Pat Sloan Is Here!!

Pat Sloan has finally arrived in Greenville!!  We are so excited to have here here for classes Saturday, Sunday and lecture at our guild meeting on Monday night.  Last night our bee took Pat and Greg out to supper at Red Robin....YUM!  We had a great time and such a sweet lady.  I am so looking forward to a little de-stressing and quilting class.

 Roger, Greg and Pat.

 Pat, Susan, Suzanne

 Sue, Gina and Dave

and Me and Roger.

Getting all of my stuff packed this morning as I am heading to the hospital after the class to relieve mom for the night.

Sorry for the delay in updating.......it has been another crazy week with dad back in the hospital.  We did the lithotripsy yesteday and dad did pretty good through that.  He is still connected to bladder irrigation to keep the blood clots from clogging his catheter and has the stent still in place.  Hopefully in the next few days we can pull the stent and see if he can pass the pieces of stone.  The stone was broken into about 20 pieces, (it was a 20mm stone which is HUGE so now he will have 20 kidney stones at least to pass.......not looking forward to this process and have alot of sympathy for what he is fixing to go through)  The doctor was not able to crush it any smaller due to the size of the stone and the amount of space that is in the kidney pelvis.  We also had to limit the amount of time the machne was hitting the kidney due to the previous injury to the kidney from the blockage.  Today we will be watching his kidney function to make sure it does not show additional damage from the lithotripsy.  Keep us in your prayers and I will try to update more later.

Now off to spend the day with Pat Sloan!

Happy Quilting,
Shelia

Hexagon Work With Mom

Today mom carried some hexi's with her to work on at the nursing home.  I purchased one of the creative memory hexagon punches and had punched some of her template plastic for her. 

As you can see in the photo she has punches a tiny hole in the center, I need to use a hole punch and make the hole bigger so she can put a pin in there to hold the fabric in place.  But for today it will have to work.

Dad had a much better day today.  He had physical therapy this morning working with weights on his legs to build strength, then he sat up in the wheelchair talking with me and mom for an hour, then he fed himself lunch and ate everything on his plate.  Much better control of his hands today and using the utensils and handling the glasses with beverages.  He was exhausted and ready for a nap after all of that.  He said that the therapist would be coming in a couple of hours to have him walk and he needed to nap before that!  Very pleased with today's progress.  Still making urine and less bloody today.  More prayers answered!

Mom took her Black Magic quilt she made up to the nursing home and put onto dads bed.  He smiled when we put it on him for his nap after lunch.  I think it took dad all of 5 seconds to fall asleep once we got him in bed. 

 A close up of some of the quilting on the quilt.

We have an interested party for my grandfathers place and are to meet them tomorrow.  I sure hope that they are interested enough to purchase and take that one thing off of my list.  Prayers being said for that too.

Off to see my Bee girls for a few minutes tonight.  Seems like forever since I have gotten to be with them.  Could use a few laughs right now.

Happy Quilting,
Shelia

Leap Year Day Drawing Winner

The winner of the drawing for the gift bag is:

Quilt Happy

Please send e-mail me your name and address so I can send you your prize package.  Thanks for playing along.

Happy Quilting,

Shelia



Happy Leap Year and Giveaways

Yes it is leap year day.....so happy birthday to all of you leap year day babies.  and let's celebrate with some giveaways.

Now here is the prize package I am drawing for:

• A pair of hemostats- to help get stuff out of your machine or turning pieces.
• 2 rolls of Quilt Time Savers Seamless Quilt Binding.  Each one will do a Queen or King size quilt 2 1/2" x 12 yards.  One blue roll and one green roll.
• 15 zippers in various colors and lengths.  Remember that awesome drawer of zippers I bought a while back on ebay.  I love being able to go into the draw and pull out great zippers to make handibags out of.
• And last a travel sewing kit.  It has prethreaded needles for that emergency fixes.  An awesome little tin when you are done also.

Here's how to enter my giveaway drawing. 

