Update on Mom

It's been interesting.....

On Friday afternoon, Mom was taken in to have some gall stones removed from her bile duct. Get this, her gall bladder had been removed 40 years ago! Apparently back then they did not remove the bile duct with it, so if you had some microscopic stones in there, they would just keep growing!

So the good news is that her color is good and physically she is much better. The bad news is that because of the anesthetic, the hallucinations (you remember last summer?) have recurred and are worse than ever. They're not controlled as of last night. Fortunately she's too weak to get out of bed and they have a monitor on her or we'd really be in trouble.

So I don't have a clue where we go from here. I've contacted the people I need to talk to about getting her into the Nursing area where she lives. Of course, you can do nothing on the weekend. Just hope it's not a hassle to get her in.

Bless her heart. She's so tired and it's so sad. I'll keep you posted....

Blessings~

Roadtrip Cancelled!!

Hi Everyone--

Just a quick update to tell you that we're not going anywhere right now. Bill's on the road to feeling better, but we took my Mom to the hospital yesterday afternoon. They're not sure yet what's going on. Tests to check her pancreas today.

So I'm sitting in the hospital and will have some time to catch up on magazines, etc! I'm really trusting God on this since she has been ready to enter into His presence for a long, long time. Keep us in your prayers, please. I'll keep you up to date.

Blessings~

On Vacation - NOT!!

Well............. You'll have to excuse me, I'm rambling a bit today......

We were supposed to leave for a road trip to St. George, UT to see our friends Nick and Mary. But Bill woke up yesterday with a nasty upper respiratory something so instead, he went to the Dr. to get fixed. Well, not "fixed", but you know what I mean!

So we'll give him a few days to get better and THEN we'll head west. The motorhome is all ready to go!

Nanette is supposed to be in St. George this month, too, and I was hoping to see her. But it looked like we were going to miss each other. However, with this delay, things may work out after all! Maybe a silver lining, yes????

This has been an interesting week for a couple of reasons, nothing related to quilting! I'm not a native Okie, but have lived here a long time. I've come to understand that the very best thing about Oklahoma weather is that it's never boring! A couple of weekends ago we were in the 80s. Then last Saturday we had the most gorgeous snow!! Got about 7-8 inches of great big flakes all day long. Just beautiful. The Best part about it was that Sunday it was in the 60s and the snow was all gone! Our daughter and family live just outside OK City (about 100 miles away) and they didn't get as much as we did, but enough for Cameron and his Dad to play in. Is this not the cutest snowman you've ever seen???

The other thing that happened was termites! They say that there's two kinds of houses in Tulsa. One that has termites and the other that's fixin' to! (A little Okie Speak for you.) Well, now ours has gone from one category to the other. We walked into the bedroom last week to see all these flying bugs coming out from one of the light switches! So called the friendly pest control company and got that all fixed up. Sorry, no pictures of that for you.

So I'm trying to decide what to do with these extra couple of days. Sew?? List feedsacks on eBay?? Both???? I think both. Maybe list today and sew tomorrow. I put my roadtrip hold on my website and am caught up with cutting feedsack orders til I get back, so this 'found' time might be kinda fun!

Hope you're having a great week!

Blessings~

FEEDSACKS!!

OK ~ You asked for it, you're getting it!! I had an opportunity to buy over 200 feedsacks a couple of weeks ago. There are many duplicates so I am selling FULL sacks, which I don't do very often. I've got a few listed so far and will get them listed as quickly as I can. They are available on both eBay and Etsy, whichever you prefer. If you need more than one just let me know. I've tried to keep the prices as fair as possible at $12.50 each. There will be some that will go to auction, but these are at fixed price. Here's a sample:

In other news, many of you know my friend, Karen Snyder. She recently "retired" from her fabulously successful shop in Long Beach, WA. I don't know how you can be retired when you are still designing fabric and writing books, not to mention being the "face" of Elna Sewing Machines. But I digress.....

She bought herself a fabulous 1973 Airstream Trailer to travel around the country in and has written David Bromstad of Colorsplash on HGTV to redecorate it for her! He and the producers LOVE the idea, but HGTV is balking.

SO--If you want to participate and write to HGTV on her behalf, she's giving away a bundle of my RISE n SHINE fabrics to the winner of the drawing. You'll find all the particulars on her site. Wouldn't it be cool to see her on TV??!!

So that's it for me! I'm off to cut feedsacks to fill orders. Yep, they're still coming fast and furious! Thank you!! Have a great week--

Blessings~

Let's Talk About Rickrack!

Some of you may have already seen the new Quilter's Home issue featuring collecting Rickrack. It inspired me to show you some of my collection! Hope you enjoy!

