Sunday, January 29, 2012

HELP ME CHOOSE

As I mentioned in my last post earlier today, I am participating in Lori's Pink Lemonade quilt along.  I didn't have enough yellow for the alternating blocks.  I took pictures of the blocks set on top of the two choices that I have.  If neither of these works, I will go buy something else.  But, maybe one of these will be OK.  Please let me know your opinion on which of the yellow looks best - or, if you don't like either one, tell me that too.  I think I have enough of either to cut the pieces required.

A.


B.



FINALLY HOME!!

When we were towed in Pensacola, this is the HUGE tow truck that was necessary to tow our truck with the 5th wheel camper behind it.  We were towed again in Vicksburg, MS, but I didn't take any pictures.  Instead of arriving home on January 18, we arrived home yesterday, January 28.  We had 10 days of sitting around waiting for the truck transmission to be fixed!  



As I said in my last post, I was happy that I had brought more projects than I ever thought I would work on during the trip.  I also decided to participate in Lori's quilt along.  This is a picture of a few of the blocks and the only yellow fabric that I had with me.  The two tiny pieces were in with some of my Gone to Texas fabric bags and I have more of the small piece on the right, but I think I'm out of the small triangle fabric.  I don't like the large yellow for this quilt.  I will probably buy something different for the 
yellow.


These are the setting blocks.  I don't remember if I made the corner pieces or not.

I also put together 3 postage stamp (1") doll quilts and started hand quilting one of them.

Another little quilt I put together, is the mystery quilt put on by the Temecula Quilt Co.  These are the 12 blocks before I put them together


After our laptop quit, I had to look at blogs on my Iphone and it wasn't the best way to do so.  It is so good to be back with our desk top computer.  I can send emails with the Iphone, but it isn't very easy to do too much typing on it, so I didn't reply to most of your comments.  Thanks so much for all the comments that I received!

Now, we need to get all unpacked and organized at home.  Have a good week, everyone!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

NOT GONE TO TEXAS

I can't figure out how to add pictures to this post that I'm sending from my IPhone. Our transmission went out as we were leaving Pensacola FL. Our computer also quit. After the truck was fixed,we left FL. When we got to Vicksburg, MS, the transmission went out again (Friday PM). So we are stranded at an RV park. The good thing is that I have gotten a lot of sewing done. I finished the Gone To Texas top. Hand quilted a small quilt. Pieced 53 log cabin blocks. I don't know when we will be able to go home. Thank goodness I have my sewing machine with me!!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

SOME GOOD CUDDLE TIME

My DIl wanted a couple throw pillows covered, so we went to A&E to get fabric.  That's where we met Kim and Karen as I posted about before.  Here is one of the pillows before.


And here it is after.  Since the fabric was regular cotton, I used some interfacing to give it more stability and I think it helped a lot.  The back opening is velcro.  I like the way it turned out.


Abigail is definitely Grandpa's girl, but last night I got some good cuddles in.  We had our DIL and Abigail over to the camper for supper.  DS is working 4 days in a row - 12 hour shifts.  After we ate, she climbed in my lap for some good cuddling.  I was very happy and got DH to take a few pictures.  It was a very nice evening.

Only 3 more days here and then we go home.  It's good and bad.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

PROGRESS REPORT AND A WIN!

I have finished all of the union blocks for my Gone to Texas quilt and sewed them together.  This will give me about 10 1/2" extra width for the quilt top.  Next I need to work on the fill-in section that goes on the bottom of this section as well as the right panel which is mostly HSTs and squares.  It's coming along! 


I was the lucky winner of this kit from Taryn.  It is a kit of the Prairie Women's Sewing Circle (from Temecula Quilt Co.) and the name of the quilt is Prairie Huswyfe.  When finished, the quilt measures 27 3/4" x 27 3/4".  Thank you so much Taryn!  I will look forward to making this some time soon!


Right next to the RV park is a place that makes and sells yard statutes.  They also have quite a few junk cars and 30 goats, a donkey and a rooster.  We can hear the rooster crow and the donkey bray from our camper.  My DIL wanted to go there to find out if they sell goats (she is thinking about raising goats when they get a place of their own).  Here's Abigail with the billy goat (gruff?).  I would have taken a picture of the rooster, but he was an ugly thing.  He may have been in a fight with a fox (or other animal) that recently killed their other rooster and 4 chickens.

You can see some of the yard statutes in the background while Abigail beats on the "drum" statute.  I'm not sure what that is supposed to be, but Abigail said it was a drum, so we'll go with that.  Note:  Don't argue with a 3 year old.  Of course, it is made of cement.

My DIL and I plan to go to a thrift shop today that we had some good luck at last time we were here.  I just might make my way over to the quilt shop again.  I need to get some pink for the pink lemonade shoo-fly quilt.  Hope you have a quilty day!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Friday, January 6, 2012

MORE BLOCKS AND GRAPEFRUIT

 I have finished all the union blocks for my Gone to Texas quilt and plan to start sewing them together soon.

