Garden and BB CW #26

Have been eating cherry tomatoes and really am just too excited about the bigger guys coming along:

This is an heirloom strawberry variety. Looks like a little valise:

Okay, maybe this block has one print too many lol:

Guild Meeting: Show and Tell

A bit of multi-tasking: embroidering while listening to Guild meeting...

So much Show and Tell!

My photo is terrible, but this is a very pretty quilt:

A friend and I are swapping blocks for this quilt; in fact, two friends and I are doing a swap for this pattern, in two different sizes:

These two pieces were begun in Sue Spargo's workshops (notice the delectable hand-dyed green velvet in the first):

a happy row:

These are Sue Spargo's quilts:

Hope S. gave Barbara B. a birthday gift as we sat down to lunch after Guild. A wool pinkeep; isn't it adorable? Hope says she got the pattern at a wool shop in Connecticut and is the owner's pattern. Notice the mouse pincushion:

Under the kitty face:

We actually have had some rain lately in burning, arid Georgia. Wait! There was some wind, too! which blew over three tomato cages as I was standing next to them (I was standing outside stupified by the novelty of cooler and moving air).

This called for further carefully thought-out landscaping:

This fellow is inexplicably six times as large as any of the others and has lots of tomatoes started:

Summer Break Half Over

If only Rembrandt could learn to relax.

Tragic, but true: the Break is half over. It is going by like a bolt of lightning. Must continue to make the most of it. Did a very large clearing job in the front yard, gradually and laboriously over a few weeks, made possible by the exit of the Bad Men. Things look much better now. But every year, there are the queen anne's lace and brown-eyed susans filling the yard. They have been beautiful this year, really breathtaking if you are into prairie meadows :-) :

The tall chaste-vitex has also been extraordinary. People have been stopping to comment on how beautiful all of this is:

I say this every year, but I just laugh out loud when I see all of this, thinking of how it appalls Timothy. It should be lawn. Good thing he didn't see it this year, it's the biggest spread yet. A child of the prairie, he isn't.

Two thunderstorms (so desperately needed) have bowed the flowers to the ground; they will have time to recover partly (not completely; they are too far gone), because we are now again doomed to have mid-90s and no rain for many future days. I would consider an escape to Gatlinburg, to do quilting before a bubbling creek for a few days (and to eat candy), but they are having the same temperatures.

Several years ago, I planted a dogwood in the troublesome island. In the wrong spot. I finally decided to take it down. Birds had a nest in one of the hanging gourds at the porch, and apparently were using the dogwood. They snapped at me continuously throughout the tree removal and kept perching on the remaining leafy branches as they got fewer and fewer. Then there were no leaves left at all. Okay, I felt kind of mean. But I'm glad the tree is gone. I want the area for tomato plants and wanted a view to the apple trees. I also didn't like how it was growing perfectly straight like a mini-telephone pole with no character at all; do all purchased dogwood trees grow this way now? Am considering cutting these branches level and nailing a pan to them for a bird feeder. Or a work surface for garden tools:

The first tomato ha:

The first apple!

Despite interference, I managed to quilt my George Washington wall hanging. Quilts look good with quilting!


The latest BB CW block:

I have begun to sash the BB CW, most unwisely using stretchy homespun plaid on the bias:


Muriel P. made the Civil War Flag Sewing Kit that Barbara Brackman has on her regular blog. Isn't it wonderful?? I have to make one of these!

The applique block beneath it....unbelievable??....Muriel is making the Friends of Baltimore quilt!!

Kept this photo to remind myself of what I sent Timothy, so I can send different things next time:

I have lots of Show and Tell and will post that next. There is also enormous excitement among Georgia quilters because of Sue Spargo's upcoming appearance at the East Cobb Quilt Guild.

BB CW #23

This is Stephen Douglas' campaign button as pictured in BB's blog post:

Fabric a-Plenty

Carol of Brown Quilts sent me a yard of this green and brown woven stripe so I could make more of these blocks; Carol, you are the best, thank you so much for taking the trouble to do that! I could have hunted for that woven for a very long time, I do believe. I used up the last of my small piece an hour before Carol's yard arrived, so there was not even any lag time :-).

So now I have nine blocks. I have the feeling in mind of what I want to do with these blocks, but can't quite decide on the setting. Add some of this log cabin block on the diagonal around them? Use this brown and green woven plaid (that goes so well with the green and brown stripe) as their setting triangles? Put a medallion something in the center? What to do, what to do. They're so cute, I want to do justice to them.

And Melisa of Sweet Home Quilt Co. in Conyers GA had that brown and black stripe; incredible! I drove down there yesterday and nabbed it. Melisa said she had 1,000 blog posts when she returned from Market in SLC; I am just a very lucky girl that she happened to see my Post of Desperation. Melisa has such pretty antique primitives in that lovely house-shop. Sigh. Love primitives.

The beige background print from Harper's Ferry is proving elusive; I am posting that on missingfabrics.com. It certainly is lucky for us Needy Quilters that Tricia Cox runs that wonderful site. I believe I have found the fabric each time I have posted there.

Moral of the Story: Always buy lotso lotso fabric.

Holy Harry, it is hot in Atlanta. Ninety-five as I write this. The little heirloom tomato plants are doing beautifully so far, even though I started them very late. See how they are cleverly hiding themselves under their paper tents from the dreadful burning Georgia sun.

The "normal" tomato plants from Pike's, planted earlier, also seem very happy. Now where is that tomato food?