My mother, Kathleen, died the day before yesterday

My mother, Kathleen, died the day before yesterday.  It is something that is profound in my life.  I am just trying to get through the minutes.  I am with my precious granddaughter, Annabelle, for the weekend and this is a lovely and wonderful distraction.  She is so lovely...very sweet little girl...and BUSY! 

I hope I can be of some comfort to Dad in the days and months ahead...such a loss for him. 

I have no other words just now...

Happy Birthday, America!!

Today is July 2 and it is the wonderful long weekend of July the 4th.  I went to the annual 4th of July flea market in Fairbury this morning...managed to get a few treasures to add to my collection!  Something very fulfilling about shopping...especially in pawing through old junk and finding a few special treasures.

I spent a wonderful weekend last weekend in Michigan with my wonderful kids and grandkids...fills a momma's heart to spend quality time with her kids.  My daughter, Laurel, and her husband, Dusty, were even gracious enough to offer me a ride to and from the Michigan event.  I appreciated it greatly.  The event was the wedding of my brother's daughter, Brianna and her nice groom, John-David.  


My brother Kevin with his lovely daughter, Brianna

My sweet, sweet grandchildren, Annabelle Rose and Aylen John, had some togetherness at the rehersal dinner..

Annie Rose loving her "baby" Aylen John

I made a CQ picture for Brianna and John-David that had their picture on it with their new married name and the colors of their wedding...don't seem to find it on my camera or in my computer so I guess I forgot to take a picture!!!  Maybe I can get Brianna to take a picture of it for me!

I am working on several projects this summer but they are to be kept secret until the reveal dates so I cannot share any pictures with you!

I just wanted to touch base here and let you know I am still alive and doing well.  Pictures of my current works to be posted soon...

Thanks for coming by...Colleen

  

Time (OVER TIME!) to update my blog!

Hello my friends!  Time does go!  That seems to be how I always start my blog entries!  I am hoping to update my blog with a few of the projects that have kept me busy in my art life...

I have had the good fortune to be associated with some fantastic women who are very creative, my Artsy-Fartsy Friends...you know who you are!  We started an association in this textile art group over a year ago and decided to make RR art journals.  We each made covers for our books and then mailed them off to be handled and developed by our Artsy Fartsy Friends.  It has been a journey of true enjoyment, of creative freedom and exploration and of shared experiences with these fine women.  The journey has not always been easy...there have been times of creative block and emotional involvement when the subject matter of the journals became personal.  It has all been fantastic to be a part of and I look forward to future projects with my AFFs. 

Our first project together, the art journal, began February 1, 2010 and is to end at our HGTV retreat in Charlotte, NC April 28, 2011.  We will find a moment together at the retreat to reveal our books to each other.  We have all been involved in making these books together and have seen bits and pieces of all of the books.  We have seen other parts of the books only in digital pictures on our AFF blog and we have some parts never seen at all.  We are ALL looking forward to this grand reveal we will have.  I can HARDLY WAIT!  To have an art journal built and designed by my dear art friends for me with their hands, mind and time will be such a pleasure...a bit of them for me to keep forever. 

I have pictures of my covers to share with you now.  I will wait to share the rest of my journal until I have it home.

My art journal is to be self reflecting with the front cover (or first page if you are one of the AFFs who made the inside pages) being a self portrait of who you wish your art self to be.  The back cover (second page to be made by the AFFs) was to be who you think you really are.  I was mildly surprised and very thrilled to find that when I made my two covers...my wished for art self and my real self overlapped more than I had expected!  So pleased to find this out...that maybe I am actually, finally being myself!  Yea!

Thank you so much, my AFFs.

Time for supper!  Back later...Colleen ("axel" to my AFFs)

MDA Raffle

My friend Jean Djirlic from Wisconsin could use all of your help!  She has been a very active fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association for the past several years and is currently coordinating a quilt raffle to raise funds for this worthy organization! Please click the link to view the quilts and also to read the write up about the raffle which includes the information on how to obtain tickets.

If you could help with this worthwhile fundraiser, it would be greatly appreciated!! Please let her know that you came via my blog! Thanks so much!

The Great MDA Quilt Raffle!

Introducing: Sweet Mister Aylen John!

Here he is!!! My sweeeet little Aylen. He is a lovely, sweet little boy and we love and adore him! He is already 4 months old. He has been a busy little guy since the moment he was born...instantly held his head up and LOVES to stand up (with a wee bit of assistance). He has definately shown his mommy and daddy who the boss is in the house! Funny how little, tiny babies have this power! I am off to have a little grammy time with Aylen in a couple of days...kiss, kiss, kiss!

I cannot believe it has been almost 5 months since I posted!!!! AND I HAVE A NEW GRANDSON TO BOAST ABOUT, TOO!

