The S word

As I was setting up my coffee pot for a couple of cups of brew this morning, a bit of motion through the kitchen window caught my eye. It's very windy here today so at first I thought I was seeing the last leaves from the apple trees blowing around out there. But wait!  The bits were too small to be leaves. Could it be?  Was it true?  Yes, indeed. I was seeing snow flakes!  Kind of like this picture that I found on the internets of a first snowfall .   First snow of the season for me.  It's pretty yet ominous!

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I doubt that any of the snow will stay on the ground, especially since the sun has come out now and the temps are rising a little. Still, it looks to be a nice day to stay indoors and bake.

That's right. I have baking to do. A batch of cookies--haven't decided on the kind yet--and I think I'll try making these Clementine-Fig Spice Cakes that I found in Better Homes and Gardens magazine as I sat at the car dealer yesterday.  I think my daughter and daughter-in-law will enjoy these when we celebrate Thanksgiving together. The guys can have some too but they usually want Doritos and beer instead while they sit glued to the football games on TV.  Oh well, their loss!



I also have sewing to do. I have yet to make the monthly blocks for the quilt-along the guild is doing of Barbara Brackman's Civil War Jubilee quilt.  This month I need to make 8 blocks in reds plus a couple of extras to be used in a guild charity quilt.  I love making these blocks--so easy and fast. The hardest part is deciding on which fabrics to use! I posted about the block pattern here if you want to see what it looks like.

I also have finished the embroidery of the second Santa table runner also shown in this blog post and need to begin finishing it off. It's been sold to a customer and as soon as it's delivered, I need to begin the third one for another customer. I couldn't guarantee that it would be ready before Christmas but I'll do my best.

The other quilty thing that's on my mind is the Farmer's Wife quilt that we're doing in the guild.  I got this pic off Pinterest.  I haven't decided what kind of fabrics I'll use in making my blocks--the 30s seem appropriate for the block patterns but now that I see this quilt, I'll have to rethink this decision. Since I've not made any of the blocks yet--2 months behind!--I just have to make a decision and get going on it.

So, it looks like it'll be a busy day today and I'd better get going on it.  What tasks do you have set out to accomplish today?  Whatever they are, I hope you enjoy them.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

I've been traveling for the past 10 days or so. Don and I drove to Maine to spend some time with our daughter who has just moved into her first home and she wanted some help with getting things situated in the house. She and her boyfriend had also broken up and she was feeling a bit blue over that. So we thought we would take a late fall drive out to the East coast to help her out.  It was a great visit for the most part. Don and Tessa put up shelves and so forth while I sewed simple curtains for the dining room and Lily's bedroom.

It was a great visit with our daughter and granddaughter except for a couple of things.  On Wednesday evening, the day before we were leaving to return home, I accidently blew out the electrical system for the kitchen stove!  That meant going to a number of shops in Portland that night to find a replacement that could be installed before Tessa's housewarming party on Saturday. Fortunately, we found a great stove (it has a convection feature in the oven!) in our price range which was delivered and installed on Friday afternoon.  I hadn't planned on giving her such a housewarming gift but that's the way it worked out!

This is the sweater I'm knitting for Lily but in a black and gray with silver sparkle yarn.  I was working on it in the car and at the house.  The second thing that went wrong that Wednesday night was, I sat on my bamboo knitting needles before we went stove shopping, and of course, broke one.  Which had a bunch of stitches on it.  So we had to find a Michaels after buying the stove and get another set of knitting needles. Not such a bad thing.  I was able to transfer all the stitches and get on with the knitting.

Bad things happen in threes, right?  The third thing was the worst and it happened on Friday as we were sailing down the highway at the Pennsylvania/Ohio border.  Deer hit.  Here's the car. Nuff said.

We had no injuries--thank goodness for seat belts and air bags!--other than my hearing hasn't returned to normal yet and I'll be seeing a doc about this. The car likely was totalled--we'll get the news later this week from the insurance company.  We left the car in Ohio as the insurance set us up with a rental so we could get home. Which we did without further incident.  I can't tell you how happy we were to be in our own home yesterday and to sleep in our own bed.  It was very disconcerting to have this accident so far from home where you don't know anyone or have any knowledge of the area and the people you have to deal with. You simply have to trust people and these days, that's not always easy to do.  All I can say is, from the PA state trooper to the tow truck driver (Mac)  to the folks at Conneaut Collision Center to the Enterprise rental agent (Doug) in Ashtabula Ohio, we were treated so, so well. They all knew the trauma and stress that we were going through and did everything to smooth the way for us. 

