Fairy houses

Last Saturday, the Town Recreation Commission held an open house for the town forest, and I organized a "spring awakenings" walk with Samantha and a fairy house building activity.  Never mind the fact that the state quilt was holding its semiannual meeting on the same day.  What a wild and crazy day.  My Fitbit told me I packed a lot of activity into the day, and so did my feet!

Our children's librarian, Ian, also plays the bagpipes, so he led us up a hill to the spot for a story followed by house building.  18 kids, ranging in age from about 2 to 10, and their parents and grandparents came along, and it was fun.

The kids did a wonderful job, using sticks, pine cones, pods, and other natural items Tracy and I had assembled.  We let them take home flowers crocheted by Linda, stickers, and fairy dolls Tracy and I made (with a lot of hot glue to hold them together), so they could build houses in their own yards, too. 

Sunday, Paul and I walked up to see how the houses had done overnight, and many were still there... if you knew where to look.  Hope the fairies take up residence!

Making progress

A few more UFOs have been worked on since I last posted.  It's fun to see progress!  I made a bunch of green 9" blocks for the rainbow scrap challenge early this month due to general busy-ness coming up.

Next, I tackled the row robin I participated in last year.  I had received some Australian fabrics in exchange for postage in a swap I hosted.  Folks were much too generous; I loved these fabrics and wanted to use them for something special.  One lady sent a  panel with Australian wreaths which became the center medallion.  Four of the rows were used as borders around the center, and then I added a couple of blocks to the last two rows to make the quilt rectangular.  I'm calling it An Australian Christmas and am looking forward to quilting it.  I'm piecing the back with scraps and some signature blocks.  This makes three quilts in the closet waiting for quilting, but I find summer a good time for that, especially now with AC in the sewing room.

I made a center block for a round robin I'll be participating in using fabric from two sets of charm squares, and I finished appliqueing another guild logo block modelled on the traditional Moon Over the Mountains block.  Photos will be up... eventually!

She likes it!

Great niece Tori graduates from high school this year and will be going off to college, majoring in communications.  Her mom told me that blue was her favorite color, so I dipped deep into my stash for this log cabin star.  I did use a variety of shirtings for the lighter strips.  It's amazing how much fabric goes into one of these.  It was long armed over the winter and just recently bound and mailed to Michigan.  I love it and am glad she does, too.

The orange challenge

This year I resolved to use more orange in my quilts, and, by golly, I have been!  I am doing Pat Sloan's "Vacation Time" mystery BOM, and I also just finished a modified "Sarah's Sampler" (from Jennifer Chiaverini's The Quilter's Apprentice) in oranges and grays.

I love the way it turned out as the grays all have a blue tone to them.  Quilting each block differently made it more of a sampler, too.  This quilt is going to the Parkinsons Comfort Quilt Project.

Two ribbons!

It's been a while since I blogged.  First there was the run up to our local quilt show, then there was the show, then the recovery period.  I think I'm finally back to "normal" although with the spring weather comes lots of busy-ness.  Since winter is so long here, we have to really pack in our good weather activities before it gets too hot.  Of course, temperatures over 80 degrees spell "hot" to us Vermonters.

The show went very well, and I think we all ended up still being friends.  We had more quilts this time and lots more visitors (377 in two days, plus the entrants and volunteers, for a total of at least 400).  I think we're going to end up in the black slightly, but I haven't paid all the bills yet.  Some of the committee members have been slow to send them along.
My Oceans of Scraps quilt received a Celebrity's Choice ribbon from the owner of our Ace Hardware store who is also president of the downtown business owners' association.  I love this year's ribbons, made by Geri!  The other ribbon came from one of the Vendors who owns a quilt shop in Brandon.  What an honor, to receive two ribbons.  I was also happy that my Nearly Insane Civil War Sampler was the subject of lots of looking during the show.  There's a lot to see in those 6" blocks.

Now that the banking's almost done, I need to update the show website in preparation for the two year dormant period.  That will take some time as I load photos of all the winning quilts and a few crowd shots.  Samantha gave me a great DVD to copy from.

This past week was a busy one, with trips to Hanover, NH, to visit Polly in her new home, and to Waitsfield to pick up an order at Mad River Quilting which is going out of business.  While there, I loaded up on mostly neutral fabrics at 30% off.  While I'm sad Lisa is selling out, she will still be doing longarm quilting and will still belong to the state quilters guild.  Tuesday and this coming Tuesday I'll be over at Tracy's working on fairy dolls to give out May 16 at the fairy house building event in the town forest.  It's fiddly work but goes much faster with a buddy.