Okay then, let me first say, welcome to this earth and our family, sweet Aylen John! He is absolutely adorable, born June 21, 2010 to my loving son, Russ and his sweet wife, Megan. Yeppers, I am 5 MONTHS LATE WITH THIS ANNOUNCEMENT! AACCHH!

Okay, I am going to get past this.

Megan and Russ have been just fabulous preggo-parents and even more fabulous new parents. Aylen had a little time of giving his tired mommy and daddy some sleepless nights but now that he is almost 4 months old, he has learned how to live outside the womb and is doing better!

We had the pleasure of having Russ, Meg, Aylen and their dear friends, Josh and Hunter, come to the country for a weekend of (hopefully) relaxation. We ate country food, took them target practicing with Mark's awesome sharing of his guns and ammo, visited briefly with our dear friends, Karen and Don Fox (he was on the run during harvest), visited with Gram and Grandad, stopped for lunch at Wally's (sports bar recently opened in the old Walmart Store in Fairbury!) and watched our beloved Huskers get tromped by Texas. Then there was hot tub, backyard fire in the fire pit, ONE game of quadruple solitaire and all around great camaraderie.

I have been having computer issues and lost all of my pictures in my old laptop so will have to beg my pardon from Russ and Meg until I figure out how to download a pix of Aylen to proudly share.

I will wait with further sharing of anything fun until I get this picture uploaded. I can't believe Grammy has been soooo negligent with this introduction! I promise you, sweet Aylen, Grammy loves you!

Memorial Day tomorrow!!

This is my lovely daughter, Laurel, holding her precious daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle is now 9 months old! I can't believe it! I am soon to be grammy again...my oldest son, Russell and his lovely wife Megan, are expecting their first child in three weeks. We are all excited! It is such a pleasure and treasure to see your kids grow into adults and to watch them in their lives and interests is immensely satisfying as a mother.

The CQ RR I spoke of last time I posted is almost complete. I have just today finished the last block and I will now mail it back to its owner. It is always fun to begin these swaps and RRs but it is equally fun to finish them!

The following pix is a block owned by LRMart from the HGTV board. My portion is the large purple and pink flower vining across the top of the block, the crown of roses and ribbon on the little girl pictured in the middle, and the lower right hand corner with beads, lace, embroidery. This block was fun to work on...a bit out of my usual with the floweriness of it.

This next block was made by LadyJ66. My additions are the golden angel and stitching to the left of the middle picture, the floral SRE and embroidery just below the middle picture, the white tatted basket with bright pink roses in it to the lower right of the middle picture and the floral spray to the upper right of the middle picture. The gold colored flowers are actually paper and the little white flowers are made by a new (to me) technique shared by everythingquilts. I am so grateful to her for sharing this...LOVE them! This is a very pretty block. Again, a bit out of my usual with all of the floweriness of it but I enjoyed working on it.

This next block is part of a "faces" DYOB RR that I am involved in through the CQI board. In this RR all participants make 6/6" blocks and in this particular swap, we are all sending different faces around with our blocks to be used on the blocks. Everyone picks one face and one block and works the entire block and then sends it on to the next person in the rotation. This block belongs to Cathy L. and she made all of her blocks to represent different countries and cultures. I chose the African themed block she had sent. She made the face and I just used it to complete my block.

Thank you for coming by my blog...I will try to be a little more current with my postings!!!!

CQ RR 2010

I am really enjoying working on ToRyAm's block from our HGTV CQ 2010 RR. There are 25 stitch artists participating. We are divided into 5 groups with 5 stitchers in each group so it is manageable and not so overwhelming. I am the Group Mamma for my group~Crazy Ladies Equal Crazy Jewels~which is an acronym for our names~Colleen, Lisa, Ely, Charlyn, and Julie. We each made a naked block and mailed it out to begin our group rotation and thus begin the FUN!

First I am posting a picture of my naked block which I sent off to Ely. When it returns home in several months I am planning to make a sewing machine cover for my dear friend Karen Fox. She and her husband built a new home and are moving in this month. Her sewing room is yellow and she also loves aqua. French country? is the theme of this block. I thought this might be the perfect use for this block.

The next picture is of the block which has come to me for stitching. It is made and owned by Carlyn King, aka~ToRyAm. She loves horses and actually hand painted the horse on this fabric!!! OMG! No pressure to not ruin it or anything!!! Anyway, I have my stitching almost complete...just a few more tidbits and then ready to mail off March 10 in time to receive the next one. Velvet ribbon and SRE motif as well as the green trim were my contributions along with

this French knot row of flowers, rickrack and hand dyed lace trim on the lower right hand corner of the piece.

Now, it isn't like I don't have enough of my own projects to do...WE ALL KNOW THAT!..but these RRs and swaps keep me very interested because I get to see someone elses work and work on all different colors and styles. I think I would get kind of bogged down working on only my own stuff...always using the same colors and stitches, etc. Anyway, love being in these swaps and RRs.

