Friday Fun

The cold drizzle could not stop the good cheer and festivities at the Friday Quilter's at the Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

From left to right above are Heidi, Eleanor, Barbara, Claire and Jan, all working on their own projects and having a great time!
Our mascot, "Yoda" was as cute as ever and a perfect gentleman. He is not quite 6 months old and he belongs to Beverly, who was working on this fabulous jungle prints quilt in Black, White, and Red.

Here it is as she continues to add more borders.

Claire was proud to have finished up the borders on her beautiful Stack'n'Whack quilt with Jan looking on, admiring it. Way to go Claire!

Barbara is shown below, working on her project with twisters that are miniature sized.

She is making twister Flip-Flops! Wheee!

We were all thrilled to re-welcome our snowbird member, Maureen, who spent the winter in Florida.
Claire brought her a strawberry cheesecake and we all had a piece of it. It was so delicious!

Maureen and I split a 30 yard roll of batting that we had gone in on together, so I spent some time unrolling, measuring, cutting, and then re-rolling the two halves.

What was much more fun was getting my Scrappy Log Cabin pressed and all ready for quilting.

With the piano key border all attached now, it measured 86½" by 86½" square. WHOOO HOO!!!!
With all those pieces, and it is still SQUARE, wow! I figured it would be off at least a little, but no.

After all our fun, soon it was time to go our separate ways. Wake up, little Yoda!

I hope you have a fun packed day and got some great quilting time in on your favorite projects!

Happy sewing!

Gingham Galore

Today I played with some gingham plaids again for the "Stars In A Time Warp" sew along over at Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog.

These will lend such a lovely note of authenticity as they are sprinkled throughout my quilt.

Just one more!

 I made up a few 4-Patches and HST's in the 4½" unfinished size just for stocking up my units larder for swapping and for my Scrappy Jacob's Ladder blocks, too.

Not to be left out are the sashing-to-blocks-to-rows sequence for Grand Illusion by Bonnie K. Hunter.

So far, I have two rows done, and I'm pleased with the way that they are matching up quite nicely!

As for the 3 or 4 inches of snow that fell last night, only Miss Emma Lynne thought it was fun, the rest of us groaned, LOL!

Happy stitching!

Plaid Love!

This morning I awoke with a driving motivation to go to see the Civil War Quilts' fabric selection over at Barbara Brackman's blog entry.

This week is historical printed plaids and I found some right away to use!

You may click on any photo to enlarge it.

That blue print above from Judie Rothermel's study of The New England Quilt Museum seemed to me to fit the bill for one of the examples of a print that mocks a plaid. It's not quite a plaid, really, but it has that "plaid-y" feel to it.

My first block is already completed and pressed, wheee!! Felix agreed with me that it looks really 19th century.

Forgive me for forgetting the camera yesterday to record the fun over at The Sunshine Club, but here are a couple of my newest Scrappy Jacob's Ladder blocks that I got pressed.

These are from my "traditional" set and I have another group of them that are more "wild."

Another thing that I worked on was getting the 36 cornerstones cut from the teal/aqua 3½" squares for my Bonnie K. Hunter Grand Illusion mystery quilt.

These are somewhat lighter than some of the Kim Diehl teals that I've used in the quilt so far and I'm hoping to lighten up the mood from so many somber tones.

I sewed them onto the pre-made sashing units into the sashing rows. Yippee, I got all 6 of the sashing rows completed! Next will be to sew sashing pairs onto the ends of blocks and blocks into rows.

If you have even the slightest desire to make Bonnie Hunter's wonderfully complex design for Grand Illusion, I urge you to download all the steps to the mystery NOW!! Very soon, Bonnie's publisher will insist that she take down the free instructions, so use the link and do it right away. link.

We have a weather prediction for 2" to 4" of fresh snow and it was 32° this morning. Will winter never end??? Here's my best shot of hope for Spring, my croci are broken through the frigid soil, YEAY!

Keep smiling and never give up hope!

Snowbird Finished!

