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February 4, 2024
Friday check in: a month of ambitions from With Strings Attached

 

Today is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.   The Celts called it Imbolc.   German-Americans created Groundhog Day (in Germany they observed badgers rather than groundhogs).   It is also Candlemas, which "celebrates three occasions according to Christian belief: the presentation of the child Jesus; Jesus’ first entry into the temple; and it celebrates the Virgin Mary’s purification."    


Time and Date adds, "Snowdrops (galanthas nivalis) are known as Candlemas Bells because they often bloom early in the year, even before Candlemas. Some varieties bloom all winter (in the northern hemisphere). The superstitious used to believe that ...

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January 26, 2024
Friday check in: estate sale part V, mug rugs, and the four-patches from With Strings Attached

 The fifth installment of Barb M's estate sale was Tuesday afternoon.  (See hereherehere, and here for the previous sales.)  A quick recap:  Barb passed away in 2018 and left a LOT of sewing stuff -- machines, thread, notions, patterns, kits, and FABRIC.  Barb's husband and family finally needed closure but couldn't deal with it all.  


Enter Paula who enlisted a group of her friends.  Since September they've had monthly sales, the first in Paula's garage and the others in a hotel meeting room.  It took until December to get everything out of the house ...

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December 8, 2023
Friday check in: more celebrating, UFO out-and-in, and two flimsies from With Strings Attached

 

Tuesday:  I was co-hostess for the Zion Woman's Club  holiday luncheon.  I brought out some of my vintage Christmas tablecloths.

There was lasagna left over for Stevens to enjoy the next day (and more in the freezer).   

The gift card "tree" was actually a picture frame with $300 worth of gift cards.  Judy and Dottie are holding it. Dottie's niece was the winner.  

We chose "festive food" for the gift exchange.  I got a gift certificate to a local bakery cleverly packaged in a holiday mug.

Wednesday:  Northern Lake County Quilters Guild holiday dinner.   The meal was catered ...

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November 10, 2023
Friday check in: Bramble Blooms QAL from With Strings Attached

I've signed up for Audrey's Bramble Blooms QAL.  More accurately it is a DAL -- design along -- and I look forward to the exercise in creativity.  


The introductory post was about the fabric pull:  three colors in stacks, with a variety of prints in each stack.  

I started with light green, then went to pink, and finally purple.





Part one was to make a background using fabric from one stack.  Here's mine. 

They are similar but distinct from one another.

I learned to make pieced backgrounds in a  workshop with Pat Sloan and I've made them several ...

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September 1, 2023
Friday check in: lunacy, forest preserves, stash report, and something new from With Strings Attached

 Wednesday evening I was among the "lunatics" at the beach who watched the supermoon/blue moon rise over Lake Michigan.  The moon popped at the horizon the way the sun does, but white rather than yellow.  7:42 p.m. on the dot.

With the brisk northeast breeze I was glad I brought my windbreaker.



We went to Ryerson Conservation Area on Wednesday and Marl Flat on Thursday for Hike Lake County.  If you've been counting -- I certainly have! -- these are #10 and #11.  

Bull thistle, cutleaf coneflower (also called green-headed coneflower), ironweed, scarlet lobelia.

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My quilting month was ...

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August 14, 2023
Friday check in: music, flowers, and Borderlands from With Strings Attached



Last evening we enjoyed the season finale at the Zion Park District bandshell.  The Blooz Brothers covered great classic rock.   We set up our chairs next to our friend Kathy.     






This week's wildflowers, clockwise from left:  nodding onion, blazing star/gayfeather (liatris),  veronicastrum (with bumblebee), widow's frill/starry campion, rough blazing star/button snakeroot, woodland sunflower.

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In the studio:  Borderlands is finished.  The name comes from the variety of fabric:  Australian prints for the blocks and setting triangles, Stonehenge for the sashes, an African print for the border.  (I had enough scrap to remove the big white flowers ...

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August 4, 2023
Friday check in: does it count as something yellow? from With Strings Attached

 

Set together the blocks were dense and dark.

