Details, Details!

My very dear friend Ilse has loaned me back the quilt I gave her this past March. This allowed me to put one more quilt into this weekend's quilt show for the Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild in Laconia, New Hampshire. The BMQG had put out a call to all members to please send in more quilt registrations for the show, so this was perfect! Yesterday I safety pinned on a sleeve to the top of the flannel backing.

The sleeve doesn't match the quilt, but it doesn't matter. Also, this quilt had been given to Ilse and her husband, Alfred, in such a big hurry that I never had gotten a label on it. This has been the perfect time to correct that omission. Usually, I make the labels with plain black ink with Printed Treasures from Fons & Porter. That stuff is so expensive that I save every scrap of it! I decided to make up a handwritten label on one of the scraps.

My dear neighbors, Ilse and Alfred love this 60X80" snuggle size when their woodstove has burned down a bit and the rooms are cold in the winter. That's pretty soon, so I'd better get it right back to them after the show!

The World's Ugliest Sandwiches!

This open-faced sandwich is the world's ugliest sandwich, but I think they are delicious! Spread your favorite bread thickly with peanut butter, then cover that layer with dots of ketchup, and then top it off by cutting up a slice of cooked bacon into bite-sized pieces. Put it into the toaster oven for one cycle so it's warm and gooey. It is messier to eat than lobster! LOL! But it is good! We made these when I was a kid in the 1950's and we had to use the broiler of the stove because there were no toaster ovens.

Girl Scout Registrar

Tonight is my Girl Scout Leaders' meeting up in Laconia and I'm going early to be able to use some Joann's coupons while I'm in the big city. I hope to be able to find a copy of the newest Fons & Porter scrappy magazine where Nancy from Michigan had her cover story quilt.

http://nancysonestitchatatime.blogspot.com/

I also did quite a few hand-rinsing of my pretty new veggie fabrics in Orvus and hung out on my trusty clothesline. There was one red and purple paisley, too.

 The potatoes must be Yukon Gold, don't 'cha think?
Then Luau and I wandered down to the orchard, but NO amount of my chirping, kissy noises, or whistling would prompt her to raise her head from all that deer scent. So I got a great picture of her rump, LOL!

That tree is the Liberty Apple variety and it produces beautiful red apples. They are good for eating but go soft quickly and then are better for applesauce. Too soft for pies.
But the yellow Honey Crisps are great pie apples.

As for the night before last, a second frost had been predicted, so Felix stripped more tomatoes off the vines. We had no more places to put them! He decided to leave them outdoors in his garden cart covered up with two dog quilts. It worked perfectly! Here is where he began sorting them. Don't you love the colors? And that one dear little late-bloomer dandelion in the grass is for the accent yellow! I guess that's what Bonnie Hunter calls your "Quilter's Eyes!"

New Interface Sucks!

I hate change! The newest interface from Google "No longer supports your browser..." Ugh! So now I hafta leave my ole' trusty firefox Flock browser to be able to post here. I'll try it, but I am keeping my old browser as my default because I know where the "file, edit, view, history, favorites, etc" are all located. On the newer browsers, these are all hidden and I can't find them! Sigh. I hate change.

Except in the weather, when I love change! These lovely cool early Fall days are perfect for getting quilts into their final readiness for my Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild Fall show on October 1st & 2nd. Geez, that's only 2 weeks away. I have 5 all done with the labels and sleeves, and one more to do after I collect it back from my friend Ilse's house who received it as a gift. She is a dear and is allowing me to put it into the show. Here are pictures of Matthew and me safety-pinning sleeves onto the flannel backs of two quilts.

That was yesterday, and boy, do all the muscles on this fat old broad ache this morning! This is Matthew's quilt, called "Orange Sherbert". Although I did the piecing, and Tracy Szanto did all the quilting on her longarm, I gave Matthew all the credit for the layout design of these Broken Dishes (or Hourglass) blocks. Then I made him decide which way was up to see what was the top and what was the bottom for when we put the sleeve on, so that it would not be hung upside-down. Here is what he decided.

