A Tasty Surprise

(First I have to say I apologize for the black & white photos. Fat fingers?)

There's a very old house at a T intersection on the way home from my longerarmer, Susie's house. I could drive right into the house if I missed the stop sign.

Every once in a while I see a sign outside that says "Bread" with a bunch of French flags. It is so inviting. I think about stopping to investigate, but I always seem to be in a rush. This week I picked up my quilts and as I drove by and saw the flags, I decided to stop. And I am so glad that I did.

I walked down a sweet little path and opened an old fashioned screen door and I was overcome with the aroma of baking bread. There was a table overflowing with long loaves of bread, rolls and brownies, along with a coffee can for payment. Had I stepped back in time or into a carb lovers fantasy?

There was a sweet lady mixing dough along with a commercial type oven. She was kind enough to tell me her story, that she probably has told hundreds of times before. She and her partner bought this 1800's house in the late nineties. They had corporate jobs, but loved to bake. One day they baked their standard bread recipe that yields 8 loaves. They only needed 3 and were heading out to visit friends. They took the remaining bread and placed them along side of the road with some red, white & blue ribbon and a can with a sign- Bread $3.00. Before they left, a car had stopped and left money for one loaf of bread. When they returned, all the loaves were gone. All of the money was in the can. This was the beginning.

As she told me the history, she continued to mix the bread dough. There is still the honor system with a coffee can.

These ladies love to bake, but if it is too hot or too cold or ?? whatever, there's no bread. When they sell out, they are done for the day and take down the flag and bread sign. At some point they purchased a refurbished oven and Hobart mixer.

Since I was a first time visitor, I was handed a "to go" roll. It is slathered with butter as soon as it comes out of the oven and is partially wrapped with aluminum foil. This roll is to eat on the way home, so you don't consume that yummy loaf you just bought. Mmmmmmmm, I can still taste it now.

I am so glad I made some time to smell the baked bread and here's the proof that I did not eat the bread on my way home!

 

 

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Lovely Lewes

A 3 day trip to Lewes DE to visit The Ocean Waves Quilt Guild, started out with quite an adventure. Two friends were coming with me. Our meeting point was a local mall and of course I was early, because I am usually painfully early. So I sat listening to the radio with the car in the "on" position. When Lynne turned up, and I tried to turn my car on, it was DEAD. Dead, dead, dead. What a way to start this trip. Lynne said she had jumper cables, but had never jumped a car. I said I had jumped a car, but haft done it in a long time - over 20 years to be exact.

We looked at each other and decided, yes, we can do this. With a bit of googling, wwww.pep boys.com was the place with a step by step tutorial. Following the directions and the colors - "Start Your Engines Ladies ".

Success!

The next day was a lecture at Ocean Waves.

They were a great group of ladies who gave me a great reception.

And there was a bonus. It was their Spring luncheon. And if you know quilters, y now they can cook and cook a lot. They also like to eat. This is what the salad table looked like after we all went through the line.

And there was a wonderful dessert table

with my most favorite food, CAKE! Yum.

After the guild meeting we headed to a wonderful quilt shop, Serendipity, in Rehobeth. They have a big assortment of Chesapeake Bay types of fabric with lots of crabs and ocean themes.

Thanks to my buddies, Serendipity is the newest quilt shop to be carrying Curvalicious. Yay! They will arrive in the shop around the middle of May. I will head back down on June 20th to demo my cool tool, during the shop's birthday celebration.

Speaking of demos, this Saturday, May 10th, I will be demonstrating how to use Curvalicious at 2 local quilt shops. In the morning I will be at The Quilt Block in Exton, PA and in the afternoon I will be at The Round Bobbin in Ambler, PA. They are both giving a one day discount. Stop by and say hi, and while you're there treat yourself to a Mother's Day gift.

 

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On The Road

Beautiful tulips from my DIL's garden.

Clearly she doesn't have deer!

Getting ready to head out to the Delaware shore.  Lewes, her I come!

IF you are in the area, I'll be speaking at the Ocean Waves Quilt Guild on Monday morning.

