Quilting "Album of quilters"

Still a ways to go, but the in the ditch quilting between the blocks and the plain block quilting is done. I used Karyn Emmerson's Quilting Inspirations and my Bernina 200e to 'embroider' the quilting designs. Still learning how to do this, it has been a while since I hooked up the embroidery unit, forgot a lot.

Grandmother's Choice - BOWs 17 & 18

I got a little behind this last week, Christmas and youngest daughter at home had something to do with it. All caught up now. This first BOW is Mother's Delight, symbolizing Christabel Pankhurst. Printed the templates from EQ7.

BOW 18 is Cheyenne:Wyoming firsts, mostly rotary cut, but used EQ templates for the diagonal square and the triangles.

Christmas Greetings from Elm Creek Manor done!

Now up in my entry way, this actually might get a bit more quilting for next year, and needs blocking, but later.

Knitting another Noro striped scarf

I needed something easy to bring along on the New York trip, so grabbed my last skeins of Noro and needles and started this in the airport. This is the fourth Noro striped scarf I have made, and probably the last.

Civil War chronicles

Still plugging away at the Civil War Chronicles BOM. Month 8 is a tumbling blocks variation.

Month 9 is Broken Windows. Still have three more to make of this one, still cutting out that blasted stripe. There are a lot of directional fabrics in this quilt, can't say they are fun to work with, in fact, very fiddley. Not terribly happy with the stripe in this block, will try and get them lined up better in the next ones, which means fussy cutting for the whole block.

Grandmother's Choice BOW

Almost a third of the way done! 16 of 49 blocks are complete. Let's just ignore the sashing (which I currently plan on piecing). Here are the first 16 blocks on the design wall.

BOW 15 is Centennial to celebrate the New Zealand women's right to vote.

BOW 16 is Capital T - for the Temperance movement.

Grandmother's Choice catch-up

After a couple of hectic weeks, it was time to get caught up with the Grandmother's Choice BOWs.
BOW 12 was Little Boy's Breeches and symbolizes dress reform. I was reminded of Amelia Peabody, Elizabeth Peters' intrepid Egyptologist and sleuth. Amelia was an avid advocate of rational dress, but until now I really wasn't sure what it looked like. Now I know thanks to Barbara Brackman.

Grandmother's Choice BOW 11

This weekend was quilting, actually quilting, not piecing, so the BOW this week took a back seat. Tonight I got it done, not exactly a Little Red Schoolhouse, more a Vine Covered Cottage.

Center almost quilted

Still need to do the trees and red bits of buildings using the green and red threads shown. Debating on how/what to quilt. At least for the trees. Buildings will be easy.

Christmas Greetings quilt progress

Saturday I spent much of the day at the sewing machine, stitching in the ditch (along the sashing and the narrow red block trim) is done, and a bit more. Two blocks are mostly quilted, and I am working on the center block. Now I need to make some decisions on how to quilt that field of snow!

I have been looking at Leah Day’s website to get some ideas. The falling snow is a variation of one of her designs. Still need to do a filler pattern around the outer applique shapes. I used a very light silver Rayon for the snow, a bit of glimmer. And I need to fix some of the icicles hanging from the roof.

While stitching in the ditch, I did part of the Feathered Star, still needs something in the star, but I will use green for that stitching, not the gold.

Cornucopia of Thanks done!

At around 98" square, this will be for our bed. I have two matching pillowcases made so far, need to make another two. Love this quilt!

Civil War Chronicles BOM 6

I did months 7 and 6 out of order, but now months 1 - 7 are done. This is Crown of Thorns, 4 of them.

Grandmother's Choice BOW 10 - New York

How appropriate that the block this week is New York, although it was not picked because of Sandy, but rather to commemorate Susan B. Anthony voting in New York on the first Tuesday in November in New York in 1872. It was also the last time she would vote, not living to see the 19th amendment passed into law.

Still using "Morris and Company", tricky to get flag colors. The corner star was fussy cut using the large floral, white flowers for the star, a blue background for the field.

Grandmother's Choice BOW 8 & 9

BOW #8 was revealed while we were in NYC, so it had to wait a bit. I ended up using some of the scraps from earlier blocks to piece the striped portion of the block.

This block was easy to cut and piece using Marti Michell templates (blue squares and smaller outer triangles). I drafted it in EQ7 and used paper templates for the large triangle and the rectangles. All caught up.

New York City vacation part 4

Day 5: Sunday This morning we took the subway to Brooklyn, specifically to the Brooklyn Bridge stop. We walked down to DUMBO and found Buddy’s for brunch. There was a park along the East river with a carousel. That area also had several art galleries and some great photo opportunities of the NY skyline.

