It's time to play Catch Up ! or is it Ketchup ?

ok... I've been awol long enough, and probably like you, can't believe how fast this summer has been flying by. I've been busy with the usual.... family ( a new grandson was added ! ☺ ) and the old one ( 6 ! ) was here for over a month ...having fun with Grandma and Grandpa...taking swimming lessons, sailing with Grandpa..... quilting..... the band..... So now, I intend to get back to blogging, and will share some pics about our adventures.

You may have heard in the news... we have still been having flooding in North Dakota... seems every year now there is a problem, and not only has it been affecting Fargo, ( not so much Grand Forks anymore, because after the 1997 flood, they fixed that ! ) but now Minot and Bismarck, Valley City, not to mention many smaller towns, and Devils Lake, which just keeps rising and when it gets much higher, will find it's own outlet and be disasterous for much of the state. Anyway... this leads into a little event that we put on, our Not so annual USFEST. We have had a couple in the past, up at our other Money Pit ( at my old hometown) where we are fixing up an old 1917 home ( more blogging material......) . Well, in June, we have our annual Missoui River Bluegrass Festival on, where else..... Cross Ranch State Park on the Missouri River. You know, the one Lewis and Clark and .......was it Sea Bisquit ? the dog..... anyway, we are a big Lewis and Clark state... I digress. Well, the Missouri River, being one of the new areas of the state to flood now, was just reaching it's crest when the fesitval was to take place, so therefore, the festival had to be canceled. Well... what to do ? So many of us had taken time off of work to attend, so we still wanted to get together, and started looking around for a centrally located campsite that had openings and would let us jam all nite long. Well, there wasn't too many campgrounds around that weren't flooded, and of course all of them have a noise curfew, so I offered up our little place to have it. We just happen to have put up some full service campsites up there a couple years ago to accommodate all the wind generator workers ( we are now in the middle of a wind farm..... more blogging material for later....) so we had the perfect set up. About the noise ordinance ? Well there isn't one. There are only about 24 people in town and 26 when I and the DH are up there, well, that is an estimate... but we did double the population and made some pretty darn good music ! It was a great time and I hope we can do it again sometime ! !

This is Mel from Canada. He plays some awesome mando, guitar and banjo ! And he has the nicest wife Sheila.

Here are some of my friends from around town. I think we made Bluegrass lovers out of them ! They're asking when the next USFEST will be......One of our small town sunsets...

kind of a dark picture, but here we are jammin' all night long ( gotta love a small town). We put up a canopy to keep the sprinkles out, and of course have to put up the icicle lights for ambiance !

John and Joe.... father and son banjo pickers ! Gotta have a bass player ! we were lucky and had 4 in attendance !

Here we are in the middle of a bluegrass song. I'm the one on the far left - kinda in the backround....to my left are Linda and Terry, members of our band, Spiritwood Creek. You can see the back of another member, Carrie, she's the blonde with the teal dress on... check out the next picture....

Carrie modeling an old dress we found in the house ( it was my parent's home ).. I think it may be my Grandma Johnson's... and is probably from the '40's or 50's. Let me tell you, it is in awesome condition and the style is really cute.. it could be worn to any formal function today and still look in style. I only wish it fit me ! Picture taken inside the house. I am not too attached to the paint color, so it won't be there much longer. The stairway will, however !

ok... that is enough for now... if you have time, do an internet search on the Minot flood, it is just devastating. Minot hometown boy Josh Duhamel ( Vegas, the Transformer movies ) is hosting a benefit there in Sept. It is a Black-eyed Peas concert- he is married to Fergie . Hope it raises LOTS of money for the flood victims !

well... I am off to a Bluegrass festival in Minnesota ( more blogging material ) this weekend.... don't you think that this is all I did this summer.... I had already quilted more quilts by May of this year than I did all of last year ...... and of course, that is more blogging material, yet to come !

have a great weekend everyone !

Well, I finally did it. . .

