Pastels

I finished all of these blocks last week but chose another layout before they were sewn together. The finished quilt top is a secret until my Asheville Quilt Guild lecture and trunk show next week. It's been years since I last worked in pastels and now I have two pastel quilt tops done in a few weeks.

Machine Quilting

Here's how I decided to quilt this tiny (12" x 12") quilt to jazz it up a little bit. This photo color is not right. The border is deep black.

Current Events

For weeks I have been creating samples for a lecture and workshop for the Asheville Quilt Guild (North Carolina) which will take place on June 16 and 17. I've shown some photos, but many of my samples will be unseen until the day of the lecture. Here's one, though, that I've shown before. I'm planning the quilting right now. It's a tiny piece, measuring in at approx. 12" x 12".

And here are a few blocks I'm working on...

High Tech

Three weeks from today I am scheduled to have the toes of my right foot reconstructed, which means that I'll have some recovery time when my foot will need to be elevated most of the time. Not a bad proposition, since I have plenty to catch up on...cleaning of drawers, transferring to a new address book, machine quilting several quilt tops (if I can master the machine pedal with my left foot), reading all the quilt books I've bought this year, and I may take an online college course on how to use Power Point.


Right now I'm using the Pencil Point presentation system...

with this high-tech flip chart, straight from the 1950's. Oh boy.

Work Space

I've been preparing to teach two days of demos at Georgia Sewing and Quilting in Buford, GA (northeast of Atlanta) on Friday and Saturday. The event is in celebration of their first full year in business. Happy Anniversary!

As usual when I'm preparing to teach, the dining room is a collection site and a disaster area, haha.



Some of the dining room mess has to do with the pressing and cutting of fabric for dyeing. Bill's been rust dyeing too and has some pieces cooking in the garage right now.


Well, at least a portion of my samples are in fine order...

and I'm ready for a day of fun!

String Blocks

Each day of vacation I worked a couple of hours on string blocks for an upcoming class. The blocks aren't sewn together yet. They will be combined with other blocks and some of them will be further manipulated, but this is the fruit of my labor.

These blocks are 8 1/2" square...

These are 4" square...

My favorite yarn shop in Northampton, Mass. carries all kinds of yarn (including weaver's yarn on cones), books, tools, and accessories plus wool roving, which is what I bought there. The store is called Webs. For perspective, one of these balls is nearly the size of a basketball.

The center fabric in each of these four blocks is a lovely print that I found at Valley Fabrics in Northampton. I'm hoping that our quilt shop here in the Athens area has more of the same fabric because I only bought a few fat quarters of it.

Spring in New England

We have been in Massachusetts, my home state, for about eleven days visiting family (son, sister and S-i-L, nephew) and friends, going to a Red Sox game, taking "Sunday" drives nearly every day and enjoying Spring in New England. It was beautiful! Here's a quick recap...

Love the rock walls that are all over the northeastern U.S. This one was in Williamsburg, MA.

Also in Williamsburg, the General Store. Every inch of this old fashioned store is covered with lovely and yummy things: ice cream, maple sugar candy, baked goods, fresh spices, unique kitchen tools, handmade soaps, jewelery, local pottery, post cards, penny candy, gifts of all types.

Just up the street is the Williamsburg Blacksmith shop.

We can't go to Mass. without a trip to the Red Sox. There's nothing like the aroma of Yawkey Way...sausage, peppers and onions, roasted peanuts, hot dogs, and spring air.

The Sox won Thursday on a perfect baseball day. Here's the famous Citgo sign on Kenmore Square in Boston. If I have the story right, Ted Williams called it the "C it go" sign because when he hit a ball from home plate, and it was high enough to pass in front of the sign (from his point of view), it would be a home run.

We always arrive early to the game to absorb the atmosphere. Fenway park opened the same week that the Titanic sank in 1912, so its 100th anniversary is fast approaching. Bill is wearing his gardener's tan already.

We were lucky enough to be in town for a photo shoot prior to our nephew A.J.'s senior prom. That's my sister Cecile (Cil).

It was a great week. Next up...I'll give you a sneak peek of the blocks I made on vacation and some fabric finds.