FRIENDS GATHER!

The town's community center is open to the public again and we held our quilting group yesterday!  It was so good to catch up with friends and see what everyone has been up to in the months and months apart!  I worked on the latest Quilts for Kids kit.  

There is one blog reader who will appreciate this fabric!

And while I was enjoying a good time sewing, talking and laughing with friends, Bill was struck by the truck on the left-Bill is in the middle and the car on the left of  ran right up the driver's side of Bill and flipped on his side!  (he had to be removed by the rescue crew through the windshield!)  No one suffered any injuries-just three ruined vehicles!  The truck who pulled out and hit Bill was at fault but that is little satisfaction when your new truck is unable to be driven....

I had started this for my PROMPT for the day but maybe 

Bill did it better than me! 

A Little Tweak for Style

It was just cool enough to need a shawl yesterday. 

I love knitting shawls but they are not always easy to wear

because

they don't stay put and you have to fuss all the time you wear one!

So I placed the shawl over my shoulders

and pinched where the underarm would be if it was a sweater.

(I rearranged it so the back hung like a swing sweater

and the fronts curled nicely, too.)

Then I did a whipped stitch to keep the edges in place

 and wore it like a little shrug

all day

and it never fell off my shoulder or shifted

so I never had to fear bending over or moving freely!!!!!

I will do this with all of my crescent shaped shawls!

And today, I will be going to quilting group.

I will take the sewing mat and finish it!

Threads that Bind Quilters

 I enjoyed quilting time with my local group-

my throat is still pretty sore but the medicine is starting to kick in gear! 

 I finished the other 6 blocks while there so I can squeak a table topper out of these.

 I have only a few blue pieces and a few more of the beige

 so I am playing around with the idea of  angled blocks for a border

 to really use up every last piece from this collection.

 While at our stitching time, a woman came in and asked if we would be interested

 if she dropped off a few unfinished quilt tops from her m-i-l who passed away.

  We naturally said we would be glad to look them over and donate what we couldn't use-

you never know what you are going to get!

She said no one in her family did any sewing let alone quilting 

and she wanted them to go to people who would appreciate the work that went into them.

Well, we hit pay dirt!

  These are very old tops (flimsies my Aussie friend calls them!)

  We each picked out one and said what we thought we would do with  it.

 Most had condition problems-they have been stored a long time and smelled of moth balls.

 When this quilter ran out of fabric for a strip-she just pieced a similar color and continued on her work.  

You can see this red square had several pieces to bring it up to size. 

 All of the quilts were pieced by hand with a few blocks sewn by machine, too.

The pieced block on the right was done by machine.

There are 81 pieced blocks and two different fabrics used for the red blocks. 

 There are fabrics from the 30's, 40's and 50's in this quilt; 

 some of the other tops were from the 50's and 60's. 

 We sure had a wonderful time examining these donations!

  I think I will layer this with batting and backing and quilt it.

  Of course, many quilts made in FL of that time period were just backed and quilted without a filler so it was a light covering for the bed not a quilt for warmth. 

 But since this was made by a woman in Jacksonville,

 she would have experienced cooler temperatures for winter

 and would have appreciated a quilt with a cotton batting. 

 I will think it through a bit-how do you weigh in?