Little Houses from Little Quilts book....a 20" X 20" wall hanging(I photograph against another quilts backing..that's the light floral you see beyond the edges of the houses). I'm trying for one last March FINISH of a UFO. I've tried for one a month, this year. If I get this one done by tonight, I will have finished 3 again this month...9 total so far for '06 ! I'm very happy about that. Only one side of the binding is stitched down as I write this morning. See explaination below...LOL I machine quilted this one...just stitching in the ditch. I did take time to match the thread color to each house and star. Had decided I didn't love it enough to hand quilt it....DONE is a good word! 

The close up...I'm not unhappy with this wallhanging, but I am disappointed. From a distance the houses just sink into the background. And naturally I didn't take several steps back to look at them before I jumped into the cutting and piecing. I am proud to say I figured out add those sawtooth stars way back before it became trendy...LOL 

As I said, I'm having a very hard time getting this UFO finished. And THIS is the reason. It was my choice to use this backing fabric. I just focused on getting another older piece used...naturally. But I see now that I am going to have to write a note to myself, DON'T use a dark backing if the binding is medium to dark. I absolutely CANNOT see the tread or the stitch, or even the edge of the binding against this background. One of the dirty little secrets to having this particular vision challenge. I'll muddle through this one, but be wiser next time....you can count on it!! 

Rainy Thursday.... and not much more fun than a rainy Monday. But I'm glad for the rain, what WI has is an abundance of dirty snowbanks and street sand. Puddles every where which guarantee you'll be tracking sand into the house. I've been on the run today, a paying it forward day. Driving into MN and picking up a neighbor at the hospital, transporting her. She has total knee replacement on Monday and will be doing her after care at the local nursing home. Not a hard job, just one that needed doing, and was time comsuming. So I give you one of my vintage postcards today..an easter greeting from across the years. There is no date on this one, and it was never mailed. It was addressed to a Raymond Dolfine, in River Falls, WI. Someone wrote "Does your hen look like this one?" and is signed Adele. Makes me wonder, when, and why it wasn't mailed to him, and did he ever get it, or did it stay in the desk of the sender? The graphics of this old card are a far cry from what we have today, and yet it has a charm of its own. And so I, too, send this friendly little rhyme, to wish you well at Easter-time.Hope that my greeting arrive at your house..*S*

Weird red background fabric for Linda J(which won't be my setting strip) And a section of the braid before I trim. I don't pre-cut the length of 2" strip that I am using...I just add them as I pick them, and trim even after 5 or 6 strips. By using the triangle(Thanks Amy!!) to begin, I've chosen to make my braid 5" wide. It's the width of the 24" ruler that I use.

Stir-ring Things Up.......so many of us in Mavericks and Stash are playing with strings lately. Maybe it's that 15th of March..The Ides are Upon Us....followed so quickly by the 15th of April....a day of reckoning. Maybe we see that frugal is good(at times!) or maybe it's just a time of gay abandonment...a "what the heck" time. Obviously I didn't want to be left out...LOL. These are some of my "strings" play. The blocks are 5" at this point. And while they are bright, and happy, and fun...something is lacking. The nice thing with string blocks, as with many Maverick undertakings...is the rule...."there are no rules", I like that one...alot !! Are you having any fun with your piecing??? 

And since I'm not really satified with the blocks the way they are, this is a possibility.....some or all of them, mophed into something else. A second split is also possible...time will tell. 

OK...WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE??????? A messy stash? A pile of UFO's that reach the sky, errrrrr, ceiling? The incredible list of "round tuits"? A few pounds to lose? A pile of stuff to donate? Being late in sending birthday greetings? Need I keep going????? We all have "something". And of course, an EXPLAINATION is best, but we often offer excuses instead. "The dog ate my homework syndrome". The "I never have a spare moment" or "as soon as the kids are in school". The excuse that I find most fitting is that "LIFE HAPPENS WHILE YOU ARE MAKING OTHER PLANS". Day to day, month to month, year to year....that old rascal time just keeps movin' along, whether or not WE make any progress on things we want or need to do. I absolutely LOVE what I saw last night on Nellie's Needles. Do I work that way? NO. I love what Tonya does over at Lazy Gal Quilting. Do I meander down her quilting path? NO. Do I want to? YES! Hers, Jeannes, Traceys, Bonnies, Joannes and all the rest.....but I don't. And I think I have figured out why. On my way to making ALL the quilts I REALLY want to make, I have wandered into an inlet, a safe harbor called "making the quilts that are for someone else". And on days like today, when I'd love to JUMP into a new idea...I don't. Because "I OWE"....2 graduation quilts, 1 wedding quilt, and I have about 60 UFO's hanging over my head. And if I wait til I get all that done, they will have been replaced by more UFO's and more "obligation" quilts. More scraps to use, and so many, many miles to go before I sleep. I think, in a way, a person has to have a "cleared deck" as well as an idea, to create something unique and creatively clever. Right now all I have is excuses.......how about you????( I take that back....I DO have an idea...just dawned on me...*G*... that's a seperate blog entry.) 