• Follow my blog
• Leave a comment about Leap Year Day
• If you have a blog link back to this giveaway on your blog.

I'll draw for the winner on March 1st and post the winner.  Good luck.

Several other ladies are having giveaways.  Bonnie Hunter on her blog Quiltville Blogspot is having a giveaway to celebrate Leap Year Day also.  So run on over to her site and leave a comment,  you'll be entered into the drawing for prizes.

Pat Sloan is also holding a giveaway on her blog Pat Sloan's Blog.  Take a stroll over there and also leave a comment to register for her wonderful prizes.

Best of luck today in all of the drawings.  You can link this to all of your sites and encourage everyone you know to take advantage of this giveaway.

Happy Quilting,
Shelia

Update on dad:  Had him back in the ER last night for urniary retention, had to change out his catheter again.  He was totally blocked and had no urine output all day!  Think someone would have noticed that!  O.K. that is the nurse manager coming out in me and I was pissed.  But things are better right now and I will move on to the next battle......trying to take one day at a time and that is hard for us type A personalities. 

Don't forget to enter the drawings.

Thread, Thread, Thread

 Fabric and thread are one of the quilter's most favorite things.  And since receiving my Connecting Threads catalog I have been drooling over some of the newest thread colors.  They even put them into groups.  I am contemplating ordering some of them for my birthday....hehe.

I have the Pat Sloan classes coming up in a couple of weeks and we will be doing applique......so of course I need to add to my thread collection. (sounds like a good enough excuse to me to order some more thread).  Now  NO laughing allowed from my bee girls who have seen my thread collection already.  I know I don't "Need" any new thread, but just like that special piece of fabric we all want, how can you turn down these lucious colors of thread?

Update on Dad:
We got dad moved to NHC for rehab late yesterday evening.  Hopefully with 1-2 weeks of rehab we can get him back on his feet and moving again.  Pray that we keep him drinking enough fluid to keep that kidney functioning.  Mom and I are both exhausted and hoping that the physicial therapists can get him rocking.  Still some confusion at times but with all he has been through it is no wonder.  Heck I am confused at times right now just from exhaustion.  As a nurse it is so frustrating for me to be waiting for others to get things done.  I just want to do it myself and get it done.......very hard for me.  I've aggrivated my neck again this week pulling and lifting with dad, but I can't let him be dirty and wait for someone else to take care of it, so I do it myself.  Mom is not able to move him by herself so we really need to get some strength back for him.  His room mate at the center is 98 years old and a sweet little fellow. 

Back to work today in the ER.  Hope you can get some quilting in sometime today.
Shelia

Out With The Old And In With The New

See this ruler........I bought this ruler when I first started quilting in 1992.  Love this 12 1/2 inch ruler for squaring up blocks.  

 Well I dropped the ruler and other day and broke two corners and cracked it across the middle.  I was able to get the crack back in line, but it still has two corners missing.  My dear husband tried for over an hour to convince me to just go get another ruler.  He kept reminding me that this poor ruler was 20 years old and I had used the heck out of it in those 20 years.  He's right but he just doesn't understand how special your rulers are to you as a quilter.  But after I messed with it for a while I finally gave in and admitted that my long time friend would have to be replaced.  I am so used to using this ruler and haven't really liked any of the newer ones that are on the market, but guess I will have to try some of them out.

I had to take some things over to my grand daughter the other side of Spartanburg so we made a buzz by Joann's.  This was my first time in this store.  Toooooo much stuff to look at...hehe.
I looked over all of their rulers and finally settled on this set of two.  Fiskars 6 1/2 and 12 1/2 inch square rulers. 

 Hopefully they will be my new best friends.

Update on Dad:
We are attempting to get him moved from the hospital to NHC for rehab today.  I've been to the center and gotten him signed up and his room is waiting on the hospital side to finish their stuff up.  Hopefully a week or two there will get him up and about again.  I've been making him exercise his legs in the bed inbetween his PT treatments at the hospital.  Now to get him up and moving again.

Happy Quilting,
Shelia