it's christmas in july!

today's the start of 12 days of blog hopping fun offering you tons of ideas for your holiday sewing and gifting! sarah craig has organized this event that includes giveaways too....so start right in hopping....and bring along that water container to keep coooool...no snow in sight!

Friday, July 14th

From My Carolina Home

Vrooman's Quilts

Pampered Pettit

Saturday, July 15th

Citymousequilter

Vicki's Crafts and Quilting

Quilting Fun

Sunday, July 16th

Swimming in a Sea of Estrogen

Everyone Deserves a Quilt

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting

Monday, July 17th

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

Crayon Box Quilt Studio

Tuesday, July 18th

Seams To Be Sew

Stitchin at Home

Domestic Felicity

Wednesday, July 19th

The Colorful Fabriholic

Smiles From Kate

Thursday, July 20th

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting

The Inquiring Quilter

Selina Quilts

Friday, July 21st

Katie Mae Quilts

Quilted Blooms

QuiltFabrication

Saturday, July 22nd

Devoted Quilter

Kathy's Kwilts and More

All Points of the Compass

Sunday, July 23rd

Mel's Quilting Blog

Resourceful Momma

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting

Monday, July 24th

Anja Quilts

PickingandStitching

A Dream and a Stitch

Tuesday, July 25th

Christina's Handicrafts

Abyquilts

and be sure to check out sarah's blog for giveaway details!

quick fix

this is the RIGHT version.....

these are 2 rows finished of 6 total....as i was sewing the 2nd row, i remembered there were 8 gray motifs in all (plus 2 halves), but with the 2 rows had only 2, so realized had missed a couple along the way....and now that have gotten this far with it, like it even more.  my mod muse is in overdrive...lol!  hoping to get the flimsy done in the next week or so and retire the shoebox.  thinking the next UFO will be the tumbler top.  and september will be a basting marathon...

this saturday is "my" day of the 12 days of christmas in july blog hop....so be sure and hop on over to check out my projects, which just might give you some ideas of your own.  in addition to the blog hop, there will be some giveaways...friday is day 1, and all the blog links and the link to the giveaway will be posted then....so be sure and stop by!

fun evening!

tuesday night visited nearby Four County quilting guild where Pat Sloan was the guest speaker....

a great time was had by all...pat is entertaining, inspiring and enthralling, all in one!  she brought many of her quilts, large and small, and gave a brief history of her quilting life, which is jam-packed with all sorts of quilty events....podcasts, blog, books, fabric designing etc.   i thoroughly enjoyed myself....four county is a pretty large group of talented quilters, and if i didn't already belong to 2 guilds, would join in a nanosecond!   their show is coming up later this year in my backyard and planning on viewing all the lovely works that will be on display.  ***  while finishing up my sewing for tuesday, had an arrrrrgghh moment.  it appears while i was trying to watch netflix and sew on my orange mod from a teeny, tiny black and white diagram, completely missed places where the gray design should have been.   today's task is to rrrrrip out the wrong ones and re-sew the right ones!  not too many, which is good.  ***  hot days here but cloudy and off and on showers.  so thankful to have my own apartment, climate controlled, electronically connected, all to myself....i am truly blessed!

next up!

the orange mod is the next UFO to be worked on to the flimsy stage....in a perfect world, i'd have a complete wall for design space, but until that happens....

and here is the gray accent design with another block almost done...

oh yes, i am really liking how this looks so far.  out of white squares so all done for tonite....will it use up all my orange scraps??  surely you jest, but at least some of them....and since the shoebox they are in is cracked at one end, the leftovers will move on to another waiting place for another use.  this is another one i'm itching to hand quilt. it'll be a while, tho, since these blocks take more time to construct.  ***  got my summertime haircut the other day.  when i moved to maryland, found a terrific place and haircutter but SUPERCUTS has moved into the neighborhood with better prices, and since my follicles have a long history with that business, have switched.  ***  and what else have i been doing?  cooking up veggies...had several zukes, summer squash, peppers and was given some very large sweet potatoes so cooked all the summer squash, fried up some onions and peppers, used up 3 of 4 zukes--saving the last for lemon zucchini bread--and roasted the sweet potatoes and popped in freezer.  also got a few ears of delish corn and some tender little cukes and 2 huge tomatoes, so it's good eating now that summer fresh days are here....now back to quilting the QOV and get THAT puppy done!

great minds....

sometimes think alike....bonnie hunter just revealed the new leaders/enders project for the upcoming year and it's rail fence! how did she know?  went to my pile stash elfa storage drawer and unearthed this....