So, we're home now and it looks like it'll be a gorgeous late Autumn day here.  If it gets warm enough, I'll spray paint the two little tables I'd like to get done before winter sets in, go to the garden to harvest the brussels sprouts, do a little sewing on a quilting project and maybe catch a little football on TV if there's time.  Quilting comes before football, for me anyway!  :)

That's my adventures for the past few days. I hope your adventures were less dramatic!

Happy Halloween!

Another finished quilt

I don't think I ever mentioned that one of the members in my guild has been diagnosed with cancer and has had surgery and now the follow up chemo/radiation, I'm not sure which.  The guild has a policy of making and giving a quilt to members or their spouses who are seriously ill. We don't keep a supply of quilts on hand, but make them up one by one as they're needed. Fortunately, we've only had to make 2 quilts in the 5 years I've been a member.

I suggested that we all chip in with fabric and talent and make a quilt for Diane while we were at retreat.  Everyone brought 2.5" strips of a variety of yellow fabrics and we stitched them into 12" blocks.  I overestimated how many blocks we'd need to make a generous throw quilt for her and we ended up with enough extra blocks to make a second quilt to keep on hand for when we may need it.

Since I was the organizer of this project, I took the finished top with me after retreat and got backing fabric on sale. Another guild member who does long-arm quilting offered to quilt it up which she did in 2 days.  I asked another member to make up a label which she printed off on fabric. I got the label yesterday and framed it up and did some hand embroidery on it. Last night I finished the binding and label and the quilt is ready to go to Diane on Tuesday night at the guild meeting.

Here's what we made for her:  "Rays of Sunshine" (photographed on a gloomy, dreary day).

I love all the yellows and golds in this quilt.  While I was stitching on the binding, it felt so warm and snuggly on my lap, I know Diane will feel loved when she wraps up in this quilt.

Unknown to us, Diane is a bee keeper so it's very fitting that we included some bumble bee fabrics in this quilt.

And this is the label Becky and I made together for our friend.

The other thing I didn't mention after retreat is that I sold my red "Santas" table runner--

after I'd finished the embroidery and worked out the faint staining from the red dyes, and added the checkerboard border and quilted it up--to one of the gals at retreat who fell in love with it when it was finished.  She took a look at my Etsy store, Jolly Ruby  as well and decided to buy the embroidered Halloween table runner as well.

In addition to these sales--and remember every penny of sales goes to the Jolly Ruby fund which helps enhance the lives of people with disabilities--two other retreaters asked me if I would make "Santas" table runners for them as well. I'll do my best to get them finished by Christmas but I didn't make any promises.  They're okay getting them a little late.  Whew!

Then, the other day, I got a call from a person who lives a few blocks from me about making a memory quilt for her out of napkins she's saved from various events she's attended in her career.  So, of course I said yes!  This is going to be fun--and easy!  And she's not in a big hurry to get it.  Whew again!

Today, I have done my house chores and will go for a walk when I'm finished with this. Then, into the sewing room to work on a charity quilt block that needs to be done by the end of the week. What's on your plate for this Friday?

Gloomy Friday

Well, this week has just flown by. I've had something to do every day since I returned from retreat on Sunday and it seems as though I've accomplished nothing!  Especially in quilting. I wanted to keep up the pace I set at retreat but here at home, there's always something distracting--computers, tv, yardwork, grocery shopping, and the occasional house chores. Yuck!  I just want to keep quilting!

Although today is gray and overcast with spits of rain, I stopped by the garden this morning to see if the winter rye had sprouted yet--and it has!  I've never planted a cover crop like this so I'm anxious to see if it helps any. For those of you who don't garden, we can plant a crop of a winter hardy seed like winter rye and it will sprout in the fall and with luck, continue to grow in the spring. It all gets turned under before planting, adding lots of nutrition to the soil. Some refer to this as "green manure." 

This is the long view of the garden with my 4 brussell sprouts still standing there.