He is very proud of "his" quilt and can't wait until after the show when I will let him take it to his dorm room at New Hampshire Technical Institute.
The other quilt that I finished up yesterday with a sleeve and a label, was "Celtic Cottage" which almost got named, "Comedy of Errors"! Here you can see us pinning on the sleeve on the flannel backings that never got centered when they were at the longarmer's. Oh well, it looks very lop-sided but I still love it! The pattern was inspired by Jo Kramer's "Chain of Faith" featured on Moda Bakeshop on May 1st, 2011. Jo used a Moda precut Jelly Roll in Collections for a Cause line, but I chose my own fabrics from my stash and cut them by hand.

Believe it or not, there is NO GREY fabric in this quilt top! Those are all pale greens and beiges but the camera lies!

Intruders

Yesterday at 5pm, we spotted this doe and her two young raiding the apple orchard for drops that Hurricane Irene blew down. It was fun to watch them, but when one of the yearling fawns, called a "skipper", began to feast on the bark and leaves of a baby Asian Pear tree, I drew the line. I shouted out, "Hey, you, STOP THAT!" Immediately, all the deer looked at me, up by the house, and they froze for several seconds before they all took off. We had one other intruder, also. And that was the first early FROST! Geez, it's a month early. Felix and Matthew covered up the butternut squash, snow peas, and lettuce and radishes. They harvested all the tomatoes and the summer squash. I took a full shopping bag of the extra summer squash down to the food pantry in the village and they were glad to receive it. My dear hubby, Felix, moaned and groaned to lose his hobby garden so soon. As for me, I was just glad to have cooler weather! Gosh, Wednesday we used the air-conditioner all day, and here on Friday night was the frost. I love New England!
The weather is always doing something interesting.

As the days are shorter now, I'm already sitting in the sunshine for at least 15 minutes every sunny day to keep my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) at bay. I sit outside and do a little knitting and watch the traffic go by on Route 140. Today, I walked down to the orchard and grabbed myself a Honey Crisp yellow apple and ate it right from the tree. It sure was sweet and juicy!

"Pawprints" Bound!

Now this is a RED quilt! I swear, it glows in the dark, tee hee. I am very proud of this one because I chose my own design work for the first time. It is a simple 2 1/2" four-patch that has been placed into a nine-patch setting block, using 4 1/2" scrappy reds.
I am also proud that the binding is DONE before Labor Day! It only came back from my longarmer (Linda Monasky of The Bear Paw Gallery in Alton, NH)
http://www.thebearpawgallery.com/index.html
on August 31st, so that was three days! Linda did a beautiful job of hand-guiding the red thread into lovely swirls.

Usually I take a month to get "around to it" on the bindings. This is also the first quilt that I ever happened to make with a binding that is the same fabric as the outer border. Would that be called a "self-binding"? I have a basket of binding scraps saved and there was more than enough of them to use on this, but I just could NOT bring myself to add another layer of busy-ness to this quilt. I'm glad. It looks fine.

This border and binding fabric were a super-saturated Robert Kaufman fabric that is a great blender. It has almost every shade of red worked into it which is I think why it works so well with all those varied scrappy reds in the quilt's center. I'm also glad that I decided to use a bland neutral for the 2 1/2" inner border.
I'm often guilty of making quilts that are "too girly" So this one got a real macho flannel camouflage backing. And one of the scrappy reds that I used is a tone-on-tone of red pawprints, hence the name.

The quilt's secondary pattern of crisscrossing lights doesn't show up until you view it from a distance, but it is so fun when you finally see it!

The Bologna Moment Brought to you by Puppy-Dad

Every morning, Felix (Puppy-Dad) gives out doggie vitamins and glucosamine tablets (which are for improved joint health) to our dogs. And then they get their bologna treat for the day, one slice each, cut up into pie-shaped wedges. Raven is very gentle; Luau is very greedy. If the "Bologna Moment" is late for some reason, we sure do hear about it from Luau, who becomes very vocal.

