It's Tulip Time!!!

The wind is blowing at about 30 mph outside my sewing room window and if there were any tulips budding outside they might look like this one!! Surely spring will bloom soon!!

This is a simple design that can look so different depending on the color you choose for your tulip. If you want more than one tulip, add a couple and make it a "bunch". :-)

Here are the pattern pages..........

And while there is still some snow on the ground here in Minnesota, there are spots where some tulip bulbs are beginning to pop up next to houses and soon they'll be blooming all over!!

You can stitch the design above in Redwork or traditional embroidery, anything you wish. If you want to do it as an applique block, then use the pattern pieces below and back with fusible web to apply to the block.

Now, as promised in my previous post, I will be e-mailing the pdf files to those of you on my e-mail list. I received many new requests to be added to the list and will be sending to everyone who has e-mailed me since January. I will do a mass e-mail of these blocks in pdf file and then I will be contacting each of you individually to make sure you are receiving the blocks. This could take a few days as there are about 300 of you on the e-mail list now. I have had offers from two bloggers who have ideas on how to create a more efficient mailing list and of a site where I can post pdf's and you can go there and retrieve them. I have looked into this and will probably make some of these changes over the next few weeks. I have a very full plate from now til May 4th and so the blocks for May will not be posted until May 8th. Thanks for sticking with my blog. Keep watching as come mid-May I will be sharing my plans for my one year blog anniversary. Can't believe all that has transpired since May of last year!! What an interesting journey and so much fun!!

Speaking of fun, while I didn't go any further for my spring break than my sewing room, I did enjoy hearing about my son's trip to New York City. He designed some artwork for a CD cover for someone (sorry can't remember her name) and went to New York for the opening night of her CD. He and his girlfriend, Stacia, had a great time and it was fun to hear how excited he was to see the sights and sounds along Fifth Avenue. I was there 36 years ago at a time when we lived in Dumont, NJ. We took my parents in to see Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and more and then up to West Point. My mother still talks about that trip. Ya never know, someday I may get back there yet!

Time to fix supper..........

Later then....

Sandi

Back from Spring Break.....

On my first day of my Spring Break, I was awakened by the sound of the dog barfing. That was not what I wanted to hear. The day got better, though. I found an on-line source for white wool when I contacted Stephanie at the Amana Colonies. I want to do some dyeing when spring finally comes and can hardly wait to the get the Ivory wool I ordered. Later in the afternoon, I had a nice conversation with Jim at TheGentleArt about their hand-dyed threads. He had sent some samples and I used them for the tulip penny rug that you see in the picture. I love the variation in the color as it gives variety to the stitched design. I used a pale yellow Perle cotton for the scalloped border.
That first day of my "Spring Break" was the only day that I really spent much time in my sewing room. I started working on controlling the chaos but didn't get very far because of an Easter Bunny project that multiplied. More on that later. :-)
When I closed my post last Wednesday, I was upset with myself because my sewing room was such a mess, I had misplaced the thread to finish the tulip penny rug (it was stuck by static to the side of my sewing chair), I couldn't find the sketch for the April Snowman (I had drawn it at the end of February so I'd be ahead of the game in April!) and there was loads of stuff going on that you don't care about but it needed my attention here. There's still a lot of stuff going on so I may not be blogging regularly for a couple of weeks here. Fortunately, the thread was found and so was the April Snowman sketch (attached to my yellow clipboard and lost in a stack of magazines and designs). Some chaos has been controlled. :-)
It has definitely been an interesting Spring Break with some sun, some fun, some rain, some drama, some shopping, and some SNOW!! I can't believe how long Spring is taking to make her appearance her in Minnesota!
Today, I'll be finalizing the patterns for April and will get them posted. Then on Tuesday, I will e-mail the pdf files to those who are on my e-mail list. Some of you need blocks from previous months and I will be going through individual e-mails to verify that I have sent you the correct blocks. I am looking at other options that would make this easier but have not made any decisions yet. I am so not technical. Learning lots though but it takes my old brain longer to process it all as nothing clicks as quickly as it did when I was younger. :-(
Back again by the evening with the April BOM patterns........
Sandi

No foolin'.........yep, it's a long post.........

That's right........no foolin', we got snow last night. It will probably have melted by the time I get up in the morning. Not the case further north where they got much more snow and blizzard conditions. All that on top of the flooding!! Yes, here in Minnesota, March definitely went out like a lion. Hopefully the waters will slowly go down and the danger of more flooding will soon pass.

So, have you been fooled yet today? I have no plans to fool anyone. I will be heading out to the post office in the morning so I will be watchful for those that might want to fool me. I am sometimes quite easy to fool which is not always a good thing. My son describes it as "mom is a little gullible". I guess that means I would have bought the Brooklyn Bridge. LOL!!

