Family minus one

We had a wonderful weekend with the whole family minus our daughter!!  We have several birthdays in May and June so our older son did  a Low Country Boil for us Saturday night.  What great fun! You put everything in a big pot.  When it is done you dump it out on the table and dig in.  It was really good. We had crabs, shrimp,  sausage,  potatoes, and corn. 



I have been working on the twin quilts this week.  I wanted to work at the beach but my little toe and the end of the bed had a run in!  How can something that seems so minor hurt so bad!

I finished the yellow twin quilt this week and put borders on both of them.  This is the blue one.

This is the one with the yellow print.   I have a cute coordinating print for the back.  The back of both of them will be the same.  The stars are the same in both of them too.

One question:  Is it twin quilts or quilts for twins!! 

A couple of weeks ago I had a high school class reunion.  If you want to get in touch with your place in the world,  go to your high school reunion!  It was wonderful.  How can folks that grew up in a small southern town following WW2 turn out so different.  It is amazing and a tribute to our parents and our community.  We were all fairly sheltered but so many of us have branched out and are doing fantastic things with their lives.  I don't regret still being here.  I regularly see folks I started school with.  I am very comfortable with where I am. 

Happy Summer to all!!

Summertime is calling me!

To me summer is Beach,  Baseball and Being with family!  We had the greatest time at the beach with my cousin and her family.  I can't wait for them to come back next summer. 

So enjoyed seeing our oldest grandson at his tee ball game yesterday.  If you want to laugh go to a tee ball game.

A great time with all the family.  My husband cooked hamburger and hot dogs.  Why is a hot dog so good at the beach?




I have been doing some quilting.  I showed this one before.  I guess you would call this a commission piece.  I am doing two quilts for my daughter in laws friend who is having twin boys.  This is the first one.  I need a border.  I am thinking a rich royal blue.  What do you think?

My daughter in law and her friend are both Virginia Tech grads so I had to include their logo.  

















I also attended my high school reunion this past weekend.  What an experience!  I have stayed here but so many of my classmates have been lots of places and done lots of things.  It makes me feel a little boring.   It was so interesting to hear what everyone had done.  I reconnected with several classmates and hope to stay in contact with them.  We are all so different than we were in high school-Amazing!!

So what is everyone doing to beat this heat?  Sewing,  relaxing,  reading, watching TV?

Challenge Quilt

I am doing my local quilt shop, Cottonfields challenge.  This is my first challenge and yes I know I am not supposed to show it but I am so excited about it I cannot keep quiet.  This is part of it.  I have had so much fun with it.  You know I love making stars.

This is another part of,  including the border.  I am enjoying spiky sawtooth borders these days.
























June is going to be such a busy month for us,  full of family time and beach time.  My cousin from Tennessee  is coming with her family this weekend.  I have my high school class reunion the following weekend,  don't ask how many years.  Fathers Day weekend my son from Charlotte and his wife are coming.  I am already tired!!  By the way,  my son won his neighborhood pie contest with a Key Lime Pie.  I hope we can talk him into making it for us.   The last weekend in June our daughter from Indiana will be here.  I love summer!!

I like to post pictures.  Since I could not show you more of my challenge wall hanging I will show you my huge hosta.  Somehow I have not done much yard work this spring. 

Thanks for all the suggestions about my found nine patch squares.  I have several things going right now and I am not going to do anything with them until next fall. 

Back from across the pond

My friend and I are back from London.  We had a great time.  The first thing we did was get on a "hop on hop off" bus and we got to Buckingham Palace just as they were changing the guard!!  I could have come home then and been happy.  Who does not want to see the changing of the guard?

On Friday we took a day trip to Stonehenge.  It was so so impressive.

A view of the London Bridge.



This is a picture of some tapestries in the Cathedral at Bath.  They were so quilt like. 

We had a great great trip although it was short.  I even learned to use the Tube to get around, not bad for a retired grandmother!!

My daughter in law has a friend who is having twins boys in August and she asked me to make them quilts.  Is this too bright? I want both quilts to be similar but not exactly the same.

In cleaning out my mothers house I have found so much fabric and I found these squares she made.

