Charity Queen

One of the most wonderful things about having a quilting blog is being connected to more generous and kind and skilled quilters like Annie M. from way out in Washington state.

When Annie heard that the Sunshine Club was making quilts to benefit the hungry, she responded to me directly.

Annie worked all summer long on a beautiful quilt made from the Swoon pattern and then sent it to us. Here it is!

Her workmanship is fabulous on these big blocks made with Civil War reproduction fabrics.

Her good friend, Margaret B. volunteered to do the quilting on a longarm and did custom work.

Annie did the binding and then paid to have the quilt sent to me for the Bowls Of Care charity auction to be held later this fall.

Everybody in the Sunshine Club was so happy to receive this gorgeous quilt!

Even her label was well done!

Thank you, Annie and Margaret for all your efforts to help support the needy. Quilters are so generous!

Happy sewing!

Rolling Along

Just a quick aside to acknowledge our 62% of an eclipse here in New Hampshire.

It got kinda dimly lit and the temperature blessedly dropped from 82° F to 78° F, but it never got truly dark. The best part was being able to be home for the great TV coverage of the event.

I've made a little more progress on those "X" blocks for my Arkansas Crossroads quilt. I cut the blanks of the 4½" squares last Tuesday so I had a good supply of them.

The squares are an RJR fabric called Cotton Supreme in the "Canvas" colorway which is a pretty off-white. I used some randomly cut 2½" squares of Civil War reproduction fabrics to snowball the corners.

Although they are simple to make, they are time consuming. I only got three done, but on the other hand, I am taking the time to sew the second seam to be able to harvest the bonus HST's.

Sue had made a jelly roll quilt in pretty teal selections. Nice work, Sue!

Now she's working on her second baby cloth book.

Mary had all the coasters and table mat to make a tea setting that she plans to sell at a local craft fair.

Mary also made three cute animal heads that were too precious to use as pin cushions. She's going to attach these to the corner of a baby blanket made of poly fleece.

Marjorie has pretty much finished joining her yoyo's. Now she needs to decide what fabric would look best as a back drop for the yoyo pillow cover.

There's nothing more fun than stitching on my featherweight with my friends!

Happy sewing!

Happy Hobbies

Felix's garden is experiencing some deer raiding problems but otherwise our occasional rain is keeping it lush and well watered.

At the Sunshine Club on Tuesdays, Sue was almost done hand tying her huge hourglass quilt.

It is a king size quilt and looks terrific!

Meb was showing us all the lovely small quilts that she has been sewing.

Beautiful blocks!

Here are some that were put together to make a table runner. Nice work!

Here's Mary looking on as Meb does some hand quilting.

Beautiful pattern and it might work as a baby quilt.

Here's another pretty table runner!

Joyce had her table  mat all sandwiched and ready to machine quilt.

She did a great job on the stitch in the ditch and some diagonals, too. Nice work, Joyce!

I did some cutting of Bella solids yardage into 4½" squares for the X blocks on my Arkansas Crossroads top.

Back at home, I got distracted and made a few whirlygig or hopscotch blocks just for fun! Wheee!

Hope you let yourself get off track enough to have a ball just playing in your fabrics!

Happy sewing!

Happy Sewing

Last Tuesday the Sunshine Club met for sewing various projects. Mary was turning and finishing a bunch of microwavable bowl potholders. Love that purple!

Sue was sewing up the pages for a child's cloth book.

This is so cute!

Getting the pages lined up into their proper sequence is pretty important!

Mary had gotten permission to use the center's one washing machine to wash up some fabrics from an estate of a smoker to distribute to the Sunshine Club. Here's Marjorie with a nice bagful of free fabrics. Thank you, Mary!

One of the fabrics that caught Sue's eye was a Winnie The Pooh print. She has an idea for applique with this print.

Marjorie is almost finished with her yoyo pillow top and it looks great!

 Then, on Friday at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop, we all marveled at Sue's two finished quilts. Just look at that Hunter's Star!

It is gorgeous and photos don't really do it justice!

Sue's other quilt has yet to be bound but it is a wonderfully complex sampler quilt.

Such craftsmanship went into these blocks!

Tracy Szanto of Dreamland Quilting did a beautiful job on this!

Here's a peek at the backing, too.

Maureen had a pair of beautifully embroidered placemats from her friend in Florida. These look great!

I finished putting the 5" charm pack borders onto my jelly roll race quilt top and pressed it.

Now I have things ready to quilt. Oops, must arrange a backing, too!

Happy sewing!

A Visit To Maine

Sunday was lovely weather for my visit to Sanford, Maine for a trip to Marden's department store. Marden's is a chain, but not every one of their stores boasts a fabric department.

I met up with Grace there and we had fun shopping in spite of a bit of a wait time to get to the cutting table.

The cutting table was right beside a big shelf of neatly stacked remnants and I kept finding pretty reds that I had to take home with me!

The highest price that I paid was $4.49 per yard and I had found some very nice neutrals, too. My total bill was $37.67, right on target for my goal to not go over $40.

My only mishap was a stupidly forgotten camera that I had left in the cart as I was leaving the store. Fortunately, the man who found it turned it in to the courtesy booth. I was able to claim it later in the day when I returned for it. He didn't leave his name/number so that I could thank him, but God bless him!

In the meantime, back at the ranch, I've resurrected a project that had been set aside. Remember those endless winter days filled with the construction of Sawtooth Stars? Well, I built quite a stack of them!

These are 8" when finished in the quilt, but I've been dragging my feet to begin making the alternate block of 8" hourglasses. Finally, I broke the inertia and got started.

I have over 60 star blocks so I need 60 of the quarter squares. too. I used 4½" width of fabric strips in red and neutral.

Very carefully, I stacked them up with right sides together, four layers deep.

Then the wonderful Companion Angle ruler made cutting the ready-to-sew stacks easy.

Turn it upside down for the next cut and do the whole row.

The only tricky part of making quarter square hourglass blocks is to remember to feed the parts into the sewing machine in all the same orientation so that each sewn pair is the same with no mirror images.

I was able to get 7  quarter square blocks out of one width of fabric run that was stacked four layers deep. And I sewed the cute little 4½" HST's scraps from the two ends, too.

I laid out one Sawtooth Star with four of the Hourglass blocks on my ironing board so that you could have a sneak preview of the layout pattern.

 Happy sewing!