Wicked Good Time At The Busy Thimble

It's hard to believe that two days ago we were digging out twice from two storms that hit us on either end of the day on Wednesday.

Felix did a superb job of getting us plowed out but this is what he started with...

It is usually my task to sweep off the cars with a broom and I was very thankful for the cold temperatures that kept all the snow light and fluffy.

The kitties were unhappy about staying in the garage until I shoveled out a walkway onto the deck.

Raven and Emma-Lynn took it all in stride.

Then Thursday, yesterday, brought clear skies and the balmy temperatures of an incredible 46 degrees! As hoped and planned, I drove to South Portland, Maine to visit my dear friend, Grace. We wanted to go to our favorite reproduction quilt shop, The Busy Thimble.

This shop is located in rural Litchfield, Maine and is owned by Cyndi Black who has a passion for acquiring all the latest lines of Civil War reproduction fabrics.

The primitive pine plank walls are covered with Cyndi's wonderful quilts to inspire you!

There is fabric EVERYWHERE in all manner of glorious shapes and sizes; bolts, one yard cuts, half yard cuts, fat quarters and even "snippets" which are 14 rolled bits of 6"x10" fabric.

Grace and I both took advantage of the outdoor porch sale fabrics that were marked 30% off their prices with a one yard minimum.

We were in heaven, surrounded by quilty ideas and cloth!

Above is my stack, ready to bring in from the porch to be cut by Cyndi. I also picked out one drop-dead gorgeous red. It is by Moda from the Floral Gatherings line that you see her cutting for me here.

Grace was ogling the Paula Barnes cheddars.

Everywhere there were bolts of yardage.

I felt giddy on my fabric high, LOL!

Soon it was time to say goodbye and pay my bill, which was $75 for 9 yards and a $10.50 roll of Jo Morton snippets that was just too cute to pass up, LOL!

We had clear roads and sunny skies to drive the hour trip back to Grace's apartment where her Mom had graciously prepared a delicious dinner meal. I devoured fried haddock, oven roasted vegetables with fennel, some KFC cole slaw, and banana cream pie topped with whipped cream! Yummmy! Carolyn even let me take a piece of the pie home to Felix on his birthday. Thank you so very much!

Back to beautiful downtown Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire, and safely home before the freezing rain hit us last night and this morning. Now I love snow, but I hate freezing rain!

I chose to cancel The Sunshine Club at the Pearson Road Community Center this morning as the roads were terrible.

Later on, Felix and I'll be watching the final broadcast today of the Men's Curling on the Winter Olympics.

Go Canada! Go Great Britain! Who will win it?
Congratulations to Jennifer Jones and the Women's Canadian Curling Team for their gold Medal!

We wait four years to see curling and enjoy the suspense of every play.
So until next time, as Curling Announcer Fred Roggan says, "Sweep well!"

Still Snowing!

Well, we are snowed in yet again! And yes, I STILL love the snow.
We had an unusual phenomenon with this storm that I do not ever remember before. It is called "snow thunder." It was just a very loud BANG as if a large truck had backfired, or maybe like when one of the Potter clan sets off a stick of dynamite near the Fourth of July. Country life is always amusing, isn't it?

I used the time to do more hand hemming on my reproduction churn dash. It was lovely to have a big quilt on my lap while watching the curling on TV. We only get to see curling during the winter Olympics, so it is treasured! I was able to get it finished, too.

I was unable to get to my clothesline for photographing it, but I'm loving this quilt! It went through a stage where I thought it was ugly, but not now. Here are two close up shots so you can see some of the fabrics:

It is 84" x 100", so it is a good big quilt.

I quilted this myself on Ellen Peters' rented longarm and I used an edge to edge ivy leaf and loop design. That busy sashing fabric doesn't show the quilting very much, sorry.

Miss Raven likes it! The binding was that plain paper bag colored solid that I had also used last year on the baby log cabin quilts.

I have not forgotten my 100 chevrons needed for Celtic Solstice and did another ten of those, too.

They take five seams per unit.

Pressing the center seam open is what Bonnie suggested and I'm doing that. I don't say that I'm very good at doing that, but I'm doing it, LOL!

One more gratuitous dog on the quilt picture for you, thank you, Miss Raven!

When all else fails, take a nice nap. That's Raven's advice and I take it to heart, LOL!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all my wonderful readers! My Felix gave me a big bouquet of flowers and a lovely card and he loved my card, too! It is such a treat to have fresh flowers in February, I just love them.

I spent most of the week binding and finished up a small quilt for my dear friend Debra in western Massachusetts. I had wanted her to receive it in time for Valentine's Day after her gorgeous Christmas gift of my tote bag shown here:

Alas! I was in such a hurry to get it mailed out to her on Wednesday, that I have no pictures of it for you!
N.B. Debra has posted pictures of my gifted quilt on her blog, called Feathers In My Nest. You can go to see it.

The big story today is Mother Nature's gift of 12" of fresh clean snow! This snow is fairly sticky and heavy so it was hard shoveling this morning and no Sunshine Club today.

During the night, it snowed and snowed and then there was a brief interval of freezing rain on top of the fluffy snow. Then it went back to a lighter snow until daybreak.

So that meant that Tipper was able to walk right on top of the snow, while Miss Emma Lynn was up to her tummy!

