Give Away Day

How about a giveaway?

 

The winner will get every thing you see,  A quilted bunny,two Rural Jardin charm packs and two quilt books , an autographed paper pieced book by Carol Doak and a Book by Carol Burniston.

Leave a comment and I will pick a winner on September 6th.

Friday Night Sew In The results

Made these block for my guild's Memory quilt  need to write in the names and gather the rest at September's meeting.

Old Sturbridge Village & Fiday Night Sew In

Summer is winding down for me, I'll go back to work on the 30th of this month poor, poor, me.  On Tuesday my girlfriend and I went to Old Sturbridge Village. It  museum that reflects life in New England during the !790's through the 1840's.  It's a living museum with many of the old crafts in full swing.  I took some pictures unfortunately, I failed to charge my camera before I left so the pictures are all from my blackberry, needless to say that the picture quality is not so good but interesting any way. We saw some very interesting thing including some you ladies dying wool using natural ingredients... didn't get a picture of that, but I did take some of...

This is the room they make and store cheese... rather stinky

Typical country meal of the late 1700's or early 1800's..
see the black dots? Can ya guess what they are?

Yup  you guessed it..
FLIES ! Yummy...
The food and the table was covered with the pesky little critters.
 Kind of a understand why there was so much illness back in the good ol' days.

My friend, Sue, checking out the inside of the huge kiln

They man who was making pots to go inside the kiln

pots before they are fired and glazed

Pots or brown ware after they were fired and glazed.
It sure was hot that day....

even for the poor piggies... it was so dry that there wasn't any mud  for them to wallow in.

Melinda, my friend, I was thinking about you...

We took a spin in this fancy smancy stage coach.. This coach ran from Worcester Massachusetts to Hartford Connecticut (approximately 70 to 80 miles)  in about twelve hours. Let me tell you that this was not a comfortable ride and we were just ambling it was stiff and you could feel every bump. They told us that normally it would travel twice as fast OUCH!

These young ladies were giving a demonstration about how two brothers discovered how to make a hot air balloon by using heat from a fire not the smoke. They used this little chimney and a tissue paper balloon, filled it up, let it go and it promptly flew into an very tall tree.

We only saw on quilt. Notice the ropes at the foot of the bed, these were used before spring, the mattress was filled with straw. I sat on one ... not very comfortable, but I guess better than a rough wool blanket thrown over a pallet of straw on the floor.
By the way my mother was born at home in a bed very similar to  it. She just gave it to my sister.
Notice the wall paper it is a replica of the way it was mass produced  Massachusetts, it is block stamped.
There is a fabric line I think  it's call the Sturbridge Village Collection, it is inspired from this village and the textile and wall paper from this time era.
 And speaking about quilts .. tonight is Friday Night Sew In  so I better get to it!!

I'm Still Here

I haven't posted in over a month, time has just flown by... I've been busy. In July we took a trip to Cleveland.

We saw...

 Tall Ships...

 Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame...

and the Football Hall of Fame.

Couldn't take pictures in the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame but it was fun to see,hear and read about the evolution of Rock. 

The Football Hall of Fame was fun too.  There are only three of us in my household and I'm the only female, so needless to say  sports pretty much rules the roost here. I've been a fan of football ever since my freshmen year in college when I caught the flu and was sick the whole Christmas break. I watched football with my dad and he explained a few things and realized I actually liked the game. My husband and I have always wanted to visit.
It was hot is Cleveland like every where else this summer. We only stayed for two days and  headed home I drove, we hit such a terrible rain storm just outside the Buffalo New York area it rained hard for about two hours making visibility nearly impossible. I got behind a tractor trailer truck and followed him for quite a while, we made fairly decent time considering. So thank you Mr. Truck Driver where ever you are!
I've been tutoring my great niece for the past three or four weeks or so. She's having a little difficulty with her reading, but I have seen some real improvement lately. I'm so proud of her and she should do fine once school starts again.  Linda, from Prairie Flower Farm and my virtual quilting group, A Dozen Quilters had us make a block with the Grandmother's Garden flower and I've been hooked on hexies ever since.

I've also played around with miniature Dresden Plates...

I made my niece a table topper for the Fourth of July and had some fabric left over and started playing. I started out making Shoo Fly Blocks, my thought was to have them appear to float on a white background. But then thought that it looked a little to stark, so I added some Grand Mother's Flowers...

I call it Shoo Flies from My Gram ma's Garden 

What do you think?

Then I made a pillow for my son's girlfriend. This is also the block I chose for my quilt from A Quilter Dozen.
There's  more but I think I'll save it for another day.