One month mark

One month ago, today, my dad passed away.

With his passing and loosing our family pet on the same day, I had filled last month with so many things to stay sane, that I don't know where the month went.

Staying busy is my way of coping with things, but you wouldn't be able to tell by the shape the house is in right now, so this month I need to shift my focus a little more from creating things to creating more calmness by reorganizing things that surround me. Guess this happens when life gets out of balance. You focus so much on one area of your life, that other areas suffer. I do feel out of balance at this time and the only way to get back in balance is to re-evaluate things and change priorities. A while ago I started listening to some of Anthony Robins' CD's, about creating the time of your life. He speaks about just this scenario, where your life gets out of balance and how to go about creating more harmony to make things work for you. Quilting and creating is important to me, that's why I do it, but with things changing around here and us adjusting to not having Cliff around at this time, I will need to modify a few things to work better for us. It's hard to believe Cliff is in Korea for two months already, which means that we'll have him back in 10 months!

OK, I don't want this post to sound too depressing, though, so back to posting about the productive things I've accomplished.

Quilting and making gifts for others has always helped me release some stress, so I've been working on some Dear Jane blocks over the last few days. Today I finished my 50th block, which brings the total of pieces in this quilt to 786 so far. Here are the blocks that I've finished, since posting the last block.

OK, now off to declutter my craft table. A clear table definitely helps me to lessen visual stress and free the flow of creativity.

More crafty things

After backing Michelle's healing quilt with the black and bright cat fabric, I still had plenty left over for other crafty/quilty items. I ended up making some more checkbook covers, wallets and napkin holders for the staff at Dreaming Summit Animal Hospital and the small table topper for Dr. Hillebrand.

Then I also finished my 46th Dear Jane block. So far I have not counted pieces, but I think if I want to add the statistics to my siggy line I should start, before it's too much too count for the entire quilt. lol This block alone consists of 40 pieces.

Michelle's healing quilt

This is how far I've gotten with Michelle's healing quilt for now. The top is entirely done and now I just need to piece the backing, baste, quilt and bind it for her to hang in her room. Mittens had green eyes, so instead of using two different colors for the eyes like the pattern showed, we decided to let all of the kitties have green eyes. Michelle is really looking forward to get this quilt.
Below are some items I sewed up as thank you gifts for the staff at Dreaming Summit Animal Hospital. Dr. Hillebrand and his staff were wonderful during the care of Mittens. Everybody there is very professional and caring, not only to the pets, but also to the owners.


Wallets:
Checkbook covers:
Cell phone FOB's:

Camp Thunderbolt

Michelle processing through the deployment line to pick up her backpack and other necessary items.
Here she is trying on a pilot's helmet.
Of course there is a pre-deployment briefing to attend. Michelle is practicing her handgrenade skills.

The OSI (Office of Special Investigations) enlisted Michelle as a junior agent. The task was to lift fingerprints of items to see who didn't clean the room. Here she is using dusting powder to lift the fingerprint. Now it's time to get combat ready with face paint. Posing with a sniper of the security forces.
Michelle's arm - impaled by a stick.

Saturday morning at 6:30 the kids got a call for their deployment. They deployed for 5 hours (with mom in tow) to a far, far away place on the other side of the base. ;o)

It was good to get out of the house and do something different, but I'm not used to being out for 5 hours in this heat, so I ended up with a whopper of a headache (beginning of migraine) by the time we got home. Even with that we had a great day today and the kids got a whole lot of goodies thanks to so many different organizations that generously donated items and their time to make this a huge success!

This "deployment" was mainly for kids to get an impression in a very fun way of what their parents have to do when they deploy, early recall included. In a real deployment those calls can come any time of the day. Cliff had phone calls at different times of the night for the real thing throughout the years. Families with deployed family members had sign up preference, but the event was open for all military families, active duty, reserve, DOD etc.

They had about 250 kids from what I heard, which were split into 8 different groups (group color was on their special laminated deployment ID) and we were picked up with two tours of 4 buses. When we got back to the starting point, they staged a coming home party in the hangar, where everybody walked through a line getting high-fives and leis and then after a short post-deployment briefing they got more gifts (i.e. Diamondback baseball cap, Coyotes shirt etc.) and cake.

