Garden catalogues are still arriving in my mail box. The snow is leaving slowly and it’s almost time to start working in the garden. Last fall I planted garlic that I bought at a farmers market. I bought three different kinds of garlic. I’m waiting to see if they survived the winter.
I love day lilies. Every time they start blooming, I say that that one is my favorite. They are so beautiful, even if a blossom lasts only one day. The yellow ones are so bright and the orange and magenta ones so striking.
For those new to my blog, I match fabric to the colors in a picture of flowers and then make a block from Kimberly Einmo’s Block book. I am making 10″ blocks. The blocks today are the 7th and 8th in this series.
I’m still not sure how many blocks I will need or how I will sew them together into a quilt. Until I do, I will have another UFO.
Have a great day and happy quilting.
Several years ago, I bought a book called Miss Rosie’s Spice of Life by Carrie L Nelson. There are 13 quilt designs in the book. When I showed it to my daughter, I remarked that I liked every quilt in the book and I would make them all. She challenged me to make all the quilts from my stash and I counter challenged her to make them all, also. All the quilts were made from our fabric stashes. Even though we thought that our stashes would diminish, they did not. It took over one year for each of us to make all thirteen quilts. I machine quilted mine and she sent hers to a long arm quilter as she still worked full time. We were so happy to sew the last stitch on this project.
This is the first quilt in the book. It is called Whirligig.
I made mine using solid fabrics with a black background.
Hers was done in browns, reds yellow and beige.
This week’s Gaa – Barge is a very small piece. It is only 9 1/2″ x 10″. The pattern is called Chinese Coins and is so very easy to make. It is made from very small scraps.
It uses an adding machine tape for the stabilizer. The tape is easy to remove when sewing is finished.
Flip and sew scraps onto the adding machine tape. Make sure that they fill the whole tape plus a little.
This is the back side of the tape.
Place a rotary cutting ruler on the edge and trim sides away.
When both sides are trimmed, the strip is straight and even. Remove tape and insert strip between sashing. Add a border.
When I was a young mother, Nana taught me how to make the quilt. I placed green where she had green and the centers were yellow. My fabrics are from the fifties. I used scraps from the skirts that I made for my girls and some from Nana’s sewing. My quilt is hand quilted. 
My mother had inherited one of her quilts and when she downsized asked me if I wanted to keep this quilt. I was honored to receive it. At first glance, it looks like squares sewn together, but standing back, there is a definite pattern.
Each square was bordered with a hand sewn feather stitch.
As I photographed the quilt on the living room sofa, I noticed that the living room rug was one that she hand hooked. I recently took out the carpet and had Pergo put down in two rooms. This rug was in the attic, so I brought it down stairs to use until I could find a new rug. I like it so much, it is going to stay.
Miss Molly, my quality control inspector, had to check the quilt. Yes, she can see through all that hair. That is her winter coat. She will look much different next month when she goes for her vacation and spa treatment.
Turn dough onto a lightly floured board. Let rest for 5 minutes. I put a bowl over the dough.
I used cheese, pizza sauce, and pepperoni on one pizza. 
I didn’t want two pizzas, so wondered how it would be if I made a dessert pizza using one apple, some raisins, nuts, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It was not very good. It would have been better with a pie crust, not a pizza crust. Not wanting to throw it away, I whisked one egg with 1/2 c milk and a little sugar, cut up the dessert pizza and baked it for 30 minutes at 350. Delicious bread pudding.
Usually, I make my own red sauce, but I was lazy and bought a can at the store. There was some left over, so I froze it in little tins. I’ll take it out of the tins, transfer it to freezer bags and put it back in the freezer for later use.
Nancy’s wall hanging was the first one that I received when the swap was over. Her quilts were perfect. It is 15″ x 19″ Another year, she received a small wall hanging that I made.
I always wanted something from Shirley. She is a master of the mini quilt. This one is 17″ x 19″ I had watched her work on this quilt at another group meeting and really liked it. Every year, at the Yankee swap when I got something from Shirley, someone took it away from me. I thought that I would loose this little quilt, but the last person in the swap chose something else.
I went home with Claire’s quilt the last year that Claire was with us. She moved to Florida and I have such fond memories of her. I could have swapped for other items, but I wanted a memory of Claire.
The first was made from two paper pieced flowers. I don’t remember why I made them. They have been in my stash for a long time. My sister in law gave me a toilet paper cover for Christmas. It was knit in Christmas colors, As pretty as it was, when the season was gone, I put it away. The two flowers looked about the same size so using the knit piece as a pattern, I designed a cover. I enjoy adding piping to quilt pieces so piped around the top. It looks like Spring.
Last June, I had a class at the Vermont Quilt Festival with David Taylor. He taught Invisible machine applique. It is an quick,easy, and fun technique. The piece, Under the Apple Tree, was completely appliqued in the class. Then it has sat in my ufo stash until this week. It just needed the border added, quilting and binding. It is 12″ x 12″ so didn’t take long.
When I made the Garbage to Gaa-barge series, I belonged to a group called the Tuesday night quilters. We had lessons and sewed challenges and round robins. At one meeting, a member was making a baby quilt. The fabric was unusual. It was not baby quilt fabric. When it was finished it was awesome. A baby would love to bright colors.
My Christmas cactus has outdone itself this year. It has been blooming continually since Thanksgiving day. It must like how I care for it. It is in an east window. At night, I pull the insulated drapes around it, leaving it to the evening window chill. It apparently likes to be cold at night.
Basket is a Nancy Pearson pattern. It is hand appliqued and hand quilted. 25′ x 25″
Rose is also hand appliqued and hand quilted 18″ x 18″ It has a double row of piping on the border.
Stone Soup was made from a stone soup challenge. A bag was filled with different criteria from fabric stashes and then traded with other quilters. When I opened my bag, I found that there were two different colorways. One was red, white and blue, the other was pastel. They didn’t seem to fit in one quilt so I made two and joined them at the top. They fit over the back of a chair. 
Miss Molly quilts 