Last Monday night, we had chicken tortilla
soup from Schwan’s for supper. Mmmm, yummy! That’s good (and hot!) stuff.
We had Scoops corn chips and Salsa con Queso cheese dip (in lieu of
crackers) to go with it. And there was cinnamon applesauce for
dessert. 😋
Tuesday afternoon, I took a couple of boxes
full of gifts to the post office for those of our children who live a long
distance away. As I drove toward town, a hawk soared low over the highway and landed
on a tall light post just as I drove underneath.
I dropped off a bag of Stuff & Things at
the Goodwill, and then took Jonathan (Jeremy and Lydia’s little boy) a birthday
gift. He was six years old that day.
We gave him some pajamas with a
glow-in-the-dark space shuttle on the front, and a game that works somewhat similar
to the classic Battleship game. Every
time he has seen me since then, he has told me how he likes that game and asked
me to come play it with him. I have
promised to play it, the very next time I am there. 😊
Late that night, I finished putting the seventh (and
last) border on the Atlantic Beach Path quilt. It was ready to be
quilted. This final border is the fabric
I used for a good many of the kaleidoscopes. The rest were cut from the
Beach Path panels. I will attach the 3D hexagons and all the rest of the
embellishments (pearls on the tucked borders at the twist, and hexagon-shaped
Swarovski crystals in the middle of the 3D hexies) after the quilting is
complete. The quilt now measures 123” x 124”.
Many
times when I post pictures of a partial view of a quilt, I get requests from
other quilters to show the whole thing.
Most ask quite nicely, but every now and then someone demands imperiously, “You
need to show us the whole thing!” ---- right whilst it’s on the quilting frame,
somewhere in the middle of the job. 🙄
On that Tuesday, my back deck, which is the
only good place around here that’s big enough to take pictures of quilts this
size, was covered with several inches of snow. Furthermore, it was melting
snow.
With
those facts as background, you’ll understand why I laughed when I got the
following note from a good friend:
“The
borders look fabulous, but I want to see a picture of the whole thing!
Since it is only about as big as a football field, I don’t see why you couldn’t
hold it up with one hand and get a picture with the other hand.” hee hee
A quilting friend
sent me the following:
In My Sewing Room
Thou Shalt Not...
...ask when it will
be finished
...cut anything with
my fabric scissors
...request that I hem
your pants
...speak to me when I
have seam ripper in hand
...tell me I have too
much fabric
...push buttons on my
sewing machine
...bring me your
clothes to iron
...pull on any loose
threads
...wonder aloud why
I’m still in my pajamas
...come looking for
food—this is not the kitchen
‘Thou shalt not speak to me when I have seam
ripper in hand’ made me laugh. However...
I have pleasant memories of Caleb, frantically getting ready for his date (or
Wednesday evening church service – which was also a date, come to think of it,
as he picked up Maria on his way to town, and they went to church together)
after getting home late from work, asking me (with lots of preemptive ‘pleases’
and ‘thank-yous’) to iron his shirt. I
was usually in my sewing room, right beside the downstairs bathroom. I’d time it to finish the ironing job just
about the time he needed it, gauging the time by the sound of the shower.
He’d stick his hand
out the door, and I’d hang the still-warm shirt on it. He’d put it on and say “AAhhhh... nothing
feels better than a freshly-ironed shirt!” 😍 One could never begrudge
ironing shirts for Caleb.
Larry often comes up
to my quilting studio (upstairs, nowadays) when he gets home from work, asking,
“What’s for supper?” So I hold up
whatever it is I’m working on at the moment, gaze at it admiringly, and say, “Why,
thank you! I think so, too.” Makes him laugh, every time.
As for the other items on the list... Not
very many quilters would think I have too much fabric. And the only time I don’t take a bath, wash
my hair, get dressed, and curl my hair, every day without fail, is if I’m
deathly ill. I am very rarely deathly ill.
