Easter Review

I received the most wonderful thing in the world yesterday.  An unexpected gift for no reason at all:

This is a little quilt that I admire at my friend, Mary B's, house every time I stay with her.  There is just something about it that I love.  Don't you?

This will give you an idea of how small and sweet it it.  Here it is with my little scissors and my thimble.

On Sunday, Rich made his Danish pancakes, aebleskiver, as part of our Easter breakfast.  They sort of look like eggs.  I tried a new topping for mine this year, fresh squeezed lemon juice and powdered sugar - yum!

It was such a beautiful day, we decided to attend the New York City 5th Avenue Easter Parade.  Here's a mad hatter:
   

A  trio of sweet little ladies:

Here is my favorite - the house from the movie "Up" -

Check this one out - wow!  You can see St. Patrick's Cathedral in the background.  Unfortunately there was a mass and we couldn't fit inside to see the flowers this year.  I never will get used to seeing TV screens down the aisle in a church.

We walked over to Rockefeller Center to see the flowers there.

And the skaters in their shorts - how fun!

On the way back to the car we  saw this little soap shop called "Rain".   All their products are made in Southern Africa.  The displays were lovely.  It looked like a candy store.

See you soon with an update on the quilting on my "Mother's Garden" quilt.  I hope you are enjoying lovely weather where you are and pretty spring flowers!

Hip 2 B Square

Happy (or somber) Good Friday!

I'm working on a college quilt for Hanna that I can't share yet.  Instead, I decided to show you the college quilt that I made for my son, Andrew.

I think you'll notice right off, that this is not my usual style of quilt making, but I do love to make modern quilts too.

It is a free pieced square in a square.  The fabrics were guitars, music, wild prints and black and whites.

Here is the back.  Looks like a face book fabric.

I quilted simple wavy lines

I have a nephew, Nick, who is 6 weeks older than Andrew.  The boys get together a couple times, as they live in Seattle.  I inked this from a photo of boys taken at the family farm.  They looked so funny wearing the wife-beater t-shirts and shades....

Here is another quilt that I made Andrew when we repainted his room.  As you can see it is also free pieced and made of black, white and gray fabrics.

 The back.  I love this weird "eye ball" fabric.

This one I quilted with a different pattern in each area.  It was a large quilt and took a lot of TV time to finish!

The label

And here is a quilt I made him on his "golden Birthday"  He turned 7 on April 7th and it was also Easter Sunday (hence the 7 gold Easter eggs)  It was an occasion that  I thought deserved a special quilt! 

Happy Easter Weekend Everyone!  It was fun to share these older quits with you today.

Bunnies! and a cake

A tour of the bunnies living in and around my place.

On the hall table under the carrot tree.  I made these bunnies years ago.

 Here is a close up -

The Living Room mantel.  A little more is more theory going on

A few of  my vintage and antique post cards

Hooray!  I won these oil lamps at the recent retreat in the white elephant.  The best part?  They were my friend, Margaret's.  Love them!

Bunnies under glasss-

The family room mantel including 3 old beenie bunnies-

Bunnies in the front step patch.

Funny folk art bunny and wagon that I picked up at a garage sale last year with one of the several pots of pansies around here - love those sweet pansies!

 

Best Cake - It is the Orange Crunch Cake from the Bubble Room in Captiva Florida. I made it for Andrew's birthday recently.   Click here for the recipe.  The only thing I changed was that I made home made butter cream frosting instead of the chemical loaded tub of flavored lard (not a fan).

I'm working on a secret quilt project for the Miami of Ohio bound college girl.  Next post I'll share the 2 most recent quilts I made for Andrew.  I think you may be surprised.

Land of Lincoln

Happy Friday and Tax Day!

I'm back from a visit to the Chicago area.   It was so wonderful to see my girlhood friends and my quilt friends.  Thank you all for your wonderful hospitality!

First I spent the weekend here at the Geneva Grand in Lake Geneva.  It's a wonderful resort about an hour northwest of Chicago.

I love the openness of the midwest and really miss it!

Then I was in my old home town, Glen Ellyn to visit with quilt friends.  I also had an opportunity to do a little antiquing in St. Charles with my good friend Pat.

At Mary's I got to visit a basket quilt I organized for her 70th Birthday in 2000.

My daughter signed it when she was 7 years old.

I spent a day with friends at the Illinois State Museum to see some of their extensive Amish quilts - no photos, sorry!

There is a wonderful book of the collection available on Amazon.

Here is an antique quilt top that Mary owns and with her permission I'm sharing it with you.  I think this quilt would be really fun to recreate.  I'm almost certain that the tan was at one point green.

It's very curious, most of it was hand appliqued (in a top running stitch) but there are sections that were machine appliqued. 

these birds are a crack up - they look more like ghosts!

Again, great trip and great to be back home to a beautiful spring here in Northern New Jersey.

And now I'm off to catch up with all my friends in blog land.   Have a great weekend!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

And did we ever!

During the Red & White weekend in NYC 6 of us got together to have dinner, show and tell and Challenge Reveal!  But first, we brought our Midnight Star Quilts out to show Lori, of Humble Quilts.

Susan is on left, me in the center and Jill's on right.  It's so fun to see different version of this wonderful little quilt.

The Challenge:
It all started last Sept at the quilt show in Oaks, PA.  I came with Susan and Pauline and we met up with cupcakers, Jill and Susan and Lori who was in town for the show and a get away weekend.

One of our favorite exhibits at the show was "Vintage Revisited" by Mary Kerr.  Click on her name to read more about this project and her book.

Lori supplied each of us with an antique star block of red and white (ironic, no?).

Here is a photocopy of the block I received:

The rules were simple:  incorporate this block into a new small quilt.   You could manipulate it any way you wished, but it needed to be identifiable in the new piece.

Here are the results:

Lori's - aren't all those tiny star blocks so cute!  love the red, white and blue!

Susan (McDs, all those hst - wonderful!

Mine - I decided to incorporate the Civil War Anniversary.  My flag is detachable by snaps.

Pauline's - I still don't know how all the diamonds worked out - and great piping!

 Susan H's - Now this is a neighborhood I want to live it.  So fun!

Jill's: (look at all that good stuff in her corner hutch) - I love her tumbling letter blocks and the bias binding!

It was such fun to see what everyone made with their block.  I'm ready for round 2!

I photo-transferred my block onto fabric to use on the back:

I used the center section as my label:

A big thank you to  Jill for opening her wonderful home to us for the party.  She had her lovely collection of Easter decorations out and it's always a treat to visit her warm and welcoming home.