Veteran's Day

Thank you to Veterans young and old, living and departed.


I was able to vote this week, wearing whatever I chose to wear, driving my car myself, and eating as much pork roast and bacon as I wanted to eat. Thank you for all my freedoms that I treasure, I love my country!

God bless America!

Good Choices!

Friday Quilters gathered at the Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire for some quilty fun!

Here's Maureen, below, who's been working on some banners for the raffles at the Laconia Senior Center. Nice work!

Maureen made the Hunter's Star with what she calls, "the easy way" with Half Square Triangles instead of "Y" seams. Looks terrific!

Beverly, below, is making forward progress on her "Storyteller's" Block Of the Month by Nancy Gere of Windham fabrics. Don't get discouraged, Bev, it's all worth it in the end!!!

Lil' Claire was working on some microwaveable bowl potholders, look at this!

See the pretty rounded corners? Those are the latest design modification and so practical, too.

Although I quite forgot to snap some pictures of my progress on those neutral strings, let me, instead, briefly take you home to Park Hill Farm's sunny window where the Christmas Cacti are blooming already!!!

I call this one the white one, even though it sports a blush of pink on the trumpets.

A second cactus is also blooming in a lovely salmon color. Thanks to my neighbor, Ilse, I own several wonderful varieties.

Truly, I must confess, that on a routine Dr.'s visit, my car auto-piloted itself over to The Mothership, also known as Keepsake Quilting's retail store on Wednesday. What fun!

Summer shoppers have departed, but their Outlet Store still has neat bargains to peruse.

Karen helped me by cutting two yards of each of my four selections in rose pinks, lights and darks.

Then she took my picture to post here for you and she did a good job of it, thank you, Karen!

Today, early in the day, Sue and I worked at selling raffle tickets at a small room near the voter's exit at the Alton, New Hampshire, Pearson Road Community and Senior Center.

We did well and ran out of tickets around 10:30am. Bake Sale choices did well, too.

Lots of folks asked me if I had voted yet and I teased them by saying that I hadn't yet voted because I am a "political refugee from Gilmanton Iron Works!"

My feet were tired from standing and I was glad to sit down while Husband Wonderful drove Ilse and me to the polling place at the Academy Building, as our town hall is known. It's great to be an American and vote!!!
Miss Emma Lynne guarded the house by napping on my Davy Crockett Log Cabin. Good dog!

Here's to making good choices!

Happy quilting!

Around the Town

Voting and elections will temporarily displace The Sunshine Club from the Pearson Road Community Center in Alton, New Hampshire, but Tuesday we had fun together! We'll meet at the church instead.

Here are Sue and Bev, below, both hand quilting their respective large quilts. Way to go, ladies!!

Mary, below, impressed us with all the homework that she did to put together all of her scrappy string blocks into a top.

She had decided to put a diamond shape of yellow-stripped blocks in the center as a focus pattern, and it looks terrific!

Mary also was doing some cutting of cute little white felt snowmen to stuff for tree or wreath ornaments. These are adorable!

Below, I am pictured with my 100 deep stack of neutral strings that all need revamping, whew! Step by step, I'm eating the elephant.

First, I pair up two string blocks in alternating directions, but with right sides together.

Then I draw a diagonal line with an ink pen on the reverse side of one of the blocks, and sew down ¼"  on either side of it, not on the line, that is.

Sometimes it's advantageous to select the block that gets the line carefully. I like one with a wide center strip. After they are sewn, I cut them apart for the "Lover's Knot" blocks

 I've used both scissors and a rotary cutter and they both work well.

Whenever I'm tired, sitting down with a plain old pair of scissors feels fine!

I also wanted to tell you that my dear friend, Marge, in Arkansas, sent me a box filled with pretties like these pumpkin decorations and a small quilt. Thank you, Marge, I love reds!

Miss Emma Lynne, and her buddy Mr. Tipper, have been searching out their favorite bright bits of green grass to nibble together.

I swear that they must be part cows or goats, LOL! but they keep each other company so who could mind?

May you all enjoy some amicable companionship. Happy quilting!

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

Happy Halloween!

Our trees are mostly ghostly!

The winds and rain (Hooray!) over the weekend have stripped off all of the leaves.