Somebody
asked me what the name of that fabric is that I pleated for border #4. I looked at the selvedge and discovered it’s
called ‘Sand in My Shoes’, ©McKenna Ryan, for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. ‘Sand in My Shoes.’ The fabric is even more appropriate than I thought!
Wednesday was a much warmer day, after many
very cold ones. It got all the way up to 45°. I could’ve loaded the quilt on the frame –
but I didn’t have backing or the wool batting.
Since Larry had a Thursday
appointment with his dentist in Lincoln, he said we would go to Country
Traditions in Fremont for backing and batting after his first appointment at 9:30
a.m.
The dentist had told him
last month that they would remake his temporary dentures, so that when he gets
his permanent dentures in January and these become his
backups, they will fit as well as possible. We would have 4 ½ hours to kill between 9:30
a.m. and the next appointment at 2:00 p.m.
So, instead of working on
the quilt Wednesday, I scanned more old pictures in one of my many albums.
Here we are at the Norris Geyser Basin Visitor’s Center, August 20, 1994: Teddy, Keith holding Lydia, Larry holding
Caleb, Hannah, Joseph, Dorcas, and Hester.
Thursday morning, we
headed out of town a little after 7:00 a.m.
The sun wasn’t up yet, and the sky was a brilliant red, orange, and
yellow as we crossed the Platte River bridge.
As it turned out, Larry’s dentures fit
well enough that they decided not to do the total remake on these temporary
dentures until next month, when they’ll redo the temporaries and make the
permanent dentures at the same time.
We stopped at Country
Traditions in Fremont on our way home, and I got the backing and batting for
the quilt. The saleslady asked if I had the 40% coupon that had been in
their newsletter, but I hadn’t even noticed a coupon. So she told
us she would keep my fabric (11 yards) and batting (king-sized Quilters’ Dream
wool) behind the counter, and we could scurry over to the public library, pull
the newsletter up on my laptop, tablet, or phone, print the coupon, and bring
it back to the store. They require the actual piece of paper, as there’s
no bar code on the coupon.
Better believe we were willing to pop right
over to the library and pay 50¢ for a coupon printout in order to save
$57.16! The people at Country Traditions are so nice to me.
The backing would take three 132” lengths of
this 42”-wide fabric – even if there had’ve been any 108”-wide fabric
that I liked as well [there wasn’t], it would’ve taken 7 ½ yards, cost more,
and there would’ve been a lot more left over.
By 8:00 p.m., I had the backing cut, sewn together,
ironed, and ready to load on my frame. Supper
first, though! And after supper, having
gotten up at 5:00 a.m. that morning, I was too, too sleepy to do anything in my
quilting studio.
I spent Friday loading the backing on the
quilting frame and piecing together one piece after another of 80/20
(cotton/poly) batting until it was big enough (or so I thought). I loaded it on the frame... then the
Quilters’ Dream Wool... got it all smoothed down just right... spread out the
quilt top in preparation to loading it next – and realized that the batting
wasn’t big enough. Neither piece
of batting was big enough, even though they were king-sized.
But... it was late. I smoothed everything out, made sure no cats
were cuddled up in the batting, and went to bed.
At noon Saturday, we had a big dinner at Jeremy and Lydia’s
house. Most of our children and their
families, and Loren and Norma, too, were there.
We had ham, sweet potatoes with walnuts in a crunchy sweet topping,
chef salad, juice, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, orange fluff,
grapes, oranges, and all sorts of cookies.
Our contribution was two trays of fresh vegetables and dip and two trays
of fresh fruit and dip.
Some members of the family were sick and couldn’t come; some were just
recovering after being sick earlier in the week, and some would be sick the
very next day.
When we got home, I loaded the Atlantic Beach Path quilt on my frame. It’s bigger than I thought – it’s 123” x 124”.
I had to add a 10” strip of batting to both
the king-sized Quilters’ Dream wool and the cotton/poly battings. Fortunately, I had some wool batting left
over from another quilt. I should’ve
counted how many pieces of 80/20 cotton/poly batting I put together; there were
a lot. I used up one giant bag full of batting leftovers.