A very Happy Easter to all of you that celebrate it, and Blessed Passover, too. I am so blessed to have such great friends and family. Recently, my very dear friend, Grace, now from Maryland, sent me this special gift.

A quilty stories book, how great is that?? Thank you, Grace!!!

When I saw Beverly on Friday, she presented me with two quart jars of her fabulous No-sugar-added homemade applesauce! Thank you, Beverly! Felix loves this stuff and he can have it even with his diabetes.

My dear neighbor, Ilse, brought over an Easter Raisin Bread and a Lemon Cake, too. She had a whole bagful of goodies with Easter candy for all of us; chocolate for me, Werthers for Matthew, and even sugar free chocolates by Russell Stover for Felix.

We are so very blessed! Thank you for all these dear friends and their gifts.


Today was the very first day that the slowly receding snow has allowed me to walk out to my clothesline.

After I put the final stitches onto the hand hemming this morning, I took my 58"x76" Snowbird quilt out there to photograph it in the gorgeous sunshine. Wheeeee!

-Later, I am adding this post to the wonderful linky party over at Julie K's blog for the "Binding Blitz" on the first of May. Here's the link back to her blog. -Ed.

I love the quilting, which I did on Ellen Peters' longarm, upon which I rent time.

It's just hearts and loops, but it's so pretty on the florals and polka dots of Edyta Sitar's Laundry Basket Quilts for Moda in the Snowbird line.

The binding matches the outer border and I like it, although I might've chosen one of the indigos for a binding, too.

The backing was a pieced cozy flannel from a Joann's sale a couple of years ago. It needs a label, yes, but I'm calling it done! Yippee!

Above are the leftover scraps from my strings piano key border for the Scrappy Civil War Log Cabin. No pictures of that one yet, but I will show it to you soon.

Have a great day!

A Very Good Friday

I'm thrilled to report that we now have one and a half cars up and running so that I was able to get to The Golden Gese today, Yeay!!!!! Kudos to my home mechanics, Husband Wonderful (Felix), and Star Border (Matthew), YEAY!!! Thank you, guys! -since writing this, now the second car is up and running.

This quilt shop is on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire has a lively gang that calls itself The Friday Quilters.

We have a great time sharing our stories, our quilt projects, and we chomp a little chocolate, too!

Here's Heidi sharing her marvelous progress on her batiks. I told her that it makes me think of Jazz music like Dave Brubeck's "Take Five".

Beverly was doing a wild animal prints quilt and has a lot of it done. Good job, Beverly!

Our dear mascot, Yoda, was beautifully behaved and napped quite a bit.

I really did work a wee bit on my strips for the piano key borders but silly me, forgot to get a picture.

Our Fearless Leader, Claire, helped today by cutting some lovely fabrics for me.

These are the ones I'd picked out and my budget is always thin, so I tried to shop the sale corner where the bargains can't be beaten.

Half price and no shipping charges, Wheeeee!

The Fat Quarters were $2.75 a pop, but who can argue with the selection of these gorgeous cheddars?

The neutrals in historic selections were very good, too.

Please understand that The Golden Gese is a full service quilt shop with 1930's, Brights, Batiks, Florals, Christmas, Novelties, well, just about everything. I just choose the Civil War stuff and that's my personal bias. So there!

Happy Sewing!

Scrap Fun

Have you heard the joke about the bed?

It hasn't been made up yet.

That's my best to you for April Fool's Day!

Barbara Brackman's discussion of Civil War foulards was very enlightening and, as always, enjoyable.

 I found myself eager to create a few blocks.

My very best one used Barbara Brackman's own design of Richmond Reds in the tossed floral of the cream colored star points that you see below. Her link is here.

The center's red paisley and the madder foulard with the dark chocolate background were more delightful but anonymous scraps from Wendy's gift to me. Thanks, Wendy! Her blog link is here.

And I got back to doing another Scrappy Jacob's Ladder block, too. This makes 22 of the 36 that I need.

I hope that nobody switched your sugar for salt today! LOL!

Happy stitching!