I am nearly finished with that penny rug I posted yesterday. I would be completely finished if I hadn't misplaced the thread I am using for the final border. I've looked up and down and it's just not showing up so I will try again in the morning. In my search for the thread, I did get my box of threads all organized so some good did come of misplacing it.
Speaking of misplacing things, I must now confess. I would have posted the April blocks but I have misplaced the snowlady I drew a month ago. I was going to be so organized and got the sketch finished so I could post on April 1st. Well, I have pulled so many files and papers in preparing for programs and such in recent weeks, that my sewing room is in a terrible state and I cannot find the stack that has the sketch in it. Yes, I am that messy that I have misplaced the sketch.
I think it's time for me to take a vacation. I haven't had one since a trip to San Diego in December of 2005. My trips to Iowa don't count as vacation. I'm talking about a spring getaway type trip. I imagine a warm climate. San Diego in fact, would be just right. There would be a trip to Rosie's Quilt Cupboard that would make me smile, then dinner at Casa de Pico or Casa Guadalajara in Bazaar del Mundo in Old Town San Diego. Then we could go to the beach and watch the sunset and delight in the fact that we didn't have to wear a winter coat. Sounds divine, but it's not gonna happen anytime soon.
I do need a break though, to get re-energized and bring some order to my sewing room so here's what I'm going to do............. I'm taking a break from blogging for the next five days. I'll be back on Monday. I'll have the blocks for April for you and will finally post the ornaments on my Christmas blog and will have news to add to the crazy quilting blog. Also, I mentioned earlier this week that I am going to be making some changes to my blogging and here are two............first one is that I'm going to take Sundays off from now on and not do any blogging at all. Several bloggers follow this path and I think it's a good idea. Second thing..........I had originally set the 1st Wednesday of the month for my Tea and Stitches post but last month and again this month, I want to do the tea just before the holiday in these months. So, from now on, the date will not be the first Wednesday of each month. Instead, I'll post the date for the next tea in the upper right corner of the Tea and Stitches blog. There are other changes coming, too, but that's enough for now.


Now before I take off for my Spring Break in Sewing Room, MN, I have to share the story behind the yo-yo cross you see in the picture. My mother, Mary, made it in September of 2007. My dad was in the Care Center and my mother was living in an apartment nearby. To cheer her up on her birthday, I asked as many of my quilting friends as I could think of to send her a card and include a fat quarter. Didn't have to be a new one, just one that she could use for hand-sewing blocks while she visited my dad. My friends came through big-time and sent cards and wrote notes and included multiple fat-quarters for her. She brought the cards to the Care Center to show to my dad and he thought it was so cool he was sure it should be written up in the local paper. There were all these cards from all over (some friends told their friends, etc. so some cards came from people I didn't even know) and it was a really neat thing. She decided she would make yo-yos from the fabrics but wasn't sure what she would do with the yo-yos once they were made. That was all in September. A little over one month later, my mother fell ill with complications from kidney stones and developed sepsis in her blood stream. The outlook was not good. My brother, sister and I spent long hours at the hospital while she was in intensive care. I brought my dad to visit her and it was so hard for him to see "Ma" so sick. I would stay the night at the hospital and my brother would come after he took his daughter to school and I would go to my mom's apartment to shower and then return to the hospital. I had Kaiser, our beagle, with me and my cousin, Faye, walked him when I was at the hospital.
On the fourth day that my mom was in intensive care, I was at her apartment and Kaiser was snooping around when he started chewing on something. I thought it was a bundle of fabric until I picked it up and saw that it was something made of yo-yos. Then I realized it was a cross. I took it with me to the hospital and I taped it to the wall at the foot of her bed where she could see it if she woke up. And after five long days, she began to respond with just the tiniest squeeze of her hand - hard to feel because she was retaining so much fluid - and eventually she got stronger she moved from ICU to a regular floor. She left the hospital after a couple of weeks and was transitioned for rehab to the Care Center where my dad was living. He was so glad to have her nearby. I learned that she had made the cross just shortly before she fell ill. It hangs now in her living room. There have been many ups and downs for her with her health in the last year and the passing of my dad last spring made it even a little harder. But this is a new spring and she's doing well and as you know, we get out and do some serious shopping and such when I visit her. :-) So where am I going with this.........well, I'm not sure, I just know I wanted to share the story. This is, for lack of a better word, a "tender time" for us because it was just a year ago about this time when my dad's health failed rapidly and he passed away. We all grieve in our own way but I think when this spring comes and we see the headstone and green grass and share more stories, it won't seem quite so sad. It's funny, though, because my mom said that sometimes she'll read something in the paper and think "oh, Melvin would like to read that" and then, of course, she stops herself and knows he's gone. I do the same thing, too. I thought I was crazy until someone on one of the Yahoo groups that I'm in said that they did the same thing. It takes time to heal. And so, I need some time right now, need to take a break. I'll see you on Monday and be fresh and ready to get back to blogging.
Thanks for listening.
Sandi

Spring Tulips are growing in my sewing room!

