PAINLESS CATHEDRAL WINDOWS

This idea is not original with me, but, having seen some quilts done this way, I have decided to spend a day teaching my guild members how to create the cathedral window look in a new way.  You can make any size block, any size quilt, any combination of colors, and any order of base and top pairings.  Here's how it starts. 

I wanted to make a 24" square table topper.  I had in mind four corner sections and a separate center with the cathedral windows in it, surrounded by my background color and then bordered by more cathedral windows.

I decided to use white as my background fabric and twelve 3 1/2" strips of Kaffe Fassett yummies.  This particular way of combining the fabrics will be the reverse of what you usually see in cathedral windows, where the outside (or top fabric) is white and the leaf (or arced) section is in colored fabric. 

Because I wanted a 24" topper, I divided my top into 8 x 8 sections in my square.  Each section, therefore, measured 3" x 3".  This allowed me to have a four section cathedral window block (finished size = 6") with the white peeking out from under the folded back colors.  But more of the design as the pattern emerges.

What you see above is cut from 3 1/2" strips, one from each of 12 fat quarters:  Eighty Kaffe Fassett squares 3 1/2 x 3 1/2", 40 white squares the same size plus four more 3 1/2" white squares for the corner treatments,  six white 3 1/2 x 6 1/2" rectangles and two white 3 1/2 x 12 1/2" rectangles.  You can use as many colors or fabrics as you wish, and nothing has to match if you want it to be nice and scrappy.  At the very least, however, use four different colors and eight different fabrics to get some texture into the finished project.

You fold each of the colored squares in half right sides out and press them so that they form triangles.  That's what you see so far in the first picture.

Next I placed two of the colored fabric triangles over each of the 40 white squares and pinned them so that the outer raw edges met and the center folds touched but did not overlap.  The last step for this first part of the preparation for assembling the cathedral window block is to sew the outer edges with a basting stitch about 1/8" in from the edge.  This will keep the triangles from slipping in the next part of the project, which I will publish in a few days.

Here's a picture of the first PCW block I made earlier this year, with some of the top triangles pinned back in preparation for sewing those edges to reveal the white fabric underneath.  This is NOT the design for our January project, but it gives you a hint of how things are going to evolve, in case your curiosity is killing you.

ELLEN'S 80TH

My MIL is quite a lady.  Half-Italian, she's an incredible cook.  She also has the best Mexican food recipes, and I have happily tasted and collected each one.  Yum!  She has the energy level of a 50 year old and the memory of someone in her 30's.  Petite and curvy, she can still turn heads when she comes in the room.  I think she may have kept every gift ever given to her since birth, and she remembers who gave it to her, too.

I admire Ellen for her sustained good will to all, her cheerful disposition, her inventive and creative mind and her indomitable spirit. Most of all I admire her for LIVING her life and making every day full and rewarding.

This past Sunday was her 80th birthday, so DH and I flew out to California Thursday to surprise her.  The result was everything we hoped it would be -- shock, joy, tears, and lots of hugs.  We caught up with the family at the birthday party --  nieces and nephew and cousins and brothers and sister -- extracting promises to come and visit us in the near future.  Well, you know how that goes -- all good intentions at the time but life gets in the way, so we're not holding our breath.  Nonetheless, we miss all those folks and hope that at least one or two manages to land in our neck of the woods once in awhile.

Time for reflection.  None of us knows how long we have on this earth, but the older I get, the more I love being here, and the less I want to leave, ever.  I want to breathe this clean country air, kiss my grandchildren, laugh with DH, marvel at the sunsets, and gather precious memories forever.  So I try not to squander this precious time, whatever it is, that is allotted to me.

Besides, I can't go until I have used up all my fabric, right?

Catch up time!

It's been forever since this blog was updated, so I guess I'd better fill you all in.

In November, my sisty, Missy, and I went on our first cruise.  This was a combination quilting/sightseeing cruise (read that to mean shopping...), and we had a ball!  Our ship was the Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas out of Baltimore, MD harbor.  The stateroom was spare but had a nice, big window and was adequate for our needs.  This picture is of our ship docked at Labadee, Haiti.

Here's a shot of the interior of the ship.  It seemed there was always music playing somewhere, and in the evenings there was dancing or shows to entertain us.  During the day while we were at sea, we worked on quilting projects created just for us by our teachers, Bonnie Hunter and Pat Sloan!

Bonnie is known for her extraordinary scrap quilts, and Pat is our applique guru.

Missy and I took Bonnie's class on the first day.  Bonnie introduced us to the Baby Lock machines provided by a dealer in Florida, and we made a small needle case with them just to get the hang of how they worked.