Found a wonderful blog read(and see) tonight while browsing on Technorali. If you get a chance, check out the wonderful donation quilt posted on Nov. 22, 2005, called "Thankfulness". It's a blog called Nellie's Needles. Her work is incredible...not just the donation quilt...*VBS* Very inspiring...

http://nelliedurand.blogspot.com/

Remember that old saying, "you can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs?".......well, there is a price you pay for shopping in your stash. Pulling out what you hope will work, cause you're on a low or no fiber diet. I pulled many pastel yellows, a few pink, peach and blue to complete the cake stand top. And something blue for a border on the bow ties. And some backings and bindings, and did I mention I couldn't resist starting some thing "string"? And a pieced border for the RailRoad crossing? And that neat one at Bonnie's with the 3.5" squares sewn to the 2 rectangles..can't remember it's name? Oh, and an all pink bow tie top?? Hmmmmm.........thought maybe I forgot to mention a few of those.....*G* IF this was ALL the mess, it wouldn't be bad, but the rest of the room looks like Hurricane Sam made land fall right here in WI.

In the corner, between the computer and the sliding closet door...this is what happens while shopping in your stash...or at least this is what happens to ME...*G* 

If you just saw this part, it doesn't look too much worst than when I showed you last summer..*VBS* 

In this part of the closet, the only thing to survive the hurricane damage was the shelf with the baby flannel. 

Eye Candy for vintage lovers everywhere......more of the wonderful old blue fabrics, shirts in black and white. Pink checked flannel, red plaid something, very loose weave, both brown and black and white wovens, dresses maybe, or skirts. The green, a sort of paisley. The fabrics definitely span the years......piece from a scrapbag. Hard to believe the makings of a quilt, coming out of a small(or medium) bag, kept especially for "patches". 

The backing...flour sacks, rough version, not pretty. Totally utility....making do. I was very moved by this top I had bought. I sat and thought about it as I finished quilting whatever came before it. About the woman, about what her circumstances might have been. I firmly believe that we, as quilters, step forward each generation on the footprints of what came before us. Maybe I believe you can't really know where you are going, or why, if you don't know where you've come from. And so I chose to use these very coarse flour sacks and a wool batt for this quilt top. The sacks were sold in some local store for .99 each. They are fairly good sized, I think it took 4 of them and some "bits" to make the backing. The sack says "Pillsbury" Southern King Patent XXXX. Higher up you can see what is probably Arabic.And in very small print at the top, in faded blue, it says "For Export", and then some kind of a customs type stamp. But what the bags say isn't of that much importance. I felt they were in keeping with the "flavor" of this particular top. It's soooooo a utility quilt, such a "make do", I wanted nothing to distract from the top itself. In hind sight, once it was quilted and bound, I realized that this top probably NEVER would have been hand quilted. Maybe, but probably not. And that's ok too, as I stepped from the footprint of the maker into my footprint, as the quilter., adding my bit to it's completion.

Another shot of the backing. I quilted this one on the diagonial line through each block. It has a light weight wool batting, and yes, it does quilt like a charm. The wool batt predates the ones that are used now. No cheese cloth or scrim, just a light wool batt from a woolen mill locally. I don't know what will happen when I wash it. 

American Beauty....quilting dates far, far back to Chinese dynasties who quilted layer together to make their clothes. "Patching" or patchwork, as we know it, is distinctly American. And the maker of this old quilt top was a true quilter. The top is set 17 squares by 21 squares. Each square finishes at 4". It's a hand pieced top. I bought it many years back at a little antique shop for about $20. It's not a "beauty" by most standards. In looking at it, the maker had just the ONE red square..which is pretty much dead center(I have the quilt folded over for the picture). It's not so much what she HAD, as what she DIDN'T have. Of the 357 squares in the quilt, more than HALF are pieced. Scraps of the same fabric pieced together to get a big enough piece to cut 4.5". Think about that. All done by hand. I amazed me then and amazes me now....how much that gal wanted to make "one more top". No doubt finances were an issue. Maybe she was a widow living with a son and daughter in law. Trying to keep to the background and be mostly useful but invisible to her daughter in law. Things were hard for everyone, but hardest of all for an older woman after her husband died or left her. There was no Social Security as yet, and few job opportunities for women. There was no social organizations to seek help from, nor any pension plans. I have lived this first hand. At age 27, my mother and father "took in" my Grandmother when her husband died unexpectedly. In your 20's with a one year old first child, and your mother in law comes to live with you....seemingly forever. My dad was always good to my Grandma, but I'm sure it caused many strains on the finances and the marriage. Gram was dependent on them for EVERYTHING...clothes, food, shelter, medical needs, glasses...any and everything you can think of. Could she have been the maker of this quilt top??? Definitely. To fill the spare time, to her herself occupied, to make something useful, yes. You would and could piece together the tinest bits to make another block that would make another quilt. You would be doing what you could, where you were, with what you had. And so would I. I'll tell you a little more about this quilt tomorrow...*VBS*