I must have a gazillion projects in progress but the comforting part is that I am never bored. This is a good thing because in this land of “winter that won’t end”, I always have something to do!! LOL!! Like today when I started a new project from a pattern I did a few years ago - the tulip penny rug in the picture. I wanted to test my directions so I was working through the project for my Wooly Buddies group.............and so............. I gathered up my supplies………

and after some serious indecision on what wool color to use for the scalloped background ...................... I finally ended up with the piece you see in the picture and it's all ready to stitch. :-) I am liking the colors I chose and will be using some new threads from TheGentleArt to do the embroidery on the penny rugs. I learned of their threads from Jacquelynne at theNobleWife and had to check them out. Their colors are gorgeous and I look forward to getting more colors for a lot more penny rugs that are on the drawing board.
Tulips will also show up in the Seasons of the Heart block for April and the Snowman block, too. As noted last night, I hope to have those available for you by the end of the week. I am a bit behind which is often the case for me because I get involved in so many things. But it's also because sometimes life things go on that don't need to be blogged about but are part of life. So sometimes the road is not always smooth but it makes the journey interesting. I am just glad to be blogging, to be able to stitch both projects and stitch together new friendships. My kids are doing well and so is my mom and I get to see my grandson more since we moved here. I am blessed. Thanks to all of you who seem to enjoy reading my blog.

It's that time......light's out!

See you tomorrow.
Sandi

Change is in the Wind!!

Looks like March will go out like a Lion here in Minnesota. The weatherman is predicting some more snow for us and could be a little windy!
So speaking of wind, there is "change in the wind" that will be coming to my blog. I have been working on some things that will make it easier to share the monthly block of the month designs and other needlework patterns that I love to design, plus some lovely vintage designs that are just waiting to "see the light of day". I will be working as fast as I can to set up this new process and should have it finished so that you can access any block all year long. More information will be available in the next few days and I expect to be able to post the April blocks by the end of the week. The easiest part of offering these free designs is the sketch and the finished block. The hard part is the technical side of loading it and offering it to all of you who want to do the BOM series. If all goes as planned this will work so much more efficiently and you will be assured of getting each month's block. Stay tuned plus, I will send an e-mail with the "change in the wind" info to everyone who has signed up to receive the "Seasons of the Heart" BOM patterns.
Thanks much......
Sandi

Gas Station Dolls!

I'm still on last weekend and the visit with my mom.......I always bring lots of bags with me full of projects and then I shop while I'm there so I end up with lots of bags to keep track of and at some point one of my bags from the thrift shop got tucked behind my suitcase. I discovered it late last Saturday night and here's what was in it........

Red Riding Hood!

Scarlett O'Hara!

and the Coronation Doll!!

I bought them for my mom and paid just $7.00 for all three of them. She has always loved dolls - so do I - and these were in such good condition that I knew she'd like them. When I took them out of the bag, she said "oh, those look like gas station dolls that you used to get when you'd fill your car with gas." All I remember getting with gas purchases was free glasses at Holiday and that was many years ago!! LOL! Anyway, I have a couple of these dolls from when I was a kid and they were old then and didn't have their original clothes so I made clothes for them. These dolls are in their original outfits complete with the staples that hold them in place. I'm guessing the Coronation Doll is in celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Red Riding Hood never looked so fine as she does in that red polka dot dress. The little doll is not the cutest but her dotted swiss dress just made me think of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind!! There are no markings on the dolls so I have no clue to their manufacture. They just called my name when I saw them on the shelf. ;-) That's the last of the items I found at the Country Peddlar Thrift Shop in Algona, Iowa.

I've been on the computer a lot today so time to close the door on it. Had lots of new members join my Wooly Buddies group. If you like working with wool or want to learn more about it, click on the Tulip Penny Rug on my sidebar and it will take you to the homepage for Wooly Buddies. It's a fun group!!

Back tomorrow night.....

Sandi

Let there be light!

Today was a much more productive day. After a good night's sleep, I definitely felt better and got several things done on my "to do" list for home. Then I ran errands in the afternoon and off to our crazy quilting meeting where we had a great time as we always do. More on that later. Have a couple more things to share related to my weekend in Iowa and Hobby Lobby.

Here's the scoop.....

My mom had these two cute little lamps that sit on each side of her bed. However they were always falling over at the slightest touch. So when we were at Hobby Lobby, I picked up two round wood bases for just $.99 each plus some paint and glue. I painted the bases with the metallic black paint (two coats) and let them dry overnight. Then.........

and I realize this picture is very dark......I glued the bases to the bottom of each lamp and poof!! no more tipsy lamps!! And the lamps even look better!!
We thought it looked so good that I just had to share our cleverness. LOL!!
Sandi