In the mean time, Lori at Humble Quilts has started a quilt along.  Anyone who wants to can follow along to make the replica of an antique quilt.  Here are the first 6 blocks.  It's a small quilt, so it won't take too long.  Thanks, Lori!  Since I didn't bring a lot of fabric along with me, I just barely had enough pink for these 6 blocks (which measure 5").  I think I'll go back to the quilt shop and get some more pink.

Some friends of my DS/DIL called to say they could go and pick grapefruit from their tree.  It was just loaded with them!

DS put a fish net on the end of his golf ball retriever and was able to reach grapefruit high up in the tree. It worked like a charm!

Here is some of what we picked.  I took some to the camper and squeezed several of them for juice.  I love grapefruit juice!!!  Delicious!!

Abigail is sitting on her new Dora couch playing with one of her dolls.  She doesn't like to pose for pictures, so these are candid shots.

Feeding her baby.

Not counting the cold night a couple nights ago, the weather has been beautiful.  It was around 70 degrees yesterday and it's supposed to be 67 today!  


Thursday, January 5, 2012

CHANCE MEETING

Over the three years that I have been blogging I have followed many blogs, left comments and even emailed the bloggers.  Two of these bloggers are from the Pensacola, FL area and I believe they have even blogged about a certain quilt shop.  Yesterday, I went to this shop (A & E) with my DIL to pick out some fabric for a quilt I am making for her, and I spotted someone who I thought might be Karen from Nana Girl Quilts.  I had seen her picture on her blog and her hair is beautiful!  When I saw the hair (from the back), I had to go and find out if it was her.  (In fact, I did a walk by first so I could see her face).  So I asked her, "Are you Nana Girl?"  She said, "Yes, who are you?"  So I told her I was Country Log Cabin.  My name is Ruth - actually, I go by my middle name for my blog.  She was with Kim Brackett of Magnolia Bay Quilts, who I started following first.  Kim has published several quilting books.  What are the odds of meeting two other bloggers by chance?  Even if you know they live in this area and frequent this shop?  It made my day!!  Thanks for letting me take your picture on the spur of the moment!  It was great meeting both of you!


Back to reality now.  I have been working on my Gone to Texas quilt and I am going to make it bigger than the pattern in the book.  Click here to see the original post I did about it.  I have been working on it quite a while and have several posts about it.   I decided to add another row of the Union block, which will make it 10 1/2" wider.  I will probably also add more border to it to get it to the size I want.  

Here are some  blocks that I have just finished.  I had 4 that I needed to finish, and then with adding 6 more, I had a total of 10 make.  I'm just about finished with those 10 and I will move on to some of the border panels.

This is the table in our camper with my Featherweight set up to sew.

I'm working on HSTs and flying geese now for the last 2 Union blocks.  Since I get up early every morning, I have time to sew before we do anything else.

Today we're going out to eat for an early celebration of DH's 70th birthday because we won't be here for the actual day.

I decided today to tell you why I decided to use my middle name when I started my blog.  At the time I was working for a U. S. Magistrate Judge at the U. S. District Court.  I really didn't want anyone that might google my name to bring up the blog and learn more about my personal information.  I didn't know if anyone would google my name, but I did have someone in prison get a hold of my home phone number once and call me collect, and since I worked for a judge, some people might not be too happy about what happened in court, etc.  You get the picture.  I know when I reply to comments, my first name (Gladys) is sometimes on the email, so that is why.  

The night before last it was 24 degrees here in NW Florida.  At about 3:30 AM, our heater went off and we thought we were out of propane.  We put on extra sweat pants, sweat shirts, socks, etc., cuddled under the quilts and tried to sleep a few more hours.  When DH checked the tanks, one was empty and one was full!!  This is the second time this has happened and it seems there is a problem with the propane line,  so we need to get this fixed ASAP.  At least we know now what is happening.  BRRRRR!  

Happy quilting!  Thanks for visiting.

Monday, January 2, 2012

ABIGAIL'S TURN WITH GRANDMA & GRANDPA

Last Tuesday we arrived in Florida just in time for Abigail's 3rd birthday!  With her birthday so close to Christmas, it gets confusing for a little girl.  She's going to have to wait a long time for another birthday and Christmas.  Today she and her Daddy came to the camper for lunch so Mommy could take down their Christmas decorations without someone being upset.  :-)  

Here she is hiding under the table.

She's even cute with hair hanging in her face!  

I am spending a little time every day doing some sewing and I have a counter top in my kitchen that is perfect for cutting fabric and ironing blocks.



Below is a picture of the two wall hanging/stitcheries that I received from other bloggers.  The Texas shaped WH was received from Love recently and I blogged about it.  The one on the right, I received  over a year ago from Liri along with the block swap that I participated in.  They are perfect for the camper and both feature the state we are from.  Thanks, Love & Liri!!


Thanks, everyone for your sweet comment on my past posts.  I haven't been able to respond to everyone, but want you all to know that I really appreciate your visit.  I hope you all have a very Happy New Year!