You have to see it to believe it.

I was about to throw away the left over scraps from the baby quilt, when I thought about Bonnie Hunter's idea of salvaging the remaining fabric. I had fussy cuts all over the place and was not in the mood to spend too much time cutting out anything usable. I decided to just take the fabric, holes and all, and lay it down folded over as best I could. I took my rotary cutter and ruler and sliced across everything. I cannot get over all the strips, 2 1/2" and 1 1/2", of different lengths that came out of it. Even some 2 1/2 squares.

All I have left is this little pile to discard. Bonnie is right, at the cost of fabric we would be throwing out a lot of money already spent.

Murphy's law

Well I worked on the little quilt yesterday for most of the afternoon. I did the quilting on my grace machine frame and it went okay. I still need practice.I decided to try to finish it last night by sewing on the binding. It was all sewed and as I turned it to the back, I noticed a tear in the front of the binding. Very unusual because I was using a good quality fabric and I never had that happen before. Frustrated, I decided to take part of the binding off and redo it. Of course, the patched area landed right on the mitered corner. After a few expletives, I continued to sew the rest of the binding down. When I reached the area, where the binding meets; guess what I found? Another tear in this piece. What was going on?! I lost my patience, attached the binding differently and hid the tear. Since I was tired and wanted this quilt done, I decided to sew it down by machine. What a mess! Needless to say, I will be undoing it and sewing it down by hand.

What is too many cherries!

Since I do not have any quilts to show you, I thought I would show you my breakfast. Do you think I ate too many cherries? I feel a belly ache coming on.

My dog Maggie, aka Cujo, acts like she would like to take part in my cherries' breakfast. Old Chrissy has bed head. It is 9 am and she doesn't look like she wants to start her day yet.

Hope to finish my baby's quilt today and will post when it is done.

Lunch

I finished the quilt top for my neighbors baby. It only measure 36" square, but he is only an infant. I will probably sandwich it tomorrow and try quilting on it. I will be binding it in the same color red as is in the print.

My niece treated me to lunch at the Jedidiah Hawkins Inn in S. Jameport, L.I.

http://www.jedediahhawkinsinn.com/index01.php

The Inn was a victorian home built in the 1800's. It was repaired and was used as a designer's showcase in 2005. It is now a restaurant and inn. If you click on the email address you can see several pictures of the home. The pictures do not do it justice. It is one of those must see in person places. It is pricey so I would only have lunch there.

A Beautiful Day

Today the grandchildren came over and we watched them for awhile.

After dinner, DH and I went to the Bay to enjoy the beautiful scenery and cool breeze. The first thing we saw was this lovely flower growing among the reeds by the dock. The tide was unusually low and we were told it was a full moon tide. As you can see, the evening sky was clear. We were able to see Fire Island but unfortunately it is not visible in the picture. We stayed to see the sunset and considered ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy all this that is only minutes from our home.



I received an invitation to a baby shower
in October. My daughter told me that the new mother will be decorating the baby's room in an all sports theme. I am hoping that I can find some fabric or pattern for a quilt with that same theme. I would like it to be more babyish looking than the fabric I have seen for older boys. If any of you know of fabric that you think would be appropriate, please email me.

A little tidbit

I had been looking for an end table for the guest room for sometime and did not want to spend a lot of money. Last summer there was a garage sale only a few blocks from my home. I saw this table and immediately bought it for $50.00. Inside was this great 301 singer sewing machine. It came with the table, storage stool and all the hardware. Included in the table was the original sales receipt. A Mrs. Holland bought it in Saratoga Springs, NY, in 1953 for $386. I was 9 years old. Her son told me she sewed on it every day until she died in her eighties. I hope she knows I am taking good care of it. By the way, it really sews well. Oh, that scale, I have not used it in sometime. It just makes me too fat. :-)

I have plenty of UFO's that need attention, but once again I am starting something new! My excuse is that it is an overdue quilt for my neighbor's new baby. The fabric is from my stash which I am really trying to use. I bought the fabric a year or two ago. Well, I better get back to work!

