A Middle of the Week Outing

Yesterday I had a date with my sister up in Westminster Maryland. As I was traveling on Rt. 27 I saw a sign for Historic Main Street in Mount Airy. I had plenty of time before meeting her. I already intended to hit the Westminster Antique Mall so I took the turn onto Main Street and found a nice little town. I’d forgotten they had a quilt store, Patches, and luckily it was right there on Main Street. I stopped in and found a very well stocked, full service quilt shop. I didn’t make any purchases, but I expect to go back some day. The Westminster Antique Mall was full of all kinds of things. These were the only quilts I found.

The stitching on the pink rose quilt was very nice. 

This was my favorite booth. It took me back to a 1950's kitchen and ladies bedroom. I considered buying the wooden drying rack (right center with the vintage dogwood fabric hanging on it). I thought it would be nice to hang little quilts on. Is hanging quilts on a wooden dowel really a problem? Would you do it?

At 4:00 I met my sister at the hospital where she works. Our first destination was Elizabeth and Co.’s tag sale. We got there about 15 minutes after they opened and there was already a crowd. They said people had been waiting since 2:30 for the doors to open. These gals sell painted vintage furniture and other decorative items. Here are some photos. Click on the link to their blog for better ones.

These items came home with me – a red quilt rack, a distressed light green shelf, a pale yellow desk organizer, a cornflower blue vase and a little off white divided tray. Their prices made it hard to resist. My sister also made some purchases and luckily we got everything in her minivan. She took me on a little tour of Westminster and we stopped at Eclecticity (Art*Books*Music..and more) where I bought this previously owned book.

After checking out all the good reviews on Amazon, I'm looking forward to reading it. Apparently it won an award when it was published in 1977. I think this might be the first paperback edition. It is mostly text. This is my favorite quilt photo in the book.

After our tour we had dinner at Rafael’s. We both had yummy Portobello pannini’s and homemade potato chips.

We went back to the hospital, moved my treasures to my car and I followed her to her house in Eldersburg. I wanted to see her new kitchen. It’s lovely and her new vintage coffee table looks good in the adjoining family room. I wish I’d taken a photo.

It was a fun day and now I feel the urge to paint. After some quilting, of course!

All About Jo

Last Thursday I attended Jo Morton’s lecture and trunk show about decorating with quilts at Fairfax QU. What beauties!

Saturday, I attended her Rhubarb Crisp workshop. It amazes me how little I get done at these things. I only made 4 sawtooth star blocks in 6 hours. I realize we took time to gather around the table, chat and eat lunch. Yes, it was fun and I learned a new way of making flying geese and Jo’s method of clipping seams for neater pressing. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend you take one of her classes.

some of her class sample blocks 

my little 4" blocks 

Being the obsessive person I am, I took every opportunity I could on Sunday and Monday to work on this project. I wanted something to show at her next lecture (Making Something New Look Olde) which was today at McLean QU. But guess what! I left the little flimsy I made – four star blocks with the flying geese sashing – at the meeting. I’m trying not to be too made at myself. A message has been sent out to the group and I hope I hear from someone soon. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of it. I’m sure you won’t mind a few photos from Jo’s trunk show instead.

Thanks to my friend, Suzie, for taking the trunk show photos. I was a lucky holder.

Lone Star Finish and Other Happenings

I finished my lone star a couple weeks ago and kept forgetting to show you. The star points sat in a drawer for so long - It is so good to have this one done.

Jo Morton is in town and she is visiting three chapters of Quilters Unlimited. I'm looking forward to her Rhubarb Crisp class on Saturday. I'm a member of the McLean chapter and she'll do a lecture and trunk show for us next Tuesday. I wanted to see her before the class so I went to the Fairfax chapter meeting to see her this morning. I will have no trouble sitting through it again next week. Jo is very personable and her quilts are fabulous! I wish I had taken a photo of my fabric selections for the class. I have way more than her instructions call for and it is all ironed and neatly tucked in a bin. I'm sure I'll only use a small fraction of it during class, but it was fun bonding with it again. I started with some of Jo's fabrics - Cocoa Express, Crimson and Clover, Ember Red and Evergreen and added many other designers to the mix. I think you can tell by the names what colors I using. I also added some cheddar prints. I had fun shopping my stash and I can't wait to get started. I have no business starting a new project, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a class with Jo.

I've only been stitching a little bit here and there and when I do that I tend to go from one project to the next and the next and the next..... Let's see, what projects have I touched in the past couple of weeks... EPP the hexies, hand quilting the morningstar, a simple square block pattern for a charity quilt (did a nickel swap with gals in the Springfield chapter), handpieced a spool block, made a basket block, and stitching hanging sleeves on my 3 quilts going into the guild show in June. I do my housekeeping in the same haphazard manner ; c )

Oh, and I've been weeding, weeding and weeding some more in our garden. How could I forget - I have poison ivy on my forearms. It's not bad enough to see a doctor, just bad enough to drive me crazy at night. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. It's blistered now and I've been soaking in Aveeno. I picked up some tecnu spray at the grocery store today. I just put some on. It smells awful so it should be good, right?

Early this morning I put my 9-patches from the McLean chapter exchange on my design wall. I want to use two different fabrics for the block background and alternate them. I was so tickled that this setting uses the exact number of 9-patches. I made a few extra with my strip sets so there are several repeats. I'm not sure what color to go with on the background - maybe light and dark grey, or blue and grey or blue and brown. I don't know. I might go out to the Jinny Beyer Studio tomorrow morning and audition some of her palette fabrics.

My rotary cutter broke (the grey one in the photo) so I went to JoAnn's and used a coupon to get a new one (grey and white). I'm not completely happy with it. It's light in my hand and I find it hard to open and shut it. What brand rotary cutter do you use?

Quilt Hunting

After my massage this morning, I headed out to Manassas to Iron Horse Antiques.

I saw this quilt here last year! No wonder it hasn't gone anywhere - it's buried!

Love the sled under this quilt.

Love the stripes and dots.

The quilts on the left were supposed to go home with me. They were from the same booth so the gal at the counter was calling "Betty" to see what her best price was. I had some other shopping to do and never heard from them. The prices weren't so bad, but by then I wasn't sure I had to have them so I didn't go back.

Kinda sad to see a quilt like this cut up and made into pillows. Makes you wonder if the quilt was really in such bad condition.

 This was an interesting box. I couldn't figure out how to open it.

This little bitty did come home with me. The pink gingham is so sweet. Just three of the corners are rounded.

I also bought these 1970's juice glasses.  I couldn't get a photo where they showed up well. One is Speedy Gonzales and the other is Pebbles from the Flintstones (Fred and Wilma are on the other side). I think these originally sold with jelly in them.

Have a great weekend!

Hand Quilting Goof

Started quilting my morningstars

and found this-

Yes, I could feel something wasn't right and foolishly kept going. Once I got a good look at it I knew I couldn't continue. Thought about it and decided I had just done things in the wrong order and I needed to baste more.

Did this and I don’t have any puckering in the back. So far, so good.

Now I’m taking out the part that was puckered - painful! – while watching the Masters. 

I don’t do it often, but I like watching baseball and golf. Does that tell you something about my personality?!?

Happy Easter!