A Quilt FINISH: Bargello in Plaid

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Yahoo!  My dirty dozen quilt challenge #5 quilt is FINISHED.  This is Bargello in Plaid from Bonnie Hunter’s book Scraps and Shirttails Book One.


The quit is made with recycled 100% cotton mens shirts.  I have the thrift store in my area that used to have bag sales for $3 a bag and I could stuff all the shirts I wanted into it.  I always went  on bag sale days and always got shirts.  I’m made many shirt quilts.

I finished the top in about a week.  I was pushing hard, as this was the July quilt, and I am really into this UFO challenge right now and with me, if the fire is hot, I go with it.  So, while that fire was hot, I put this on the frame on Sunday and quilted it.


..and as soon as it was off the frame, I bound it.


I am so glad I did as not it is FINISHED!!  YAHOO!!

The quilt is made of panels rather than blocks so that makes the construction fun….it’s something different.


I used… Continue reading →

What I’m Reading: Before She Was Found

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The last book review I did was for Heather Gudenkauf…this review is for another book by her, Before She was Found.  Gudenkauf is an Iowa writer and I always love her books.  Picking this one to listen to was an easy selection as I’ve never had a book by her that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.  You might remember that I just finished another book by this same author, This is How I Lied.  I loved that book and was hopeful that I would love this book too.

Before She Was Found: A Novel by [Heather Gudenkauf]
I was reading along..I thought I had figured out whodunit….but surprisingly, I was wrong.  That usually doesn’t happen for me, but after reviewing the story, I could see how I might have missed a few clues as to who was the real purpetrator.  I loved the book…seriously, I always love her books.

This story was told through the perspective of many and I really appreciated that.  To often in life when a tragedy happens, we forget that many are affected by a single event.  This book was a good reminder that many feel the impact of a single event.

Here is what Amazon had to say: Continue reading →

Community Quilt from Ray

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Do you all remember the missing mail I had a month or more ago…the mail from Julie with the cute quilt tops in it?  Well we solved the mystery.  I had sent them to Ray and now Ray is finished with them!!

Ray writes:

“Just finished another of the 3 quilts from Julie. Hopefully I will get the 3rd one to you later this week. I got to longarm a BIG 100 x 100 string quilt for a customer this week.

This was an interesting quilt. I had never seen this pattern before.

Loved the feathers and the fabrics. The patterns in the fabrics and the light green background gave it an outdoorsy look. I found the brown backing in a group of fabrics that Shirley from Nevada sent me. There was not quite enough for the entire back but  I could supplement it with the leaf fabric from my stash, The brown fabric really pulled out the brown in the feather spines.


I found the dragonfly pattern for the quilting which just seemed to set it off.


Thanks to Julie, Shirley and Jo for another successful community quilt completion and another smile on the face of a future recipient.”

The second quilt was also from Julie….Ray writes: Continue reading →

Never Ending Saga: My Dishwasher

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I’ve had almost a year long problem with dishwashers.  It was about this time last year when my dishwasher discontent started.  I hated mine.  The dishes weren’t getting clean.  I wanted something new.

Finally at Christmas the kids said they’d get me one.  Bucks was great and installed it.  I was so happy for about 2 months.  The top rack in the dishwasher broke.  WHAT??  This is only a couple months old.  How could it break??

Well I didn’t think about any warranty.  I went to Amazon and ordered a top rack bracket.  This is the old one and apparently, the new one was supposed to be better as it have screws rather than plastic snap together system.

Karl fixed it. 
I was so happy.  I thought it all a fluke.


Karl was so happy to.  He’s not been known to be the fixer of the family but with this fix, he proved to us all he can be.


Well believe it or not but about three weeks later, it broke again.  This time I was telling one of the kids and they said, did you call in about a warranty.  Hmm.  Ya.  The dishwasher had a warranty for a year.  Surely this break would be covered by a warranty.

I called in.  Yep, it was covered by the warranty.  They offered to send me the part.  I waited and waited for it to come.  At the time of the call I think it was late April or early May.  Well the part didn’t come and didn’t come.  I ended up calling in and asking about it.  Supposedly they had sent the part.  They blamed covid on it not coming.

I waited….two weeks later, still no part.  In the meantime we had used the dishwasher with the bottom rack only occasionally putting a couple plastic glasses in the top rack.  Then the dishwasher started leaking water.

At this point I was very upset.  I called into the company again.  I told them I wanted a tech to come and look at it…and by the way, where was the part to fix the dishwasher top rack??  Well apparently the part for the top rack got damaged in the mail and was no longer coming my way.  WHAT???!!!

So I asked that the part be expedited.  The person on the line said no…she couldn’t get it expedited.  I explained to her that it had more than a month without dishwasher and I was frustrated.  She passed me on to her supervisor.  Well she did “expedite it”.

Two weeks later the repair guys showed up to look at the leak.  They said that the leak was due to the rack being a problem.  The rack was putting pressure on the door and the door was opening thus the leak.  Hmmm.  I didn’t buy it but okay.  The part had come for the upper rack and I showed the part to them already knowing what they were going to say….wrong part.  UGH.

I asked them if they could order the part and they did…and two weeks later they came back and fixed it.

Whew…I finally had a working dishwasher…or … Continue reading →