Christmas Memories

It's Sunday night, December 27, and Ken and I are "veging" at home, as we like to call it after a busy couple of days.

We went to Todd and Sue's for Christmas Eve with her family and had snacky type food and exchanged some gifts. We came back home about 6:30, and Ross was here. Leigh, Jill and the kids and Pixie, their new puppy, came about 7 or so, and the kids and I started to make cookies...and make cookies...and make cookies. Even I was a little mortified at what a big pile of cookies we had!

Roy and DeAnn came around 9:30 and watched us bake more cookies!

Ah, if it weren't for the last minute, a lot of things wouldn't get done. DeAnn and I gabbed til about 12:30, and then I went back into our bedroom and finished sewing up the sweater and hat that I made for Shane! Crazy, huh? But it was rather pleasant doing it and watching the fire in our new electric fireplace. I felt a little like Ma Ingalls, working on things after her children went to bed!

The next morning, I put the cinnamon rolls and cinnamon diamonds in the oven, and we began our day with sweets! The turkey also spent an hour in the oven, then into the big electric roaster.

After Todd and Sue and kiddoes arrived, and Grandma Grady (Ken's mother), we opened gifts. What fun! The boys seemed to appreciate getting Yaktraks, some special gizzies to put on the bottoms of your shoes or boots to help you stand up on ice. Ken had appreciated them a couple weeks ago when we had a Sunday ice storm, and we decided our boys needed them.

And then, turkey dinner. I had an abundance of kitchen help which I really appreciated, before and after! We at promptly at one (am I good or what?). The only thing we didn't have was pie!

In the afternoon, I asked our four kids to pose for a family picture. Perhaps I will post them here if it works OK.

After a while, the Lindbergs and the Trotters came out. Originally we had hoped that the kids could go sled-riding, but the weather was rainy/icky, so everybody just played inside--music, games, etc. And ATE! I didn't cook supper, but just let everybody pick.

Ross left in the evening since he had to be to work at Bonton before dawn.

Friday evening, Heidi, Kirsten and I got into our jammies and watched the dvd Pollyanna, a heart-warming story about a little girl in 1912.

Saturday, Roy and DeAnn left to go to her folks for dinner. After a late lunch of chili and cornbread, the Purcells left, and Ken and I were alone to R&R and clean up the place for meeting this morning!

We had some of the Brookville folks with us for meeting this morning since Joan Hannah was in Virginia. We had nine with us for dinner--leftovers and Spanish rice.

I will be packing cookies for the freezer!

Ken is off until Jan. 4, so we are thinking of some day trips this week. I also hope to start work at H&R Block on Jan. 4, although it hasn't been confirmed yet. Maybe tomorrow I will find out for sure what they are planning for me.

And so ends the Christmas holiday for us. Time to be moving on!

I Love Thanksgiving!

Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, invited his countrymen to set aside the fourth Thursday in November for thanksgiving. His proclamation is very interesting. Read it here: http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/thanks.htm

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I would like to tell you why!!

November and March are probably my least favorite months of the year. The weather is usual very dismal and they are months of transition as far as the seasons go. During those two months I usually have the feeling of "Let's get on with it!" In November we know we are heading for winter and snow, but the weather is certainly gray and uncheerful.

Then, along comes Thanksgiving, and it is such a cheerful holiday!! Unless you work in retail, you usually have Thursday and Friday both off from work or school. It's a great time to travel to be with your family.

I love roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and flavorful turkey gravy!! It makes my mouth water to write about it, even! A fresh, hot biscuit from the oven is really special, too.I enjoy pumpkin pie and other pies that make their appearance that day, too. Sweet potatoes are an OK dish and I accept them as part of Thanksgiving dinner, but don't need seconds. I pass on the cranberry sauce and leave that for those who enjoy it.

Since the dismal weather usually keeps families indoors, it is a time of togetherness, playing a game, etc.

Thanksgiving, as compared to Christmas, is what I call a "pure" holiday. A spirit of thankfulness is always pleasant. I don't feel that the Thanksgiving holiday is over-commercialized, either. People buy extra food to celebrate with their families, but it is not characterized by greed.

Christmas, now, is a different story. I have every reason to appreciate the Christmas story of Jesus being born into the world and enjoy many of the Christmas carols (Oh Little Town of Bethlehem and O, Holy Night are my two favorites). I do not believe that Jesus was born on December 25 because we do not know that.

