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For mother’s day, my children told me to stay in bed, to not get up.  I pretty much assumed they wanted to make me breakfast in bed.  All week long I was getting questions like “so when you make bagels in the toaster, you push the bagel button, right?” and “do you like ketchup with your hash browns” and “how do you like your eggs?”.  I was a little scared because my son (12) is just beginning to cook and while that is fine, my husband is on deployment right now, so no adult supervision downstairs while he cooked.

They came upstairs with this:

A bagel with cream cheese, and scrambled eggs.  Yes, no hash browns, because I told them I couldn’t have them.   The eggs were a little undercooked, but I really wasn’t that hungry that early so that was fine.  It was a great attempt for his first time making scrambled eggs! I am proud of my kiddos!

I used the back-basting method of applique.  It wasn’t really bad.  This was my first attempt at any type of needle-turn applique.

It was a block for my friend Carla’s Aloha Quilt.  My bee has a tradition that when someone moves away that we make a quilt for them.  Each person makes a block.

Carla really loves flowers so each block was to be a flower block.

Here is the whole quilt:

We will miss you Carla! 

I finished first (though it took me the longest to prep before we all started)  The flying geese made a nice touch I think.

Next came Maureen:

Then Kristin finished:

Then Susan:

Then Holly:

Then Wendy’s:

and a group shot of everyone’s:

A little background about these projects.  It has become a tradition with my sewing bee that if someone leaves the group to go to the mainland, we give them a quilt to say “aloha”.  We had one member leave this month and one that will be leaving next month… we wanted to throw one big “aloha” party and give them their quilts.

Project 1:

This one was for Linda.  She has a “travel” wall at her house of all the places she has been.  so we thought it fitting to give her a bit of Hawaii for her wall.  A lot of the ladies made her a block and this was mine:

I used some of my hand dyes and made my pattern for the wonky pineapples a bit smaller…

Here is the whole quilt:

Super Secret Project #2:

Holly loves owls.  For a while now, I have been sending her links to owl patterns, fabric, etc. because she just loves them.  When she announced that she was moving back to California to help her parents out, it was a no-brainer as to what type of quilt we would make her…. an owl quilt.

I had the perfect block in mind.  One from Bejeweled Quilts.   I enlarged it a bit so that it would fit a bit nicer on an 8” block and gave everyone instructions to make owls in their own personalities:

Here was my block before stitching the edges down:

Yep.  Those are prairie point blocks to make the feathers.  So like me, it is a bit anal and a bit “fluffy”.

Here is the whole quilt:

Both ladies loved their quilts.  They both cried a little.  I am glad to have known both of them and will miss both of them immensely!

I made some for my retreat buddies Halloween weekend, but I also had to make some for the ladies that come to my bee for the “holiday” party.  I filled them with things like m&m’s, life savors, kit kats, twix, and a ferrero rocher.  Nothing horribly exciting, but just a small token of how much I appreciate each of the ladies who come and make the Sassy Bee a fun place and that I look forward to hosting every month because of them!

I made 19 bags.  17 people RSVP’d that they were coming to the December bee.  While it is an open (to the quilt guild) bee, I like to know how many to expect to come. 

Since I am writing this the day before, I am hoping that I have enough, and won’t have to disappoint anyone that didn’t RSVP to let me know they were coming so they could get one too.  When this posts, the bee will be coming to a close. 

For those of you who did not make it, we missed you, and will see you in the new year at the January bee.  I will post pictures (hopefully) Sunday about the bee.  We are doing a pot-luck dinner and a small gift exchange.

For those who were interested, these were my milestone to get completed of “Other gifts”