Manchester, New Hampshire, With Bonnie K. Hunter!

Last night was the much anticipated Bonnie K. Hunter (http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2013/04/iphone-o-gram-flying-high.html) lecture in Hookset, which is a nice little town right beside the "Queen City" of Manchester, New Hampshire.

I went plenty early and it was a good thing for I lost time getting lost, LOL! It was held in the Emmanuel Baptist Church which seats 450 in upholstered theater-style seats, so this sinner was blessed to be very comfortable.

Bonnie was brilliant! Her talk was warm and funny and informative. Many times the big audience burst out laughing together as Bonnie pointed out the foibles of being involved with patchwork piecing.

Here is a bad picture of a good quilt, Bonnie's Midnight Flight, which is going to be her workshop on Saturday. And I'm going to it!!!! Yipppeeeeee!!!!! Can you tell that I'm excited?
I lost count of how many times the audience burst into spontaneous applause, but it was more than several times. I was enlightened by her description of how to use the scrap-savers system and how it evolved in her quiltmaking process.

The lighting in the sanctuary was more conducive to prayer and meditation than to photographing quilts, but the lecture quilt above says, "The Fabric Food Chain."

Bonnie helped everyone to understand just how the flow of fabric from the scrap-savers system goes right into the use of leaders and enders. And how those leader enders get to become fabulous quilts without "stupid sizes." Stupid sizes are pieces that don't work and play well with other sizes because they are not easily divisible.

I had the very best time! Bonnie's gift is to travel around the country to visit us so that we don't have to travel to her. If you ever have the chance to go see her, DO IT!!! You won't be disappointed.

Back at home in beautiful downtown Gilmanton Iron works, New Hampshire, there was Easy Street!

In the meantime, I have been using the good weather lately, to audition border fabrics for Easy street. I played around with an odd idea of using a background neutral as the final wide border as you see above. I hated it! It made my quilt look muddy or washed out.

So after several tries, I found this medium green Thimbleberries that I love! I remember buying it at the Quilted Frog quilt shop in Weir's Beach in Laconia, New Hampshire. It was on sale and I bought all they had. Thank goodness it was plenty enough for the borders of this behemoth of 98" square.
Thank you, again, Bonnie, for this wonderful mystery design!!!!

Boston, You're My Home!

It was with a lump in my throat that I lowered the flag in memoriam for those who died trying to run in the Boston marathon. What a pointed and vicious attack. These were Baghdad-style bombings designed to terrorize our country in the same way that Israel suffers. I used to believe in religious tolerance, but now I'm not so sure that it always works. We need to protect ourselves from fanatics. We need to lock up the madmen.
My prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded.

Smiling At Myself

Last minute tax forms' completion from last night for Felix and Matthew were top priority! So then we were off to the Post Office to mail them with today's postmark.

"If it weren't for the last minute, some things just wouldn't get done at all!"
                                    -Victoria Carroll-Parkhill

But today was sunny and mild with sweet breezes that simply intoxicated you with the promise of Spring. 59 degrees and the doors were opened to let in fresh air. The sleet and snow are all gone. And the sunshine was abundant.

Over on the sunny western side of the house are the Mount Hood daffodils, the earliest variety. At 5pm after a day of sun, they are almost ready to pop!

Throughout the year, I collect a few thrift store vases especially saved for this time of renewal.

I like to take bouquets to my elderly friends and a bunch for the Senior Center over in Alton, too. I planted these myself, with Felix's help, and I never tire of them!
Today I spent time in the blessed SUN, which we have hardly even seen for over a week. It sure did improve my mood! Geez, I had gotten so grouchy and depressed with no ambition to try to do anything. Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is like that and even though I use corrected for daylight lightbulbs, nothing beats the sun.

After taking Matthew in to college at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, I stopped at The Golden Gese quilt shop with a bag of rows of churn dashes and their sashing rows. I had finished sewing the 9th and final churn dash row this morning at 6:30am when I was up early.
I spread them out to ensure a good color distribution and besides, I was dying to see what it was all going to look like, weren't you, too?

Charlene Higgins, at the shop, was expecting another gal who had called and requested the use of the bigger table, but she welcomed me to use the three class tables that are almost as big.
So when you are looking at these, they are missing the sashing rows that are supposed to go in between the churn dash rows. To do all 19 rows together would have fallen off the table.

Maybe if you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can make out the four rows of sashings with their 4-patch cornerstones, way off in the distance.
If you want the truth, the photos look better than seeing it in person. That Windham Williamsburg red sashing fabric is just so BUSY!!!! Now I hate the whole quilt. But I have learned to bite my tongue and go with the flow. All my quilts seem to go through the, "It's ugly and I hate it..." stage. So please bear with me and my horrid child, LOL!
Happy sewing!

