Not MY Quilt

I thought I'd share a quilt today that is mine in the fact that it lives at my house; but not mine in the fact that I didn't make it. Most people probably don't have to clarify that but since I don't own a handful of quilts I haven't made, I thought I would. LoL!!!

Whilst I was pregnant with Jeremiah I felt like I went into labor several times the last couple weeks before he was born. One of the times my Mom, who loves me just that much, decided when would really help me would be to go walk around all the antique stores in downtown Clinton (where I live). There's only about 20 of them. : ) It was only July. I was only a wildebeast. Or at the very least, a walrus.

Anyway, the trip paid off because we found this wonderful, beautiful, soft, old baby quilt. I am no quilt historian so if anyone knows better, please correct me! I believe the fabrics to be from the mid-late 50's. They look like fabrics my great grandmother had in her stash for making jammies for her first round of grandkids thereabouts.

It was such a find, I think Mom paid $25 for it. It was/is in really good condition! No holes, rips, popped seams. It is backed with a solid yellow loudness and hand quilted outlining the strips of fabrics. My children LOVE this quilt! It is so soft and very lightweight but still warm. I can lay it over them and they will actually leave it on...for a while. Horrid cover-kicker-offers, both of them.

I have been up to sewing things but of a baggy nature instead of a quilty nature. When I get batting this weekend, though, look out!

A Handy Green Purse

Today I am worn out. I am sitting in the recliner with bleary eyes, knitting a little on my sock. I am halfway done with the heel, meaning I am about 33% done with this pair LoL!

We attended church this morning and then drove around and around peaking at houses. We've been going around looking at houses we've found online and scoping them out, before calling our realtor to actually show us one. To date we hadn't come across any we actually wanted to see the inside of. The first house we visited today was a million miles out in the country. We got no cell phone reception (meaning we'd have to pay for a landline). The driveway was a hazard, you had to pull forward past it and then back in, around a hairpin curve. The house was dark brown wood everywhere and had little bity outbuildings littered throughout the grounds and a dilapidated barn. When you walked closer to the house it smelled like mold. When you looked in windows you could see mold on walls, floors, ceilings... so. Bad house. We drove away, quickly.

The second house was not so bad. It too had a barn. It wasn't as far out in the country. We got cell phone reception. It had a nice property though it needed a bushhog taken to it. The house nees a little work from what we can see but nothing totally major. It is a possibility, especially since the price is nice!

The third house is gorgeous. I love it. Tony loves it. Jeremiah loves it! It is the biggest house we've looked at by 200sq ft; and though it is at the top of our price range it needs the least done to it. We could move in as it is. It is beautiful! We called our realtor and she called the listing agent...and didn't hear back from her. Sigh. She (our realtor) said she'd keep on her and call us as soon as she is able to talk to a human and perhaps we can go see it tomorrow when Tony gets done with physical therapy. I am praying already. If this is the house for us, I pray things will progress quickly and smoothly. If this is NOT the house for us I pray things won't progress at all and we will know quickly, so as not to spend time on this to be disappointed later.

On to the handy purse... Tony has been having to have physical therapy for his hand. He crushed/smacked it against a dye at work some months back and it caused a lot of scar tissue between his knuckles making his hand hurt him badly all the time and also have almost no mobility. The woman who does his physical therapy has been being very helpful and nice, even to Jeremiah who had to go with him last week while I had a Drs appointment. Her favorite color is green. Tony asked if I could make her a "little" green purse with a hand on it, because she's into hands (since that's kind of her trade.) I thought I had til Wednesday but nope, his appointment is in the morning so this afternoon I "threw" together this bag. It measures 9"x9.5". Jeremiah and Hannah's handprints are on one side, mine on the other with antique button fingernails. Pretty cute I think! I hope she likes it!

World Wide Knit in Public Day!

