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Dear Friends,

Thank You all for your kind words of comfort. The memorial for my Chrissy will be next weekend, and I will be away a few days before and a few afterwards. It has been a week of agony and heart ache, and I can't say that I feel better (especially because I'm crying right now, and will for the rest of my life) but I have started to push myself to get back into life - like my Chrissy would want me to do. She was not a crier - mostly cause she never wanted to be like me. I cry watching toothpaste ads.  I'm fat, she was always beautifully thin. She always shared her sunny side, I'm trying to learn that. I can cook, and tried to teach her, but her brothers were merciless in their teenage teasing. She didn't learn at home, but from her hubby, who was a cook when they married. She never learned knitting or crochet, or any of the old granny pursuits, that I like to do. She did start to quilt, mostly because I found so much peace with it, and because she liked to do volunteer work and wanted to make things to donate. She made a few beautiful items for her kids and the pets, then her illness shut that down. She was waaaay more social than I am, she had lots of friends in all the places she has lived.  And we all are missing her so much.

I got all kinds of pictures of her together this week. A friend of hers lives quite near us, came to get them and will put together a video for her memorial and we will all get a CD, so I don't have a picture to put here, but I will try to get some on in a week or so.

I have started to sew again.  There are more blocks of the palms (on the banner) done, but I didn't want to futz with a picture of the new ones. I still don't know if I'm picture-abled again. We'll see in a week or so. 

Thank you for your loving comments. I appreciate your time and the soothing words.

Hugs,

Terri

My Chrissy has passed

I know a number of you have been praying for my daughter, Chrissy. She passed in her sleep this morning at 8:30 AM at the Hospice where she was admitted yesterday. (She would have been 40 on her next birthday in May.) We were lucky to see her for a few days before the New Year. She was talking and sitting up and seemed nearly like her old self. It was wonderful...
Thank you for your prayers. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Hugs,
Terri

Good News on my Chrissy!

No pictures this time....
Chrissy just wrote in her Caringbridge Journal - like e mail, but goes out to lots of people all at once.... She just let everyone know that her liver is getting clearer! This last MRI (on Thursday) of it shows fewer tumors. It means that her regular chemo is working!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It doesn't mean that the cancer is gone, but that lots of the tumors are gone, and that may be the best we can hope for at this time...
She thinks its the medicine working, and we will let her think whatever she wants to... I feel it is all the prayers from perfect strangers that is helping. You know who you are! You all who have been praying for her, Thank You!

I met a really nice lady at JoAnn's the other day, we had so much in common. We talked right there in the store for maybe an hour - of course within that hour I told her about my Chrissy. She took my arm and told me she'd pray for her.... We hugged several times and exchanged phone numbers and favorite books and websites for paper piecing.  The point I'm blundering up to is that there are so many nice people out there, who will pray for someone in trouble. What a wonderful world it is!

Please keep up the good praying. My Chrissy is in a better way, but she is still fighting the cancer. I feel that someone has God's ear, we may never know who, so we've all gotta keep praying.

With that plea I will say good night, and hope you and yours have a wonderful weekend.

Hugs,

Terri

Quilt Show today!

We went to the Gold Bug Quilters' Guild Quilt Show today... here are the ones I liked.

She said this was made with leftovers from a bigger quilt.

This one was 3-D.  Below is a close up.

The shadows were not 3-D - so pretty and amazing. Each of the leaves are pieced, too. It's all made from jelly rolls.

I liked the snowman face on tan fabric... remember:  don't eat the yellow snow!

I gotta try some of this! (No, I wasn't tipsy - it's the way it was hung.)

This one reminded me of the Houseelf.  Wouldn't this be the Bride of your Forestman?

Such pretty colors!

The camera did not do justice to this one. I liked the way the border was done, and the Christmassy colors. The centers of the blocks are a paisley print. The rest is greens.

I guess Christmas is coming... I liked this one, too, but then red is my favorite color.

This pic is a detail of the quilting on the next picture. That whole panel in beige is quilted from the sky down to reeds and water...

Think richer deeper forest kinds of colors. I think I need a better camera.

 

Aren't these cute? I think it was a challenge, cause there were a dozen or so.

 

I did get 3 new batiks... I guess I was drooling, so my hubby encouraged me to pick out a few pieces... He's an enabler.  I think he was so happy to get into the show for free.

 

 

Sew that was the excitement here today.

 

Thanks to all that stopped by and left me some cheer. I appreciate the prayers for my daughter. We need a miracle there.

 

Hugs,

Terri

Reading & Sewing....

I've been reading blogs and sewing... That's pretty much it.

Here are some pictures



Meow!

