A coupla photos

I've been quilting up a storm! Too busy to blog, and while I roared through a couple of mysteries, I am now bogged down with our book group's book for September: Light in August by Virginia Woolf. I managed to get side-tracked very easily whenever I sit down to read it. Here's a photo of "Summer" which I just finished binding. I still need to put a hanging sleeve on and then it will be ready for The Big E. I am also going to put a sleeve on this baby-sized "Dear Jane" quilt in 1930's fabrics.

I was planning to work on my Asian "Dear Jane" quilt this summer and even bought some Amish black for the sashing at Keepsake. But that will have to wait until later in the fall. Right now I am quilting the 3"-6"-9"-12" Ohio Star block quilt in three 2' wide sections. It is going well with lovely variegated thread around the stars and curly-cues in cream on the plain areas. I love the colors - red, teal, caramel, and chocolate. Yummy!

Somewhere along the way, I also got captivated by Sylvia's Bridal Sampler, which features 6" blocks rather than the Dear Jane's 4.5" ones. I am making my blocks in bright colors with a cream and beige pin dot background. These will be a good pick up project to demonstrate at The Big E (Sept. 23 & 24). I also signed up for an SBS Christmas swap. Each person is making sets of the "Sarah's Choice" blocks in red, green, and tan. Here are blocks for my first two sets. I have another set cut out, and even if that's all the blocks I make, I'll end up with 18 different blocks for a little throw. They are due Oct. 31.

Fun at camp

Quilt camp on Wed. was great fun! It was my first retreat of any kind, and it was nice to be at the former Windy Wood Farm, 1/2 mile down the road. There were 11 of us, and 6 people brought Featherweights. Everyone worked on her own project, and our hosts just kept supplying us with goodies and drinks.

Paula and I pinbasted a quilt she had made for homeless veterans, put together blocks by various people for another, and then pinbasted that second quilt. I took home the first one to quilt and bind. She had brought a little quiz which suggested we each choose a "name," and I chose Miss N. Daditch since I can't quilt in a straight line, even though I try. This red, white and blue twin-size is being shakily quilted in a grid pattern, a little at a time.

The rest of the day, I spent sewing a binding down on a ninepatch/snowball quilt that just came back from the longarmer. I'm going to call it "Summer," since I made a bathmat for Jenny with the leftover blocks and that's what my mother said it looked like. I got about 3/4 of the way around and there were several other finishes and good beginnings that day.

Lunch on the porch was a lovely curry chicken salad in a tomato, croissants from Montreal, veggies, fruits, and apple squares. At 3:30, just before going home, we enjoyed rootbeer floats, cookies, and M&Ms. A very caloric, but productive day!

I haven't worked on the binding but have quilted about half the quilt since Wed. It's been a little hot, so I am diving into a good book, Stitches in Air, a novel about Mozart's mother that Axel passed along. Having read a novel about Mozart's sister a few weeks ago, I'm really enjoying it and now want to read a biography.

Busy week

Quilts and quilting are on my mind this week, as I head over to the Vermont Historical Society to help with a quilt preservation project this afternoon. They are rolling all of their 250+ antique quilts on new, acid-free rollers, interleaved with tissue paper. It should be very interesting and offer a glimpse of their collection, which I hear is great. Today is a trial run, and then volunteers will help in the coming weeks.

I spent this morning gathering sewing stuff for Quilt Camp tomorrow and a Wildersburg-wide yard sale in Sept. I probably have more projects than I need for tomorrow - a quilt that needs its binding sewn down, a small wallhanging to finish quilting, some paper-pieced triangles to hand stitch, and some 9" quilt blocks to contribute to at least one quilt for homeless veterans. The group that is organizing the veterans quilts is looking for at least 88 quilts. Our guild president solicited blocks, and we'll put the quilts together tomorrow. I'm taking my sewing machine and some scraps just in case we need to make a few more blocks. I also have a batt that a friend donated and offered to quilt one which I hope to get all pin basted tomorrow.

As for the yard sale, I dug through my stash and collected a bag of fabric that I always pass over when looking for things. Some of these came from Tante Wil's stash. I think she was planning to do a quilt in plaids, but I don't think I ever will. There are also quite a few glitzy fabrics that I hope someone else will like. I'll have to measure and price them all before Sept. 12. I also found some notions that I'll never use. And there are many more parts of the house that I'll collect stuff from for the sale. Amazing to have "junk" after all that downsizing this winter.

As I write this, I hear a little backhoe and crew ripping up some driveways, including ours, in preparation for putting in new ones. This is the beauty of condo-ownership - things just happen without our having to fret over contacting contractors, waiting, paying, etc. The car is parked on the lawn next door for a few days. And speaking of cars, my son has finally found one to buy, a lovely, used Honda Accord. It should be his next week sometime.

A lapsed blogger

I see that the last blog post was dated July 12, and here it is, August 4! Summer just keeps slipping away. I've been quilting and reading a lot lately. Finished machine quilting Incense and Peppermints and put the binding on. I made a yellow and green "windowpane" quilt for a new baby, and used a pre-printed fabric to machine quilt from the back. The printing washed out in the washer and the quilt looked great, despite the fact that I went the lines more than I sewed on them. Then I made and machine quilted a baby-sized quilt using Dear Jane swap blocks in '30's fabrics. I'm handquilting the blocks when it isn't too hot out. I think I have five more to go.

After a trip to Keepsake Quilting in NH with a friend, I embarked on a new quilt using a beige background fabric with red, teal, caramel, and brown in it. The Ohio Stars in 3", 6", 9" and 12" blocks use those same colors, and I had to order 3 yds. more by phone. Today I bought 2 more yards of caramel and dark brown, so it is growing like topsy - and looking good. The 3" blocks are tough to make but very sweet to look at.

