Fall is in the Air

Here I am again, and it only took me four days to get back to it this time.
It's been awhile since I posted about our SIS hand sewing bee, so I thought I'd throw in a couple of pictures from our gathering yesterday.

There were only 3 of us that day, Jean has been awfully busy this summer.

Chris was working on her 9-patches, and showed us the 'hybrid' project which was the result of melding 2 projects... something that was not planned but turned out wonderfully. She had been working on the 9-patches for some time, and then she had these adorable wonky houses.













And Alice is hand quilting her Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, which is one of my favorite quilts, so I am particularly interested in watching her progess with that one. She's doing a great job with it, and it's going to be a precious heirloom!

I haven't been doing as much sewing lately, as fall is definitely in the air, and there can't be too many beautiful days left like the ones we've been having. So DH and I have been working outdoors mostly, getting ready for winter. I did finish another Dear Jane block yesterday though, and got a good start on another one. It looks lop-sided but it's not. It's just the way I had it aligned in the scanner.

M-12 Hopscotch


Another reason I wanted to blog today was to test something that Chris taught me. Actually, she had to re-teach me with a little remedial tutoring on blogging as I can't seem to remember things very well! So I wanted her to refresh my memory on how to create a link within one's blog. So here goes, I am going to try to link to her EXCELLENT blog, Crispy Quilts. And once you get there, you can also follow a link to a second blog of hers where she does tutorials on hand piecing which I highly recommend. Even if you haven't thought you'd like to be a hand-piecer, why not give it a try! You might like it.

And a rare remaining daylily bloom... this one is really hanging in there. I took the photo at dusk, so the flash went off and it gave a striking backdrop which was much darker than reality.


Have a great day, take time to smell the 'daylilies', and SEW!!!

My Name Is Rita, and I'm a Slacker

I have only done one more block since my last post, but here it is. Our guild is getting ready for our annual quilt show, and that's taking up a lot of my time. After the first weekend in November, that'll be behind us though. Then I'll really kick it into high gear on my Dear Jane.

M-8 Enchanted Square

Catching Up on DJ Blocks

I was feeling rather guilty today about how little time I've spent posting on here lately. And then I got sidetracked playing with spreadsheets of my completed blocks, vs. which ones I've posted. And I realized there wsas a huge 'gap'. So I am going to try to get the rest posted... perhaps in installments.

SOOOoooo, here we go! Hope this isn't too boring... but after all, the primary objective for me of this blog was sort of to document my Dear Jane journey, and I just got way behind on it. One thing I'm wishing I had done differently was to note the dates each block was done, and perhaps journal a little bit about what was going on at the time (my private thoughts).

And in reviewing, I realized a couple of these I'm not particularly proud of. Some were among the very earliest. But I'm posting them anyway. I may or may not redo the worst of the worst... we'll just see.

I also see GLARING threads sitting atop some of the blocks. Funny how you don't see those little guys until the image is blown up on-screen. I'll have to rescan all of those with lose threads on them as soon as I can get around to it.

***
A-1 Pinwheel Gone Awry


A-2 One-Two Buckle My Shoe


A-3 Hunter's Moon


A-5 Cathie's Campfire


A-6 Uncle Homer


A-8 Florence Nightingale


B-1 Bachelor Buttons


B-6 Wild Goose Chase



C-3 Rayelle's Fence


C-5 Eye of the Cyclone


C-12 Family Reunion


D-3 Jason's Jacks


D-6 Challenge


D-12 Crossed Swords


D-13 Field of Dreams



H-1 Peek-a-Boo


H-13 Farm Fields


I-12 Fred's Square Fair


J-4 Adelaine's Apron Strings


J-12 Rebecca's Basket


K-1 Crooked Creek


L-10 Nan's Naiad


L-11 Caitlin's Rose


M-10 Simple Simon

And One More...

I've already found one block I missed. And this one is a really recent one.

F-1 Big Top

Catching a Breather

I'm back... I promise to be better at posting more often this winter when we get past the busy gardening season, and I can turn my attention almost exclusively to sewing or sewing related past-times.

This has been a very 'sewing intense' week however. It began when we went to Iowa to visit very good friends, John & Kathy, and I sewed little Jane blocks all the way down and back, plus one or two while we were there sitting and visiting, and in the hotel room on the way.

Then I had 2 all-day sewing days back-to-back on Wednesday and Thursday with 2 of my small groups. Unfortunately I didn't think to take my camera. We sewed at Diana's on Wednesday, with Carol and Kimm. That's a machine sewing group, but the last few times I've sewed by hand anyway, as I am obsessed with 'Jane' right now. Then Thursday we had our hand sewing bee, and went to 'Crispy's' house for the first time. She lives 35 miles west of Bismarck, in a charming little home that was moved into town from the country! In the past we've met at the country club in her small town in the summer months when it's worked out. We also got a chance to meet her very nice S.O.