Then we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhatten. Not a bad walk, but narrow with bicycles and other pedestrians. Then we headed uptown to get tickets to a show, we picked Spiderman at the TKTS booth. Today was our last opportunity to go to the Cloisters, so we hopped on another subway and headed up to the northern edge of Manhatten, almost, the 190th St station. We walked from there through Fort Tryon Park, along the Hudson, very scenic. The Cloisters is a composite of various monestaries, religious artifacts and tapestries. The Unicorn Tapestries are the big draw for me, but there are others as well.

The M4 stops at the Cloisters, so we took that back towards midtown, getting off at Columbia University area and had a snack, then caught the subway back home to drop off the camera before heading back to the Theatre district to see Spiderman. While our seats were in the 4th row, and at the extreme left edge, we could see pretty well. Farther back would have been better. The flying around the theatre encompassed the balcony to the stage, so we twisted a lot! fun show. When it was over we headed to Katz’s Deli for more pastrami sandwiches, actually we shared one, very good¸ and Coney Island beer, a good choice to go with the pastrami sandwich. Day 6: Monday This was our last full day, and most of the things on our list were done. So we decided to do a self-guided walking tour of Greenwich Village. We’d been on its outskirts all week, but hadn’t really gone there. So we used the AAA tour book as our guide and walked around.

We started off in Washington Park, roamed around looking at lots of buildings, including one 10 ½ feet wide, or should that be skinny?

As we roamed around we discovered an Italian restaurant for lunch, some more very good pizza. We also investigated a Public Library, to check-in and get line assignments for our flight the next day. Worked a treat, even got them printed out. We decided we had time to visit one more museum, the Guggenheim, so headed uptown on the subway, and took a bus over to Central park. It had mostly Picasso paintings on display, and being tired, didn’t appreciate it as much as it deserved. The building was a Frank Lloyd Wright design.

After leaving we walked across Central Park, got a little lost (not really lost, just it was wider than we anticipated), and finally found a subway to home.

Our last dinner was at Crispo’s (another Corey recommendation), Italian, delicious, just around the corner from our hotel.

New York City vacation part 3

Day 3:
Dawned gray and dreary, with drizzling skies that opened up later. We got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art before the downpour, and left when it was over.

Our brains were saturated with loveliness.
That evening we went to the Four Seasons for dinner, a disappointment to say the least. I did not like my dinner, left most of it on the plate.
Then we headed over to see “The Heiress” featuring Jessica Chastain, David Straithern, Dan Stevens and others. It was still in previews, and had a few (very few) kinks to work out, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Day 4:
On tap for Saturday was the Food on Foot tour. We headed over to Grand Central Station, the meeting point, got there early so wondered around looking at architecture.

There was a photo shoot in the terminal, a bride with a lovely dress was on the stairs at one end of the terminal.
We met up with Corey, our intrepid tour guide for several hours of good, inexpensive food down in the East village.

Our first stop was dumplings (gyozu or pot stickers). We got a small vegie with whole wheat and shared it. Then on to some of the best pizza I’ve had, artichoke spinach with a creamy sauce, again we shared one slice.

Then we went to This Little Piggie had Roast Beef, we shared a pastrami sandwich on rye with coleslaw (in the sandwich), hand sliced thick slices of pastrami were fabulous.

The Puddin’ Shop was next, with the pudding being rich, and delicious. We shared a small cup that had chocolate and coffee flavored puddin’.

We were still full by the time we got to the hot dog shop, which had quite a variety of dogs, but we passed. Others in the tour enjoyed them.

Our final stop was Veniero’s Pasticceria, we got several small sweets, canolli and tarts and a gluten free, no sugar cheesecake that you would swear wasn’t. We took these home for later, a couple of nice snacks for later.

Corey gave us some recommendations for later that worked out well.
Not having other plans we decided to do the Circle Line twilight cruise, so headed back uptown on the subway to 42nd Street and then a bus to the piers. After getting our tickets we headed over to the Intrepid aircraft carrier museum a pier away.

The flight deck was full of various aircraft including a Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, a Blue Angels Hornet, a Tomcat, and others. The hanger deck had even more, with wings up, barely clearing the ceiling. There was a museum on that deck, and a kid’s hands-on area. The kids all looked like they were having a ball. We didn’t have time to see the Enterprise shuttle because we didn’t want to miss our boat. So we walked back to the loading pier and got on the Circle Line boat. We traveled down the Hudson and then up the East River.

We headed back home and tried out the Corner Bistro (burgers and beer) recommended by Corey, a winner. Not being too late yet we decided to go to the Empire State Building.

It doesn’t close until 2am, but the NY sky ride (think theme park ride with moving (stationary) chairs and a large screen) closed earlier, so we did that first. It took us all over NYC, showing us places we hadn’t seen yet. Then to the 86th floor and observation deck. It was cold out there!