Beyond that, though, the holiday gets very mixed up and twisted around. Greed takes over, and the commercialism of the season gets very pathetic. Santa Claus is a very cheerful fellow, but he has little to do with the birth of Jesus, he just happens to be mixed up with the same time of year. Giving gifts is a pleasant thing, but many people do it because they feel they "have to" and may overuse their credit cards. Not so good! And, things get taken to excess. Parties, parties, and more parties. Lots of money gets spent for decorations.

Yes, I feel that Thanksgiving is a pure holiday. I intend to enjoy it to the fullest!

So, who takes care of the bill-paying in your marriage?

Last week I put out a question to my facebook friends--who takes care of the bill-paying in your marriage? Not who earns the money that pays the bills, but who sits down with the checkbook or at the computer, and does the job?

This was prompted by a comment from Sheila Wyatt, my niece. She is a June bride and made a comment that she was tired of paying bills. I got to thinking--who does this job in most marriages? Obviously, someone has to, so I put out the question.

I got over thirty responses! Oh, I told them, I didn't mean to be nosy and only to reply if they wanted to. Two replies were that the husband and wife shared the responsibility. Of the rest, we had ten husbands and nineteen wives.

So, what does this mean? Probably not much of anything! Most seemed comfortable in how it was set-up to work for them. I was a little surprised to find that there were that many husbands (ten) amongst them. My husband and son Roy were included amongst them--like father, like son? Even though the women outnumbered the men, the task of paying bills is not as gender-specific as I thought it was.

My comment was that I enjoyed the fact that Ken took care of the bill-paying and that meant one less thing that I had to do! But there is more to the story than just that...

In the year prior to our marriage in May, 1971, we were dating, working to save up money for our life together. Ken had arrived home from Viet Nam in April, 1970. I graduated from high school in June and started a job at a bank in St. Marys. Ken worked at Brockway Gulf.

In August on 1970, Ken's dad died of a heart attack and Martha was left a widow. Ken took over paying most of the bills until we got married the next May. (Martha, in her upper 50's, got a job at a dry cleaners where she worked until she could draw retirement)

Ken was used to paying the bills and continued doing that for us in our marriage, and he does it to this day! I think it is a little source of pride for him to do it. I am not ignorant of our finances, though, and we both understand our money matters.

This is what works for us, and I can truthfully say we have had very few problems between us over money.

Another interesting sideline to this: When we were first married, we had decided to raise our family in the traditional way of the man being the bread-winner, and the wife being the homemaker. I worked for a year and a half after we were married (I retired to motherhood at age 20!). Since we wanted to learn to live on what Ken earned, we did not use what I made for living expenses. My salary went for extras--the washer and dryer, later on a freezer (which is still in use at Newry convention--boy, that one was a good one!). We also made payments on the principal of our mortgage with my earnings, which ended up saving us a nice chunk of money in interest over the years.

Years later, I found myself turning a rug-weaving hobby into a business. Once again, that money did not go into the household funds, but went back into the business for supplies and equipment--I eventually acquired a total of six looms! It also bought some sewing machines and sergers along the way. I think some of what I earned helped to build on our addition for a studio (now it is our bedroom) and may have even helped on our new kitchen.

Last winter I worked at H&R Block and made some dollars, too. I also sold out a lot of my weaving stuff. Some of that money went to buy the new bedroom furniture in our downstairs bedroom.

These are just things that worked for us, in our lives and in our time in history. By careful managing, we raised four children on one income. Ken has had good health and a pretty much steady work. I think he has probably gotten about 6 weeks of unemployment. None of our children were interested in going to college after high school, so we did not have the expense of education for them. Three out of the four of them have done a great job in being responsible to get their own education and we are proud of them for that!

Money issues can be a great source of contention in a marriage and can produce a huge power struggle. Hopefully the young ones getting married these days will have the wisdom to choose wisely and make money work FOR their marriage and not against it.

Just my musings...

Mothers in the Kitchen

Yesterday afternoon I was planning to have sausage gravy and biscuits for our supper. Since I was volunteering at the hospital 12-4 and our Bible study now begins at 7 o'clock, I decided I would use the box I Bisquick I bought recently and make my biscuits from that.

As I was stirring up the biscuit dough, I was filled with nostalgia because I remember making Bisquick biscuits as a girl at home! It was probably one of my earliest kitchen endeavors. And so, I began to think about my mother. I seem to remember making biscuits on my own, but certainly she was close by. What I mean to say is that I really don't remember her getting out the box and giving me instructions. I think she just let me go ahead and do it!

What a great gift from my mother! To allow me the space in her kitchen and life to just learn these things, kind of on my own, but not totally. It helped me get courage to try new things, whether it is in the kitchen, at the sewing machine, or probably lots of other places. There have been successes and failures along the way, but hey, look at all you can learn from the goof-ups!

