Wishing You a Glorious New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Holiday Quilt Time!

It's that time of year when I must decide which holiday/Winter quilts to put out. I only have room for a 1/3rd of them and I still haven't extracted the beautiful ones my dear friend, Lisa, has made me over the years!

Why is it so hard to take good pictures of quilts? Believe it or not, all of these have 90° corners!

Noel Night - Detroit 2013

We had the most awesome night this past Saturday.  It was the 41^st annual Noel Night in Detroit!  Normally, we don’t get a chance to attend as it coincides with several December birthdays, but luck was with us this year!

Steve and I parted at the WSU parking garage (only $6!).  Even though it was a bitterly cold night, we were dressed for outdoors so we skipped the shuttle buses and walked to the Cultural Center (geocaching to and from the garage!).

What an amazing experience!  The All City Marching band roamed the WSU campus, giving impromptu performances.  Everyone dressed up in holiday wear and costumes.  The roads were blocked off around the Detroit Public Library and the Detroit Science Center, giving it a huge block party feel!

After passing a petting zoo and coffee vendors, Steve and I ducked into the Cathedral Church of St. Paul for a totally fascinating history of the cathedral (and weird cathedral trivia, in general).  The Cathedral is STUNNING!  The altar is made of tiles from Pewabic Pottery.  There were reproduction tapestries on the walls – the reproductions were made in the 1500’s.  Fascinating sculptures and ceiling tiles.

After the Cathedral, back out into the cold for kettle corn, roasted almods, hot dogs, hot cocoa, and music everywhere.  The venue stretched around 70 locations in the Cultural Center of Detroit – shops, musical performances, giveaways.  We went into the Detroit Public Library – after a tour of the oldest part of the library, we stopped to watch the teen drama performances downstairs and the teen line dancing upstairs. 

It was in one of the older rooms that we stopped to have our picture taken in front of the tree.

Wandering back outside, we stopped to appreciate the ice sculptures displayed under Rodin’s Thinker on the steps of the DIA.  It was such an amazing festive spirit – everyone from all walks of life having impromptu chats, enjoying the holiday lights and sounds.

We didn’t even make a dent in the venues, but there is always next year.  It was glorious seeing Detroit at its holiday finest!

Happy Thanksgiving All!

Halloween Nights

The family had a great time at Greenfield Village, Trick-or-Treating! I think Lorna and crew had the best costumes!

Flowers In Winter

My last post was so down, but I do want to acknowledge that I've had joy this week too. Thursday was Valentines Day, and, for the first time in many years, I received flowers at work! That are from my Sweetie. He started out as my geocaching teammate, but, for the last four months, it's grown into something beautiful. He's warmth and laughter and goodness.

 

Thought I'd share my flowers with you!

Happy Valentines Day! Happy Spring!

 

In The Holiday Spirit!

Tee hee… just figured out mobile blogging and giving it a go!

Happy Tuesday!
Elisa

Tis the Season

I have a fabulous friend in Utah that's in love with her personal printing presses. I received this great card in the mail!

I love being surrounded by such talented people!

Great job, Lauri!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I am thankful for my family, my good friends, my Love, my health, my job, my life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

A Patchwork Ghost

I'm so excited that I will be attending a geocaching "mega event" soon.  The theme is "Halloween in July".  I'm telling you up front - it's too hot to dress up.  But we are decorating.

Each member of my family is supposed to create a ghost to represent ourselves.  I made one for myself and my Dad.

Patchwork Ghost and her Dad!

I think they're rather cute!

Happy Stitching!

Elisa

Happy Independence Day

Just returned from the Clawson fireworks. I tried out the fireworks setting on my camera. These are great if you click to enlarge.

Happy Independence Day!

Elisa

 

Red Brolly - Free Easter Embroideries

Hop on over to Red Brolly! She has posted wonderful new embroidered Easter goodie bags!

This year and another.

She has such a fun blog and has great whimsical free embroidery patterns! She's the one with the great Brutus embroideries I featured a few months ago!

 

Elisa

 

Happy National Quilting Day!

What are YOU going to do today?

I'm already in my room working in my journal quilt, prepping the embroidery of my SKoW blocks, and washing the black background for my butterflies.

Happy Stitching!

Elisa

Small Finish - Easter

Last night I spent my 15 minutes of quilting time cleaning up my Quilt Room. I realized I had too many pieces of 'almost completed' projects floating around so I'm going to try to finish off some smaller ones.

Here's my Easter Egg for Nancy Halvorsen's 2011 Count On It book. It was supposed to be the April block, but Easter sometimes occurs in March so I changed it.

This quilt will fit in that 12" square free-standing Ackfeld wire frame.

It's not often I "birth" a quilt rather than bind it, but this was a kit from a local shop and the fabric was cut pretty exact. One trick I have learned over the years: When I have it layered, I don't sew 3 sides, flip it out, and then hand sew the 4th. That 4th side always looks wonky to me. Instead, I sew all 4 sides, make a slit in the center of the backing, flip it out, and then ladder stitch the cut close. The sight of the slit is where I add my label (on this little fellow, I fused one on over the slit).

I think I finished this one first because I'm ready to take my Winter wallhangings down and see a little Spring!

Cheers!

Elisa

Happy New Year, All!

Wow! What a year! What a month! What we week!

Glad they're over.

Spending every waking hour working or with an ailing family member. 

Finally able to work on my Some Kind of Wonderful blocks. I've been practicing appliqué for 2 months, and just finished stitching the main section of my actual block! Looks great!

I may no longer refer to appliqué as "the A word"!

Here's to wishing you and yours a safe and healthy New Year!

Cheers!

Elisa

Santa's Elves

If you could ask Santa's elves to take care of one dreaded quilting chore, what would it be? It's been a week and my snowmen STILL aren't basted. <sigh>

Basting bites.

Ok, off I go. My goal is to show you my snowmen this week.

Good cheer!

Elisa

Blue Christmas

I must admit.... I'm a little sad this Christmas.

My best friend is having a quiet Christmas in Maine.  Another confidant is facing life's issues in Pennsylvania.  A third is all the way in Boston. And my work cohort & quilt critic has moved to Utah.  So far away.


I do take comfort in my quilts, though.  My house is too small for a real tree so it's decorated with Christmas quilts & wallhangings.  Many of them in the gallery below came from my friend, Lisa, over the years.  Seeing them.... I can feel her spirit nearby.

These are only a few of my holiday quilts. Every year I have to pick and choose what goes up.  About another dozen in the cedar chest and one more in the works.


Happy Stitching!
Elisa