In July, I started making some little blocks because I was tired of making slabs. I was inspired by the High Five quilt in the book Sunday Morning Quilts. These kept me busy when my son and granddaughter were visiting other family members. The finished blocks are made log cabin style, and end up being 5 inches square. Naturally I used my scraps and stuff I found in the big bins that need to be sorted and organized.  I cut a bunch of 2" squares of lights to use as the centers. My DGD seemed unimpressed with the arrangement on the design wall, so I asked her to have a go at it ..read more

  While listening to the US Open Tennis last week, I added the leftover blocks from the Joyful quilt to this fabric I found for the backing. The backing fabric wasn't a standard backing fabric - it was about 42" wide, so I sewed the leftover blocks to each length, then sewed the two long lengths together. Yes, I planned for the diagonal stripe to be where they joined. Here is the quilt lying on top of the backing. I always do this to make sure there is enough fabric all around. I think it looks great and will make a terrific couch quilt. I know all retirees say it, but I have been r ..read more

  I added this sparkly fun fabric as a border to the colorful cobblestones quilt, which I have named "Joyful." The fabric has glittery silver stars, which makes it a bit too cutesy for me, but I didn't read the description carefully enough, but it's perfectly fine. This is the fabric I'll use for the backing for the JOYFUL quilt. In non-quilty news, I cleaned out the shed. It had been sadly neglected over the years. I went in there wearing a mask, googles and gloves, and cleaned, tossed, organized, and swept the place clean. There were some openings and it was clear it had been a wint ..read more

  I finally found a layout I liked for the colorful cobblestones.  Once I worked that out, I decided to web the quilt top together. I have mixed feelings about this method. It's one of those things that work better IN THEORY than IN PRACTICE, at least for me. I figured out why it bugs me so much.  Normally when I sew a quilt together, I do it the old fashioned way. I take two pieces off the design wall, sew them together, press the seam, and then move to the next pair. Then I'll sew pairs together, and then quartets until I get a row complete. When I have two rows complete ..read more

  There's a quote that an art school in Florida uses in its advertising: "A great idea is only an idea until you make it real." And just because you make the idea real doesn't make it great. The IDEA for a brightly colored cobblestones quilt sounded great, but once I got all the blocks on the design wall I was decidedly unimpressed. There's too much of this that just looks like mush to me. Now, that "to me" is the operative term here. Just because most folks think it's OK doesn't mean that I do. I shall continue wrestling. This is the view when I eat my lunch on the front porch. Quite n ..read more

  We have these great big TV's in several places throughout the facility. Today, I was the star on all of them. I have worked at Felton for 35 years and 10 months, and Tuesday was my last day in the office. (I have vacation time I'm still working off), but as of today I am officially retired. Needless to day I didn't get any "work" done on my last day. Instead I walked around and said goodbye to my coworkers. I got lots of hugs. I have been talking to people for the last few days, because I knew I'd get too emotional to do it all in one day. But it was still a bit rough. I was given a b ..read more

One of the tasks I need to do is to straighten up the fabrics in my stash. Since I am between quilts, I figured it would be a good task to start. I worked on the White on Whites, and then sorted out the white with colors and the creams with colors. I took the fabrics off the shelf, ironed them, refolded them, and put them back on the shelf. I decided to work on the fabrics I call "colors on a white background." As I was pressing one piece I thought. "Gee, it would be interesting to make a cobblestones quilt with these bright fabrics, and have bright bold colors slashed through them." *** T ..read more

  I've decided to name Deb's quilt "Cobblestones."  Here is a closeup of the quilt so you can see some of the fabrics I have used in the quilt. At first I thought the quilt I would need a small dark border around the quilt, and then a larger cream one, but when I put a thin strip of dark fabric on the left side, and I didn't like it at all. Then I thought I should put a narrow light border, THEN a thin dark border and THEN a wider cream border, but I wasn't sure about it, so I gathered up some leftovers and made a sample strip, and put it on the top edge. I didn't like either versi ..read more

  I asked Deb to come over and take a look at what I had on the design wall. She was happy. She loved the fabrics I had chosen and I was glad to see we were on the same page. I did a lot of tinkering after she left and this is the layout I will sew together. When Deb visited we talked about borders and binding and we looked at some fabrics for each. Now I do not usually allow this kind of input in my quilts, but when I toured Deb's house, she wasn't kidding. It was a lovely, serene home, but it was very neutral. I knew that if it were up to me I would add more color, but this quilt is ..read more

 Happy Birthday to my darling granddaughter, Somebody is 8 years old today! And as. you can see she loves the PRIZM quilt, so now it lives in California. The cat loves it too. He hasn't stopped cuddling with it since it came out of the box. (The soft frisbee is a gift from Mémère as well.) yeah, those two are definitely connected ..read more