Happy Labor Day

Today we take a break from our labors and say good-bye to summer. Sigh.

What are you up to today? Picnicing, quilting, catching-up?

I'll be watching auto races at Lime Rock with my husband and two sons.

I don't care about cars, but I love hanging out with the guys.

Happy Labor Day!

Above: "The Artist's Wife at the Sewing Machine," by Romanian painter Ignat Bednarik (1882-1963.)

Quilts by CoopersQuilts

Wow, look at the corner blocks in this quilt! Great colors too. Sparkling earth colors.

You could add a bunch of selvages to the string quilt below, don't you think? Although it's pretty as is.

Saving the best for last:

While searching Bing.com for "colorful quilts" I found these beautiful quilts made by Jacqueline of CoopersQuilts from Florida. She sells them on Etsy. (All the quilts are recent except the one in the bottom photo which is from March of 2008.)

Iraqi Bundles of Love (by Oct. 1)

Quilters are putting together bundles of fabrics and thread to send to our soldiers who will give them to women in Iraq for making quilts and other things for their families. Visit the Iraqi Bundles of Love website to learn more. Leave a message and ask for the address if you'd like to send a bundle of love.

Matt, the soldier who is responsible for delivering the bundles to remote areas, has a mother, sisters, wife and daughter who are all quilters. So he knows how important these bundles are.

Here are some recipients with their bundles, a women's sewing co-op.

Jacqui's Fancy Stitches

Jacqui of Treadle Quilts in Canada is saving Kaffe fabrics for an orange peel quilt that she plans to make. In the meantime, she used the selvages to make another thread-catcher to hang near her sewing machine. Take a look at the fancy machine stitches Jacqui used to attach the selvages. It looks like she used variegated thread too. What a nice touch.

Liberated Wedding Ring Selvage Quilt

What a wonderful selvage quilt by The Cozy Quilter from Ontario, Canada. She calls it her Liberated Wedding Ring selvage quilt. I think the red triangles look like butterflies fluttering over the surface of the quilt. The royal blue inner border is one inch wide. The binding will be dark red. She'll be taking it to be professionally machine quilted soon.

Isn't this a beautiful way to display her quilt, on a clothesline? Cozy Q doesn't have a clothesline, so this is her neighbor's. Take a look at her blog.

Jana's Selvage Sewing Machine Cover

Take a look at Jana's new selvage sewing machine cover. What a neat job! Visit her blog called Jana's Patchworkwelt Jana is from Hamburg, Germany.

She's a Violinist and a Quilter!

Linda Hall of Tampa, Florida is a symphony violinist and a quilter. Her new blog is The Quilting Violinist, "Holding life together with stitches and notes." Isn't her selvage quilt with yo-yo's a beauty? Nice job, Linda! Take a look at all the fabric that Linda and her quilting buddies are using to make charity quilts. Wow!

Michelle's Clothesline Quilt

Michelle from Florida (Nostalgic Cafe blog) made this great quilt and do you know what she thinks about it? She says: "meh." What's not to love? I think it's wonderful. What do you think?

Have You Visited Nifty Quilts?

Nifty from Seattle of the Nifty Quilts blog made this stupendous quilt! I love everything about it: the border, the quilting, the webs, the "backgrounds," and the binding. Her blog is loaded with more wonderful quilts and fantastic fabrics. It's a real treat! She is a new blogger, so stop by and say hi.

This quilt makes me want to drop everything and go make a string quilt. How about you?

Yulia's Braids

This is Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine. She's iconic in Europe for her braids. They're very pretty, like a golden crown. A beauty salon named Muse used braided hair extensions as handles for these bags sporting Yulia's photo. (See below.) Pretty clever.

Thanks to LeeAnn for the "heads-up" about this story which first appeared on the blog: http://www.blog.ivman.com/. ("IV" stands for Instant Vacation.) Also visit LeeAnn's blog.

Inspiration from Nostalgic Cafe!

Wowzers! Take a look at all these selvage projects by Michelle from Florida on Nostalgic Cafe!

Numbering them 1-9, top to bottom, left to right, which is your favorite? I especially like #4 the spider web and #8 the house (or pool cabana). Oh yeah, #9 the Asterisk blocks too! Cool selvages in #2 too. Nice job Michelle!

Selvage Quilt for a Bear!

Edda in Portage, MI has finished her third selvage project, a table topper. This quilt will be wrapped around a stuffed bear at Christmas-time and donated to a charity with many others made by her guild. What a great idea.

Beautiful job, Edda! I love your colors.

Sunrise on Golden Pond

On Saturday morning I got up at 4:30AM to climb Rattlesnake Mountain in the dark (with my husband Jason and sister Eileen) to watch the sun rise over Squam Lake in Holderness, NH. You may remember this lake from the movie "On Golden Pond." I recommend that movie for great scenery and some funny lines. It was so quiet and beautiful this early in the morning. The lake in the distance is Lake Winnipesaukee. It's a much bigger lake, busier too.

