salvaged blanket......

Last winter, one of the secretaries at school gave me a couple bags of fabric. It was cut up into big 12 inch squares, along with some old blanket, too. She was working on a quilt of some sort, but lost interest in it. I told her I would take her "junk" and it sat in the back of the car for months. I finally got it out when I was packing the car for camping.
There was flannel and fleece.

I cut the squares smaller and started making a rag quilt. I had never done one. Her cut up blanket was set aside and I used regular batting. I needed to add some cheap flannel that I had laying here for the backing.
It took awhile to get everything clipped.
When I was finished clipping, I brushed it all with my hands and took it outside to shake the crap out of it.
Then I (gasp) ran it through my own washer. It left a bunch of stringy clips, I wiped them out and haven't had any problems with the washer since doing this. I did take it outside again and shook it some more. Tons more of the stringy clips came flying out. Then I dried it.

This is an awful picture, I know. The squares are about 5 inches. The secretary was so surprised. She didn't expect to get anything back. She thinks it will be perfect for football games this fall (it is kid sized for her young kids)....and it is our new school colors!

Target Stadium, baseball & geocaching.....

If you click on the collage it gets bigger.  One picture says, Our turn at the love. I guess that works too....the "g" was cut off for glove. 

scrapbook pages.....

My neighbor kid, who isn't really a kid anymore, has been over a few times to work on his DC scrapbook. 7th and 8th graders go there for a week long field trip. He went a couple years ago. We are having fun using ALL his pictures.
Blurry ones have become background for the graves at Gettysburg, or tags were cut out and decorated. A friend had given him all their left over stickers and he wants to use them up too. His goal is to have this done by Thankgiving, his older sister will be here for a visit.
I am pretty sure he will get it done by then.

adding to the memories.....

quick post.....4 more for the pile......

I trimmed all the blocks too.

The rules I follow, sort of....

If the fabrics are pretty together, they get sewn together to make strips.

If a strip is heavy/dark on one side, the next strip sewn to it, is heavy/dark on the other.

Stagger the seams, unless they are butted together.

If it is lookin' dull, add bright.

finished lap quilt....

I finished something! It is made with Java charm packs and additional fabrics. It has been a stop and go project. I was never sure on what I would be doing with it, so it didn't get priority.

Then my brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. My cousin Gwen asked if I was making him a chemo quilt. I hadn't even thought about it. I remembered this half done project and decided right then and there the java quilt would be his. 

I just needed to finish it. 

We are going up to the cities this weekend, I'll be able to bring it along. It should look great in their family room and warm up any hospital rooms!

That dark block really stands out. If only the cat was sitting on that one! She could have hid it! Oh well.

Karen was down to Tennessee....moving her middle son back to school. I got to babysit Charlie, her dog. I never took any pictures of him.

But Karen brought me back treats! Things we don't have around here.....

The whiskey praline pecans are pretty tasty.

This is my favorite recipe in the book. But it doesn't say where one would obtain a squirrel....do you just go out and shoot one out of a tree??

older things since I have nothing new......

The Iowa Braille School in Vinton put on a Summer Institute in Ames. I was there for 3 days taking classes. For instance....
Accessible math for Elementary. I found out here that we need to use the Nemeth code for numbers (slightly different from what I had just learned) it makes more sense when writing algebra. The dots all drop to the bottom of the cell instead being in the top......
or Canes, Doors and Stairs, oh my! We were blind folded to get a feel of what the Orientation and Mobility teacher is doing with the student  when they come to work at the school. There was more, lots more, and I am still digesting it all.

Back to older stuff.....Amanda (niece) was here on and off working on more bags for 4H and the fair. She needed fabric for bean bags to go with a game she had made. But, when she saw this fabric, she fell in love and decided to make bags too. 

Where did I get this fabric?

A few weeks ago, a huge box of fabric arrived in the mail from my cousin. She was in the middle of moving and wanted to clear fabric out of her piles.

She considered the colorful stripe fabric ugly and called it clown fabric. When I saw it, I thought...binding! There was also a colorful polka dot fabric. 

It was late at night and the camera wasn't on the right settings, so the next picture is not very good.

My geocaching quilt is back from the quilters. Eventually, I will get the striped fabric on it for binding!

  

Yesterday we went to an old tractor auction. 

Lots of pretty colors.

I liked the looks of some of them.

It's the back wheels.....

I even liked this John Deere because of it's wheels.

It was this Minneapolis-Moline that had tractor joe interested and wanting to have a closer look. 

It is a pretty yellow......

Except we got there to late, this one had already sold. Some lucky person got it for $600.00.....

Then there was this adorable fixer-upper......

As we ate our lunch of maid-rites,scotcheroos and pepsi we debated. Should we bid or not? What would be our top dollar?? What would we do with it? Yard art? Fix it?

We talked ourselves out of it. It went for $525.00.....we will concentrate on finding a decent yellow Minneapolis-Moline.

I sewed some more when we got home.

I am up to 9 blocks now. I am shooting for 30. Maybe. They are turning out to be 12x12 inch trimmed blocks. It is such a mix of old, new and uglies.

where are the ugly fabrics?

I am amazed.

Tonya is so right.

Most of the fabrics I thought were ugly, just aren't. When I mixed them with all kinds of other fabrics, they don't scream "icky" at me anymore. This is becoming more of a memory quilt. A lot of the fabrics are left over from quilts I had made back in the mid 90's. There are recent fabrics too. 

It is a mish-mash of fabrics. I have started to love this. Last night, after supper, I sewed strips together, I wanted to get an idea of what it would look like. 

I now have 4 untrimmed blocks.

And gobs of strips ready to go together. 

Thank you Tonya.

18 flowers and 3 million strips...

This is 11 of the flowers that are done, there are 18 in the pile. I have been side tracked though.

It started out simple enough (click here) Tonya put a call out for old/ugly fabric.

Hey, I have chunks of ugly fabric hidden away, I sent her some.

Then she showed her project (click here)

Wow, that looks cool. But I still wasn't thinking about really sewing anything like this.

Then her project got bigger (click here) and I started to think about it.

Sure would be nice to get some fabric cleared out of here.

This morning I wondered what these little flying geese would look like mixed in with all those skinny strips.

I started cutting and sewing.

It all went rather fast. I made each segment longer than my 12 inch ruler. If it was shorter, it needed more, if it was longer it was good.

This is all strips. I haven't sewn any blocks....So I don't know how big each block will be yet.

But, I liked what I saw.

I like the flying geese in there. But nothing is sewn so they might not be there in the end.

I am going through a box of old, short, leftover pieces right now.... Making a bunch more 1 1/2 inch strips. 

i heart flowers quilt, a beginning....

Crispy and his friends went out to eat one night. I think they had Chinese. Before they left, they all bought fake mustaches in a gumball machine. Everyone was wearing one when they got home. The next morning, there sat the mustache on the kitchen table. It was still sticky on the back. A cheap pair of sunglasses lay there too.

Hmmmmm......

I ended up sticking them on this lamp for safe keeping. I am trying to keep the kitchen table clear of extra "stuff", not an easy thing to do. There is always something gathering there.

New month at Block Lotto! Flowers this time.

I made a few. 

I don't know what made me try mixing them with the block lotto scrappy hearts I had won last winter, but I did...

I fell in love.

love

love

love

I have 6 flowers for block lotto, the rest are going into a different pile. 

My pile to keep, for the....

i heart flowers quilt!