Rainy day in Georgia-lina

South Carolina Peach Blossoms...

It is spring here but it is cold and wet!  I want to go to an country auction tomorrow but it is cold and wet!  Last time I went when it was like this we "mud-skated" across the field...I felt bad for folks trying to carry large pieces of furniture to their trucks!

There are a few quilts I'm interested in but mainly I want to check out all the sewing items.  She had a huge collection of thimbles - the real type.  Nice silver ones at the show last week were running $100 and up.  I have two antique thimbles that I bought at auction for half that and they work great for me...and they would be easy to carry across the mud field!

Class handpiecing block...in progress but so far loving the points!

I tried to explain to my dear husband that a thimble is to a quilter as a putter is a golfer...he has ten putters in our garage.   And since I am back to doing some hand-piecing I'll get more use out of the thimble than he will those putters...

And here is a glimpse at some of the new additions to the "stash."  The large Blue Hill orange backing is for my Halloween applique quilt!  Just need to sew on the borders and it will be a finish!  Having the back ready is a real incentive....

Quilt Retreat Recovery

I got home from the quilt retreat with my local guild a bit exhausted but glad to have gone. Before even bringing in my bags I headed to my bed for a good three hour nap...yikes. I sewed for hours past my bedtime two nights in a row and that catches up with a girl! After much sewing I got a few blocks of my mystery quilt done...I have stacks of square and square and 9-patches to work with now so I think progress on this quilt will start moving along now!Remember this quilt? I finally got the borders on this weekend. Much easier for my DH to understand a large quilt coming out of the bag than a couple of blocks! Anyway this top is ready to be quilted! A sort of finish....

The space were sewing in was really large and had a decent size kitchen...what more could you ask for? We did have a visit by the quilt police...who knew!Actually he was a park ranger who was just curious about quilts...but check out the really fun strippy tops in the making int he background!
There were lots of really fun projects. One of the things I like about this group is the diversity of their quilting. We had every thing from "turning 20 again" to really complicated paper-piecing projects. (The colors in this quilt are so much more vivid in real life...) We also had a couple of Bonnie projects in the works.
The quilt above has lots of plaids. She used several shirts in order to get the scrappy look she wanted. No big surprise she roomed with Bonnie the year she stared this quilt!

Check out the back of this quit..a good use of more plaids!A lesson learned this trip...if you put a half finished project in a box for six months it can take you almost that long to figure out how it goes together when you take it back out again. I did want to label this photo - how many quilters does it take to put together the Carolina Crossroad blocks...
But in the end it was worth it...isn't this one beautiful!

I have more photos but I've got to take Macbeth out on his walk. It has started to flurry and he is so excited! He keeps running into the computer room and "telling me" to come to "his" window by the front door to watch the funny stuff come from the sky. We don't get much snow in the part of Georgia so I'd best go out and play with him for a bit!

On to Step Six!

I've been pretty much house bound the past couple of weeks. My eyes haven't been very good but I have done a lot of cutting fabric and a bit of piecing. Now I am very happy with how my Carolina Crossroads is coming along but it does show how wonky my eyes got...I thought I had only used blue fabric! It wasn't until I took some photos of the 9-patches that I realized I had slipped into the green stacks...Oh well! Colorblind Crossroads may be a better name for it.

My eyes are getting better and I even ventured out to the grocery store today...I mean tried to venture out. The road at the end of the village was flooded so I turned around and went home. Not that I will starve. Besides being slightly chubby (slightly - hah!) I also keep a very well stocked "larder." I could eat for weeks out of my cabinets. It is the cat food that I am worried about...looks like they will get a can of tuna tonight!

Back to the Crossroad project. Had anyone else working on this found themselves with lots of extra 1-1/2 inch squares and other bits? It has nothing to do with the directions...just an overenthusiastic rotary blade. I don't want to toss them but...they are pretty small. Ideas?