As the sun got higher in the sky, the colors changed (below). Isn't this beautiful? I love it here.

After this excursion, I went back to bed for a few hours! Then Eileen and I went to Keepsake Quilting, 10 minutes away from her house in the town of Center Harbor, NH. Of course we found some fabrics that we needed. I got some pea green Kaffe ikat fabric that I'm sure will come in handy. That night we had the "dump dinner" (see yesterday's post). What a perfect day!

The Dump Dinner!

Meet my sister Eileen Lovett (above). She's the one who made the optical illusion selvage quilt that you saw here yesterday. Eileen is the queen of creativity and fun. She actually owns two copies of the Fun Encyclopedia. She could have written it! Take a look at what we did for dinner Saturday night at their summer house in Holderness, NH. We had a dump dinner! The name had us all pretty curious all day.

Eileen boiled several big pots of shrimp, sausage, kielbasa, white potatoes, purple potatoes(!), pearl onions, and corn on the cob. She poured off the water after it was cooked, and then "dumped" it on the center of the table. Her husband Campbell (in the white hat) served each of us a little dab of coctail sauce (ketchup and horseradish), butter, and mustard. Then we ate the delicious dinner with our hands! The funny thing was that eating like this without a plate, I didn't really know exactly how much I ate. Twelve of us didn't finish all this. We had covered the table with a plastic tablecloth, then newspapers, and finally aluminum foil, so the clean up phase took just a minute. Everyone volunteered to wash the dishes. Eileen made blueberry pie for dessert, and fortunately we got plates and forks for that!

After dinner we all played a game called "Apples to Apples" and we laughed so much that our faces hurt. It was dark for a long time by the time we left the table. Then I sat outside under the stars and enjoyed the sound of the crickets. I love evenings like this.

In case you're curious, in the bottom photo you can see our other sister Lynne in the pink shirt on the left. Next to her is her son Oliver, then our brother Bruce's wife Jennifer, Sam in the "Halftime" tee-shirt (he's one of Eileen and Campbell's two sons), Michelle (Bruce and Jennifer's niece), Amelia (Lynne's daughter) is standing, and Campbell is on the far right. Our mom, Mary, is standing in the photo at the top. Not shown: Bruce, my husband Jason and me. I was taking the photos.

Eileen's Optical Illusion Selvage Top

My sister Eileen Lovett of Rhode Island is having a selvage quilt challenge with her friend Nancy Poor. This is the start of Eileen's quilt, the center. This "box" is about 18" tall. She'll add a 4" or 6" piano key border of selvages. I'll show you a better photo when it's finished, but I couldn't wait 'till then to show you this.

I'll feature photos of both quilts in October when they're both finished. Okay?

Handknitted Christmas Stockings

These pretty Christmas stockings are 8" long. They are available on Taraluna for $23. I like the colors and designs, especially the blue one in the top row. It looks selvagey. Haha.

It's not too early to start thinking about making stuff like this. Well, maybe it is a little early. :)

Poster Supplies Quilt Inspiration

I saw this poster by James Rizzi in a store window in New York City recently. I asked the store owner if I could take a photo so I could make a quilt like it. He looked like he'd never heard that request before! But he said okay. There's something kind of Anna Williams-ish about this. What do you think?

Thanks, Ellen, for telling me the name of the poster artist.

Awesome Little Selvage Quilt!

This beautiful little table topper selvage quilt is the creation of Wendi Irons of Galt, CA. She used a pattern by Schnibbles for inspiration. This quilt measures 33" x 33." Didn't she do a wonderful job?

I can't quite figure out what it is about this quilt that I like so much. Is it the bright colors, or maybe it's the crisp white border that ties in with the selvages so well? The binding is pretty too.

This would be a stunning quilt studio wall quilt! Wouldn't take that many selvages either. Wendi says it didn't even make a dent in her selvage stash. :)

Molly is Famous!

Do you remember Molly? She's the daughter of my dear friend Sandi. I've known Sandi since she was born, 50-odd years ago;) I wrote about Molly's blog a while back: Lessons from Elephants. Well here's an update: she graduated from Simmons College and now she has a job at NASDAQ. She recently visited New York City and got to ring the closing bell at the NYSE. Pretty cool, don't you think? She's on the right in the photo above. Smart and pretty.

Happy Blogiversary to Nickels!

Nickels from Nickels Pickels in Germany just made her first selvage projects, the charming little purses above. She's giving them away to celebrate the one-year anniversary of her blog.

There is a Translate button at the top of her blog, so you can read her posts in English or Chinese or whatever you want. She has lots of quilts, crochet and other things to inspire us. Keep up all the good work, Nicole.