I checked off one more thing on my very own "bucket list". . . I designed a pattern ! I will post some pictures below. It was really fun to design, and since I use AutoCad in my real life job, it made writing the pattern fun, and easy to sketch with.

So, here is the pattern. . .

And here is another picture of the quilt. . it is made with a panel, 2 charm square packs and yardage. If you look closely, there are a couple pictures of outhouses in the quilt. . . I have a fondness for outhouses. . . so in the next picture, you can see my quilt label, which is an outhouse, and, yes the door has a little handle and opens ! and inside is my label. I also digitized the outhouse border quilting. That was also a line item on my "bucket list"- to digitize a quilting pattern. Thanks to my Statler Sibling Janice B. for some technical help on getting that to work, and it sewed out beautifully.

So. . . easy quilt, easy pattern, but it sure feels good to have accomplished a couple of my bucket list items !

Now. . . I need to kick it into gear this afternoon and pack. . . the band and I are heading out to Medora, ND for a gig. . . .. Bluegrass and Ribs. . .. Spiritwood Creek Bluegrass Band is heading WEST ! sounds like it might create something to blog about next time !

Hi. .

I thought I would take a little time out from the LIST ( my quilting list. . . only 5 more customer quilts/runners to do before Christmas, and barring any catastrophe, I do believe I will be done by the middle of this week with them all ! ) to post. I saw this tree skirt pattern in a magazine- and it was so nice to find one that I actually felt like making ! - and thought it was so cute. I made this for my DIL for her birthday. Sure hope she likes it. She has her whole house decorated PRIM, and boy, let me tell you, it could sure be on a tour of homes ! So, that is why I used the muted prim colors in this tree skirt. Now, I never can stand to make the same thing twice, if I do it is under great duress. .. . . but I really like this pattern and I think I might need one of these one day too. I had better mark that magazine and put it in a safe place. I am not up to making it this year, but I think it will go on my WISP list.

I quilted it using Nested Hearts, and am really happy with the way it turned out.

In other news, it has been bitterly cold up here in North Dakota ( like below ZERO), and just a couple weeks ago it was up in the 50's . I did not get my outside lights up yet - I hope to be able to motivate to get something up outside this weekend. Of course that all depends on how much quilting I can get done this weekend too !

Mr. Stitches has been good about keeping the wood stocked for the fire in the fireplace, and cooking the occasional suppper ( ok, he has been making most of the suppers around here , however I do have them organized so he knows what to make. . .) so I can quilt in the evenings, and go to practices and gigs with the band. We have been doing a few Christmas gigs lately, and let me tell you. . .. all those Christmas songs you THINK you know ? well just try putting chords to them and playing them right and singing ALL the words right. . . and figuring out which Christmas songs you can bluegrass up. . . . well. . . it just isn't so easy ! But it has been fun, and exhausting ! Soon enough we will be back to the usual bluegrass songs that we play all the rest of the year.

Ok. . . I have another couple table runners to quilt out tonite. . .

will try and post more later. I have some really cute quilty items to show you all !

I hope you are all taking time out to enjoy the season !

Will Quilt for Musical Instruments

Or so it seems !

I recently received a mystery package in the mail . . . . quite an oddly shaped package, lots of brown wrapping paper, lots and lots of tape. . .lots of work to UNwrap it. . . . . . . .

It came from my friend Jenny in Arizona. Pretty creative use of boxes there Jenny, how many boxes and rolls of tape did it take to wrap this up ?

Underneath all the paper and boxes were a bolt of fabric and a canvas case . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

And inside the case was a beautiful log cabin quilt top and wrapped inside the quilt top, was a beautiful Mountain Dulcimer !

What a fun package to receive in the mail and open !

I am excited to quilt up your quilt for you Jenny, and hope you will be as happy with the results as I am with the dulcimer ! and. . . Jenny said to use the BOLT of fabric for the back, and donate the REMAINDER to Quilts of Valor ! Thank You Jenny ! That fabric should make several backs for Quilts of Valor quilts ! What a generous donation !