My mother enjoyed making bread, and I can still remember seeing the pan of dough, sitting in a bigger bowl of water on the radiator to rise. She began to allow me to help her shape the dough into bread, cinnamon rolls, or what we called a "beautiful thing". A beautiful thing is more accurately named Swedish Tea Ring. Instead of slicing the cinnamon rolls, we made it into a circle, placed it on a cookie sheet, and cut about half way through the dough all around it and laid those slices on their side. When is came out of the oven, we drizzled it with frosting. Mmmmm! Not only was it beautiful, but it was also delicious!

But the beauty for me in the bread dough lesson is that Mom mixed up the dough and kneaded it, let it rise, and then let me help shape it. So, I knew what bread dough was supposed to feel like! After I was married, I began to make the famous "Grady Buns" and since I had worked with dough at home, I was well on my way to establishing my place in Cinnamon Roll Hall of Fame! When a bread machine became a part of my kitchen, I adapted that recipe to make a small batch of buns or a dozen cinnamon rolls.

Like a lot of wonderful things in life, the love of baking and cooking started small in me and keeps growing and growing, thanks to my dear mother who allowed me to make messes in her kitchen!

Anatomy of a Quilt--or, How Many Rooms Does It Take to Make a Quilt!

Finally, finally! I get to tell you the story of my lavender "Tossed Nine-Patch" quilt that I made for my granddaughter Laura's seventh birthday! I took pictures of the process from the beginning with the thought in mind that I would blog all about it with the pictures. This is a long process with lots of pictures. If you are not interested in quilting, you might want to spend your time somewhere else! If you are a quilter, you may even pick up a few new tips! I am excited to share this with you!

Why does anyone make a quilt? As my daughter Jill put it, "It's not because you need a blanket, that's for sure!" We make quilts as a form of artistic expression, putting colors together and with the thought that the person sleeping under it will feel the warmth of our love!

My husband, Ken, laughs and says it is pretty crazy to cut fabric all up in pieces and sew it all back together again! But he knows I love fabric and sewing and applauds my creativity--and sleeps under the quilts!!

This quilt is crazier yet, my dear husband. Not only do you cut up fabric and sew it back together into squares, but then you cut the squares you made into four smaller squares and sew them back together again a different way! The method behind this quilt was fun and intriguing to me. This quilt seemed to flow for me. I usually have a certain amount of frustration sewing a quilt together, but this one was minimal that way. I certainly recommend the pattern to anyone, even a beginner. Eleanor Burns has done a great work in quilting and has been at it for over 25 years. I have a good number of her books and patterns, and her method of teaching is excellent and time-efficient.

I bought this pattern at a quilt demonstration in DuBois last summer put on by Eleanor's sister, Pat Knoechel. During the demonstration which was primarily for another quilt, Pat briefly mentioned and described the method of sewing this quilt together. Bingo! I had to buy the pattern. I also bought the book for the other quilt, but am not ready to tackle that one yet!

So, busy August was nearly over and my garden was a disappointment because of tomato blight. Our son Ross had moved to State College to finish his final two years at Penn State. I decided it was time to get out my lavender fabrics and cut out a quilt to give as a gift for Laura's birthday, which is September 23. Lavender is her favorite color. I used Ross' recently vacated bedroom to do my cutting. Notice the "tutti-fruiti" color walls. Or is it "mango-tango"? Ross painted the room in the colors of his choice when he moved back here two years ago.

In the beginning...the first thing to do is cut strips of fabric five inches wide. A quilt ruler works great for this.
Then, cut the selvalge ends off evenly and cut into five inch squares across.
Keep going with all the fabrics of your choice. I had thirteen fabrics that I used. I didn't bother to count the squares I had, but knew I would have more that enough. I ended up putting some of the lefovers together for a border around the quilt, and still have a plastic bag with a nice sized stack in them for some future project.
I laid them all out on the lid of a plastic storage container, which worked well and moved across the hall to my sewing room (room #2--are you keeping track?)
I am sewing on a Bernina Artista, which I bought from the estate of Ken's Aunt Edna Sekel after she died. I own two Bernina's. The other one is mechanical (this one is computerized) and I love both of them. I always say Bernina sews a beautiful stitch.
I true-Eleanor Burns style, I sew the nine-patch squares together assembly line style. If you aren't familiar with this idea, ask me about it and I will explain it to you. I worked on five of them in my first batch, because I wanted to make some and cut them apart and then sew them back together to see how they looked!
Pressing is very important, and the pattern explais exactly how to do it. In this pattern you are to use the same fabric for every center square of the nine-patch. I used a pastel purple, with really was not very dramatic and didn't show up all that much in the completed quilt. Put one completed square on the cutting mat, and again, using a quilt ruler, cut it carefully into four pieces. Accuracy is important! Notice my central lavender square is now cut into four little squares.
Now, according to the pattern, we rearrange the squares so that two of the little lavender squares are in two of the corners! Again, the pattern gives excellent directions and diagrams.
Now, I have a stack of new blocks!