The occasional exceptions are the hearty oak trees, still clinging onto their bronze shimmers.

But these are a few pictures that I took last weekend to celebrate our Fall foliage.

On a quilty note, my dear friend, Janet, sent me one of her fabulous miniature quilts and some of her hand made  herbal soaps as a belated birthday gift to me.

Thank you, Janet!! If you haven't yet visited Janet's blog, "Rogue Quilter," then click HERE . You're in for a treat!

At the Tuesday meeting of The Sunshine Club at the Alton, New Hampshire, Senior Center, we had lots of fun and chomped a few chocolates.

Sue, hidden by the quilt top, was working on finishing up a UFO that she had set aside, while Bev looks on admiringly.

Bev, below, is making more decisions on where and how she may choose to do more hand quilting on her quilt.

Ooops! "Technical difficulties, please stand by..."

Sue spent quite a bit of time using the big tables to sandwich her quilt with the snazzy red backing, Warm & Natural batting, and her pretty Black, Red, and White quilt top.

First, we pressed her pieced backing seams open, then flipped the backing over.

Sue had used a coupon at Joann's for the best price on a king sized batt.

She harvested the excess trimmings carefully to use for "Franken-batts," which will be cobbled together for baby quilts. Way to go, Sue!

Marjorie, seen below, joined us with her yoyo's pillow project, all bright pinks and black. We were glad to see her!

I forgot to take a picture of what I was working on, but in the above photo, you can see one of my neutral strings blocks.

Mary, seen below, was gleefully showing us her latest batch of fantasy cuddle toys for tots.

I say gleefully because these are selling so briskly at a local consignment shop, that the owner there has now raised their prices to $22 per toy. Now that's validation of your work!

These are her own design and are made to not be too scary for a wee child.

While we celebrated all the blessed rain over the weekend, I was very glad to learn that my dear friend, Ilse, now has some water in her previously gone-dry well. She is so happy! The photo below is Ilse in August, on her 84th birthday.

Her two rain barrels are also full to the brim! Thank you to all of you who offered up prayers to The Almighty in our behalf as we survived this severe drought in New Hampshire.

Miss Emma Lynne prefers cuddling on the futon to the rain outside. If it's really pouring, she just looks at me and refuses to go out to do her duty. She says she's made of sugar and will melt. Hmmm.

Hope that you are enjoying a great day sewing or quilting or just hanging out for Halloween.

Linking up to Love Laugh Quilt. Link.
Linking up to Em's Scrapbag. Link.

Fall Fun

Friday Quilters with Claire was great fun at the Golden Gese Quilt Shop on 22 Liberty Street in Concord, New Hampshire.

Maureen, seen below, was on a production-run of making up polyester fleece "infinity scarves" in Patriots designs for her Christmas list.

Here in New England, where witch hunts have always been popular, we all love Tom Brady, the Patriots Quarterback, and we know he was deliberately smeared by the National Football League.

But we still love our team and Coach Bill Belichick is the best. Just look at that stack of scarves! Go, team, go!

Maureen also used her embroidery machine to make a special Flamingo Block for Darlene's Breast Cancer Memorial quilt. Darlene would have loved this and she's looking down and smiling, I'm sure.

Our group bid a fond farewell to Sue, the snowbird, who will wend her way south to Florida for the winter. She has promised to return for some Christmas celebrations, so we'll see her then. Safe travels, Sue!

Sue's gray and turquoise zipper pouches, seen above, are going together beautifully.

I worked a wee bit on my "Lover's Knot" blocks in all neutrals, a project that has been stalled since last winter. Here, below, is an example of what they will look like.

High winds have been stripping the beautifully colored leaves from our trees, making sure that they will look good and spooky bare for Halloween on Monday.

Miss Emma Lynne can't wait for Halloween to get a new rawhide chew, yippee!!

But the kitties don't care, they are bored by it all.

Mr. Tipper was, however, willing to field test the cuddle quotient of a quilt left out to air.

He gave it a 7, but he's one of those hard judges that never gives out a perfect score of 10.

Linking up to Oh Scrap! Link.
Linking up to Love Laugh Quilt. Link.

Enjoy your day and happy sewing!