… which means it’s time to pull out the baby pool and the hose. It was 100 outside yesterday and we still had a great time. Jack surprised us when he started pouring water over his head – and it looks like he surprised himself too!

Enjoy the weekend!

The new book is here and Linda is shipping it out now. It’s already getting good reviews! In their new issue, American Quilt Retailer wrote:

“Applique Outside the Lines by Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins (C&T Publishing) is brilliantly thought out! In fact, it is so well thought out and explained, that when you use this book, Becky and Linda encourage you not to follow the directions! Can you imagine that? How wonderful!”

We love a good review! Click here for more info.

We’ve also added a new ePattern to our site. Jacob’s Ladder didn’t quite fit in the Piecing book but it’s too pretty not to share. Click here for more info.

Our Jacob’s Ladder is made from Japanese taupe fabric but you can use any fabric you like to make yours. Value placement is important in this quilt. The instructions in our ePattern clearly state where to put the light and dark fabrics so that you don’t have to guess.

I’m home and desperately trying to dig my way through the pile of stuff that didn’t get done while we were on the road. There is hope. The pile is smaller!

I shot this while standing in Times Square last week (hard to believe that it was only a week ago). What an amazing place. Noisy, crowded, busy people going everywhere at once, taxis doing their best not to kill you, eye-candy everywhere you look – NYC is well worth a visit. Enjoy this (short) show:

I had a few moments in the hotel room to blog surf. I checked the Artgirlz blog to catch up on posts I missed. I found their post on the color turquoise and it made me oh-s0-happy! I especially love this photo with the stripes in reflected in the pool water.

There are so many good blogs out there and you are reading this so you know that. I’d like to encourage you to talk to your friends and see if they, too, are blog surfing. If not, tell them what you like about it and encourage them to join the fun. They will thank you for it later.

We’re nearly home and I’m looking through a few of the photos I took thinking that you all might be interested. These matted photos below were part of a much bigger piece of art. I liked the way the photos float inside the openings in the matt, sometimes on torn black paper. Nice look.

I have no idea what this is. Looks like a huge upside-down water glass. It was on top of the MOMA.
A big part of our trip included a stop in Baltimore where Jeff (our youngest son) lives.

There are lions guarding the entrance to the NYC Public Library. These guys are resting where the ones in front of the Art Institute of Chicago are in mid-step… but they are about the same size. Notice the pigeon on this fellow’s head.

We did more people watching in Times Square. It is my sincere hope that I am not nearly as interesting to look at as many of the folks we saw are.

If the trash is from a store with pretty boxes, it can be a little bit festive… This pile made me think of Christmas.

There is an installation piece at the MOMA by Song Dong called “Waste Not”. Turns out that these items all came from his now-deceased mother’s house. That is the skeleton of her house with the items. Seriously, if this doesn’t get you get rid of the junk in your house, what will?

I enjoyed the look of the empty toothpaste tubes but I am not going to make my own set at home.

And I shopped for fabric in the garment district! I am very lucky that Steve was with me and carried my purchases all day long. I found out where to go from a page on Paula Nadelstern’s web site. The shop in the photo below is N. Y. Elegant Fabrics (not on Paula’s site but it’s near the shops that were). Oh my, it was huge and full of luscious stuff. I did buy some cotton (great big red dots on white), and some etched fuschia velvet. It made me wish I had time to make more garments.