Quilts and Books

Nearly 1000 entrants. 4 finalists. And yes -- Phyllis P. -- That would be me.

This month's TBR theme is virgin heroes. I wonder if Stephanie Laurens could even write a virgin hero. Probably not, but I won't hold it against her. Meanwhile it turns out that the only book I have in my TBR that would fit the theme is Outlander . That sucker scares the heck out of me. I wasn't even going to try. I think I'd need an entire month to finish it. But I digress. It's been quite some time since I've read a Stephanie Laurens book. A Fine Passion is #4 in her Bastion Club series. I've been intrigued with her new series that stars heroes who've been in India. But being rather obsessive, I knew I wouldn't allow myself to start the new series without finishing the old series, so it was time to return to the Bastion Club. I'll start off by saying I find myself rather ambivalent about this book. There was a lot to like here, but quite a bit that just did not ring true. Now granted, almost everything I know about Regency England comes from ...

So, back during the football playoffs I blogged about all of these strips I was sewing together for a Quilts of Valor project my guild was doing. Before yesterday's "Super Sew-In" I had to finish prepping my strips. First, I cut the strip sets into smaller sets 6.5" wide: Then I had to sew them end-to-end until I had sets that were approx. 10 yards long. Here they are laid out in my upstairs hallway. I'm standing several feet into the guest room and they extend down the hall into the master bedroom, up against the treadmill. Rolled up like this, they don't look like so much fabric. The QBFFs and I, along with a helper, formed one of the teams of 4. We had 12 teams working on quilts during yesterday's day-long sewing event sponsored by my guild. Here's our workspace. And here are the 3 quilt tops we finished yesterday. As a group we were particularly fond of the middle quilt which was harder to make and took quite a bit of coordination between us. We...

Here's an odd little project to show you. Remember the old child's game "telephone"? Someone whispers a sentence into the ear of the person next to them and then it goes around the room and you see how the sentence changes as it's repeated by each player. Well, I entered a guild challenge based upon that game and here is my little quilt. We were placed into groups of 4 people per group. One of our members, a talented photographer, passed photos out to one person in each group. Person #1 had to make a quilt based on one of the photos. The other 3 people in the group were not allowed to see any of the photos. In November the photo was returned and the finished quilt was passed on to person #2. Person #2 (which would be me in my group) had to make a quilt based on Person #1's quilt. Us #2s have to turn in our completed quilts to #3s on Thursday night and return the 1st quilt to their owners. I wish I could show you the quilt I had to "copy." But I need ...

It started with three very disparate fabrics. The QBFFs and I decided to have a challenge. We each picked a fabric and gave a fat quarter piece to the others. My choice was the blue batik with orange highlights. QBFF A. chose the pink. QBFF T. chose the purple. These fabrics were not going to be able to go into something tame and calm. I've posted pictures of this as a work in progress , but here it is finished, hanging on the wall of the guest room. The next picture is a close-up of the quilting which I did on my Baby Lock mid-arm domestic machine. The pattern is from the July/August issue of Fons & Porter Love of Quilting . I'll be entering this in the June NQA show. As I was getting the photos ready for this blog post I realized that I never posted the picture of the completed large version of the Christmas Candle . And here's a bonus picture. This will keep me indoors sewing all weekend :-)

5. Forbidden Falls by Robyn Carr . Robyn Carr has become my new crack. I can't get enough of the Virgin River novels. Shoot me now. They're sappy. They're full of babies. The women have almost all been through some sort of trauma--widows, abusive ex-husbands, rape, etc., etc. But Carr weaves some excellent stories about the growing town of Virgin River, up in the mountains of Northern California. Virgin River comes across as this mini-utopia. This particular book was both emotional and funny, and it touched on issues of faith without being preachy. And it was NOT weighted down with back story!!! This time there was just enough to move the story forward. Thank you for that, Ms. Carr because that is one criticism I've had of previous books in the series. Anyhow, FF is the story of Virgin River's new pastor and the church he is restoring. He hires Ellie to be his new assistant. It turns out that Ellie is in desperate need of a "respectable" job in order to w...