Aunt Emily

Emily Bowyer Hammel was my father's older sister. She was the dearest person I've ever known. Over several adolescent summers, she patiently taught me how to sew and how to cook. I loved her. Sadly, she has been gone these few years and I miss her very much. However, I am carrying on her legacy of sewing and trying to carry on her legacy of caring.

Thursday, July 31

My Baby is Back


GREAT NEWS!!!


Z is out of the hospital, home and doing very well. He has been home for a few days. Tomorrow is an appointment with his surgeon, so we will have a better idea of how he is healing then. Thanks to those of you who kept him in your heart.
Sally


Monday, July 28

Books

I picked this up at http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com. I thought it was a fun list. A good way to while away the time. I know many of you are readers, as well as sewists!

People’s Republic of Mortimer published "A Whole New Way With Memes." No tagging involved. If you like to participate, just copy and paste this list of books into your own blog, and follow the instructions below, or add up the books you’ve read.

This list was compiled in the U.K. by the BBC. The average adult has read only 6 of the books on the list. I’ve read 41.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (Mine are highlighted in color as the underliner doesn't seem to work)
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog. Note that this list in no way represents the top 100 books.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Elio
t21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (STARTED THIS - DIDN’T FINISH = O points!)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (SCAREY HOW LIKE THIS OUR LIVES HAVE STARTED TO BECOME)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jone’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Saturday, July 26

What Am I Talking About?

Zman is doing real well. He is out of intensive care and in a regular room. While I'm waiting, I'm fooling with things on the internet. Here is a WORDLE of the things I'm talking about on this blog.



Tuesday, July 22

Prayers and Good Thoughts Needed

This is my 3 year old grandson, Zared Chrisman. On Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time, -5 from GMT) he goes into the operating room at Cincinnati Children's Hospital to have open heart surgery. Please, if you can, take a minute before then to send him good thoughts and your prayers to help him get through this.

Back from the Break!


We are back from our Wandering vacation. We hit every antique store, quilt shop, junk shop, and used book store in northern Indiana and several in Chicago too. I've gathered new fabric, some great vintage patterns in larger bust sizes, and great books. My prize - a Beany & Cecil box from the early/mid 60's! Will post it all later.

Tuesday, July 8

More Progress!

CLICK FOR ENLARGED PHOTO!!
First, the two photos above are of the quilts I posted yesterday, folded. These are shown hanging on the porch rail, so not quite all of either one shows.

Last night, I made signficant progress on my grandson's I SPY quilt. I had the top sewn together for him for his birthday in March. But grandma didn't get her act together too well - finally this week I got it quilted and bound. I think it turned out well, and today he was already picking out all the items on the quilt. That is him, below, peeking above the border. This item is also for the Stash Reduction on http://www.patternreview.com/, but only the backing and binding, as I did the rest before June 1.

Monday, July 7

Thwarted in my endeavors!!!!!!!!!!

As usual, my weekend did not go as I hoped it would. See the post below about the dress and the coat. Well . . . I started cutting out the dress - cut out a nice contrast for the front and back yoke, the front, front side and back - but not enough fabric for the sleeves!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought I bought 4 yards, but apparently I only bought 3. So I had to call and order more of the fabric so I can complete the dress - luckily, I was using a new Kaufman mermaid print, so it is available.

So I think OK, I will make a top. Got the pattern out for the top, and guess what - had picked up the wrong size! Now I can scale it up, but did not feel I had the energy for that. So I ended up getting the machine quilting (VERY SIMPLE QUILTING) on the two crazy patches I made last month, and fnisehd quilting Zman's I Spy so he could take it to the hospital with him. Finished the binding on the two crazy patches, but haven't got the binding on Z's quilt as yet.

But here is the real reason grandma couldn't get everything done she wanted to do: My young warriors!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, July 3

I'm Still Here

It has been over two weeks since I posted! Can't believe it has been that long.

I've been busy with my stash clean out and reorganization of my sewing room. It seems to be never-ending. BUT I am also in one of those phases when whatever you plan on doing, doesn't happen because of others who need something, or changes in work schedules, or whatever. Some times just sheer exhaustion.


However, the holiday weekend is coming up and I am - well lets say hopeful because whenever I say "planning" something happens- that I will have time to make two things - my muslin for THE GREAT COAT SEW ALONG - where I am terribly behind - and a dress from the Project Runway. I have some of the new mermaid fabric - can't remember what designer or manufacturer right now, that I am going to use for the summer dress. Wish me luck in getting what I want to do, done!!!!!!!!!!