I see your true colors shining through....

I finally got my quilt top together for the ALQS and took it out in the sunshine to take a picture of it. So now instead of me posting a pic and saying "it's not such a hot picture" I can officially say look-this is what it looks like!



See the shadows on the left hand side. We have this gigantic tree right in front of our apartment-it's absolutely gorgeous and even on the hottest sunniest day our patio is in the shade 95% of the day. There's about a 1 hour window where it gets full sun but even then I've got some shadowy bits. So now you know why all my pictures turn out so dark! I can't complain though-it's only on the hottest days we have to run the air with all that nice shade so that big tree saves us a bundle.

After I took the picture I sandwiched the top and started quilting it-I've got just over half of the top quilted so I'm really pleased with the progress. Originally I'd planned a pieced border to follow the purple (which was going to be thinner) but once I got the purple on it just looked right so I decided to listen to my quilter muse and stop.

something to report

I've got progress, sweet, sweet progress. Today I spent a couple hours working on my quilt for Kate's ALQS. I was really buzzing right along on this and then with everything that's been going on the last month I went from way ahead of schedule to way behind. My goal is to have the top all pieced by Tuesday so I can get to work on quilting it.

I chose the Iowa Star pattern for my partner's quilt. I thought that was appropriate since it was coming all the way from Iowa. Although if I'd known that the weather was going to be like around here I might have picked Storm at Sea!


I also worked on my row for Kathi's row robin-I'd work on a couple Iowa Star blocks and then put together some blocks for her row. I promise to get a picture of her gorgeous rows tomorrow when the light is good-she is going to have an amazing quilt.

DD and I had a tea party with my friend Kathleen today. We had little chicken salad sandwiches, cheese slices, pears, tea, and angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream. Kathleen made the chicken salad-there were figs, raisins, and a whole host of other yummies in there. It was absolutely delish. She offered me the leftovers chicken salad-one guess what I had for supper. Hehehe-there's just enough left it may be breakfast too!

wet and wild, hoping for dry and boring.

Today DD has a friend over to spend the night and at the rate we're going she may end up being here for more than one night. When her Dad dropped her off he said the water was right up almost to the edge of the bridge and the Highway Patrol was out there deciding if it needed to be closed.

Iowa is right in the midst of the "Floods of 08" as the news channels are calling it. Fortunately for us we're far from the rivers and up on a hill so we're in no danger of getting washed away but lots of people around us, especially those near the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers are dealing with the flooding and the danger to their homes. We've laid in a small stash of bottled water in case Waterworks goes under but right now they're assuring us the water supply is safe so hopefully we won't need it.

Many parts of the state learned some valuable lessons during the floods of 1993 so homes, business, and lives are being saved this time around because of new safety measures and better protections that were put in place after 1993. Of course then they called it the 100 year flood and now 15 years later we're having another one-guess they may have to revise that.

If you have some spare prayers and good thoughts Iowa could surely use them-I can't even imagine what it must be like for the folks who've seen everything they own literally washed away.

Here's a picture I took out at Saylorville Lake/Dam. In 1993 Saylorville peaked at 892 feet and the other day it was at 889 so it's very, very close to the last huge flood level. See that bit of wood fencing in the middle of the picture. That's normally a little observation deck with a bench where you can sit at look out over the water. Right now you can sit there and be in the water.
Here's a picture I stole from out local news station KCCI. Those bridges crossing the river have huge arches underneath that are usually visible.




On the non flood related front I've been working on uploading some pictures to our family genealogy website. My cousin Christopher is the compute genius in the family and the mastermind behind the website-he has our genealogy on there, pictures, a blog, and part of our family cookbook. Lol-I just try not to mess it all up when I upload the photos. I've got gobs more stuff that needs to go up but hey-baby steps right.

Believe it or not there actually has been a little quilting done too-I've been working on Kathi's row for the row round robin. Hopefully tonight after DD and her partner in crime crash I can do a little more on it. Right now I'm going to take the girls swimming (in the pool-not the flood water!). Send me a couple happy thoughts while you're at it-lol-by the time we get out of the pool I may need them and a stiff drink!

