Whole Lot Of Shakin' Goin' on!

Dear me!
A dead computer monitor had me out of commission this week, and having forgotten my camera which I accidentally left over at Ellen Peters' studio this week, well, both those events conspired to leave me speechless on this blog!

So in the meantime, let me show you some humble file footage of not-too-ancient vintage. A week ago, I became thoroughly disgusted with my ironing board cover that looked like scorched earth. All my lovely clouds of fragranced best press from my homemade recipe do leave a starchy residue on the board with gay bits of thread glued into the mix.

 Mind you, now, this cover hasn't been washed for a year, I think, so it was way overdue! But with all those drops of Attar of Roses to scent it, the board smells as sweet as a Fabreeze commercial, no matter what it looks like.
Here it is after a run through my machine with some Arm & Hammer. Not perfect, but nice!

Also, last week I mentioned that I was going to work on assembling some pink and brown blocks that I had made a year ago. I've sort of started calling this "Gingerbread Girl" just because of the pink florals and the browns that are mostly from some old Civil War swaps.

The pink and unbleached muslin blocks are a pinwheel variation,

while the browns are a star.
Each of the Half Square Triangles started their life as a 5" charm square that was traded in an old Yahoo group. I sewed down either side of a diagonal line drawn onto the muslin and then cut them apart. Repeat until you turn blue in the face.
By the way, in the above photo, the black background on the left of the block is my asphalt driveway, not fabric.

The blocks came out to a nominal 16 1/2", so they are huge. Why I could make them all and then not sew them into rows for a little over a year is beyond me.

I matched things up with finger-pinning and stitched them up and they look great!

This is not an original design as I was inspired by Mollie Johnson's Maryquilts.com instructions for Stars & Pinwheels, see here.

She is so clever and freely shares her instructions! I can always spend hours mooning over designs there. Thank you Mollie! It is about 64" square right now. I'm debating putting borders onto it, muslin and then scrappy browns.

I had a nice time at the Alton Senior Center this morning chomping on those new peanut-butter filled M&M's with Sue and Pauline. I was delighted to show them the second little panel of Quilt-As-You-Go that I've started. This one, like the last one, also uses the Kansas Troubles line of Cattails and Clover by Moda.

It's so dark and moody; I love it! I added a Jo Morton brown and a cheddar to the mix of the pieced scrap bag strips.

But I had to groan that when I went up into my attic under the eaves, I found another whole roll of that awful thick polyester batting to be used up. I think I bought it in the early 1990's when we first moved here and there was a big Joann's in Gilford, New Hampshire. That store is gone but the batting lives on in my attic, LOL! Well, at least it is lightweight!

Boohoo! I have zero pictures to share of the guild meeting, or my quilting marathon of seven hours at Ellen Peters' longarmer studio, nor any of today's excursion to a lovely quilt shop in Milton, New Hampshire, called Evergreen Country Primitives.  www.evergreencountryprimitivesquiltshop.com

Camille Arnone is the owner there and she served us freshly brewed coffee and told jokes and stories the whole time we were there. With my dear friends Cindy, and Mary Ann and Kathy, the four of us shopped 'til we dropped. Then we had a lovely lunch at The Farmer's Kitchen in Farmington, New Hampshire. I know, I know, it was another Lobstah roll! "Tis the season!"

So please forgive me while I stall you until I can retrieve my camera, LOL,
and sew forth.

Happy sewing!