Thursday, July 31, 2008

Finally decided on the fabrics I will use




for JudyL's BOM which starts tomorrow. I've included a second photo to more accurately show the color of the darkest fabric.

I have also made progress on my Orange Crush. All but one row is sewn together and on the design wall. The little yellow sticky is to mark a 4 patch that I sewed in incorrectly and have to go back to correct. Of course I didn't discover the mistake until the row was sewn together! I guess I need to be grateful that the whole top wasn't finished or even quilted before I noticed the mistake. I'm not too crazy about this one (it was done as a mystery, if you haven't heard of it before) and of course, that is the risk you take with a mystery. Someone pointed out that I may like it better when its all together than I do as individual pieces, and seeing it on the design wall, they were right. I do like it better than I did, but in general, its way to busy for me. If I were try this design with what I know now, I would do it much less scrappy, perhaps controlled scrappy, so that the star shows up more.

Sunday, July 27, 2008


It's been a while since I've posted, not much 'quilty' has been going on. I've made the drive up to the northeast to finally bury mom. Had a visit with some old friends, my brother & his family, and then down to the Jersey shore to visit with cousins I hadn't seen in ages. Aside from it being a sad occassion and a lot of driving, it wasa good visit with some great folks.

I haven't done much knitting either. Somehow the knitting aggravated my left hand (I have trouble tensioning, I think) and I have had to stop for a while. I have learned of a method called Portuguese knitting that I am going to try. I'm hoping that the rather different way of tensioning the yarn with this method will enable me to continue knitting--I've started a yarn stash that I MUST use!!

While I have plenty of WIPs and UFOs, I have some more in the thought stages and am still plugging along on the OC(Bonnie Hunter), although in a smaller version. I also have the fabric put aside for JudyL's last HAD that I want to do so I can try her upcoming BOM without feeling even more guilty.

The only quilt related thing that I have done recently is with my DGD. She accompanied me to one of our LQSs a few weeks ago. I pointed out a sample quilt for her, "Do you recognize that?" And she did! It was a log cabin quilt from a jelly roll book (title escapes me at the moment) and is called the RainBow Quilt. We had seen the book last summer while we were visiting another store, and she asked if I would make her the quilt-they didn't have the jelly rolls and I wasn't about to start scouring the store for substitutes. This store didn't have the jelly rolls, but had kitted fabrics in the same colors. Her plea was "Can WE make this, Gram?" - Yes, I knew the quilt sample and the kit was there before I brought her.....I figured if she still liked it, I would make it for her. Since she indicated she would like US to make it, I'm even more pleased. Miss Thang stays with us every other weekend, so we got started and made this block combination. Next time is the pink/orange combination.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Time sure flies by....





We went camping with our son and two grandchildren. We slept in the little camper, son and children in a tent on our site. Once again we camped at Lake Lanier, which is close to home. If anyone had a problem (little one was a first time camper) or the weather had been tooo inclement, it would have been easy to go home for a spell. It did rain and thunder the first two nights, but we all stayed dry and the days were great. Our area is still suffering from a bad drought. You can see in the photos how the lake has gone down. The water usually goes right up to the trees, and the depth post is usually under water at the end of the swimming area. (first pole photo this year, second post photo last year)

Even just last year, which was bad, the pole was still in the water- you can see where the water should have been. Needless to say, we were blown away to see how much worse things were this year.