Back to being hot!

I haven’t updated my blog in awhile – I went away for 4 days to take some quilting lessons in Flagstaff this week. Had a great time – I stayed with a friend at her cabin which is just lovely, filled with antiques and COOL! I was able to sleep with the windows open and a cold breeze coming in! Since I’ve been back in Phoenix we have had temperatures up to 118 degrees, so we are all getting a bit cranky. I had a headache from the heat today so I haven’t done too much stitching. I’m still working on my Quaker Garden and on the last large motif so I hope to get done this week sometime.

While I was gone I received my biscornu package in the mail from Pam in Quebec! It was so exciting – she stitched it in pink and it’s just lovely! Here is a picture of it – thank you so much Pam!! She also included some other special gifts, some hand-dyed floss that must be Canadian because I haven’t heard of it, and a journal and some pretty stationary. Isn’t it great getting stitching presents in the mail? I really want to make some more biscornus for myself. Also, since my exchange partner has already received the one I made, I will post a picture of it as well. It’s a Just Nan pattern called “Beach Roses”. I was nervous it wouldn’t turn out but I thought it looked pretty good for my first biscornu. I hope to make some more.

I took 2 quilting classes while I was gone – one was an applique class with Elly Sienkewicz, it was really fun getting to see her work in person as she’s so well known in the quilting world. She is a really nice lady and had lots of good tips for us about ink transfer and specialty applique. Unfortunately, the block I started in class I made a mistake on and accidentally cut off a piece of the applique so I trashed it. I only had about 2 hours of work in on it anyway so I decided to start over. I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes – at least I wasn’t near the end instead of the beginning! The other class I took was by John Flynn called Pickle Dish. This pattern is very similar to a double wedding ring quilt. It was hard – I spent the entire day and got ONE block done! I had decided I wasn’t going to make a whole quilt, that I would just learn his technique and make a pillow or something and I am really glad I made that decision! I still have to add 2 more arc sections on to this and then I plan to applique it to a background and make a little pillow out of it. I still would like to make a whole Pickle Dish quilt someday but when I have more time. It takes a lot of time and concentration to make this quilt accurately even with John’s innovative techniques.

Yesterday I decided to straighten out my linen closet. I ran across some old linens I have and thought it might be fun to post a couple of pictures. This is an apron my grandmother made me when I was 7. Not only do I love it because she made it (and pink of course my favorite color), but she was embroidering it during the Mercury 7 spaceship launch and she embroidered the capsule onto the apron, then she inked the date and details around it. Mercury 7 was the first manned orbit in space and John Glenn’s famous flight. It was a national event at the time. (Yes you can tell that if I was 7 in 1962 I’ve been around awhile!!)

The other picture here is a guest towel I made in 7th grade Home Economics class! We called it “huck toweling” at the time although now I see it referred to as Swedish Weaving. Let’s see, I figure this towel to be approximately 37 years old! It’s scary how quickly the time passes. I remember not liking taking the sewing classes very much – mostly because I already knew how to sew and I would get frustrated sitting and listening to the teacher go through everything a couple of times. My mom taught me to sew fairly young so by junior high school I could already sew dresses and skirts etc. Making an apron and the types of things we did in school were sort of boring. It shows how times have changed though – I don’t even know if schools teach Home Economics anymore and if they do, I’ll be they’re not making aprons!