House's House Quilt

This is relevant under the heading of Quilt Watching. Don't you just love when quilts turn up in unexpected places?

Speaking of unexpected finds...discovered this Hugh Laurie album in Starbucks a year ago. That's right - Dr. House is a killer jazz pianist. Honest!

 

[here is the link since YouTube is refusing to show in post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGiNa-7opKk ]

Didn't It Rain album is simply excellent. [See what I Mean!? Evenin' is my FAVE. Which one is yours?]  All superb musicians with The Copper Bottom Band.
Take time to read Mr. Laurie's liner notes!!! Equally superb writing.

So after a year of dreaming and waiting impatiently, yes stamping my little foot the entire time, HL & The Copper Bottom Band [with  Elizabeth "Trombonista" Lea -  showstopper extraordinaire!] finally came to town! We got tickets third row center!! And this is what we saw!!!

House Quilt :)

 

In the spirit of One For My Baby...and One More For the Road (which they bring to a new standard on this album, btw), here is our original favorite Hugh Laurie piano, from way back, remember Jeeves and Wooster?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnCNJD3-e7g

 

"Oh, and one for yourself...of course."

 





Flag Day Quilting

Finally dove in the r/w/b stash. I only meant to finish this adorable Debbie Mumm panel.

Instead, I came out with 3 projects!
Decided the panel was so perfect alone that I only need add borders. Inner border has simple corner blocks with Debbie's starts (from panel surround) added in raw edge applique.
The outer border was really fun! I used my favorite Easy Dresden Ruler by Darlene Zimmerman to make 4" wedges for my round corner border; instructions here.

However, this time (because the 4" pieces were smaller and because I wanted lots of blue against the red corner blocks) I used 5 wedges on each corner point and gathered them to fit:

Well, I had so many wedges left over, I was able to make 4 Dresden Plate Flags.

Dresden Plate Flag by Road Home Quilting

So how should I finish these? 11" diameter Dresden plates. Please give me your ideas!

Lastly I salvaged a silk screened flag remnant someone had donated to my stash. But two of the red stripes had been cut off, so I wasn't sure what to do with the poor old thing. Finally decided it could work as two Flag Day Banners.

Finished with simple rolled seam. There are grommets at the top corners for hanging, and Velcro pockets on the bottom - to fill with trinkets (washers, rocks, anything heavy) so Banners will hang straight and not fly around. Will it work? I'll let you know on Flag Day tomorrow :)

This should have been the simplest of my 3 Flag Day projects but, you guessed it, turned out to be tricky splitting the stars. Have you noticed the way stars are tilted on our Flag? Well, thankfully there is enough blue between stars to get full seam allowances for both sides. But one side has single star points, and the other side finishes in double points! And hardest of all to figure out, the stripes only aligned well with the single point side. Here you can see on the double point side how I fudged the red line by growing the seam finish width:

I actually have a reason for ranting like this. The moral of this story is, please tell me, was 1/2 a day entirely too long to spend on a salvage project?

Pearl helps sort Dresden pieces

Summertime Kitchen

Working on new recipes...

Here is the start of a tomatilla & tortilla casserole....

Christmas Surprise!

Everyone says Christmas is about giving. Most of us would agree, but it also feels good to get something as well ;) As this holiday is coming, we give and receive.
From our friend, Diane (@ddrquilter), we received beautiful, hand-crafted presents, plus the gift of an unexpected surprise in the mail.

 Isn't the cactus mug rug cute? It looks perfect. Hand quilted too!
It says, "Life can be prickly, friends make it sweet."

  

 Diane has neat craftsmanship skills! Pretty rainbow colors too:)

I got the fancy pillowcase! How did she know blue was my favorite color?

And there's also a prickly pear coffee mug for Mom. She says every morning, "Coffee tastes better with prickly pears on my mug."
(Mom and Diane are huge coffee fanatics. You should see all their coffee pins.)

Thank you for all the super sweet presents Diane, and the wonderful surprise too! We absolutely adore them!! Where did you get the time to make them?

 

Merry Christmas!

And thank you too, our first 100 RHQ Followers for your kind gift of taking time to read our posts.  We are sew glad you are here! Wishing each of you all the very best in the New Year.