Orphan adoption, 2021: make them disappear

 

UPDATE:  The winner of the drawing is Cindy Smith. 

Thank you all who entered!

Woohoo!  It's time for Cynthia's spring orphan adoption link up at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework.   Here is the link  to the event. 

In 2012 I gave a guild workshop on "disappearing" blocks.  That was before Jenny Doan brought the design concept to YouTube.  I  kept all the class samples I made -- the raw blocks, initial cuts, assembled blocks, and flimsies. I lent them to a friend to use in a class and she returned them. They've been on a shelf for ages.

And now you can have them!  You'll get ALL of these -- and  I'll include goodies to fill the flat-rate box.

To qualify to win you must fulfill ALL FOUR of these requirements: 

(1) Leave a comment stating the author and title of a book you've read recently and recommend. It CANNOT be a quilting book.  It CAN be an audiobook.

(2) Enter by 8:00 AM CDT Thursday, March 25.  I will draw the winner that morning.

(3) If you are a no-reply blogger include your email address so I can contact you. 

(4) U.S. addresses only.    

I look forward to hearing from you!              

Friday check in: elephant parade

3/30:  here is the link to the OMG Finish linkup at Elm Street Quilts.  My friends have received the placemats and they are delighted with them. 

 I was going to make simple slab borders for the elephant-block placemats. 

Then I thought I'd use a skinny strip and scrappy neutral borders.  That required piecing more scrappy neutrals. 

I didn't like the "fenced-in" effect.

 

If I took the fence out the elephants would be swimming in a pool of neutrals.

What to do, what to do?  

I happened to have some scrappy-batik slabs on hand.  I cut them into three-inch strips. 

I have quilted the elephants and the neutral backgrounds on all four.  I hope to finish quilting the borders today. 

(And now I have 16 3-to-4-inch strips of batik neutrals to play with.)

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday   and  Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

P.S. I honestly did not think about Elmer until now.  

Midweek: soda bread and elephants

 As far as we are aware, we are not one speck Irish.  (We may be surprised when we receive the results of the Ancestry DNA tests. We spat in the vials and mailed them in about a month ago.)   I baked a loaf of soda bread this morning and have corned beef in the crock pot for tonight's supper.

 That's cultural appreciation, not cultural appropriation.  I have never been to a St. Patrick's Day parade nor gone downtown to see the Chicago River dyed green.

 

A colleague posted her mother's soda bread recipe on Facebook last year.  The specific instructions are great!  (I used Greek yogurt in place of sour cream. I put a teaspoon of vinegar into the milk in place of buttermilk. I had to retrieve the 20-yr-old jar of caraway seeds from the top shelf of the spice cupboard.  Using 1 tablespoon a year means that jar will outlast me.....And I mixed the dough with a spoon rather than with my "mitts.")

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In the studio:  I pieced many scraps of batik neutrals for the backgrounds and did the applique last evening. They are 10-1/2 x 13-1/2.  Since they'll be placemats I need to make them at least 14 x 18. I thought I'd just add slab borders from contrasting/coordinating batiks but I had another idea.  You'll need to come back on Friday to see!  

Linking up with Midweek Makers and Wednesday Wait Loss

P.S.  I've seen "cornbeef" advertised at two local eateries. Vegan alternative? LOL. 

Weekly update: pie for Pi Day, square dancing, elephants, and reading

 March 14 (3.14) is the day for Pi, Pie, and Puns. I made cherry pie for the occasion.   

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In the studio:  I have finished 20 Nine Patch Square Dance blocks.  I found the perfect fabric for the sashing in my stash -- a Hoffman floral.  The colors are right (not too yellow, not too green, a little pink, a little orange).  The flowers are realistic, not stylized, which go with the realistic flowers in the centers of the blocks.   I need 1 yard.   I have 15 inches. Okay, what can I use instead?  I searched high and low -- in the yellows, the greens, the multis, the moderns, the vintage.  I searched all the other colors and genres just in case.  Nothing.   I don't want to buy fabric during Lent but I drove to Joann's to see if I could find something comparable to that Hoffman floral.  I hadn't been to Joann's for months. Lots of interesting new prints!  But I stuck to my resolve (yay, me).  I returned empty-handed.  

