{Post 1,770} Recent Events

Why not start with a great food picture? We have been having people over fairly regularly. The majority are college students. I love sharing good recipes with them. Here are some apple dumplings I have made thrice in the past couple of weeks. Full disclosure—one batch was for a friend’s family. Very simple with everyday ingredients (except for Mountain Dew).

I try to sew a little every day. I have had customer quilt tops to machine quilt (several pictures below) as well as my own perpetual scrappy tops to sew. Here are a few pics w/o explanations. 

I love string quilts, but I don’t have many strings (I realize I could cut up my voluminous fabric stash, but that wasn’t my goal). I have made and accumulated various strings of colors that are not my usual lately. This little turquoise basket was where they lived. It was more than full when I started. So I started making a string quilt. I used 6-1/2” square cuts of phone book for my base. I had some black with green polka dots in my stash, and I have NO IDEA where they came from. I decided to use those for a center strip pans then added all non-green (with a few exceptions) to fill the foundation. Here are my first few, then as of last night.

My husband and I took a trip to the Lancaster area. Our first goal was to go to Sight and Sound theatre for a performance of David. We stayed in a B and B. The pic of the horse and buggy was taken as we got into our car in the B & B driveway. It was that close. Saw and experienced many interesting things. My husband insisted that we go to several quilt shops, and who was I to argue? There are many Mennonite and Amish people in that area. They both make most/all of their clothes. Here is one fabric stores black section. If you sew, you know that all fabrics are different in hue, hand, and weave. Whatever color black you wanted, they had it!

We stayed with these cuties for a few days at their house, then I picked them up to spend a couple days with us. Exciting times. Haircut for the big guy (he is 3, and a champion hair-grower!), many snuggle sessions and just daily life. I didn’t take many pictures. Just savored the time together and coordinated meals, naps, snacks, naps, more food—and that was just for me! Just kidding. Having toddlers in the house sure changes up my usual routine!

Finally started on this project a few days ago. First coat of our new trim paint. We have removed the carpet from our steps going downstairs, and the trim needed filling, sanding, and painting. One coat away (I hope) from being finished.

Then, last but not least, this past weekend I had this guy for a few days. He had his karate belt testing on Saturday. He was promoted from gold to orange belt. He has worked hard for this honor.

I have a busy day ahead. Finishing the quilt with the leaf motif at the top (all flannel—front and back…about half finished now), minimal cooking and cleaning, working in Good News Club at a local public school this afternooon, second coat of paint on the steps, and, sewing, of course!

Until later, Joan

{Post 1,769} Another Quilt Show?

 Yes, I was fortunate to attend another quilt show yesterday. This one was 10 minutes from my house. It was put on by the local quilt guild. I went by myself and enjoyed meandering about the show as well as visiting the boutique and the one vendor that was there. Lovely time! Here are some quilt pictures I took, some for inspiration, and some because they were eye candy!

The first few days of the week had me working on this quilt. It is just one fabric on the top and one fabric for backing. My friend said it reminded her of a shirt her father used to wear. She asked for it to be quilted in white thread with Wonky Feathers. She also asked me to bind it.

This quilt is one I worked on today. I had a number of my own quilt tops hanging in my laundry room upstairs. I finished piecing the center of this a couple months ago. I absolutely loved piecing these blocks. Each fabric is the background in one block and the tree in another. I got a Christmas layer cake somewhere that provided most of the fabrics. I added some from my vast stash to get it to this size. 

Today I added the 1-1/2” inner cream border and a 5-1/2” outer green border. I will start the quilting next week. It is hard to get a good picture because my sewing room is so narrow. I have to take the pictures from an angle from the side. The pattern for the blocks can be found on www.diaryofaquilter.com. Search for modern Christmas blocks. So fun and easy!

I have been cooking for the last 4 hours, and I still need to clean up the kitchen. We are having 4 college young men over for lunch tomorrow. I make so much from scratch that it takes a long, long time. I haven’t even started cleaning up the house yet. I made all of these things homemade: ham/potato soup, chicken/rice soup, iced tea, and pumpkin pie squares. Looking at the list, I’m wondering what took so long!

Have a healthy and wonderful week. What quilty thing are YOU working on?

{Post 1,768} Quilt Show

 I don’t get to go to many quilt shows. There is a big one a little over an hour from my house that I look forward to all year. To be honest, I’ve been down in the dumps off and on the last month. So my usual enthusiasm for the show was down a little. Here are some pictures from it. The first one I took because I could not find my car last year for the l-o-n-g-e-s-t time. I was so excited to get there (and I was alone). Once I came back out, the huge parking lot was packed, and I could not remember where I parked. I figure the cars around me in the photo would come and go, but those trees in the background weren’t going anywhere! I was parked catty-cornered from the bright blue car.

As has been the case for the past couple of years, there were lots of what I call art quilts. Where they look like a picture instead of traditional piecing. It is not that I dislike them, but the pictures usually don’t connect with my life. I find that I’m liking modern quilts (but not necessarily modern colors) more and more. They are so much faster to make for one thing. Here are a few I did like. They are all patterns by Bonnie Hunter. I sent them to her since I thought she would get a charge out of seeing her patterns in public.

I also took pictures as reminders of machine quilting or patterns that I like. I have had a red and cream feathered star for many years in my project drawer. After I pieced it (as the beginning of a queen-sized quilt), I decided I didn’t even want to make a second block. I might use a couple borders from this and make it into a wall hanging for our foyer.

I have seen this Gypsy Wife Quilt online and asked a woman on IG if I could buy her pattern because I did not want to pay full price. She just sent it to me for free. I would pick different colors, but I like this.

This picture was taken to give me some ideas for how to machine quilt my Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt. Mine has been all hand-cut and hand-pieced so far.

There was an area of older fabrics, books, etc. I think it was called “Gone, But Not Forgotten”. I bought all the 4” I Spy hexagons they had. I plan to sew vertical rows by machine, then hand piece the edges on an upcoming road trip. Here is mine laid out. 182 hexagons. I am going to move a few around before stitching them together. All these cost me $5. I was so surprised that I only had ONE of the prints out of the unique 182 in my stash. The black horizontal thing on the right is the arm of our treadmill. My design wall is behind it.

In the last week, I also machine quilted Oakish Leaves on this large Churn Dash quilt. It measures about 72” x 82”. This is the most dense pattern I have used in a while, and it seemed like it took forever. I used a light gray thread that matched the linen-like background fabric very well. The quilting shows up best in the last picture. Notice that the gray is alternately the background on one block, then the Churn Dash on the next.