FMQ Challenge for August

The Free-Motion Quilting Challenge for August is from Wendy Sheppard. I think this is a beautiful flowing designs, but it's going to take a lot of practice on my part.

I had a hard time just trying to draw it and my attempts at sewing were dismal. I have way too many open spaces, I sewed myself into places I couldn't get out of and just generally made a mess of it. So in a last ditch effort to at least have something I tried drawing it out on the quilt piece and sewing that way. Still a fail.

No laughing! Oh go ahead, I am.

I used a disappearing ink marker, but the ink won't disappear so it looks even worse. 

In my defense August was a weird month, my birthday, a hurricane, a broken toe and lastly a broken down car far from home. 

Come on September. 

I do want to thank Wendy and SewCalGal for their efforts. This really is a beautiful design, worth going back and learning once I'm a little more relaxed. Seeing it on Wendy's quilts is inspiring. 

Later,

Dana

Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Butt

Isaac is gone, we are still under Tropical Storm Warnings because the wind is still strong, but I see blue skies in the distance and everything here is washed clean. The terrible twins and I went out back to see the damage.

In the tradition of good tropical storm reporting here's a palm tree.

Palm fronds move if a bird flies by, so we saw hundreds of them as the media looked for something to report on.

These are the steps from my porch, look at the upper middle of this picture. Yes, David left a beer can on the table and it blew off. 

The pool is now a pond or a swamp

Maya found a stick, she'll love that thing, carry it everywhere and try to bring it in the house, sometimes if Brady helps they actually manage to bring something like that in. That's a sight to see, the two of them trotting through the house with a branch, one on either end.

I'm pretty sure I have a broken toe, it's swollen and red and there's no wiggle, plus the nail is half ripped off. I would like to claim it as storm damage, but I'm also pretty sure it's because of this guy.

Brady Bug never learned to play with people, that can be a problem with rescues. He loves to play and I'm dedicated to teaching him. He's big and strong with huge feet that he comes flying at you with. Our play usually ends with me running away yelling stop, please stop while laughing so hard I'm weak. 

David, curled up with a book through the storm read the perfect description of Bug "jubilantly chaotic", that's my Bug.

This guy tried to climb up my foot while I stood there taking pictures. 

So that's it, everything is fine here. These two and I will be cleaning up the mess and probably doing more playing than anything, then tell David how hard we worked :)

See ya later gator

Dana

Hurricane Thoughts

First I want to thank everyone for the well wishes, as Debbie said in her comments, we've been through this before, more times than I can count.We are as prepared as possible and other than a low level stress, we're not really worried. This hurricane is a cat. 1 coming through below us, we are on the "dirty side" which means we'll have high winds and lots of rain. We know when to throw the dogs in the car and get out. 

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Andrew, there was a mandatory evacuation of the Keys and since shelters don't take dogs, we ended up in a motel in Miami. That was as far as we could go since the roads out of South Florida were parking lots. That motel was torn down around us. Cori was very young and we had her in the bathtub in a soft nest of the bedding, while David and I held the door closed fighting the storm, she slept. And for a month after she woke up screaming with night terrors.

CNN reported that the Keys were gone and we had no way of letting our families know we were safe. It took us four hours to drive 30 minutes, all we wanted was to go home and when we finally got here, all was well, no electricity for weeks and no drinking water, but the Keys have the most amazing people. We had a thermos of coffee on our front porch every morning from a neighbor who had a generator. We had two gallons of water delivered every day from another friend. I took every cooler I could collect and had them filled with ice everyday from a local fisheries and delivered them to neighbors. That store wasn't open for business, but they made ice every day and gave it away. Thank you Jack Hill.

This is my neighbor's house, the entire street went in and cleaned his yard, he was on emergency call for and couldn't get home to do it. His wife didn't speak English and just stared at us all when we showed up with chain saws.

We dragged the picnic table out to the front of the house and every night all the neighbors came together and we grilled up whatever was defrosting in our freezers. Lots of lobster and fish, we are a fishing community. 

This is my back yard with my cute little shed, that tree laid right across the roof and protected a bunch of my orchids that were under it.

Another friend had a Vegas vacation planned and flew out with names and numbers of families and called every one of them to let them know we were all safe. My mother cried when she finally met her, she was a hero for my mom.

My next door neighbor's yard, the wind hung that chair on there.

I have some of the best and worst memories from storms. My college roommate calls for every storm and asks how I can live here. Because it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and I'm proud to live here.

The pictures are from hurricane Mitch who missed us, but threw tornadoes our way. Five tornadoes touched down, some in my neighborhood, but across the highway was a trailer village, it was pretty much destroyed. About a week after this I was in K Mart and the cashier asked me if we were all O.K.  I couldn't understand how she knew, but she'd seen me on the news from the helicopters, all I could think was OMG how was I dressed, I must have been filthy.

TIP: If there are news helicoptors over head, dress nice. LOL

I have no pictures from Andrew, although I had my camera, I was too shell shocked and it felt like an intrusion to take pictures of the devastation. I still don't regret it.

Dana

Foto Finish - Funny

Today's Foto Finish optional theme at Cat Patches is Funny.

I know I've shown you this picture before, but it's a favorite of mine and I'm a bit distracted this morning.

I found Brady Bug sleeping like this and luckily had my camera close. This picture always makes me smile.

