Almost Christmas!

Okay...so now October isn't sounding so bad. lol It is not mid December and Christmas is less than 2 weeks away. Still have a little bit of shopping and decorating to do. Looking forward to my house being in order. It's disasterous...looks like a Christmas decorating tornado blew through the place dropping and tossing Christmasy stuff all over the place but not anywhere that it belongs. >_< I just finished another little doll quilt for a QATW swap. I really like the way it turned out. :) At some point I will get pictures of the last few doll quilts I've made.

I'm in the mood to bake Christmas cookies...there's always so many kinds that we want to have on hand...Peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses, Russian teacakes, chocolate fudge, gingerbread and sugar cookies, date nut bars, spritz cookies...some with colored sugar and some with jelly. Mmmm... :p There are others I know but if I even get half of those baked BEFORE Christmas I'll be amazed. o_O

Happy Holidays! Trish =3

October???

Where has the year gone? lol I mean really...wasn't it just the beginning of summer? How in the world did it get to be October already without me noticing. hmmm... Guess it's time to pull out a few things that I like to set around the house this time of the year. The leaves are turning here in New England. It's hard not to take notice of the beautiful reds, oranges and golds. The rain should be clearing out this evening and tomorrow looks to be a picture perfect fall day. Cool, crisp and clear. I think a nice long walk is in order.

On the quilt front, I've been trying my best to get in at least an hour each day of quilting time on Chester. So far, I've done pretty well, with the exception of a day here and there. My Farmer's Wife blocks have slowed down. :( Just not feeling it this week. Maybe it's all the rain. I've one that I've been working on for 3 days now. :S 3 DAYS! This is a 6" block! What on earth could make it so difficult that it's taking me 3 days to get it done?! I just need to sit down and get past it. (insert determined face here.)

Seem to have gotten myself involved in all sorts of swap stuff over at the Quilting Around the World site. :D Fun stuff! The last round of Gold Star Quilter's, a really sweet 30's sampler just started, another round of doll quilt swaps; this one is all fall related. :) and a nice quick maple leaf block swap all done in batiks! Yummy! I love they way they look but tend to be a hand quilter for most of my projects. This one will force me into practicing my machine quilting skills.

Well, the kids are home and it's finally the weekend. Ahhh...I love Friday afternoons! =3

Quiet fall day...

The last few days have been quiet around here. I've been able to concentrate on hand piecing my little Farmer's Wife blocks. I'm up to 20 completed now. :) I was able to get Century of Progress done while listening to the principal speak at my son's open house for school last night. I always hope I'll come across someone else who's a quilter or is interested in learning that would want to become quilting buddies. I'd love to have someone to sew with a couple times a month. :) It's so much more fun to sew with a friend when you have 500 half square triangles to make. lol

Here's a picture of my progress on my Farmer's Wife blocks and a picture of Jersey's back. I had to fix those block a couple times because he was determined to lay on them. =3

The Farmer's Wife

Here's where I stand so far on my growing pile of The Farmer's Wife blocks. :) I am having such a good time working with each one. Scrappy samplers are so much fun to make...no opportunity to get board with making the same block over and over again. Each one is like a mini quilt all on it own. I'll prep the next few blocks in the list so they're ready to go. It's great having handwork that's portable. I get so much done while out and about. :)

I need to pick Chester up off the hope chest and quilt a few threads. I was really hoping to have it done by October...but I don't think that's going to happen. lol Good thing there's quilts on the beds already!

The girls and I are trying to get our ducks in a row with ideas for a Children's party at the firehouse for Halloween. We're hoping to ask for donations of canned goods for the local food pantry as admission. I'm also working to get a Halloween quilt together to raffle off for them as well. And it just got a little easier! A friend over in Rhode Island is gifting me with a nice stack of Halloween crazy squares! :D (the kind where you stack several different squares and then chop them up, then resew them back together.) I've got 4+ yards of a fun Halloween border print that I'm hoping will finish them off nicely! Anhoo, I need to get that quilt together and stitched up fast! I've got just over 2 weeks to get it together and machine quilted. :o

Well, it's about time for me to run out the door and drop Mathew off at school. I love the potential that each new day brings...so many possibilities! =3

Grrrr....

