24 years ago today I married the man of my dreams.
Happy Anniversary Rick ~ I love you.
When all my will is gone you hold me sway
I need you at the dimming of the day
Lazy, lazy days
Lazy HOT days I might add. It’s about a bagillion degrees here in California. It’s all I can do to stay awake. The heat just drains me. I need to sit on the porch in my slip and drink an icy cold mint julep.
We had guests for the past few days – hence the slowness around here. My dad, sister and brother in law came up for a few days. And we just ate and drank and lazed and then started all over again.
This is the thermometer at 12:45pm today. 100 degrees. And it’s not even the hottest part of the day. I think it got up to 107 degrees yesterday.
That thermometer is in the SHADE – did I mention that?
Okay enough whining about the heat –
I said no more quilting posts but the tabletopper above is my July one – my sister Kate made it for me using 30’s reproduction fabrics that I had collected. This was back when I pretended I couldn’t quilt myself and would get my sisters to feel sorry for me and make them for me. Guess that gig is over.
I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July – even if you don’t live in the states – I hope you had a perfectly lazy day, eating fabulous food and enjoying the company of your loved ones. That’s exactly what I did.
Happy Fourth of July!
UFO’s
Last quilting post for a bit – Rick noted that my blog has veered from its original intent as more of a decorating, food, lifestyles type of blog to a craft blog. More lifestyle in the upcoming week – I promise.
Since I was on such a roll on Saturday I pulled out an old unfinished project that has been languishing in the closet since I lost interest in it last year. My niece gave me a selection of fabrics (I do believe they are from the Seaside Rose collection but I might be wrong) – I wanted to do a shabby chic kind of tabletopper with the fabric but as the quilt evolved it really ended up looking like a baby quilt.
I was halfway through machine quilting it when I just gave up. So this weekend I pulled it back out and decided to finish it. I’m machine quilting using a technique I like to call "quilting in the general vacinity of the ditch." I’ve also heard it referred to as "sweet flipping buddha what kind of hot mess is THAT!?" by others when they see my technique.
Sigh. It really is a testament to my earliest quilting attempts. I’m hoping that once I wash it a million time it will have kind of a vintage shabbiness to it and the miserable sloppiness of it will be forgiven.
My ironing board has been up and down all weekend long. I have a lovely laundry room but there just isn’t the space to leave it up permanently. The laundry room is also the passage between the house and garage and invariably Rick will fling open the garage door and crash into it.
Growing up ours was a permanent fixture in our garage. With a trunk full of my dad’s wrinkled dress shirts nearby. My mother wasn’t overly fond of ironing and found it easier to just go out and buy new shirts for him until he caught on. We always had a teeny stainless teapot (like you get at a diner when you ask for tea – they bring you hot water and a teabag) that we would use to fill up the steam resevoir.
I used to have a friend whose mother kept her freezer stuffed with ironing. She would take damp clothes out of the washer and freeze them until she was ready to do her ironing. I’ve never come across anyone else that has done that. She must not have known about the trunk method.
And we have a winner…
Is the suspense just killing you? I was going to go all high tech and use an online random number generator (and assign numbers to each name based on the order they were left) but it didn’t present quite the picture taking opportunity of using something prettier and doing it the old fashioned way.
Other than drawing names I was quite productive this morning. I actually FINISHED something – can you even stand it? Okay it needs to be quilted and finished but looky here:
The colors are a tad wonky (they are a little lighter than depicted here) but look at that! It actually came together really quickly. The middle part took no time at all. I probably spent the most time cutting out the applique bits. I adore that kind of hand work and I can see more applique in my future.
The hairiest part was sewing the four corner squares onto the border pieces so they would all line up properly with the main part of the topper. My seam ripper and I really bonded this morning.
Oh I just realized I’m not technically done (beside all the finishing work) – I still need to hand stitch around the applique pieces. I’m telling you fusible web applique is the way to go. You get really precision edges that way (like I’ve ever tried any other method of applique – but whatever).
I took some liberties with the layout of the applique because I ran out of usable charm squares. I have this dream of living close to my sister and having a big old studio on the property where we can set up sewing machines and craft tables and have tons of storage area for someone’s (ahem) stash. If that was the case I could have just raided her Celebrate Spring leftovers.
I guess it’s back to embroidery now.
What? Oh you want to know who the winner of the book drawing is?
Congratulations Julie! If you could just shoot me an email with your address I’ll ship it off to you. Thank you to everyone for playing along.
Bloggy giveaway
A few weeks back Turkey Feathers had a giveaway – she finished this book and wanted to pass it along to another reader. I was actually the second name chosen (the first was out of the US). So I was the lucky recipient and now I want to share the love.
Leave a comment and I’ll draw a name on Saturday morning and if your name is chosen then the book is yours. And maybe a little something extra too.
While I won’t put any rules around this drawing I would love to see the book make the Internet rounds. Perhaps, dear winner, when you finish the book you will do the same.
I just love the idea of many hands turning the same pages and wondering what a previous reader may have thought about a particular passage.
Let’s move on to the apology portion of the program, shall we?
I wanted to say thank you for all the lovely comments regarding my work in progress and the margaritas (seriously you must try the recipe – if you don’t like alcohol use a little sparkling water instead) – I’m just SO miserably behind in responding to comments and emails. I hope to catch up this weekend.
Thank you for being so kind and so patient.