Faces DYOB RR

Clay faces and pieced 6" blocks getting ready for the next CQI DYOB faces RR. My CQ friends are going to have "think outside the box" on this one! There are five CQer's involved in this challenge. Each is making or printing faces and piecing 6" blocks to send around for the others to work on. I am really excited to see what everyone does with these faces.

My blocks all have the same fabrics in them...I stacked and cut and stitched them together so they are different yet the same. I have never pieced anything this way before.

I am really enjoying participating in the CQI group...everyone is very interested in CQ and SOOO talented...very inspirational!

Pansy memory block

This is my pansy memory block including a CQ fan and a fabulous vintage shell pin. The block is made to be a part of the CQI 2010 monthly challenge. This month is was fans and curves. I made another piece, a table runner, that I will be using to participate in the challenge this year. February is velvets. I did incorporate two pieces of velvet in my fan, the purple and the off white. I have several curves and velvets on my table runner also. This block is actually multiply purposed...it foremost is a memory block of my precious Jenny who died 8 1/2 years ago on April 26, 2001. I have incorporated a small pix of her wearing a pansy flowered dress that I made for her to wear for her confirmation. I saved the dress all these years thinking I would give it to my daughter, Laurel, for her daughter some day. She now has a daughter, yes...precious Annabelle..., and I just decided that maybe giving her a dress that her dead sister wore wasn't as great an idea as I once thought it was. So instead, cut into the dress and am using bits of it on this block...the pansy fabric in the fan...and I think I will cut more of it up sometime and make a pretty new little dress for Annabelle sometime. I have another grandbaby due this summer and who knows...maybe there will be another little dress made!

Anyway, this block is quite out of my comfort zone in colors and in the floweriness of it. I was a bit nervous to begin but now that I have, I am enjoying it immensely. It is actually kind of fun to be flowery! Who knew!!!

I am really enjoying the CQI group...very focused on CQ...LOVE IT!

Today was also the day I packaged up my AFF project to mail out tomorrow. So fun. I am anxious to get the next project to work on...Nicki mails to me and I am looking forward to doing my best job on these art books. Great group of artists to work with. I enjoy them all.

50 degrees yesterday...snowing today!

Yup...snowing again. We still have a few drifts sitting around but a lot has melted off. Yippee!!! Of course, not to be negative but, my house is in low-country and when it snows a lot and then melts, the water table rises and...when your house is old as the hills and the basement is below the rising water table...no wonder it was a bargain! Oh well, have learned to live with after 15 years and amazingly, most of my fabric is stored in plastic bins down there and it remains just fine!!! I emptied all of the bins about two years ago to sort my stash when I started CQing and was so very pleased and shocked that everything was just fine! I have the bins stacked on moveable scooters...like the kind we used to use in gym class when we were little...10 scooters with bins stacked 3 high. It works well...can move them around to find what I need. I also have 2 scooters in my sewing room with tubs 4 high full of whites, satins, silkies, wool, felt, sparklies. I get into these quite often so it was just easier even though a bit crowded.

Anyhoo, been very busy working on a project with 4 other VERY creative ladies...an art journal RR. I am so very excited about this project...I seem to let loose and just be me while I have been working on it...wish I would be like this with all of the projects! That is my goal...stitch like myself!

So, the first pix is the front cover...supposed to be "My Alter Self".

The second pix is the back cover..."The True Me" and the third pix is both together. This project has been a nervous blessing for me! I was nervous to begin but once I did, LOVED doing it!! Usually I seem to need to have a finished purpose for whatever I make. This time it was truly all about the process of creation and it was such a relief!! The interesting thing is that as I worked, the lines between the front alter self and the back true self blurred more than I thought they would. LOVELY!!! To find out that you actually might be closer in life to who you wish you were than you thought or allowed yourself to be.

Mind you, it has been a long time in coming...my true self. I am 56+ and I still struggle with being true to myself. Anyway, fun project. When it is finished...a few more treasures to attach and roses to stitch...it will travel to the other ladies in turn and they will complete the pages of my book along the same theme as my covers. I am so blessed to have met such creative and lovely women at this point in my life. I will treasure my book when it returns home...I will have a little part of each of these special ladies to keep for my very own.

Thank you my AFFs.

CQ For Me block

This is my CQ For Me Challenge block which I participated in on the HGTV Quilt Chat Board. All of the stitchers involved received a piece of blue silk, green silk and a white lace motif chosen by NickiLee, hostess of the challenge. We all received the same fabric and the same amount of the fabric. We could just as little or as much as we desired but we had to have a recognizable piece of each fabric and we had to incorporate the white lace motif as well.

