Gumballs top

Even though I had a lot to do last week (Heritage Days, after all), I started a new quilt.  It's a scrappy one called Gumballs, a pattern I saw in another blog and which appeared in McCall's Quilting some years ago.  I decided to try to use up some blues and, unusual for me, cut all the pieces before sewing them into blocks.  I needed 120 nine patches and 120 half-square triangles, plus other fillers!  I can almost close my blue fabric tub now.  

Over the weekend I managed to get most of the blocks together and finished the 60" x 72" top yesterday.   I have some pieces of previous backs ready to put together today.  But I'm not all that thrilled with the whole thing.  Maybe I'll like it better once it's quilted.  At any rate, I'll take it to Marie for quilting when I have the back ready, and I'll probably give it to Bags of Love after that.  

Meanwhile, Dear Jane has been languishing on a chair, waiting to be bound, and I did get half-way around over the weekend.  Our perfect weather has come to an end, and it looks like I'll be indoors watching the rain for the rest of the week.  

Our blueberries are coming in strong right now, and I've already frozen several bags.  I want to bake another blueberry buckle for Friday (my birthday) so will try to get outside in between showers to pick two cups more.  We're planning to go out for Chinese on Friday with Chris and Paul's sister Pat.  I'm sure we'll be too full after dinner for cake, so I'll give them each a piece to take home afterwards.

And speaking of blue, I must be in a blue period as last week I also finished a blue tote bag for my brother Axel to give to a friend who has been driving him around.  It's hard to see, but both sides have a pocket between the handles.  I used pre-quilted fabric from "Connecting Threads" for this bag and another one I need to put a button on.

Yesterday I went to the quilt shop where they offer a discount of half my age around my birthday.  I bought about many yards of mostly neutrals, stocking up for the coming year.  Phew!  Had a nice, long awaited chat with Robin while she cut everything.  That in itself was a birthday gift as we don't get together often enough.

Favorites from Billings show

 I forgot to show photos of two quilts I really liked at the Billings Farm Museum show last weekend.  The first was called "Eclipse," and I loved its simplicity.

Next is my favorite of the show, perhaps because I met the quilter, Susan Damon Balch, a year or so ago at a meeting of the state quilt guild.  I forgot to write down the name of the quilt, but the use of monochrome gave it a peaceful feel and I liked that she blended in some traditional quilt blocks in the background.

Billings Farm Museum show

I spent yesterday in Woodstock at the Billings Farm Museum "Quilt Guild Day."  The Green Mountain Quilters Guild was the featured guild in an old barn set up just a little way from the main building where the annual Vermont Quilt Sampler exhibit is.  Five members of the statewide guild showed some of our work and demonstrated some techniques, including three ways of working with hexagons, hand quilting in a large hoop, Hawaiian quilting, and sashiko.   Several people asked how to get started in quilting which was fun to discuss.

It was a gloomy day, but morning and mid-day visitors to the grounds all stopped in to see what we were up to.  At around 2:00, the heavens opened up and it poured off and on for about an hour and a half.   We decided to pack up and go home at 3:30, even though we were scheduled to leave at 5 pm. 

We did sell about ten small quilts made by members which was good.   Several people wanted to buy my little landscape, but it was promised to a lady who had to visit the ATM first.  I love how the sky turned out in this one, and I have another hanging on the wall over my desk.

There was a distinctly "farm" smell throughout the barn perhaps due to the pigs and other critters in the barn next door.  Because it was a bit damp, I'' run all five of the quilts I brought with me through the dryer on "air" to freshen them up a bit.

I was also surprised that my bookshelf quilt received a lot of comments from visitors.  I made as a "row robin" several years ago with my international friendship swap group.  

I enjoyed looking at the quilts in the show, too.  This is the third year for the show, and the jury takes great pains to make sure there's a variety.  I was especially pleased to see quilts by three members of my local guild there.  All were deserving of note.  I didn't take too many pictures but the museum's website (link above) has several good shots.

What I do on Mondays

 

For the past few years, I've been Zooming with old friends from my work life on Monday afternoons.  These are all people who worked for their state libraries and collected data about public library use.  We were mostly all together in Washington, DC, on 9/11/2001 when the twin towers were hit.  We spent some tense days then and really bonded.  All retired now, we talk of books, movies, politics, and anything else that comes to mind.  States represented are Colorado, Georgia (now living in FL), South Carolina, Minnesota, and Massachusetts (now living in Chicago).  Quite a spread!

A trip and a finish

First, the finish!  Another small hat for a child going into foster care.  I've only been knitting this for a few weeks although I probably would have finished sooner if I'd stuck to it and sewed it together right after I finished knitting.  Instead, it languished as usual.

I love the "Hawthorne" yarn that Knit Picks sells and have made a few other hats using it.  I still have enough of this yarn left to make most of another hat, but I think I'm going to concentrate on finishing the purple scarf I started months ago.  It uses smaller needles so is taking me a while to finish.

We went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, for a long weekend and returned this morning after spending the night in Glens Falls, NY.  It's about a 10 hour drive to NOTL, which I could do if I felt like it.  But we decided to break this trip up into two days each way to give ourselves a chance to relax.  We are, after all, retired with no real place we have to be.  Going back and forth over the border was easy, which was a relief.

