Finally, the first day of fall

Goodbye summer. Hello fall. Welcome back. You were sorely missed.

-dana

Two Liberty of London Quilts

These two quilts are for my mother. The tops are made entirely from hundreds of Liberty of London Tana Lawn fabrics. I had been collecting the fabric for ages and was waiting for the perfect project to use them.

Two quilts for Mom was that perfect project. Tana lawn is a silky, smooth fabric. Thin, slippery and drapey. The prints are mostly tiny florals with a few surprises now and again. The backs of each quilt are a voile base cloth that is nearly indistinguishable from a tana lawn in it's smooth feel and drapiness. The quilts feel light and airy. And very, very luxurious.

The fabric makes these quilts special for sure. Which is appropriate because they are for a very special lady. My mom is exceptional. She is kind and smart. Funny and forgiving. Strong and determined. Devoted and loving. She showed me how to be a mother. How to love deeply. And how to be fiercely loyal. 

Two quilts. One for her bed. And one for napping on top of her bed. So that she is surrounded by the luxurious, silky quilts. And hopefully feels my love for her like a hug.

-dana

Celtic Twist

This month is my turn in a quilting bee I'm in. I chose this free block from McCall's Quilting called "Celtic Twist."  For bees, I like to choose blocks that have bold visual impact but are fairly simple to construct. I think this one fits the bill perfectly and I look forward to receiving all the blocks in my mailbox.

-dana

P.S. If Instagram is your thing, you can search #stashsewciety to see all the blocks made for this bee throughout the year.

P.S. II.  I know what you're thinking. You are thinking that you recall me saying I had to finish up all my current works in progress before starting anything new, right? Well, I don't count this as starting anything new because I haven't made a single block for it yet. Each of the member of the quilting bee will make me two blocks. That means at the end of the month I will have 22 blocks and then I only have to decide how many more to make after that.

Last hurrah

We spent last weekend with my brother and his family. In tents. Along the lake shore. Roasting marshmallows and swatting gnats. We cooked over the fire and listened to ducks quack in the darkness.

We swam and tubed. I introduced Oreos to my niece. (Your welcome, Jeff!) We hiked to a beautiful summit. Ate yummy food and plenty of junk.

I always feel a profound sense of gratitude when someone chooses to spend their precious free time ... vacation time ... with me. What better gift is there than time? Getting this time with my brother, sister-in-law and niece? Awesome, awesome sauce.

-dana

A new quilt -- Charmed I'm Sure

A finished quilt is the best kind. This one is inspired by a quilt from a book called Rotary Roundup by Judy Hopkins and Nancy J. Martin published in 1994. I started it back in May and have been calling it #charmedimsurequilt on Instagram. I find hashtags are pretty handy for tagging something and then being able to pull up all photos with that tag and view my progress.

I asked Razor if he'd hold up the quilt, while standing on a chair in the cow pasture across the street. I laughed at him on the chair. And he laughed at me and my visible displeasure for walking through the tall grass to get to this spot.

I talked last week about needing to finish up my five in progress quilts. One down!

-dana

Unexpected day

Razor is off work this whole week. This whole week! That is unexpected in and of itself. But yesterday he asked if I wanted to drive to a neighboring town and look around. On a total whim!

There were at least five or six antique shops and though we saw lots of great things, we were just looking. 

Well, we were just looking until we spotted this door on the way out of one shop. It was behind another door. I asked if we could take a closer look. And if the shop owner had a tape measure. He told us they brought it over from England. It's 32 inches wide. And standard exterior doors in America are 36 inches wide. Our shoulders sank a little bit at this news. But I took their business card with the measurements written on the back.

The girls were already home when we finally pulled into the driveway. I immediately started dinner. Razor immediately grabbed a tape measure.

Guess how wide our front door is?

Guess who is getting a new/old front door??!!??

Three cheers for unexpected days.

-dana

Food

Each year I say that I'm going to weigh the amount of food that we produce in our garden. The berries, greens, apples. The herbs. The summer bounty. It would be so interesting to see a total number of pounds of food grown on our land. It's very satisfying growing our own food. The pleasure of doing it as an activity is probably number one on the list of why it's satisfying, Also, though, it feels good knowing where our food comes from. Plus, using food that is in season means it tastes better than food harvested before it's ripe and then boated, flown or trucked to my local grocery store. Maybe next year I will remember to weigh it all as we harvest it. Then I'll have to research how many pounds of food an average American family of four eats in a year. Let me put that on my 2017 list of things to do.

Food. It really is a thing that connects us as humans.

Recently, my girls and some friends had a cooking competition at our house. They were in teams of two and given mystery ingredients for three rounds. Razor and I were the judges. It was a delicious task.

Food.

-dana