Civil War, new BOM and tutu's...

The last month has been busy, craft wise anyway...

Finished Quilt Top

First the big finish...I finished the Civil War quilt top!  After one year of Saturday morning blocks, I have finished the blocks, chosen my favorites and sewn them together binded by pale gold stars and faded black sashing.  I chose the faded colors to compliment the Americana palette and give an old and faded look…it turned out nothing short of fabulous, in my book anyway!  The one-year sewing journey was memorable as well.  2011 was the year that Josh was to be deployed for the first time.  We found out in December of 2010.  With a year to prepare, I felt lucky that we had this time to deal with imminent deployment.  Each passing week, I would log on to the Civil War quilt blog and read stories about the men and women that fought and sacrificed so much during the tumultuous times of the Civil War.  I could not help but ne moved by the words and could also not help thinking about Josh…this was my most personal quilt so far, I felt very connected to the sewing sisters that came before me…

BOM

Feeling empty with no block of the week, I web surfed and found a free block of the month program that uses half square triangles…at this writing, I have finished two blocks and rally can’t decide if I want to stick with my color choices or the program…because in the meantime, I have found another great group of fabrics that I want to use in my crisp blue and white quilt.  The color combo is quite appealing to me…stay tuned…

In January, we made the annual trip to the Arizona Quilting and Sewing Festival.  This was a Thursday off from work that starts at this funky little breakfast joint called “scramble” the food and atmosphere are pretty urban, but also serves as a nice change of pace.  Debbie always has the biscuits and gravy, she needs to sneak in her carbs, Dorene has the vegetarian burrito and I had the bacon and eggs with the rosemary potatoes…We spend the day shoulder to shoulder with other crafters as we wind our way through the displays and see all that there is to offer…quilts, wools, sewing notions, machines and even items that you may find at a swap meet…the event is held at the fairgrounds, this year it didn’t smell too bad!  I made a couple of purchases and of course added to my to do list…I can’t say how much I enjoy my friendship with these wonderful women.  It is truly a blessing to have such good friends.  The following Saturday, I returned to the event with my wonderful new daughter in law who had always wanted to go but never went.  We had a good time and got to know each other a little better.  Although she admitted sometime later that it really should have just been called a quilting show…   

To be young, crazy and wearing a tutu!

Later that evening was a new event for me…a tutu party…this was something that Alyssa and her cousin Juli have done in the past.  It is essentially a costume party and you get to drink and be a little crazy…since I had not worn a tutu since the third grade, I did feel a bit conspicuous and was not sure about the whole thing…I decided to go with a Seahawk theme and that at least made the experience a bot more fun…so we spent hours on Friday tying netting to elastic bands…at then end of the party, I was glad I did it…

Gandalf...

The tutu party was in a sense Alyssa's goodbye party.  On January 23rd the Army movers came, packed up her condo and loaded it into a truck headed for upstate New York.  Ashley and I went over one Saturday morning and helped her organize a few things for the move, there was quite a bit of stuff.  The movers arrived in New York the day after Josh left for Phoenix.  He was only in town for a few days, they did some last minute errands, Alyssa traded in her car for a brand new one, we had some family time together and then, they headed for New York to really start their life together, just the two of them.  They made it across the country in three days with her two cats and , praise the Lord, no bad weather, almost two weeks later, the moving company brought the boxes to the house, now, she is a real army wife!