Quilts and Books

And the winner was .... author Dorothy St. James ! Dorothy has previously written in several genres as Dorothy McFalls. Now she has a mystery series out (book 3 is due in April) centered around Casey Calhoun, the White House Gardener. When Dorothy won the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes Research last May, she only had covers for two of her books in the trilogy. I was happy to wait until she received the 3rd cover before beginning work on her quilt. In the end we agreed I'd start after the holidays; I finished it last week and shipped it to her. Now that I have word that it safely arrived I can show it off. Essentially I chose to mimic the look of a triple picture frame. The covers themselves are beautiful, but busy. So I decided to go simple and drew inspiration from the White House and the color red to symbolize the fact that the books are murder mysteries. I found a fabulous white batik fabric with very subtle blue, yellow, green, and pink shading. You might be able ...

Desired is  Nicola Cornick 's 5th book in her 6-book series "Scandalous Women of the Ton." I have enjoyed all of the entries in the series, including this one, for their unusual heroines, settings, or situations. Desired  is the story of Tess, Lady Darant, a thrice-widowed woman with a huge fortune and a reputation of licentious and careless behavior. If she is received anywhere respectable it is more likely because of her sisters Joanna (book 1) and Merryn (book 3). Owen Purchase, Viscount Rothbury, is a former American who inherited the title and somewhat run-down estates from a distant cousin. He is a good friend of her sisters' husbands. We learn at the book's opening that Tess is really not the woman painted by her reputation. She was horribly abused by her second husband and she hides her pain behind a carefully constructed facade. She has no desire to marry again and spends her time secretly aiding radical causes and drawing political cartoons. Owen i...

February was a pretty productive quilting month. I attended my guild's annual  Retreat where I managed to get most of a top done. And I made some progress on the book cover quilt I'm making for last year's winner of the Brenda Novak auction . As a matter of fact, that quilt is very  close to being done. As soon as the author receives it, I'll be posting all about it. As for actual finishes, though, I got one done. But this was the one I'd entered in the local shop challenge. Unfortunately, I didn't win the February drawing. But, for the win I can say I at least got one done! I'll take it. I started this quilt top at the 2009 guild retreat. It was a mystery quilt where we were instructed to bring a variety of light, medium, and dark fabrics. It's a fun study in values. I chose all green fabrics. If you look closely you can see that the dark values run across the quilt from the top right to the bottom left. The medium values run from the top left to...

Since I prefer to write about the books that were especially memorable for me, and since I am reading fewer books on average, I am preserving the alliteration in my title by only mentioning four books this month. Everything else that I read was pretty enjoyable and three of the books books were re-reads so not mentioned here. It was a good month. 4. Promoted: To Wife and Mother by Jessica Hart . TBR Day hostess SuperWendy reviewed this book  and her enthusiastic review combined with a most excellent price point for Kindle convinced me to buy this book. I ended up reading it almost right away and I'm glad I did. I'm not going to bother with much description; Wendy does such a good job in her review. I will tell you why I liked it though: hero and heroine in their 40s, teenagers (I have one of my own), dealing with the failing health of a parent, and finding time for romance between job and family responsibilities--that last one is darn hard. I thought Hart put all of these th...

Most of the big snow storms missed us this year by going just to the north or just to the south. Now that it's March and the days are longer, most of us are tired of the cold and ready for spring. Heck, my tulips are starting to come up! But last night we got one of those rare wet and heavy snow storms that made for some pretty pictures this morning. As I write this, the temps have been above freezing for almost 8 hours and with the sunshine it's melting fast. But my kid got the day off from school and I got a two-hour delay so I could sleep in. I'll take it.