Early Christmas

We had a wonderful weekend with our son Dave and his wife Emily. We went to their home and enjoyed a soak in their new hot tub, which they got just in time for our old age! It is so relaxing. My brother Pat and his wife Alice live only a few blocks away, and they came over to join us. One of these days, we will have one of those lovely spa tubs at our mountain home. The huge snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast on Friday missed our area by only a few miles. We got a trace of snow on the deck, but the rest was rain. But it was still pretty cold, and that tub felt great!

Emily and Dave are hosting her entire family for Christmas, and we will be joining them for Christmas Eve, but we decided to share our Christmas gifts with each other this weekend. These lovely Victorian-style patchwork ornaments were a gift from Emily, made by her mother. I love them!

I finished the satin pillow that I started a long time ago to give it to Emily for Christmas. The white satin is left over from their wedding quilt. I just quilted feathers and flowers all over, but added a border of mixed horizontal and vertical lines. It will go on the leather chaise lounge in their bedroom.

I was very surprised to receive my gift from my hubby while we were there...a Nintendo Wii! He said I had asked for it last Christmas, which I don't recall. I was just thinking how happy our grandkids will be that we have a Wii they can play with...when I opened the accompanying gift from Dave and Em, the Wii Fitness Plus. This has all kinds of games for balance, strength, flexibility, and aerobics. The four of us played Bowling Saturday night, which was lots of fun. When we got home, I fooled around with the program and tried some of the fitness exercises. When you start out, it measures your BMI and compares it to your age, and then you do a balance test. I did not catch on to how to perform the balance exercises. My Wii Fitness Age is 70! Since I am 59, I was not too happy about that! Charlie, who is 60, had a fitness age of 55. I will have to try that balance test again.

This is going to be a fun way to work out without using the same exercise videos I have gotten kind of sick of doing. I sampled the yoga (at one point called YOGO in the instruction manual), hula hoop, step aerobics, and strength exercises.

My five-year old grandson is an expert on his dad's Ipod, clicking away with his little thumbs on video games, and instinctively knowing what to do despite the inability to read the messages. He can even download new apps on his own. Maybe he can teach me to do some of these Wii exercises!

To end on a quilty note, here is my little three-year old granddaughter, Lily, at our house a couple weeks ago. Do you think I have a future quilter in the family?

Wednesday Works-in-Progress: Satin Pillow top and some Needle-Felting

First up for Work-in-Progress Wednesday: a quilted satin pillow top for a baby pillow. I started this a long time ago with some leftover satin from my White Wedding Quilt. I ran into a little bit of bad tension (railroad tracks) and put it aside to do some frogging (rip-it, rip-it!) That finally happened while I was sitting around and the Dish Network satellite guy was here...or was it one of the Time-Warner Internet guys...we have had lots of service workers here in the past month! Including the HVAC guys yesterday who finally fixed our upstairs air conditioning system. Oh, I slept so good last night!

For this little pillow, I stitched a border area...no measuring, that's just not me- LOL! I did some "piano key" borders with my magnetic lock on the Gammill, but forgot which way I was going when I rolled down. Anyway, that became a design element, so some of the stitching is vertical and some is horizontal. I promise I don't drink Margaritas before using the long-arm!

The center is just playing around with free-motion stitching.

Yesterday I finally got a call that my Bernina is ready to pick up at the shop, so maybe I can get some of my quilt backings and this pillow put together.

Since I am doing a demo with my Babylock Embellisher on Thursday night, I have been putting together some little pieces of fiber samples. Here are a few bookmarks, with ribbons and Angelina, beads and ribbons.

Some silk and Angelina on batting...

and on dark cotton (there is a piece of painted muslin in thecenter under the silk)

some silk fibers and Angelina on a piece of dyed Dupioni silk, which I found out bleeds terribly!

I did not know this fabric would bleed so bad. I bought a pack of mixed colors of the Dupioni silk at a quilt show in Illinois years ago, and have been hoarding it and using it sparingly in projects. When I did the one above, I wet the piece after needle-felting, and that's when my bathroom sink turned purple. This will probably be used for fabric postcards.

One last bit of WIP news about my Oriental wholecloth quilt: I decided I had done all I could with the piece as is, but it still needed something. I hit on the idea of making it the view out of a Japanese window. That would require some kind of borders. So I did a little research on Japanese architecture, and found out that the name Zen Garden would be incorrect for this quilt. Zen Gardens do not have water features, just stones, plants, and raked gravel. The gardens represent landscapes such as mountains. But Zen Gardens are not the ones with the bridges over ponds. So, that WIP will get a new, more accurate name.

I am off to weed some flower beds before it gets too hot, and then to drive to Raleigh again to pick up my beloved Bernina!