Care Quilt...Fruit salad

(Zoe the piecing supervisor....)

My other quilt projects were set aside this week when an "all call" went out from my quilting group to work on a quilt for one member's sister who is going to go through chemo starting in the next week or so.  Amazing how fast a quilt can come together when lots of folks work on it.

We used a 6-1/2 inch block in earth tone batiks.  Cut it in half on the diagonal and sew-in a neutral colored strip 1-1/2 by 10.  After all the blocks are finished select a block size...we were able to get enough that we could trim to 6-1/2 inches...usually we only get 6 inches.

Anyway, the blocks were sewn together yesterday.  I pieced the back last night.  Maggie quilted it this morning while I made binding.  This afternoon four or the group are sewing down the binding.  In less then a week a quilt is finished...amazing!  Since the center looks like melons we have been calling it Summer Fruit Salad....

Challenge Progress

This week I jumped into the Victoria's at Bumblebeans Matisse challenge. I'm proud to stay I stuck with it and just a few minutes ago finished sewing the top together.

Here is the painting she choose for us to use as inspiration:
Here is my top...
Along the way there were some suggestions and hints - like the 3 minute put your fabric onto the design wall challenge and how to make a basic sketch. All fun. I am happy I got to play with fabrics that I love but haven't worked in any quilts for a long time. (like the large white circles on blue - I almost made it into a bag just to do something with it...this fabric has frequent flyer miles!) Now I am playing with ideas on how to quilt this...I may just use the swirl from the paintings background as inspiration or I may each section of the top slightly different....
I mentioned earlier I was perusing my batiks and trying to decide if they were earning all the space they take up in my stash. I pulled some that I had "real" yardage of (for that read at least a 1/3 of a yard with WOF) and cut some 4 inch strips to make an around the world "quick quilt." The photo above shows 1/4 of the quilt. The girl that walks Mac for me graduates this year so I will give it to her for a dorm quilt.

Other than that it is a quiet Sunday. I am nursing some poison ivy patches on my arm and trying my best not to scratch...ughhhhhh. Before I went out to garden I had put on some ivy blocker cream on my arms and hands, while gardening I wore gloves and when I finished I washed with gardener's soap but still the ivy got me...can you imagine how bad it would be if I didn't do all that! I think I just need to walk near poison ivy for me to break out. I generally do not use chemicals in my yard or garden but for PI I make and exception...that stuff is evil!

Spring wanderings....

I've been slow blogging this week...the weather has been just too nice to stay indoors. The first hummingbirds came to the feeder, dragonflies are buzzing the garden, roses are in bloom in the side yard, and the thermometer never got higher than 75 degrees. This will not last long so I am determined to enjoy it while I can!

A sure sign of spring here are the strawberry booths...we have lots of strawberry farms around us and several of them set up temporary stands along the busier roads. These are not to be confused with the hard supermarket strawberries - oh no. These are large, red, and sometimes strangely shaped sweet soft berries.

So this weekend I was invited to a wedding shower (the photo on top of this post is from the deck of the house) and I decided to make a strawberry pie for the first time ever! I went to the local stand and got a gallon bucket (you always have to have some left overs!) I found a recipe in an old cookbook and thought I was good to go. I had just taken the crust out of the oven when my DH came home complaining he had missed lunch and was hungry. So I put aside the pie recipe and get dinner. When I did get back to it about 4 hours later I just hurried through making the filling...it wasn't until I read the recipe for the last time that something in my head went "huh???" Seems the cookbook had two recipes for strawberry pie...one on the right hand page and another on the left....so my pie has the crust from page 40 but the filling from page 41. What tipped me off was the first used a spring form pan and the second a pie plate...duhhh.
In the end my strawberry experiment was fine. I was afraid that when I took off the spring form the filling was going to run all over the counter but it held up fine. Who knows I may even make it that way again!

I also have been going through some of my sewing room stuff again. I packed a box of fabric for the girl scouts. I am debating with myself (and a very intelligent debate at that!) about what to do with my batiks. I went through a batik phase but now haven't really used them for years. I pulled a few that I love and made a couple of shopping bags with them. The fabrics didn't go into the donation box yet...

BTW I did post how I wash vintage blocks as I promised however since it took me a few days...or rather weeks to finish the post when I published it fell back in the list of postings on my blog. So if you are interested it is under the April 6th (or so...) post.