What The Elves Are Up To

Yesterday was a fun-filled day with the biggest thrill being present to witness Matthew and Bella take their vows of marriage at the Laconia, New Hampshire City Hall. They made a lovely couple and we wish them well!

The morning was spent at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire. Below is Maureen, who is still making special mug rugs for family and friends.

Beverly was working on microwavable bowl holders.

They are cute and well-made!

Jan, below, had some of the microwavable bowl holders in progress also. Nice work!

Claire, below, was doing itty bitty paper pieced blocks for Christmas. So cool, Claire!

I neglected to photograph my second Missouri Star Quilt Company's Christmas stocking's piecing, but it it coming along very well. Link.

Happy Quilting!

Moving Forward

Like most of us, I'm not very good at coping with loss. So it is with sadness that I must report that I am grieving the peaceful passing of my dear friend, Frances at 99 years old. She gave me wonderful times spent in her warm and witty companionship. I will miss her.

Frances Hugelman   (1916-2015)

Our nation also suffered an egregious loss. It was in form of the vicious terrorist attack at a San Bernadino Christmas Party. All I could do was to lower the flag to half mast again and pray for the victims' families and for the survivors. God bless all of our brave first responders who were spared the coward's pipe bombs that were laid for them.

Still, for all the sadness in the world, this is a quilting blog. Saturday was a happy day for me as the sun shone and my old (1989 Mercury Marquis) was really running well! I seized the day and took myself out to a favorite quilt shop called, "Footprints" in East Rochester, New Hampshire.

Footprints is a small shop and crammed with goodies and ideas! Just look at those shelves of gorgeous neutrals!

I found a quick $30 bucks worth of those neutrals to take home with me. Maybe I'll even find the strength to cut into them, LOL! Cindy snapped my mug for the camera, thanks, Cindy!

Today, at The Alton, New Hampshire, Pearson Road Community Center, The Sunshine Quilting Club enjoyed a fine continuation of our Log Cabin workshop. Here's Sue, showing some progress. Good job, Sue!

Caroline and Joyce joined us with their marvelous hat looms. Here's Caroline, below.

These circular looms are sold by Walmart in 4 different sizes and take one skein of bulky yarn to make one beautiful hat! Here's Joyce, below, working on hers in the "Women's sized loom.

As for me, below, I enjoyed sewing on "Scottie," my Scotland-made Featherweight twice as much today due to my main machine still being in sick-bay for another week.

My Christmas Stocking is now finished, yippee! I used the Holly Taylor "Winter's Song" for Moda and the instructions for it are on Missouri Star Quilt Company's Youtube videos. Link.

The stocking went together beautifully! I chose to add a stitched up a scrap of the backing fabric to insert a hanging loop into the seam of the cream-on-cream cuff.
When you are stitching it, the loop end goes down towards the toe of the stocking and the two raw edges of the ends of the loop are placed together even with the top edge. Those raw ends should be placed between the cuff and the body of the stocking. After you stitch it, the hanging loop will be in perfect position as soon as you fold the cuff down. I'm so very happy with it!


We are not promised tomorrow. Tell your friends and family that you love them.

Happy quilting!

Holly Jolly

This past Wednesday, Felix drove me to take my favorite White Sewing Machine to the spa for maintenance. He took me out to our best Chinese buffet restaurant which was delightful! But I'm definitely in a state of withdrawal for my machine and it's gonna be a two week wait, EEEEEK!

I refuse to continue the Allietare clues until I get my White back! But I did go into 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire, to the Golden Gese Quilt Shop. I used, "Scottie," my Scotland-made Singer Featherweight to enjoy some sewing with friends. Below is Maureen with her mug rugs.

These were from Jenny Doan's tutorial on the Missouri Star Quilt Company and they are a great use for pretty scraps! Link.

What a great last minute gift!

Claire had just finished up a quick quilt for her newest granddaughter and it is so cuddly!

Jan, below, is almost finished with her dramatic Sea Turtles top! Good job, Jan!

I was proud to finish up a pair of matching pillowcases that have been cut for two months and I had never got around to actually sewing them. Do any of you have that happen?

Having one project finished, I let myself enjoy a new project with some pretty Christmasy fabrics called "Winter's Song" by Holly Taylor for Moda. Here I am, below, holding up the start of one of Jenny Doan's Christmas Stockings. Link.

I'm not sure of what I'd like to use for the cuff of the stocking yet, but I'm pleased with my progress so far.

Tis the season to be jolly! It took Miss Emma Lynne several cookie-bribes to convince her to wear her new Christmas Tree headband for even a nano-second, LOL!

Happy quilting!

Seeing Red?