one of those things just sewed up on a day with no size or destination in mind.  these were probably leftovers from this flimsy....

it's up next to be quilted once the QOV is done.....saw this quilt in an old issue of alex and ricky's defunct magazine "a quilt life"....it was an article on antique photos with quilts featured, many of them from the prairie in the late 1800s or early 1900s...a traveling photographer would pass thru town and quilts were often used as backdrops for photos taken in front of a soddy or barn....this pattern intrigued me and now it's a flimsy....see?  quilty inspiration is everywhere! 

our nation's birthday!

a glorious 4th to all....

and reminder that the 250th is coming up in just 9 short years....plans are already in the works....

https://www.facebook.com/TodaysDAR/videos/1965507670141550/

and recommended reading for today is "the federalist papers".....to read about the process of establishing this republic by three learned founding fathers is awe-inspiring.....

monday task

it's monday again, another hot one and the eve of a biggie holiday as well....one third of summer has flown by but plenty of sewing days ahead!  this is what i've done today....first thing this AM, attached the border to the ocean waves so it's in the flimsy pile now; then, this...

started with the new border for the scrappy 9-patch.  some suggestions were made by a blogger pal, they got impressed into my brain, which then started percolating some ideas and--believe this--woke up early one morning last week with the plan!  that's right, dreamed about this and how to fix...how spooky is that???   anyway, went to work removing both outside AND triangle borders all the way around and began the rework.  the final won't be as wide as the 2 separate borders would have been, but it'll fix the problem and get it to the flimsy stage.   in my careless, perfectionistic youth would have tossed the whole thing, but now older and wiser AND more frugal, realized it would have to be saved and fixed.  of course, now there is more time for such things too....it'll preserve the look of the triangles, which were a big plus for this and the primary reason to find a fix.  ***  no doubt plenty of holidays plans on the drawing board and i've a few as well.  lots of memories of july 4th at reid state park with my extended family, nearly all of whom are now gone. what glory days they were!

and that would be me, the blondie leaning over, probably looking at lobsters...LOL!

win-win-win!

while catching up on the antics of francis and clair underwood (house of cards),  just about finished my ocean waves top....all i can think of is stained glass...needs a final press...i hate to iron much when there are so many bias edges...but it's safe now.   this was a great finish all the way around....the top finally got done....except for a 2.5" charcoal border....

an empty UFO drawer.....

and this gap on the stash shelf.....there used to be 2 piles of solids, now only one...if this keeps up, may have to consider some replenishment....but i think i'm good for a while....lol!

saying goodby to june 2017 today....it was my parents' wedding anniversary and imagine mom is knee deep in memories of that day,  my dad and their hopes and dreams for the future...they made a beautiful couple....inside and out.....

the floor

no individual quilter achieves success by themselves...it takes a village--of sorts...for many of us, it's the floor; our over-size design wall and receptacle of all things scrappy....see what i mean?

thanks to those ever-defective command hangers, my real design wall is now crumpled in a heap on the floor, so my floor stood in...these are just pinned but wanted to make sure no two exact colors were side by side.  it's the best effort i can make, knowing somewhere it'll happen as it always does in my scrappy quilts.  so anxious to get these blocks sewn together and see the top up close and personal....but while the floor has provided aid, it has also created disarray....

for some time now, have had a wastebasket with a wider circumference on my "need" list....this is why.  a date with the vacuum is also on my list....but aren't they pretty???   call me happy to have all the triangles cut and sewn!

coming together

started this years ago, can't recall exactly when, but i know it was after bonnie hunter showed hers off...9 or 10 years maybe?  hers was very large and her triangles were very small...i was immediately wowed and a bit intimidated....and who wouldn't be?

but one day a pattern crossed my path; a smaller version with bigger triangles (for hand quilting, you know) and so it was started.  the charcoal solid was bought on my first visit to lancaster quilt shops when my suitcase bulged with over 11 yards of fabric!  solids were collected in little bits just for this project, and as expected, the last of my cherrywood scraps are included.  and now the first row is done...my fingers are itching to quilt it...the auriful quilting thread was bought at maine quilts 4-5 years ago...charcoal....it's definitely one of those process quilts and one i'm planning to keep for me. not true amish, but homage to the amish quilts that first lured me into quilting....the photo doesn't do the colors justice, so much more vibrant close up.....i'm just tickled that it'll be a top very soon and can probably start quilting in the fall....who knew natural fibers could be so darn much fun!