The Sunshine Club News

Although there's not too much to show by way of our progress, the Sunshine Club of quilters braved their way through the heavy rains to get to the Alton, New Hampshire Senior Center.

Sue worked tirelessly on more string blocks for our raffle quilt as you can see below, on the left. Right beside her was Diane, on the right, ready to do more hand hemming of her binding. Can you see that gorgeous batik quilt of Diane's ready to go to the quilter's?

Diane held up the quilt top so we could all see it. It's a beauty, girl!

The almost translucent-looking colors just glow!

Joyce joined us for breakfast and seemed to enjoy the newest catalogs from The Mothership, that is, Keepsake Quilting, in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. They are always filled with inspiration.

I confess that on those rare occasions that I grant my Dr.'s a few billable hours, I often bring the Hancock's Of Paducah catalog to peruse whilst waiting my turn at the meat factory.
Also seen above is Bev's tee shirt panel all prepared with iron-on stabilizer on the back. Bev wants to do a pillowcase to go with the quilt that she's been working on.

As for me, Joyce captured most of my head but got a great shot of, "Midnight Blues" getting the binding hemmed very slowly. Although Matthew and Bella are already married since December, 11th, of 2015, my quilt for them is just getting finished now!

Felix and I made a planned trip over to see Matthew and Bella's new little apartment in Alton, New Hampshire. This is their table!

I was setting the above table with a piece of donated cotton gingham, and with Felix's and my housewarming present of a 16 piece set of microwavable Corelle dishes for Bella and Matthew's new home. The pattern is called "Spring Pink" by Corning Glass at Walmart.

We are thrilled that they are also using Felix's late Aunt Lucy's rock maple table and chairs from the late 1940's. Boy, stuff was so well-made back then, wasn't it? Not all sawdust and glue like now.

We had a delightful visit!

Happy quilting!

Before And After

The New England weather this year seems even more changeable than usual! We've gone from warming spring rains,

To freezing rains!

 

Then we had blustery winds.

Then a quick two inches of wet snow,

That was gone by the same afternoon.

Miss Tanner,  the outdoors-only kitty, was not amused by all of Mother Nature's jokes.

On a quilty note, I photographed some lovely Small Quilts that are shop samples for the upcoming classes at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

(are you there, Janet?)

I love the look of small pieces, don't you?

And the colors of these little quilts are jewel tones but in traditional fabrics.

Each one is a small classic. You may call the store and I think that you can arrange to buy a kit from them. Link.

In the meantime, Sue and I knocked out a few more of the pretty scrappy strings blocks over in Alton, New Hampshire at the Senior Center.

They came out very nicely and we're almost up to the halfway point of making 48 blocks for the raffle quilt to benefit the Center.

Of course, you can see in the above photo, that there was plenty of chocolate consumed from that half-empty dispenser, LOL!

Miss Emma Lynne, my lady lab, was all tuckered out from racing around in the snow. Sleep well, Miss Emma!

This post is now linked to Love Laugh Quilt's Monday Making Linky Party!
Also adding a link to Em's Scrapbag, too, Link!

Happy quilting!

A Little Stash Enhancement Music, Please, Maestro!

Okay, so I owe you a blog post after my April Fool's Day Cop-Out of a written post, LOL!

Thursday, I volunteered to chauffeur, Husband Wonderful, my Felix, to his Rochester, New Hampshire dentist appointment. Hee hee! That was so that I could sneak in a quick visit to see Kelly Jerome at her Footprints Quilt Shoppe in East Rochester, New Hampshire, right near the Maine border. I had a ball!

The displays of neutral Civil War reproductions always make me drool and this trip was no exception!

This tiny shop is crammed with great fabrics and I always enjoy myself here!

Although I didn't take home any cut-from-the-bolt yardage, these forays do give me my wonderful scrappy variety. My 60-block deep stockpile of all-neutral scrappy strings is growing, but I keep changing my plan and making it bigger.

Additionally, I'm loving my progress on those eight inch Jewel Box blocks, too.

I made so many of them that I (gasp) actually ran out of my HST's components and had to make some more! Here are a stack of them ready to rock 'n' roll through the machine as chain piecing. Wheee!

Tuesday, I made it in to my bee where we were all rollicking up some red focus-fabric string blocks.
Praise the Lord and pass the Chocolate!!

Even camera-shy Sue, below, made one for us!

Joyce, below, had a lovely bunch of them that she'd made at home all week and brought them in to us for the raffle quilt.

Spring is a temperature roller-coaster here in New Hampshire, but my tiny Russian puschkinia bulbs opened up and cheered me.

Snow and frigid cold weather is in the forecast, so I harvested a few of my early Mount Hood daffodils for in the house.

Then on Friday, at The Golden Gese Quilt Shop, on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire, I couldn't help myself from eyeballing the gorgeous gondola baskets of Fat Quarters for $2.75 each.

It is such fun to gaze at them all! Aren't they pretty?

Back at home, I did finally get the newly quilted Midnight Blues trimmed of its excess backing and batting, so now it is awaiting its binding.

While I was at the Gese, I did get the binding all prepared and pressed. The fabric is an out-of-print Minick & Simpson called Independence Trail. It's nice but it's blue.

While at the Golden Gese, I was able to snap a quick picture of Marianne, above, pressing her pretty batiks top of Missouri Star Quilt Company's, "Summer In The Park."Free Video Link.

Claire, below, was there, too, with her marvelous bagful of pretty scraps. Whatcha doing, Claire?

Ah hah! It's a scrappy Tumblers in progress! Say, that's looking beautiful!

Claire's daughter, "lil Claire" was working on machine blanket-stitching all around her fusible applique salamanders.

Just look at all those tight curves to negotiate! Yikes, that's got to be carefully done.

But then, Claire spoke up and showed me her dinosaurs that are done the same way as the salamanders.

Whoohoo, now that's a lot of adorable dinosaurs!!! She's making a total of twenty of them and they are terrific!

There were a few newly-added additions to the sale corner, and also some full-priced pretties that I couldn't resist, so here below is my stash enhancement loot. Pretty low-volume colors for a red person, I'd say, wouldn't you agree?

 Miss Tanner wishes to interrupt me briefly to say a special "Thank you" to Ila, who lovingly sent the heated cat bed to the outdoors-only garage kitties. Thank you, Ila in Illinois!!!

Mr. Tipper and Miss Emma Lynne (my lady lab) enjoyed a brief walk around the as-yet-unopened daffys.

Happy quilting!

April Fool!