Whatcha Got in the Shoebox?

As I plug along on various projects, it is challenging to keep them all together neatly. I have discovered that shoeboxes and empty Raman noodle boxes are great. I like to stack 10 units, such as a four-patch, and then offset the next ten, until I have a stack of 50 units. Then they go into the shoebox!

These are my 450 four-patches for Blue Ridge Beauty. I have more fun making the 4-patches than the HST's and I need 450 of those too.

On the Half Square Triangles, I have about 250 done, so I still have a ways to go!

The patchworking is very theraputic today.  I await the phone call to see how my eleven year old  little yellow lab mix named Luau, fared at the surgery to diagnose her anal tumor. We do not know if it is cancerous or perhaps just an infected anal gland. The growth is the size of a golf ball and very hard. Luau has been having a very difficult time passing her stools for about 2 or 3 weeks, but I did not understand why. Perhaps I should have gotten her to the vet sooner. I did learn that dogs can benefit from a Metamucil-type of preparation if it is sprinkled into their kibble and mixed with water.
The waiting and not knowing is hard.

Thank you so much for your support, it means a lot right now. It is an inoperable cancer that will take her life. She is not yet in pain, so I have chosen to bring her home for a few weeks of last swims in the lake, lots of bologna treats, and tons of cuddling before I take her back to be put to sleep peacefully. I owe her that.

All our life is only borrowed from God. I can just keep reminding myself that I had 11 wonderful years with Luau. It is hard to not be sad.

 

The Floral Totebag

The Saturday the 6th workshop was a big success! You may recall that I had already put together my 5" floral patches from my swap group. So I was ahead of the group.

As I drove to the workshop, my 1989 Mercury Marquis began acting strangely, with the check engine light that came on as well as the amp light and then I lost my power assist on my steering. There on route 11, a narrow winding road with no apron and cars behind me, I chose to drive on about half a mile to get to The Wise Owl Restaurant to be able to call home. I do not use a cell phone.

Husband Wonderful, Felix, and his trusty sidekick, Matthew, came immediately to rescue me. It was a glorious sunny day and when they popped my hood, they saw the broken fan belt that was the culprit. The guys loaded me and "Scottie", my Singer Featherweight, into the Mountaineer and drove me straight to the class. By the time I got there, I was an hour late, but was just even with the group because I had worked ahead.

My totebag was made from the florals in my swap group online and I was careful to chose a dark piece of yardage for the handles to not show the dirt when using the tote. Also, I made the deepest part of the lining a very light color to be able to see the bottom of the bag when rummaging around in there. I love the way it turned out!

By the way, by the time that the workshop had ended, Husband Wonderful had the car repaired and running like a top again! Yippee!

Long Lost Chum

It amazes me that sometimes things just fall together the way they should! In January 2010, I posted my first quilt on Quilt-Pictures.com  http://www.quilt-pictures.com/orangemans-day.html#comments because I had not yet started this blog. I had forgotten all about it.
But as chance would have it, my oldest dear childhood chum was cruising the net looking for eye-candy quilts and popped into Quilt-Pictures. When she saw my name, she left a comment which was sent to my email. OMG! I was SO surprised! We hadn't kept up and I had not heard from her in 40 years. As luck would have it, we were able to meet at her daughter's farm in the next town over from me for a wonderful luncheon, all home-cooked. It was the most fabulous reunion!

A few days ago, I pulled into my wonderful paved driveway that I use as my layout area for quilts, and saw that we had a visitor in the orchard. This doe was quite large and had a fawn with her, but the little one ran for cover.  She stayed long enough for me to go into the house to fetch the camera to take these:

She sure did like stealing those apples! Felix was furious and chased her off to protect his crop. I got a big laugh out of it all.