Tis the day after...

Three things to be happy about:
(1) warm apple pie
(2) chamber music
(3) a night lit by candles

Tis the day after Christmas
and all thru the house
not a creature is stirring
except my mouse!

Today I catch up on some of the blogs that I normally read, but haven't read in awhile!

Meanwhile I took the black-and-white inner border loose from my scrappy border because I made a very minor - doh! - mistake in the measurement that I just couldn't let go.  I probably could have stretched it to fit but I took it loose - considering Murphy's law and all.

AND... since I took it loose... I went ahead and tried red instead of black and white - thanks Marei!! - and I actually like it better.   SO... when I put on a new inner border, it'll be red instead of black and white!

Our bee just reached it's ten year anniversary - yaaay!

We're doing an exciting block exchange for the event!  Every June the community center where we meet has a Community Day celebration; the completed quilts will be displayed this coming June during the event.

I don't think the blocks are supposed to be secret, so I may be sharing my progress with you as time goes on.

The theme is "10" - we are to create blocks that have the number 10 represented in some way, shape or form, whether it's spelled out "ten" or numerically "10" or represented by ten items - such as ten fingers or dots or whatever.  Anything goes as long as it's a 10!

We're in two groups of 10 - apt, eh? - and I have oodles and oodles of ideas running around in my head!  I've been doodling and doodling - can't wait to get em on fabric!

Have a great day - get those gifts returned, catch those sales, sew forth and sew on...

Santa rides tonight!

Ready or not, here he comes - Merry Christmas everybody!

Sew forth and sew on

More guild photos

Three things to be happy about:
(1) warm apple pie
(2) the winter solstice
(3) finishing what you started

Isn't that a gorgeous purse?  Renea, one of our guild members, bought it from a vendor who upcycles wool coats into these beautiful bags.

The inside has two generous pockets; she reuses the buttons and loops as fasteners, and appliques a unique shape on the outside, also from wool.

Gorgeous!

Meanwhile I have more pictures from Saturday's meeting - enjoy!

Sew forth and sew on til later!

Guild meeting

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a loan paid off (my car, yaaaay!!)
(2) humorous greeting cards
(3) gusts playing the wind chimes

It is sorta windy outside, though not at the moment.  The sky looks gloomy; it must have already rained just a bit, but they're calling for heavy rain later, yuck!  I'm taking Felicia by Costco today, I hope it won't be too too crowded if we go early - yeah, right!!

Yesterday we had our Christmas party at guild meeting, it's always a fun meeting.  As usual we had lots of great food, fellowship, and show n tell ... and we even learned the Quilter's Shuffle!  I think the December meeting has to be my favorite one of the entire year.

Guild member Chloe Ellis was the winner of this year's raffle quilt - way to go!

Here's a sneak peak at the 2014 quilt:

I love it because it's scrappy - right down my alley!

More pictures later - sew forth and sew on!

Wonderland cometh!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a giant tote bag
(2) Gloria Vanderbilt jeans (cuz they fit me!)
(3) first snow of the season

Yesterday didn't turn out bad for me at all!  I had a medical appointment for 3 pm, and by the time I got out and moving (earlier than I normally would have) I only had to deal with wet roads, which are a breeze.  I used the extra half hour looking at 2014 calendars at Barnes and Noble ... didn't see anything I wanted to pay $14.99 for!  I'm partial to calendars based on Black artists and designers - Annie Lee is my all-time favorite but B&N doesn't carry them.

As I'm typing this we do have snow that started as large flake and are getting smaller ... the NBC news people are sounding disappointed that we aren't already getting a walloping, they've resorted to telling people how to measure the snow - "not on the grass, but on a hard surface."  Sheesh!

Schools, local government and Federal government offices are closed ... ahh, the good ole working days - how I don't miss em!




About my quilt... I have to make more of the border strips for my quilt, but sometimes you want instant gratification, shoot!

A few months ago (how time flies!) I bought the Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam dies from Accuquilt and I started fooling around with them...

They're gonna turn out right cute, I need to use brighter colors though.

This will be for my sister's youngest granddaughter, who has a twin brother.

I'm thinking of alternating Sue blocks with stars or even a nine patch, not getting too fussy because I want to finish their quilts before they graduate high school!  Right now they just turned 4, but I do tend to procrastinate a bit!


