Traditional Memorial Day

Forty Five years ago, I married the most wonderful man on the planet.

My gift to him this year was to put my recently finished Celtic Solstice onto our bed for the first time. Felix was delighted!

Thank you, to Bonnie K. Hunter, for your fabulous designs! Link.

Have a great weekend and Happy Sewing!

A Special Young Scout; A Special Old Scout

Sometimes doing good helps you out. Recently, I read about Diana Jasany, the remarkable 16 year old adoptee who is earning her Girl Scout Gold Award by making 16 quilts for foster care teens who have "aged out" of their support programs.

You can read more about her at Quiltville's Quips and Snips, which is Bonnie K. Hunter's blog.

As a former Girl Scout leader for ten years, and then having been a Girl Scout Registrar for 5 years before the internet, I was thrilled at the chance to help Diana win her Gold!

A Former Bag Lady For The GS, 2011

I packed up about 10 or 20 pounds of vintage floral fabrics, mostly in the purple ranges, into a Medium Flat Rate Box that is available for free at the Post Office. No pictures, but I sent it off to Diana for the princely sum of $12.65. It helped me out with giving me more shelf space for my stash!

Although I don't do Facebook because of all the creepy people there and the uber-aggressive marketing cookies that Facebook uses, Diana does use it. If you do, too, here is her URL to her page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dianas-Golden-Needle/1620860048143753

Perhaps you will contact Diana to get her mailing address and send in some blocks, strips, backings, or fabrics. You'll feel so very good! I do.

A Chocolate Pusher for the Seniors

Thank you for your support of this project!

Happy sewing!

Hard Candy Christmas

Link to Sarah's blog.Today was the last Tuesday of the month, so I got to enjoy both the regular weekly Continental Breakfast at the Alton Senior Center with The Sunshine Club, as well as The Farmer's Wife down in Milton, New Hampshire.
Sue was busy quilting the straight lines on her Leprechaun Quilt.

It takes a lot out of her back and shoulder muscles, so she prefers to only do three rows at a time.

That's a lotta rows!!!

When she was done with that, she sewed Dresdens together, nice work!!

I worked on my big Log Cabin with the Piano Key border to hand hem the binding. At the Farmer's Wife group, I actually finished it!!! Yeay!!! But I forgot to bring the camera in from the car, so this picture is still at the Senior Center.

I love this quilt!!!

When I put the marvelous Faye Burgos "Love & Glory" bias-printed red stripe onto it for the binding, it looked like a candy cane!

It makes me remember how poor we were when I was a kid and how much I loved those candy canes that we got every year. I used a wide red flannel backing with a subtle black printed texture.

I quilted it with free hand Baptist Fans which was taught to me by Making Scrap Quilts From Stash blog.
I love all those beautiful Civil War reproduction fabrics!

It is 86" by 86" square so it's large enough for a queen sized bed.

There are 49 blocks set 7 by 7 with a pieced piano key border that is 5" wide.

It is named "Hard Candy Christmas," to honor my parents struggle to make our Christmases bright.

Today I have linked up to another blog named My Quilt Infatuation that you might enjoy! Link is here.
Also a link to Judy L. at Patchwork Times blog linky party!
Link to Julie K Quilt's Binding Blitz is here.
This blog post is being linked to Amy's Creative Side blog for the Blogger's Festival 2015. Link.
Happy quilting!

Memorial Day

Thank you to all of those who have served our country. This morning I visited the grave of only one such soldier, David C. Lucy, who was 22 when he died fighting in the Civil War in 1862.

It is a privilege to honor our service people and also our elderly.

My shut-in girlfriend, Frances, loves to go out and be active. She had great fun looking at the antiques in a local mall of dealer booths. In March of next year, Frances will be 100 years young! there is a vintage lunch counter where we rested with a Pepsi.

There was so much to see and she really liked the train that was set up and moving around the track.

Here we admired a glass case filled with china.

Looking good, Frances!!!

Be happy with what you have, says Miss Emma Lynne!

Happy sewing!

Frosted!!

Last night our lovely Spring weather was interrupted by a deadly frost that killed all 18 of Husband Wonderful's baby tomato plants.

Felix knew that he was taking a big gamble to put them in the ground a week early, but he was morose at their demise. The lettuce and Swiss chard had not yet been planted so I had covered those with some old beach towels and they did just fine. All this week is predicted to be in the 80's, so the roller coaster ride continues.

