Doll Quilt

The November quilt for the Jo Morton Little Women's Club is a doll quilt. I used a collection of fabric that I purchased from Connecting Threads several years ago. The top is pieced. It is small so I was able to cut and piece it in an afternoon. I am thinking of hand quilting it.

A Fun Weekend

Our weekend started with a drive from Wisconsin to Illinois to visit our son on Friday. On Saturday morning we stopped by his fraternity to pick him up and found a rusty red truck in the driveway with this on the roof!

A dead squirrel. Ewwww!

We also picked up his girlfriend and we were on the road to Indiana for the Purdue- Illinois football game. It was Homecoming so there was a lot going on. The Purdue band was huge by itself, but there was also an alumni band sitting at the opposite end of the field. They combined forces for the half time show.

The game was televised on ESPN so there were about a million timeouts between the team timeouts and the commercials. The cheerleaders and bands tried to keep the crowd entertained and there were trivia questions and other tidbits on the big screen. During one of these timeouts I was watching the big screen and saw a shot of the crowd. I thought - that guy looks like my husband and he's sitting next to a lady in a green coat. HEY THAT'S ME!! I screamed to my group, but by the time they looked up, there was something else on the screen. How funny!

After the game I gave my son's girlfriend a tour of the campus and we stopped by the dorm I used to live in. It was one of the oldest and prettiest dorms on campus. It was recently remodeled and a couple of girls from our church in Wisconsin are living there now so I got to visit with one of them and she gave us a tour. It was so fun to see. We had a beautiful living room with little sitting rooms off to the side. Everything was exactly the same - even the furniture after 35+ years. I got all misty eyed telling these young people about my memories of sitting around in the dark passing the candle and singing sweet songs for pinning circles. SAY WHAT? They thought this was hilarious. They had never heard of a pinning circle or any of the other old fashioned traditions I talked about. Our tour guide told us she had to accompany my husband and son thru the dorm, which is the way it was in the old days, too. So unlike my son's dorm at Illinois where everybody runs around like free range chickens.

We spent our day at Purdue with some of my old friends including dinner and a birthday party for one of them. My son and his girlfriend were good sports about spending their day with old fogies and hearing us talk about the good old days.

They weather was beautiful and we got a sunburn in the stands. Sunday we drove home under gray skies and rain.

Off We Go

Finished with time to spare. Tonite is the next Little Women's Club meeting and and was able to finish quilting and binding this little piece two days ago. The pattern is called Redware & Harvest. I followed Jo Morton's color scheme and the name fits. It measures about 30" square. I did a cross hatch quilting with rust colored thread and bound it was a rust bias cut binding. I used LuAnn's binding tutorial ( LuAnn of Loose Threads fame) and it worked great. Thanks, LuAnn.

We are heading out tomorrow for a weekend with our son and to attend the Illinois - Purdue football game at Purdue. We have such a family rivalry going and I think Purdue might get creamed.

A Little Update

I finished piecing this top on Wednesday and if I can tame the seams with my iron so it lays flat, I will get it quilted next week. We have company from out of town for the next few days, so we will be enjoying them and doing some sight seeing. Yea!

We Interrupt This Previously Scheduled Quilt ...

I started sewing away on the blue & gold hexagon quilt from my previous post and then started thinking about the next Jo Morton quilt and realized that I better get hopping on it right away as I have a busy schedule for the next week. So, I did an about face and pulled out the pieces I had already cut and went to town.

Jo Morton sure does love her HST's. I had a handful left over from previous quilts and thankfully she has designed the series of quilts for this club using the same size HST's over and over. So I plopped some of the leftovers into this quilt and saved a little time.

I thought the HST's were a little drab until I added the large cheddar triangles and Shazam!-- they really brightened up quick. I love them. This makes such neat pinwheels. Can you see the pinwheels? I sure hope so or I really messed this up big time. LOL.

Almost There

I have finally made it through paper piecing all the blocks for this quilt.

I have one of these.

I have several of these.

I have several of these.

And I have a few of these. These were the last ones I sewed -- for some reason triangles always seem to get the best of me.

This quilt is for a very special occasion in a friend's life. Can you guess what it might be?

I should be able to get this all sewn together over the weekend. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Where in the World are the Marshall Islands?

This is usually the first question people ask me when I tell them our daughter is working as a teacher in the Marshall Islands. After spending lots of time on Wikipedia, I can tell you that there are over 100 islands in the country and they are located on the equator between Hawaii and Japan. During her first month, DD was training and living on the capital island of Majuro. There are large buildings and banks and resorts and schools and homes there much like most of the touristy islands we are familiar with in the Caribbean.

After her month of training, she was assigned to a remote island. It is very, very, very, very small. To get there, she had to fly from the capital island to a second island ( The plane goes once a week.) From there she took a boat that is owned by the islanders and goes whenever there is a need from the 2nd island to the island she is now living on. The boat ride lasts about an hour. There is no dock, so she was dropped off as close to the shore as possible with her bags and boxes and waded into shore.

The island she is living on has 150 residents, 50 of whom are students in grades K-8 at the 3 room schoolhouse. There is also a church. She is living with a family at one end of the island. There are no roads or vehicles.

There is no electricity or running water. No computers, no TV, no cell phone, no shower. It rains daily, so the rainwater is collected in large (900 gallon) plastic containers. This is used for everything. Drinking water is boiled. There is no store on the island, no doctor, no clinic, no dentist. The residents fish for their meals and eat lots of fruit and coconuts from the native trees. Spam is also very popular. Apparently it comes in lots of flavors. Who knew?? Pancakes and donuts are breakfast staples.

The kids like to play ball games, esp. volleyball. DD goes snorkeling and swimming a lot. There is almost no English spoken. Our daughter is the ESL teacher. So she reads a lot and has taught her host family to play some of her favorite card games, like Speed and Kings in the Corners. The sun rises and sets about 6:30 everyday and the temp is always about 83 - 85 degrees. Very hot and very humid. Lots of mosquitos, too.

Most of us think about owning our own private island or sailing off somewhere to get away from it all. After hearing about my daughter's experiences, I've decided to stay put in Wisconsin -- at least until the snow gets too deep or the freezing cold gets to me.