Here's the finished project from the familiarization exercise with the sewing machines.  We worked on the blocks for Bonnie's quilting project after making this needle case.  There were four days at sea -- two down and two back.  Two of those days were spent with Bonnie.  Although all my blocks are made, I haven't assembled them yet, so I'll post the final result of those classes another day.

On the second day at sea, we began Pat's class.  Again, we had a small initial project to do prior to starting on Pat's special pattern for us.  Here's my wool applique needle case from Pat's warm up exercise.

Cute little thing, isn't it?  I hadn't finished the stitching around the outside of the case when I took this picture, but you get the idea.

This is the final project, all assembled but not all appliqued, for Pat's class.  I will be doing machine applique in a blanket stitch for this wall hanging.

We were heading first for Puerto Rico and arrived there around 1 PM on the third day at sea.  This pictures El Morro, the fort that sits at the entrance to the harbor.

With very little time for shopping, we briskly walked the narrow, cobbled streets of old San Juan, finding this and that for our families back home and enjoying the architecture.

I never did find out exactly what this building was, but someone thought it housed part of the city government.  I thought it was charming.

On the fourth day of the cruise, we landed at St. Thomas, USVI.  This is one of my favorite islands in the Caribbean.  DH and I used to come here annually for my medical conferences and some wonderful scuba diving, but we stopped after several tourists were murdered, preferring the safety of Grand Cayman thereafter -- and GC has better diving.

Nonetheless, you can't beat St. Thomas for shopping.  Sisty and I did our share to boost the economy of that small island, I can assure you.  One has to bargain in the Caribbean.  You must NEVER accept the asking price for anything, or you will be taken to the cleaners.  If the vendor asks $100, you start at $10, because chances are that he paid no more than that for the item.  However, this is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those who do not know the true value of an item, particularly gems.  Here we are with our favorite jeweler.  At one point, I was ready to walk out the door without a purchase and thanked him for his time.  Need I say more?  I have a lovely ring and watch as a result.

Our next stop was Samana, Dominican Republic.  DH and I had vacationed for our first anniversary on the northern side of the DR during a gasoline rationing crisis where the lines were miles long and the gas stations had armed guards and the locals'  idea of scuba diving was to take 8 divers out in a small dinghy and throw them overboard with their gear and tell them to gear up in the water, so we had never returned.  Most of the island looks like this.

We were greeted with residents clothed in traditional colorful holiday garb and swaying to steel drum music that was impossible to keep from dancing to along with them.  Small lorries that held up to four passengers were powered by one man on a scooter at the front.  Housing was dismal, and the pretty homes on the hills were only for the very rich.  Closer to the town, the government had made a mighty effort to clean up the view from the main street and had built or refurbished small adjoining cottages that housed souvenir stores.  Outrageous prices demanded serious and sustained haggling to get the cost down to something even vaguely comparable to the price in the US.  Of course, I LOVE to haggle, so I got that $55 hat down to $3 in no time.  Heaven help those meek souls who bought anything at face value, though!

I must admit that I was very concerned to be visiting Haiti, what with all the poverty and storm damage and crime on that island.  I thought that a bunch of rich (comparatively) tourists should not descend on a town that was desperate for reconstruction and just the basics of life.  So I was not prepared for Labadee, which is a peninsula privately owned by the Royal Caribbean lines.  The scenery was breathtaking.  The beaches were clean and the water a wonderful Caribbean turquoise blue.  Because this part of the island is privately owned, we were prohibited from leaving this portion to tour any other part of the island.  Local craftspeople had remarkable painted clothes, well turned wooden boxes, beautifully fired ceramics, and some of the best painted steel drum sculptures I have ever seen.  The prices were pretty much the same as in the states for such mementos, and the locals were not very flexible in their bargaining, but I bought a few things to take home with me anyway.

So, we bid adieu to this lovely place and spent the next two days at sea, where our course took us through a major storm that we could not escape.  This was my first experience with aiming for one place and ending up at another whenever I sallied forth from my cabin in those tumultuous seas.  Fortunately, neither sisty nor I got seasick and were able to enjoy our final two days of classes.  We even got up VERY early the last morning in order to see the coastline from Virginia Beach north and to watch the sun come up over the Bay Bridge.

Would I do it again?  Well, let me break that down into quilting cruise vs cruise alone.  Maybe to the quilting cruise, and no to the cruise alone.  Unless DH was with me so I could dance under the stars and have him to share the romance of the seas.  I have to say that if I didn't have the quilting projects to fill my time, though, I would have been a bit bored on this trip on the days that we were at sea.  DH and I, being scuba divers, much prefer flying to a land base and exploring from there, both the under water beauty and the sights and activites on land.  Going out here and there with unknown diving companies at various islands is not our scene. So we're not likely to take a long ocean voyage in the near future.  But I wouldn't mind flying to the Greek Isles and then touring them by boat.  Or Loch Ness.  Or the fjords of Norway.  Something new and different to see.  So we'll just have to keep our minds open about all that.

