Mud Season

Here in the north country, you are fortunate if you can afford to buy a house on a paved road with a paved driveway, and we are especially blessed with a sunny driveway that drains away from the house.

From Sunday through Wednesday there has been a glorious thaw and melt ushering in the start of "Mud Season."

Our Matthew has helped out with the chopping of ice.

My Felix replowed the asphalt three times trying to break up the hardpack of snow and ice.

Today, at last, we got down to very sandy and sometimes very wet blacktop, YEAY!!!


On the quilty notes, I was able to enjoy the Continental Breakfast of omelets served by volunteer Georgiana, Bob, and George, over at the Pearson Road Community Center in Alton, New Hampshire on Tuesday morning.

It made for a happy start to The Sunshine Club, our quilting group. Sue was sewing the final long seams on her Greens strippy jelly roll quilt.

After she finished that seam, Stella helped her cut the crosswise length when it was folded in half.

I have trouble spelling, "Leprechaun Quilt" without my spell-check feature on this computer, but that's what I think that Sue should call her quilt.

The pictures do not register the bright flecks of golden glitter that swirl through the strips, but in person, it is very glitzy!

After measuring the top, it was 58"x 68" before pressing. The prospect of pressing the top on a travel pad was so daunting, that Sue decided until she could do it on her own ironing board. Roney (pronounced, Row NAY), our Center's Director, gave Sue permission to bring in an ironing board and store it on the premises of the Center. YEAY, Sue!!! Thank you!
I got four more blocks assembled for my Scrappy Jacob's Ladder and also refilled the Hersey's Milk Chocolate Nuggets dispenser, YEAY!!!!

Today, I was able to do a Chrome Yellow block for Barbara Brackman's Civil War blog.
These are some of the fabrics that I used for it.

And, with a drumroll, here is the block!!

 Happy sewing!

Frances and "Pleasant Times"

Yesterday was all about my girlfriend, Frances, on her 99th birthday!

She is happy and healthy and living each day and said to count our blessings.

Frances blew out her candles with one try, can you see below that they are still smoking?

Frances, herself, quit smoking cigarettes when she was a mere 85 years old. Since then she says that she feels better, but that she has had to bury a couple of her own doctors.

When I gave her my gift of the quilt that I named, "Pleasant Times," she was careful to study my workmanship and quick to praise it.

I am honored to have been invited to the private family celebration and to enjoy the friendship of my very best role model for graceful aging.

We'll do lunch soon! Happy Birthday my very dear friend!

Thanks for stopping by to share the celebration!

Happy sewing!

Dirty Snow Season and "Pleasant Times"

Usually, in New Hampshire, we get thaws and melts and warm sunny days in between the winter snowstorms. This winter was tougher.
Our ever too-perky weather girl cheerily informed us that we have endured 44 days in a row when we never got above freezing temperatures, and that the mean average daytime high for those 44 days was 12°F. There were lots of sub-zero nights and even a few sub-zero days with leaden skies. We got it. It was cold.

But "dirty snow" season is really kinda encouraging to those of us who live in the north country. The dirtier the snow, the faster it melts and goes away.
Our asphalt driveway is usually a huge heat sink with the blacktop storing the sun's rays. That was not true this year. It never melted off.
Our star border, Matthew, today sourced some precious sanded salt over at the Gilmanton Youth Organization, whereas the Town Garage had run out. He gleefully spread out the mix onto the icy white snowpack of our beleaguered driveway.
That snowpack had clung to the frozen pavement even after plowing. At last, with the sand, we are beginning to see some of the blacktop reappear again, YEAY!!!

Thank you, Matthew, for finding it, hauling it, and spreading it!

The other very heartening pleasantry that happened today was that I photographed my "Pleasant Times" quilt on some of the snow that is still pristine. It looks great now that it is all bound by machine.

No, I still can't get through the deep snow to the clothesline, but changing the camera setting to it's "snowman" glyph seemed to prevent overexposures.

The burgundy flannel sheet  of the backing was a bit short, so I had added onto it with a strip of flannel printed with cherries. That seemed to create a natural spot to place the label.

You may click to enlarge the picture. My labels include the size dimensions, which are 65"x75" for this generous throw.
Who can ever remember the exact sizes a year later when you suddenly want the quilt to be shown in a display?? Put it right on the label! If subsequent washings shrink it up a half an inch, who cares, it's close enough.

I hope to present it to my dear friend, Frances, tomorrow, when she turns 99 years young.

Today was also a play day in the indigo scraps for a few more Week 8 blocks for "Stars In A Time Warp," from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog.

I discovered this early relic from my Potholder Pile that looked like a promising indigo candidate, albeit that it had anonymous fabrics.

The indigo star points in the above block may have even come from Walmart's fabric department, gasp! The sacrilege of it, horrors! The cornerstones I know are Abby from Windham.
The next block, below, has a better pedigree with it's Paula Barnes, and Judie Rothermel for Marcus Brothers selections.

Last is a dear little Victorian print from an unsigned Fat Quarter that screamed to be used in the center square of the block.

I had great fun designing these three blocks and on the last one, above, I auditioned several choices of cornerstones before electing the indigo wallpaper stripe. I'm calling it indigo although in these photographs it looks more Prussian to me. Go figure.

I hope that you can have fun and solve some minor mysteries in your designs, too.

Happy sewing!

Friday And Scrambling

From scrambling breakfast eggs, to scrambling for a parking space at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop (22 Liberty Street, Concord, New Hampshire), to scrambling to pay off our steep New Hampshire property taxes on the farm this afternoon, my day was full of scrambling!

