Happy Hallowe'en

 

Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy Halloween and repeat my love for this season of the year. 

 The sun continues to change it's angle and by so doing I can see my maple tree reflected on my garage side window from the inside of my house.  

If I open the front door, which is just to the right of this round window and look out to see the reflection. . . it isn't there.  

Autumn is such a magic time of year.

Have fun tonight whether you have a gathering to go to or you are repeatedly answering your front door.  

Robin

Exchange, quilt on the floor, autumn

 

I have been working all week on an exchange we are having in my quilt group.  We are exchanging any size (mine are 12") pumpkin blocks.  I made the one on the right and decided it didn't really shout pumpkin so I changed the pattern.  Thank goodness there are only 8 of us participating because it's taking longer than I thought it would (doesn't it always?).  I've got 6 pumpkins shapes appliqued so far, just 2 more and then I'll work on the stems and leaves. (Was just reminded that there are only 7 of us participating so I'll have one extra regular pumpkin as well as the first block I made - Good Grief!)

I thought I'd show some of my progress on the flower quilt.  I call it "Earth with her 10,000 flowers" from the song.

I am enjoying doing the Baptist fan quilting pattern.  It makes it feel like it's going fast.  I'm using white DMC color #712 pearl cotton size 8 thread.  It is so soft and glides right through the fabric.

My #2 daughter has finished all the blocks for her batik quilt but she has no room to lay them all out so here they are in my family room.  She has such little time to sew because she's in the thick of teenagers (four of them to be exact ranging in age from 12 to 18).  She's in the car constantly taking them to school, ballet, friends houses, etc.  Her husband is deployed so she's doing it all by herself.

She comes over one morning a week because that is all the time she has to spare.

So, this quilt might be on my basement floor for a while.  It's just my husband and I so it's not bothering us.  He exercises down there and I quilt at the frames both of which are not hampered by her quilt.

I set up a sewing station down there too so when she comes she can just sit down and sew.

The valley is finally showing some signs of fall.  I've seen the colors on the mountainside for a month now.  This is our maple tree on the south side of the house.

Halloween is next week already, actually one week from today.  September and October have flown by in a dream.  

Robin

What I've been doing

 while I was impatiently waiting for my new phone to work right.  We got new phones on August 21st and I could call and I could text but I couldn't get into my apps.  So my blog has been silent for over 2 months.

It has been raining all day.  It's the first rain we've had since August I think.  And Tuesday was our last day of 80's from 2024  It's been a long summer.  The house was unusually dark (I've been used to the bright sunshine) so it was a perfect day to put out my squirrel lamp.  Doesn't it just glow?

This post is picture heavy so here goes;

I started a new little quilt with my 2 fabric lines by Jeanne Horton.  The first line was a Wisconsin line she designed in 2014 while I was in Wisconsin.  The 2nd line is Riverbanks and it goes with the first line very well.  The center is a little story about the history of Wisconsin.  The border with the postmarks is from cities all over Wisconsin from Green Bay to Rhinelander to Waukesha.  We didn't go to them all but since we were over vehicles and apartments. . . we went to most of them.

I appliqued part of a quote by Joseph Smith Jr. that we would recite every morning while we were on our mission.

I just finished the square in a square border this morning.  The quilt looks quite dark in this picture and the fabric lines are very subdued but it is brighter in person.  I have two more borders planned 

I have been cooking,

                                              Apple tarts and German Chocolate Cake - yum!

and canning

all the produce that my garden gnome keeps bringing in.

                                                                        Tomatoes,

                                                                            apples, 

grapes, and cucumbers, honey dew melon, corn, pumpkins, strawberries, raspberries, and lovely basil

                                                 A great local display of squash and pumpkins.

                     I went to a wedding shower for a grand niece.  (When did I get so old)

                             Wouldn't you know the only picture I took was of the food - ha!

I lost my wedding ring one day.  It has been loose for a long time because I have lost weight and wouldn't you know it some of that weight was in my fingers (?)  I soon found it in the hamper but it put a scare in me and so I have just put it in my jewelry box so I don't loose it again.  It feels kind of weird not to have a ring on that finger after 51 years.

                                                 We had a family campout in the backyard.

                      It was no stress, the kids planned it and everyone brought their own dinner.

Shane is a fabulous story teller and I didn't hear the story because I was taking pictures.  Looks like it was a good one.

                                       Look at his eyes in the picture below.

My grandson came home from his mission in Florida in September thankfully missing both Hurricanes.

And last but certainly not least.  I got a new granddaughter last month.  She's beautiful and healthy.

This is the before picture taken at the family campout.

And this is the after.

Robin

Summer meanderings.

I haven't posted much because I don't really have much to show or much to comment on.  But. here goes.

 I sure haven't done much quilty-wise this summer.  I can't seem to get the momentum going.

I have my son's Christmas quilt on the frames (see picture on the right) and am about 2/3rds of the way through with the hand quilting.  I'm doing 'big stitch' so it is going a little faster than it might.

