I’m in Seattle!

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I am teaching on an Alaskan cruise… we sail tomorrow. My husband, Steve, is with me on this trip. He enjoys accompanying me to scenic places :-).

We got to Seattle this afternoon and 
had time to take the bus to the Seattle Public Library. Rem Koolhaas designed this building 
and I have only seen it in pictures until today. My oh my – what a place!

The outside is glass and steel… gray and yet very reflective. Inside there are gray areas — and areas that are just saturated in color. We came into these very simple, gray stacks of books. The light permeates every space. Even where ceilings are low, you don’t feel closed in.

The escalators are intense shades of yellow and yellow-green. 
The photo below is at the bottom of a double-escalator. The insides of the elevators are similar in color, but I couldn’t get a good photo of  one. 

There is one floor in the library that is all in glossy red – except for one wall that is intensely fuscia. The walls undulate. Majorly cool. 
If you find yourself in Seattle, it’s definitely worth a visit.

How to applique the circles in the center of the Aunt Millie blocks.

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Several of you have emailed asking how we stitched the circles in the center of the Aunt Millie blocks. FYI – Those instructions were in the original pattern, but somewhere along the way they got deleted. We’re sorry about that. However, not to worry, we can tell you how we did the circles.


The circles with wedges are appliqued, not pieced. Sew them off-the-block. Start with a 4″-6″ square of fabric for the large circle. Draw the circle on it. Applique each wedge onto the circle. Applique the small center circle. Then cut the unit out as a whole, finger press it, and applique it to the block.

These instructions are also posted on our website, on the Aunt Mille page in the left-hand sidebar.

Happy stitching!

The new fabric is here!

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I’m old enough that even as I wrote the title to this post I could hear Steve Martin in my head saying “the new phone book’s here, the new phone book’s here!” I think I watch too many movies :-). But enough of that.


Our new fabric, Elanor’s Picnic, has indeed arrived. Linda and Paul have been busily cutting and preparing kits and fat quarters. I got the web pages built. We are ready to ship! Click to go to the first of the fabric pages or go to our home page which has also changed. We hope you like this fabric as much as we do. We think that it may be our best fabric yet!

I could write a lot more about the fabric here, but it’s all on the web pages. FYI – We’re not going to send out an eNewsletter about the new fabric until late August or early September. P&B is in the middle of re-printing more fabric and we want to be able to re-stock before we send the eNewsletter. What this means is that you who read our blog are being notified first! 

Let me revise that… Since I posted this entry earlier today we have been notified by P&B that the next group of fabric is here. So the eNewsletter is going out tomorrow. But you did hear about it here first! 

Happy quilting!

Can you believe it?

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I found yet another photo of Steve taking a picture. This one was on the way home from Grand Junction. We were close to Monarch Pass, CO, I think. He’s way over there on the left, at the side of the road.


I also got a photo of this Holiday Inn sign. I love the pointy ball at the top. I wonder what it looks like with the neon lit? We couldn’t spend that day waiting to see it. Oh well.



There are two photos that I didn’t get to take that I still regret. The highway was too narrow and there was enough traffic to make it dangerous. Steve spotted a hawk nest on top of a power pole. There were two hawks, and presumably babies, in the nest. Pretty cool. And there was an alligator farm out there on the high plains (which seemed weird enough) that had alligator-shaped signs. I wish I could show you the pictures…

I’ve been going through my pictures…

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I take pictures of my husband, Steve, taking pictures. Does anyone else do this? I started taking these pictures a few years ago and now I have a lot of them. It’s interesting to me that Steve assumes almost the same stance every time he takes a photo. I’ll bet everyone does. 


I mostly take these pictures when we’re on vacation (otherwise I’m not there to capture these moments). These are the pictures of Steve taking pictures that I took when we were at the Colorado National Monument, on the mesa near Linda and Paul’s house. Steve is waving in the 2nd photo. I missed him taking the picture, but I thought the wave was nice :-).


It was fun while it lasted!

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It’s Thursday evening and Steve and I are in Clarendon, TX, 2/3 of the way home. The last two days were absolutely packed! Tuesday we got the blocks drawn for Linda’s next quilt. It’s going to be cute! I’ll work on border drawings from my house next week.

I took some photos of Linda’s house to share with you. Her house is new so the plants are not mature but the grass is green and the views of the mesas from her house are spectacular! Grand Junction is in the high desert and the climate is dry. It gets hot in the afternoon but it cools off overnight. I have to say that I wish I could take the weather home with me.

Wednesday morning we had new photographs taken to use in new books and articles. We looked good from the waist up (which is all that counts in this sort of photo) but from the waist down we were in shorts and tennis shoes. An interesting look. The photographer, Melinda Roberts, did a great job on the real photos. She gave Steve permission to take some candid photos of us at the same time so that I could share one with you. 
 

Next, we went up on the mesa that you see from Linda’s patio. The mesa is in the Colorado National Monument. You can drive up onto the top of the mesa. We had a picnic at the Visitor’s Center and took lots of photos on the drive through the park. I resisted the urge to take home a rock from the mesa.

After touring the mesa we dropped Steve and Paul off at the house (that’s them above) and Linda took me to her favorite clothes store – Herberger’s. She had told me that there were great clothes at great prices and she was not kidding! I found shorts, tops, dresses, tops, and jackets. And a lot of it was 70% off! It’s probably good that there is not a Herberger’s in Sherman, TX.

We got on the road early today and will again tomorrow. It’s time to sign off and get some sleep! Happy stitching!