Check this out!

My mom is selling treasures from my grandparents' house on ebay for my grandfather. My grandfather worked for an auction house for over 30 years and before that he owned his own antique store. Anything they saw that they thought might someday be collectible, they bought and stored it away. My grandfather has finally decided to let us help him clean out some of these treasures. On my trip to Tennessee, I brought home several popcorn tins and boxes full of vintage buttons. I will be listing these on ebay later this fall.

Right now my mom has a quilter's diary listed. It is from 1877. I looked through it and it was so cool! You can check it out here!

Do you believe in UFOs?

I am just knocking them out around here! This afternoon I pulled out another zip-lock bag with a in-progress project in it and went to work. I had a huge pile of left-over 2 inch blue squares left over from various projects and thought I would make another quilt like this. I had the four patches already made so I put it together with the solid blocks and got six rows put together. I guess it will have to go back into the bag for a while to age some more I gather some more blue scraps for more four-patches. I may have to raid my mom's box of nickel squares while I am at her house next week.
Before we went to the beach last week, I had dug another well-aged project out to work on. These nine-patches are made from fabrics that Maddie had dresses made from when she was little. I made most of the dresses (with lots of help from Nina) - my mom made her a few - and Nina even made her several (with matching ones for Eva!). I am going to use them in a pattern from "The Joy of Quilting". The alternate blocks are a rail fence block (navy and white) and a solid white block. The problem is that I no longer have that book and can't remember the layout! Nina is going to get her mom to send me a picture of the quilt from her copy of the book.
Hhhmmmm.....what else can I find to work on around here? I am running out of UFOs but the pile of "To Be Quilted" tops is growing!

Finishing up some UFO's

I have been in the mood to finish up some unfinished projects. Tonight I dragged out the box that had all my orphan blocks in it. Not as many as I had thought. Surprisingly (haha) most of the blocks contained blue and yellow! Right now this piece is about 50 inches square. I am going to put a wide border around it to make it into a lap size throw. I have got plenty more of the blue and white floral fabric that I used in the large vertical block in the center.

This is another UFO I finished this week. I had pieced nine patches out of the leftovers from the quilt I made for my sister for Christmas. I was bored with the nine patches so I cut them in half in both directions and came up with this. A little bit busy, no? But I still like it. It is about 35 inches square.


We are headed to Tennessee on Monday for another quick visit with my family before school starts back on August 9th. Where did the summer go?

Staying up waaaaayyyyyyy to late!

Sunday afternoon a couple of friends had their new house burn down...to the ground. They were supposed to move in today. They had crews out there refinishing the floor and most of the workers were smokers. They are thinking that maybe one of the workers threw a cigarette butt into the grass and the dry brush caught fire. As dry as it has been here it quickly spread. When it hit the house, it burned quickly because of all the fresh polyurethane on the floors. The fire department was supposed to come out to investigate yesterday. Thankfully no one was hurt and their personal belongings were not yet at the house. But it is still a huge loss for them.

So I was laying in bed at around midnight on Sunday night thinking about all of this and how horrible I felt for Sheryl. What to do, what to do. In my head, I went through all of the quilts I have sitting around here and of course couldn't part with any of them. So then I started thinking about what quilt tops I had sitting here waiting to be quilted. I remembered this green yellow brick road quilt - made with the leftovers from this quilt. I got up and went to the sewing room. Found some backing fabric. Got everything pinned on and started quilting. It is amazing how few interruptions there are from midnight to 3:30 in the morning! I got the quilt quilted and got the binding made before collapsing. The next morning I got up and put the binding and the label on. I think it turned out really cute. I quilted it doing big loopy-loops and leaves. Most of the fabrics had leaves on them so I thought it was appropriate.

I delivered it to Sheryl yesterday morning. She was so surprised and loved it. Her 3 year old immediately climbed up on the chair where we had it spread out and wanted to be wrapped up in it!

I am so glad that I was able to give a friend lots of quilty hugs!