FAMILY REUNION

THIS is a bonfire!  We had the first annual Wachter family reunion Saturday at my niece, Jenna's house in Pennsylvania.  Jen is lucky enough to have a darling log cabin/stone spacious cottage on four level acres, so most of the Wachter clan that was descended from my father gathered there at her invitation.  The kids ran and played, we all ate too much, and the bonfire was a huge success.  Various menfolk tested their mettle dragging full size fir trees from a pile about 20 feet high across two acres to the bonfire to keep it crackling and going long into the night.  Those of us with more traditional tastes added chopped wood sections to the fire, and the warmth and glow from all of this was enchanting.

Meet the cast of characters.  This is youngest son, Jon, bringing folding chairs to the bonfire set up.

This is Jon's eldest, Jon Russ, dragging his own tree to the fire.

Jon's wife, Shary, is NOT texting!  She's taking a movie of the men dragging the trees and logs for the bonfire.

Jon and Shary's youngest son, Adrian, just "happened" to catch his stick for marshmallows on fire.

Sister Missy and progeny:  Lara in front and Jenna in back.

                                           Jen's daughter, Aubrey.

   Jen resting after all that cooking and cleaning and stockpiling wood.

Missy's youngest, Lara, above, and her fiance, Jeff, here.

Grandma Missy reading to Jeff and Lara's daughter, Gianna.

Brother Elm's eldest son, Joey. Elm couldn't attend since his race track was open that day (Mason-Dixon race track).  Joey and Jenna and Jon have a "special" way about them when they start cutting up together, and all political correctness is left waaayyyyy far behind.

Joey's son, Jakob.

Just a word about start-up reunions:  they're every bit as much fun as long standing ones, and one of the best things about them is that you actually KNOW the people involved, since fifteen generations haven't produced 400 people that you've never met. 

We have a Hake reunion every year.  Hake was my mother's mother's family name, and although I grew up with my cousins and aunts and uncles, I am now a member of the eldest generation represented there, so I know almost none of the great-great grandchildren. And it's hard enough to remember the names of my own contemporaries.  This makes that reunion more befuddling than befriending for me.

I think that's why my kids and their generation decided that having a family reunion with just my father's descendants would be such fun.  There aren't as many  of us to keep track of.  And my kids and my brother's used to go with us to Murder Mystery Weekend at Allenberry in Boiling Springs, PA some years.  It was an annual tradition for my sister, my brother and I to go to this event for 17 years, so we had at least one full weekend that afforded us time to catch up on each other's lives. I love that our children are now feeling the need to continue that weekend of visiting in a pastoral setting welcoming to all generations.



Quilting by embroidery!

This pretty patchwork was created in the hoop of MY sewing/embroidery machine!  A week or so ago about eight of us from the quilt guild decided to get together with Sherry Newton, an extraordinary software teacher/embroiderer/longarm quilter who lives in the Lake Gaston area.  We wanted to learn how to do those amazing embroidered quilts that are on the web these days, but some of us hadn't even taken our embroidery hoops out of the boxes yet!  This was completely undaunting to Sherry.  We had at least three different kinds of embroidery machines, and Sherry was able to work with all of our formats and put us on the right path!

Each of us had her own table.  I don't know how you are, but when I am a little nervous about doing something I haven't tried before, I don't want to be crowded until I get my sea legs.  I've embroidered towels and such, but never an entire quilt. 

Here's Kay's block, coming together nicely. She looks like she really has the hang of this thing.  It's not just embroidery that we are doing in this class.  We are also learning how to applique small bits of fabric into the block cleanly and securely.  Even though this is all done with the machine, you have to decide what colors you want in each block and follow Sherry's careful directions as to how to applique them in the correct order.  Sherry also taught us about the various stabilizers and threads that we are using in this class.

Jan loves purple and green combinations, and these fabrics were just perfect for her pansy block.  Every one of us finished the first block in the series of 20, even though it took a full three hours to do so!  Hopefully, as we become more familiar with these techniques, it will go a little faster.  We're supposed to go ahead and do as many of the first five blocks as we can before the next class (monthly). 

It's nice to stretch one's wings now and then, isn't it?

Don't forget to check out my other blog:  http://www.lakeside-quilting.blogspot.com/  where I show a bargello Christmas table runner in the making this week. 

