Wonderful Vacation

Vacations are wonderful things … especially when the weather is fantastic, the food is great and the company is good.  We played golf in the western mountains of North Carolina and wore ourselves out.  This is one of my Smokey Mountain pictures from this year:

 And this is a little gazebo that the cart path goes past on one of the golf holes:

 And this is the bridge that was featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing”:

 (My golf ball is in that pond on the left before the little waterfall …)

 And I made my friends stop at every barn quilt that we passed!  Here are a few:

On a Welcome Center

On a Shed

At MeMaw's Produce Stand

More tomorrow!

What’s in the Works?

I have been busily making stars out of pinwheels for one of the larger Quilts of Valor again.  My QOV group uses a snowball block and I ask them to save the leftover triangles from the corners of those blocks for me to use to make pinwheels.  This is the start of how I am using the pinwheels:

 Every other star will have a red frame and star points.  Fortunately, I was able to get some nice red fabric at an excellent price recently due to a friend that told me of a good sale!  More photos to come as the top progresses.

And of course, I always have to have more than one project in the works.  This top uses fabrics that were sent to me to make a quilt for Wrap-Them-in-Love, an organization that sends quilts to children around the world.  I’m going to call it “Rogue’s Gallery”:

 It’s also coming along nicely, but I need some more orange fabric for the borders – oh well, another fabric shopping trip – too bad – LOL!

Grandparent’s Day

Last Sunday was Grandparent’s Day – one of those Hallmark holidays.  So my brother and SIL and their family came down to visit my mother, 86, who is in poor health.  My brother has three boys and two have wives and one has a 2-yr old baby girl (my mother’s first great-grandchild).  There was a real crowd and it made my mother very happy to see everyone.  They came to FL from Colorado, Illinois and Indiana.

 We ate at John’s Pass Village, close to where they were all staying near my mother at the beach.  They all got to see the dolphins swimming in the intercoastal waterway.

View from their condo

They have a boardwalk of shops there right on the water and the baby discovered the stuffed dog in front of the pet store – it’s hard to capture a picture of her since she’s a little perpetual motion machine!

Now You See Her

Now You Don't !!

 Of course, I couldn’t forget about quilting and when I saw the tile in the bath at their condo, I had to take a photo – LOL!

 But I did finish up a top this weekend from a great book called “Take 5” by Kathy Brown – I got this book for my birthday and will be making more from it soon, since it’s so good:

 You use just 5 different fabrics and can work up some great looking tops really fast with her excellent directions.  The stripes in this one don’t photograph well, but the colors are bright and vibrant and the print has little raccoons and mushrooms - perfect for a child's quilt:

And lastly, I noticed this little beastie sticking his head up from the grass in our yard:

He’s a snapping turtle that I guess wanted a little relief from all of the standing water back in our conservation area.  Even when they’re small like this guy, they can bite your fingers off, so I gave him a wide berth!

We Will Always Remember

All we have of freedom, all we use or know -

This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899

Happy Labor Day!

Labor Day is a traditional day of rest and relaxation...

That’s just what I intend to do!

I hope you and your family have a wonderful day, too.

I’ve Been Busy

Even though I’ve been busy, I only have bits and pieces to show for it.  I made a quick appliqué block to send to a swap group member that had a crisis in her family.  The blocks were to be any blue heart design on a yellow background and another member has volunteered to put it together into a quilt.  I hope it will be a comfort.

I had it in the envelope then remembered I wanted to take a picture

Then I finished up my round of our Round Robins that are circulating from another group.  The person who sent this center also included a piece of the focus fabric that could be used or not – the recipient’s choice.  When I received it, another person had already done the cute triangles with yellow for her Round 1 addition, so I went subtle and used the focus fabric a lot in my Round 2.  I wish I had had some yellow so the 4-patches would have popped out more, but red is what I had on hand.

 I have been trying to keep up my walking in between the rain storms.  I took these pictures of a Gardenia that has been shaped into tree form last week and when I walked by today (without my camera, of course), the tree is full of blooms and you can smell the lovely gardenia fragrance before you even get to that house.

gardenia flower

gardenia tree

 And the rains have made this beautiful Bleeding Hearts bush burst into flower also.  Guess the plants around here were thirsty and are now grateful for the quenching!

I just like this giant elephant ear plant.  I don’t recall seeing any at the stores or plant nurseries, but I think they’re cool.

 And last, but not least, I sent off a box to Wrap-a-Smile with 6 quilts in it.  I still have 2 of the 8 yet to quilt, but thought I was taking too long and just wanted to get these out the door.  One more is on the frame – so maybe tomorrow (I say that a lot…).

So maybe I do have a little something to show for where my time went!