Rescues

For the first time in six weeks, Friday was cool enough for me to travel to The Golden Gese Quilt Shop  on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

Maureen was there and was working on a patriotic sashing strip star from Block Magazine by Missouri Star Quilt Company. Link.

Her Red, White, & Blue blocks do seem too yellowed in these photos. That probably means that my camera needs new batteries, sorry. A really bad photograph still beats all text to a visual person like me.

These were the "Oh My Stars" ten inch squares by Dover Hill for Benartex and they look great with the indigo solids in the sashing. No, that's not black!

Miss Beverly was hard at work doing the piecing for her Nancy Gere "Storytellers" Block of the Month medallion top.

The pieces are so pretty for this, and very accurately made, too. Sew, Bev, sew!

Little Claire, below, had just finished a really cool baby quilt and she showed it here. Love that coordinating border!

Her friend, whose name I missed, so sorry, had come to sew with us and finished this super pretty pinwheels quilt. Good job!

 
As for me, I was playing "Quilter's Roulette" again by cutting yardage for borders without previously figuring out all the math before cutting.

"I think that there's enough to do 6½" cuts.", I mumbled to myself. I'm not really sure if I'm pretty good at guess-timating or if I'm incredibly lucky, but, either way, I made it work.

Maureen helped me to both measure, fold, and photograph this now-completed 85" square top. Thank you, Maureen!

The colors are not my beloved Civil War reproductions due to it having been a long languishing UFO. I rescued it from the rockpile.

This was from my brights and florals period, about four years ago or more. I'm  still a sucker for a pretty Robyn Pandolf.

I have another orphan that I rescued to introduce to you, that is not quilty, but rather from the Green Thumb department.

One day last December, I happened to grab a shopping cart from the parking lot as I walked into my local Hannaford's grocery store in Alton, New Hampshire.

There was some trash in the cart, so I stopped at the wastebasket to throw the trash away. But amidst the dead water bottle and sales flyer debris, was a small piece of Christmas Cactus. The bracts looked unfrozen as yet in the outdoor frigid air.

I claimed it. I brought it home and potted it. I watered and fertilized it in it's sun drenched window. This week it looked like this.

I cheered! I was so happy that the cutting took and then grew to twice it's original size and then bloomed!

My dear friend Ilse, who has the greenest thumb of all, told me that it is actually a Thanksgiving Cactus if it is the fuchsia and white colored blossom.

She always says to water via the "fingertip test," to determine if the soil is moist or dry, and then water the plant accordingly.

Linking up to Em's Scrapbag. Link.

And to Finished Or Not Fridays. Link.

Linking to Can I get A Whoop Whoop? Link.

Happy sewing!

Butterfly Bust

You might recall that recently I'd gone to the D.S. Cole Growers Open House Tour of their greenhouses. Link to previous post. At that time, we were all cordially invited to attend a 30,000 hatch Monarch butterfly release party.

It was held last Sunday at their retail store, Cole Gardens, in Concord, New Hampshire. The hatch had been kept in a small screened tent that held the host plants of butterfly bushes.

The day was very hot, but we were all glad that it hadn't rained for the occasion. There were mobs of people, each of us anxious to see the imagined spectacle of clouds of  orange butterflies flying free.

It was disappointing. Even when the two sides of the tent had been zipped open, the butterflies refused to leave their nursery tent with their potted host bushes. They all had Stockholm Syndrome.

Above is the single picture that I took that captured one butterfly, winging upwards above the light grey tent dome. It looks like a small black wedge.
In the future, if Cole Gardens ever does this again, I hope that the workers will gently drag the butterfly bush host plants outside of the tent, one at a time.
We left quickly to avoid the stupendous traffic snarl in the parking lot. Everybody had their camera out as we were escaping. Still, it was fun!

Thank you, Cole Gardens, for bringing us all together to witness the event.

On a more quilty note, I stayed indoors with the AC through another stifling hot Friday to trim my "Nurture" quilt. Here it is before trimming.

You can clearly see the mistake we made on the orientation of the batting when we loaded the quilt onto the longarm, EEEEK!
That narrow band of white in the foreground is the "batting-that-just-made-it."

And, conversely, as you can see above, there are billows of extra batting left on the sides, LOL!

Nevermind, if it had run out, we would've just slipped in a supplementary strip of batting and quilted over it. At any rate, with rest breaks in between each side, I got it all trimmed.

I loved the way this quilting came out with my loop de loops. It was very even and flowing, if I do say so myself.

I'd thought that I was doing a random movement, but as I got into a working rhythm, a pattern somehow emerged.

I must've been in my Right Brain!

Next up was to make up some solid toast-colored binding for "Nurture."

While I have yet to sew the binding onto the front of the quilt, I can show you just why I haven't tackled that yet.
Here's the work in progress on my trusty vintage White Sewing Machine as I continue to sew more Starstruck units. I'm happily sewing, but the piecing is in the way.

If I can clear Starstruck aside temporarily, then I can sew on the binding. Starstruck is a free Bonnie K. Hunter pattern, thanks, Bonnie! Link.

One break in the heat has been most gratefully received by Miss Tanner, who takes turns with her brother to enjoy the cat bed.

