Quilts and Books

Since I had to spend Saturday attending an all-day meeting, some important household chores were left until Sunday. Which left less time for sewing. Not to mention, the games were close and worth keeping an eye on. That also meant less sewing. Congrats to the Saints and the Colts. Should be a fun Super Bowl and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be hand sewing during the Super Bowl so I can keep a closer eye on the action. But if I watch all the commercials, I won't make much progress. Meanwhile, during this last week I started working with those sets of strips for the Quilts of Valor project. The strips were in groups of two and I began joining those groups of two together. I sewed them into strata of 10 strips each and I wound up with a stack of close to a dozen of these strata. The strata are about 40 in. long and anywhere from 20-30 in. wide. They'll get cut into 6.5 in. segments and sewn into one very, very long strip set that is to measure 10.5 YARDS. I've been ...

Well it's a new year and for the 3rd year in a row, I'm participating in Keishon's TBR Challenge --the challenge to bloggers for us to reduce the size of those piles of books waiting T o B e R ead. Keishon has a list of suggested themes, but other than a stray romantic suspense, most of my TBR books are historicals. So I'm going to ignore the themes this year and go with what I have. I've been carting this month's entry around since Thanksgiving. But I also have had a gazillion library books to read and return, so this one kept staying on the back burner. A year and a half ago I read CJ Lyons' debut book, Lifelines . I loved it and it was my number 1 phave the month I read it . Warning Signs is the second in Lyons' quartet of medical suspense novels centered around 4 women who work together in a Pittsburgh hospital. Marketed as general fiction (meaning you won't find them in the romance section at the store), they nonetheless have strong romantic e...

The QBFFs & I decided to participate in an all-day quilting event in February to make a boatload of quilts for the Quilts of Valor project. For homework prior to the big day, we each have to sew a pile of strips into something that will eventually measure 6.5 inches by 10.5 YARDS. Yeah, YARDS. That's a lot of strips. So during today's games I worked on my QOV strips. Here's my mess of strips. Oh look! On the far left there's my library copy of Nalini Singh's Blaze of Memory all ready to read. Only I have to read my monthly TBR book first. So far I only got about half my cut strips sewn into sets of two. While the pile doesn't look real big, there are over 2 dozen sets of them. I'll be sewing them together into groups of 10, cutting them, and sewing again to get that great big long 10.5 YARDS of strips. It should be fun trying to get a picture of that! Yesterday during the games I cut strips to make the binding and rod pocket for my stars quilt that I q...

Here's a short review because Mary Balogh's latest is a short book, slightly longer than a short story that would appear in an anthology, but shorter than one of her old traditionals. And it's an unusual story because of the way that it explores the wide gulf that existed between the classes in Regency England. There's a cover quote from Debbie Macomber that says in part: This is a not-to-be-missed story with a surprising twist . And really, that's it in a nutshell. Of course, I'm a die-hard MB fan who never misses any of her books as it is. The twist caught me by surprise, although the way it's written allows you to catch on to the fact that something is up from almost the beginning. But I did not see the full extent of what she had done until the last chapter. And then I did something I never do. I went back to the beginning and read the whole thing over again. This time I caught the double-meanings that were laced throughout the book. Very cleverly done....

I'm not sure why exactly, but it turns out I get quite productive late in the football season. I turn on the games, warm up my machine and get to work. I don't really watch the games; I listen, even though I really do care which team wins or loses. I look up if something exciting happens, otherwise I keep my eyes focused on my sewing and my ears tuned to the TV. So this weekend we had approximately 14 hours of NFL playoff games (and I do NOT want to discuss any of the outcomes. I'm quite disgusted). I had this project from one of my QBFF challenges that I've been very anxious to finish. I love how bold and colorful it turned out. It would look nice in my office at work. This quilt is approximately 42 x 42 inches. I quilted it fairly densely. All-in-all, I'd estimate I spent 9-11 hours quilting it. The sprial/starburst quilting design inside each star is from the book Thread Work Unraveled by Sarah Ann Smith . Nice book. So here is the quilt in my machine on Saturd...

I feel as if I should subtitle this post "Large Print and my Treadmill." Because that's how so many old Nora Roberts titles ended up on my December reading list and how 2 of those wound up as Phaves. Bear with me while I explain. In the recent past when I've been looking for an older title it has not been unusual for me to find it in my library's large print section. It's where I found a copy of Judith Ivory's The Proposition (see #3). I've always known that my daily treadmill time is much more enjoyable if I can read while I walk. But I really need ideal lighting conditions to walk while I read a paperback. When I figured out that a large print book is easiest on my eyes I went to the library and began browsing the large print shelves and discovered a whole section of old Nora Roberts titles (late '80s). I grabbed half a dozen and brought them home. What fun to discover these old categories. I'm hoping to go back and find old Linda Howard or ...