Marvelous Marden's

Saturday was a planned stash-enhancing experience.

Sue, below, from The Sunshine Club on Tuesdays at the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center, volunteered to drive me to Marden's department store in Sanford, Maine.

The store is part of a small independent chain that sells everything and it is all deeply discounted.

They are only in Maine, and not every store has a fabric department like this one does. There are aisles of bolts arranged by colors in a veritable rainbow.

The 100% cotton quilting fabrics are mostly quilt shop quality and priced at $4.49 or $4.99 per yard.

Above is the gal who cut my selections and she then very nicely took my picture of me holding my new loot.

I picked out several creamy neutrals and a tan that were all in half yard increments, and a yard each of a Robyn Pandolf blue floral and a red cretonne by Maywood Studios.

My tab was under $35, wow! And that even included some new dog toys for Miss Emma Lynne!

Happy quilting! (Or chewing, as the case may be.)

Friday Fun!

Fresh clean mountain air just invigorates me and makes me feel like quilting!! Here's what was going on with the Friday Quilters with Claire at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop at 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

Darlene, below, had joined us downstairs to work on her Rail Fence set on point in beautiful Civil War reproduction fabrics.

I love that she's used only tans and deep creams and no whites to give the Patriotic look a colonial twist. So homey looking!

Sue was back from her travels to Israel and Palestine and back to work on her greens, blacks, and buttercream yellows. So pretty!

Sue also was giving some final details of instruction to Beverly, who was making more microwave bowl potholders.

Soon Bev had it figured out!

Soon these two halves got sewn together with right sides facing each other. They are so cute and so practical, too!

I was resuming my efforts on my third Scrappy Jacob's Ladder, but I left early when, yikes!, I ran out of units from my swap groups. No problem, the September batch will soon be arriving in my mailbox!

Thursday was a bit of fun, too. Husband Wonderful, my Felix, joined me at the annual September Open House Gala at the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center.

We enjoyed a big hearty Roast Pork & Gravy dinner with butternut squash and red bliss mashed potatoes with a side dish of apple crisp. The meal was a $2 donation per Senior, $6 per adult.

There was even live entertainment with a lady Canadian singer who was wonderful.

What made us laugh the most was the buffet style dessert table that had tangerine "pumpkins" with a wee bit of celery as their stems. So clever!

And how about these trays of Black Sheep Cupcakes? LOL! Adorable!

Or maybe you'd prefer Pretzel Moose Cupcakes??

We had a wonderful time and the Spanish Club put on a very entertaining skit for us, too!

On the way home, we stopped off to buy a gallon jug of 2% milk for our house, but these just jumped into my cart and insisted on coming home with me! Does this ever happen to you?

I'm linking to Love Laugh Quilt Link.
Happy quilting!

Lost & Found

Lovely, fresh, invigorating cool air has returned to New Hampshire!!! Wheeee, it's quilt weather!

Below is Sue, working on her Easy Hourglass Blocks and making great progress on them at the Alton Senior Center where we sew.

Below you can see me, sewing on my little Scotland-made Singer Featherweight sewing machine that I named, "Scottie."

In the foreground above, you can also see Beverly is working on her tee shirt quilt. I have taken a break from the hourglass blocks to work on my third Scrappy Jacob's Ladder blocks. For those of you who might be newly visiting here, I'll shamelessly show off my two completed Scrappy Jacob's Ladders.

Above is the first one in the "Barnraising" layout with the red Stewart plaid flannel backing.

Below is the second one in the "Sunshine & Shadows" layout with the blue plaid flannel backing.

I have two adult nieces and one nephew and this series is dedicated to them.

Back at home, I'm very pleased to have finally finished my stack of 144 quadrants for the quilt that I'm making for my house-boarders, Matthew and Bella.

These units are 6½" square and four of them are sewn together to form the 12½" unfinished block.

It is my adaptation of Kim Brackett's pattern called "Scrap Basket Blues," from her book, Scrap Basket Surprises.

If you love 2½" strips as much as I do, this is a wonderful pattern book! Go buy a copy to replace the one that you can't find in all your own rubble, LOL!

I'm working hard, as I assemble those quadrants, to mix up the units for better "random" scrappiness.
Random, indeed, harumph!!