Linking up to A Quilted Passion. Link.
Also linking up to Whoop Whoop Fridays. Link.
And to Oh Scrap. Link.


Stay cool and quilt on!

Quilting News!

Although it has been too hot to drive all the way to Concord, New Hampshire for the Friday Club, I did make it over to my Tuesday sewing group, The Sunshine Club. Below is Sue, working on ironing pairs of "Hip Clips" that her granddaughter sells.

Hip Clips are a fashion accessory for your short sleeve tee shirts and have magnets to hold them in place on your sleeve.

They can be added straight, as above, or gathered, as below.

With Sue's wonderful help stitching the rows, Mary got her project of a checkerboard completed. Nice work, Sue! Here's Mary showing it.

Mary also made some really bright colored stuffed animals, kitties and dogs. She wants to give some to her grandchildren and perhaps sell a few at a local crafter's consignment shop, too.

Bev was stitching the handquilting on her big UFO project in teals and burgundies.

Marjorie joined a little late but we were glad that she came!

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Keepsake Quilting's retail store manager, Deb Comeau, informing me that I had placed third prize in their Quiltfest. Yippee!! Thank you to everyone who took the time to go to either Facebook or their blog to vote for me. I so appreciate it!

Also, yesterday, amid phone calls for an elderly lost dog that was found and eventually returned to her grateful owner, I did some quilting!

Below is Ellen, loading my "Nurture" quilt onto her big longarm for me to quilt.

For this quilt, I wanted very simple quilting to let the pretty fabrics shine, so I did plain old garden variety loop-de-loops.

The variegated tan/pink thread that Ellen found was just perfect for these florals by Howard Marcus' Collection For A Cause line called "Nurture" by Moda.

For the life of me, I cannot do an even meander or stippling quilting pattern on the quilting. But give me a song and a loop-de-loop and I'm all set for fun quilting!

This quilt took me about an hour and a half and used two bobbins but, due to the dog call, I was there during the warm part of the day. As I quilted, you can see "Corky" was passed out from the heat underneath the big quilting machine.

Soon the quilt was done! We only goofed up one thing. The rectangular piece of batting got loaded sideways. Yikes, we almost ran out of batting at the end! Fortunately, my generous cutting policies paid off and we made it. Just barely, but okay!

Now I'm wondering what I'll use for binding on this quilt. I need to shop my stash, whoohoo!

Miss Emma Lynne, my lovely lady Labrador Retriever, was outdoors enjoying a stroll in the sunshine with Miss Tanner, one of my outdoor-only kitties.

When we had rescued Miss Emma Lynne, the shelter had given us dire warnings about how she was not compatible with cats. Hmmmm.
As soon as I firmly leash-trained Miss Emma Lynne that chasing the kitties was not tolerated, they all became dear friends.

I wish that people could be leash-trained to be more tolerant, too.

Linking up to Fabric Frenzy Fridays. Link.
And to Finished or Not Fridays. Link.
And to Can I Get A Whoop Whoop? Link.
And to Oh, Scrap! Link.

Happy sewing!

Enjoying The Journey

Busy errands have kept me from doing as much sewing as usual this week. I'm still pounding away on my big Starstruck project from Bonnie K. Hunter's free patterns page. Link.

Thank you, Bonnie, for the pattern and all the inspirations on your blog!

Of course, another ten units for the Starstruck quilt produces more bonus triangles, and that means more pinwheels, yippee!!

When one of the errands was Husband Wonderful's dental cleaning in Rochester, New Hampshire, I jumped on board to ride shotgun and then steal away to Footprints Quilt Shoppe in East Rochester.

While I shopped for pretty neutrals, the little Chinese restaurant two doors down made me two quart containers of WonTon Soup to go, yum!

Love the displays inside Footprints.

Fat Quarter baskets were brimming with unleashed potential.

My fabric bill was only $25 so I thought that showed remarkable restraint.

Back at the ranch, I felt a sudden urge to go back to Sawtooth Stars and I made these two.

The center squares of my Sawtooth Stars are from the line called, "Crossroads" by Jan Patek. They feature what I believe is hops for beer making, but Felix thinks perhaps it is wheat. If you click on any picture, it will enlarge it and you can take a guess for yourself.

Last Tuesday, when I was working on putting borders onto my little "Nurture" charm pack quilt top, seen below, I ran into a wee bit of a snag.

The Moda factory had very nicely folded, beribboned, and shrink-wrapped the four yard hunk  of floral border fabric that I'd purchased from Craftsy.

When I opened it up and cut it, I was thinking that I was going crosswise as usual. Eeek! They had folded the fabric differently! I don't even know how to put it into words, but suffice it to say, I needed extra seams on that border fabric. Beware!

Today I took the remaining piece of the border fabric, trimmed the selvedges off, split it in half and sewed the two resulting panels onto the two long sides of my backing. I was determined to work that matching floral border fabric into the backing. Here is the pieced backing all sewn together.

The center panel is sort of an oatmealy beige that was a wide backing remnant. I bought it from Thousands of Bolts, an online supplier of only cotton quilting fabrics.

The backing is now 81" by 94" which will give me sufficient margin space on the longarm for the 66" by 75" top. I love these fabrics!

Linking up to Em's Scrapbag. Link.
Linking up to Oh Scrap! Link.

Happy sewing!