Quilts and Books

Time for a quilting post! I've done a fair bit of sewing lately. As usual, multiple projects going at once seems to be the way I've been working. And after several months of no finishes, I have 3 projects I can show off. This first quilt was mentioned here just over two years ago. It's called "Moss Garden" and the top was made by my late mother-in-law. It was made from a kit she purchased to go with a pattern in a book called Inspirations from Japan by Maria Tamaoka (no web site found). The fabrics are a combination of Japanese wovens and American commercial cottons. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing my mother-in-law finished the top in the 6-12 months before she died. She usually had someone else quilt her tops on a longarm, so I imagine only her final illness kept her from sending it off to her favorite quilter. So, after basting it into a quilt sandwich two years ago, I finally buckled down in the late winter and quilted it. I bound it in May...

This month's TBR theme is Westerns (historical or contemporary), a sub-genre that I enjoy, but don't go out of my way to collect. I wasn't sure I'd even find any in my collection, but as I scrolled through my Kindle I did run across this one. As I recall, Harlequin made a number of its e-books available for free in celebration of its 60th anniversary, and this was one of them. It's the third in a series of connected books, but it stands alone quite well, except for the cheesy baby-filled epilogue which seems pretty standard for this sort of book. It's a contemporary romance set in and around Dallas, TX. This Philadelphia Phan will try hard not to hold that against it. Linda Warren's Once a Cowboy is the story of Brodie Hayes, a retired rodeo star who now lives on a small ranch near Dallas. Private Investigator Alex Donovan works with her father Buck at his agency, and occasionally takes on missing persons cases. She is approached by Helen Braxton ...

Hi all. I have been seriously AWOL lately and I am sorry for that. Unfortunately I had some minor, nagging health problems that had me just sitting around much of the time feeling lethargic and sorry for myself. I'm hopeful that the worst of it is behind me now and I can catch up and show off some recently completed quilts! Meanwhile, let's see if I can remember what I liked about these books: 5. The Christmas Child by Linda Goodnight . This book was listed as a RITA finalist in the Inspirational category and when I saw it at the library I decided to pick it up. It's about a couple who are brought together when a lost, mute, 6-year old boy shows up in the small town of Redemption, OK. Kade is a big-city undercover cop recuperating from a tough assignment when the little boy is found huddled in the back of a dumpster. Sophie is an elementary school teacher who takes an interest in both the boy and the man. This is a sweet story about love and faith that is told with a l...

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...