I pulled out my Material Obsession Two book and opened my box of UFO projects to make progress on my Gypsy Kisses quilt. Lori dubbed the blocks - my GaGa quilt, and you can see why.
I started working again on this during my vacation. and have almost all my black dot middle piece appliqued onto the lashes part of the GaGa eyes of the Gypsy Kisses blocks. At least all the blocks I have made so far.
This type of quilt is not easy for me and the applique dot piece had to be hand stitched into a "hole". When the side lashes are joined to the square blocks it leaves a hole in the center of the block and then appliqueing the piece into the seam allowance of the lashes is a little bit of a trick. But, I got the hang of it. Finally.
I love the combinations of fabric in my blocks.
Some kind of black and white dot fabric is in the center of all the pieces.
And some type of gray fabric makes up the end squares. I kept it really scrappy.
The bottom block above has 2 different pink strips of fabric for the lashes but I don't mind that since that would be typical for a real vintage quilt. When those quilt makers would run out of matching fabric they would just make a substitution. I like adding that quirk to my quilts sometime.
These fabrics all make me happy.
I don't know how big to make this quilt but I am pretty sure mine will be much smaller than the quilt in the book. The next step would be joining blocks together. That scares me! I hope there isn't another big time gap before you see these blocks on my blog again.

-nanette

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I'm not a very modern quilter but I like a modern edge sometimes. I am really drawn to quilts around blogs that use a linen-look fabric as a plain color choice in sashing. But finding that perfect linen blend or cotton look linen is really tough. I'm just not finding exactly what I'm looking for.
Recently I purchased this Free Spirit Quilters Linen. At 54" wide it is a pretty good value and it comes in some pretty interesting colors. I purchased the gray above. But it really looks more tan with a undertone of green. Hmm. Not exactly what I thought it would look like. And I left in the wrinkles so you can see that a downside of a linen blend is that it wrinkles. The nice part about a quilter's linen is the weight is more like you'd find with a quilt grade cotton - not so thick.
I also recently purchased small quantities of sale fabric. Shops both online and in town are cutting prices to get ready for fall fabrics and Quilt Market is just around the corner, too. Above is a cute little yellow with blue flowers.
These two fabrics above are wallpaper prints from Peacock Lane. I really like them. I took the photos of the sale fabric against the gray quilter's linen. I like how it looks.
I took this photo of 2 of my finished mosaic blocks against the quilter's linen. I think it really looks great with the green in the Denyse fabric. And in fact, a true gray color wouldn't work as well, I think. So for today, I think I just might use this quilter's linen as sashing for the new mosaic quilt. We'll see for sure as things progress.

-nanette

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Before I left for vacation, my little city had it's yearly celebration including a quilt show. There were dozens and dozens of lovely quilts. I wish you could see them all but below is a little sampling.

















Aren't the quilts fantastic. I'm so lucky to be associated with great quilters.

-nanette

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Every year at the end of summer there is always plenty to do around Labor Day. Our garden is at the peak of harvest the first part of September. Today peaches are making it a true labor filled day.
I love this vintage Labor Day image since it shows the cornucopia full of fruit and vegetables. So true.
We have Red Haven peach trees and they are so delicious this year.
So far I've made peach jam.
And I used Calli's recipe for fresh peach pie. Before I could take a photo of my pie it was completely gone. It was really delicious so I may make another one. The only thing different than Callie's instructions was I used a can of peach nectar instead of water. Go see how pretty Calli's pie is; it's much more beautiful than mine.I also spent this Labor Day weekend cutting some 2.5" squares from my Denyse Schmidt fabrics (and a few others thrown in). This is my cutting table after messing around with those squares.On my design plate I laid out one of the blocks I'm going to sew. I really love patchwork. I guess I'm just a square at heart. I've made several mosaic quilts like this one above. And I thought it would be fun to make a new quilt with the mosaic idea. My new quilt will be sashed with a light gray quilter's linen.
I have 3 mosaic blocks put together so far. This is my first block....
....2nd block....
....and the 3rd block. I'll see if I can squeeze in some non-peach time today and sew up my 4th (the one on the design plate) block and maybe a few more.

I hope you are all having a productive or restful labor day, what ever your plan may be.

-nanette

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If you haven't heard, Denyse Schmidt has a new line of fabric called Sugar Creek. It is sold exclusively at Joann's. Joann's isn't my favorite store for customer service so I was lucky my daughter Shelbie stopped by Joann's for me. And it seems this line is selling like hotcakes, just like Denyse's past fabric lines. Thanks Lori for the heads up.
The navy is my least favorite but I realize navy is showing up in lots of fabric this season. I think navy is the new black right now. I have so many ideas of things I could do with these fabrics.
The blue and green are really great together. I like all of the prints. The mix of floral with geometrics are perfect for me because I don't like matchy-matchy lines and just like past lines from Denyse, they look like they were pulled off a shelf from a vintage sewing room.
I purchased more of the green floral (so beautiful) so I can use that as a border. I don't really think these photos do the fabrics justice. They are more lovely in person.
This is my pack of fabric from Denyse's last line. I've used quite a few of them but still have bits and pieces left so I may pull a few of these and mix them with the new line. We'll see if it works out. I just love Denyse Schmidt fabric.

-nanette

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It was another great week at my sister's family ranch (Stewart Crow Creek Ranch) out of Afton, Wyoming. We had a wonderful time with family. The week went so incredibly fast. And now looking at our photos I realize we took way more movies than still photos and we used my daughter Whitney's camera more so I don't have those photos to post. This will be a very quick vaca photo report.
The lake is always fun. Our family likes to spend time out on the boat, fishing and paddling around in the very very cold water.My nephew Josh, Mason Dave  having a "man dip" here in the lake. Dave said it was bonding time.
While we were at the ranch, a wagon train came through on the old dirt road that goes from Afton into Montpelier, Idaho commemorating how trade used to travel through those towns. The Stewart ranch is right off that road. The wagon train took kids and adults on rides.
We went into Afton a few days for supplies and lunch. We had fun going down main street with Allison. Shadow is in his bag next to Allison and Shelbie. Shadow is easy to take around and is so good in his bag. No one knows when we go into stores that we have a dog.
More main street and Allison. She wasn't sure what that big guy was doing.
We always do a craft or sewing project. We made Christmas Trees from this pattern. You can just see them sitting next to my sister Polly and her sewing machine. That was really fun. We also had a carnival for the grandchildren but I don't have photos of that (darn!).
If you remember I made myself a family history quilt from flags of my heritage. I made mini quilts for my sisters with the same flags. This is my sister Polly standing next to hers after she hung it at her house.

So back to life now. And into fall. Tomorrow is September already. I only have Mason at home and in school now. It is kind of weird but life marches on.

-nanette

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