Happy Halloween!

Our trees are mostly ghostly!

The winds and rain (Hooray!) over the weekend have stripped off all of the leaves.

The occasional exceptions are the hearty oak trees, still clinging onto their bronze shimmers.

But these are a few pictures that I took last weekend to celebrate our Fall foliage.

On a quilty note, my dear friend, Janet, sent me one of her fabulous miniature quilts and some of her hand made  herbal soaps as a belated birthday gift to me.

Thank you, Janet!! If you haven't yet visited Janet's blog, "Rogue Quilter," then click HERE . You're in for a treat!

At the Tuesday meeting of The Sunshine Club at the Alton, New Hampshire, Senior Center, we had lots of fun and chomped a few chocolates.

Sue, hidden by the quilt top, was working on finishing up a UFO that she had set aside, while Bev looks on admiringly.

Bev, below, is making more decisions on where and how she may choose to do more hand quilting on her quilt.

Ooops! "Technical difficulties, please stand by..."

Sue spent quite a bit of time using the big tables to sandwich her quilt with the snazzy red backing, Warm & Natural batting, and her pretty Black, Red, and White quilt top.

First, we pressed her pieced backing seams open, then flipped the backing over.

Sue had used a coupon at Joann's for the best price on a king sized batt.

She harvested the excess trimmings carefully to use for "Franken-batts," which will be cobbled together for baby quilts. Way to go, Sue!

Marjorie, seen below, joined us with her yoyo's pillow project, all bright pinks and black. We were glad to see her!

I forgot to take a picture of what I was working on, but in the above photo, you can see one of my neutral strings blocks.

Mary, seen below, was gleefully showing us her latest batch of fantasy cuddle toys for tots.

I say gleefully because these are selling so briskly at a local consignment shop, that the owner there has now raised their prices to $22 per toy. Now that's validation of your work!

These are her own design and are made to not be too scary for a wee child.

While we celebrated all the blessed rain over the weekend, I was very glad to learn that my dear friend, Ilse, now has some water in her previously gone-dry well. She is so happy! The photo below is Ilse in August, on her 84th birthday.

Her two rain barrels are also full to the brim! Thank you to all of you who offered up prayers to The Almighty in our behalf as we survived this severe drought in New Hampshire.

Miss Emma Lynne prefers cuddling on the futon to the rain outside. If it's really pouring, she just looks at me and refuses to go out to do her duty. She says she's made of sugar and will melt. Hmmm.

Hope that you are enjoying a great day sewing or quilting or just hanging out for Halloween.

Linking up to Love Laugh Quilt. Link.
Linking up to Em's Scrapbag. Link.

Fall Fun

Friday Quilters with Claire was great fun at the Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

Maureen, seen below, was on a production-run of making up polyester fleece "infinity scarves" in Patriots designs for her Christmas list.

Here in New England, where witch hunts have always been popular, we all love Tom Brady, the Patriots Quarterback, and we know he was deliberately smeared by the National Football League.

But we still love our team and Coach Bill Belichick is the best. Just look at that stack of scarves! Go, team, go!

Maureen also used her embroidery machine to make a special Flamingo Block for Darlene's Breast Cancer Memorial quilt. Darlene would have loved this and she's looking down and smiling, I'm sure.

Our group bid a fond farewell to Sue, the snowbird, who will wend her way south to Florida for the winter. She has promised to return for some Christmas celebrations, so we'll see her then. Safe travels, Sue!

Sue's gray and turquoise zipper pouches, seen above, are going together beautifully.

I worked a wee bit on my "Lover's Knot" blocks in all neutrals, a project that has been stalled since last winter. Here, below, is an example of what they will look like.

High winds have been stripping the beautifully colored leaves from our trees, making sure that they will look good and spooky bare for Halloween on Monday.

Miss Emma Lynne can't wait for Halloween to get a new rawhide chew, yippee!!

But the kitties don't care, they are bored by it all.

Mr. Tipper was, however, willing to field test the cuddle quotient of a quilt left out to air.

He gave it a 7, but he's one of those hard judges that never gives out a perfect score of 10.

Linking up to Oh Scrap! Link.
Linking up to Love Laugh Quilt. Link.

Enjoy your day and happy sewing!

Blessed Rain!

Most of my outdoor photos are taken to celebrate our gloriously sunny New England days. Today we are celebrating the desperately needed rain.

All of the Lakes Region, where I live in New Hampshire, is under Severe Drought, as listed by the weather service. My well is still functioning but we are cautious and conservative with our water.

My very dear friend, Ilse, five doors down the street from me is not so fortunate. Her well is now dry and she cannot afford the $30,000 dollars to have it redrilled. She is using an outdoor rain barrel's water to bring in and flush her toilet. She's 84 and is caretaking Alfred, her 90 year old husband.

Fortunately, Felix had not gone to the recycling center yet when Ilse was here visiting, so I still had some rinsed and ready to recycle juice bottles. I gave her 4 large bottles of clean water and she was so relieved to have it because my water is still clear. June, my neighbor right next door, has water but it is cloudy and yellow/red from the iron deposits in her water.