As you know I've just started piecing together blocks for the Farmer's Wife quilt. I have the EQ5 program for it and for the last 7 blocks, (I know...I should update! maybe I wouldn't have this problem) I've been happily hand piecing together my little blocks. I'm just going in order that they're listed in the block directory so when I came across one that could be adjusted so that I didn't have so many seams, I did just that. I fixed it so that there weren't so many. Hand piecing makes inset seams simple and I think finishes the block of nicely if it's possible to do. Anyhoo...I decided to go through the list and "fix" other blocks that I wanted eliminate extra seams on. About the 3rd block in I go to preview the rotary cutting page for the block and since it's not a square or triangle it can't extrapolate how to cut it. So they just delete it from the page! Ugg!!! The shape is labeled in the drawing of the block but not represented with all the other rotary cutting measurements for the other shapes. This is a block where they've taken a square and then sewn a flying goose block to the top of it to make a house like shape. This isn't a hard one to figure out...I can do it on my own, but sheesh!

Alright, enough grumbling. back to sewing! =3

My first Farmer's Wife blocks!!!

Here's my first 3 little Farmer's Wife blocks. I could wait no longer so last night around midnight I started piecing my first one. lol Think I'll go pull a few fabrics for the 4th one and get started. Happy dance!!! =3

Hey!!!

Wowser's! It's been MONTHS since I was here. :x I wish I was better at remembering to post on a regular basis. Can't blame it on much...I just seem to get sidetracked easily with family and quilty things. Which are good things to get sidetracked with if it has to happen. lol I've several things that need to be uploaded and posted. Most of which are little doll or wall hanging type quilts. I've since sent them all out to quilty friends that I've met on line. They were part of different swaps run at quiltingaroundtheworld.com Such fun! I have really enjoyed participating in them. :) I've also finally started hand quilting Chester. At the moment it's easy peasy stuff...just tripple diagonal lines across the center blocks. I've some other things planned for the borders.
Also finished piecing all the blocks for my Double Delight quilt. Yippie!!! I plan on getting the top together little by little. This quilt pattern comes from Bonnie Hunter. It's posted on her site Quiltville.com as a mystery quilt-along. She's such a fun quilter to follow! :)

The kids have all gone back to school. Mathew's in the 6th grade and has moved up to the middle school. Laura's moved up to the high school and Rachael's a senior! Gosh, they are all growing up just way too fast! Speaking of the kids...I have to scoot! Must get to the grocery store before they get home!!! :0

Hope everyone has a great day!!! =3

IT'S SNOWING!

It's snowing! :) You'd think living in New England that we'd get more of it...but this year has been very flip-floppy and by that I don't mean the kind you wear on your feet. lol The states south of us have received tons of snow while we have just had a couple good ones this winter. I never thought I'd love the snow this much. I figure if it's going to be winter...we might as well have snow. Everything looks so pretty when covered with snow. It's like a giant eraser...covering up the fact that everything is brown and gray. =3

Anyhoo...I thought I'd update with a picture of my Chester County Medallion quilt top. Finished mitering the borders a couple days ago. You can see in this picture that I still have yet to trim the corners. I so love this quilt! It's a document reproduction of an antique quilt that is housed in The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Meaning all of the fabrics are true to the quilt. They were reproduced specifically to make this quilt. Only missing one part....the backing! :o I am having a heck of a time locating the fabric needed for that. Somewhere I just know there's 9 yards of it with my name on it... =3

Here I will ATTEMPT to keep track of my various quilty projects. There are always lots of projects going on...usually I have 3 or 4 active quilt projects and others that I pull out now and again to work on. I'd probably finish more if I just worked on one at a time...think I must have quilter's ADD!

Current projects are -

• CW Ohio Star Medallion - Quilt pattern by Judie Rothermel (LOooooOve her fabric and quilts!)
• Floral Charms
• Quilting Around the World - Block of the Moment
• Grandmother's Flower Garden

I'll snap a few updated pictures to post in a bit. Hopefully Jersey doesn't think I'm spreading them out for him to play with...lol He thinks every quilty thing put out is there just for him to play with and mess up. Must pass inspection ya know! =3