Today was WWKIPD... they even had a website http://www.wwkipday.com/. Mom put up fliers all over Clinton (where I live) last Wed so today they showed up at my house--by "they" I mean Mom and all the kids-- at 10 til 10am to go downtown and sit and knit. In public. We had 1 woman and her granddaughter stop. The woman said her granddaughter knits and likes to, but didn't know we were doing this so away they went to browse antiques. We had 5 or so old men stop and sit in the gazebo with us, probably killing time while their wives browsed antiques. So not a huge social success but we got some knitting done. Mom worked on some knitting bombs, which will porbably show up on her blog, Veronica worked on a scarf, Josiah started to knit something then decided to goof off (8yr old boy) and I began working on the second pair of socks I had planned from the Wabi Sabi yarn Mom stuck in my stocking back at Christmas.

I decided to do with abhorant crochet chain cast on toe-up nonesense that let me short row the toe like a heel. I have a limited amount of the Wabi-sabi and am using a solid for the toes and heels so I needed to knit the socks from the toe up. That way once I do the heel I can just knit til I run out of yarn!

Sometimes the Lord knows you will have a need and provides for it before it arises. Then when suddenly you have the answer you need, you are very pleasantly surprised! I have been stewing about what to back my friend's log cabin quilt with. I cannot afford to go buy any backing fabric and the largest piece of fabric I have that would work is a yard. Not big enough by far! I figured I would have to piece backing from random pieces giving it a sort of patchworky look.

This afternoon I sat down cut all the rest of the strips I used for the log cabin blocks in to approx. 7" long pieces. Then I randomly sewed them all together. Ironed the long strip to find that it was long enough, even with about 8" extra! Suddenly I remembered months ago Mom gave me saome chicken fabric she came across in a bin and didn't know what to do with. I think it's a whole bolt, without the carboard! I cut the length I needed, sliced a 12" strip off it length wise and sewed my strip set in place! I now have the perfect, one of a kind backing for my quilt! And Jesus provided the fabric months ago, before I ever knew what to do with it!! Awesome!

Smoky Mountain Honeymoon

This quilt has not been a test of my skill, but of my endurance! I kept thinking "guerrilla warfare"! Everything about this quilt went together "wrong" but it is beautiful now, and lays flat, and is lovely and I love it. I think it is just perfect for my friend for whom it is intended!

I had to take in the center of it to fit the red borders on, then made the HST borders and had to trim the red borders so the HSTs would fit! Then I decided on a very thin (1" finished) green border using the same fabric I intend to use for the binding. I thought it would be neat to miter the borders 'cause the fabric is striped but I don't know how to do that! So I decided to wing it. It worked really well, only I could have saved myself the trouble because with the borders being so thin it really doesn't have that cool mitered effect. Oh well, I love it anyway! It measures 46.5"x57". I am going to piece the backing too since I don't have anything big enough to use. I have an idea for it already but this will have to wait at least until tomorrow.

Yesterday morning my first thought upon waking was that one of total serendipity! I chose the log cabin pattern and the colors/fabrics before I talked to my friend, who called during her honeymoon. She said they were honeymooning in North Carolina, tucked back in the Smoky's in a log cabin! I realized yesterday that the quilt is the colors we have here in the woods of the Smoky mountains and that the log cabin block went right along with her honeymoon so now I have a name for her quilt: Smoky Mountain Honeymoon.

What to do?

I finally finished the yarn I'd been working on. It was the red, black and white corriedale wool that I spun and today plied with solid black black merino. Watching the two yarns twist together was amazing, the merino is so silky and sleek; it looked like wrapping a hair beast (the corrie) with a black velvet ribbon. Beautiful. I somehow (??) ended up with 154yds of this worsted-to-bulky weight 2ply. What, oh what am I going to do with it? It's too cool to knit something to felt. I should knit something for myself since it is my signature colors. I already have a shrug, a hat, scarf, mittens...hmm....

I finished the last 2 log cabin blocks I need for my friend's wedding quilt. For some reason they were an odd size, 11.5" unfinished. I had a major glitch and squared the first one to 11" unfinished which means the outter round of "logs" on each block is thinner than the other logs. And then to add more insult to quilting injury I sewed the top together, cut my strips for the first inner border and I'll be darned if the quilt wasn't a 1/2" longer than the strips were long!! I stewed about this all day and came up with duh, take all the row-seams in 1/8th". Tada!! No. Still too short. So I did what anyone else would do and added a piece to the borders. Then sewed the borders on to the quilt which layed perfectly flat and now it waves. Sigh.