I like red. When I needed to choose a color for the darks of my Quarter-Square Triangle blocks, it just had to be red! The driveway has been too windy and rainy and cold for layouts so I was using my tiny guestroom floor. Half the blocks are the Stars In A Time Warp, from Barbara Brackman's wonderful sew along, with the alternate blocks as QST's. Civil War Quilts

Bonnie K. Hunter's methods for construction helped to inspire this layout with her free pattern for her "Chunky Churn Dash," on her fabulous website, Quiltville's Quips & Snips.

I love the optical illusion of seeming to have been set on point when the alternate block is used.

Barbara Brackman had also suggested this as a possible layout and had shown some great looking antique quilts that have used it.

It was so gratifying to finally be able to see what the quilt will look like!! Wheeee! Thank you, Barbara Brackman! Thank you, Bonnie Hunter!

My setting is 121 blocks, set as eleven by eleven blocks and each block is eight inches square. I chose to use the uneven number so that I could have stars blocks in the corners.

The room is too small to get a very good camera angle on the whole thing at once but I was dying to show it off to my two sisters. The guest room door was kept carefully closed for my big reveal during our Thanksgiving celebration. I got my two sisters to come to see it, but Miss Emma Lynne wanted to zip into the room as I opened the door for them to look into the room! Eeeeek!

No, no, Miss Emma! Come, girl, come! Soon she was out from having "customized" the design a wee bit. She was quite embarrassed to not have been welcomed to lead the way into that closed room, LOL!

Now that all the leftovers are eaten up from Thanksgiving, I have just begun the newest Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt called, "Allietare." Thank you, Bonnie, for designing a new quilt for us to share!
Link.

I'm struggling with color conflicts because I want to do this quilt in Bonnie's RED!

But I have a commission quilt to do in purple, so I may relent and make this my commission quilt.

Lots more units to make but I'm very pleased to have scratched the surface and to have units that seem to have the right seam allowances, wheeee!

I'm linking up my progress on Bonnie's blog here: Link.

 Happy quilting!

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Happy thanksgiving to all! Here are just a few pictures of New England foliage to celebrate with you!

Happy quilting!

The Triple Play

When my younger sister, Lucinda, arrived at my older sister, Suzanne's, house, I was delighted that they wanted to come right over to join the Monday Chair Yoga class at the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center.

From left to right, Lucinda, Victoria (me), Suzanne, and Felix, at the Senior Center.

We met there and shared a great class! Both will be joining Felix and me for Thanksgiving Day turkey at our house.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, Felix and I enjoyed a week-early turkey dinner at the Senior Center.

The meal was ample and there was a good crowd that was in a festive mood.

After we ate, we were entertained by a comic who told funny stories and amused us all.

On a more quilty note, I was happy today to go to the center for our regular meeting of the Sunshine Club. Sue gave me this dear little sewing pin with the Featherweight on it! Thank you, Sue!!

Sue was working on her second Easy Hourglass Quilt in the Red White and Black fabrics that I believe she bought with me last summer at the Keepsake Quilting Annual Tent Sale. Nice job, Sue!

The last Tuesday of every month is the handwork circle at The Evergreen Country Primitives Quilt Shop where we shared some chat and some cookies. Well, of course, chocolate, too, LOL!

It was thrilling for me to be there to finish the hand hemming of my third scrappy Jacob's Ladder, YEAY!!! That's a triple play!

This one is all diagonals, but it shares the same style of inner border of scrappy lights and then a final border of 4-Patches as the previous two quilts.

The sun peeked out from the clouds and let me take some pictures as the breezes picked up.

This clothesline already has a pretty low sag to it and I decided to test it's strength to see if I could capture an image of the whole series of the Scrappy Jacob's Ladder quilts.

Each 82" square quilt is filled with Warm & Natural Batting and each one has a 100% cotton flannel backing, so they are HEAVY quilts!

Each quilt has a different layout setting so that they can be individual and yet be the same. That is so that my two adult nieces and my nephew, who will each receive one of the quilts will be treated fairly. In the photo below, from left to right, are the settings of Sunshine & Shadows, Barn Raising, and Field & Furrows.

This last one, Field & Furrows, was done with a pretty green Florentine scroll  cotton flannel backing and a green binding.

The Barn Raising layout, below, features a red Stuart plaid cotton flannel with a red binding.

And the last one enjoys a Black Watch tartan blue plaid cotton flannel backing with a blue binding.

The wind blew but the clothesline held!

If you click on the next picture to enlarge it, you might just be able to make out Miss Tanner,  one of my two little outdoors-only kitties who decided to join the photo-shoot. She is walking out from between the quilts.

These quilts have taken me a full year and a half to complete. Now I just need to get labels onto them!

This post is being linked to the binding blitz at JulieKQuilts.Link.

Happy quilting!