I hand dyed my lace motif using water based colored pencils and by wetting the lace and then just coloring on it with the pencils, the color bled and it dyed. I like the technique and plan to use it again sometime on something. I started by piecing the block using a multitude of textures and fabric types. Blue is not my favorite color to work with so this was truly a challenge for me. I made a generous rectangle shaped block and after it was pieced and I had started embellishing it I decided it would make a perfect cover for my handmade jewelry display notebook. Currently I am using a tacky plastic binder~not so inspiring for potential jewelry customers to see!

I enjoy combining textures, colors and old and new things together. I am fairly new to CQ and really new to SRE but have become rather partial to making SRE groupings. I usually like to add a bit of "funk" to them though~sometimes not very traditional flower colors, unusual tidbits, etc.

This has been a good challenge...got me thinking and working outside my comfort zone.

NEW YEAR'S EVE 2009!!

WELL...WE MADE IT!! Through another year and DECADE!!! Oh my! So much has happened!! Suffice to say that all of my loved ones are healthy, working and seem to be doing what they want. I am now a GRAMMY!! Annabelle Rose was born to my daughter, Laurel Rose, and her nice husband, Dusty, on August 27, 2009. Fantastic! and am soon to have the distinction again...June 15 grandbaby #2 is due to my son, Russ, and his lovely wife, Megan. SOOO excited! My youngest son, Will, has found a very nice companion, Steven, and I am so very happy that he has someone to share with.

The old couple pictured above are myself and DH, Mark, on a motorcycle trip last summer to South Dakota. We do love riding together. I look forward to the warmer days and the freedom of riding once again!

My artistic life is busy, busy. I am so thrilled to have made the acquaintance of some very special and talented people on the HGTV Quilting chat board and on the CQI Crazy Quilting chat boards. These folks are so very creative and certainly keep my head spinning with ideas and anxious to try new things! Thank you to you all!

So, I am attempting to post a few more pix for your viewing pleasure...the mechanics of posting and editing to my BLOG are still quite new to me so thank you for bearing with me!

Now, on with the show... This is the block I made for my friend, Jean Smith. We had a deal where I made a CQ block for myself and she made it into a fabulous bag for me and then I made a CQ block for her and she is making it into a bag for herself. I love the colors. She provided the center focus fabric. I hand dyed the fan lace motif and the green doily beneath the SRE and button grouping.

This block is my FFT#10 participation requirement block to begin the process of being a full fledged member, WITH stitching rights!, to the CQI group hosted by Leslie, Kerry, Hideko and Cathy. This group, CQI, is such an inspiration to me! The stitchers come together from around the world and share a love of stitching. SOOO wonderful to "find my own kind!" This block will be "worked on" by 4 other fantastic people. It should return home to me in February or March. I can hardly wait to see it completed!

I think this will be enough posting for now...here's hoping it all worked! See you in 2010!

Colleen (alexemmarose)

Necklaces made from old earrings

The necklaces below are made from old earrings. A friend of mine, Lori O., brought me old earrings from her deceased grandmother-in-law and I made necklaces out of them for her to give as gifts. Such a cherished-type of gift!

The picture below is of my daughter, Laurel, and her daughter, Annabelle, one day after little Annie's birth. This pix is a gift for Annabelle for Christmas. It was probably one of the harder projects I have ever worked on! Had to make sure everything fit and worry about it all! I am SO not an organized stitcher! That is why I LOVE crazy quilting...NO RULES!!

Anyhoo, out to sit in the hot tub and watch the sleet come down-have the tub in a "bath house" with a double garage door that opens to enjoy nature while soaking.

Two days before Christmas and ice and snow are coming down!

FINALLY!!! I am posting a few pix for your viewing pleasure! (thanks Kathi...for the encouragement to get this up and going!)

Home today after a wonderful riverboat cruise up the Mississippi River and lovely, peaceful stay in the Amana Colonies in western Iowa. The highlight of the Amana stay was shopping in the cute shops and of course, the QUILT SHOP. Now I know you might think, and rightly so!, that I really do not need ANY more fabric and accessories but you know what they say...the one with most at the end WINS! Really, a super little quilt shop in an old barn...so quaint and charming. The fatal mistake was probably when Mark decided to "go wait outside". We would probably be a little bit richer if he had stayed...

Pictures soon of some of "my creative life". I am just thrilled to actually be able to find my blog and then to post on it!

WELCOME TO MY CREATIVE LIFE!

Well, here it is...my very first blog entry of my life! I am sooooo glad to finally be at this point!

Welcome!! I am so glad you have come to visit me! I will do my best to be faithful in posting and am anxious to share photos of my creative life with you!

I will start my blog life by introducing my very precious new grandbaby, Annabelle Rose.

That is enough excitement for one day...me a BLOGGER! Whew!

Next time there will be photos of some of my CQ life.