Quilts and Books

I hear the term "old school" thrown around a bit and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what that means. It does conjure in my mind an image of slightly more lurid covers, although given what Avon still puts out, I'm no more confident of that assessment either. I didn't really start reading Romance until 2003. When I got into it, I looked for the back lists of only a handful of authors (Balogh, Beverley, Kelly, Metzger, and Putney). For this month's TBR Challenge I don't own too many pre-2000 books. This one goes all the way back to 1988 and I chose it because it's Carolyn Jewel's first published book and I'm a fan of her recent historicals, especially Scandal from 2009. If it didn't say so on the cover and on her website , I would never guess that this book was by the same Carolyn Jewel. The style is so markedly different. As it has been nearly 25 years, it's hardly fair for me to expect otherwise. But this book is so different...

Are you an author? Do you know any authors? Would they like to have a quilt designed and made by ME featuring up to four of their book covers? Kinda' like this one here. I made it for Brenda , just to see if I could :-)  Well, and to thank her for the awesome job she does every year to raise money to find a cure for diabetes, a disease both our sons have.  Here are a couple of close ups: So, if you know someone who wants one of these tell them to go BID! Bid early, bid often! RIGHT HERE.  Or feel free to link to and/or tweet this post. I thank you for your support!

5.  Crossing Oceans  by Gina Holmes. This was available as a free Kindle download back in November and I decided to give it a try. This is not a romance (although there is a bittersweet romantic element). Holmes is a Christian inspirational novelist, and Crossing Oceans  was her debut in 2010. It's the story of Jenny, a single mother to a 5-year old girl. Jenny has learned that she has incurable cancer, so she takes her daughter and moves back to her father's to find a new home for little Isabella. She has two choices--her own father, from whom she has been estranged since she became pregnant; or David, her daughter's father who never knew anything about Isabella. Jenny has some fences to mend. Jenny is not always likable, but I think that made her human and realistic. She's dying, doesn't always feel well, and has a lot of ground to make up in the short time left to her. I enjoyed this book that was well outside what I normally read these days. 4.  Kill Shot ...

This month's theme is "new to me author" and Marie Force came immediately to mind when I was deciding what to read. One of the best things about TBR Day is that it forces me to read things that have been on the back burner waaaayyyy too long. Really. I should have read this (and the rest in the series) back when I got them last summer. I was the winning bidder for Force's "Fatal" series in the 2011 Brenda Novak auction and if I enjoy the rest of them as much as I liked the first, I'm in for a treat. I had seen Marie Force's name mentioned several times on Twitter and elsewhere as an author to check out. That's how I ended up bidding on these books. The "Fatal" series is similar to JD Robb's "In Death" series in that it follows the same couple throughout. And while heroine Sam Holland is a police detective like Eve Dallas, the similarities pretty much stop there. Fatal Affair is book #1 and it's where we mee...

Last summer I got to spend half an hour in a lovely little quilt shop, People, Places & Quilts in the heart of old Charleston, SC. An employee was doing a demo of the "Lil' Twister," a plastic template tool made by the Country Schoolhouse to help you make easy pinwheel quilts. Naturally, I had to have one. At my quilting retreat last month I pulled out a stack of purple batik or hand-dyed fabrics and started cutting them into squares. When I was finished, I laid them out rather randomly, just trying to make sure there was some contrast between a block and all of its neighbors. This was about as far as I got before the retreat ended. Last Saturday, International Quilting Day, I pulled those squares out and set to work again. After all of the blocks were sewn together and a border added to the outside, I was able to use the tool to cut new blocks that were centered on the intersection of 4 blocks. Here's an idea of what the process looked like: Next...

This month's theme is "series catch-up" and Fallen is book 2 in a trilogy by Emma Jensen (no website found) that also includes the titles Entwined and Moonlit . Ironically, Entwined was my June 2010 TBR read . The heroes of these 3 books were spies together during the Peninsular wars and carry various physical and emotional scars from their time there. Fallen takes place almost entirely on the island of Skye in 1812. Our hero, Gabriel, the Earl of Rievaulx, has been asked by his friend Nathan (and hero of Entwined ) to go to Skye and track down an elusive traitor. A SIDE NOTE: I think the fact that an Earl was running around Spain spying on French troops and is now free to go to Scotland to find a traitor causes this book to meet the definition of a "mistorical." I try not to get caught up in the finer points of what constitutes a mistorical because I am no expert. But Gabriel's "profession" did not ring true and in the end did a lot to d...

I'm sitting here watching a little March Madness, anxious to get back to some sewing. I just agreed to make a t-shirt quilt for the son of one of my best friends. He'll be a freshman at Loyola Chicago in the fall, so I can't procrastinate. These days I feel as if my UFO (Un-Finished Object) pile is as bad as my TBR pile. If I'm not careful I'll get behind on my blogging, too! 5.  The Bentleys Buy a Buick by Pamela Morsi . Morsi's latest book isn't really a romance, although there are romantic elements. Tom and Erica are a happily married couple with a young child. After being a stay-at-home mom for 5 years, Erica has resumed her career as a medical coder. Tom is working hard to grow his business which is an auto repair shop that focuses on classic cars. Tom gets an opportunity to do some work on an old Buick in nearly mint condition. His obsession with the car leads to time away from home causing Erica to wonder if he's having an affair. Her insecurit...