Bargello, Revisited

Yes, While sitting talking to my daughter last night I finished the binding on this quilt. That's about the fastest I have ever made one. I really like it and have put it over the back of the couch. Taken off the flannel TB that I made a couple years ago.

You can't see it but the binding is the dark blue the same as the inner border.

Here's a closeup of the quilting. I did diagonally though every other strip both ways. Then a design around the border.

While we were talking my Daughter was finishing up putting this puzzle together.

She had started it at Christmas and then put it on my old cutting board I have in the basement and put it on the bed down there. So finally I have my basement back and she needed the bed to sleep in last night. She bought this at a yard sale for 25 cents and there are two pieces missing. But she's wanted to get it together so she could pass it on to and old lady that loves to put puzzles together.

Hope everyone has had a good weekend and if you are lucky enough to have Presidents Day off , happy quilting. Thanks for stopping in.

Antique Dogwood

Thought I would show you one of my antique quilts. I used to buy and sell them and this one I decided I wanted to keep.

From the fabrics I think it was from 1890-1900. Beautiful quilting. It is all hand appliqued and I do think the name of it is Dogwood.


Don't they look like a huge dogwood flower and the buds. Love the scalloped border.

I don't remember now where I bought it but probably around this area. I used to go to a lot of house auctions as well as some auction houses. We did antigue shows for close to 25 years and I always had quilts and other types of needlework. That's back when you could buy a box of old lines for a dollar but sure can't do that any more

Here's a closeup of the flower and the quilting. Lots of feathers and between the blocks are round feathers.
Here I think you can see some of the quilting pretty good. It is in perfect condition and hangs on the towel rack in the living room with a couple of my quilts.

Now our Ice is all gone and today turned out really nice. Got clear up to 45.

Then made better when my daughter came up this afternoon for a sleep over. She tries to get up every six weeks or so. The family, that will be home, will be up right before Easter so that is about another month. I think she enjoys the relaxing she can do here away from her duties as wife, mother, and now for awhile caregiver to her husband who had some knee surgery besides having Lyme desease which prevents him from working full time. He is a Lawyer. Then she is a teacher's Assistant in a Special School and will get her Master's degree come summer. On her last class.

We're proud of her.

Where Is Spring??

Tues, we had a nice day of snow showers. It would snow for a couple hours and I would go clean the drive.

Then it would start again. I cleaned the drive twice. Wasn't hard. Just have to push it to the edge. Only the length of a car. to the carport

By evening it was snow covered again, This being Primary day for Maryland, I didn't get down to vote. The snow plow never came though as there wasn't any school.

Well they were saying that it was going to warm up. Yah it was 20 degrees, and rain and Ice. UGH

Here's what it looked like in the morning. See how foggy it looks. That's the warmer air. Yah maybe got up to 25.

The worse part is my husband had an early appointment for some minor surgery at the Medical Center. Well, he hates that I have to drive and worse that he would have to ride with me in the snow or ice. Of course it was cancelled.

As well as school for the day

Here's the iclcles on the front of the carport. The trees look white because they are covered with ice.

Then I was going a little stir crazy although I got a lot of sewing done. Quilted the Bargello quilt. Am putting the binding on now.
Thursday, today I had my hair appointment and day in town. Wanted to go the the local Quilt Shop and see if they had a book Kim suggested. by Sharon Craig, Twists and Turns . They didn't and neither did Borders.

Then on the way home Hubby wanted me to stop and get some crab meat and I thought Carb Cakes would be good for a Valentine's Day dinner.

Coming through Boonsboro all of a sudden I noticed how the trees were sparkling. The closer to the mountain I got the more eveident.

As soon as I got home I grabbed my camera and tried to get some pictures of it. With the sun shinning on all that ice, they looked like diamonds of all different colors. This is off the end of the carport looking out back.

This one I took out the window. The smaller tree is my old dogwood tree which will be beautiful in the Spring.

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Cactus in Bloom!

Ah, yes, the cactus is in bloom again. I knew it had more buds but they weren't coming out so to the basement porch it went. Then when the buds started to come out I brought it back up to the kitchen. It sits on the open window that is above my sink and opens to my porch. The red one looks like it's getting ready to bloom again. So it will come up next. Isn't it fun to have these flowers that bloom a couple times a year.

But then I love my african violets that sit in my windows and bloom all the time

I also wanted to show you what I have done the last couple of days. I showed back in January the paper pieced center to what will be a Yours Truly Round Robin that we are doing in Carol Doaks group.

