When I was a kid, sometimes my folks would drop me off at Gramma's for the night while they went out. It wouldn't be long after they drove off that I'd be pestering Gramma to get someone over to the house for me to play with; and nine times out of ten it would be my cousin Audrey. Fast forward 40 some years, and I'm still hanging out overnight with Audrey - usually at a quilt retreat but this weekend I stayed at her house.

When we plan these kinds of weekends, we are power sewing and talking with hardly a lull in the action. We don't have time to figure out complicated quilt instructions or fussing because the directions are wrong. This weekend we worked on Schnibbles patterns by Carrie of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company. This is my take on Tiny Town which is a knock-off of Carrie's pattern Full House. The fabrics are from two charm packs of Blueberry Crumb Cake by Blackbird Designs.


Let me add this. I had a question on the directions for Tiny Town, so I emailed Carrie. She was prompt in getting back to me to help me figure out what was confusing me. I appreciate the fact that she takes the time to read and respond to an email. I can't say enough good about Carrie or her patterns. Here is the link for Tiny Town.



This is Lincoln from the book Another Bite of Schnibbles. Talk about quick and easy! I love how these patterns work up like this. The fabrics I used were two charm packs of Clermont Farms by Minnick and Simpson.





We took a couple hours off for a quick run to Audrey's mom's house to eat freshly-baked cookies with her before a quick stop at the quilt shop and to pick up take-out Chinese for supper while we watched The Help.

Talk about a great relaxing weekend! We sewed up a storm and ate way too much junk - a perfect combination for a great time. Audrey will be posting pictures of her projects over at Four Houses Down. Thanks, Audrey, for a great weekend!

I was talking with a friend about finishing up old quilt projects, and I remembered I had this one in the bottom of my project basket. This is Autumn Stars by Thimbleberries; the fabric is mostly Meadow Waltz by Kansas Troubles. I had to pick up yardage for the lattice strips, and then the top went together quickly. Why I didn't do this years ago, I have no idea.

Autumn in Northwest Pennsylvania is beautiful; I love the colors and the smells. Where I live, there are lots of rolling hills covered with trees. In the fall, the color of the leaves on the trees can be breathtaking. Usually the second week in October is when the color is the best.

What's better than a crisp autumn night when the sky is full of millions of stars. The eight-point star (one of my favorite patterns) makes me think of that. The Maple Leaf block makes me think of raking leaves and the smell of the air. A perfect block for someone who loves the outdoors.

Hunters in our area are heading to the woods that time of year. I can only imagine how heavenly it is to sit under a tree or in a tree stand enjoying the peace and quiet. I can't picture myself in a camo shirt sitting in a tree stand, but I know I'd have my Nook instead of a gun.

Anway, this will be one of my favorite quilts. The colors are deep, rich, and elegant. Most people are thinking spring right now; I've got fall on my mind.

If you bake cookies, you probably have a sugar cookie recipe that you love. Mom made these cookies every year for Christmas; and if she had the time, we also got them on Valentine's Day. She had a rule about cookies - some were for the whole year and some were only baked at Christmastime. That way they'd be special. She was that way about her pumpkin pie; and to this day, I don't bake a pumpkin pie unless it's for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Anyway, I'm making a batch of these cookies; and here's the recipe if you'd like to try them.

JANE'S SUGAR COOKIES
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Chill dough for several hours before cutting out with your favorite shapes. Bake at 400 degrees for approximately six minutes. Cool and frost with this other great recipe.


BUTTER FROSTING
1/4 cup soft butter
2 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
3 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt

My friend Angela and her blog buddy Amanda started The Farmer's Wife quilt-along quite a while ago. I had most of my blocks done when they started, so I never jumped in. But now that sewing around here has taken on the theme of getting things finished, I got my box of TFW supplies and checked out where I had left off.

I'm kind of obsessive about organizing and probably need some type of intervention. When I made each block, I printed off the block templates from the web and filed the page with the completed block. Then I filed everything numerically. I'm laughing at myself as I'm typing this, but seriously it did help me to know where to pick back up. There are 111 blocks in this quilt, and I wanted to set mine just like the author, Laurie Aaron Hird.

I purchased a block of the month from Primitive Gatherings, and it's some of the best money I've spent on this quilting habit. Not only were the instructions clear but the beautiful fabrics were a generous cut. I think there is enough fabric left over for another quilt. We'll see some day down the road because I'm giving my leftovers to Audrey so she can make her Farmer's Wife.

And I found a couple of indispensable tools that I feel helped make these blocks turn out so well. One is the 1/4" foot that I bought for my Bernina, and the other is a roll of white freezer paper. Some of the pieces to these blocks are odd shapes. I would trace the template onto the freezer paper, iron the paper to the fabric, and cut the pieces from there. Some of the rotary cutting directions from Primitive Gatherings used hard to cut dimensions of 3/16" and those marks are not on my Omnigrid rulers. And again I steam pressed open a lot of the seams to help keep the blocks flat.

Some of the blocks are still a bit wonky. At this point, I am not planning to repiece any of them. NancyZ can work wonders machine quilting; and in the long run, the wonky pieces will be hard to find once the quilt is finished and on the bed.

And Laurie Aaron Hird told me she tried to piece blocks that never made it to this quilt and ended up in the trash instead. My hero!