Mercy Me - Word of God Speak

A day of mourning

Eleven hours apart from each other, both my father Karl-Heinz Dedisch (*June 3, 1936- + October 4, 2008) and Mittens have left this world.
I want to take a moment to thank all of my cyber-friends for their condolences and prayers to get us through this difficult time.

Cup Cozies

This morning I made two cup cozies from a kit I ordered from Connecting Threads. I think they turned out cute and I have plenty of fabric left from the kit to make several more in different color combinations.
Here's a link directly to the Cup Cozy Kit :

http://www.connectingthreads.com/fabric/cup-cozy-kit_KD1610.html

OK, now I need to straighten out my sewing corner and get ready to pick DD up from school.

I'll get to do some more quilting this evening, because I'll be teaching a 2 hour hand quilting class later.

Quilter's Wallet

On Saturday I was teaching the Quilter's Wallet by Pat-e-Patterns ( http://www.pat-e-patterns.com/index.htm ) in a 4 hour class and I finished my wallet on Sunday.

You can make this wallet with 5, 10 or 15 credit card slots. I like to make the wallet with 10 credit card slots and that's what you see in the pictures above.

One very important thing with this pattern is to really label all of your cut out pieces and place the numbered pieces in the appropriate stacks, or it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

For the class I prepared the labels for the students, so they just had to cut them out an attach them to the appropriate fabric, batting, lining pieces, as soon as those were cut.

Progressive Sampler

I realized I've never shared the picture of the Progressive Sampler I was teaching at Bearly Stitchin in Goodyear, AZ.

This was a 6 week class with 3 hours / week.

For the quilt top I mainly used my hand dyed fabrics from Marjie McWilliam's cotton dyeing class at Quilt University and added some batiks from my stash to it.

Below is a color wheel I dyed and the dyeing set-up in my backyard. Unfortunately life has been too busy to dye anything for several months, but I hope to get back into it again soon.

Yesterday's doings

Yesterday I picked up my shirt for the Phoenix race for the cure on October 12th.
This cause is very close to my heart, because my mother passed away from breast cancer on February 13th 2005, after a ten year battle. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was pregnant with our son and she passed away the day before his tenth birthday and just a little over 2 weeks after her 67th birthday. I miss having her around. She is probably the strongest woman I've ever known. A fighter with a big heart, who touched many lives.
Contributing to organizations like the Susan G. Koman foundation will hopefully make a difference in the life of many families, so that they will not have to suffer the loss of a loved one to cancer.
Remember, breast cancer awareness month is in October!
Here are a few links:

http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm
http://www.nbcam.org/
http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/breast


Staying with the color scheme of the t-shirt, here's a little table topper I'll be putting together.
The four Drunkard's Path units were made in a demonstration for the Progressive Sampler quilt I was teaching and I don't like blocks or samples to go to waste, so I'll be adding some sashing strips and the purple center square to turn the blocks into a small table topper. :o)

This next block is another quick block I used to quickly demonstrate sashing to the class.

Don't know if any of you have tried out some of the new battings that are on the market now. Since I had to kill some time to sign up for the Race for the Cure, I visited JoAnn's. They had all packaged battings on sale (40%), so I thought I'll give the new Bamboo batting from Fairfield a try. It's a 50/50 mix of bamboo fibers and cotton. Very soft to the touch. I' bought a queen size batting, so I can try it both for hand and machine quilting. I'll let you all know how I like it after I had the chance to test it.

Last, but not least, I received my signature blocks back in the mail from a swap that was done on WASIQ (Washington State Internet Quilters). Unfortunately 13 participants dropped out, but it still leaves me with 77 signature blocks (if I counted correctly lol). This should be a fast quilt to put together, once I can decide on the layout I want to use for the blocks. Oh, so many options!

Moon Glow

This year I also started on some Moonglow blocks with Jinny Beyer's pattern and fabrics. Above are the blocks that are done so far. I intended to make one block a month, but you probably all know how that goes. lol

If I get this quilt finished, before Cliff comes home from Korea, I'll be very happy, so keep watching for updates on my progress.