I've been doing a lot of genealogy.  I spend hours on the computer, sitting at my kitchen table.  It's amazing how the time flies.  I hope I'm not getting hunched shoulders because I find myself bending over the computer without being aware of it.

I started a bears paw quilt in an effort to use up some of my brown fabric stack.  I finished the sixth block this morning.  This isn't going to get done anytime soon as this rate.

I've missed my monthly quilt group, "Bound Together" for about 3 months in a row.  I finally went at the end of July.  One of the ladies was getting rid of  all kinds of stuff.  I wasn't interested in anything until she held up this piece of fabric.  It isn't my usual colors but there was something about it that I just couldn't pass up.  This is a picture of the fabric with the sun shining through.  I just put it up at my back door to get a picture.

And this is a picture of the the truer colors.  You can't believe how soft this fabric is.  I think it is drapery/upholstery fabric that has been washed.  It's just wonderful.

Years ago my grandmother worked in the drapery department of ZCMI.  She would give my mother colorful bright remnants and that is what my summer clothes were made out of.  I remember a particularly bright orange print that she made into capris for me.  It was the 70's so you can imagine the color combinations.

I'm not sure what I will do with this but I'd love to just frame it with wide borders of cloth and do whole cloth quilting.  

So soft. . . . . . . 

I can tell the autumn is just around the corner.  The 'Jack in the Pulpit' are changing color.

The pumpkins are getting big and changing color also.

The cloud dynamics are changing too.  We've had a very hot dry summer and this week alone we've had two deluges (is that a word?) in two days.  Everything is healthy and green again.

I made homemade hot dog buns for a family dinner last night.  They turned out great.  I cooked Brats in the oven.  It was really slick but the flavor sure doesn't compare to the ones cooked on the grill. 

I started a new applique project.  It from a block I saw on Pinterest.  Again, I'm moving like molasses and not get anything done very fast.  

Here is the block.  Isn't it the cutest thing your ever saw?  Those little birds are tiny so I have to be at my best (in the morning when my eyes aren't tired) to do a quality job with the applique.  The original block is small.  I made mine about 20" so I can use it for the center of the quilt.  I'm not sure what is going to surround it but I don't need to make that decision yet.  

One thing I do enjoy about summer is the fresh basil.  I have a tomato, mozzarella, and basil sandwich at least twice a week - yum!

If you are still with me, you are a true friend.  

I hope when the heat backs off I'll have more energy and more interesting things to say.

Robin

Summer so far

Needs something more on that back wall

Well, I think it's finally all put back together.  We got new carpeting and flooring in May.  It's great and I love it but why does it have to take so much out of me?  I just don't adapt well or quickly.  I never have.

The quilt in the hoop is finally done and I have it hanging on my sewing room wall.  I started it in 2004 when the pattern first came out.  I hand appliqued the gold house on the right, the whale house, the sailboat, and the house above the whale before it became a UFO.  During the lockdown I tried to finish up things instead of start lots of new things.  I finished the applique and it went into the closet in the quilting queue.

The pattern by Sue Garmen is "All Around Town".

 

As I hand quilted it I imagined who lived in the houses.  The block below was student housing.  Notice the cobwebs on the grass.  College students don't want to be bothered with mowing the lawn.  The house with the angel is "Guardian Angel Daycare".  It was fun to think about the people inside as I quilted.

The "Garden Gnome" is back to work outside.  We have shelled 1,000s of peas.

My granddaughter above was my biggest help.  The peas were picked three times a week and she would dutifully shell peas and only nibble a little.  Toward the end of their growing season I gave her one of the days whole harvest.  She took it home and ate it all.

We are currently working on green beans.  I pressure canned 6 qts. yesterday.  They are not as fun to prepare as the peas and definitely not as sweet to chew on. 

Just a couple of pictures from the 4th of July.  My grandson below is wearing noise cancelling ear muffs.

We try and get together every Thursday for a family dinner during the summer (I have no idea what I am cooking this week!)  Whoever can come, comes, and so it changes from week to week.

Last week was a hot one for us.  I didn't want to heat up the oven so we just had bacon waffles.

It's not a low calorie meal because the bacon grease gets cooks into the waffle.  We ate them with real maple syrup - yum!

I finished this little quilt for my upcoming granddaughter who is due in September.  I made this quilt using a line by Barbara Brackman called Patterns of History from 2004.  It is a very pale pink.  The outer border was ice cream cones.  They were tricky to make but I was rather please when it turned out.

When it came time to bind the quilt, the curves and valleys were definitely not even and were more work than I wanted to go to.  Knowing that even if I worked really hard the binding would still not look very good.  So I decided to do a knife edge.  After working on that for a week (it was really slow and time consuming) I threw in the towel and cut the edge straight for a regular binding.  

I learned a lot about me with this quilt.  I used to like to do things the hard way for the satisfaction of being able to do it.  I have drawn the line with ice cream cone borders.  Uncle. . .  

I call this quilt "Dainty".

Robin