The Friday Quilters were gathered around inside for sewing, chomping chocolates, chatting, and showing & sharing. When I came in, (from left to right) Claire, Kim, and Heidi were already sewing up a storm.

Downstairs at The Golden Gese, was Barbara from Maine, who was adding more length to her awesome scrappy bricks top. She wants the bricks to flow horizontally across the bed.

All the scraps are from her own stash. There are many Civil War historical reproductions as well as lovely florals that caught my eye. Just look at the richness of all the different fabrics!!! (You may click on any photo to enlarge it for better viewing.)

"Puppy Mom" Beverly was there with our darling mascot, "Yoda."

I must, here & now, print my most humble retraction for having called Yoda part Shitzu. Dear me, he is Yorkshire Terrier and Silky Terrier, now how could I have made such a gross mistake?
Perfect gentleman that he is, I was already forgiven by today. What a good little guy! Actually, at less than 5 months old, he was only interested in his toy, LOL!

Bev was busy trying out arrangements for the layout of her crayon box blocks, and Barbara from Maine was helping Beverly out by suggesting new possibilities.

The big layout table is so handy and we are all very grateful to our hostess, Nancy Gesen, for allowing us to use it during times that the rooms are not booked with quilting classes.

 Beverly and Barbara tried this arrangement for a while, but didn't like the doubled white lines.

Once Beverly settled upon her final choice, she determined that she wanted some extra white strips sewn on along the bottom edge to complete the design.

Darlene and Marianne concurred with her choice. Don't you just love the diagonals set up by the little black flippy corner triangles?

In the meantime, Penny, of Penny's Longarm Quilting (76 Church Street, Hillsboro, NH 03244, (603) 486-8081) brought back Heidi's quilted batik top. Heidi had done it using a layer cake pattern of rows of offset squares. Look at this!!!

The freehand spiral and plumes quilting is a wee bit hard to see in this photo, but those tropical batiks are as delicious as sherbert on a hot day.

As for me, I spent my time just assembling the 60 sashing components for my Bonnie K. Hunter's mystery quilt called Grand Illusion.

As I worked, I learned that I had sewed ten units together bass-ackwards and I corrected them with my trusty seam ripper immediately. Soon I had a basket filled with all the corrected pieces, YEAY!!!

By the time that I was ready to leave, Bev had her first "augmented block" sewn for keeping the design and it looked great! If you look closely, you can see her perfect purples for her borders are sitting on the table off to one side.

As I write the last of this post, Husband Wonderful is just returning from paying our taxes at our town hall. He had also stopped off to pick up some needed toilet paper. He came in, brandished the package of Charming Mega-Rolls, and exclaimed to me, "Well, Victoria, now we are officially wiped out!" LOL! Geez, don't you just hate toilet paper jokes?

Life is good. Keep scrambling!

Happy sewing

I Got The Blues For My Baby...

The Barbara Brackman Civil War block for yesterday was indigo blue, what fun! If you'd like to peek at her wonderfully entertaining and educational entry, here is the link to it.
I pulled some choices from my stash.

My first efforts to use the Rothermel indigo included a lovely distressed Moda floral from Barbara Brackman's own Richmond Reds collection. I bought it at the Evergreen Country Primitives Quilt Shop in Milton, New Hampshire and paid retail, gasp! It was worth every penny!

The wallpaper stripe was a fat quarter acquired from a midnight online session at Thousands Of Bolts And Only One Nut (link) and I think that it is a Marcus Brothers. The madder tan with the berries was an unknown scrap from my "lucky pile."
Next, I tried this combination using the same Strawberries, Blueberries, and Chocolates indigo from Judie Rothermel of Marcus Brothers.

The madder stripe in the center block seemed to call my name and begged for the Andover cornerstones by Jo Morton.
The next block is an indigo cheater gleaned from my ever-ongoing Potholder Pile and was made long ago. It does use a Kansas Troubles center block and cornerstones. Those fabrics are lovely prairie prints, and while they are not authentic Civil War reproductions, they do appeal to my muddy-loving palette.

The dusty blue might be from the Civil War Jubilee collection, but I'm not sure because it was a scrap bought from last summer's June tent sale at The Mothership (Keepsake Quilting's retail store in Center Harbor, New Hampshire). Their scrap-stuffing plastic bags event is such fun! It appeals to that miser within me, LOL!
And now my personal chef and podiatrist is calling me to lunch of roast beast sandwiches with horseradish, yum! He swears he washed his hands, LOL!

Happy sewing!

Forward Progress

Today was bright and sunny in the morning for The Sunshine Club over at the Alton, New Hampshire, Senior Center. I borrowed my Husband Wonderful's car and went out to play.
Sue joined me and was soon working on her green strippy quilt. She is using three jelly rolls instead of one for a larger sized quilt.

Just look at that ball of confusion! I think I'm going to call it The Leprechauns' Quilt!

My strippy quilt needed trimming, so I used the big table for that and got it all done.

Today I also got my hair trimmed at the Tuesday special at the Smart Style inside the Concord, New Hampshire, Walmart. So it was Trimming Day all around!

Remember way back in late January, when I was cutting and packaging neutral strips for a swap?

Well, hooray, the swapped fabrics finally came in and I love them!!! I'm planning a new start with them sometime this June. My plan is for it to be a little less wonky version of a log cabin than I've done so far. It shall be a smaller scale of blocks than I've done before as well. That means more blocks!
In the meantime, I need a giant scale log cabin to sit in readiness for Gilmanton Police donations to fire-ravaged victims in our three villages.

This post is being shared at Love Laugh Quilt.

Hope you are having fun scheming and planning new quilts!

Happy sewing