DS as a House Guest

When your teen-aged children come home to visit for the Thanksgiving Holidays, it may be Pure Norman Rockwell; at my house, it's more likely things like Timmy eating carrots while he showers:


While driving home from working at the LQS on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, traffic became impassable on the expressway, so I bailed out to the surface roads, which take me past a good junk store, My Favorite Place, on Peachtree Industrial. The junk looked disappointingly worse than usual as I made the circuit, but I turned a corner and came upon dozens of very good quilt books by people such as Kindred Spirits, Nancy Martin, Harriet Hargrave, Piece o Cake, etc., for about $4. I decided on these guys:


More Dear Janies:

Clues

Well, it must be the holiday season, I can hardly show you anything I've been working on. Here's one fragment, destined for a gift exchange:

Another fragment, destined for a gift exchange:

Another fragment:

Another fragment...oh wait, this is Marcie's Christmas Sparkler wall quilt, that's no secret. And it may turn out to save my holiday season, because so far this quilt is my only Christmas decoration :-).

No Kicking and a Voice

I hardly kicked this Dear Jane around the block at all; it was so smooth to sew! Wouldn't mind doing several of these:

(Hey, does anybody recognize the print above? I just had a little scrap of it on the cutting table from who knows where)

And another that was done with no trauma, phew:

If I could get A12 made, I could put together the first two rows of Dear Jane and get an idea whether the scrappy background look is going to work. Hard to believe I've actually made dozens of her blocks.

A tiny quilt voice in my head (I think it was Jane...she seemed very nice...a bit determined) told me I'd better fix this block, so, okay, Jane, I fixed it:

Shop Samples, a Bit of Show and Tell, and Class Talk

Yesterday morning, I spoke to the art class at the high school where I work about quilting. It was very enjoyable as you can imagine to talk about one's passion. The idea was to talk about how you repeat one block to create an overall graphic design, to be followed by the creation of their own quilts on paper, so I brought some examples, showed some examples from my laptop projected via an LCD projector, and showed some designs from EQ as well:

Stars Around the Garden class was last night; here is a new shop sample in Little Quilts, "Glory Bound" by Bonnie Blue Quilts:


Here is a beautiful quilt that will be given as a Christmas gift:


Latest DJ:


and here is my Dear Jane shop sample for the classes display at Little Quilts; locals, join us if you want to start your Dear Jane:

Show and Tell Jo's and Dear Janes

Dear Jane blocks...first four are for a class sample:

The Jo Leftover pattern:

Show and Tells from Jo's Little Women...

placemats!

Cute chicks and blue kitty...

Apples

I have lots of Show and Tell for you from Jo class last night, but hey, we must write this blog chronologically, eh? so:
Went to the Ellijay area in north Georgia on Sunday with Beloved Son to get some apples right where they were grown since we have eaten up all of my own.

Yum, did lots of tasting and liked the Pink Lady and Arkansas Black the best.

The orchards were mostly very welcoming to their public. Some, however, gave mixed messages:

As we headed in to Dawsonville, desperate for a meal, Dogs and Hogs Bar-B-Q presented itself just in time and we had a great meal. I liked the S-M-L piggies on the containers:

As a prelude to Show and Tell, here is an interesting old tattered piece that our Noble Leader purchased just yesterday. It's two old worn (worn) pieces cobbled together; can you tell what it might have been used for? Maybe to keep a horse warm??