Look closely at this part of the quilt...in 3 of the 4 blocks, that you can see well, each is pieced. The red/green check is pieced 3 times to get a 4.5" square. In the neat brown one you cad see it's pieced by looking at the dots arrangement. 

Can you see on the plaid square the lengths to which this quilter went? The quilt is hand pieced. 

One of the neat old blue pieces that someone had in their bag of scraps. 

Friends and cousins....Jessica and Alisen are two of the little girls I've given snuggle quilts to, over the years. I love scraps, and making scrappy quilts gives me great joy. I made the one on the right for Alisen for her birthday in Sept. Her Dad is my new son in law. Al is an only child and she and her cousin Jess, are inseperable. Not wanting any little thing to come berween them, I made and utility quilted one for Jessica also. Both were flannel backed, as the girls are showing you. Those 12" friendships stars are pretty clunky, but you sure can see the fabric that way...*VBS* Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Compare...really an odd word if you think about it. Good if you are buying a car, bad if it's your children. In this case, it's just about measurements and Finn's fun, folly and foolishness. These are about as extreme as it got for me. The bow tie knot finishes at 1/4", the tie piece at 1/2" and the whole thing at 1". Set together the bow ties would finish at 1/2". Will I make a whole quilt of these? Probably not...LOL But if you subscribed to the Minature Quilt Magazine back in "the day", you just had to try these and see if you could do it...LOL I could, and I did..*G* These are probably right up Lucy's alley. Or Keryn, over at pages from me...or was it her twin???? Hmmmmm........

And you thought all my foolishness was just with words....LOL Oh my no.....it goes much further than that. The little quilt(?) on the left is actually my nametag from my former guild..*VBS* Silly old bear! 

Something new begins......

And it's not from scrap! Are you amazed?? Me too..*G* Everything is cut from FQ's and my stash. All the background is the same, and each fabric is just being used in one block. Might keep the setting posts all the same..haven't decided as yet. Was auditioning the magenta you see at the bottom of the picture. The block is called Aunt Lizzie's Choice.

Friends with Aunt Gracie....I know you've seen this before as a finished top. Now it's a finished quilt. I decided to send it off for long arm quilting, and be done with it. I'm delighted with the quilting. Just enough sun this morning that the flash didn't go..but you get the idea. Probably headed to one of the DD's.It's about 60" X 70"...9 patches and friendship stars.

The closeup of the wonderful quilting...*VBS* I know some of you think I make my friendship stars backwards(point wise) but this is how MY book shows them. I don't think there really is one right way as long as the star can spin. 

Weather Update: My little corner of the world made the Metro MN news at 5 last evening....coming in at 18.5" of snow in less than 24 hours!!! That is more than we normally get the whole month of March..LOL. North of us, and slightly west...Rice Lake, WI came in with 24" from this storm. This morning the sun is brightly on the new snow, and we are at 12 degrees. Compare to Saturday, when it was 60 degrees..if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes, it'll change..LOL

"What a difference a day made, 24 little hours............" well, in this case it was 72 hours since I showed you WI in March on Friday. Weather is what happens while you were making other plans. This is what I woke up to this morning. We knew it was coming..have been under a winter storm watch the past day and a half. This is the same looking south east shot I took on Friday. The landscape has changed...and this was at about 9 this morning. The winds are gusting, and it has rained, thunder and lightening, sleet and finally snow. The drifts out by the roads are now about 3 feet high, and still it blows and snows. But I shopped in the sunshine on Saturday, so I'm good for whatever comes..except a power outage...if that happens, I DO have enough quilts to keep warm, and I can always quilt to pass the time. Hope all of you are safe and warm and NO ONE was in last nights tornadoes in ILL. Hugs to all...Finn