Visiting The Mothership

Today was a planned visit to "The Mothership", as I affectionately refer to the main store of Keepsake Quilting in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. I went to restock our Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild advertising bookmarks in the ladies room rack, but more importantly, to meet face-to-face with my internet friend, Marsha Hodgkins from way over in Vermont.
Marsha's blog is here, if you'd like to meet her.  http://quilterinmotion.net/veterans-quilt/

Here she is after we exchanged bear hugs, modeling her beautifully made quilted jacket!

Those New York Beauty curves towards the lower part of the front of this jacket are actually the openings for the side pockets. Clever design, eh? Here's the back,

We had fun shopping, especially raiding the 25 cent scrap bins and doing our Show & Tell of our respective ongoing projects to receive the September 15% off discount coupon on regularly priced items.

I bought one yard of a teal print to use on the inner borders of my Hugs & Kisses top.

After we shopped, we braved the light rain and drove just beyond THE (one and only) traffic light to the Center Harbor Diner for some chowders; Marsha chose corn chowder, mine was clam chowder. Yummo!

The food was good and so was the service, so I would go again.

This is a place where the local workmen come to eat their lunches, nothing fancy, just a real honest-to-goodness American diner! It is a family business that you always love to support.
We parted company after lots of fun chat, I ran a few errands on the way home, and also stopped off at The Quilted Frog for a few new greens for that Community Comfort quilt that Jean Vaillancourt and I are doing with the Sew & Sews.
The blocks for this one are really tiny! Only 3 1/2" wide in a rail fence scrappy greens. Here are some of the panels that I sewed this morning and yesterday for it.

The green strips are 1 1/2" of dark, medium, light, sewn in order, then pressed and crosscut into the little baby blocks. Lots of fun!

Messed Up Morning

Our nearest medical facility is Lakes Region General and it is about 26 miles away or half an hour's drive. That's a long drive when you had to get up and only have some hot water and no coffee or breakfast before your routine yearly blood work.

Then they made Felix and me wait another 35 minutes for our turn to be stabbed. Ugh! Finally it was over and he took me out to McDonald's for breakfast by 9am.

We had the coupons from Sunday's paper, but it still beat the heck out of eight bucks for the two of us. Hey, that's a yard of fabric, right? But the good news is that my Dr. Capron has already emailed me that the results look good and that he'll see me in a week.

When I got home from all that nonsense, what was waiting for me in the mailbox but my new shirt from Fabricaholics Anonymous! What fun it will be to wear it at the work party to hang our quilt show on September 28th!

Can you see my red disc earrings? My dear friend Sharon Zimmerman made these for me out of Budweiser beer caps! They are so campy and cute. She calls them "Beerings" and sells them for $10 a pair in any brand of beer that you choose. I have a whole collection of them and I love them, even though I never drink beer. I'm more of a wino, myself.
What's wonderful about these beerings is that people notice them at first for their nice size and colors. Then when they realize that they are flattened out beer caps, they comment and strike up a conversation. Many times at the grocery store, post office, or the bank, perfect strangers compliment me on them.
Here's the back of that wonderful shirt!

Of course, my wonderful unofficially adopted son, Matthew, was able to get my fabrics drying on the line into the picture, too. They just happened to be red, my neutral. LOL!
At last night's Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild ( http://www.bmqg.org/) regular meeting, I had this as my Show and Tell. I call it a cheater quilt because I bought the blocks all ready sewn together on Ebay and then assembled them and threw a border onto it. I have some very wanton moments on Ebay. Sigh.

It was all done with white-on-white and Aunt Grace 1930's reproduction fabrics, 100% cotton. I've had it assembled now for 2 years waiting to get it over to Linda Monasky of The Bear Paw Gallery in Alton, NH, to be quilted. http://www.thebearpawgallery.com/index.html

It's about 60" square after I added the borders. You'll see that I had to buy two separate Ebay auctions to get the two different sets of blocks that make up the Star & Chain pattern. The name of the sewist who constructed them was Lois Cox who calls herself "Cottonstasher" on Ebay. I have no idea if she is still offering them.

This quilt I needed in a hurry because my sister's mother-in-law is fast approaching her 90th birthday on October 18th of this year. This quilt will be perfect for her because she lived through those tough depression years. She has to go once or twice a year for a complete blood transfusion, so I hope she will want to take this quilt in with her when she goes. That's Felix, Husband Wonderful, hamming it up for the camera while Raven dozes as usual on the futon.