Then I made Diantha cut 600,000 (actually it was only 32) 5" charms from the fabrics I used for the lag cabin blocks to make HSTs from. There will be the red border, the HST border and then possibly another thin solid border. I didn't square up the HSTs, instead I went to walmart.

Why you ask? Because I needed a turkey baster or squirty bottle. Why, you inquire further? Because Diantha was due for her very last olive-oil lice treatment from the pandemic that they've had goin' on. I was assured nothing live was on her head before i agreed to let her spend the night and then I told her not to sit or lay on m y bed or I would kill her. Anyway I covered her in olive oil, knotted her hair up and secured it with a totally sexy walmart bag so she can sleep tonight. I just had to get a pic! She tried to turn away to hide that she had just crammed a whole double stuffed oreo-wanna be in her mouth. Wonder where she gets that??

My brother is 21?

You know your parents are a little off the beaten path when your Mom will drive to the liquor store to sit with your kids in the car so you can go in and get your brother a birthday present. How cute are these air plane sized bottles??


My day was totally shot after blogging this morning. It stormed and so was good napping weather for the kids and I. When we woke, we got ready to head to Mom's for my brother Allen's birthday. He wanted ribs for dinner. He turned 21. Suddenly I feel old. It doesn't help that 3 days ago I had to dye my hair, yet again, because my baby son commented on those wonderful silver hairs I had about every other hair. The good news is my hair is naturally bottle-black and so it's no hassle to just dye it back bottle black. And the other good news is I am still young enough to pull off wearing bottle-black hair without it making me look like a washed out old lady. The bad news is my "gray" isn't gray at all, but streak of lightning, glorious silver as Jeremiah pointed out and will only accept interferance from haircolor for about 3 days.


Between blogging earlier and leaving I managed to spin enough of that black merino that I thought I could probably skein it and begin to ply it. I skeined it and had spun only 100 yards. Meaning I am 76 yards short! CRAP! So oh well, I will spin some more and attach it to what I have and tomorrow hopefully I can ply the 2 yarns together. None of this will be happening tonight. My migraine is back.


When we arrived at Mom's house since the birthday boy was asleep, the first order of birthday biz was to feed Betsy (2) and Hannah (1) each a piece of jelly toast. And yes, Betsy's naked... again.

Log Cabins, Handspuns and Fabrics Oh My!

Finally I have my camera back from my MIL's house where I left it on Sunday and can share pics of what I've been up to!!

First I have actually managed to make 10 whole log cabin blocks over the last 3 days. Not a large feat by far, but it is progress nonetheless! I think I shall need at least 12 blocks. I had 16 in mind originally but now I am wondering if 12 would be better and some kind of interesting borders? This is not necessarily the layout I will go with, just slapping them up on the design wall as I finish them.

Saturday and Sunday I spun 184 yards of merino wool into thick and thin, totally fun yarn. When I bought this 4oz batt it was pure white and I used koolaid to dye it these fun, candylicious colors. Not sure what I will use this bulky weight yarn for but I'm sure I can think of something.

Monday and Tuesday I spun another 4oz batt, this time of corriedale wool which is a little scratchy for my sensitive skin so I will ply it with some merino. I bought the batt evenly divided into 3 pieces and dyed red, black and white. It spun up really fun, striping a little here and there with 2 or all three colors. I think it'll look great once plied! I tried to spin this a little thinner than the merino and thought I had succeeded but for some reason only got 176 yards from this batt. Hmm.....

This morning I began spinning the merino yarn to ply with it. I am spinning solid black merino into a slightly-thicker than sock weight (but not by much!!) fairly even yarn. The spindle it's shown on is 2" across the whorl, which I painted to look like a bloodshot eyeball. Bringing some punk to spindling!!

And last but not least while my dear mother in law was in South Carolina all last week visiting with her mother (the Nana Juanita Jeremiah made a quilt for!) she bought me some fabrics! She said she just loved these bright colors and couldn't resit. There are 4 1/2yd cuts of the semi-solid prints and the others are all 2 yard cuts. I can't wait to think of some way to use these! Maybe for my mini quilt swap quilt???

I got an award!