She gave us the instructions for the first round. We were to have 4 corner paper pieced blocks for the next round. Simple enough since she had given us the BOM also and in a 12 in. size and a 6 in. size. So I used that and added some strips inbetween and I have my completed round.

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Here's the catcus. You can see the bare trees out the window past my porch.

These blossoms only last about a day then die but there is usually some others to come out.

We had a strange day today. I was up before it was light and then DH looked out and said it was sure foggy. Well, it started to get light enough to see and nope it was snowing. The ground was white. Wasn't laying on the road and never did. It snowed for about 2 hours and then stopped and the next thing I knew the snow was all gone. That's the way our snow's have gone this year. Guess we're headed for a rough March.

I know many of you have had a lot of bad weather, if not snow then rain and those horrible tornados.

Well, Tomorrow is another day and hope you all have good ones.

Bargello

Ah, the Super Bowl Sunday quiltathon. I've seen many blogs of quilts being made. What a great idea Bonnie had. And her moving the next day.

Here's my completed strips. I did rearrange them from this picture.

Wanted to get the darks more even.That dark spot at the bottom is my stool. If it weren't for that I couldn't reach the top of the board. I'm too short. LOL
Then this is the dark narrow border I found in my stash of TB. It is Navy with stars but does what I wanted it to.

Did you notice the darker strip was on the opposite side. Just looked better.
Then In this picture that I sent Kim last night I just had the outside border stuck around the quilt

This morning I got the outside border sewn on. It is a Thimbleberries. One I had used on another quilt and had the length.

Then this afternoon I decided to get into my old stash of blues and pulled out a lot of odd pieces and started to stick them up on the quilt to make a scrappy pieced backing. Took me all afternoon. But it's done and I have a big enough piece of batting so hopefully tomorrow or this week I can get it pinned . This one I feel I can machine quilt. Lots of straight stitfching.

I really love the way it has turned out. Thanks Bonnie for mentioning this.

Log cabin

Remember the Kentucky Log Cabin quilt I made a few weeks ago? Well Judy Martin's web site said to send in pictures of completed projects so I did. Got a notice that it would be up in awhile.

Well yesterday the email came. My picture had been posted and right after came Judy's Newsletter. Wow, she sure writes long ones. Still haven't finished reading it.

I went into the site. Here's the link to Judy's pictures. There it is the first one (by Eileen). Wow what a picture . Looked at the rest and someone else had made a smaller one with very dark fabrics. I didn't like it near as much as mine.

Then I had a comment from one of my friends that blogs, a Hollow member, and she had seen it while going in to get Judy's free pattern . She says I'm famous. I hardly think so since I sent the picture to Judy myself. LOL

BRRRRRR!

Just wanted to show you what it looked like outside yesterday morning. This was the first picture I took.

Can you see the ice on the trees. The fog stayed around all day and got much worse. All the trees by the afternoon looked silver.

This is the Oak tree in the front which never seems to get rid of it's leaves. See the icicles.

By this morning all was gone and the sun came out and was really nice. Except!!

I went to Curves and had some other errands to run but before I got to the grocery store my DH called and said to come home. the electricity was off and He had to get up. He has an electric lift chair as his legs aren't strong enough to help him get up.

We have a generator which I run once a month, so when I need it will start. So I got it started and the few things that are hooked into the genrator working. Which happly is my TV and MSN.

I went on back to do my shopping etc. The electric company said it should be done by 12:30, It was 10 AM then. Well by 1 pm it still wasn't on and the generator was showing empty but still running. DH said I should turn it off and go get more gas and see if I could see where the electric company guys were working. We live in the mountains and our wires come across alot of woods and farms. Not a long line. About 10 homes. So not like the whole town was down. So out I went the other way to see if I could see them. Yep, There they were. One guy up in a bucket stringing wires. I saw another on the ground so asked what had happened and why so long. A tree had fallen over the lines and took them down. Probably was hard to get to and of course would have to have gotten the tree out of the way. So this was probably a result of yesterdays storm. Finally came on about 2 PM. Thank goodness.

Well with the horrible day yesterday I decided to go ahead and sew up the first set of strips for Bonnie's Super Bowl special. Reading her blog every day as she is having quite a time with moving etc. and still keeps making quilts. I had a lot of strips and plenty other fabric to cut and had the 4 sets cut and put in the order I wanted to sew them. So that's what I did yesterday.

Here they are laid out. Still folded up. I wanted to see how the colors worked out. I had used about half Thimbleberries and then dug out some blues from the other stuff to lighten it up.

So this is it all stretched out on the board. I have them sewn together now so am all ready for tomorrow and getting started on the next one. It will go down. She calls it Scrappy Bargello. Love it. More to come.