I wanted a warm quilt that would not be always sliding off the bed or your body, so I chose a brightly printed aqua daisy pattern of cotton flannel. Cotton flannel is so snuggly!

As for that Hugs & Kisses quilt, I'm still working on that, too! I got all 100 of the 5" charms sewn with their two flippy corners and got them all sewn into 4 piece blocks, 25 of them in all. They were all nicely pressed with my special recipe of starch. I took them outdoors to lay them out in the driveway and take a picture of them.

I have learned that my camera sees things that I miss out on with the naked eye. But immediately after I snapped this photo, a brisk breeze sprang up and carried my blocks away! LOL. I should have taken a picture of how they were all scattered about, but I was too busy chasing them down the driveway's slope!!!!

I'll hafta wait for a calmer day, teehee! But I like how it's turning out, don't you?

Fresh Autumn Air!

The winds of Autumn have blessed us with cool energizing air! I feel so happy to be alive rather than feeling like I've been dipped into molasses when it was too hot and muggy. Now THIS is living!

Geez, I even did some cleaning, and I never do that.

It seems that everybody is all jumping onto the "Hugs & Kisses" bandwagon all around blogland and I didn't want to be left out of all the fun. Click on this link if you'd love to watch Jenny Doan of the Missouri Star Quilt Company video of how to make this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyj9jCTlmc4
 Way back in June, I had bought some sale priced $4.00 seconds of 5" charm packs from Keepsake's big rained out tent sale. I cut a big bunch of 2 1/2" beigey cream squares to go with two of the charm packs which were teals and tans. I had fun!

I was surprised to find that the charm packs contained a full 50 squares. I merrily sewed the beige squares onto the opposing diagonal corners of the five inch charms. It took me all morning to do one pack because I stubbornly made the bonus HST's on every corner.

I worked on the second charm pack today after cutting up more cream squares. Look at all these sweet little HST's!!!

Then I pressed about half of the charm blocks and made them into the "Hugs" by sewing four of them together.

I still have more to sew and press, but I really like how they are going together. I'm working at color placement to try to keep the teals and tans fairly evenly distributed rather than all clumped up. So far, that is working out well.

Raven didn't care about it one way or another...

Gentleman-In-Training

My dad, Norman Myron Parkhill, is safely in his grave these many long years, but when I was dating Felix forty odd years ago, he had some old fashioned ideas about the skills of a well-rounded young man.

Norman invited Felix to join us for dinner in our little post divorce apartment where I lived with my Dad, and he bought a nice big turkey to roast for the occasion. When Felix arrived, the air was scented with the aroma of the nicely cooked stuffed turkey and the bird had just come out of the oven.

That's when my Dad sweetly asked Felix to please carve for us!

If Felix was surprised, he held it in check and really did a very good job at carving the turkey. My Dad laughed and said that he had passed the test of carving but would still need to be able to hunt pheasant upcountry.

So tonight when our two big stuffed Purdue oven roasters came out of the oven and had had a little standing time, I asked young Matthew to please carve for us.

He was surprised but willing. After a little coaching as I told him the story of my father's test, Matthew did a very good job of carving! I reminded him that someday he might need to slice thinly to provide for many mouths to feed when he has ten kids of his own. That got him laughing!

What I've Been Up To

Help! Somebody stop me! LOL, I just can't stop making these cute sawtooth star blocks out of Civil War reproduction fabrics. I think I'll quilt and bind these for some more potholders to sell at the show.

They just look so olde timey, don't they?

It has rained so hard for the past couple of days that none of us had made the long walk down to the garden. So when Matthew went this morning, look at what he found!

Wow! That's a lot for three people, one of whom is now taking a lot of meals at his dining commons. Saturday, I'll take a bag to the food pantry.

Some of you have responded that you love lobster, too. If you can't get access to the fresh ones, here is a good recipe for the frozen shelled-out cooked meat. I know, I know, it's expensive. But it's cheaper than ordering it in a restaurant and better quality as well. So indulge a little.

Lobstah Salad

1 bag frozen lobster meat chopped  (about 2 to 3 cups)
1 bunch of green scallion onions (only the upper part) sliced finely
4 single stalks of celery, cut into strips and finely chopped
1 whole head of Romaine lettuce chopped finely
about 2 Cups of real mayonnaise
several shakes of Mrs. Dash's Lemon Pepper Seasoning
2 big splashes of cider vinegar
1 splash of lemon juice


Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and chill. Serve heaped into hot dog rolls or on top of snowflake dinner rolls.

