Thanksgiving Indeed

On Wednesday, while my hubby and I were out of town, my daughter was in a car wreck. A bad one. We're talking air bags deployed, ambulance, hospitals. She will be in the hospital for several days while the doctors watch her carefully due to a spleen injury and bad concussion. Thank goodness for air bags!!! She is alive but bruised and scraped up.  According to the police report, another vehicle blew through a stop sign right in front of her. Her four-month-old car is totally smashed up.  But we are very thankful our daughter will be okay.

Right after the hit, our daughter called us to say she had been in an accident. She was upset and nearly incoherent. Then our call was cut off. We tried calling back and there was no answer. Can you imagine how frantic we were? We called the friend she was staying with to alert her, but we didn't know where the accident occurred or how bad it was. Finally a policeman answered one of our repeated calls. She was in an ambulance headed to the hospital. Our friend stuck with our daughter through the whole emergency care, called us with updates, and spent the night with her. We are very thankful for our caring friend!

We immediately cut our trip short and drove 22 hours straight to get back home. We are very thankful the nor'easter that recently passed through had ended and the weather did not stop us in our journey.

Also, our nephew's son was born this morning. He's a healthy nine-pound-plus baby. Mother and baby are doing well.

Thanksgiving all around, indeed.




So, naturally, I'm not thinking about sewing or flying right now. I hope you all had a much less eventful Thanksgiving!

Cocoa Craze

While working ferociously to finish Celtic Solstice before Bonnie's next mystery begins, I took some time to assemble the Mocha Swirl blocks into a top. Then last Saturday I went shopping at Quilt Ledger, a small quilt shop about 15 miles away in the little town of Christiana, Pennsylvania. Leslie, the friendly owner, pointed out some fabric on sale. Lo and behold I found a great border print for Mocha Swirl --Pushy Paisley from Hoffman Fabrics. Now Mocha Swirl is a flimsy and renamed "Cocoa Craze".

For those of you interested in trying this easy pattern (I highly recommend it!), buy "Scrap-Basket Surprises" by Kim Brackett. http://www.amazon.com/Scrap-Basket-Surprises-18-Quilts-Strips/dp/1564778908/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1415548272&sr=1-1


I have made two quilts from this book and am contemplating a third - "Christmas Ribbons". Another quilter had used this pattern with pink scraps over a black background. It looked great and could be a thoughtful gift for someone who is struggling with breast cancer.

I may even whip up "Summer Breeze" as a baby quilt.  "Monkey Business" would be great in bright batiks. "Pinwheel" would be nice in a controlled color palette. Good job, Kim, on designing easy quilts that look more complicated than they are. Evidently we quilters like your designs because there are certainly a lot of images of finished quilts proudly posted on the web.



On a higher note, I got in some flying yesterday. It's a pretty autumn weekend with cool air to boost engine performance and clear skies which make the colorful trees sparkle in the sunshine. The picture below is Poconos fall foliage from coreyhilz.com. This is what I see all around me right now!

Regarding the college search, my daughter did well on her last SAT and the acceptance letters are starting to arrive. Whew! She has not declared a major although is leaning toward pre-law. Hmmm, I'm not too sure about that, but it is her choice. If that's her passion, so be it.

At the Crossroads

Taa-daa! Carolina Crossroads is a flimsy!  I finished adding the borders yesterday and prepped the backing. Now it's time to call Cindy Carrey of North Star Longarm Services to finish the quilt. The deep blue and bright orange combo is very striking. Maybe this quilt will bring some good luck to my favorite NFL team: the Denver Broncos. There are 50 blocks in this quilt so this it is fitting that this quilt is being completed before my 50th birthday.

I had a lot of fun digging through my blues to get a variety of shades and prints.

The outer border is a deep tone-on-tone blue stripe. Because of the stripe, I decided to miter the outer corner even though the inner borders were not mitered. This time I followed directions and the miters turned out great. The pictures are before ironing; they were flat after ironing...and a quick fix of a wobbly seam line.

Next up is a concerted effort to finish Celtic Solstice before Bonnie's new mystery quilt begins. As for Mystery 2014, I have all the fabrics selected. I am opting for deep, saturated coral, teal and green with golden yellow rather than pink, spring green and light turquoise. I just felt in the mood for richer colors.

Oh, and I finally finished the blocks for Mocha Swirl, too. Now I am searching for the perfect larger print for the outer border. I also put in some time on Blueberry Hill (Jamestown Landing) and Colorado Sunshine (Floribunda).

On a higher note, my hubby and I flew to Bloomsberg to check out yet another college town, sans daughter this time. We circled town a couple of times and talked to various people at the old, country airport. It was a nice flight, although a bit nerve racking to fly the low final approach over a river. This college seemed to be much smaller than my daughter wants, so it's not on our college tour schedule.

