July 26, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I think this article explains it all. I will break this habit TODAY! Click here.
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July 26, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Although it’s going to be pretty hot for turning on the oven, here’s a very easy recipe for using all the great fresh fruits and berries of the season. Mix together 1 can of crushed pineapple (20 oz) and the dry ingredients of an angel food cake mix. That’s it-nothing else. Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 min. (Do the toothpick test for doneness). As it cools the center will sink, not to worry. This will have the texture of a sponge cake. Serve with fresh fruit and cool whip. Yummy! and can’t get much easier. Let me know what you think. Got this recipe off the radio, and it was a hit with my family. And if you like them easy, have you seen these recipes? Click here.
July 19, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. If you are of a certain age, that phrase has an entirely different meaning to you than it will in this post. I spent some time this morning looking around on Pinterest for NY Beauty block quilting designs. Didn’t find what I was looking for, but ran across this series of posts instead. Click here. I took the pledge this morning. I am often asked questions by my quilting students which have answers all boiling down to one simple fact. I make my quilts to be used; “for keeps” is the phrase the author uses. I would rather have them used up, worn out, stained with grape jelly, or skidded with green grass and red dirt stains than have them be still in pristine condition 20 years from now. That is why I prewash my fabrics (baby skin is so sensitive to chemicals in fabric […]
July 17, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. We had our monthly guild meeting last evening. Committee chairs spoke about their groups, activities and how one can get involved if so desired. It is amazing to me how much we have going on in our guild. We can rightfully be proud of all of the charity work that gets made and given away with little, if any, fanfare. True giving from the heart (and hands). Lori R and I demonstrated our guild’s Accuquilt machine. It is available for any of our members to use whenever the BNHV is open. You can find documents of what dies we own at our guild’s web page. Some of our members were not aware we owned the machine, and some of our long time members had not seen how easy it is to operate. In today’s e-mail I got a link to a video where a shop […]
July 15, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Do you recognize that term “boutis”? I thought it was a French term for whole cloth quilts, but apparently in the French quilter’s mind there’s more to it than that. The link I’m including I found in my Pinterest feed today. It’s completely in French, but the pictures are absolutely gorgeous. This quilter (blogger) has some wonderful things to share. If you have Google translator you can do that for yourself, but the pictures alone are worth “a thousand words”. Get ready for beautiful images. Click here.
June 28, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I’ve mentioned here before that many of the ideas for my blog entries come from other bloggers. I subscribe to quite a few blogs and receive daily or weekly updates from many of them. Leah Day, a phenomenal quilter, who wrote the 365 free motion designs blog, is one of them. She has added a few new threads to her blogging posts. Today her post was titled “You have permission to quit”. After listening to what she had to say in her youtube post, it got me thinking about some of the UFO’s I have accumulated. I can think of 2 that are unfinished because I do not like them anymore. One was so poorly written by the designer that every step of the way requires some sort of correction. Her math calculations were atrocious, and you can just imagine how that irks me, the […]
June 25, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I apologize for the faulty links that WordPress has posted from me. I’m not sure what is going on there, but definitely it’s not what I want it to do. Ain’t computers just grand?! I’ve been looking around the web at free motion quilting tutorials of late. I will be teaching an intro class to FMQ myself this summer and am interested in what other teachers are doing. I also am becoming a bit of an online student at Craftsy, Craft Daily and a few other sites. I find that learning and listening in my jammies with my beverage of choice suits my style these days. I came across this blurb for a book/class on bobbin quilting by Michele Scott which is intriguing. That girl has an attitude! I’ve seen her work online and a few pieces at a national show, and she is very […]
June 19, 2015
Hi everyone, I am so bummed I had to miss the meeting again!! It seems that un-planned things always happen on Thursday, the Guild night?? yeah…last night was unexpected family shuffle as some were battling a little stomach bug that baby is giving everyone these days (but me! – grandma is immune! ) Oh well – maybe in July I will just take a day off when Guild night comes, ha ha! In the meantime – using my coffee break here at work to quickly draw a winner of a surprise I promised, as I promised!! So…what is the prize?? Maybe you guessed it already, but yes – it’s a BOOK! Book we talked about – IRICH CHAIN QUILTS, Contemporary Twist on Classic Design. We had 8 guild members comment (so now we know what they are up to!), each got a number assigned in order of comments appearing – THANK […]
June 17, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Although that title could be about quilt projects, it’s actually about the maple helicopters, whirligigs, schizocarps or whatever you call them. It seems that this year’s crop is at least twice the size of a usual spring. Every garden bed needs another cleaning from them, both those just dry and dead and those that are starting to sprout. The pathways are loaded too–I’ve got work to do before the mulch can go down. In the middle of summer I love those lush maples, but now I hate them. And I haven’t even mentioned cleaning the gutters and the flat roof!! I’ve been enjoying a new quilt book that just arrived. The Farmer’s Wife sampler (this is the 2nd book-using 30’s fabrics this time) is a project that intrigues me. I haven’t been enticed in the past to do any of the block compilation type quilts-Dear […]
June 16, 2015
…and that would be ME! 🙁 Hello everyone, sorry to be MIA for so long from our blog!! What can I say… just life in general! New job, too much fun with my granddaughter, summertime… excuses, excuses!! But early this morning, while it was pouring outside and I couldn’t go for a walk with Marley, I was browsing quilty blogosphere of course, with my morning coffee…and thought that this particular new book (and the fun Blog Hop that goes with it), could be interesting for you all too! IRISH CHAIN QUILTS by Melissa Corry The subtitle is what I really, really LOVE – contemporary twists on a classic design!! And lets just say it from the start – I have no affiliations of course, I don’t even have the book YET! I just love the idea, love the quilts I saw so far and thought to share for inspiration. 🙂 […]