The Wrath of Irene

Hurricane Irene paid us a visit Saturday.  DH and I are fine but a couple of pine trees from the back of our lot fell and clipped our house.  One of the branches went into an upstairs bedroom and damaged the roof.  We had rain pouring in most of the afternoon!


This tree fell first and hit the other one breaking it off.  They both clipped the house.

This is the tangle of trees next to our sun room.

This is the ceiling of the room upstairs.  The hole in the wall is where the branch came through!

The trees blew out the window in the room we were sitting in.  My husband was sitting right by the window.  We have thousands of pieces of glass in the carpet and on the furniture in that room.  We were lucky.  All over town there are trees down and houses damaged.  Ours is not nearly as bad as many others.  Around the corner from us a huge tree fell on the house and half the house is crushed.

This is a car that was parked in our neighbors driveway.  They moved their other cars to the street!!



The strength of Mother Nature is amazing!  I hope everyone else all along the east coast survived.

Good Bye Irene!

Bad news for the east coast!  Hurricane Irene is on the way.  We have tied down,  bungeed down,  put up and are on the way to the grocery store to buy bread,  milk and wine (the essentials).  She is a nasty looking lady. 

We are trying to be prepared.  Lets hope it won't be as bad as it looks like it might.  Yesterday we thought it was going to the east of Cape Hatteras but this morning it looks like she will go between Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout.  Right now it is a wait and see.   I wish I had a battery operated sewing machine.

We had an earthquake earlier this week!  Crazy weather week. 

Check out the challenge quilts

Lori at Cottonfields has hung the challenge quilts.  Her rules were use the two pieces of fabric and birds.  Look at the different ideas.  They are posted on her blog Talk is Cheap Quilts.  Mine is the one with the Freddy Moran chickens.

My cousins daughter is raising money for a adoption for a friend of hers.  I told her I would make a quilt and she could auction it.  My aunt gave me these squares several years ago and I never did anything with them.  I can't decide what background to use. 




I don't have any more of the orange print but I have some of the stars print. What do you think of this idea?  Here the star squares blend into the background.

The other problem I have is that even with a 4" border the quilt is only 30" wide.  Any ideas about how to make it wider.

The other day I found a site with a  tutorial about quilting as you go QAYG.  I am fascinated by the idea of making a big quilt and only quilting each square.  Have you ever tried it?  I did this square early in the summer but got distracted.  I would love for this to be the beginning of a big quilt.  Any ideas or suggestions?