Here she is, bounding through the snow!

I have begun piecing some of the shoo fly blocks for an upcoming swap, too.

I need 4 sets of six blocks all in dots and dashes. I hadn't expected to participate due to a perceived lack of polka dot and striped fabric, but when I looked, I found some. It pays to shop the stash!

There was one day this week when I volunteered my time at an assisted living facility.

I had expected to be paid, but there was a misunderstanding about that. As a quilter, I warn you to get very specific and crass if you receive any invitation to do a presentation. Oh well, chalk it up to experience!

Stay calm and quilt on!

Sunshine Club Doings

There was, and is, plenty of sunshine yesterday and today! It always energizes me. At The Sunshine Club, Sue was working along on her purple butterfly tumblers and Pauline had started cutting up jeans for a denim quilt.

I gave about a three minute demonstration of how to spin seams on the backs of both four-patches and pinwheel blocks. Always look for the last seam that you stitched to be facing horizontally, that means that it goes OVER the vertical seam.

Keep it oriented that way as you open the fold with the backside facing up.

Tug the right-hand side of the horizontal seam DOWN towards you and push the left-hand side of the same horizontal seam UP and away from you. As you do this, the center lump will kind of pop open as the two stitches of the vertical seam let go, but then the rest of the vertical seam is held by the horizontal seam that crosses over it. Then press firmly to flatten it all out. See the tiny pinwheel?

After everybody had seen what that was all about, we all went over to the Director, Roney's (pronounced, roe NAY, she is originally from Chihuahua, Mexico) Valentine Workshop.

Roney had brought in LOTS of art supplies!

We all had a blast revisiting this classic kindergarten activity.

After all, now we can finally appreciate it, LOL! Please do notice the mini quilt that has been placed onto the cold metal chair where I had been sitting. The Alton Community Church keeps a whole stack of these in the dining room for folks to grab and use and each one is different. Cool, huh?

Next week we leave the church to return to our "home" at the newly renovated Alton Community Center.

Stay warm with a quilt!

Enjoying the Snow

It snowed all day today and I had a lovely day cocooning. I'd shovel a bit out on the deck for the kitties, munch some lunch, and take a long nap with Felix. We got just a little under 7" of snow and we felt badly for Matthew who had to be outdoors at work all day.

Mostly, I worked on cutting and organizing my ten sets of 2" HWOF (Half Width Of Fabric) neutrals for my swaps over at QuiltvilleSwap, a Yahoo swap group that began as Bonnie Hunter fans. I have no idea what exactly I will do with these neutral strips, but who can't use them somewhere?

I must credit Bonnie for her freeing me of the notion that all neutrals must look like oatmeal. This group is pretty bland, as the camera shows it, I guess that's because I'm swapping some older stuff.

The Ziploc "snack" sized baggies are perfect for keeping the sets of ten strips nicely organized. Tomorrow, I'll be all dug out and able to mail them.


Ila M. from Indiana sent me a big box of goodies! I was so surprised and happy. She had lost her dear elderly cat this past summer and so she passed on a marvelous heated pet bed for the kitties. THANK YOU, Ila!
Here is Tyler, the first to discover this new comfort zone. His sister, Tanner, had been cuddled right beside him, but the flash scared her off.

My crew of two labs and three kittens are hard to photograph! They keep moving, sigh. Here is what I took of two dogs and one cat, and all you can see is a tail, LOL!

This one's a little better:

The labs, Raven, and Emma Lynn, are so excited about fresh snow! They run and leap and play as if they've never seen snow before. The fun is contagious and I love it!

But I really want to share a practical joke that Matthew played on me when I went to bed early last night. He never told me, but he slyly borrowed my camera and took this picture of Miss Emma Lynn!

Headphones and all! LOL!


Stay calm and quilt on!

The Last Linky Party

Yesterday I worked on preparing the brown paper bag colored binding for my Antique Churn Dash. I probably should have machine sewed it on immediately while I had the energy, but I foolishly burnt myself out on doing housework, LOL! This is the quilt I'm talking about:

And here is the basket of binding. A basket really is handy so that you do not need to roll up your binding, just set the basket right beside you.

The basket keeps the binding nice and clean and organized. At my house, that means out of the dust, dirt, and doghair, LOL!

I also got the orange and blue tri-recs blocks for Celtic Solstice Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt all completed! I am enforcing a rule that I will not sew my blocks for the mystery until all my components are done. Here is my cache of units so far:

That meant that I need about 70 on those Chevron units. This morning I woke early, mindful of this being Bonnie Hunter's last linky party here and began to work on chevrons!

I doubt that I will finish them today, but the forward progress certainly broke my inertia.

At least I can avow that Celtic Solstice is still a work in progress and not a UFO, LOL!

Also, I was noodling around and found some fine looking choices for the Dots'n'Dashes shoofly swap over at Blockswappers, a Yahoo Group and started a few HST's for that. You'll see more of these later, I'm sure!

Working on several projects at once is a mixed blessing; you are never bored or sick of any one thing, but you are a bit subject to the feelings of being overwhelmed a bit. For me, it's all good!

Here is why Matthew could not make his bed a few mornings ago, LOL! Now who could disturb lazy lady labradors?

Stay calm and quilt on!