Berries!

Not much sewing has been going on, but we've been making lots of jam! We have a bumper crop of black raspberries this year & my hubby was sweet enough to bundle up and brave the wilds (and the mosquitoes) to pick them. My daughter & I also visited a local orchard and picked lots of tart & sweet cherries, so we're getting a good start on filling up our freezers with jam. And we still have lots of fruits to go!

Since I haven't any new quilt work to show, I thought I'd show some of my vintage linens, just a couple for today. My mother-in-law was passing on some linens a while back & I ended up with one of these, and my daughter with the other. My daughter was kind enough (I think she got tired of all the weeping and begging) to give me the other.
I'm not sure how these were to be used, but I believe they would sit on top of a pillow when the bed was made up. The look like pillowcases and are the same size, but don't have a back. It seems to be a common design, I've seen it a few times before, but it does seem a bit of an odd sentiment to stitch up for decorating the home, doesn't it?

I should take some pictures of the veggie garden soon (I think we'll have enough veggies to feed the entire county) but in the meantime here's a picture from another garden. I love monarda, especially the red. I bought plants a couple of years in a row that were supposed to be red, and when they bloomed I was disappointed to find they were actually purple. Finally I have red bee balm & plenty of it!


I hope you're all enjoying your summer, or whatever season you happen to be in at the moment. I'm falling behind on my blog reading, but we're supposed to have some rainy days coming so I hope to catch up!

More Quilt Show

Here are more pictures from the quilt show in Shipshewana, Indiana. I tried to be so careful about getting the information on the quilts, but I'm sorry to say I missed the boat on this one. Isn't it a beauty, though?

This is Shades by Marilyn Peters of Kendallville, Illinois. I love the colors she chose for this, lovely.

This is another Barbara Perrin quilt, Empty Nest-Two. I wish I'd measured those squares, they're pretty darn small. I did take a pic with my hand held up for comparison, but the picture looked pretty dorky, so I left that out. Another amazing quilt.

A little closer....

This is a close-up of the border. Wow.

My full sized picture of this one didn't turn out, but my daughter has a picture of it on her blog. I wanted to show you these close-ups, though. It's 9-Patch Strip Tease by Doris Goins of Kendallville, Indiana.

This is another quilt by Barbara Perrin, Sunburst Serenade. Wow again.
This is Paisley Stars by Cheryl Baker of Middlebury, Indiana. Love the colors on this one, and the paisley, of course.

This is Batik A La Zig Zag by Nancy Scott of Berne, Indiana. Batiks are so great.

My daughter showed this one on her blog, but I wanted to post my close-ups of it. It's not at all my kind of colors & I'm not too into modern art, but on closer inspection I was knocked out by this one.

Check out this hand quilting, yowsa! It was made by Michele Shepherd of South Bend, Indiana, a wedding gift for her nephew.

Another close-up of Still Water.

This is a close-up from the quilt Past-Time Ladies by Fay Mack & Debbie Van Kuiken of Villa Park, Illinois. The full quilt is on my daughter's blog. I wish I'd taken picures of every block.

One kind of strange thing that happened was when I looked through my viewfinder at the Boston Commons quilt, the purples were all blue! I've never had that happen before. Weird.

And I'll finish up with a couple of pictures of the vendor's area. Hope you enjoyed the show, I sure did!

The Whole Quilt

Just a quick entry today to post the picture I promised in the previous post, the full sized picture of my favorite quilt from the Shipshewana quilt show. ---Oops! I never posted the name of the quilt artist who made this, her name is Barbara Perrin and she lives in Pullman, Michigan.

And another picture that my daughter also sent along. That is one AMAZING quilt.

Shipshewana Quilt Show

I was really pleased with the first annual Shipshewana quilt show. They had a nice selection of quilts, all very well made. Fortunately they allowed photos, just no flash. I'm going to start with my favorite quilt, but (oops) I think I had my daughter take the pic of the full quilt, so I'll have to get that from her. She's also got pictures from the show, we're trying not to have too many duplicates.

This quilt artist actually lives in a nearby small town, I hope I can meet her someday, though I would not be bringing along any of my quilts. I mean, seriously people, look at this work!


I didn't compact this photo down, so hopefully you can click on it and see the detail. It is a delightful quilt, with so much intricate detail, just amazing!

This one is so incredible, look at that quilting! I'd love to sit down with the maker of this one and hear more about the story of the quilt.

I'll end for now with this lovely fairy quilt, and will post more quilt show pictures soon.

Giveaway!

First things first, the giveaway is on my daughter's blog, A Cargo of Joy, here. Which reminds me that I'm wayyyy past my 100th post AND my 1 year blogiversary so I'm really overdue for a giveaway myself. I'll have to figure out something good to make up for being so late.