By the way, did you all know that MAY is BLUEGRASS MONTH ?

It's Virtual QUILT FESTIVAL Time !

TURN UP THE MUSIC !


Here is my entry into the QUILT FESTIVAL. The name of the quilt is Bluegrass Stars. It was designed and pieced by Barb in Bismarck, and quilted by me. This quilt will be raffled off to raise funds for the B.A.N.D. (Bluegrass Association of North Dakota) . The funds will be used to help promote Bluegrass music in the state with jams, festivals, concerts and classes.























Next is a close -up of the quilt and the last picture is of the quilt back. Bluegrass instruments featured on the quilt are guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, dobro and bass. My apologies to any bluegrass instruments not represented on the quilt. . . we love you too ! For more information on North Dakota Bluegrass check out the North Dakota Bluegrass Forum . For information on tickets for the Bluegrass Stars quilt, contact me.

To see more quilts in the QUILT FESTIVAL, click on the link to the left. . . enjoy !

On the Road AGAIN !

Well I've been busy this week not only with my real world job, but with customer quilts, so I can take off this weekend for our annual WINTER BLUEGRASS weekend in Minnesota ! Time to pack up the ol' instruments and head on over for 3 days of bands, jammin' and sleepless nites ( cause we are up jammin' for most of the nite ! ) We can usually count on a storm, as past history has proven for bad weather and icy roads. . . so we will pack our winter survival gear and take it easy, but we are going ! Here is a picture of a couple of us jammin' away. . . I hope to return with some more pictures from this weekend, and will clean some quilt pictures out of the camera too. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to convince the rest of the gang to stop at any quilt stores along the way. . . and there are some really NICE ones too ! . . so that will probably cause me to go into withdrawals. . . I will have to take some quilt magazines along for the ride I guess ! See ya Monday !

We All Have Our Hobbies. . .

You pretty much know most of my hobbies, quilting, bluegrass music, reading, gardening, etc, etc. . .and the DH has his also! One of which is classic cars. Driving his '55 Ford, fixing it, planning the redo of his '51 panel van, getting parts for the '51, going to car shows, looking at others' cars, getting parts for the '51, helping with his car club, did I mention getting parts for his '51 ? Oh yes, and building a shop to work on his '51.

This weekend is their annual Winter Wheels Car Show. The car club members put in so much work for this show and it is always a success. It is always the same weekend in January, which is taking quite a chance with this North Dakota weather, but we have found that if it is nice, we get alot of people not only from town, but also from out of town and if the weather is bad, we may not get the extra people from out of town, but we sure do get more local people. I guess people want to just be able to get out ! You know there is a bit of a thrill to be able to get out and about in a blizzard. It isn't a very safe thing to do out in the country, but in town we sure do ( until we get stuck in a snowfilled street) !

Here is a few of us girls' contribution to the Winter Wheels Raffle. I found these classic and antique car fabrics on ebay, we first fussy cut them and we tried to focus on a different car in each block and sewed them up in a simple quilt pattern. Then I quilted it using an all-over antique car pattern. If you click on the picture you can almost see the car pattern in the stitching. The fabric is a bit too busy to see it well in the picture though.

I think it would look pretty good in my DH's classic car, or even on my couch. . . I think I might have to buy a few tickets !

One Project A Month Challenge

Ok. . . I'm going out on a limb now. . . and joining the One Project a Month Challenge. Sounds like just the motivation I need! If you are interested, head over to http://www.abyquilt.bogspot.com/ to check it out. Now for my first step in that direction. . . I need to figure out what January's project will be !

I have also been enjoying all the interesting comments from all the entries in our current contest below. Thanks to all who have entered! I hope to soon start entering everybody else's giveaway, really look forward to checking out all the blogs !

Here's hoping everyone is having a great start to their New Years. So far in 2009 I have participated in 2 bluegrass jams. . . that is doing pretty good for the first 3 days of the year !