Quilted Building Blocks

I got the 3 Building Blocks quilted this week.  I always think it's interesting how you can take the same quilt block and change the look completely by fabric and quilting choices.

 I like the look of the quilting on the back.

February Peace Circle

This month was were asked to 2 non-symmetrical blocks for do.Good Stitches.  We could use whatever fabric we wanted as long as the sashing was white.  This was perfect, because I have a lot of scraps that were given to me.  I never say no to fabric as a general rule, but these scraps didn't go with a lot of my other fabric, so I used them for these blocks.

Bummer!  Looking at the picture just now I just realized I turned the lower triangles in the wrong direction.  Sigh.  Looks like I'll be picking it back apart and turning them in the other direction.  Bleh.  Good thing it's still the beginning of the month, so there's no rush to get them in the mail.  Boo.

Update:  I fixed them.

Big Sisters are the Best

BB wasn't feeling well and Little Lady said to him in the sweetest voice, "Do you want to cuddle with your big sister?  I'll read to you!"

I also happen to love that she's wearing her Princess Sophia tiara while reading to her younger brother.

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!

I have no idea why this quilt top has brought back 1990's Enya music into my head, but I've had Orinoco Flow running through my brain all morning. 

My goal has been to get completely caught up on my quilts from do.Good Stitches before it's my month again in March.  These are the sail boat blocks I requested in November.  I think this quilt is going to make some little boy very happy. 

A Special Quilt

On the Friday before Christmas a friend of mine was traveling with her 4 youngest boys on the highway when a car headed in the opposite direction turned into her lane and hit their van head on. The boys had bumps and bruises and amazingly were ok, but she sustained the majority of the injuries. She has two fractured feet, a fractured shin, a broken femur, and her lower back was crushed (her doctor said it looked like it was a crushed soda can). She was in the hospital for 3 weeks, and now has begun physical therapy from home.  It will be a while before she is able to walk again.   She has been nothing but positive and showing gratitude through the whole process, but she has a hard road in front of her.

As I started working on this Rising Star Quilt from do.Good Stitches, my friend kept running through my mind.  I felt instinctively that this quilt belonged to her.  I talked to my Peace Circle ladies and we all agreed this quilt was meant for her.  She loved it and I hope it's a comfort to her on her long road to recovery.

This was the first time I've done a large scale quilting pattern on such a huge quilt, so it was a bit rocky, but in the end, I liked the loose basket weave look.

I love these pictures because the clouds are so puffy they look like they're falling straight out of the sky onto the quilt.

 The contrast of the extremely dead grass is also quite striking.  😉

A Day in Ireland

 

I just finished reading Dubliners by James Joyce (1882-1941).  This book falls under category #2 of the Back to the Classics Challenge 2017. A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967.  Dubliners is a collection of short stories.  This book first came to my attention because of the acclaim that The Dead often receives an example of the quintessential short story, and it is one of the short stories in Dubliners.  

I read one short story a day to break it up a bit.  It's pretty obvious from the beginning that he was a gifted writer.  Within a few sentences he's plopped you straight into a cross section of someone's life and it feels like you haven't missed a thing.  Most of the stories really only cover one day in that person's life, but it's almost always at a junction in their life where they have some sort of personal epiphany (and it's usually not a very happy one).   I can't say that I "enjoyed" the book, because that's not really the right word to describe it.  Most of the stories are depressing and they usually emphasize the lower natures of human beings.  He brings out a lot of the vices within the Irish culture.  For example, there's quite a bit of the stereotypical Irish drunkard of a husband squandering all the money on booze.  I can totally see why his writing would have been controversial when it was published back in 1914.  I do have to say that I definitely felt an appreciation for his literary prowess even if I didn't always fully understand all of the political and cultural nuisances associated with life in Ireland.  I'll end with a couple quotes from Dubliners to give you an idea of his writing style:

“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.”  

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”

 “She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”

Third Time's the Charm

  

I started out with the easiest category for me in the Classics Challenge 2017: #6 A Romance Classic.  Previous to this challenge I had read a couple of Georgette Heyer books and loved all of them, so I thought I would read another one for this category.  Even though Jane Austen wrote during the Regency era, Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) is the mother of Regency Romance as Historical Fiction.  The woman was prolific and very well loved.  I personally love her biting sense of humor that is often tongue in cheek.

I didn't have a particular Heyer book in mind for this challenge, so I found three books that were in print at my local library and decided to read those ones.  I started with The Convenient Marriage, and as fate would have it, I didn't care for it all that much.  Heyer still had some witty lines that had me laughing out loud, but I found that I really didn't care for most of the main characters. Lord Rule is the only intelligent one, but he's so far superior in wisdom than the others that I couldn't believe him to be even remotely amused by Horry.  I walked away from the book dissatisfied, but luckily for me I had 2 more books on hand.  I then read The Talisman Ring, and I found it a bit more to my liking.  It still wasn't my favorite Heyer book, so I continued on to my last option which was Regency Buck.    This was by far my favorite Heyer book of the three.

The back of the book synopsis:
"After their father's death, Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Peregrine travel to London to meet their guardian, Lord Worth, expecting an elderly gentleman. To their surprise and utter disgust, their guardian is not much older than they are, doesn't want the office of guardian any more than they want him, and is determined to thwart all their interests and return them to the country.

"With altogether too many complications"

But when Miss Taverner and Peregrine begin to move in the highest social circles, Lord Worth cannot help but entangle himself with his adventuresome wards..."

Regency Buck's got a bit of mystery along with Heyer's typical characters (the cunning one, the nincompoop, the headstrong heroine, and the slimy suitor).  I felt like the two main love interests were equally suited in intelligence and temperament, so it was enjoyable to read about the war of their wills pitted against each other.  This book is why I first loved Georgette Heyer as author to begin with, so I'm glad I ended on a high note.

First Finish of the Year

With the craziness of last year I didn't make nearly as many quilts as I usually do.  I'm off to a good start this year though.  This little baby boy quilt is mailed and on its way to a sweet baby of a friend from our medical school years in Hershey.

The back is left over flannel from a previous quilt, so this entire quilt came from my stash.  I was pretty happy to be able to use this fabric line again.  I've always loved the lions. 

My next project is to catch up on the 2 do.Good Stitches quilts from this Fall.  One is a completed quilt top I need to quilt and finish, and the other is still in block form from what the ladies mailed to me that needs to be pieced together.