Ella Makes Her First Quilt

After spending a wonderful Thanksgiving day in Gorham, I returned today to do some sewing with Ella.  Aunt Paula worked with her this morning, teaching her how to use the sewing machine and I took over when I arrived around 11:00.  

First off, Ella selected her fabrics from my stash of "leftovers" from my previous projects.  She selected quite a nice assortment, then proceeded to iron each piece.  It was much easier once we lowered the board.

She laid the pieces out on the floor in the order she wanted and then proceeded stitching them together.

This is the first two pieces going together with great concentration.  The white with pink swirls was used in the border of her pink polka dot quilt.

She's sewing it to a fabric that was used in one of the monkey quilts; I can't remember if it was hers or her dad's.  There are several strips of Olaf fabrics, used in her Olaf quilt.

We took turns, sewing and ironing throughout the afternoon.  She was very attentive when sewing the final strips together.

Ta Da!

The size was determined by the smallest strip, which was one of the Olaf fabrics and it's not quite large enough to use as a quilt, so Aunt Paula spent tomorrow helping her add a couple of 4" borders and completing the binding.

It was a group project, made with lots of love.  

Well done, Ella! and thanks to Aunt Paula for all her help!  Hopefully, it will be the first of many sewing/quilting projects for Ella ;o)

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;o)

Happy Birthday USA

Celebrate Freedom!

This is the only patriotic "quilt" I have made and technically, I made it for Bill several years ago.  I'm not that happy with it and vow to make another one...some day.

AND, I didn't get it hung up till the 5th.  No worries, I celebrate the holiday, any holiday, all month long.

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;o)

A day full of exercise

What a long night it was.  We stopped late yesterday afternoon for a Dunkin Donuts coffee and specifically requested DECAF.  Well, apparently, decaf it was NOT.  I was up reading a quilting magazine until after 0130.  Don't get me wrong, I bought extra magazines for the ride down and didn't read all of them, so it was nice to be looking at all the pretty things, but not at that hour.  Mr. Bill said he had trouble sleeping, as well.  That will teach us. 

We did not exercise yesterday but we made up for it today.  We started with a trip to the shelter and walked several dogs each.  We even stopped in to visit with the cats before we left.  You can check out their website here if you want to know more about where we spend some of our time and the animals we are enjoying. 


After an exciting lunch of salad, again, we spent some time at the gym.  Mr. Bill decided we should walk extra long today to make up for not walking yesterday.  Whatever...  We parked at Fishermen's Village and walked along the nice path along the river (and under the bridges) to Laishey Park on the other side and we just kept walking.  By the time we returned to FV Bill had walked for one hour and 35 minutes.  I admit I took a small (20 min.) break and waited for him on one of the piers, sitting and soaking up the sun.  I saw more than one fish jumping out of the water.  Pretty cool. 

Bill is on a mission to lose 20 pounds before we return home.  I'm thinking that his real plan is to lose about 120 +/- pounds by exercising me to death and going home alone.  ;o)

Since we started the South Beach Diet again I am feeling a lot like my sister-in-law, Paula.  She is a wonderful cook (that's not the part I feel like) and I love eating everything she makes.  I'm reminded of her because she no sooner finishes one meal and she is thinking about what to have for the next meal.  That's exactly what I've been doing!  No sooner do we finish lunch than I'm talking about "what's for dinner".   We finish dinner and I'm wondering what we should have for dinner tomorrow.  One of the SBD recipes is Pesto Broiled Tomatoes.  Yum, they are so good we had them again tonight except I added fat free mozzarella on top.

We got to Skype with Greg and Ella tonight.  It's so much fun to see them and Ella just talks up a storm.  She kept saying "Papa Bill come back" every time he went to check dinner.  I love it!  

Greg had a question about the camera that Bill bought yesterday.  The answer is...the camera came with an EF-S 18-55 IS lens and the zoom lens is an EFS 55-250 mm with image stabilizer.  He took it along today when we checked on the eagles.

Wendy asked if we had any big plans for the rest of the week.  The answer is...no, not really.   We seem to spend a lot of time shopping (Walmart, K-mart, Lowe's, Home Depot, grocery store, Goodwill) and will continue to go to the shelter and continue to exercise.  Maybe we will check the map again and find somewhere to explore.

Oh yeah, this is for my quilty friends.  I'm working on sewing the end triangles on the blooming 9-patch which is set out in the spare room.  It's the only way I can keep the strips in order.  

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;o)