All kinds of HAPPY

Little did I know when my son set up a "blog" what I was in for other than simply letting my kids see what I had made. At that time, he pulled up a couple of quilt blogs already in existence and posted them along the side of my page. Where did he get those names? Was it only an accident or does God really work that way in our lives.

Some were like shops promoting themselves or long arm quilters looking for work but the first ones I read were Taniwa and Stitchin By The Lake. It was some time later I figured out what it meant to become a "follower". That may sound dumb to you but most of my friends my age don't even have a computer.

Now I am part of a virtual quilting group and that makes me happy but if you have not read either of these blogs, I will attempt at the end to add a link because you must see that they are about much more than quilting and have connected up those loose ends that seem to fill our lives. The first picture brings the happiness off those friendships. The Lovely pile of goodies sitting by my plant and coffee cup were sent by Marlene. The cozy hot pad she made with her own hands and is almost too dear to use. The other mini quilt on the table was made by Tanya. It has the kanji (characters) for my name. Fuku brings fortune and happiness and Ta or Da is a paddy field. She then selected a Psalm to print around the words. And such a perfect one it is! I am still blown away by the friendship of these two women who went to such lengths to make me happy.

Next you will see that the Psalm banner is DONE. I finished yesterday but it was much too windy to take a picture. Don't zoom in to closely because you will see a lot of threads and dog hair but when I returned from school today the weather was just fine for getting that picture and I grabbed the ladder, the banner, and the dog and raced to the park. As I was hanging it I saw the generous amount of dog hair covering every area.

Lest you think the dog must be bald by now ... here is my assistant, Nikko, guarding the work from the little kids with the frisbee. (Or maybe thinking she'd like to play with the frisbee too.)

And here is one more reason to rejoice. Today the little kimono blocks were complete and we began to arrange them on the floor. The dark blue blocks in between will be quilted with family crests. Today we copied them to the blue and then arranged everything into rows for assembling.

These last pictures are arranging and pinning.

Since there were only a few left to mark, we decided to get that part of the process done so we can get it all together and start on the quilting.
To mark the crests on the dark fabric, we centered the paper copies where they were to go. Then we went over the lines in the paper with a ballpoint pen. After picking up the paper, there was a line depression where the pen had drawn and we went over it a second time with a white chalk pencil. The Japanese sewers often mark fabric with a "hera"which is similar in that it leaves a light line in the fabric. This is quite useful but requires good lighting and may be difficult to see on figured fabric.

We had a good turnout for the work and you can see the happiness on the faces of the remaining three that we were able to get this much done.

So, now you see the blessings the day has brought. Thank you for being my virtual quilt group. Thank you to Marlene http://stitchinbythelake.blogspot.com/

and Tanya http://tttl1998.blogspot.com/ (check them out now, if you haven't already) And smile for the joy that quilting brings and the friendships that blogging brings too.