Teensy is
sitting there innocently pretending he’s not paying any attention to what I’m
doing, and certainly not planning anything I might disagree with, such as
clambering into the batting that’s hanging onto the floor and making himself
comfortable.
The two
layers of batting are to make the quilting really show up well. 80/20 goes on
the bottom, because it works well as a stabilizer. Wool goes on top, because it
has a good deal of loft, and will emphasize the quilting. Wool is ‘indiscriminate’
– that is, it will ‘poof’ the quilting on both front and back. However, with
the 80/20 under it, the ‘poof’ will particularly show on top.
Sunday morning after the
service, Larry and I sorted our Christmas cards into the paper bags labeled and
set up on tables in the Fellowship Hall. I discovered two of the newlyweds had not been
added to my address book, so when we got home, I added them in and addressed
Christmas cards for them. We took them last
night.
All afternoon yesterday,
Larry had a venison roast smoking in the Traeger grill. We had a few bites before heading to church
for our Christmas program, and it was soooo good.
Lydia, Jacob, and Jonathan
were sick and unable to be in the program (Lydia would have played her violin
with the strings). Poor kids! It’s always so disappointing to get sick and
miss the Christmas program.
I almost missed once, when I had the
measles... and I was supposed to do the entire Scripture reading!
I recovered in the nick of time, but I sure
felt bad up until I knew I could make it. I was 11. My voice was weaker than usual, and we had no
mic system. But I gave it all I had, and
people said they were able to hear me all right. By the end of the program, though, my throat
was so tight with the effort, I could hardly swallow.
We came home last night with
a large sack of cards to look through, the great majority having
children’s and family pictures in them. I love getting pictures. Some of my friends broke the ‘no present’
almost-sorta-kinda rule; there were wrapped gifts in our bag.
We had a late-night snack of
venison off the Traeger grill, fresh vegetables (broccoli, carrots, cherry
tomatoes) and dip, and fresh fruit (fresh-cut pineapple, apples, grapes,
mangoes, and honeydew), with Tropicana orange juice, and a candy bar for
dessert. The church hands out a bag of nuts, candy, apples, and oranges to each
person who attends the Christmas program.
One of my friends gave me a complete copy of
all of our Christmas poetry from years gone by!
You can’t imagine how totally delighted I am. My book of poetry, including many poems by my
sister Lura Kay, my friend Penny Golden, and several that I had written, was
given to someone back when I stopped being the pianist and my niece Susan took
on the job. It was an accidental
parting; I hadn’t intended to get rid of it!
Years before, I had typed up all those poems uniformly,
in the same format. Before, we had them done on a variety of bad
typewriters with dilapidated ribbons, and copied on poor Xerox machines with
dry inkwells. Even the pages weren’t all
the same size.
I think I typed them all on my very first
computer, but I could be wrong. Actually, it’s more likely I typed them
on the Word Processor I had before the computer. If on the computer, they
were lost when that old relic bit the dust. I made the purple-mohawked
gink at Radio Shack promise he wouldn’t reformat that computer when I took it
in for service, because I didn’t want to lose what I had on the hard
drive.
He promised.
And then he reformatted.
The thing I most regretted losing was a
little video clip of Victoria opening presents on her second birthday, holding
up a new dress in front of her, a balloon in her mouth – she was trying to blow
it up without holding onto it, and it was flapping about like an extra-long
tongue. Then she lost it entirely as it
went shooting out of her mouth, and somewhere off-camera Caleb could be heard
laughing.
This Kimball grand piano in Lydia's great room is the one my father got for me when I was 13 years old -- on the very day Jacksons came to town.
And now, I have a handful of gifts to wrap
(people gave me gifts, and I didn’t give them much of anything in return!), and
several thank-you notes to write.
Then... I shall start quilting the Atlantic
Beach Path quilt!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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