Quilts and Books

In what can only be a wild coincidence, 2009 has brought us a second book with a hero who comes back from the dead after his wife has remarried. In Jennifer Haymore's A Hint of Wicked (which was a Phave back in June) we had the story of Sophie who presumably lost her first husband at Waterloo. She remarries years later and shortly after the marriage her first husband returns. In this new book by Julia London we have Macy in a contemporary story of a woman whose husband is presumed killed in Afghanistan when all that is left are his dogtags after an attack on his vehicle. Turns out that Finn was captured by the Taliban and escapes only to find that his wife had remarried just 7 months previous to his escape.

Despite the disparity in time and setting, not to mention the legal situation, both books are eerily similar. They do not tell the romantic journeys of the protagonists in what might be considered traditional romance fashion. Instead they focus on the decision the heroines must …

I was going to write this up on Tuesday, but then I started reading Jo Goodman's Never Love a Lawman and, well, I just had to finish that first!

5. Never Romance a Rake by Liz Carlyle. This was one from my TBR pile that I've had for a year now. The hero, Rothewell, is one of those heroes who is about as dark as they come. A horrific childhood combined with a boatload of guilt over the circumstances of his older brother's death have filled him with a lot of self-hatred. He gambles with some very disreputable people and finds himself agreeing to a wager that, should he win, commits him to marry the illegitimate daughter of his gambling partner. Camille is desperate to be married, period, and makes it clear she supports this wager. The two are drawn to one another immediately, and must learn to make their marriage work, despite their secrets and their pasts. This was another beautifully drawn book by Carlyle that focused on the relationship between Rothewell and Camille. Camil…

We were inspired when some of the mini groups in our guild showed quilts that were based on fabric exchanges. So each of the 3 of us picked out a fabric and passed a fat quarter of it to the other two.
Predictably, I picked a blue. The blue has bits of orange in it. Yes, I was going out on a color limb.
But my QBFFs picked fabrics that were not going to let me get away with something comfortable.
We ended up with this:

So, I took a deep breath and randomly pulled out a whole bunch of brighter/intense fabrics and paired some until I got 5 pairs of fabrics.
Then I made those stars I showed you a few weeks ago.


And here's what I came up with:

Today is TBR Day. I totally forgot.

Over the weekend I read an older Karen Ranney that I downloaded from Fictionwise. My Wicked Fantasy has a paranormal bent as a ghost is involved. Rather different and since this was first published in 1998, it would have been before everyone else jumped on the paranormal bandwagon. I was going to write a review because of the way the ghost is used and the hero's insistence on the cold light of logic. But then I decided I'd rather make more stars. So I sewed instead of wrote. It'll be a Phave though.

Then on Sunday I started Karen Rose's latest, I Can See You. That was a mistake because on Monday after work I was supposed to be doing a boatload of PTA stuff. Instead, after supper, I buried my nose in the book and didn't come up until nearly midnight when I finished it. There were lots of dead bodies, an incredibly sick, twisted villain, a scarred heroine, a determined hero, and Karen's trademark tight plotting. This is the star…

I should be working on UFOs. Instead I started a new project recently and made some pretty decent progress today. These are HARD. Irregular angles and bias edges made it hard to piece these accurately. I ripped out numerous seams until I got the hang of how to place the edges together.

I drew a star on an 8" block of freezer paper and cut it apart.


I ironed the freezer paper templates onto two 12" blocks of fabric (stacked together right sides up).


I cut out the star block adding 1/4" seam allowances.


I sewed the blocks together.


Credit where credit is due: This pattern is from the July/Aug. 2007 issue of Fons & Porter Quilting.

I can't show you all the blocks because 1) they aren't done yet, and 2) this is part of the latest challenge my QBFFs & I are doing and they aren't allowed to see it yet. Sometimes they read this blog.

I actually finished this while on the way to California last month. It was a wedding gift for my niece and her new husband. This piano was made from a kit my late mother-in-law left behind when she passed away 3 years ago. I thought my niece might like to have something her grandmother had intended to make. The pre-printed piano keys and music-themed fabric made this a very easy quilt to put together. The curved seams are easier than they look and this was a very fun quilt to make.

So, one more UFO down. Gee. Only 23 more to go.

Oh. Just have to say--I'm never buying that cheap batting from JoAnn's again. It shed worse than a pet.

Many of us readers have particular authors that we gravitate toward. Their writing and their stories have that certain "something." It was no surprise as I compiled this list to realize that the 5 authors represented here are among the ones I most look forward to reading. I have gushed over a few of them in this blog previously. Without further ado, last month's Phaves:

5. Loving a Lost Lord by Mary Jo Putney. When I started reading romance again about 6-7 years ago, Putney was one of the first authors I discovered. Her Shattered Rainbows is one of my top 10 reads of all time. Putney took a detour into the paranormal (with mixed results in my opinion) and then a publisher switch meant a two-year gap between books. It was with a great deal of anticipation that I read her first straight historical in some 5 years. The hero of this story is the victim of an accident that leaves him with amnesia. He suddenly appears in Mariah's life just when she's in the need of a pr…