Jennifer has a challenge going for paper piecers (see the button on the sidebar). Make one or up to 5 of the kitty faces from her free pattern and send them in, and you could win all of the kitty faces. There are rules posted at the link above (Jennifer). I did have a bunch of troubles with mine.... First, I'm not a cat person, so making a Tabby block... well I had troubles figuring out the colors, and second, they didn't turn out the correct size, so I may have to try again. Third time is the charm?  See the grey kitty has a neck. I made one of the pieces the wrong color. (I kind of like it that way. Looks like he is turning his head to look at me.) But alas, he is not quite 5.5" either. The spotty one maybe the wrong color way, and the nose and ear pink don't show much....also the eyes seem to be too green, and for me that gives him a lizard look.  What do you think?


Below is the commission I got a couple of weeks ago. Here it is rows sewn, but not together... oh, and the bottom 2 rows are pinned together and sitting on the sewing machine. Since the picture I have the flimsy done... now the part I absolutely hate. Basting

 

You all are wondering what happened to my colors, these are the colors chosen by my client. (Don't you just love that word?) All the fabrics are from my stash, and it is gorgeous in person.... the camera takes away alot. That yellow is textured and the olive green is actually  a muted gold. This is a mere shadow...   ( Notice the white paper in the center? It's my low tech way of identifying my pictures. I didn't want to spend all that time on Picassa or whatever.) 

 

Here's my two blocks for the Rainbow Challenge, see the button on the sidebar. Orange is the color for September... that one on the right looks yellow on the picture... I might have to make a couple more orange. I love o.

 

 

Okay, so this is the part of the blog I've been dreading. I have to ask you all to pray more. My Chrissy is having more intensified chemo... She is growing more cancer cells than one set of chemo can kill. She is now having chemo beads injected onto her liver - and that has worked this first time, but only cleaned a small spot. They will keep trying to clean off the whole liver (which was cut in half to take care of tumors previously, and is not growing back now since the cancer has attacked it again.) If this all sounds really serious, it is. The chemo weakens her so much, and then the second kind is worse. It is so serious that our SIL called us - we should come to visit. So please, please pray your hardest.

 

Hugs,

Terri

Weekend Work

I promised you red... I have a lot of "jewel tones" and not a lot of tints.  I do like how these came out.

I'm using mostly "crumbs"  or leftover strips. I'm surprised how much of that there is in my stash.

This time I pinned them to the design wall which is now holding the backing of the I Spy and the batting is hanging out the wrinkles for a few days. Makes a nice muted background for photos, don't you think so?

Did I show you both of the greens?  Well, if I didn't - here they are. Quite Christmassy. I tried for different prints in different places and each has a different stem color. Still no plan for a quilt, but I started the purples last night before "Longmire".  Love that show.

Wait til you see the purples...

So today, probably right now, Chrissy is undergoing the next procedure. Please, keep happy thoughts for her. Pray your hardest and best.

Hugs,

Terri

New Hope on 3 fronts!

So not much going on here in the quilting department. I've made some messes of various items and I'm letting my psyche rest from the disappointment in myself.  You all know what I mean.  I'm working on a set of pot holders... and they are turning out okay, for pot holders, but that's not the HOPE trifecta.

Here are 2  hope stories of the least importance:
You know I love plants, and starting them, especially difficult starts... Last year I got a Ginkgo to start from a pit, that I stumbled across while picking up Elm seeds. Well, it grew nicely, and took well to a transfer to a larger pot, and then dropped it's leaves during the fall.  I knew it would, I was okay with that. But the leaves didn't come back on when the others - out in the wild outdoors did! I was quite disappointed... I was sure it was dead.  It was 2-3 months late, but....
 SEE! I am soooooo pleased! It is back!

And  above, is the only - 1 of 8 - Magnolia's I got to start from a cone picked from my son's front yard. I took the red fruits out of the cone, and planted them. One came up!  That's the way it works. Not all seeds start up. It didn't come up right away either... I watered through the winter and spring, and then one day, mid June, I noticed something already sprouted quite high. It's still getting new growth, too! I think it likes this $1 large drink cup from McDonald's. It gives the new growth some light that isn't the really strong sunlight from that morning sunny window.  (New apricots fry when not covered by at least newspaper in our hot sun, so that may be what is working for this new sprout.)

But Now for the best bit of HOPE...

Chrissy's latest test - she was having some really bad pains in her liver area...

- showed the pain is from a large accumulation of liquid from her surgery, and not cancer!

It doesn't mean that she is cancer free, but that the latest test is a good one, and maybe the chemo is working better this time. Please, keep up the good thoughts and prayers for her. It seems, that with all she is doing, the prayers are helping, too. And I thank you all, my Friends, for that!!!!

Hugs!

Terri