Grandmother's Blooms

So glad to call this one finished. It's been a very long term project. I started it in the 90's and started a push for the finish last year. Pardon the feet and fingers in the photo. I was hoping to photograph it on a bed, but I wanted natural light and it's too cloudy for that today.

Here is the back-

and some detail-

I love the crinkly feel and look of a just washed quilt.

I've mentioned my foray into furniture painting in previous posts. I was delighted to read about other quilter's furniture painting adventures from Belinda and Wendy. I finally have a few pieces to show you.

Before

After 

This dresser was a lot of work. I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Country Grey and Old White. I found it on Craiglist and plan to sell it at a local thrift shop that I consign with.

Before

After

We (my DH helps me) decided to take the scalloped trim off because it was brittle and already broken in some areas. I found this table at an estate sale in my neighborhood. I used ASCP Paris Grey as the base coat and Old White for the stencil and just a whisper on the trim. I hope to sell it at the thrift shop, too.

I'm not a big stencil person, but I like it on this coffee table.

I saved my favorite for last.

Before

After Stripping

After Painting and a New Seat

My neighborhood does a clean up day in the spring. Put anything on your curb and they will pick it up and take it to the dump. We have regular biweekly trash collection, but they won't take just anything. The night before this special pickup I drove through the neighborhood to see what I could find. Score! I found this gossip bench (telephone table). I have absolutely no use for this thing, but I love it and plan to keep it! 

My DH reupholstered the seat. I love it! 

I used Scandinavian Pink for the first coat and Cream for the second coat. I probably could have distressed it more.

This post has been linked to ELIZABETH & CO. 

Now back to some quilting stuff. I won these fat quarters from Doniene. Thanks Doniene! Check her out. She has a wonderful blog and has been doing a fabric giveaway every month.

Quilting Cousin

I just spent a fun day of chatting and quilt sharing with my cousin Mary from San Diego. My poor parents had to put up with a day of "quilt talk". They seemed to enjoy our show and tell and my mom kept us well fed. Here we are with our current handwork. I love that deep pink heart in her wool work, a new love.

I have another quilting cousin in Oregon. We all hope to meet someday for the Sisters show. I'm a little jealous because they keep in touch via Facebook. So far, I've resisted Facebook because I'm worried about the time I'll spend with it. I already spend more time than I "should" reading blogs. Are you on Facebook? and do you find it very time consuming?

Mary showed me her beautiful quilts on Facebook. She also had a file full of dozens of antique quilt tops that were GIVEN to her by a genealogy friend. The quilt tops were made by her grandmother, Daisy. While the woman had interest in her family genealogy, she was not interested in the quilt tops. Lucky Mary! They were mostly early 20th century quilts and an uncompleted, but still beautiful, crazy quilt. This quilt was my favorite. I love this setting and the bubble gum pink is irresistible.

I hope those of you suffering from these high temps in the states are faring well. Last Friday night the Washington, DC area was hit by a derecho. Derechos are very damaging wind/thunderstorms. We were watching tv and there was a warning at the bottom of the screen about severe thunderstorms. All of a sudden the power went out and we could hear the wind. I wouldn't say it was like a train, though some in the area did. It was loud and scary nonetheless. We lost power for 49 hours. It came on late Sunday night and we realized our AC wasn't working. Temperatures were around 100 humid degrees all days so we were really sweltering. Our neighbor hooked us up to his generator some so we didn't lose much food and had a fan going at times. When the service people came Monday afternoon to fix the AC I had to turn them away because the power had just gone out again. That lasted just 6 hours so it wasn't too bad. We had every window and door open and every fan going overnight. I was so hot I didn't care if we got robbed. I made sure the 3 dogs were on the ground level with the hopes they would scare anyone away. Though I expect they'd more likely welcome them in. ; c ) All in all we were lucky. Several lives were lost and many trees and limbs caused severe damage to homes. One large tree in our neighborhood fell smack dab over the bedroom of the neighboring home. I'm sure those people won't be in their home any time soon. We also heard of a young family in our neighborhood who had just settled on their home and moved in that day. They had a large branch fall on their car and lost power for days. What a welcome! We've had record setting heat all week and this Saturday we are expecting the mercury to hit 104 degrees. Ouch! Looking forward to next week when temps are forecasted in the cool 80's.

Stay cool!