SECOND BLOGSPOT

I have a second blogspot for my professional work as a quilter.  Sometimes I will post new discoveries in the quilting world.  Sometimes I will show my latest quilting commission.  There is less personal chat and more business conversation on this second blog:  http://www.lakeside-quilting.blogspot.com/.

Please visit it from time to time to catch up on my customers' work.  My latest quilt is a stunning New York Beauty effort by Kay McA.  Here's a picture of the entire quilt, below.

I will continue to share my own quilting adventures and personal journey with you on this blog, so stay tuned.

RAINY DAY DISCOVERY

Marilyn Doheny has worked her butt off the past two days, presenting an amazing and awesome trunk show on Wednesday and a jam-packed full day class on Thursday using her remarkable 9 degree rulers.  We were all completely saturated with  the variety of designs that could be accomplished with her quilting techniques, and we were also totally immersed in the process to the extent that while finally creeping out of the class at the end of the day, we found ourselves tired but exhilarated by all that we had learned to do.

So I thought that today, Marilyn, who is my guest for the next several days, should have a little relaxation.  The first requirement was that the fun would not require any of us to meet anyone's schedule on anything, and the second was that it must involve fabric.

After the trunk show on Wednesday, we had held a luncheon for her at the Rosemont Winery.  Chef David had made incredibly delectable tidbits of this and that for us, topping it all off with a heavenly flan.  During that luncheon, I heard of a new quilt shop in the area, the Threads Run Thru It Quilt Shop in Phenix, VA.

Now, you have to realize that "the area" in rural Virginia does not mean "the area" in any other civilized and populated part of the world.  If you lived in a suburb of a big city, it could mean just a few blocks.  If you lived in a small town, it could include the backroads between that town and the next.  But in rural Virginia, "the area" means anything between your home and about 2 hours away, because there is absolutely NOTHING around where we all live down here until we get to a major city, like Richmond or Raleigh. 

So that meant that we needed to make an hour and a half trip to see this quilt shop.  And we did.  In the rain on a grey and somewhat muggy day. But oh boy!  Was it ever worth it!

The quilt shop itself is a charming log cabin out in the middle of nowhere.  It's not even near the three or four houses that pass for a town in this neck of the woods.  It is REMOTE!  As you go down the lane and come upon this pretty place, you are immediately greeted by two things:  the lovely quilts hanging on the outer walls, and the cat, Wing Nut, who is a long-haired, multicolored, affectionate "familiar" of this bewitching place.

Once inside, the warm greetings continue.  Lori and Steve Clayton (who built the log cabin himself!) welcome you with an exquisite collection of every fabric you could possibly want, with the exception of no Amy Butler(which I don't use anyway) or Kaffe Fassett (which is ok, because I can get his stuff any number of places).  The fabrics are top notch quality and very up to date.  I spent over an hour just drooling and touching and thinking and planning and combining one with the other.  Finally, I bought a whole bunch of yummy stuff and sat down to wait for the others in my party.  Myrt was with us, and she looked over some fabrics I wanted to make into strata for the Eye of Rah quilt.  She quickly saw that I needed a particular red as a zinger, so back I went to the batiks rows to choose a strong, deep red.  While there, Marilyn had found a batik with several heart-catching colors in it, so of course I needed some of that, too.  I ended up at the cash register for two more purchases.

This is Emily.  She must have cut more than 50 fabrics for the three of us today!  And always with a smile.  While we were there, four more ladies arrived, and by the time we left, another two had come in the door and were proceeding up and down the aisles, eyes glazed over, slack-mouthed and drooling, just like we had been upon seeing all those fabrics, willing and eager to jump into our arms almost of their own volition.

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I sat back down again and watched others fondle, carry and combine their treasures.  Then another spark of color caught my eye, and of course, that needed to go in my bag.  And the black and white diagonal stripes -- I had forgotten I needed them, too.  By now, I'm a little embarrassed at showing up for a third time at the register, but what's a quilter to do?  You have to have the correct supplies, right?

If you look at the top picture, you will see that Marilyn is seated at a little bistro table.  These tables are in one section of the cabin/shop, as is a small kitchenette.  Lori Clayton will prepare lunch for her customers if she knows when you are coming and how many there will be!  We had delicious chicken salad sandwiches, potato chips, brownies and iced tea -- for free!!!  What service!

Lori is also a longarmer.  She has a Gammill with the Statler computerized robotics attached.  I'm giving her a plug even though she is competition for me.  But she's also a good sport about it and seems to have a comfortably large customer base.

This quilt shop has been in business for a year and is doing very well.  Both Steve and Lori are personable quilters who know what is required to have a successful enterprise.  They make a good team, and the shop is absolutely, 100% worth the trip.  I highly recommend them to all the quilters in "the area."