Quilts and Books

No commentary. Just some pictures chosen at random for you to enjoy.

NQA is a member-driven organization that relies heavily on volunteers. Each year it holds an annual show and accepts up to 400 quilts for display and judging. Ribbons are awarded, but there are no cash prizes. It's fairly prestigious to win a ribbon there, although there are shows like AQS and Quilts, Inc. that are probably more prestigious. Anyhow, at NQA a quilt is entered into one of 16 categories. Within each category three ribbons are awarded (first place, second, etc.) and, at the judges' discretion, one or more "honorable mention" ribbons are awarded. So, my quilt was in the pieced wall hanging category. There were 27 quilts entered. Four received honorable mention ribbons, thus a total of 7 ribbons were given out. Truly, there were some pretty awesome quilts in my category. Let's look at them, shall we? First, I have photos of 3 of the 4 Honorable Mention winners: This is smaller than the others. Those little squares are 3/4". This is accurately pi...

In the 25 years I've been quilting I've displayed a handful of quilts in shows sponsored by the guilds I belong to. Only three times, though, have I entered a quilt into a competition--that is a show that has judging and awards ribbons (and sometimes cash prizes). One of those 3 quilts was one my sister & I made together, and for the purposes of this blog entry, I'm going to leave aside for now. The first quilt was a 36" x 36" wall hanging made entirely by hand and I entered it in the state fair--about 20 years ago. It did not win a ribbon. The second was the quilt below that you've seen here a few times recently. That would be 20 years between competitions. Why did I wait so long between entries? Well, I did go through some major life changes that sent my quilting goals in other directions for awhile. But mostly, I was waiting to complete something that I felt had a reasonable chance of showing well against competition. Not necessarily to guarantee a win,...

One of my May phaves was Pamela Morsi's Wild Oats , the first book of hers that I'd read. Wendy first reviewed Wild Oats and a commenter mentioned Simple Jess as another Morsi classic worth reading, so when I saw a used copy available on Amazon, I ordered it. This is such an unconventional romance that I felt positively compelled to talk about it. In a nutshell, SJ is a story set in the small, isolated mountain community of Marrying Stone (in the Ozarks?) in 1906. Largely untouched by the outside world, the community governs itself, even to the extent of intruding upon the individual, personal decisions of its members. When the town decides that a young widow, Althea, must remarry, she is given 3 weeks to decide who she will pick to marry. Althea owns a farm in a favorable location and she is trying to preserve it for her young son. She is highly resistant to the idea of remarriage because she fears her son would be shunted aside by his new step-father. It turns out Althea...

First, my apologies for neglecting my blog lately. Lots of other stuff seems to be keeping me busy these days... So, when I started reading romance again, about 7-8 years ago, I joined the Regency readers Yahoo group where I gathered up a ton of reading recommendations. One particular trilogy that people would refer to time and again was a series by Emma Jensen (I couldn't find a website for her) consisting of the books Entwined , Fallen , and Moonlit . I managed to find used copies of all three and then they proceeded to sit unread in my TBR pile. Entwined is the first book in the series and the one I read for this month's challenge. I think I'll save the other two for July and August. I definitely enjoyed this one and I'll be looking forward to the next two. Entwined is the story of Nathan Oriel, a wounded war veteran, and Isobel MacLeod, the daughter of Nathan's steward. Nathan is mostly blind--he can only see large shapes and colors. He manages to fool most peo...

Yes, I did a lot of reading in May, but I also got quite a bit of sewing in. And in between, I kept an eye on the action over at the auction . So, if you didn't see, my quilt sold for $176! A very respectable price and the auction itself raised over $285,000. That just amazes me... Meanwhile, I actually finished the May block of the month in May. This one was a little easier than the first one, although one of the edges didn't come out quite as straight. Nonetheless, the corners came together right and it squared up nicely to the required 12.5 inches. Here's a look at my blooming 9-patch. The quilting is almost done. As you might be able to tell, I appropriated the kitchen table which is nice and big. When it's done, I'll get some close-ups of the quilting. Finally, I am basting into a quilt sandwich the last top my mother-in-law completed before her death in 2006. It's stretched out on a frame in our living room, which has almost no furniture in it. Every now ...

May was filled with lots of good reading. I had a couple of books that came close to being a 5 Phave : A Secret Affair by Mary Balogh and SEALed with a Ring by Mary Margret Daughtridge . The former got a tad too sappy toward the end and the latter I really liked, but historicals usually rank higher for me than contemporaries. In the end I could only pick 5 (because Phyl's 7 Phaves is not alliterative), so here they are: 5. Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn . I love the way JQ writes. She has a light-hearted, humorous style that almost always works for me. And she can do it while writing about people with real problems or burdens. Sebastian is a writer of gothic romance. Absolutely no one besides his publisher knows the truth about Sebastian. When JQ wrote about him doing writerly things, I wondered if she was describing herself. And Annabel is the oldest of 8 siblings from an impoverished family. Her wealthy grandfather still harbors a grudge toward Annabel's paren...