Now I have sewn together some of these blocks and laid them out on my ironing board so I can see what they look like.

You may have noticed my ironing board in earlier pictures. It is a husband-made add-on for my ironing board which is great for quilting. It is a rectangular piece of plywood, 22" by 60". I saw one at a needlecraft expo 20 years or so ago, called "Big Board". I don't know if they still sell them or not, but when I described it to Ken, it was easy enough for him to make it. It sits on top of the ironing board. Underneath is a frame that goes around the ironing board with a twist-on piece of wood to hold it securely. If you need and want more details, I am glad to supply them to you! It works really well for quilting, and pressing larger pieces of things.

And, this picture above is totally out of place, and I don't know how it got there! And I don't know how to delete if, so here it will stay, I guess!
Fifteen nine-patch squares have turned into fifteen tossed-nine-patch blocks. I laid them out on a guest room bed (room #3!) to see how they will look and how big the quilt actually is. I want it to be for a twin bed, and I don't like skimpy quilts, so looks like I want some borders on it!
I decided to use the white with little lavender flowers on it for the first border. It is five inches wide, like the squares. It will give the quilt a clean, feminine look, I think. I want it to be girlish for Laura. I am not to the point of sewing it on yet, just getting the idea of the look I want.
I still have stacks of squares to sew together! The challenge is to get them arranged so there are no fabrics alike touching each other. That didn't quite happen in this quilt. I have a couple of goofs along that line.
All sewn together.
The border is sewn on now, but not pressed yet. I decided that I still wanted this quilt bigger, so I started sewing my lefover squares together for an additional border.
Here they are string sewn together and ready to be cut apart to make the strips.
I seemed to forget to take some pictures for a little bit! Above shows the quilt with the squares borden on it. We have fast-forwarded to the process of sandwiching the quilt together with the backing on the bottom, then the batting, and then the quilt on top. I use my kitchen island to do this (room #4!). I lay down a cardboard cutting board because I use pins to hold my quilt together.

I wish I had taken pictures of the pinning process. Some quilters say to hand baste the quilt together and some use last safety pins. I use quilting pins. They are longer that ordinary sewing pins. Mine have yellow heads on them which make them easier to see. I, in fact, use them for nearly all my sewing and like them a lot. I pin about every six inches, and it must have worked OK for this quilt because I think I only got one tiny tuck in it, and it was near the edge.

One drawback to all those pins is that you might as well figure you are going to get pin-stabbbed more than once when you are machine quilting! As long as I don't draw blood, I just figure, "oh, well" and go on. Blood means I need to stop for a bit because I don't want blood on the quilt!

You will notice the purple-flowered backing material. This is a fairly heavy-weight sheet. I bought three or four of them one day at a close-out sale of a Wamsutta outlet store, figuring I could use them for quilts someday, and lo and behold, the day has arrived! Interestingly enough, I did not buy anything to make this quilt. Everything was gathering dust in my sewing room!! I have rolled the side edges of the quilt inward, and rolled up the bottom edges, leaving the corner where I want to start my machine quilting exposed. It's time to set up my machine in the dining room (room #5) and get this thing quilted!
The dining room table works well for machine quilting. It helps to have ample table space to my left and behind the machine. I took off the table cloth but left on the plastic table protector to preserve my table top from all the pins I put in! I will be flipping this quilt around a lot!

I am using my previous sewing machine for the machine quilting. This is a New Home Janome Memory Craft 8000 which was my dream-come-true sewing machine in 1994. It has done lots of sewing and is a dear friend of mine! For ordinary sewing, it does not feed properly, and I have pretty much put it out to pasture. But, it will do a good job with its walking foot or darning foot for free-motion quilting.

Getting started on sewing diagonally across the squares...
Okay, let's see where we are at...a few more to go.
Ta da! I have finished the cross-wise quilting! For some strange reason, I enjoy machine-quilting as long as my quilt doesn't fall off the table too many times!!
Now, what about that lavender flower border that I put on? I decided to do some free-motion loop-de-loos on it. They didn't turn out real great, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere! I drool when I watch videos of the beautiful free-motion quilting done on those quilting machine set-ups! Someday....and for the present, I am dreaming about one!