But the Friday Quilters were full of life and bright new ideas for projects. Here are some of them from the workroom at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire. Sue, seen below, was working on her polka dots and turquoise quilt.

She got most of it assembled and it looks fabulous!

Beverly, below, was cutting pieces for her Yellow & Grays Illusion blocks.

Her blocks sure do pop with a three dimensional optical illusion. Weak batteries in my camera are making everything look a bit yellowed but that background is white.

Maureen and Beverly are seen below holding up Maureen's Quack Quilt from Missouri Star Quilt Company. Those chicks make me laugh!!!

Now here's a big smile for you!

The blocks are really cute and Maureen used her embroidery machine to stitch those eyes on the chicks. Very effective, Maureen!

I couldn't face working on the hand sewing on my binding of my Piano Keys Log Cabin.

So instead I had a ball sewing more Jacob's Ladder blocks in the bright novelties. Sue was teasing me about all my empty candy wrappers from chomping chocolate, LOL! More Hersey's Nuggets, please!

We have such fun together and we get stuff done eventually. I can't recall if I got 3 or 4 blocks done of the brights version of my third, yes, third, scrappy Jacob's Ladder.

Sure hope that my swap hostess, Karen, will soon be sending me my May pouch filled with more wonderful HST's and 4-patches in the 4½" unfinished sizes. Eeek, I'm running out of the 4-patches!

May you enjoy this long Memorial Day weekend and give thanks to all our wonderful armed service people who have sacrificed to keep us free.

Happy sewing!

Cool Sewing

Today I am a Blockmaker for Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog. I just did two for the #19 Serpentine Stripes.

When I bought the center's Penny Rose stripe, I was buying it for the Ombre, but it seems to overlap the definition for a serpentine stripe as well. This is by designer Erin Turner and it comes in a blue or a yellow colorway, too.

If you haven't yet started the Civil War sew along, you are missing out on the fun!

I had one leftover pink and blue and brown serpentine stripe and made that up as well.

It just seemed that there were some leftover parts that made up this paisley block, too.

The Spring weather is marvelous and Felix, my Husband Wonderful, enlisted Matthew's aid to plant three replacement fruit trees due to some winterkills of our Asian Pears.

They planted three winter hardy to zone 4 Apricot Dwarf trees. My Grampa, Park Parkhill, used to say," To plant a two dollar tree, dig a ten dollar hole!"

Thank you, Matthew, our Star Border, for your heavy duty digging!!! But why on earth are you holding up the number of fingers of your IQ? You little freshie!

Miss Emma Lynne was not amused by the gesture and decided to go sniff out some deer sign.

On Tuesday, Carol and Sue were chatting at The Sunshine Club at the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center where we meet for some fun.

Sue worked hard on several more rows of quilting before she took a break with some piecing on her Dresdens.

They sure are coming out nicely!

I'm still slow stitching my hand hemming of the binding on my Log Cabin.

The chocolate decanter is open in the foreground above, and we all chomped a few of our favorite Hersey's Milk Chocolate Classic Nuggets, wheee!

 Lastly, I do wish that you could smell my lilacs in the living room. They are a heady fragrance that I love!

Happy sewing!

Whatcha Doin'?

Everybody at the Friday Quilters with Claire was busy with fun projects down at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord.

Sue was sewing and pressing pieces in the happy dots fabric that she is going to accent with a deep teal or turquoise. Here is her work area with all those pretty colors! Nice organization with those paper plates, too.

Beverly, below, was working on a new project called Illusions with modern greys and yellows.

This is the instruction sheet that she's been using, and to the right of it, her first block done. Nice work, Bev!!!

Maureen, below, made great progress on her Missouri Star Quacking Chicken quilt, and she even overcame a setback with a wavy border that needed unsewing and restitching.

Way to go, Maureen!

Jan, below, was working on a very colorful Fall tablecloth that she had pieced using Missouri Star's blooming flowerpot Dresden design. Link.
Second Link for Spring Dresdens.

The colors are just smashing, pumpkins, that is, LOL! Look at this!

Eleanor, below to the left, had been busy pressing some of her beautiful blue blocks and Beverly was admiring them. Can't wait to see them all together, Elle!

My progress is really boring. Just an old picture of me binding my big Log Cabin quilt with the piano keys border. It's 86" X 86" and I don't think that I'm quite halfway done yet.

But I don't mind and it was fun to chomp some chocolates with all my Friday friends!

Stay focused and happy sewing!