VA Hospital quilts

A few months ago a chaplain at the local Veterans Administration Hospital approached the quilting guild I belong to and asked if we could make quilts for the long term care wards.

82 of the quilts on display at a local church...

Many of these vets are elderly and no longer have family that visit.  Making the institutional setting even bleaker.

Here in front are two of the quilts I made...Bonnie H. fans will recognize one!

So first our goal was 50..then 75...and come Tuesday when they are presented I believe we will be close to 90 quilts!  I'm really proud to be part of this guild...

I am madly putting the binding on the last one in my stack...a fitting project for the 4th of July I think!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July...Independence Day here in the U.S.A.

My Red, White and blue Goose on the Pond

Generally this is a day for cookouts, beach, and fireworks - all the great things about summer.  This year we are taking it easy and may just do the cookout!

Stay safe and enjoy the holiday...

Happy 4th of July!

We are having a quiet 4th here...well, sort of quiet. There will be fireworks down by the river near us.The explosions really bother our cats so we generally stay home to keep them calm...Macbeth, our deaf Scotty dog, gets upset by the cats getting upset so it is general mayhem for a few hours.

I've made several patriotic quilts but only kept one.  This is my husband's Goose on the Pond (photo is from my guild's show in 2009.)  He insists on having it up for the summer even though it doesn't go with our living room at all!  At least he likes his quilt...

I finished the 80 blocks I needed for the Corn and Beans.  I need to clean off my cutting table so I focused on finishing this morning...so difficult!

Hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day...and if you are in the USA I hope you find a way to stay cool!

Happy 4th of July

OK so I am a bit early...that alone should surprise anyone who knows me! We had our ex-pat independence day cookout yesterday. It was typical UK weather. Fine in the morning during set-up and showers when the guests arrive. We were lucky it cleared up later in the afternoon so the tents had time to dry out before we had to take them down.

A typical mail story...the decorations never arrived! The woman in charge of the committee ordered them over a month ago! The tracking system showed they got at far as the military postal system. Oh well! Needless to say there are no 4th of July decorations in the UK stores so we had to improvise. We had some flag banners left from last year. I pulled out all my patriotic fabric from the stash and over the weekend made 12 table centerpieces (30-inch by 30-inch little quilts which hid the fact we couldn't find round table clothes and had crossed over one blue and one white.) We bought red plants and wrapped them in more patriotic fabrics and used mason jars for some red, white and blue flower arrangements. In the end it look very American Country...I liked it better than all the plastic stuff they used last year!

We don't have any big plans for the holiday weekend. I'm trying to rest up a bit. If I am really ambitious I may try to make my first Victoria sponge cake. Our village is having a "Flood Reunion" which marks last years flood then lack of water episode. As part of the festivities they are having a cake baking contest (which of course my DH signed me up for) but you have to make a Victoria sponge. I had to look it up on the internet! I may have to make a few trial runs over the next few weeks...