What about sashing?   Nothing in the Aussie fabric box worked (mostly F8ths and FQs in that collection)  My stash yielded a Stonehenge print that was just right.  Alas, I was a few sashes short.  I found another tone-on-tone yellow-gold that blends nicely and I'm going to go with it.

Yellow is the RSC color for August so there's a goal achieved.


Here's how I left the design wall when I came upstairs last evening.  The red edge triangles are an Aussie print, one of the few I had in ...

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July 28, 2023
Friday update: challenge completed + using left overs from With Strings Attached

 

My entry for the guild challenge is quilted, bound, and labeled.   

This is all I will show you because it's a surprise. The reveal is at the September 6 guild meeting. 

At the PieFest in 2008 I made a lot of red/black/white flying geese.  They are 3" x 5-1/2" unfinished.   I used five in this project.  




I put the remaining geese on the design wall.  I contemplated blocks -- Yankee puzzle, Louisiana, variable star -- but I wanted to get something done before I lost heart or got distracted by something else.  I didn't fuss much with ...

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June 12, 2023
Friday check in: ins and outs from With Strings Attached

 Car update:  the right control arm had failed.  I had never heard of that part and looked it up.  The control arms are one of the core components of a suspension system and serve as the direct connection points between the front wheel assemblies and the vehicle's frame. The control arms allow a driver to steer a car while also guiding the wheels up and down with the road surface. Although they are simplistic in appearance, control arms have a vital role in a vehicle's overall stability and drivability.    $943.95.  

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IN

Our dear Magpie friend 
Ellie ...

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May 26, 2023
Friday check in: bow ties from With Strings Attached


Historian Leslie Goddard presented an engaging program about Route 66 for the final Clara Cummings Book Club luncheon of the year.   She showed photos and told stories about how the highway changed small towns from Illinois to California (gas stations, restaurants, tourist courts).   It became the popular overland route because most of it was fairly flat (south of the higher Rockies). However, it was a two-lane road that went right through the centers of towns, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was superseded by the Interstate Highway System.  Rather than get stuck in backwater obscurity many of the towns ...

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May 13, 2023
Friday check in: thrift shop deals + a finish from With Strings Attached

 

After an appointment yesterday morning I stopped at two thrift shops and indulged.   The stripe was a roll of quilt-weight home dec,  54" wide.  18 yards for $10!  A smaller home dec on the left, two twin flat sheets, and homespun (curtains).    Total cost:  $23. 

Washing and ironing all of it took some time. Then I finished the wall hanging.  Quilted, bound, labeled.     


Linking up with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? Finished or Not Friday  Peacock Party   

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April 21, 2023
Friday check in: GIVEAWAY WINNER! and design considerations from With Strings Attached

 

I thank everyone who took time to comment on Monday's Hands2Help blog hop post.  It was inspiring to read all the stories about the ways that quilters use their passion to enrich people's lives.

 I used a random number generator to pick the giveaway winner:  KAWeed  (Though her post came as "anonymous" she included her email, per the giveaway qualifications.)   

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In the studio:  the pinwheels and square-in-squares are on the design wall.  The units are 4-1/2" unfinished.

The pattern (Gerri Robinson in McCall's Quilting) is a straight set. 



 
I tried on-point.  I cut setting triangles and ...

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April 7, 2023
Friday check in: blogging friends and a workshop from With Strings Attached

 The Northern Lake County Quilters Guild hosted Lynn Dykstra who is familiar to many quiltmakers from her blog Klein Meisje Quilts.  Lynn presented a trunk show at the Wednesday evening meeting and gave a workshop on Thursday.   

I've admired Lynn's work since I began reading her blog way back when she and Bonnie Hunter were among the "Quilt Mavericks."  




Two members of the McHenry County quilt guild came to sell tickets for their annual raffle.  One of them was Sue Daurio, who blogs at Sue Daurio's Quilting Adventures.  We've been meaning to meet up for several ...

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February 10, 2023
Friday check in: finished! from With Strings Attached

 

I finished the daisy wall hanging.  I adapted a design from a pattern in the National Quilting Assn. magazine.  20" x 20".