The topic is: "Inspiration From Squiggles and Dots".

Come see me.

And The Winners Are .......

When your block is accepted for the 100 Blocks magazine, you receive 5 copies of the magazine, a big pin and a mug upon publication.  I look forward to getting the mug. 

 It has all 100 blocks on it.  Here's my collection.

 

Here's my block - front and center.

 

I received 238 comments.  I loved hearing how many of you actually ride a bike and are looking forward to some better weather.  And then there were those of you who haven't ridden since childhood.  It was a great comment topic. Thank you all for stopping by and taking the time to share.

 

Using the random number generator, the two winners are:

Cecelia - ceceliayoung@gmx.com

and

Maureen - Mgw070@shaw.ca

 

Congratulations to you both.  I know you will enjoy this publication.

 

 

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Blog Tour and Giveaway

Today I am one of 10 lucky bloggers on the Volume 9 blog tour for Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks.

 

This is the third time I have had a block published in this magazine and this block is the one I am most excited about.  Why? Because I love riding my bike.  I named it "Go Wheels?"

It's on page 45. 

 

The flag is 3-D and the streamers are made from DMC floss.

What fun!

I like to use a shiny thread when I blanket stitch applique, either rayon or polyester.

It gives it a little pop. Wouldn't a dog look cute in that basket? (I have just the one.)

 

I loved this block so much when I made it, that I had to make a quilt using it.

I hand stitched all of the bicycle sayings with some help from a friend, using 3 strands of DMC floss

and a back stitch on a coarsely woven utility cloth.

 

Quiltmaker is giving away a copy of the magazine to one of my visitors.  Leave a comment telling me the last time you rode your bike along with your e-mail address so I can contact you if you win, with random.org.

 

For a second chance to win, Follow me on Bloglovin' and let me know, to receive a signed copy of the magazine from me. Remember to leave your e-mail address.  I will be choosing both winners at the end of the blog tour. To visit the other blogs. head over to Quiltmaker's blog to see the list by clicking HERE.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

Curvalicious Quilt v.2

It's time for annuals. I splurged yesterday and bought 2 of these beautiful baskets.

Recently we had a speaker visit our guild who said that gray is just not catching on. Well, I beg to differ and I think many others would agree with me.

I made this quilt using my Curvalicious tool. It has to be the easiest quilt ever, with a one piece background. It was such a beautiful day today that I just wanted to be outside. Bailey and I had fun staging the quilt around the yard.

This is the pattern up close. The grey is the background.

I bought the backing fabric from a shop that was closing its doors. It was perfect for this quilt. I love those monkeys.

I am working on a how to video to go with my original one. I'll keep you posted. But I could use help with a name.
This morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Cathy Perlmutter, a very creative quilter, who owns Curvalicious. She designed a very unique quilt and wrote a blog post that made me laugh so hard that I almost wet my pants! I am so excited about what she did. Take a look: http://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/2014/04/easy-modern-and-curvalicious-baby-quilt.html
Tell Cathy I sent you!

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Free Motion Quilt Book

I am always on the look out for more filler type patterns for free motion quilting. I saw the cover of this book and was intrigued. It looked like patterns that I could replicate on my home sewing machine and they were different than many I had seen in ither books.

The title says First Steps and presents the book for beginners, but I feel that any tips I can pick up to improve my machine quilting us always worth the money. The design that really caught my eye was this one made using leaves. It's quite unique and I haven't seen one like it. The way it branches will make it so versatile for me.

Christina takes the branching one step further and developed these other designs.

I love doing swirls and feel very comfortable filling in an area with them. The leaves and berry designs are just an extension of that. I can't wait to try them.

Christina includes a bunch of small projects that are perfect for practicing. If you would like to learn more from her about free motion quilting, visit her blog: www.afewscraps.blogspot.com

And as I promised, it's noon on the East Coast, so it's time to announce the winner of the one yard piece of Grand Central Station fabric. Drum roll please! It's jwchevan@umass.edu. Your comment made me think about how you must have felt as a 6 year old traveling on the train. Shoot me an email with your snail mail and I'll send it right out.

 

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