I don' normally do blogger awards but I am a sucker for questionnaires/surveys and this one has one. :-D I do have a lot of other normal bloggy stuff to share but it will have to wait until tomorrow because I left my digi cam at my MIL's. So I can't share pics of the 183yds of merino I spun yesterday and today, or the corriedale I'm spinning now, or the log cabin blocks I made today.... you'll just have to be patient til tomorrow.



I received a blogging award and it was from Kim's Crafty Apple. Thanks! I totally didn't see it coming!

Here are the RULES of this Award:
Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

7 things you "might" find interesting about me:
1. I am ambidextrous when it comes to the art of rotary cutting, much to the chagrin of my righty-only mother.
2. The song Sharp Dressed Man by ZZtop makes me really happy everytime I hear it.
3. I am excellent at organizing stuff other people wouldn't think of organizing.
4. My original career choices were 1) journalist, 2) photographer ans 3) mortician but I never took chemestry.

5. The only man I've ever slept with is my husband!

6. I wax the tops of my feet/toes. Judge me, I don't care. I have naturally dark hair, body hair doesn't stop growing and I refuse to be the old lady in the nursing home with hobbit feet!

7. I think my husband's earrings are sexy.

I nominate:

1. My Thoughts on Life, Yarn, Kids and other Stuff
2. Knittingspinningsewingcrocheting
3. Sunshine and Family
4. The Scrappy Quilter
5. Color Me Katie
6. p.s. i quilt
7. Patchy Work of Mini Gray

Enjoy the award! Have a great week!

Nana Juanita's Quilt

I am getting sick, again. I had gotten over my flu from a couple weeks ago and was fine until yesterday when my husband, who still had a sore throat, decided he felt romantic. Nothing like sharing germs. Luckily I have a Drs appointment tomorrow so if I'm really dying like I feel like, I'm sure she'll tell me.

I stayed up until 1:30 last night, and got the top pieced for Jeremiah's quilt. I should mention that at 11pm he was still rearranging squares. He decided after his Daddy got home that there were still a couple squares he wasn't happy with. : ) I labeled the rows and sewed it together exactly as he had it.

This morning I ironed it and found backing. I found 2 pieces of fabric in my stash that were big enough, he chose the one he wanted. It just happens to be the same fabric I used for binding on his baby quilt! Then we made a quick run out to drive past a house that is for sale. A guy Tony works with said it's in his neighborhood and that it's a really nice neighborhood, good price on the house, etc. The house was cute, nice yard but I looked it up online when we got home and it is listed for $30,000 more than the guy said! Whoa. So that is probably out.

Anyway, pinned the quilt, took a nap with the kids (accidentally), got up quilted it, let Jeremiah dig in my stash for something for binding. He chose something really cute, the same backing I used for my "Delilah" quilt. Doesn't match the Juanita quilt backing but it looks good from the front and he likes it so that is all that matters. Washed the quilt while I fed the kids dinner and ran the dishwasher. Once it came out of the washer I got the label put on. Whew! Got it all done!

Don't know if we're going to go to South Carolina this weekend but if we do end up going it's ready to take. I even let Jeremiah write the label! He did such a good job, I told him which letters to write next and he wrote them all with me only having to show him how to write 2 of them. Underneath his "To Nana Love Jeremiah" I wrote,

"Made for Nana Juanita June 2009

Quilt top laid out and arranged by Jeremiah W Bowman age 3.5

Sewn together by Desiree Ross Bowman

both of Clinton TN"

I washed it in the hypo-allergenic dye/frangrance free baby detergent I have to use on Jeremiah's, just so there's no smells or anything in it to maybe bother her if it gets delivered to her in the hospital.

While that was all in the works I sewed together the squares I cut yesterday in to 4patches. What, oh what, will they become? I am not really sure but I am playing. : )

Another Jeremiah quilt

Today I got the iron in labels I ordered from Jennifersjewels on etsy. I LOVE them! I will have to order more because after ironing them into all my bags and purses I already have made up I only have 5 labels left. The great thing is I can also stitch them into the linings on future bags! I am so happy with them, even though this is a crappy little picture (my camera wouldn't cooperate) you can see the totally cute little cherries and the "Hamncheezr". The second line is my etsy address.

