie.

And little June Annie. It is so much fun choosing the fabric strips to frame her, add a little rick rack trim and how sweet is that! The beautiful chair Annie is propped up in is a family heirloom, a highchair that has been in Hubby's family since 1887. Many little Paquins have sat in this chair including my children. My Mother-In-Law took such beautiful care of it and even had an engraved plate with the 1st child's name and date made for the back of it, such a treasure.

I have several new patterns I'm working on. Here is a little teaser picture for you, but first, have you noticed how stunning the fabric collections we have to choose from lately are? They just keep getting better and better. With this project I am using three complimentary fabrics for each of three models. I tend to lean towards the brights, they make me so happy, but I can be a sucker for dreamy pastels and florals as well. One pattern, yet isn't it interesting how fabric selection can determine so many different looks.

This project is laid out on my kitchen table at the moment, some extra jumbo rick rack is involved as well. Fa, la, la la la!


Another long weekend is ahead of us, no plans here, I'll probably still be sewing with a picnic for two thrown in somewhere. Hope yours is safe and wonderful!

I feel really dumb

The 3 D words for today are dumb, dumb and REALLY dumb! I bought this darling cowboy fabric yesterday with thoughts of making pillowcases for when my Grandsons come to visit. I had a great day and felt my morning was unusually productive: after skipping through some quick house chores I cleaned my cutting table off and put everything where it belonged. Turned my music on and and then sat down to sew. I'm happy as a clam humming and sewing. My fabric is all cut for two pillowcases. I used my really cool finishing foot which folds and finishes the edge of your fabric on the ruffle. Made flat fold piping, sewed pillowcase #1 all together, turned it right side out and........ AUUUUGGGG! Nooooooooo.......
My horses are running sideways :( I just can't believe I did this. I was aware that the fabric was directional when I bought it and I even knew it when I cut it!

Pleeeeeze tell me I'm not the only person who has done this before.

As for me, I'm blaming it on I'm out of chocolate! Looks like a trip to the grocery store is in order, and fast! I guess this means you don't want to see a tutorial on making this pillowcase LOL!

The 3 A's, Annie, an Apron and August

Good morning to you! I woke up early today, so excited to start working on some new projects I have had rolling about in my head. And now 2 hours later here I still sit attached to my computer. I've read all my Face Book updates, harvested crops on my Farmville farm LOL, caught up with all my blogging friends and the latest Google news. What did we ever do before the Internet, personally I think I got a lot more done! This week was my baby sisters birthday, Happy Birthday again Darlene! I won't rat on her age, because my birthday follows hers and even though we older children are sometimes notorious for picking on our younger siblings we were pretty close as sisters go. Well I had no choice, we shared the same bedroom growing up! And sometimes that seemed like a major pain and I had green envy of friends who had their own space. But the truth of it is we talked a lot, shared clothes and music and developed a great sister bond that may not have happened otherwise. I made her this little apron to send along with her gift, Darlene is a great cook and a girl can never have enough aprons! The fabric I used is from an old tablecloth I had, probably 50's and was just large enough to cut out a skirt, waistband and ties. No pattern was needed as these are quite simple to make. The best part was not having to sew side or bottom hems due to the pre-finished edges! I like having a pocket on my aprons but in this case did not add one as I felt it would take away from the charming design. I think it turned out pretty cute!

This week I also finished my December Annie design and stitched her up! Annie loves decorating for Christmas and her kitty loves to "help"!

These are the floss colors used in this blocks palette: DMC numbers 966, 702, 899, 758, 601, 817, 3807, 3852, 3862 and black.

8 blocks finished, my quilt is growing!

And now I am off to take a look at my wool felt stash. I have been missing working with some wool and have a new penny rug design I want to play with. I'm having so much fun, I hope you are too, have a great week!

Back to School

I had the best evening last night! Even though it was 99 degrees, hubby and I ran our sons last load of "stuff" down to Jons new apt in Lawrence. Moving in a college town can be somewhat difficult. One rental lease was up on Friday but he could not move in to the new apartment until Sunday. He had to bring everything home for 2 days! Well, anyway, here he is all situated once again with his stuff. This apartment is way different from his last two. It is in an old house right on the edge of campus, very convenient for walking to classes. Hard to believe this house has 6 apartments in it! Although older, it had a nice college feel to it. Two bedrooms, a bath, teeny kitchen and sitting area, large bright windows, perfect!

Of course I don't know if he wanted us to see the apartment or this LOL! I have to say the frig is nice and clean though, don't you think?

You have probably heard me say before, I love going to Lawrence, besides getting to see my boy it's a fun place to go! The town just vibrates with all that youthful energy, who needs to go to a spa, I could just sit there and soak it all up and leave feeling rejuvenated. The city of Lawrence is very old, founded in 1854, it has a lot of history. The Oregon Trail ran through what is now the KU Campus which opened in 1865, the Santa Fe trail ran just south of the city. The campus in itself is just beautiful, situated high on top of Mount Oread. My boy gets a really good work out walking up and down that steep hill every day!

And so many good places to eat, I am working my way through the list!

We took Jon and his new room mate, who we liked a lot, to dinner. It was Taco Tuesday and boy was this place CROWDED!

Yummy, yummy, yummy! Besides all this great food I could spend a whole day downtown going through cute shops. Two quilt stores, that could be an afternoon in itself! Jon told me he found a giant antique store we would love, so I guess that will be on our menu for next visit!

And PS, did I tell you this is my Sons last semester, yep, he's on the home stretch, I am so proud of him! Can you tell?

Hope you are having a happy week. I plan on heading back to the drawing board to work on the next Annie. And maybe get a little sewing time in. My head is swimming with ideas!

Stitching and.... cooking!

Another hot week here in Kansas but it is summertime after all. Our son was home from KU for the weekend and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Love spoiling my boy with some home cooking and he sure brought his appetite along, so fun to have him here! Besides cooking I have been busy stitching on my Annies, however with heat indexs in the 100s not outside on the patio this week! My latest Annie design is complete. November Annie has gathered a bountiful harvest in her basket to share with family and friends. I can almost feel the cool crisp air, picture pumpkins and gourds, and smell turkey in the oven!

As I mentioned before I am stitching 2 sets of Annie blocks, one as red work, and one in color work.

Here is the DMC floss palette I used for November if you are interested. The floss numbers are:

black, 317, 414, 3862, 372, 3852, 435, 758, 347, 3777, 938, 921, 702, and 581.

And now it's time to think about preparing dinner. Tonight I am making a pasta dish my son and I saw the Barefoot Contessa make on one of her shows, we were both drooling over it.

Lots of heavy cream, cheeses, mushrooms and ridiccio, now that I have never used before! This recipe is neither low cal or economical, but I bet it will be good :)

Love to stitch

My favorite spot to sew is on my back porch, natural light to see better by and the birds provide a little background music. A big glass of iced tea and I'm good to go for the afternoon. I love handwork and stitching is so relaxing, choosing colors of floss and watching my design grow and come to life.

I have several storage units to keep my floss organized, however as you can see I don't use any of them lol! I have little plastic cards to wind your floss on, books with individual plastic inserts to keep each color all nice and neat. Plastic boxes in which these little plastic cards of wound floss slide in to. In the end I still carry around my bowl or little basket of chosen floss colors and pick from that. This must drive my friend Patty nuts, when ever she visits from NY she usually sits and organizes all my floss for me while we talk. It looks beautiful for awhile!