Doxie love

Do you have doxie love in your house? We sure do. Here's our current member of the family, Seamus:

How can you not love that face? Short of his atrociously bad breath, he's a keeper. Seamus is the latest in the long line of doxies in our family over the years: Ginger, Heidi, Reesey, Tink, and extended doxie relatives Bella and Weenie.

 

Like most doxie owners, we love all things doxie so I just had to do this baby quilt when I saw the pattern. It's called "Baby's Bow Wow Blankie" by  All Through the Night Folk Art designs.




Fortunately for me a friend of the family was expecting just around the time I saw the pattern in one of my favorite local shops, Fabric-Etc. (thanks Carol!) and that sealed the deal! This one went to baby Sutton.

Look who's sneaking in on this one!

 
And what better way to close than with a Seamus puppy pic!

Here's to finding your stitching inspiration!

Happy stitching,

Tonya

Nine patch jazz

I just spent a lovely evening on the bay with my honey listening to live jazz and watching the sunset. A beautiful end-of-summer evening in my corner of the world. Here we are...at least part of us...

 
Can you see that lovely nine patch underneath? This is my quilt from my grandma. It's a humble nine patch, hand-tied, old school. I'm sure there's not an inch of quilt-shop-quality fabric in it, there's a sheet for the backing folded over for the binding, and even the ties are different colors throughout. She made quilts for all of her 10 grandkids and I'm sure my cousins' quilts look very much like this one. Mine is dated 1988. She hand-embroidered the year in the corner.

It has been our go-to picnic quilt for a long time and has seen many days in the sun. I know I should probably put it away to take better care of it as it's very worn and we're pretty hard on it. But that's kind of how my grandma made it. She grew up during the depression years in rural Pennsylvania, made do with what she had and expected whatever she made to be used.

I don't have my grandma with me anymore but I do have this quilt and I think of her everytime I use it. It's also how I feel when I'm making a quilt for someone else. I think of them a lot while I'm working on it. I like to think my grandma was thinking about me when she was making this one. It's kind of like a never ending hug across time.

Happy stitching,

Tonya