I mentioned Picnik in my last post, if you're interested in free sites to alter photos, there's another one I like, Photoshop Express, it's where I altered the photo below. They have some nice options.



I love the endless number of things you can find on here. Remind me again what we did before the internet. It just cracks me up when my son calls on his cell from California (lost) so that I can get on Mapquest & give him directions. Or my Mom calls me from Florida to find the instruction book for her stove on-line so she can figure out how the self-cleaning option works. I feel kind of bad for the kids that are growing up with it because to them it's just always been there, they might not realize just how amazing it all is.

Back to quilty stuff: I finished up my Bunny Hill, A Tisket, A Tasket block for June. I didn't think I was going to get it done before the end of the month, and I really don't want to get behind on the BOMs. The bird shows up better in real life, but I need to fix the eye, the bead isn't really showing up too well. Birdie needs a neck bow, too, but I didn't have the right color so he'll just have to wait until I can do some ribbon shopping.

Guess I'd better go get ready for the quilt show tomorrow (yea!). It's supposed to be 85 degrees, guess I'd better pack some extra water. Hope I can get some good quilt pics to post!

A little of this...

....and a little of that. I have a feeling that's how I'll be working this summer. I'm kind of distracted and can't seem to settle on any one project. It will be a good thing if I finish up a lot of small projects anyway. I finally got my June block done from Gail Pan's A Christmas Wish. I'm just about done with my Bunny Hill block, I should have a pic of that in my next blog, just have to do the embroidery parts.





I got the first pillowcase done, dang that was a lot of embroidery for one pillowcase! I'm not real thrilled about the colors, but the colored lines on the pillowcase were permanent so I didn't think I should stray too far from what they had printed on it in case the lines showed through.
I do like it, though, I'm a sucker for a little house in the valley with smoke coming out of the chimney. Not sure what those things in front are, though. My daughter & I decided they were supposed to be wagon wheels, but why the red designs on the wheel?? No clue.

Have you discovered Picnik? It's a fun site, you can do quite a bit of playing around with your photos for free. Of course if you want to upgrade there are 'premium' options, but there are a lot of cool things there that you can do at no cost, so if you haven't seen it you should definitely check it out. I am not exactly a computer genius, so I like a web site that makes things EASY. My daughter has been making some beautiful photos on there, too. I love this picture of my grandbaby, very cool.
These pictures are deceiving, though, the tones of the altered photos make it look really cool outside, and actually it's face-of-the-sun hot. Okay, I might be exaggerating slightly. I'm still cooling down after spending a few days with no power (thus no air conditioning!).

There was a second big storm on Friday night and a tornado hit an area just a few miles from us. There was no warning, but fortunately nobody was hurt. It took out a house and a few barns and did some damage to some other homes as well. It's a shame about the barn in the photo, it looks like it was in good shape. I feel bad for those people, dealing with insurance companies and builders is a nightmare.

I'm really looking forward to Friday, there's going to be a quilt show at Shipshewana. Well, actually it's going on right now. It's the first quilt show they've had there, they even had Marianne Fons as a speaker yesterday. I hope it's not too crazy down there on Friday, I thought things might have calmed down a bit by then, I'm really not crazy about crowds. Hopefully they'll allow pictures. If so, I'll share them with you this weekend!

Sweet Pickle

Isn't he cute? I took a walk through a local craft mall while my husband was getting his hair cut & found this little guy. I'll have to check back for more veggies so I can use them in the garden, though I would have picked up this little guy, garden or not. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Larry the Cucumber of Veggie Tales.

It was a good news/bad news day. I had to go to physical therapy about pain in my hip and ankles. X-rays showed spondylosis, which they tell me basically means I have arthritis. So at least it's not something worse, but it is something that will just get worse over time and can't be cured. At least with physical therapy I can strengthen the right muscles & that should help a lot. They already told me a lot more than my regular doctor knew, it's nice to find someone who can answer your questions.

I haven't felt much like quilting lately, hard to believe, but it happens. We've been spending more time outside, enjoying the nice weather, working in the garden, grilling out when the weather allows. However, I did get started stenciling the cupboard in our bathroom last weekend. I thought I'd breeze right through it, but the smaller stencils take a lot longer, especially if you want to use 3 different colors. I really like the stencil, it's exactly what I wanted.

I've also been doing some embroidery, I like to have something to work on in the evenings. I found this pair of pillowcases last week at a yard sale, I like the picture, but it's a LOT of embroidery. I guess it wouldn't be if I made bigger stitches, but that's not how I roll (ha!). I have a pile of things like this to embroider that I've bought over the years so I really need to get more of them done. Hopefully my kids will like some of these so I can make a few as Christmas gifts & kill two birds with one stone (geez, that's an awful saying, isn't it?).

I'll finish up with more pictures of quilts from Lolly's in Shipshewana, enjoy!