Sunday, January 27, 2013

Good stuff, but not it

Did you ever get a hankerin for something from your childhood?  When I was a kid growing up in Wisconsin my Mom used to fix a maple flavored hot cereal.  So I went searching the web for anything that might still be available today.  I found Maypo cereal on Amazon.  I ordered it and when it came I could hardly wait to try it. 

 
 
This is maple flavored oatmeal, and while it is tasty, it's not what I remember.  Drats!  So I went looking for Maple & Brown Sugar Malt O Meal.  Still looking locally, I may have to order that online too.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Returning to normal

After 7 years of longarm quilting for the public I have decided to close my business.  It was a wonderful and wild ride, but it's time to slow down.  Though always grateful for customers, and they were fabulous at that, I never had a lot of time to make my own quilt tops or quilt them for that matter.  If I did have a chance to steal some time to get something started, it quickly became a UFO. 

Over New Years the Heartstrings Quilt Project did a sew along using the guidelines of their standard quilt block which is a string quilt block.  Instead of using the standard blue or red center strip we used purple as suggested by Mary Johnson, our fearless leader of Heartstrings.  This is the finished quilt:



My center purple strings were more of a medium purple, though many chose the darker purple.

Inspired by encouraged by my progress I started to assemble a block with a green center string and a narrower blue strip on either side.

 
I have the 48 blocks finished and just need to put them together for the top to be done.  I like the way the green and blue play against the scraps.
 
 
Prior to that I started Bonnie Hunter's mystery, Easy Street.  I have all of the units assembled, but the project was set aside when I had to get back to customer quilts.  I hope to soon pick that up again and finish it.  I won't share those pictures until the top is finished.