Before I start though, I want to show you the cute Iron Keeper that was also featured in the magazine using my Rise N Shine fabric! Thanks, Stasia, for emailing me and letting me know it was there!

Now on to rickrack.....

As most of you already know, I am a rickrack fiend! I absolutely love the way that it looks with feedsacks and repro fabrics. Before I found a good source for cotton rickrack I used only vintage cotton because the colors are so much nicer with vintage fabrics.

After collecting quite a few, I noticed that the labels were just wonderful! Many of them are from companies that we would expect like Wrights, Penney's, Talon, Coats and Fruit of the Loom. Oh, you didn't expect Fruit of the Loom???

But the really fun ones are those that we've never heard of today such as those below:

Notice how they seem to borrow themes from one another? Cameo starts out as a rose, then adds a cameo which is picked up by Lady Fayre. Here's another example from Warren's old and newer label and it's similarity to Boiltex. I have no idea which came first.

It's interesting to see how Wright's changed it's label through the years, along with it's price!

Penimaid was an old label for JC Penney's as you can tell from the package on the right.

Some companies even included a spool of matching thread to use in sewing your rickrack!

The next picture is one of the cutest I've seen. Little Prudence was precious!

I also love the Tailor Bird brand and once in awhile you see odd ones like the Princess rickrack that is wrapped sideways.

One of my most recent finds is this rayon rickrack in a box from Trimtex! Don't you love it? Next to it are their cotton cousins in more typical packaging.

Well, that's it for rickrack! Hope you enjoyed looking at some of my collection. Do you have any interesting ones to share? I'll put them on my blog if you do.

Hope everyone is having a great week! Blessings~

Guess What I've Been Doing??

Can you guess it? Right!! Cutting feedsack squares!! Thank you to EVERYONE who has already placed an order. No, I haven't developed carpal tunnel YET!

It has been fun to get back to playing with feedsacks. There's just something about them...... Here's a pic of a bundle of 100 off to play in someone else's house today!

I promised you a sneak peek of the quilt I'm working on. Actually, I'll show you the before and after. At least one block. The setting will be much different so I'm not giving too much away. Here's the quilt that inspired me:

And here's the block I came up with. What do you think?

That little inset piece was not as easy to figure out as you'd think! Of course everything I do is fusible, so I had to work around that. That's what got me to thinking about a picture tutorial blog.

I'm sure I don't need to say this, but I notice that other designers have it on their blogs, but everything I do is copyrighted, so please don't reproduce without my permission. You'll also see this on the sidebar.

That's my big week! I'm off to cut more feedsacks now. Hope everyone is have a great week, too!

Blessings~

Feedsacks!

This week has been a jumble. Bill and I have spent 2 days updating the website. Don't ever let anyone tell you that MS Front Page is user friendly!! It always turn out to be an ordeal!

One thing I added is that I am now back in business of selling 6" feedsack squares. I had them on my website for a long, long time and just could not keep up with the cutting demand along with everything else. I have continued to sell them without advertising to my customers who contacted me personally. But now I am telling everyone that they are back! They are still by Special Request, meaning that they need to contact me to order and when the order is ready, I will invoice the customer. Seems to be a good compromise for all. They will sell for $27.50 per bundle of 50. You can go to the Hollyhock Quilts website to view the particulars.

Every once in awhile, I get lucky and have a chance to buy a pretty big collection of feedsacks. Last week was one of those times. So needless to say, I've been soaking and washing feedsacks like a crazy woman. They were really nice. Florals mostly and several duplicates. Here is a pic of only about 2/3 of the ones I purchased.

It got me to thinking.... Some of you might know that I have reserved another blog name for Hollyhock Quilts. It was actually my intention to just transfer this blog to that one. But instead of that I think I will use that blog as a tutorial blog. The first entry will be the Collecting, Care and Keeping of feedsacks! It's not out there yet, but look for it soon. I also plan to have a picture tutorial for all my patterns and several of my techniques. What do you think?

Along with the box of printed ones, there was another box full of odd white sacks like sugar sacks, flour sacks, seed sacks. etc. Not sure what I'll do with them. Most of them are pretty faded or stained. But this one was in there and I think it's my favorite of the whole lot! Note what it says at the top about the Pert Little Pullets and Foxy Little Roosters. Don't you just LOVE that??

So that's it for me. Off to read my Bible Study lesson for tonight. Yes, Presbyterians sometimes go to church other than on Sunday and even study the Bible! I know you're shocked. Bill and I are leaders of a small faith group at church and it's always a good thing for the leader to read the lesson! Have a great week!

Blessings~