CinCHouse Charity Quilt is complete!

The background is I belonged to an online military family/friend support website called CinC House. It was a great comfort and resource for me when DH deployed and provided me with a network of friends who just "understood" when I needed someone.

Sometimes, their friendship was the only one I sought because it was nicer to have that common thread, regardless of the fact that we didn't talk about it all the time. We talked about kids, food, life... all the things a group of women can talk about.

One of those things involved our creative outlets and a few of us were fledgling quilters/sewers. I wanted to do a QOV top or a charity quilt of some sort and realized, this would be a great way for us to all be involved so I posted the idea that participants created a block. From there, I'd add sashing and the quilting.

This was almost 2 years ago. It took almost a year for everyone who committed to this to provide the blocks and another year for me to feel my quilting skills were up to par with doing justice to the pieced top. I wanted/needed it to be good enough. So I waited.

Time marched on and I always had an excuse. My husband started working with wounded soldiers and one day received a call from a mother of a soldier who needed to be involved with something.

He is a paralized soldier and has been down with all the struggles. His mother was struggling, too. Hubby asked if I thought I could make him a quilt. I agreed and pondered appropriate designs which would suit what I felt would mean the most for his situation and all of a sudden, the CinC quilt popped into my head. I asked the group if they agreed we should scrap our original plan of sending to auction as a fund-raiser and instead, provide it to this soldier. I am so happy to say their agreement was quick and completely supportive.

I do not have a picture, but the label reads: "Dear ____, thank you. Thank you for your service and bravery. You are and will always have the love of countless nameless and faceless citizens. With all the warmth, gratitude and prayers for healing and strength that can be sent to you and your family, the quilting members from CinCHouse.com."

The quilt itself and quilting are pictured here. I love this adapted quilting pattern! I wish I had time, I'd love to send his mother a quilt as well but do not have a "spare top" to quilt up really fast to send along this week. I might just include a card thanking her. It's one of those situations where they have small & limited resources, even though they have much love and faith. I'd like her to know she also has prayers and love.

Anyway, that's the story and here's the quilt I'm pretty dang proud of! GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.!

This weekend will be about quilting

Aside from life, I have been plugging away in the quilting world. At my kids' football practices, I've found the perfect time to bind quilts.

This one

which is from before my blog days, is being bound now. I will provide a full write up on it once it's complete & washed. Then you can see my quilting pattern, also, which I L-O-V-E.

More recently, I finished quilting and it is waiting to be bound is this one.

I will not show a fully quilted shot of it yet, only leave you with this teaser.

This pink one has a home and every stitch has love and rememberences of a beautiful lady lost to breast cancer. When I get the label on, I'm going to make sure her daughter and grandaughter know who inspired this one as I worked on it as an OST mystery.

Finally, I'll be cutting the fabrics for this one today.

Baby Kyle was born on Aug. 8 and I still haven't decided if I'll send this ahead or wait until we have a "girls weekend visit" after the holidays but either way, I had best get it completed! It's designed by me but now I have to go do the not-so-fun part of figuring out sizes to cut the pieces. Wish me luck!

Football, Food, Dogs, Kids, Work... Quilt?

Did I say I was back? I did, didn't I? Okay, maybe I should re-iterate so I can believe it myself.

I am back.

While I haven't been posting much, I am squeezing in some quilting with my daily activities and this week, especially, now that I've gotten in the groove of a schedule.

I quilted and am now binding a charity quilt. It's slow going b/c I keep it in the back of the car and bind while I'm at my son's football practice. However, I'm also dropping off and picking up 2 other kids at 2 other activities during that time so... there's a smal window to bind. However, it is getting done whereas at home, it wasn't.

It wasn't being completed at home because I've already loaded another quilt on the frame & started quilting and I'm getting ready to start cutting that baby airplane quilt from a few posts ago. I'm trying to be productive whenever I can and the only way I can do that is to have these things set to go when I am.

Pictures will be coming soon, I promise.

The rest of the title? Kids started school a couple weeks ago along with all their activities. We are enjoying all our time together, though even if the days disappear fast. Dogs are same as always but I've started getting their hunt training going again. This, too, is slow moving considering the short days but it's not being ignored so I'm happy. Work has also been unusually busy for this time of year/month. I am surprised I hvae enough minutes to spare today to post this.

Finally, FOOD. I want to devote a little time to writing about food today. I've been experimenting again. DH hunted some wild boar and tagged one last winter. 350lbs of pork. Some of it didn't come home, but at least 1/2 did. My freezer is full of pork. I have been exerimenting with various recipes since I typically think pork is B-O-R-I-N-G. (Seriously, he could have gone out and killed a big Hereford Bull and I'd not be scrambling to find interesting ways to eat it. Red meat is good to me as is.)

I have found a couple keepers and one that wasn't so good. I will be posting these over the next couple weeks so I wanted to warn you in advance. In the meantime, I'm going to leave you with 3 links to recipes I saw today on the Food Network which I've decided I must try (only 1 relates to pork.)

Garlic Cheese Biscuits
Short Ribs with Tagliatelle
Lobster Pot Pie

Enjoy and check back soon for quilt pictures.

I'm ba-aack!

YES! Finally, after a nearly month-long hiatus, I've started sewing and quilting again. I have also started fabric cutting for the airplane baby quilt I designed (a couple posts back). The kids start school tomorrow. The new house is primarily unpacked and most odds and ends purchased and put away.

I am looking forward to getting back into a grooving schedule really soon! :D

In the meantime, here's a few pictures of the dogs enjoying their new backyard for your entertainment. Quilting pictures coming soon.

Cheers!

The Quilting Goddesses DO like me!

Sort of.

I still wasn't thrilled with DD's (K's) quilting design but I was mustering through. I finished it and removed it from the frame. Then, on a trip to JoAnn's to pick up some interfacing for another project, I came acrosse some 2" wide ribbon rolls on sale 2 for $5. LIGHTBULB moment. Bought 2, took them home and used them as the binding.

I was very happy and could tell it finished it all off nicely. Pulled the varigated thread and design from the quilting together with the fabrics. Looked very good.

I felt the Quilting Goddesses were feeling generous towards me.

One quick question, though... I used chalk to mark the quilt design and in some places, the orange didn't rinse or wash out like usual. I never had this problem before.

What do you do? Just keep washing until it goes away? It's not terrible but really, I don't want to leave it.

Cheers! Beck