Lately I've been having a very hard time getting my pictures from my camera disc, it doesn't want to read for some reason.  I know it's a disc problem because I used an old one in the drive and it reads fine.  AND I bought a new disc, I know it's someplace on my desk but I can't find it... it's almost like looking for Waldo!  If necessary I'll go buy a new one, they don't cost that much anymore.

That's it for now, sew forth and sew on til later!

Lazy Sunday

Three things to be happy about:
(1) spacious refrigerators
(2) new winter boots
(3) Sunday papers bought on Saturday night

Yesterday's weather was cold cold, starting off with a few snow flurries and rain, then freezing rain.  Usually if quilters are "snowed in" or house bound we quilt, but how did I spend my day??

Facebook!

If I think long enough I could give you a long list of things I should have been doing, but what can I say ... lazy Sunday!

I have friends who play games like Candy Crush, but my favorites are the spin-the-reel games by House of Fun

racking up those points!

Rapunzel and Mermaid are good ones; Reelz of Oz is cute, with icons based on the Wizard of Oz...

This was my largest score from a free spin

What can I say - lazy Sunday! 

Today's weather is predicted to be snow, a little sleet, freezing rain, turning to all rain... I don't mind rain but I swanee I can't deal with ice!  I have a medical appointment at 3:00, I'll have to play it by ear!

If any of you have been singing "White Christmas" or "Let it Snow" ... well ... sew forth and sew on!

New stuff

Three things to be happy about:
(1) car naps
(2) counting the days til deadline
(3) a Zen moment

We had two new Walmarts open up in the District yesterday, one of them is near Union Station (which makes it handy to the Metro) and the other one is just a couple miles away from me!

The hours for both are 6:00 am til midnight, so when I woke up this morning at 6:30 I thought to myself, "hmmm, the Walmart is open, why don't I go up there??"

There were 6 parking attendants on duty in the underground parking garage, even at that hour!

An escalator leads to the store on the main level....

The produce section is right at the front as you enter, everything looking bright, cheerful and new!  My stomach started rumbling at the smell of rotisserie chickens...

Although it's not a super humongous store, it has a bit of everything, including a full-scale grocery department.  

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but you might ask what did I need so urgently at 6:30 am???

bagel thins!

two camisoles!

Christmas socks!

I do shop at Walmart, and it's handy to have one so close to where I live.  If you look at the first photo again you'll notice it's built really close to an apartment house, those folks just need to take a one-block walk around the corner to get there!  

At the time I went, it was smack in rush hour traffic and I wasn't even on the main street... the store sits on Georgia Avenue near Missouri Avenue - an intersection that's always always busy at that hour anyway... what can I say except "uh-oh!"

Have a great Thursday, sew forth and sew on til later!

Thankful - and thankful!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a child's fascination with small things
(2) car naps
(3) having all the ingredients

Yesterday I got to have Thanksgiving all over again!  My friend Sandy invited me to have a second Thanksgiving dinner with her hubby, daughter and grand kids, and a family friend - thankful!!

It's not nice to say someone else's mac n cheese tastes better than your own mom's, but in this case Sandy wins hands down!  It was delicious.

Did we kill the bird??  Yes we did!

After it was depleted and we were all repleted and groaning, her friend and quilting companion Dale wrassled out that elusive wish bone, to be wished upon later.


Now for more thankful stuff...

Glad to report that after fah-ting around a couple days, I'm making progress on the mid-string border...

I pieced the units together as leader-enders while I was sewing the rows of the top together...

Then there was a question that stumped me but shouldn't have ... which color to use as the inner border to put a break between the center and string border?  It couldn't be a busy-busy fabric because of all the texture created by the pieced string blocks, nor did I want to go with a solid.  Somehow blue or green didn't give me the look I wanted, I didn't want to use yellow (too pale) or red...

So, just in the interest of getting on with it, I went with a white on black fabric...

How to lay out the border?  No matter how I turned them I didn't like the look of string blocks directly next to each other on different sides of the quilt, it just looked too jumbled!  So I'm trying the inner border all the way across the top and bottom...

One side looks okay so far, eh?  

It's not too late to change my mind, I haven't stitched the side down just yet.

Onward and upward!

That's it for now, sew forth and sew on til later...