Quick update on me since I've been absent for a while. I had a birthday and a fun visit from my daughter then David and I went up to Ft. Lauderdale to visit with her, she just moved into a new place and she wanted us to see it. Then we've a had other little things going on like a broken A.C., not fun. 

This morning we woke up to find out that we are under a hurricane watch, it was only supposed to be a tropical storm, which means we have a lot to do and I'm doing it all with a German Shepherd glued to my side, Maya is terrified, our weather has already gotten horrible, Brady is oblivious. I need to go out and take care of a few errands before everything closes. So, drinking coffee, making lists and reading a few blogs is my attempt at "normal" before we hunker down. We will probably lose the internet soon, so if you don't hear back from me, no worries.

I hope you'll visit Cat Patches and see the other funny pictures, these should be good.

Thanks for stopping by,

Dana

What I'm Working On

I used to do works in progress Wednesdays, but really it's just so hard to keep track of Wednesdays, so this is just a happy coincidence.

I thankfully just finished this

See the wrinkles at the bottom, I walked over straightened them out, walked back to get another picture and this is what I saw

Our first photo bomb for next year, she loves to play tent.

This quilt was like playing in a crayon box to make, I pulled any bright funky fabric I had and went from there. There were 10 panels (why 10?) and instead of doing a bunch of 16 patches or whatever I appliqued a whole forest of Trufala trees, O.K. maybe just a grove. Each block was free motion in different styles because why would I make it easy on myself and do something allover? I was really not happy with myself about half way through. 

Please, please if you get the slightest inkling that I'm thinking about making another twin size quilt could we have an intervention please? They feel king sized when they are under my little machine and really heavy. I'm asking this because I bought two of those Lorax panels, what can I say, they were on sale and I adore The Lorax.

Thanks for stopping by,

Dana

Foto Finish Water

Today's optional theme for Foto Finish over at Cat Patches is water. 

Really? water? I live on an island, then again we are being visited by a storm, so maybe dramatic pictures of that, which way to go?

How about down.

Pretty isn't he? That's a lion fish and they are big news down here. There are different theories on how they got here, but mostly it's people dumping them out of aquariums and now they are taking over our reefs. They have a nasty sting and surprise, the divers and snorkelers don't like that. So now we have lion fish derbys, divers go out and capture as many as they can and win prizes, yea. Oh, and they are giving us recipes hoping we'll eat them. LOL, Pass. 

Now I hope you'll go over to Cat Patches and join in the fun.

Thanks for stopping by,

Dana 

Pets on Quilts!!!

Welcome to Pets on Quilts, my favorite show in all of blogworld. This year Lily Pad Quilting is carrying on the tradition and I thank her so much for stepping up and taking it on. 


This is my third year participating and I learned with the first one that I need to stalk the "terrible twins" early if I want any decent pictures.

What's this, there's a quilt on our bed. Where did this come from?

Maya likes it.

She even likes it enough that I was able to sneak in and take a closer picture.

Brady Bug really likes it, but then he likes all of my quilts.

This was the last of those pictures I was able to get because something is going by outside and they both had to run out to the yard and protect the house. It was probably a cat. 


I do want to tell you about that quilt, it is the largest I've made, just twin size, but huge for me. I used Kumari Gardens fabric by Dena Designs to make Carrie Nelson's Plan C quilt from her book Schnibbles times two. The fabric and pattern were made for each other, it turned out really beautiful.


When I take pictures of my quilts these two are always along and although they say they are helping, I call it photo bombing.

See the bottom of the quilt?

Last year I told you their stories, both rescues, both sad. This year we are celebrating all the laughter they've brought to our lives. These are my two rescues who rescued me. 

Miss Maya Grace says "Thanks for stopping by".

Mr. Brady Bug says "I hope to see you again".


And I say I hope you're enjoying all the love that we're seeing in Pets On Quilts.

Dana

I Promise, I'm Not a Robot

Many of you know I had a problem with the word verification when they started with the black and white weirdness and I wasn't the only one. Sadly I just stopped leaving comments until one of my favorite bloggers hurt herself (Hi Debbie) and I really felt the need to let her know I was listening. She has since taken the horrible thing off of her blog, but I did realize that they had fixed it so it was actually readable. 

Hopping around reading Pets on Quilts, I've run across quite a few of these and now Blogger has started a new torture, numbers. Some are so blurry, I can't tell what they are. This morning I came across this one:

Really!!!???, can anyone tell me what that &*%* number is?

Edit: Well, Sharon from Vrooman's Quilts left a comment that said she doesn't do the numbers, so I tried it and it works, just ignore them, they're there just to make us crazy. Thanks so much for Sharon and her rebel ways :)

Thanks for stopping by and visiting a very frustrated,

Dana

Thanks Lorelei

I want you to show you what came in the mail yesterday.

Pretty, right? I won these from Lorelei Craig (don't you love her name?) who blogs at Mermaid Sews. Lorelei's blog was a stop on the blog hop for the 100 Quilts for Kids put on by Swim, Bike, Quilt. This is all the fabric I need to make a disappearing 9 match quilt, which I will add to the pile of quilts to be taken to my local Women's Shelter. Don't forget the link is open until Oct. 15 to join in, make a quilt, donate it locally if possible, feel good. Easy. This one's close to my heart.  

Thanks so much Lorelei, I do believe in mermaids. 

One last thing, Sarah asked me about the quilt I had pictured in my last post. Sarah, you're "no reply" and I don't know how to get in touch with you to answer your question. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Dana