We visited Shippensberg University's Open House last weekend with our daughter. She seemed to enjoy this trip more than the last school we visited. It helped that a friend of hers was there (they swore to be roommates if they both went there) and she saw a former classmate there, too. I had also arranged with a friend of mine to meet up with his daughter's roommate. She hung out with us during the dorm tour and at lunch, giving us the personal perspective that you don't usually get on these generic open houses. That made a big difference, too. Another bonus is that there is an airport nearby, not exactly within walking distance but close enough. It's a great substitute for that three-hour drive.  Guess I need to make a red, white and blue quilt!

Me and My Shadow

Table runners are fun to make. You can try a new block and make something useful rather than relegating it to the orphan pile. You can buy a kit and finish over a weekend. They are a great way to get your quilting "fix" with getting discouraged by yet another UFO.

This one I finished up today as a gift for my neighbor. It's a kit from Connecting Threads. One of our fellow bloggers mentioned she buys most of her fabric from CT then adds a kit to qualify for free shipping. Great idea!

The border fabric is a whimsical Halloween print with lots of costumed faces. Very cute! And the pattern was easy. The only difficult part was figuring out the "quilt as desired" step.

This finish was rather bittersweet for me. Yesterday we said goodbye to our beloved lab Jessie. She was only 8 years old and her health deteriorated rapidly. This was a sudden loss, but it wouldn't have been any easier any other way. I feel numb and empty. As a distraction from the aching grief in my heart, I decided to work on this table runner yesterday. Done. I have another table runner to get me through today and tomorrow. There is a shadow at my feet, watching me sew and waiting for her next pat on the head.

In memory of Jessie, my sweet, goofy, playful puppy dog. 

May you have plenty of squirrels and balls to chase and a soft blanket to cuddle with in heaven.

More, more, more!

I spent several evenings this week and most of today working on Carolina Crossroads. All the blocks are done, plus several setting triangles and all of the corner units. Check this out:

Look carefully and you will see three Crossroads blocks made incorrectly. I didn't even catch them when ironing the blocks. I totally recommend taking a picture so things like this can be spotted.  Here is the "after" picture.

This quilt looks so good, I am extending another row of Crossroads blocks. Somehow I had ended up with two extra Carolina Star blocks, so will just need to make a couple more. 

If you plan on making this quilt, here are a few tips.  

1) You may need slightly more neutral than Bonnie's pattern directions. My quilt uses the same neutral throughout, and I ended up buying a bit more to extend. I had only a sliver left (string size) after cutting all the strips per the pattern directions.

2) I hope you love making nine-patches because you will be sewing about a million of them. Don't despair; the end will come eventually.

3) Sew the hourglass components and trim them to size. You won't regret taking time to do this.

4) Be consistent with your pressing direction. I pressed IN on the crossroads blocks and OUT on the star blocks.

5) Have fun! This is an easy quilt in spite of all the pieces and triangles. I sewed all the strips sets before cutting, made about half the hourglass blocks and 9-patches, then started making the blocks. I made the rest of the components using Bonnie's leader/ender method. 

If you've made this quilt or Bonnie's Crabapple Trees quilt, you have also experienced the mysterious charm of sewing tiny 1-1/2 inch squares.  I don't know what it is about those buggers. It's kind of fun to see them suddenly grow into a 9-patch.

Crossroads Update

Below is my progress on Carolina Crossroads. Ten more Carolina Star blocks to go!

Last night I posted a Challenge on Bonnie Hunter's Facebook site. I dared other quilters to make this quilt in the colors of their favorite sports team. Wow! Lots of likes and comments!  

Flying and Crossroads

Today's weather was beeeaauuutiful!  Cool, crisp air, sunny skies and light breezes.  I did some landing practice in Nine-Zero-Bravo this evening. She hopped in the air and bobbed up to pattern altitude as I turned from crosswind to downwind. She didn't want to land until I was able to slow her down enough to kiss the ground. Ahh, there's nothing like some air time to reset one's attitude about life.

Saturday's weather was gray and rainy, so what's a girl to do when she is stuck inside?  Sew, baby, sew.  And that I did.  Carolina Crossroads is progressing nicely.  I have all 25 Crossroads blocks (the O blocks) done and 2 of the Carolina Star blocks.  Only 14 more Carolina Star blocks to go and a bunch of triangle blocks for the on-point setting.  Here is a preview:

If you read Andee's blog (moderndiary.blogspot.com), you've seen multiple green & yellow quilts dedicated to her favorite pro football team.  This one is dedicated to MY favorite team - the Broncos! I've been a fan since the early John Elway days.  It has been fun watching Peyton Manning make the team exciting again.