NOTL is a charming village on Lake Ontario, just over the border into Canada.  Every summer, they hold a series of plays and musicals in a festival honoring playwright George Bernard Shaw.  Two summers ago, we were wowed by My Fair Lady.  This year's offerings included the musical Funny Girl and a wacky play about Jeeves and Wooster.  Both were very enjoyable, and we're glad we went. 

NOTL is a real tourist destination with lovely shops and plenty of nice places to eat.  Walking down the street, one hears all sorts of languages, and one needs to be careful not to photobomb anyone.  My favorite view was a whole window full of red and white pajamas in a maple leaf print.  Wish I'd gotten a picture.  The Sunset Grill saw us twice - once for lunch and the next day for breakfast - so it was obviously a hit.   We noshed on great ice cream cones while people watching in the city park which is beautifully landscaped, and we splurged on a Thai dinner complete with fried bananas Sunday.  Our room at an older inn was conveniently located and comfortable albeit tiny.  A perfect minivacation!

Two finishes!

Last week I picked up the Wensleydale quilt from Marie, the long arm quilter, and had it all bound by machine on Sunday.  She quilted it rather loosely in a snowflake pattern which looks a bit like a large stipple.  I like its puffiness and am glad it's done.   Foundation paper piecing made it easy to put together.

I realize that blue isn't considered a Christmas color, but it is used in most winter ones, so I chose the light blue stop border because the outer border includes blue.  I used the same outer border fabric for the binding because the inner part of the quilt is busy enough!  Of course, the holidays are plenty busy.

I may take this quilt to the library to hand on the wall during the holidays along with another quilt I often use with the auction items during "Light Up the Library."  When I get a chance, my plan to is make shopping bags for all the members of the library staff for Christmas.  Right now, I'm looking for a pattern that's easy and folds in or rolls into itself without snaps, buttons, or elastic.  

Over the weekend, I also got all the quilted pieces of my Modern Jane quilt together, bordered, and partly bound.  That was a lot of work, hauling the sections around and squaring them up together.  I was amazed that I had made almost the perfect lengths of piano key borders.  Sometimes things work like a charm and other times they are a pain.   The corners were duplicate DJ blocks that I made by accident during the three years I made them.  I lost track here and there along the way.

The spirit of Jane Stickle was with me on this quilt, I guess.  Besides the almost perfect length of borders, I found I needed to create about a foot more binding to get all the way around neatly, which used up all of one black/white fabric in my stash.   I had plenty more other b/w fabric but didn't want the binding to be scrappy.  I now face the task of sewing the binding down by hand, and I'll do that in spurts.

To give myself a break, I've been working on the July Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  Why - oh why? - did I decide to make three different quilts this year?  The color of the month is Bonnie Hunter's favorite - aqua.   Unfortunately, I have very little of what I consider to be that color, so I have expanded it to be what I consider to be teal which I have a lot of.  Five log cabin blocks are in the bin and put away already.  The "traffic stop" blocks are well on their way to completion, and today I'll start on the improv houses.

Home is best

Off hand, I can't remember the quote so well - east, west, home is best?   But it sure is good to be home in peaceful, green Vermont although we enjoy visiting Mom and sister Jenny in Colorado.  Saturday was Mom's 104th birthday, and we celebrated with two online video chats.  My brother took a screen shot.  It's difficult to see anyone, but the upper right has Mom, my son Chris, me, Jenny, and Paul.

Later in the day we had another video chat with my nieces in Los Angeles and Queensland, New Zealand.  It was good to see them both.

The day before we had a visit from my second cousin, twice removed, Joice, her husband Bob, and one of her sons and his family.  Mom hadn't seen Joice and Bob for 60 years.  The last time was when she gave them baby furniture, and now her son has grown up with kids of his own.

Joice lives in Pennsylvania, and we last saw her and Bob a couple of years ago when we were traveling through on our way home from the south.  We hope to see them again this spring.

Our visit included a lot of "mom care," taking her to appointments, helping her navigate the oxygen tubes, and just helping her in general.  I did a little cooking but also discovered delicious pizza already made at Whole Foods.  Wish we had one!  We browsed around Barnes and Noble, stopped at Starbucks, and generally enjoyed life in suburban America. 

A trip to Colorado is never complete without a trip to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.  This time, there was a fabulous exhibit of medallion quilts by Cindy Vermillion Hamilton.  All were hand sewn, hand appliqued, and hand quilted.  Very impressive!  

The blue and white quilt is about the plainest one in the exhibit, but one I think I could actually do.  It gave me the idea that I could surround the map of the Netherlands I made last winter with a border of appliqued melons.   

The red background with bright blue on this quilt is stunning, my favorite of them all.  It was Cindy's wedding quilt and reflects her and her husband's Native American heritages.  

We've been home a few days, and laundry, grocery shopping and other household chores have been done.  I think I'll get a chance to quilt today before going over to Pam's with lunch and gossip.  She had a stroke about a month ago and needs a little pick-me-up.