Barre's annual Heritage Festival (formerly Homecoming Days) was July 25 & 26, so we were busy with the Friends of the Library booksale and the info booth. We were pleased to attend the civil union of the folks who purchased Maplecroft and to see the wonderful job they've done decorating and remodeling.

It was a busy weekend. For my birthday, Paul and I went to a musical called "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" at St. Michael's Playhouse. The music was by Neil Sedaka so it was a sing-along kind of evening. Lots of fun. Then on Sat., my cousin from Curacao visited with his wife and 2 of their 3 kids, ages 9 and 13. We took them for a tour of the granite quarries and to Hope Cemetery, as well as to Bragg Farm's sugar shack. All enjoyed maple creemees, of course! I was sorry to see them go, but it poured on Sunday so it was a good day for them to travel down to Long Island to visit my brother.

Quilting and jamming

I've spent a lot of time this past week taking my time, quilting "Incense and Peppermints." I'm taking it slowly in order to do a good job, particularly outlining the center medallion. If I hurry, I get sloppy, so I'm doing a little on the center and then working on the straight stitching with the walking foot. So far, it's going well. I decided to sew the binding on a few days ago since I got sick of catching the edges of the batting every time I put the quilt on the machine. I have one more side to go and then it will be back to slowly working on the center again.

Yesterday, my package of Dear Jane Spring Fling swap blocks came in the mail. I now have 20 more blocks to add to the 17 I have made. I laid out 35 to make a pretty crib-sized quilt, with 1.5" sashing and cornerstones made of various scraps of 1930's fabrics. I won't start the sashing until I've finished quilting "I & P," though. It is fun to look at those little blocks in the meantime.

This morning I made a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. I love the sparkly look of the colorful jars when they're all sitting on the counter. I'll make spiced pear jam later in the fall and, together, they will make nice gifts for the holidays.

A Wisconsin Fourth

We didn't see any fireworks this 4th of July but we did hear some when we visited my brother Axel in Madison, Wis. This was his only 3 day weekend this summer, so we decided to share it with him, arriving Thurs. evening and leaving Mon. morning. Thurs. we had an unforgetable dinner at Madison's Indonesian restaurant, Bandung. The rendang (spicy beef), eggplant curry, and ikan rica rica (sweet and sour mahi mahi) were enhanced by a delicious Wisconsin white wine, a bite of loempia (egg rolls), and pisang goreng (fried bananas) for dessert.

We got up fairly early Fri. to head north to Appleton, childhood home of Harry Houdini. The local museum is in what was a Masonic Temple that looks like a castle. The A.K.A. Houdini exhibit is small but very hands-on, explaining how some of his favorite tricks were done. There are handcuffs to unlock, a box to disappear in, and other illusions to understand. The 2 1/2 hr. drive each way took us through some lovely countryside. Wisconsin has had a lot of rain this spring and summer, so everything was very green. For dinner, we were invited to Axel's friends Ken and Brian's in Mt. Horeb for a tour of their house, full of antiques. They saved the house from demolition and moved it to a new site a few years ago and have done some lovely landscaping. Our salad came straight from their prolific garden.

Saturday morning saw us on The Square for the amazing farmer's market, followed by a trip west to Spring Green, site of Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and school of architecture. Our guide explained Wright's architectural principles very clearly, and it was fun to have lunch where we had celebrated Mom & Dad's 25th wedding anniversary many years ago. In the small family graveyard, we found the grave of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright's mistress who was murdered at Taliesen and about whom Loving Frank was written. On our travels around the countryside, we saw quite a few fireworks stands, and it was obvious that evening that Axel's neighbors had visited them.

On Sunday morning, Axel took us on a tour of Madison's west side. It has really sprawled since our family moved there 47 years ago. Then we went to Johnson Creek, mid-way between Madison and Milwaukee, for a delightful brunch at Hi-way Harry's with old friends Henry and Gay. So we had a jam-packed weekend - lots of fun!

"Authors at Aldrich" are terrific!

Last night we went to this week's Authors at Aldrich program, featuring Gordon Hayward, a landscape and garden designer who has written a number of beautiful, useful books. He talked about growing up on a farm and having to prune fruit trees from a young age. His father would work very hard all day and then read in bed from 9 pm to about 1 am. At breakfast, he would share what he'd learned with his sons. He had very focussed reading habits, confining himself to one topic or author a year or two - from the Civil War to Shakespeare (twice) to Compton's Picture Encyclopedia. The boys got quite an informal education.

Hayward became an English teacher and then met and married Mary, an Englishwoman. He worked in England's Cotswolds as a gardener and then began writing for Country Journal and then for Horticulture magazine before embarking on writing books. Many of his books discuss designing a garden in great detail with photographs and sketches, and then include how-tos, based on his experiences with his Westminster West garden and others he has designed around the country. Intimate Gardens is of particular interest to Vermonters because it includes lists of plants for specific settings and their blooming periods for our climate. Warm and welcoming, Hayward talked for about half an hour and then fielded some very interesting questions from the audience.

Hayward's presentation was the fifth of 12 this summer, held on Wednesdays at 6:15 pm in the library's Milne Room. All that I have attended so far have been very different from each other, but fascinating. I also particularly enjoyed Gareth Hinds' discussion of his graphic novels and his process of putting them together. All the programs are being videotaped so that DVDs may be borrowed from the library, they will air on Channel 7, and they are accessible on the library's website. People can come to the Farmer's Market, move on to the library program, and then head to Currier Park for the concert. Barre is very lucky to have such an excellent package of activities every Wednesday night!