Friday's Cruel Joke

Sleet all day piled up into 2 inches of slush and gave us a dreary cold cloudy day on Friday.

The only one who loved it was Raven, who rolled in it and enjoyed her snowbath!

Spooky allowed another photo,

As for me, I drank mocha and sewed more Churn Dash rows. Here is the signature selvedge of that red sashing fabric that is going between all the blocks.

It's Williamsburg Folk Art Village by Windham. I have been scissor-trimming a strip of the selvedge to save it as one piece before I rotary cut my better fabrics. I just leave the long wild "tail" attached to the body of the yardage and tuck it into the folds when it goes back on the shelf. I cut it off when it is about half a yard, or wherever the signature ends.
The one good thing that happened is my needles came in from Needlecoop , a yahoo group buying program.

These are sewing machine needles made in China with the flat shank. I find them as good as Schmetz, made in Germany, which is what I used to use. These cost me about $25 for 10 packages of 10, a fraction of the cost of the German brand.

That's a quarter a pop! And now I have a hundred of them so I'm not afraid to change my needle more often.
What I did differently this order, was to get the embroidery sharps instead of the regular sharps because the embroidery sharps have a larger eye with the same sized shank. I hope that will make it easier for these old eyes to thread those new eyes, LOL!
Happy sewing!

Spooky and the Churn Dash

My cutting table looks like a churn dash bomb went off on it!

These are the quite wonderful blocks from my block swap, which was both positive and negative images of blocks, as you can see. I wanted to spread them out a bit as I assembled them with the red sashing.

I just love red! When I can't sleep, I moon over the antique and vintage completed quilts that feature red fabrics over on Ebay. The red ones seem to always fetch more money, too.

I need 9 rows like the one above and I have worked hard to try to keep the directionalized fabric of the red sashing going all in one way, with the stems of the fronds pointing to the left.

I like the way it is growing and I have 5 of the nine rows that I need already done, so that's better than halfway, WHEEEE!!!

Isn't that cheddar block just fabulous?  I am so determined to not create another "quilt-in-a-basket" where I have all the blocks made for a top safely stored and never assembled!

As a leader/ender project, I've also been assembling little indigo and neutral quarter square triangle blocks that are 3 1/2" unfinished.

I cut 2" strips from the blue and stack it with a 2" strip of the cream with right sides facing together and then cut out the isosceles triangles with the Companion Ruler by EZ.

I have a nice little pair of stacks of them that need their dogears trimmed but I haven't counted them yet. I think that I'd like to do the Pfefferneuse quilt idea from Bonnie's String Fling book, but I cannot find my copy in all this rubble, LOL!

In the meantime, my frightfully-allergic-to-cats husband, Felix, and I have been blessed or cursed with the presense of a stray feral cat who has taken up residence in our garage.

It has lived there all winter but there was no point in mentioning it here because he or she is too skittish to get a picture.

Hence the name is Spooky! My policy is that I will feed her as long as I do not smell cat urine in the garage. If I smell that, I stop feeding for a week.

Spooky is a brindle color and white. Is that called a tabby cat? I'm not sure. My sister says that if a cat is tri-color it has to be female. Please do let me know if you have any ideas about this. What I don't know about cats would fill 6 volumes, LOL!
If you are looking for a Spring treat, how about asparagus with chicken chunks in a cream sauce made with Cambell's condensed cream of chicken soup?

We served ours over hot jasmine rice.

A little sprinkle of paprika on top and it's Chicken A La Queen!
Happy sewing!

Capitol Area Quilter's Guild Show

Today winter came roaring back with frigid temps below freezing for most of the day and sharp gusty winds, but sunny. It was a perfect day to go to the Capitol Area Quilter's Guild show held right in Matthew's college gym at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, New Hampshire. I went and had great fun!

Here are just a few that caught my fancy:

Of course, my personal prejudice is for the Civil War fabrics!

There was plenty of eye candy!

In this antique quilt, there were examples of internal piecing, even to include a bit of selvedge to stretch the precious fabrics!

You can click on any picture to enlarge it.

This was precision piecing!

Then is was time to enjoy the Keepsake Quilting Booth of Make-your-own-scrap-bag for five dollars!

What fun to laugh and play in the scraps with other quilters. We would call out, "who wanted batiks?, who's looking for flannels?, send me the Civil War stuff! And soon everybody was chatting as they churned through the bins.

The trick is to place several of your chosen scraps on the table, smooth them out, and then roll them as tightly as possible so that you can stuff as many rolls into the bag as you can. They did have pre-stuffed bags available, too. We all agreed that none of us need more fabric, but we had a ball!

Happy Sewing!