Any ideas on how to use them.  They all have the plaid or print in the corner squares. There are 109 of them.  What a strange number?  For one thing it is a prime number so you cannot make it into a rectangle. 

This was one of my ideas,  put a solid of the same width as the square between each one.

I have a pet peeve that is really bothering me.  I read lots of blogs.  I try to comment on as many as possible.  If you comment on my blog I do my best to respond.  I have commented on several blogs lately and did not get a response.  I even sent one blogger a personal email and didn't hear from her. I love my blogland friends.  I really appreciate all of your comments and I feel like I should acknowledge the fact that you stopped to read my blog.  Is it wrong to think that consistently not responding is rude?

NC Ferry

Happy Mothers Day to everyone.  I got these beautiful strawberries in the mail from my daughter.  I would rather have had her but the strawberries are good.

We decided to ride the ferry on the way to the beach on Friday.  North Carolina is so fortunate to have a great ferry system and for the time being it is free.  This is the ferry from Minnesott Beach to Cherry Branch.  It takes about 20 minutes and it is a beautiful ride.  It is a great thing to do with the kids.

We are meeting the ferry going the other way.

My aunt is always an inspiration to me in so many ways.  She is the one that really inspired me to start making quilts.  She introduced me to Gwen Marston and I will be forever grateful.  She encouraged me (pushed me) to go to my first Gwen workshop and I was hooked.  Since then we have worked with Gwen two more times.

My aunt is making a quilt for her daughter's friend who adopted a baby.  I just had to post these stars she made.

And now look how great these stars look in the quilt.   My aunt is into a phase of doing 9 patches with 3" squares.  The stars look like they are just tossed on the quilt.

















My daughter in law asked me yesterday to make quilts for a couple of her friends,  one who is expecting twin boys!!  I think I might try this idea. 

Fun with Friends!

What a great week.  Thursday my cousin and I visited her friend who has a long arm quilting machine!! I had never seen one in use before and I was fascinated.  Here is my cousin pinning the back of my quilt to one of the bars.

Here is my black and white quilt being quilted on the machine. 

This is my black and white quilt with shots of color.  I have not put the binding on yet but I hope to do that this weekend. I am very excited about this quilt and how it turned out. 

Here is the back.  My $1/yard Elvis fabric!!

















A close up of the quilting,  Betty did a great job.

For the Royal Wedding my friends and I got together,  wore our hats and watched.  Darlene took the top off of her Easter tree and put it on her hat. 

Our hostess did a great job of making us feel very English.  Her table was beautiful. Of course we had to have ham biscuits. 

 Here are all of us in our hats! What a hoot,  we had a great time.

New Things

We have been at the beach for the last few days.  I finished my black/white quilt top.  I don't have my camera with me so I will post the pictures of that later.  I finished the sawtooth border and it looks great.  My aunt saw it and said the pictures don't do it justice.  She had not seen it in person before.  I always feel a letdown after working and thinking so hard about a quilt.  I worked on those black and white blocks during the winter of 2010.  It is a good feeling to finish but still you have so much thought invested.

Our new quilt group, Non-traditional quilters,  met last Monday at my dear friend Lori's quilt shop,  Cottonfields.  She has a great blog too.  There were only 4 of us,  hopefully there will be more this week.  She showed me curved piecing!  I know should have done it before but I am scared of curves!!  Since I was trying to motivate myself this morning I decided to try it.  Wow!!  It isn't hard at all. 
This is some of the fabrics from my black and white quilt and "shots" of color.  Now I have to decide what to do with it.  I think I will piece the back of the black and white quilt and use it there. I have some great Elvis fabric for the back.  I do love pieced backs.

I have some great starfish fabric that I have had for years.   I was playing with it yesterday afternoon and made these blocks.  Maybe I will make a few more.  It would make a charming quilt.  I thought about black and white log cabins  but I am honestly ready for some color. 

Did you see Tonya's post on Unruly Quilting?  She is trying to do without her rulers!!  I am not sure I am ready to be that liberated!!  I am sure my grandmother never used a ruler or a rotary cutter and she made great quilts.  Tonya also has some links to other blogs with very interesting stuff.  Daintytime is very interesting.  I really like her ideas about Mod Mood Quilts.   I think the first one I posted is sort of a Mod Mood quilt.