NBC-10-Philadelphia-kimwolterman

Since we had my old office/new guest bedroom painted a couple of months ago, we have hung nothing on the walls in there. We have four vintage sheets of paper dolls that we framed and hung in Katie's room when she was little. Jim now has his office in that room, and doesn't want the dolls in there. Imagine that! So we will be moving those into the guest room. But I also decided to make a quilt to hang on the wall above the new bed we purchased for the room. I was about two-thirds done with the piecing when my sewing machine began to act up. All I could think was, "Thank God this didn't happen while I was working on the graduation quilt for Tommy!"

I took the machine into Jackman's Fabrics since that is where I purchased it. They will do an initial trouble-shooting on the machine, in case it is something simple. No such luck with this one, so the machine had to be sent in for repair. I have had it for five years and have never had it cleaned, which they recommend that you do on an annual basis. So I guess I am lucky that I have gone this long with no problems. Though I could point out to them that my Sears Kenmore machine, given to me as a college graduation gift by my parents in 1978, has never been in the shop and runs like a charm. As my dad would say, they just don't build things like they used to. At any rate, a week later I received a call that the machine was ready to be picked up. All that needed to be done was a good cleaning and an adjustment of my feed dogs. So basically I just had to pay the cost of the cleaning. Not too bad.

Now I have finished the quilt and just need to sew the hangers onto the back of it. My secret? I attach several of the coated paper clips to the back. You can then bend them as needed to hang the quilt on the wall with Command hooks. No harm, no foul.

This week I concentrated on getting the bedrooms back in order. The closets are all cleaned out and the furniture is all in place. We moved 2 pieces of furniture from our bedroom into the new guest room along with the bed from the smallest bedroom, and it all fits nicely. That room now just needs items on the wall and a new rug. I would love to make a quilt for the wall, but with the graduation quilt I'm working on I would not be able to get to a wall quilt until June. Maybe that's okay - we'll see. Our bedroom needs a new rug as well since we "re-purposed" the old one in the entry foyer as it would not go with the green walls I wanted in our room. We also need items for the walls in our bedroom, but there is no rush there.

Jim's office is all set up in the smallest bedroom, and it looks pretty good. We are debating on a rug in there, or just leaving the hardwood floors bare. He also doesn't want the framed antique paper dolls left on the walls. What's up with that? We will probably move 2 or 3 of those to the new guest room. Then I think we will simply take some of our landscape photos and have them enlarged to 8"x10" or maybe 11"x17" and put under glass for the walls in the office. We have some nice shots so we might as well use them.

In between all that I have managed to work a few hours on the graduation quilt. It has been very time consuming! I definitely need to carve out a couple of hours each day to work on it. Slowly but surely...

On September 12th my niece's father-in-law died at the nursing home where he had been staying for the past couple of years. Ralph was 88 years old, but his mind and body had checked out a while back. I last saw him at our family Christmas gathering, and he was in tough shape then. One thing that hadn't faded was his sense of humor. He was quite a character! As Ralph and his wife Emily had no church of their own, my niece's pastor offered to have the funeral at their church in Cahokia. It was very touching and moving, especially considering the pastor had only met Ralph on a couple of occasions. One particular statement he made has stayed with me. "We can spend time or we can waste time, but we can never make time." As a veteran Marine of both WWII and the Korean War, Ralph was eligible to be buried at Jefferson Barracks Cemetery. They provided a full military ceremony, complete with the firing of the rifles and the playing of Taps. A military funeral is something that touches everyone in attendance, and there were no dry eyes in our group. R.I.P. Ralph - you earned it.

My mother-in-law turns 80 tomorrow, and we all traveled to Iowa last weekend to celebrate with her. Jim and I stopped at the St. Louis University Lay Education Center near Bowling Green on our way up to see what that was all about. It is a sculpture garden, and it has a cemetery next to it that was established in 1831. Very interesting! We also stopped at a few barn quilts on the way so that I could take some photographs. Unfortunately the day was dreary and we were on a bit of a schedule, so I only got to photograph 4 of them.

On Friday we attended the Charles City homecoming parade. It was fun to see all the kids in the parade, and strange to think that Jim would have been on the flatbed truck with the other football players more than 30 years ago. Saturday we hit the Farmer's Market in the morning and a quilt show in the afternoon before going to Mass. That night 10 of us took Lorraine out to supper in nearby New Hampton. Great food! Sunday Jim's sister had us all over for brunch before we had to leave for home.

Monday of this week my brother-in-law turned 65. On Saturday Jim and I will have 12 people here for a barbecue to celebrate this milestone. Emily will come, but we sure will miss Big Ralph!