So any rain at all is so very welcome!

The wind and rain are taking away all the pretty colors and will leave us (pun!) with spooky trees for Halloween. 

Earlier this month, I clipped some overgrowing vines from the back fence of the dogyard and crafted a bittersweet twig wreath for Fall. It has an added fabric ribbon which I sewed for it, and some dried hydrangea blossoms. Had to take down my Christmas wreath that had gotten left up all year, for shame, LOL!

On Tuesday, at The Sunshine Club, Sue was working diligently on putting her white solid borders onto her Black Diamonds quilt top.

And yes, she is taking the time to do it right, smoothing across the center, then cutting two exactly the same and pinning the border onto the quilt top. Yeay, Sue! 

Thank you, Bonnie K. Hunter for your most excellent instructions on this technique. Link.

My young friend, Matthew, still works at the Gilmanton Recycling Center, more affectionately known as, "The Dump." 

We enjoy the benefits of their "Free Room," where "too-nice-to dump" items can be left for re-homing. Matthew found a Singer Stylist sewing machine there and got it for me.

When I brought the new to me Singer Stylist in to the Sunshine Club, Bev exclaimed that she had once owned one very similar machine! I was thrilled to have her help! There was no manual with it, but I will investigate that issue online soon.

The portable machine came with a local repair tag still on it and an ominous clear plastic bag with extra parts that was attached by a twist-tie. I feared that it had been brought in to be repaired and had been deemed unfix-able and so was brought to The Dump. But the cord and foot control were inside the plastic case, so we dared to hope for the best.

Bev fearlessly tackled unscrewing the bottom so that she could expertly dab on a wee bit of Singer lubricating grease on the gears. It took us an hour to get that bottom off, grease the gears, and then get the bottom cover back on to the chassis of the machine. But we did it!!

A few drops of oil were carefully administered to the oil holes up above and another hour or so of fiddling with the various tension controls were really worth our investment of time. We got it to sew and purr like a kitten with a full tummy!! 

Thank you, Bev!! Never underestimate the power of two little old ladies with a screwdriver.

There was some good fabric and orphan blocks trading and flinging that went on, too. We all know that we can bring in stuff to pass on to someone who might be able to see it with fresh eyes.

When I got home, I felt inspired to work on a few more of those Split 9-Patches that were a gifted orphan project to me from my good buddy, Stacey in North Carolina.

These are like potato chips!

I'm aiming to make a couple each day.

Hope that you are well and sewing!

Linking up to Busy Hands. Link.
Linking up to Can I Get A Whoop Whoop. Link.
Linking up to Oh, Scrap! Link.
Linking up to Monday Making. Link. 

Happy quilting!

Birthday Blessings

Today, I am delighted to have another birthday! It sure beats dying young, LOL! It's great to be 67!

Friday was the celebration of all the October birthdays at the Golden Gese and we had a great time!
Maureen had to leave early before I had arrived, but she left a whole bag of birthday goodies for me.
Thank you, Maureen!

A lawn ornament Flamingo that paid for a donation to a children's leukemia fund. Love it, thanks!

A hand made knitted dish washing cloth in cotton yarn. Thanks!

A nice big bag of Balsam Fir needles for my sachets, boy, I'll use that, thanks!

A really cool plastic fish-shaped soap drainer so your bar of soap stays fresh, good idea, thanks!

And how about a sign that declares, "Fabric Hoarder?" LOL!! We all screamed with laughter when I opened that one, thanks Maureen, for all your gifts and the lovely embroidery card that you made.

Sue gave me the most beautiful porcelain coffee/tea mug that reads, "Victoria" and a kit to make up into a tea book caddy that will hold my tea bags. Thanks so very much, Sue!

Beverly brought in a fig square which I greedily consumed, having skipped bringing in my lunch.

 
She has also promised a winter's worth of her famous all natural Applesauce with no sugar added, yummy!

Thank you! Bev was clowning with me for the camera, too!

We had so much fun and Claire had bought a special Rainbow Cake from Walmart for us to all enjoy.

It was delicious!

We had such fun with all the birthday cards and partying that there wasn't really very much sewing going on. But to keep this post a little bit quilty, Claire was almost finished with her pretty Fall Log Cabin Table Runner.

It is so pretty and she used such small logs in all Fall colors.

I think that the name of the magazine she got the pattern from was Quilt Sampler, but not sure of the name.

As for me, I'm slowly hand hemming on the second side of my Summer Poppies quilt, too.

In the lovely Fall air, I did put up my new lawn ornament from Maureen already. These are all the rage here now.

Thank you to everybody for my birthday cheer, even Mr. Tipper, one of my outdoors-only kitties. I am truly blessed to have such good friends both near and far!

Linking up to Love Laugh Quilt. Link.
Linking up to Em's Scrapbag. Link.


Happy quilting!