My own household is awash in too-much stuff, but I love it all and refuse to weed it. Consequently, I went for over a week looking for this padded mailer pouch that contains my carefully hoarded 1½ inch strips from swaps. You can't imagine the angst I suffered when it was missing in action! Yeay,
it's found!

Can there be another Log Cabin lurking in there? Hmmm.

Lastly, I'm trying to post a file from Maureen of her photo taken with Jenny Doan of the Missouri Star Quilt Company for you. But the file was read-only so I wasn't able to edit it to rotate it.

Hooray! The photo righted itself! So that is Maureen on the left, and Jenny Doan on the right.

Nice retreat photo!


Happy Quilting!

The Week That Was

Dear me, last week's photos of the Friday Quilters from The Golden Gese at 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire, got quite stuck in my camera, but now here they are for you!

Here are some of the ladies of the Upstairs Clan having lots of fun! Please DO notice the big Storytellers quilt in the background that was a sample sewn by Nancy Gesen, the shop's owner.

Below is Beverly as we all laughed about her passing along the Chicken Sandwiches joke that's been circulating on the internet.

 

 

Chicken Sandwich

A little boy and a little girl attended the same school and became friends. Every day they would sit together to eat their lunch. They discovered that they both brought chicken sandwiches every day! This went on all through the fourth and fifth grades until one day he noticed that her sandwich wasn't a chicken sandwich.
He said, "Hey, how come you're not eating chicken, don't you like it anymore?"
She said " I love it but I have to stop eating it."
"Why?" he asked.
She pointed to her lap and said "Cause I'm starting to grow little feathers down there!"
"Let me see" he said.
"Okay" and she pulled up her skirt.
He looked and said, "That's right you are, better not eat any more chicken."
He kept eating his chicken sandwiches until one day he brought peanut butter. He said to the little girl, "I have to stop eating chicken sandwiches, I'm starting to get feathers down there too!"
She asked if she could look so he pulled down his pants for her. She said "Oh, my God, it's too late for you, you've already got the neck and gizzard!"


Maureen, below, was working on her HST's in the Dutchman's Puzzle blocks for her table runner.

The blocks look so good! These were made from the "Ophelia" layer cake by Nancy Gere for Windham.

 Upstairs, Darlene was assembling blocks into rows in all Civil War patriotic selections. You go, girl!!

Love the way it's shaping up!

Claire showed us a couple of really cute seasonal wall hangings that are patterns offered by The Golden Gese quilt shop.

Apples, yes, and who can ever resist plump pumpkins??

I used the big tables to spread out some sausage-style pillowcases and get them pinned and ready to be sewn. (That chocolate dispenser definitely needs to be refilled, LOL! Yummy Hersey's Nuggets!)

Then, on the hot and humid torrid Tuesday at the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center, there was more fun inside with the air conditioning to enjoy.

Sue, below, was still working on her Easy Hourglass Blocks from the Jenny Doan video for Missouri Star Quilt Company. Link.

Pauline, below, joined us and modeled her blue scarf for us. We will miss Pauline as she returns to Tennessee for the winter and is leaving on Saturday. Safe travels, for our friend!

My hourglass units are far behind Sue's stack of them, but here I am, holding up one block, Yeay!!!

Then, as today was another hot day, I was pleased to be downstairs in the AC at The Golden Gese Quilt shop again for the Friday Quilters.

Here is Jan, below, holding up her modern strippy quilt in a limited color pallet that is so striking!!

We all reveled in the joy of Darlene's Pink flamingos quilt that had just come back from the acclaimed local longarmer, Tracy Szanto, of Dreamland Machine Quilting. Link.

Longarmer Tracy Szanto did a magnificent job custom quilting the pink central panel. Just look at this!!

If you'd like to help Tracy and her daughter, Sharon, to raise money to help fight Breast Cancer, here is their Facebook  Link.

Beverly, below, had great progress to show, too. She has 8 of the 14 rows put together on her circles quilt top. Looking good, Beverly!

Maureen, below, has begun the large Civil War Block-Of-The-Month quilt, called The Storytellers.

She had these four gorgeous blocks done already.

My progress was all in the pressing department. I sure did get tired of standing at the ironing board, but I was thrilled with this stack of blocks done!!! Halfway there!

The fabrics are from  a layer cake called "Edith" by Mary Koval for Windham Fabrics.

I hope that you are able to stay cool wherever you are as we all go through this excessive heat.

Happy quilting!