A Surprise --- A Mouse Picnic at the Lake!

My DIL's cute little granddaughter will be three years old in a couple of months.  She dearly loves my son; at this time he is the only man in her life (sad but true!).  Anyway, my son loves to fish and also watch fishing shows on TV, and she always wants to watch fishing shows with him.  She also loves for him to set her up in his boat in the yard and let her pretend she is driving it on the lake. They truly are crazy about each other! They both light up every time they see each other.

Last year at a quilt show I saw a little panel (Sunny Pond Mice by Susan Wheeler for David Textiles, Inc.) that I just had to get for her, and I've just now finished it for her birthday.  I want so badly to give it to her now, but I'm making myself wait until her birthday; that's really tough for me to do!  They both are going to love it.  It will be a surprise for both of them.

It is 40" wide by 50" long; the gold "frame" is part of the panel.  I added the pink and green borders.  If you double click on the picture, maybe you can see that I quilted fish in the borders.  Those sassy little mice with their big smiles remind me so much of her.  I think she will love it; hope so anyway.

Again, I remind you that I am still trying to learn free motion quilting, so please don't examine it too closely in that regard. I stitched around most everything in the panel, but I can't seem to get just the right light to show it in the picture.   I just cannot seem to do it to suit me.  I have particular problems with keeping the stitch length even.  I have to tell you that every stitch there (except the binding) was done with the feed dogs down, even the straight stitching around the gold frame.  None of it is perfect, of course, but I kept telling myself that three-year old kid won't care a bit, and I got lots of practice on it that was more fun than just working on 12" squares.  As I've said many times before, I'll probably ruin lots of good pieced quilts and panels before I learn to do free motion.

Now back to yo-yo quilts.  You may remember the pink yo-yo quilt I showed in my 1-11-15 post.  Look here.  I didn't own it at that time, but I do now!  After I had repaired another yo-yo quilt for him, my friend made me a price offer on the pink one that I just couldn't resist!  Now I a proud owner of two yo-yo quilts!  One patterned with squares, and one with hexagons.

About two weeks, while at a funeral visitation in my home town, I had a first bout with Vertigo.  Just about scared me to death!  I really thought I was having another stroke; my legs would not hold me up, and as my Grandmother used to say, "My head was really swimmin' !"  When I got home and called my son, he came over immediately and took me to the ER for lots of tests --- which showed no change from the last CT scan from 2010; said it must have been just a freaky event, or maybe an inner ear problem.  I'll see the ear doctor Tuesday.  I'm able to get around okay now, but I'm not out for any foot races any time soon!

At least the sun is shining again after a month of rain and storms almost every day in May.

Today I'm playing with some little 4-patch stack and whack blocks, from a crazy Christmas fabric.  I have four repeats stacked up, and  I'm about ready to cut the squares.  We'll see how it goes.

Hope life is good for all of you!

---"Love"