Then Saturday was guild day. I'm still getting comfortable with my role as president, so I get a bit nervous. It surprises me, but it has been a few years since I've been in the work world, so maybe it shouldn't. Anyway, each month it gets easier! And I taught the morning workshop this month, which was on hand piecing (now THERE'S a surprsie!). :) I tried to twist Crispy's arm into teaching it, as she's the pro, but she had to work so wasn't available with her expertise.

Hey, I got a new toy!!! After all the chatter about hand piecing, I bought a new sewing machine. I've been wanting a Babylock and I finally got one. They just came out with a new model, the Symphony, to replace the Espire. And I got a deal I couldn't refuse from one of Bismarck's FINEST quilt shops, Bismarck Sewing & Quilting. (We have 3 good shops, and one BAD one... and anyone in Bismarck knows which is which, I'm sure!). ;-) Later I'll follow up with a picture of new Annie (her name), but right now I can't find my camera cable. (Another big surprise....!) This machine does everything but embroider, which I don't need because I recently bought the Babylock Professional Embroidery machine, also from Joy.

Here are the Dear Jane blocks I've completed recently. Actually, some aren't that recent but just haven't ever been posted. I think there are still more that have been missed, and one day I'll get that all straightened out, but not today.

A-12 Framed Fancy



B-2 Sweet Tater Pie



B-5 Hot Cross Buns



B-9 Tinker Toy



B-10 Jud's Trophy



C-6 Ashley's Aura (Needs work... applique is not my forte' yet)



C-7 Megan's Mountain Laurel



G-1 Hattie's Hen House



H-11 Piercing Rays



I-2 Kaye's Courtyard



J-6 Granny Weaver



K-7 Rose of Sharing (Another one that's going to need a little more work...)



And with that, I'm off... have a wonderful rest of the weekend, and a great new week! We're getting ready for autum up here in North Dakota.

A Little Dear Jane Action

Just finished with 2 more little babies for my Purple Jane in the last day. It was really nice to do two easy ones after a little challenge I was struggling with the last 2 days before these. Remind me to tell you the story of B13. LOL But not tonight, that's subject for a later post, I'm going to hit the hay now. The rain is coming down softly, and will make for an excellent night of sleep.

D-5 Cathedral Window













C-1 Trooper Green's Badge

My 'Gardens' Are Growing...

Time for the beginning of a week so I can relax! (Pysically, that is...) It was another weekend of hard grueling labor, and it was hotter than blazes yesterdday. Initially, I had thought we were going to finish the walls around the windows in my quilting studio this weekend, but DH had a different idea in mind. He got motivated to start some major landscaping, and has ideas for 3 entirely new flower beds or areas. He tackled the largest one first.





It may be a little hard to envision yet at this point, but there WILL be flowers once the retaining walls are filled with dirt, and the arborvitae will have mulch around them so I'm not constantly doing battle with the weeds and tall grasses that love all that watering. The other meandering bricks around the existing planted area will be gone. They were just thrown down there by me, 'temporarily', a year or two ago... :-] I gaurantee you, if DH had thrown them down, they would have been a heck of a lot straighter, temporary or not!


My young friend Makiah came over and we worked hard gardening in the front yard for a couple hours. Then we finished her pillowcase which she started before we both went on our vacations.


Notice the four 4-patches on the pillowcase cuff? She pieced those by hand.

Tomorrow she's accompanying me when we go to a senior independent/assisted living facility to conduct a quilting workshop. I'm also getting help with coaching the residents from two other guild members, one who is a also a member of my S.I.S. group (Jean).

When I posted pictures of the recent DJ blocks a couple of days ago, I forgot one, E-4, Buffalo Tree Hopper. Now how did I manage to do that?



I also finished another of the kites today. So that leaves just one more to do. I finished Goshen. The picture won't look like the others because I'm having gremlins all over the place, so I just took a digital picture of Goshen. NOBODY can be having this much bad PC luck. First my laptop was going, it would keep crashing spontaneously. Then the external hard drive bit the dust (probably from having dropped it one too many times), and now the desktop isn't even working properly. It won't recognize the internet modem. I'm ready to pull my hair out. And I don't have time to stop and fight with it right now, so I'll limp along for another week or two, then deal with it when things slow down a bit.




Oh, I also picked up a couple of very interesting relics at a rummage sale last week. They're in pretty tough shape, plus I haven't even wiped the thick dust off them yet! But I love the looks of them and if I do nothing but set them on a top shelf for decoration, it's worth what I paid for them, which was practically nothing....





And one last thing... for those of you who are interested in hand piecing, my good friend Crispy has added another blog to her repertoire, Hand Piecing With Crispy.

It is an absolutely EXCELLENT tutorial of how she does hand piecing. Check it out, it's well worth it. Even if you're already hand piecing, you'll probably be able to pick up a thing or two, she's the master!!!