Frustrated

Here it is Friday and I have not blogged in a week. You know why? I have been sewing and ripping out the little orange block I had made from scraps. I ran into so many problems! I used spray adhesive to keep the sandwich together, I am not too impressed with it. Then I machine quilted a spider web from the center out. First I had the spaces too close together, so rip, rip, rip. Then I had to figure out where to stop and start on either side of the appliques. After all that, the stitching was hardly visible. I guess I should have used a heavier black thread. Oh well. I also wrote the words Boo on the top and bottom border in an orange thread. Also not very visible. Well, this was a practice quilt and I did learn from it. I did put on the binding with the glue technique. I think I really like doing it this way and will continue to use it.

On a good note, I went to Joann's. They have their thread for 50% off and I bought some to try on my grace frame. Aren't the colors great! If I was daring and had more money, I would have bought some of their bright colors. I ran into Joann Powell who used to be the president of the East End Quilters Guild and had one of my favorite quilts in their show. You can see her quilt in my posting of the quilt show. Anyway, she saw me buying thread and got the bug when she saw the colors. Her picks were bright and cheery colors. Hmmm, maybe I should go back tomorrow and buy bright and cheery?

I have to babysit tomorrow evening so I hope to get some cutting done tonight and maybe some piecing.

Fun purchases

Well, DH gave me a gift certificate for my birthday to http://www.patchworks.com/ and cash so I could buy whatever I wanted. I have no complaints! These are the gifts I love because now that I am retired, I can use them to take classes or buy quilting stuff. We also went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Chachama Grill. It sounds like a burrito place but is far from that. It is a little pricey for us, but we go for the price fixed meal of $38.00 I had an appetizer of crab and avocado salad, a main course of pan seared shrimp over purple peruvian mashed potatoes and coconut flan for dessert. DH had oysters rubio, loin of pork and a warm chocolate cake. My mouth is watering and it is only 10 am.

Now down to business. I shopped! I went to Patchworks and bought 2 yards each of their $4.00 sale fabric. The blue floral and the light blue fabrics are Danielles P & B textile. The dark green is Thimbleberries Fancy Free. The fat quarters are a child's novelty print of fireman and coordinating fabric. Should make an adorable quilt for a child. My husband is a retired NYC fireman so maybe one of my grandchildren will get it.

I also bought from Connecting Threads 48 fat quarters of their sale Fall Country Essentials and purchased an additional 2 yards of their pumpkin print, for borders. Maybe I should have bought 3 yards? I have really tried to not buy fabric, but, hey, it was my birthday. Isn't that a time for frivolous purchases!?

Today, we will meet with the family for lunch at a local Italian restaurant and celebrate with them.

Today is my birthday!

You think this cake has too many calories!! It is a good thing it is not sitting in my house. I've been known to quietly eat a whole cake in small increments throughout the day. Well, maybe not a whole cake, but close to it!

Well, I am 64 and still quilting. That's a good thing!

Playing with my grace machine frame

I played around with my little grace frame last night and quilted this little lap quilt. I took a picture of my bedroom so you could see that the roses came from sheets I bought a few years ago and made into valances and table top and at one point had covered a headboard. I recently bought a new headboard and used the fabric to incorporate into this little quilt. To give you an idea of what the head board looked like covered by fabric, I added a picture of our blue guest room. These were also sheeets. I never got around to covering the legs.

In this room, I also have the bottom of a treadle machine that is used as a stand for a small tv and lamp. Unfortunately, I foolishly threw away the cabinet and machine because they were in such poor condition. Sorry the pictures are not in order.

I wanted to add that the binding on the quilt was made using elmer's glue. This technique is from a video from Sharon Shamber. I think it is great.

Finished

Well, I finished the quilt on the way to and back from the baby shower. Yes, I was too insecure to give it as a gift. My daughter gets mad at me because I always feel like my quilts are not good enough. I know the imperfections. Anyway I quilted it on my Grace frame but had a lot of trouble with the new thread I used. It is a rainbow thread from Superior and it just kept shredding and breaking. The quilting is very simple since I am fairly new to this type of machine quilting.

When I took the quilt out in the car to sew down the binding, I noticed a slight musty smell. My sewing room is in the basement and some of the batting has been around a while. Do you wash your quilts before giving them as gifts? I would love to have some feed back on this from my fellow bloggers. This one for sure will have to be washed!