I will put the blocks away.  

I will go fabric shopping after Easter.  

Here is a closeup of the sashing fabric, just in case you might have some . . .

This week I'll work on my One Monthly Goal. I'm making four elephant placemats, a gift for friends who collect elephants.  

I think I'll go with brightly-colored elephants rather than the brown one. And I think I prefer right-pointing rather than left-pointing.  

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I have mixed reactions to short stories. Sometimes they end just when I'm warming up to the characters and the plot. I want to know more.  But in other cases they end perfectly, like a light bulb being switched off:  click!  The stories in Kevin Barry's That Old Country Music are in the second category. They are all set in contemporary western Ireland -- not the sentimental Ould Sod of expatriates but hard-edged, gritty, with love, sex, drugs, hard living--and thin rays of sunshine. 

Miss Benson's Beetle was such a delight!  It's another unlikely-friendship-adventure story.   In 1950 Margery Benson decided to quit her dead-end teaching job (she wasn't very good at it) to fulfill her lifelong dream of discovering the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia.  Three people responded to her advertisement for an assistant.  She hired the least-bad of the lot, Miss Enid Pretty.   Both the stolid, determined Margery and the bleached-blonde, ditsy Enid had literal baggage -- a Gladstone bag with insect-collecting equipment for Margery and a mysterious red valise that Enid would not let out of her sight -- and a lot more metaphorical baggage -- Margery's father's suicide in 1916 and Enid's past life including her now-dead husband.  During their long journey from London to Brisbane by ship; from Brisbane to Noumea (capital of New Caledonia) by airplane; from Nouema to the northern tip of the island, the two women adjusted to one another's quirks, protected one another's secrets, and forged an abiding friendship.  (Did Margery succeed in her quest for the beetle?  You will have to read the book.) 

Linking up with Design Wall Monday  Oh Scrap! Monday Making  

A golden anniversary

 Saturday, March 13, was the 50th anniversary of my initiation into Alpha Gamma Delta Fraternity.  That date in 1971 was a Saturday, too.  I've kept in touch with some of my pledge sisters and other chapter sisters all these years.  Facebook has renewed connections with many others. 

(I realize that this picture of Alex and me was taken a different year. Her dress and my hair are different. At spring break, 1973, I got my hair cut short, so this was most likely May of '73.  I made my initiation dress. It had six-button cuffs that fastened through corded loops. What a pain those were to sew!) 

A banquet . . . 

, , ,  and, of course, a party!  (Off-campus, of course.) 

 My search for photos from initiation day went from the handy archives (=front hall closet) to the deeper archives (=boxes in the attic).  I found that freshman year scrapbook and a whole lot more that included high school scrapbooks, grade school class pictures, and junior high yearbooks.  I brought a lot of stuff down and will go through it soon.  ("Soon" is a relative term. And I will probably copy some pictures, share some letters and papers, and then box everything up once again.) 

Saddle shoes were a short-lived revival fad  my junior year.  After 45+ years in storage the uppers and soles on this pair have separated.  The striped shirt ("Levis for Gals") was a just-before-college purchase that I wore all four years.  Poly/cotton will last forever. 

Jogging was new in the 70's.  Several us jogged a couple of evenings a week wearing our Alpha Gam-personalized sweatpants.   The "cool" Greek-letter windbreakers were nylon with yellow appliqued letters. I could only afford a poplin jacket with ironed-on letters.  

  

In 1973 I repurposed a pair of overalls into a tote bag and added some groovy embroidery. 

Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane!