These are kinda messy to eat but they are so delicious! The secret is that cider vinegar that brightens and brings out the lobster flavor. Enjoy!

And The Winners Are...

Hooray! Finally, after pouring rain yesterday and this morning, it stopped and the sun came out. That means that my Husband Wonderful was able to do the four random shots with his .22 caliber rifle to determine the names of the winners in my Blue Moon Blog Hop Giveaway!

1. Maria Kievet from page one.

2. Loris from page three.

3. Beulah from page four.

4. Laura from page six.

If you or any husbands might be curious, our Random Number Generator used today was a collectable Winchester Model 58 single shot .22 caliber made from 1928 through 1931 with a plain gumwood stock. It is considered a rare firearm because these were made during the Great Depression for youth markets and farm use, so they really took a beating and not many survived to the present day.
I will be contacting the winners directly by email to get their postal addresses. Congratulations to you all! If you did not win, just take comfort that at least you did not end up like last night's big losers pictured here.

Remnants of Issac

The last tatters of Hurricane Issac arrived early today with no wind but heavy rains. I worked on getting my 2 1/2" pink Half Width Of Fabric strips all cut.

I always do ten sets of ten strips. My colors tend to favor the coral, salmon, and peachy pinks over the more blued sugar pinks, as I call them. It was fun to include five sets of Civil War pinks, too. I wonder if anybody else will send CW? No matter, I love the swaps that come back!

If you are interested in possibly joining the swap, it is a Yahoo Group, Quiltville Swap, and we have both a washed and unwashed section with two wonderful hostesses.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuiltvilleSwap/

Dealing out the strips like cards into neat piles means I spend a lot of time on my feet!

Then I bag & tag the individual ten-strip piles into a ziplock snack sized bag and put my address label onto it. Then they all go into a big gallon baggie and into a flat rate $5.15 priority envelope. But I buy TWO $5.15 stamps; one for enclosing inside the package for the hostess to be able to send the swapped fabrics back to me, and one for the outside of the package. These are due in on September 15th, so I'm glad to have gotten them mailed out!

Our contest is over but I will need a little extra time for it to stop raining for Felix to shoot 'em up and get the winning names. I'll promise to take some pictures!

Not least, THANK YOU to everyone who participated!! You are a great group and I'm sending out mental hugs to you all. And I totally agree with you that I should make that Civil War Snowball bigger!

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day to all and please join this blog as a follower and leave a comment to be eligible for the Fabulous Four Fat Quarters giveaway! Tonight at midnight is the last moment.

Today is also the day that Matthew (our unofficially adopted 22 year old son) packed up his stuff from being stored in our attic and loaded it all into Felix's Mountaineer for the brief drive to New Hampshire Technical Institute for his second year of the two year program in Information Technology.

He needs to check in at the bursar's office, buy a few books? and most importantly register at his assigned dorm where he will move in and spend the night. Felix is taking him and they grabbed the Mc Donald's coupons from last Sunday's paper to do lunch, and possibly bring back a meal for Matthew for tonight just in case the dining commons is closed for the Labor Day holiday.

Felix also agreed to stop off on the way home and wash my big "Pawprints" quilt at the lovely Louden laundromat named "Just Wash It!" They have wonderful large front loaders for big quilts. I forgot to give him the Shout Color Catchers but this is the third time this quilt is being washed so I think it will be okay. Do you see why it needs to be washed? LOL!

The other quilty thing that I've been chugging along on is that Civil War scraps top I'm making from Snowballs & Negative 9-patches. Yesterday I finished sewing the rows together and snapped a quick photo on the blacktop driveway just before dark. I thought everything looked okay with it.

Uh oh! Imagine my surprise when I looked at this picture!

Do you see the two "mistake" blocks? All of the 9-patches are supposed to be "negative", that is, have more light background squares than the color. But there are two red checkerboard-looking squares, one in the lowest bottom row second from the left, that are wrong! The other one is located in the second row from the top, the third block in.
Good grief! Well, I know what happened. When I was fooling around with just starting to make these Civil War nine patches, I goofed and made a couple that were "positive." Later, when I began laying out the quilt, those two got mixed in and I never noticed them. LOL!

So I began my day today doing "frog-stitching"! Rippit! Rippit! Rippit! I got the Purina blocks removed very carefully and replaced them with some of the extra negative 9-patches that were already made up. Here is the result.

Now you can see the flow of the secondary pattern and why this is also known as "Twisted Ribbons." The top is only 55" square which seems small to me. I know it needs light wide border but now I'm wondering if I should make and add a couple more rows to get it to be a reasonably sized bed quilt? What do you think?