Anyhoo, while I was ironing them into purses Jeremiah was starting to get into things and I remembered that I had come across a baggie full of 5" 30s repros charms the other day. I handed him the bag and told him to go to town. Some of you may remember his rearranging a green quilt I was working on in this post and his ending up with the quilt in this post. He likes to play with quilty things.

I told him to try not to put 2 of the same fabrics together and he went to town. Even ran and got his stool for washing his hands from the bathroom so he could reach! Too cute! When he was all done I helped him rearrange about 3 squares, that's it! He did all the rest and he says he's happy with his layout and I can start sewing them together now. LoL!

I am working on sewing together some 3" squares from some lovely moda fall flannel fabrics. Jenn sent me a bunch she wasn't going to do anything with a while back and I dug them out this evening and cut ONE 3" square from each of them. Is that creativity or insanity? Not sure yet what it will be. Maybe a little quilt, maybe a messenger style purse? We shall see. I really enjoy working on "no-planning" projects. Probably why I do so many scrap quilts. Is it because I'm ADD or because I can't afford to go buy yardages of coordinating fabrics at one time? Or is it because I'm artistic and I just want to CREATE when the mood hits me and usually the mood is scrappy? I don't know. Whatever it is, I sure do have fun.

Please say a prayer for my hubby Tony and his Mom Cheryl. Cheryl's Mom Juanita (Tony's Nana) was hospitalized a week ago when her Dr suddenly found she had ovarian cancer. She had surgery today to remove it and it took them about 5-6 hours to remove 7-8 POUNDS of tumours, her spleen and part of her colon. Her Drs are concerned because she also has a massive amount of blood clots. They found holes in her lungs where the clots had pushed through. They are also worried because without all the pressure of the tumours on her intestines they think they might disintegrate. Juanita is a spunky 75 years old and is mother to 4 children, grandmother to 7 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

Hannah's bathing suit

I have no quilty pics to share today, they must remain secret for a little while longer.

However, I figured I'd share this pic I snapped of Hannah. Due to some almost-14 month old quirk, she LOVES her bathing suit and loves to just wander around in it. I bought it last week and we've yet to visit the pool, however she has been wearing it every day. This morning I dressed her in a cute little sundress that was hot pink with huge white and orange flowers. Underneath it she wanted to wear to bathing suit bottoms. Whatever, it's cute. LOL!

Take a deep breath

First let us talk about quilty things, because we haven't done that in a few days. Back in January I was making my block a day calender blocks out of various purple fabrics set in a pinkish orange batik fabric. Yesterday afer church we went to Mom's and I used her machine to stipple quilt it and a healing quilt I've been working on. I took my fall quilt from the disappearing nine patch blocks to quilt too but by the time I got the first two done I had run out of steam and just didn't feel like it. I chose a random meandering stipple and I am really pleased with the way both quilts turned out.

Purple is not my favorite color (though I do like it and look good in it hehe) and orange is even farther down the list but this quilt is just striking, I think. I love that I threw just a a little bit of green in there. Totally unplanned, I just felt like it one day. This quilt will shortly make its happy way into my etsy shop. I backed it with a super cute and comfy polka dot on light orange flannel.

I can only show you a little bit of this one since it is a healing quilt and you never know who follows you in cyber space. It took me all day to get the binding done on these. I made both bindings and did the healing quilt with no problem. Then I sewed it around the batik quilt and then sewed it down, and realized I'd messed up in sewing it down so I had to pick it out and sew it down again. What a pain. At least now it is done and done right!

I also called a realtor today. We made an attempt to see what we needed to do to buy a house, or see about buying a house, a few months ago but got such a runaround with a mortgage company we gave up, discouraged. We've been looking at some more online this week and actually drove and looked into the windows of one we'd found-- it was a mobile but from what we saw online and what we saw at the house we thought it had been fixed to a permanent foundation and sort of flipped making it a "real" house. Talked to the realtor about it, she called me back and said no, it is still considered a mobile so a loan would be really hard to get and instead of the low insterest it would be high, etc... kind of disappointing in one little way but not really. We want a house as an investment, not an enormous depreciating hassle. Have to fill out some paperwork and fax it back tomorrow but the ball is rolling! Scary business, but exciting too!