Friday check in: thread source and batik stars

I am not buying fabric during Lent.  But thread is not fabric!  Someone on an online group recommended  Wawak.   A few clicks later I had an online shopping cart filled with Aurifil thread.  ** $7.95 ** per 1440-yard spool.  That's the everyday price!  The order came within a week.  I am sold!

The batik variable stars are now a flimsy. I made 36 blocks and used 32 of them. It may not look like it, but there is a color arrangement -- warm backgrounds in the center and cooler backgrounds around the perimeter.   (The four blocks I did not use were color combos that didn't fit.) 

 

Crocuses are in bloom!

Warm temps and lots of sunshine this week for my afternoon walks.   The red-winged blackbirds are chorusing.

Dogwood in the sand at Illinois Beach.

Pack ice on Monday.  I haven't been to the lakefront since then but most likely it is all melted. 

This skeleton was on the side of the path -- looks like a fawn.  (Ribs on the left, skull on the right.)   

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?   

Weekly update: hints of spring, multiple projects, and reading

March began with a flurry of activities.  On Wednesday we got our first Covid vaccine shots at CTCA, the hospital in Zion. It was quick and we had no side effects. The second shot is scheduled for March 31.  

On Saturday evening we went to the first indoor concert in exactly a year. (The last time was March 7, 2020.)  Only 50 people were in attendance with ample social distancing. The Lake County Symphony Orchestra featured a percussionist (marimba and vibraphone) and a brass quintet.   

Spring is in the air with lots of sunshine and mild temperatures. . It was great to get out walking again. 

 Illinois Beach State Park, Saturday:  don't be fooled by the sand-covered pack ice. It's not safe to walk on!  You can see the undercutting. 

Sunday:  There was ice on the ponds at Van Patten Woods.  (VPW is about seven miles west of the lakefront.) 

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My Myers-Briggs typology is ESFJ.  Among the characteristics is a need for closure.  Too many projects in the works is unsettling.  And that's just what I have in the studio right now.

But first, a finish:   16 framed four-patches in green for the March RSC.  

On one end of the design wall:   8" batik sawtooth stars. Just because.  I'm going to make 30 and then figure out how to set them. 

On the other end of the design wall:  a new spare parts quilt. 

 I don't have any more room on the design wall for the other new project.  Nine Patch Square Dance by Sherri McConnell  is the new quilt-along from American Patchwork & Quilting. My idea is a sunny flower garden.  I thought I might use different colors for the nine-patches and rails, but I think that a variety of yellows and greens will work better. 

The blocks are 9".  Here is the link to the pattern, though experienced quilters can figure this out at a glance.

Oh, and this is floating around too. (I had to take it off the design wall for the sawtooth stars.)  The units are made out of leftovers from Grassy Creek. 

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Linking up with Oh Scrap!  Scrap Happy Saturday  Monday Making     Design Wall Monday

I listened to Holy Ghost by John Sandford. Eric Conger's narration captures the off-beat, not-quite-snarky approach detective Virgil Flowers brings to the job.   

I just loved this story about women who have found themselves at unexpected turning points in their lives.   Eve has lost her job as an executive at a manufacturing company.  Sally has decided to leave her suburban life (with husband and house).  They are strangers to one another when they meet on the canal towpath near London. They encounter  Anastasia, a fiercely independent elderly woman who must go into hospital for cancer treatment -- but what do do about her narrowboat?  Eve and Sally volunteer to take the boat north for its annual overhaul. Anastasia can stay in Eve's now-vacant flat during her treatment.  All these decisions are out of character and yet for everyone concerned they are just right.  Over the course of the next six weeks Eve and Sally learn how to pilot a narrowboat along British canals. They meet Anastasia's friends.  And, importantly, they learn that they can reinvent themselves.   

Yes, the boat-journey-to-a-new-life metaphor has been used a lot.  But Anne Youngson's characters are endearing.  She uses turns of phrase that make the reader smile and nod, yes, that's so true.  

(And, P.S., I learned a lot about narrowboats and canals.)