An Everyday Best Challenge!

Valerie Prideaux sent me these photos from a friendly quilt challenge that she and some friends took part in. The quilts were recently displayed at Quilts at the Creek 2014, a yearly outdoor quilt show in Toronto, Canada. Aren’t they great! All the quilts were quilted by Sandy Lindal of Scrappy Gal Quilt Co, who was so busy doing the quilting that she never got hers done.

FYI: I’ve loaded the 6 pictures into a slideshow, which is a new feature I’ve found on WordPress. Hover over the picture and you’ll see a pop-up control bar where you can click to go from slide to slide.

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Shirley entitled hers “One Thousand Three Hundred and Sixty pieces of my mind” which cracks me up. I have never taken the time to count the pieces in any quilt I’ve made because, if I knew, I might despair of ever finishing :-).

I do love Valerie’s minimalist interpretation of the design—so very contemporary. Thank you all, for sharing your work!

Barns and farms in Indiana…

I had no idea that there were so many Amish and Mennonite farms in Indiana! Last week I landed in Ft. Wayne and then was driven to Elkhart. It’s about a 1 1/2-2 hour drive through lovely country. If we had stopped the car every time I wanted to take a picture, I’d still be there :-). As it was, I took photos with my iPhone from a moving car. (Side note: my iPhone takes a really good picture!)

In many pictures, you can see a reflection on the windshield that I took the picture through. It adds something to the photos that almost make them more interesting…

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Farm buildings don’t have many windows or doors. Each building is comprised of big, simple shapes. The colors, and the way the colors change in shadow, are mesmerizing.

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There is something, too, about the weathered nature of these buildings that make the so much more interesting. The owner probably wishes that this barn was scraped and painted, but I like looking at it the way it is.

We stopped to take this photo, and the next one. This is a small building off to the side of a much-large farm building complex. I found out that the Amish will often paint the trim around the doors like this one below, or in a similar fashion. I see hearts when two doors meet!

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This is the larger structure…

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You know, I love the look, but I have less-than-zero desire to be a farmer or to live in the country. That said, I am really, really happy that there are those among us who are called to grow the food that we all eat. If that’s you, thank you!

 

Taking a ride on the way-back machine…

You know those emails that you sometimes get? The ones with lots of photos that have been forwarded so many times that you have no idea who actually wrote the first email? Every now and then I get a really good one. This was the subject line: a dose of nostalgia. Thank you, Nancy for sending it :-).

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I made these, by the dozens! Gotta say that they were lousy potholders but they kept me busy. My mom surely loved that part. Below are my grandmothers good highball glasses. Looks like she wasn’t the only one who had them.

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I wonder what happened to my diary? It looked just like this.

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I think Mom’s table and chairs were pink. Or red.

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I hated this vacuum, with a passion. But my mother loved it.

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My first mascara… I don’t miss it one little bit. For those too young to know, you wet the brush and swished it on the dark cake of mascara and then applied to your lashes. What a mess it was!

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I miss the feel of this phone in my hand, and the sound of the dial. The noise was good in both directions. Dial enough and it could make your finger hurt.

Now that I think of it, I miss the experience of talking on an old phone. Talking on the phone was more special then than it is now. We didn’t just call for any little thing—and we for sure didn’t call long distance often. I don’t miss that part—I love being able to call anywhere in the country as if I am calling across town.

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I have Mom’s watch that is similar to this one. I wish it could be made to work.

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I wish I could find these diaper pins now, for Bear who wears cloth diapers now.

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Remember this nasty glue? It dried brown and didn’t work. What’s to love?

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I was a tomboy and played cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood boys when I was 6 or 7. We all had metal cap guns that these strings of caps fit in. I remember the smell of the burning powder and paper! I suspect that is a toy that cannot be found these days.

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Hose, that came in a box, and required a garter belt. I am so thankful that hose are out of fashion.

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Remember the roller rink?

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I still have my bronzed baby shoes! and several leather baby shoes that didn’t quite make it to the bronzer. I don’t know why I love them, but I do.

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How could something be both gross and good at the same time? I actually preferred the cherry Luden’s cough drops, which are still around.

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Oh, if only the penmanship the nuns tried to teach me had stuck. I type much better than I write by hand.

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Anodized aluminum glasses are pretty but they sweat too much and, as I recall, they have a subtle metallic taste. Even so, they are just too pretty! If I had any, I’d use them.

I tried googling ‘a dose of nostalgia’ and did not find the source for these images but there were some interesting pages. If you want to, use ‘the google‘ and see what you find!

Seven Starry Sisters…

If you receive my newsletter, you have already seen this quilt and read at least part of the story behind it. (FYI: I posted the Seven Starry Sisters ePattern today.)

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I started this quilt in the early days of Piece O’ Cake… back in the 1990s. In fact, it was so long ago that I drew the pattern by hand!

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My Mom wanted to make a quilt and she offered to applique blocks. I gathered fabric, made the overlay and templates and she got started. And, as sometimes happens, years passed by :-). Every now and then she’d sew on the blocks and then move on to something else that interested her more.

When Mom moved to Texas a few years ago, she gave me the blocks. Most of them were finished, but some were not. Interestingly, she hadn’t appliqued the pieced stars.

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My tastes in color and fabric have changed over the years which is not at all surprising. I chose the clearest red and white blocks for the quilt I made and set these aside…

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And these two blocks have also been set aside. Honestly, I’m not sure what I was thinking when I chose these fabrics!

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The Seven Sisters is a traditional quilt pattern based on legends that relate to a distinctive star cluster, the Pleiades. The traditional quilt block can be pieced, although it’s a complicated block. There are probably English paper pieces that you can use to hand piece it. I have always thought that it is an easier block to applique.

I cut my blocks in a non-traditional way, with star points hitting the edges of the hexagon on all sides. I added sashing because these blocks were not all exactly the same size, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The sashing adds a terrific spark of color and sets this quilt apart.

I’m sure that I chose blue for my sashing because I found the blocks on the 4th of July. But If I had run across them at Christmas, I might have used green sashing and this quilt would be different but still great fun. Click here if you’d like more info on the Downloadable ePattern.

And, in case you were wondering, Mom was very happy to see this quilt! In fact, the top is now in her living room, waiting for me to find a little time to get it quilted!

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Always looking…

I am learning to really appreciate the camera in my iPhone. It is usually with me and so I can stop and take quick pics even on my morning walk. Use your imagination and these salvias could instead be green-tipped purple trees in a Dr. Seuss landscape!

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Wouldn’t the colors in this feather, used with the grays in the concrete, be perfect in a quilt?

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On the same morning walk, I noticed this water meter cover. You can’t really tell from the photo, but it was tall, the center part stuck up several inches, which is unusual. I love the mix of colors and textures. It struck me that the bright turquoise on the worn iron cover is the same as the turquoise in my shoes.

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There are just too many cool things that a person can take a picture of!