We're down at Grammy's house right now helping get everything set up for the garage sale. Not much quilting getting done. I did a little work on my crazy quilt blocks for the Crazy quilt swap-I've got 3 more to finish embellishing and then I'm done.

We had a tornado warning last night so we spent a fair bit of time sitting in the basement. Lol-I took my crazy quilt blocks and Kathi's rows for her row robin with me-didn't want them blowing away to Oz!

I've talked so much about the row by row round robin I'm doing on the about.com forum but I'm not sure if I've ever shown pictures of my starter row. So here it is...



My theme is red/cream stars. I asked for stars of any size and asked that the other ladies just baste their rows together because I'd like to take them apart and put them together in a puzzle fashion. I love quilts that just seem to have stars of all sizes flowing together. Lol-I'm sure when I got to put it together it won't feel like it's flowing but I think once I'm done gnashing my teeth and snarling it will be lovely.

Becca

I hope you all haven't given up on me during my long quiet spell. Shortly after my Grandfather passed away DH decided to have his own little near death experience and ended up hospitalized for 5 days. We've yet to discover what exactly is wrong with him but we now know a number of things that aren't wrong with him. I spent quite a bit of time at the hospital with him as he's a teensy bit of a great big baby and wasn't to thrilled about the idea of being left alone at the hospital. I don't know what he was so worried about-he had a whole gaggle of cute nurses!

I've spent this week trying to catch up on everything that's gone by the wayside and while the to do list is still freakishly long it's no longer threatening to become a short novel.

One of the things on my to do list was to get my row done for the row robin I'm participating in. I had Gail's rows for May and her theme was China Dolls. I had a really neat idea about appliqueing Chinese words onto blocks but unfortunately with everything going on I just plain old ran out of time and went with these simpler Chinese Lantern Blocks. I got it done just a little late and it's going into the mail tomorrow.

Aren't Gail's rows gorgeous! I love them all.
A couple close ups of my lantern blocks...

one life well lived is a wonderous thing...

You may have noticed that I vanished for a couple weeks. My grandpa took ill and was hospitalized. He passed away last Monday.

Grandpa suffered from emphysema fro the last 25 years and while we're sad to lose him and will miss him every day we're also glad to know that he's in a place where he no longer had to struggle for each breath.

Younger days....


In the garden with me....
reading a story to my little stinker....

I'd love to tell you all about Grandpa and everything he did-for his family, his friends, and his community but I'm still a little raw right now and I think I'd end up typing through a lot of tears so I'm going to be a little clique and just say this-he lived a good life and there's an empty place in a lot of people's hearts and lives now that he's gone.



On a quilty note-to my blogwarming winners-I promise I haven't forgotten you. In the hustle and bustle of the last few weeks I haven't had a chance to mail your packages but they are going to go in the mail tomorrow! I'm sorry about the delay and I hope you haven't been to disappointed not to find the goodies in your mailbox yet.

Grandpa

Not to much quilting done the last few days-my grandpa's been ill so lots of travel time to see him. I've been working on quilting my buzzsaw table topper-it's nice and portable. I'm really liking the spiral on the black-it gives the quilt lots of motion and the variegated orange thread really pops.


Grandpa's had emphysema for a long time and he's at the point now where he really isn't able to do anything as even the slightest activity leaves him out of breath and exhausted. When Grandma called Wednesday morning they weren't sure he was going to make it but they were able to get him stabilized by the time we got there. None of us want to see him go (aren't Grandpa's supposed to live forever?) but of course it's terrible to see him suffer and lose his quality of life.

Here's a pic-handsome isn't he? No wonder Grandma fell for him. Of course this picture's just a few years old.



I started researching our family history a few years ago and last year sat down and interviewed him about his life. I got to hear so many neat stories that I'd never heard him tell before. I'm so glad now we've got that history written down.

We're going to go down this weekend to help Grandma out and spend some more time with Grandpa so you probably won't see another post from me until Monday.