Hello

As a little girl I made dresses for a set of 6" dolls with moveable arms and legs, and crafted costumes from various periods for a school social studies project. Really don't remember when all my craftiness began but my mother and grandmothers were talented with their hands--my mother sewed beautifully, hand-dipped chocolates, was a great cook, and later in life learned to crochet and then learned to make exquisite pine needle baskets(you can see three of them behind me on the wall in the header picture); my dad's mother tatted, embroidered, sewed, crocheted and knitted; my mom's mother sewed and as far as I know always made her own patterns, often as a young girl having to take apart her sisters' hand me downs then made them into stylish things for herself and then later made clothes for her daughters.

This is Fourth of July rose--my all-time favorite and a picture my dear hubby took a couple years ago. It has a marvelous cinnamon fragrance that we could smell as we walked by. Unfortunately, last winter was very hard and killed about 2/3 of my roses. I was so hopeful this one had survived and wouldn't let dh dig it up until I was totally sure it was dead. Has nothing to do with crafting but another of my loves and hopefully it'll get replaced next spring.

When my mother was pregnant with me my father promised her a sewing machine if she had a girl, so along with a new daughter, my mother got a Singer sewing machine. She learned to sew beautifully and sewed just about everything I wore except underwear until I was ten when she taught me to sew on that same machine. It worked perfectly until I thought the tension needed "fixing." I'm not sure mom was glad she'd taught me, but I certainly am, and now my daughter (whom my mother also taught to sew) and I love our Brother 4500Ds that seldom if ever need tension adjustments.

I sew and craft similarly to how I cook--with the pattern/recipe near but my need to be creative means adding or deleting things. Mostly things turn out well, but occasionally there's an "interesting" event. My latest endeavor was changing a twin size red/white/black ladybug and heart quilt pattern into a pink and lavender wall hanging for my girlie girls' (granddaughters) bedroom. Hopefully I can findthe picture to post here.


The Nativity set was made for my grandchildren several years ago in my usual way--the idea came from a set I saw someplace but I changed everything in several ways and had so much fun making it, but more seeing the kiddos playing with it. It's definitely child-friendly!!

My sweet daughter set up my blog with the header that includes some of my favorite things--ladybugs, hearts, flowers, and me holding the quilt I made for my daughter-in-law's baby shower. It's a Mother Goose rhyme quilt. My machine has an alphabet in the decorative stitch section, so I did a bunch of rhymes using family names in them when possible and then did embroideries or appliques to illustrate the wording. At the same time I made a story book for my daughter's children. It was a major effort but something I really enjoyed doing for my grandchildren.


Usually there are several projects going on around here at a time. In the last few years, I've made aprons, decorated towels, created games for my grandchildren and all kinds of fun things with or without embroidery on them. For 2007 Christmas, I made "monster" dolls for my husband, children, their sweethearts, and my grandchildren. I used several of the patterns out of a book of soft monster dolls my son and daughter-in-law gave me for Christmas in 2006. I let everyone pick out the doll they wanted and then changed most of them somewhat and created a flamingo for my husband and a ladybug for me.

This year I've been making comfy quilts for my family starting with a tourquoise, green and brown quilt in a fiesta pattern with fleece on the back for my ddil. I used the same materials to make my dd one and most of those materials for the baby boy she was expecting and it also had some embroidered designs in some of the larger squares. Then my son wanted one--in black and white and with skulls. He got the black and white with some purple and gold accents honoring University of Washington. His also included some embroidered designs such as an elk, some huskies, other things that represented him. I made two pink and purply ones for a friend of my daughter who adopted two girls this year, then one pink/purple one for my oldest granddaughter. I'm in the midst of seven more for grandchildren, dsil, and some children who lost everything when their home burned a couple weeks ago. All of these are pretty much a variation on fiest, except for my dsil's which is a tossed 9 patch. It's a fun way to make an easy quilt top.

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