Linda, it sure sounds like you had fun with your family. I haven't really gotten together with cousins for years. Seems like something I should organize ... maybe not. :) I am always jealous of families that are close - ours isn't. :(

I started quilting the fan wedding quilt on Wednesday and now I am taking all of the quilting out because my bottom thread tension is off! URRRGGGHHH!!! I only had about a 2 foot square done, but that is still frustrating! We are also babysitting our granddaughter, so here it is, 8:30 Friday night and I haven't really got started on the ripping! We are going to Las Vegas early Sunday morning, and I haven't packed a thing yet, so I will get a little done tonight then that will be it until next week!

Sue

I've decided to downsize the throw for my Aunt to a lap robe and plan on working on it this weekend. I need to resize the pattern. I have 217 2" squares cut. The throw required about 430, so I don't know yet how many I'll need. I'm cutting everything one at a time, as the scraps are rather small for the most part. She fell last year and can't really walk anymore so the lap robe will come in handy in her wheelchair. DD suggested my sister and I fly to Houston to give it to her. We've been wanting to go visit her, but DH is in a lot of pain right now and we're trying to come up with a diagnosis, so I don't see me leaving him anytime soon.

Bev, I'm sorry your DH is having pain that is hard to diagnose! I hope he finds relief soon.

Sue, my family isn't close, either. My brother is 17 years older than me and my cousins are all about his age, so I've never spent much time with any of them. Plus we are spread out all over the country.

No sewing for me. We just got home from taking George (cat) for his annual checkup. He's fine. :) In a bit we're headed over to see my FIL and his wife to celebrate DH's birthday, which was yesterday. Tomorrow I need to do serious house cleaning - it's been a while. LOL

Donna

I may get to the machine if I get over being mad at myself. I cut out all pieces for a quilt last week, only to find yesterday that I miscut using finished sizes instead of cutting sizes. i cannot waste all that fabric so I have been recalculating my block and how I can resize the whole thing. Grrrr!

Growing up, my family was very close to aunts and uncles and cousins, but after marriage, moving away, returning home, things changed. I do see these cousins occasionally but we are not as close as before.

My own children all live miles away from each other and their children have never had the chance to get to know their cousins. That makes me very sad!

Now I really am not in the mood to sew!

Theresa

I still have not sewn anything since coming home. It might help to uncover the machine ..... could at least make a crumb block! When I was up north, I visited with lots of cousins, nieces and nephews. Growing up we were always doing things together so we are a close family. My girls and their cousins even take trips together when they can. Four of them went to Utah this last summer.

Linda, I think it's awesome that you and your daughter can do your crafts together. Also, I like the idea of taking a certain number of orphan blocks and doing something with them. I might try doing that. Thanks for sharing.

Sue, I think your granddaughter will experience a closeness with you.

Bev, If your DH gets to where you can leave him and you can visit your aunt in TX, I'm thinking you won't be sorry. What pattern are you using for her lap quilt?

Donna, Serious house cleaning? Surely you jest! LOL

Theresa, Wouldn't you be able to still use your pieces? They would just be smaller???? If you need a certain size, make it with the borders.....but then, you know that. :-)

I royally screwed up that flying geese quilt. My bad. I decided to do all the columns where the geese are FM just inside the triangles on each side of the goose in the middle, then go back and do 2 lines of serpentine stitch down the plain columns in between with the walking foot. Bad idea. I forgot you can't go in between where you quilted before because it causes distortion. By the time I noticed I had screwed up there were too many stitches to rip out and leave blank. So now I have a quilt that started out really great and now is an eyesore. So now instead of spending time doing a proper binding I'm going to do a self-binding with the backing kind, who cares?? What's even worse is I actually had the gall to ask for advise here on how to quilt this thing, got some good suggestions, then completely ignored it. (Can you tell I'm in an evil mood??) :(

Feeling for you Rita. I was just thinking that I can't remember ever making a quilt from start to finish without a hiccup or two.

Theresa

Theresa, I’m so glad you figured a way to use your strips. I really like the looks of your block. It’s going to be a great quilt. A couple of years ago I cut all 860 or so logs wrong for a triangle log cabin quilt. I almost cried when I found out what I’d done. It was a scrappy quilt and I’d cut up all the fabrics I wanted to use. Luckily, I was able to retrim all the logs and make the blocks a little smaller. The quilt is one of my very favorites. I gave it to my stepdaughter.

Rita, I’ve never had that happen, but I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to feel that your quilting ruined the quilt. I’m so sorry.

Sharon, do we have to light a fire under you? Get moving, Girl. I’ve at least sewn a label on a quilt we’re taking to our friends in Chattanooga the end of the month. That’s my quilting achievement for the weekend. Pretty sorry state of affairs.

Rita, I feel so bad for you. I didn't know you can't go back and add more quilting. I've considered doing it before, but didn't.

Theresa, that is a very nice block. Glad you worked it out.

Sharon, here is the pattern.snowball I'll make it 3 nine patch blocks by 3. I sewed up all the nine patches, but I need to buy some white tomorrow. I didn't use all the fabrics, but I think it comes out to 117 by the time I make the border blocks.

Urgent care told us husband's urinalysis was OK but x-rays showed he had arthritis. I questioned how you can go from no pain with arthritis to extreme pain in one day. We were headed out of town for a week and the pain was terrible. When we got back and saw his regular doc, he looked at the results from urgent care and the urinalysis clearly showed a UTI. Two weeks on the meds, lots of pain and he still has it. So now we are on a very potent antibiotic. We have an appt mid-Nov with an orthopedic surgeon to check out the arthritis just in case that is the problem causing the pain. HOwever, if the pain goes away in a couple of days with the antibiotic, we'll probably cancel. Then we have to question why he got the UTI, so we might end up at the urologist. Long explanation, but I feel we learn from each other (more than the doctors).