45 Dear Jane blocks

Just finished my 45th Dear Jane block. I took all of the blocks I've finished so far out of the folder I stored them in and put them up on my design wall to get an idea of what it's going to look like. Definitely a far cry from the traditional Dear Jane. Once all of the blocks are done, which will probably take me a year, I am planing on using a blackish blue sashing and colorful cornerstones at each intersection, but we'll see how this quilt comes along.

The Star Tower

Yesterday Michelle and I went to Goodyear to check on Cliff's aunt and uncle's house. Every time we drive out there, we pass this tower and never knew what it was about, so on the way back, we stopped there to check it out.

As one of the plaques below tells (click on the pictures to see a larger view), The Star Tower is a living memorial to the many Native American cultures that have studied the sky from this very location.

Below is a blooming cactus we saw on our way up to the tower and a small waterfall. There is also a small picnic area, that we are planing to use on one of our other trips up there - maybe as soon as next weekend.

Here's Michelle on top of the Star Tower.

Pineapple blocks

I offered Moira to make two blocks for her Pineapple quilt and here are the finished blocks. She sent me the paper pattern and pre-cut pieces, so the blocks went together very easy.

Cliff is in Korea

At 4am on September 3rd, I brought Cliff to the airport for his one year tour to Korea.
He was able to call yesterday evening to let us know that he made it safely.
I miss him already, because he used to come home every day for his lunch break and we'd have lunch together, but I'm staying very busy here, which seems to make time go by faster.
Tonight Aaron will have two of his friends sleep over, but I told him that they have to be picked up by 9am tomorrow, because I have to go to the "meet the teacher" event at Bearly Stitchin, since I'll have 6 classes there this next quarter. So you can see, it's not going to get boring here. lol

SURPRISE!

Do you remember from my last post to the blog that I didn't know what all can happen after DH makes rank? Well, I found out this morning.
DH will be sewing on his stripes some time in August and since they don't have room for two Master Sgt's in his shop we knew he'd be moved around somewhere else.
Well, that somewhere else will be Korea for one year! Now you'll probably wanna know when this is going to happen?
As far as Cliff found out this morning (he called around 6:30 to tell me this news) he'll be leaving in September.
Good thing is, I get to stay in the house with the kids. I'll update you all on more as information comes in.

It's JULY already!

Gosh, I just realized that the last post I've made to my blog was in March! A lot has happened since then and currently things are a bit crazy again. Since I didn't have a chance to blog about it, some of you didn't know that I went to Germany with the kids for a little over 3 weeks last month to surprise my dad for his 72nd birthday on June 3rd. He had no idea we were coming, so the surprise was a good one. We made it back home 10pm on the 25th and since then I'm just going, going, going to catch up on things around here. DH has been feeling sick with coughing, body aches and no energy since the day we got home and he's not getting better, so he's home sick right now, waiting on blood results etc. to finally find out what's wrong with him. Then yesterday I also received a phone call from my sister, that my dad is in the hospital again. While we were there, he was on antibiotics for an infection on the leg, which he had an amputation on. The infection did not go away, so now he might need to have some surgical intervention. My fear is that, because he still has not slowed down on his smoking a bit, his circulation is very bad in that area again and that the doctors will have to remove even more of the remaining leg. Not that there is much more to work with, so if you have a moment, I'd appreciate prayer for my dad.
On a happier note, I did sign up for another of Marjie McWilliams' dyeing classes (Quilter's Palette) at Quilt University - the down side, with me keeping the kids busy on their summer break, Cliff sick and me waiting on a maintenance guy for two days to fix some things around the house I have not been able to touch any of the dyeing materials and the next lesson will be loaded tomorrow already. UGH! Well, maybe I'll get to try both lessons over the weekend.
In my first dyeing class (which I didn't blog about here either - hanging my head in shame) I was able to do my set up outside on the patio. I thought of dyeing outside again, but I guess I need to get up early for that, because the temperatures hit the 90's before 8am already and from there on it just gets too hot to stay out there for very long.

Last but not least - Cliff made Master Sgt.!!!!!
Don't know yet what changes will come with that, but I'll try to be better about updating my blog. I might just throw some random posts with pic's in, here and there to follow up on some things I have not posted about earlier.