"Recent Developments"

When I was having the browser issues, I was unable to post my little finish of "Recent Developments."  This is my version of Bonnie K. Hunter's Happy Scrappy Houses which is a free pattern  http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/happy-scrappy-houses.html over on Quiltville.com. Thank you so much Bonnie!!!

I had great fun making the little scrappy houses. It was like playing with paper dolls when I was a kid. I made a big mess of scraps as I worked and had a ball just going with the flow of the creative process.

This quilt is going to a dear friend who has suffered a great deal of adversity in her life through no fault of her own. Husband crippled permanently in a near-fatal motorcycle accident, son killed by a drunk driver, major medical issues involving ovarian cancer and surgery, well, she's seen Trouble and knows its middle name.

This quilt also taught me not to be too much of a fabric snob. Many of these fabrics were very expensive Civil War reproductions, but I also used very old 1980's pink calicos from my stash and some Wally World (Walmart) sale scores, too. Can you see the little moon in the window of the house?
Don't forget that this is still the Blue Moon Giveaway that lasts until September 3rd. Just be sure you are a follower and leave me a comment. Please do not choose to be a "No Reply" commenter or I will not be able to reach you to tell you that you have won.
Linda Monasky of The Bear Paw Gallery in Alton, New Hampshire did the wonderful Clamshell Clouds quilting pattern on this and it looks great! If you want to use her services, click here.
As for the backing of the quilt, I was still humming, "Life is just a Bowl of Cherries" when I  picked out this happy-looking print.

You also missed out on the Red Haven Peach pie direct from Husband Wonderful's hobby orchard here at Park Hill Farm. It's sweetened with a bit of Splenda, so no guilt here!

Want some coffee with that?

And, for those of you who happen to still be smoking cigarettes, go ahead and light up and enjoy! I was able to give them up almost 4 years ago, but the beauty of this technology is that your smoke can't bother me or anybody else on the blogosphere. Be at ease!

New Browser

I hate change! But this morning, I realized that I can't fight blogger so I'vetaken on a new-to-me browser that doesn't have any of my bookmarks yet. If Mozilla Firefox 15.0 will allow me to upload pictures again, then I'll be happy. Here goes!

Hooray! The picture of me uploaded! Yeay! I'm back in business now!

Thank You, Everybody!

Somehow, I managed to sign out of my blogger account and goof up my pop-up blocker status at the same time. Moan and groan! I have not been able to access the blog to update it until now, where I am writing from an alternative browser.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU ALL!

The response to the blog hop party is wonderful, and I did bother to fish a few comments out of my spam folder and rescue them to the folder that holds all the entrants. Soall you folks are included and the fun does not end until Sepember 3rd.

In the meantime, I have decided on a novel approach of how to select the 4 winners. I will print out a paper copy listing of all the names and have my Husband Wonderful, Felix, set it up on the target range. He will shoot at it four times with a .22 caliber rifle and the four names that he hits will be my winners. We will do that on the 4th of September and I'll announce it on the same day.

Good luck to everybody, but I am the biggest winner to have all of your participation!

I have been sewing together the 48 purple string blocks that have been patiently waiting for me toget around to joining them into rows and then joining the rows. It felt good to get'r done! LOL!

Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Giveaway

When we experience two full moons within one calendar month, the second one is the technically correct definition of a "Blue Moon." And, as this August 1st and August 31st both are full moons, so then, the "Blue Moon" is coming up quickly.

Being a lunatic myself, I've decided to hostess a give-away for the blue moon, but as it is part of the Quilting Gallery's Blog Hop Giveaway, the promotion will be open until September 3rd. My gift will be internationally available, so please do join in the fun even if you are outside of the good ole' U.S.A.

All you need to do is to be a follower of my blog and leave a comment for me on the Blue Moon. All comments left on the 31st who are followers will be entered into a random drawing. I will announce the winners on September 4th.

Please be sure that you are not a "no reply" commenter because I won't be able to reach you to let you know you've won. Watch your spam folder, too, in case my winner announcement gets trapped there.

And the prize? Well it MUST be fabric to be any good, right? So here it is;

http://quiltinggallery.com/quilters-fun/quilters-blog-hop-party/






FOUR FAT QUARTER FLORALS!!!!

And, this giveaway is a four-by-four! That means that there are four identical prizes going out to four different winners, so it is more chances for you to win!

Good luck everybody!