Catching Up.....

Hello Friends.....

   Well guess this has not been my year for getting my quilting goals accomplished. I have been sick and down in the back for just about the entire year. I have started feeling alot better although my back is still not real good and I have bursitis in my hip. Hoping that goes away soon.

   I had alot of quilting goals I wanted to accomplish this year but will not dwell on that since there is no catching up at this point. I will just be happy to be sewing and quilting again. I have been in bad need of a new chair in my sewing room. I have been using my Mothers old swivel chair she used when she worked at the bank years ago. It has a date on the bottom of 1962! I believe we used it beyond it's years for sure.

   It has contributed to making my back hurt when I was sewing. Hubby took me over on the coast and we found an Office Depot that had a sale on office chairs. They also have a great selection of their chairs assembled so I was actually able to sit and try them out and see what one was going to work for me. We bought a really nice chair for $99.00.

   Yesterday I tried out my new chair for the first time and it was very comfortable. One of the quilts I had planned to make this year is a memory quilt in remembrance of my Dad. He was a musician all his life and played many different instruments.

 I have fond memories of him playing music and singing. The quilt I plan to make will have a photo of him when he was very young with his trumpet and machine embroidered instruments thruout the quilt that he has played over the years. The trumpet of course and the accordian, piano, drums, guitar and harmonica.

   I got a start yesterday on embroidering a few of the instruments. I have been collecting embroidery designs and music themed fabrics for several years to make this quilt.

   I found some really nice musical themed designs at Embroidery Library. I buy alot of my designs from that web site on the internet. I used a gold mettalic thread when I embroidered the trumpet and it turned out real nice.

   My Dad started playing the trimpet when he was about 4 yrs old. I think of all the instruments he played it was my favorite other than when he sang. Sometimes when listening to the radio or occassionally on TV I will hear one of the songs my Dad sang back years ago and it brings tears to my eyes. The song "Georgia" sung by Willie Nelson and the song "For the Good Times" always make me cry.

   When my Dad passed away, my Mother gave me his accoustic guitar. I had never played one before but I have learned to play it a little bit.

   My Dad played the accordian many years ago when I was real young. Back when the Polka was really popular and he played songs like Beer Barrel Polka and my family would all jump up and be dancing around the livingroom.  What great memories!

   So this is going to be the start of Dad's quilt. I will add more photos of the embroidery as I get them completed. I am researching printing photos on fabric so I can have Dad's photo on the quilt.

   When this quilt is done I will use it to snuggle up on the couch on a cold winter evening as I watch TV. So drop by once in a while and follow the progress of my Dad's quilt.  I am open to suggestions if you have done a project like this before, I have done embroidery on a quilt before but the photo on fabric is going to be new for me. 

 Catch ya later quilting friends!
 August 24, 2012
 Corry Geissinger


 

I'm back.....

     So sorry for my absence the past few months. I have been very ill the past several months. I am hoping the rest of 2012 is much better than the first few months for me. I am really late getting into my quilting projects I wanted to accomplish for this year although while I was under the weather I have been working on a Christmas quilt I have been hand quilting for the past year. It will be given to my daughter, Christi and I am really hoping to have it completed before the holidays this year. I will try and post a photo of it later today.
    One chilly night, Christi stayed over night with us and was sleeping on the couch and woke up feeling chilly. She told me she was tempted to get her quilt that was laying on my sewing table and snuggleing up in it although it wasn't finished....but she saw all the safety pins holding the batting, backing and quilt top together and thought perhaps it was not such a good idea...lol.
    Since I have it all quilted except the last outer border so it won't be long now. I figure by the end of summer to have it finished. This last border is very wide and has a snowy Christmas scene of horses, ponies, kitties and other farm animals. I am hand quilting around all the animals and scenery so it is very time consuming but will be very nice, I think. Stop back later and see some pics of this quilt.....

It's a New Year.....

Yes, it's a new year and I am late in getting started. I have set a few goals for myself for this year and one of those is to cultivate my Free Motion Quilting skills. I want to participate in the 2012 FMQ Challange and Leah Day's FMQ Project for 2012.

I have often been frustrated with my FMQ attempts and after watching Leah Day's 1st Quilt Along Blog I see perhaps why I have not had much success. I plan to practice Leah's teachings from this first blog so that I can learn to successfully make these simple shapes before moving on to trying to make leaf shapes we are to do in the January tutorial for the 2012 Challenge.
I really think I would struggle to make these leaves when I haven't mastered nice curves in stippling yet.

I am more excited about this now and looking forward to taking these tiny steps to get started. The link to Leah's first blog on this is here...if you want to see what I am talking about.
Leah's Free Motion Quilting Project Blog 1