researching my maternal side

Surprise! The new tv came yesterday and was left at the back door.  It wasn't supposed to come until Wednesday.  Ron and I hauled it inside, waiting for my son-in-law Chris to set it up on Sunday, when they are in town.
I am still gathering supplies and pictures for my heritage piece, and drawing in my sketchbook (not so good but I hope I'll get better).
I am scanning some shots I took in the 90s when I took high school girls, including my daughter to Ireland.  Pictures were so good, but I'll see what I can do with them. I'll have to fool with this on on Facebook.  It is cropped from the bus ride to the Dingle Peninsula.








Here's another picture of my grandmother. Pretty lady, wasn't she?  She still has the dime broach on.

Margaret Doyle Eagan

Not much going on today.  I got my haircut on Saturday--really short, and I love it.
the cleaners came today, so the house looks good.  I am trying to make myself clean out one drawer or one closet a day.  Today I did a kitchen drawer.  I am not a neat or organized person, but I figure if I can finally get things neat and organized, they will stay that way.  Highly improbable.
I am going to look at the pictures I have on the computer for my heritage

quilt, and scan the ones I don't have. This is my grandmother, Margaret Doyle Eagan.  She was born in 1863! in Macclesfield England.  Look at her ringlets and the feather on her hat.  You can't see it very well, but the bar pin by her throat contained dimes, the first money her father earned in the US>

bought Maggie Grey's book

Today is the depressing day when we take down the Christmas decorations.  Now the house is back in order.
I am beginning planning for my heritage multimedia piece.  I bought Maggie Grey's new book, Long Diaries Tall tales.  I have wanted to make a piece about my Irish heritage.  at first I thought I'd make a quilted piece, but since I got this book I think I will work on a multimedia piece.  I am busy acquiring pictures and ephemera  to use, and paints and other items to use.

Rosie and Caroline's Christmas hangings

Several years ago I made wall hangings with my 2 granddaughters, Rosie and Caroline.

 The girls are now 11.  Sean is 5 and Ellie is 7, and while they were staying at my house this year.  I decided to make Christmas wall hangings with them.  I had gone to Joanne's and bought 2 versions of sky fabric and some green corduroy. They chose the sky fabric that they liked.  I put a piece of bating down, and glued the sky fabric down on the top.  I had some fat batt that we attached to the bottom, and they sewed it on the sewing machine. Ellie used some fancy material (also from Joann's) that I cut in strips and she decorated the tree with it, and added a white moon and some pompoms for bulbs.
The one with the house is Ellies.











 Sean preferred to be minialist.
 I was working with Ellie and Sean got bored.  I have a felt covered board and I got out a bag of assorted Christmas fabric scraps.  Sean had a great time developing his picture.  when I was working with him Ellie took over.  Each of them sewed on the sewing machine, fastening the tree, batting,  and in Ellie's case the house.  After they went home (they live in Colorado), I backed the pieces and sewed fabric loops on the top.  Sean had used one of the pictures of Santa on the material he was playing with, saying that the story on the felt board was the night before Christmas.  I used the Santas to make labels for the back.  I mailed them along with some home made granola.  The package hasn't arrived yet, so I am waiting for their take on the wall hangings.  I rescued my felt board, put the scraps back in a bag to be donate. Here are the labels for the back:

Sean's creation 

cigar box makeovers

I have neglected my blog since October, but one of my 2 New Year's resolutions is to blog every day.  Don't know whether I will follow through on the resolution, but I am doing a blog for January 1, 2016.

Who can believe it is 2016!  I remember years ago thinking that 1984 was far in the future, after I read a book by the same title, and here we are, in 2016.
My husband Ron has been ill for most of 2015, first with an aneurysm surgery in April that he never really recovered from.  He spent 10 days in the hospital and another 10 days in rehab.  He is better, but not back to where he was in March.  We are hoping that he continues to improve.  Due to his health, I have been unable to travel to see Wendy, my daughter, in Overland Park Kansas or my son Scott in Castle Rock Colorado.  Luckily both of my children and their spouses and children came here for Christmas.  It was great fun to see Ellie and Sean.  They had been here for Thanksgiving. I hadn't seen them for a long time before Thanksgiving.

I made my grandchildren decorated boxes for Christmas.  One of my art quilt friends owns a high end cigar shop, and she share some of the boxes with me.  They were beautiful wooden boxes. I scanned images from a book published in 1923 and printed the images in fabric.  I back the fabric with batting and embroider the pictures. I framed the pictures with fabric and glued them onto the top of the box.  I glued fabric onto the sides of the box.  I lined the interior with more fabric. I used a handkerchief in the bottom of Rosie's box since it had an embroidered rose.







I used a handkerchief with daisies on it for the interior of Caroline's box, since daisies are her favorite flower.

I made another box for Ellie: 

I had to think hard on how to do a box for my grandson Sean.  I made a steam punk box with my friend Karen.  I used a cropped picture of Sean in his Halloween custom for the lid, and put scanned pictures of Power Rangers inside the box. I was going to use Transformers, but Scott told me he was done with transformers and now into power rangers.  Good thing I checked.


 That's all for now--Happy New Year!

Purple Mountains Majesties

Our quilt guild had a numbers challenge.  Each of us picked a number, and went to a table filled with old National Geographic magazines. The number we had picked turned out to be the page number of the photograph that we had to interpret.  The quilt had to be 32 inches square.  My picture had some mountains on it, so I chose

mountains for my theme.  The quilt is hand pieced and hand quilted.

A cloth of Beasts

Jude Hill has graciously opened a new site where her instructions and incredible wisdom are offered free.  The site's name is Spirit Cloth 101.  I am planning on working on my Beasts cloth.  I started it a while ago, putting on beasts I made in her Patchwork Beasts class, along with some others I have made later.  I have a lot of space to fill up, as I am putting the beasts on an old linen tablecloth.

Off the Wall Friday