Elgin Piecemakers Meeting

The Elgin Piecemakers held their first meeting of the season this past Thursday. There were four completed quilts to donate to the local hospital for adult chemo patients. I love the piano key border on this blue quilt.

Joanne made this quilt with a block she made at a workshop and some donated fabrics.

Heather used some donated fabrics to make the blocks and used some polka dots from her stash for the sashing and border.

The turquoise sashing really livens up this gray and black quilt.

We each made a block using 30's prints this month.  I forgot to take my block to the meeting but delivered it to Chris on Saturday morning. We laid the blocks out on the floor to take a picture.  Chris hopes to have this top done before our next meeting. Two more people need to make their blocks to add to the collection.

At our next meeting, we will be deciding on some themes and colours for next year's donation quilts.

Any ideas are most welcome!

Afternoon Roadtrip with Frank and my Husband

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis must realize by now that I often stitch in the car and today was no exception. My husband and I had the afternoon to ourselves so we took a drive in the country with a few stops along the way. I did some stitching on Frank in the car on the way to our first destination.

 

I actually did some stitching one night this week when Christine came over for a couple of hours of stitching.  You can see her project on her blog here.  She is making a wool candle mat for a Christmas gift.

I took this picture at our main stop this afternoon.  Some of you may recognize this place...Country Patchworks Fabrics and Quilts. 

I purchased some orange thread--I have been wanting to get a new spool of orange thread for months! Also, three pieces of fabric came home with me.  I love the snowmen riding in the trucks!

I also purchased something else while I was there but you will have to wait a few weeks until I can show it to you.

Our next stop was at the Dairy Queen, but I did not take any pictures of our ice cream!

On our way home, we were on the lookout for some pumpkins for our front porch.  We stopped at a farm on a country road where they had apples, onions, squash and pumpkins for sale.

 

I bought two types of squash ( a green one and a striped one) and white and orange pumpkins.

 

 

These pictures were taken at the farm. I decorated my porch when we got home but did not take a picture and now it is too dark.

We also saw some farmers out harvesting their soybeans.

It was a perfect day for a drive in the country!

There were even some leaves changing colour on a few trees.

I will be linking up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow.

Time in the Car with Frank

Last weekend, we took a trip 2 1/2 hours down the road for a family event which gave me an opportunity to spend some time with Frank in the back seat... For those of you who have not been following my blog, Frank is my Frank Lloyd Wright inspired counted cross stitch picture of his Tree of Life window which he designed for the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, New York.  I am working on the top 1/3 of the window at the moment.

I did some more cross stitching and lots more backstitching as well.  Back in the day when I did lots of cross stitch projects, I always did all of the cross stitching first and then did all of the backstitching.  With Frank, I have to do the backstitching as I go along so I can keep everything lined up properly. 

Here is how the picture looked the last time I did a post two weeks ago:

And this is how it looks today:

Slow and steady progress...that's how I roll these days.  I will be linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching so go take a look at what everyone is working on this week.

Frank and the Squirrel

I managed to find a bit of time this week to do some more stitching on my Frank Lloyd Wright "Tree of Life" counted cross stitch project. The top part of this picture involves a lot more counting and checking to make sure I am in the right spot than the bottom part did!

 

My plan for the rest of the top section is to do some cross stitching and then some outlining as I work across the picture so that I can keep everything lined up as I go along. 

 

Here is a picture of Frank from two weeks ago:

 



 

 

And here is Frank today:

 



 

 

Maybe, just maybe, I will have some time to put a few more stitches in sometime this weekend.

 

Earlier this week, my husband took this picture of our backyard squirrel, eating a walnut while sitting on the shed. He thinks he is the king of the backyard, overlooking his kingdom!  I think he has been eating a lot of walnuts as he is quite fat!

 



 

Happy Slow Sunday Stitching Day!