This is a closeup of the winter rye sprouts--they're about an inch or two high now. I have no idea how high they'll get before snowfall.   It's an experiment!

I have worked on a couple of things this week.  For our guild gift exchange in December, we are to make a zipper pouch with a surprise inside, and a second zipper pouch to be donated to a sale we're having later in the year.  I've taken a lot of kidding this past year over the crumbs I save, so I decided to make up some crumb fabric and use that to make the pouch.  Each side is different and it measures about 10" by 8."

For the surprise inside, I am putting in a bundle of 3 fat quarters from my stash, a charm square of Christmas fabrics that I'm never going to use, a new Frixion pen and a note pad with three wooden magnets. Oh, and I'll add some chocolate when the time comes. (If I get the chocolate now, it'll be gone by the time of the December meeting!)

And for the lining, I used this funky frog fabric (do you like alliteration?) that I found in my stash.

For the pouch to donate, I'm going to make some fabric out of the huge amount of selvages I've been collecting. In fact, I may make more than one pouch out of the selvages since I think they'll sell and it will make a little dent anyway in my collection.

At retreat I began making pinwheels as part of finishing off the embroidered blocks I made last spring, the Farmhouse Window Sills pattern.  I only got as far as finishing off 2 of the 4 blocks so this week, I finished off the other two and now need to make more pinwheels to put the top and bottom borders around the blocks.  In this pic, they look rather yellow, but they're more bright when you see them.

I also assembled the 9-patch house quilt and put on the hourglass border.  I thought I had enough green for a third border, but no, not quite. So this top is done.  As I said in a previous post, this will be donated to the new Habitat House neighbors we'll have this spring. Again, thanks to Sharon at Vrooman's Quilts for the idea of using my leftover 9 patch blocks.

Also at retreat, we all worked on making a strip quilt for one of our members who's been diagnosed with colon cancer.  For some reason, no one took a pic of it, but, trust me, it turned out very nice.  I have fabric for the backing and will get it to the quilter soon.

That's how my week has been. I have to get down to the sewing room now and make up some blocks for the Civil War Jubilee quilt that I'm in charge of for the guild quiltalong.  And maybe I'll make a few pinwheels as well.  :)  Hope your day is going well too.

Post-Retreat Weekend

I was at quilt retreat with my fellow guild members from Thursday through Sunday. My sides and my face are sore from laughing so much, and I have to replenish my supply of Depends.  Today will be quiet.

Nuff said. Pics to follow at 10.

Sing a Song of Halloween

Here it is, the completed wall hanging called "Sing a Song of Halloween."

I'm happy to have finished it and it's now up for sale in my Etsy shop, Jolly Ruby.  I think it's rather cute and would be great in a home with small children as it's not tooooo scary for them!  I think Halloween should be all about fun and not so gruesome and super frightening--unless you're a teenager and then it should be all about zombies and vampires!  Yeah, I remember those days!

I got the Fall table runner pinned but was too tired to begin quilting it and am I glad!

I was just going to do simple quilting but today I've changed my mind.  I follow Lori Kennedy's blog, The Inbox Jaunt and today she posted a tutorial on doing a Japanese  Lantern design.  I've been doodling it with paper and pencil and I think I've got this one!  It will be perfect in some of the long strips in the center blocks of this runner.  I'll find something else for the borders--maybe Lori has another design I can put in the borders.  I love her work and I'm so grateful that she posts all these tutorials so we readers can work on improving our machine quilting skills.

Before I begin on Lily's skirt--I know, I know1  I have to finish it so it can go out in the mail tomorrow!--I have 4 plants that have to go into the ground TODAY!  I got them 2 days ago and instead of planting them on Sunday when it was 75 degrees and sunny, I've procrastinated until today when it's 48 degrees with a predicted high of 58!  What was I thinking!

I also have to run a couple of errands and then it's into the sewing room.

Last thing. Don and I went to the movies last night (a rare occurrence for my stay-at-home husband) to see "The Martian."  O! M! G!  It was SOOO good!!!!  I've been a Matt Damon fan since "Good Will Hunting" and absolutely loved him in "The Martian."  If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Don enjoyed it so much he said he'd like to go more often so maybe there's hope yet!

Have a wonderful day no matter what you're plans are.