It will be presented to the outgoing president of the P.E.O. Lake County  Round Table in appreciation for her six years in office.  The P.E.O. flower is the marguerite, or daisy, and there were seven founders.

I've made crumb-pieced backgrounds for several projects and I like the effect.

This is one of my OMGs for February.

Linking up with  Alycia's Finished or Not Friday  and Wendy's Peacock Party  and Sarah's ...

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November 21, 2021
Friday check in: field trip! from With Strings Attached


Yesterday we headed north to see the Victoria Findlay Wolfe retrospective exhibit at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts .   

Wow!  My husband was impressed, too.  


Her grandfather and grandmother.

Her grandmother made the quilt on the lower right with polyester pieces appliqued onto a red and white sheet.  She had severe arthritis and sewing was difficult.  






A series called Red Dot. 


Left:  Is That You? 2020.  Top center: Everything But the Kitchen Sink, 2000-2009. Top right: You Are Here.  Center: Star Storm Explosion, 2021. Center right: Ignition, 2021.  Lower center: Color Study H1, 2017.  Lower right: Garden Delights ...

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November 12, 2021
Friday check in: goal accomplished and a new project from With Strings Attached

 

I first read "In Flanders Fields" in junior high. The powerful image has stayed with me all these years.  Take a couple of minutes to read about the inspiration  in this story

Our Rotary program (Zoom) on Thursdas was about Quilts of Valor. The presenter is a quilting friend who is an active QOV volunteer (and a veteran herself).  Rotary members were impressed.  I learned a lot more, too. 

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My OMG for November is to quilt three flimsies.  I've done that!  I showed  photo of the first on Monday.  Here are the other two.  The backings for both are ...

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October 1, 2021
Friday check in: a September finish, the stash report, and OMG October from With Strings Attached

 


Rabbit, rabbit!  (Here is the explanation of the good-luck legend.) 

We get our Pfizer booster shots this morning --another good luck token.

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Here's a collage of Michaelmas daisies for Michaelmas Day, September 29. (It's also Archangels Day but the other archangels don't have fall wildflowers named after them.)  

According to Wikipedia the traditional meal features goose . We're not High Church so we had chicken.  Maybe next year I'll remember to bake a version of St. Michael's bannock.  

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I quilted the tilted slab blocks. The bias I mentioned in the previous post was not a ...

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August 27, 2021
Friday check in: rummage sale quilt rescue from With Strings Attached

 Our church's summer rummage sale begins today.  I helped set up on Wednesday afternoon and will take a shift this morning.  The perk for helpers is getting to shop early and paying half price.  At previous sales I've scored some yardage -- not much, but such a bargain!  (In May I got 8 yards for $1.50 which provided the backing for Grassy Creek.)

Well, the only FABRIC this time was a fat quarter.   

But I got all of these (plus that fat quarter, plus five packages of unopened Christmas-letter paper, plus two rolls of clear Contact paper) for ...

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August 7, 2021
Friday update: design change, interrupted (RSC) from With Strings Attached




A wildflower medley at Van Patten Woods


 Barn Quilts was the topic at the Zoom quilt guild meeting on Wednesday. Suzi Parron has traveled across the country to document these bold outdoor art installations.  She says there are at least 16,000 barn quilts and the list keeps growing.  

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I made a significant design change on the wedding quilt that required  three evenings with the seam ripper.  I'll show you the details in the Weekly Update next Monday.

To keep my spirits from flagging I took a break and made and finished a quick project.  Here are the 16 ...

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June 4, 2021
Friday check in: a quilt show.....and the most beautiful fabric in the world (again) from With Strings Attached

Yesterday I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo at the Schaumburg convention center.  The Expo has been held in the Chicago area many times. I've only been once before (when the Quilt Festival was not at Rosemont). The last time I attended an event at this venue was  in 2016.  

It appeared that for most of the attendees this was among the first major outings in our vaccinated world. Some people wore masks, some didn't. (I went back and forth.)  

The exhibits weren't extensive.  That had the benefit of not being ...

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  • can i get a whoop whoop
  • Page 1 of 3 ( 49 posts )