Pillows

I've been mining my "orphan block" pizza box lately and making pillows out of the larger blocks.  I don't have much use for table runners, and everyone in my family has received at least one.  These are going into my etsy shop and, if they don't sell, guess what people are getting for Christmas? 

Speaking of which, I decided to add my Christmas things back into the shop as people seem to be thinking about the holidays already.  Amazing!

The first was a class sample from a hand applique class I taught some years ago.  The three below were blocks that didn't get into a Barbara Brackman Civil War block of the month quilt. 

And the last pillow is a modern rose based on Karen Eckmeier's rose pattern.  And there are more, but I need to find pillow forms for them first.

Heritage Days

Friday and Saturday are our annual Heritage Days here in Barre.  The Friends of the Library will be holding its annual book sale on the lawn both days, and there's lots of preparation behind the scenes:  sorting books, boxing them up, lugging them around to store and then outside on Thurs., supervising the tent (tomorrow morning at 7:30 am!), setting up tables (Thurs. at 10 am), and more.  During the sale, it's the calm before the storm.  It does get busy at times with shoppers, but the clean up can be a pretty exhausting time because of all that's gone before.  Can't wait til it's all over!

Heritage Days are fun, though, since people are all downtown and one tends to bump into them, literally.  I see a lot of people at the book sale that I never see otherwise during the year, including some former B&B guests who come back for class reunions.  The street food, the live music, and old fashioned fun do make it a nice time for everyone.  I usually spend Saturday's parade at the book sale, getting ready for clean up, but we can usually see it from there anyway.  This year, the "heritage stage" will be after the parade, indoors at the airconditioned Barre Opera House.  What a treat to hear traditional folk music there in honor of a dear friend who passed away a few years ago.  If we have any energy left, we'll surely go.

In a slump

What do you do when you've temporarily lost your quilting mojo?  It may be the heat and humidity, but maybe it's that, having just finished a good-sized quilt top, I need a break.  In any event, I am not feeling all that productive lately.  Yesterday I sat in front of the fan and read a mystery most of the day.  It was good.  Then we went out to dinner with Paul's sister and her husband... at the local bowling alley where the crab cakes were good but the fries soggy.  Still, the company was fun and the AC was on.

I have been shuffling the contents of my pizza box of "orphans."  These are blocks that didn't fit into a quilt, that were made to test a pattern, or that I didn't like so much.  Some are made of Civil War fabrics; other from selvages; and even a few "modern" ones.  They just don't go together at all, and  adding a neutral sashing won't help.  What to do, if anything?  Table runners?  Tote bags?  Little wallhangings?  For gifts or to sell on etsy?

Here's what I decided.  I need to practice my machine quilting, both walking foot and free motion.  I have a new book with FMQ ideas that I'd like to play with.   I got a few blocks out and will sandwich them today.  Stay tuned!

Works in Progress

I made a few blocks last week as part of my year-long "Low Volume at 70" project.  I'm making 6" blocks for each month.  Some are Moda's "Blockheads" blocks, and some are Pat Sloan's "Splendid Sampler" vols. 1 and 2 blocks.  Some will most likely be whatever I feel like making, and I'm using shirtings and other low volume backgrounds. 

It will be scrappy and I hope to quilt each month as I finish.  The big decision now is the color for the sashing - navy?   There's also a block to denote the month I made the other blocks.  It's from a set of machine embroidered dish towels I got from Yve long ago.  She thought they'd be fun in a quilt, and, now that she has passed on, I will remember her whenever I see them.

I've finished putting together 25 of the Ohio Star swap blocks I received in my local guild.  Only seven people participated, I think, and we were each to make 3 blocks.  But somehow I ended up with 26, due to someone's generosity.  I'm not sure why some people chose to make duplicates, but I have worked them in. 

I decided that the universal color for the cornerstones should be scrappy green, and I bought some more green to make a wide, pieced border.   You can see some of the border pieces stacked up near the top left.  I'm basing it on Deb Tucker's Oak Ridge Stars border, but because her blocks are 16" and mine are 12", I've had to make some adjustments.   The center now measures about 60" x 60", and the finished quilt should be about 80" x 80".   I just can't seem to make a rectangular quilt.

The heat wave has broken!

We had a lot of wind and some heavy downpours yesterday, and today is a gorgeous one, with low humidity and in the 70s.  What a relief after six days of heat and humidity.  We took some friends along for a walk up the Grand Lookout Trail by the town forest.  We wanted to check out a new sculpture in an abandoned quarry building.   The granite columns are older, but the bust of Vulcan was recently made to go along with the annual "Rockfire" event held last weekend.  It fits the site perfectly.

From the top of the Grand Lookout, one can see all of downtown and the mountains to the west and northeast.   We could also look down to where they are loading huge chunks of grout (waste granite) onto railroad cars.  During the week we've been hearing 5 or 6 trains a day coming down from the quarries and going through downtown.  Paul suggested that with climate change, municipalities are building higher, stronger breakwaters with the stone.

We're melting!

This is day 4 of a heat wave, and we have all had it.  Generally, the weather people say we're having a heat wave when we have 3 days of over 90 degree temperatures.  This one is set to leave us some time Friday.  What a time for our refrigerator to misbehave!  The repair guy is scheduled for this afternoon, but the fridge has been acting strangely for about two weeks:  the freezer is working tell well, no matter what the setting, and the refrigerator is not working all that well.  We have been buying blocks of ice to keep things cool in the fridge.  But since it's been hot, we've been eating dinner out more, just to get cool for a while.  Today I hope we can actually eat at home, albeit using the grill.  Fingers crossed.

Last week, my mother and sister Jenny were here, and we had a very nice visit.  Mom turned 96 while here, so I invited friends and neighbors for an afternoon tea with cake.   Later, we had a family

dinner out at a nice restaurant.  On other days, we went shopping, out for soft ice cream (Vermonters call them "creemies" and maple is a favorite flavor), walked around the neighborhood, or just sat and talked.  I've been doing our genealogy, so I had questions about various ancestors that only Mom can answer.  We are always reminded, when with her, that she has an enormous cache of information and interesting stories to tell.  Jenny is looking into having a video interview made soon.

We are so glad they came and so glad they left before the heat wave hit.  While they were here, we had perfect weather with temperatures in the 60s and 70s and beautiful blue skies, with just a little rain.   Living in Colorado for so long, neither of them was used to the humidity, but it didn't really get serious until now.  I have air conditioning in my sewing room, so I've been making a few 6" blocks for a new quilt made up of "Blockheads 2" and "The Splendid Sampler 2" blocks.  I'm cutting up the "kitchen towel of the month" set that I got years ago from Yve into 6" blocks as well.  It will be a nice memento of her and of my 71st year.  All the backgrounds of this scrappy quilt will be low volume prints and shirtings, so I'm tentatively calling it "Low Volume at 70."