I use the darning foot to make the loops. The next picture shows the foot against a darker fabric so you can see it better.
Wow! We are coasting close to the finish line! And, it's a good thing, because we found out that we are celebrating Laura's birthday on Sunday, September 20, which is three days ahead of her birthday! It sure did keep me on track this last week of sewing the quilt!

On goes the walking foot again to go around the outside borders and X them all.

Hurray! We are coming to the finish line for the machine quilting!
And it is done! Well, except for the binding, that is...
Back to room #1, the cutting room. I have learned a different way of cutting and sewing bias binding together and want to share it with you. Most quilting books show a way of sewing the ends together some way, and drawing cutting lines on the fabric and then cutting it. Ugh, in my book. I cut my bias strips first and then sew them together.

Binding is important on a quilt and subject to wear because we grab the end of the quilt to arrange it over our head on those cold winter nights! Bias wears a little better and sews on easier than straight-grain binding. I also like the bias-look on the edge of a quilt, and often choose fabric with lines in it to enhance that fact. For this quilt, I had over a yard left over of one of the fabics in the quilt. Since it has a square design in the print of it, it will look interesting in the binding.

First of all, fold the fabric on the true bias. If your fabric is 44 inches by 44 inches, the sides would meet, but ours isn't. Our bias fold is at the back of this picture, and the selvage is the white line on the far/lower right.
With the bias fold still at the top, I fold the left flap in about a third of the way.
Then I fold the right flap in about a third of the way, keeping all that bias fold at the top.
Then fold the bottom flap up. This will now create a bias fold at the bottom of the fabric. This way of folding is a variation on a diaper-folding technique, for anyone who uses or remembers cloth diapers! It looks confusing here, but get a piece of fabric and see if you can do it!

I want my bias binding to be four inches wide. Since the first cutting is on a fold, I make that cut two inches.

The next cuts will be four inches. Now I have lots of bias strips of varying lengths. Let's go sew them together.
We sew them together on the straight of grain, which actually is diagonally on the binding. This means that you have to place your pieces together like this:
And if you aren't just sure whether those two pieces will go together, here's anotherr picture to help you:
A bunch sewn together, string-sewn at usual. Back to the ironing board.
Fold in half and press! Don't you just love this big ironing board?

I decided I had better make sure I have enough binding, so I am going to measure it. Sure enough, I have about 400 inches, more than enough for a twin-size quilt. Time to sew it on! I sew mine onto the back of my quilt. I start my sewing about four inches from the beginning of the binding.

When I come back around to that point, I will arrange this piece of binding with the other end.
The pictures above and below show how I sew around the corners. I stop about 3/8" from the end, fold and push a little pleat into the binding back to the edge, and start sewing again. This is easier to show than explain!
Remember that extra I left at the beginning? Now I am approaching it. I fold it out as shown:
and sew the binding over it. Notice in the picture blow that the top-most piece of binding is placed in a little bit from the one below it. This difference will help when we turn the binding around to the front of the quilt.
These next several pictures are duplicates! Sorry! No wonder it took all day to upload these pictures!! I will write again after the duplicates.





Looks like I forgot to take pictures of the topstitching of the binding to the fron of the quilt. I usually use a three-way zigzag stitch. True quilters will handstitch theirs beautifully, but I am not that ambitious. Besides, I think that my machine-sewing is far sturdier than my hand-sewing would be. And my quilts are made to be used ( but not abused, please!)

Aha! Finally, someone comes around who can get behind the camera! Ken took the next three pictures of me while I was finishing the binding on the quilt. I was recovering from the flu when these pictures were taken, and glad I was well enough to be sitting at the machine and finishing the quilt!


And, it is FINISHED! It is 11:05 on Saturday morning, 28 hours before the birthday party!!
A few more pictures of the finished quilt...
hanging over the dining room table and chairs...

and back on our queen bed...This quilt has moved around, hasn't it? Did you count the rooms I used to make it? The answer is five, and this is another room in our house to display it!
Now for the next fun part! Presenting it to Laura! Twenty-six days are making the first cut, the lavender quilt is ready for her birthday (nothing like a deadline to keep me on track!). Here she is getting it out of the gift bag.

Our son, Todd, (Laura's Dad) is tall enough to hold the quilt up for pictures without it touching the ground!
Laura also got this throw as a gift from her parents. It looks like she will be warmed up in lavender and purple this winter!
And I wrap it around her for a special picture..
and her school friend, too!
Fences make great place for quilt pictures
with a proud grandma
or a school friend!

Thanks you for reading the story of Laura's quilt! It was great fun to make and write about! I hope I have inspired you in some little way. And now I am thinking of my next quilt....