Design Wall Monday

Another snail trail quilt, this time with the folk art look and using just the 12 inch square and no particular rhyme or reason as to the placement of color, pattern or plaids except that I tried not to have the same print or plaid touching. I have arranged and rearranged to the point where moving a block from one place to another only creates another problem with another pair of fabrics too close together. click for previous snail trail quilts.  It will be a nice throw size quilt. Happy quilting--Ann--  linking to PatchworkTimes Design Wall Monday

Summer Reading

Half way through the summer that's a depressing thought so better make the most of it as the days gradually get shorter. The books I've read since May.........

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley  book club everyone hated the book too many words and weird story but it was written almost 200 years ago. 
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain  just for fun wonderful writing.
Chestnut Street by Maeve Bianchy

Sex and Salmonella by Kathleen Taylor 
Hotel South Dakota by Kathleen Taylor
Mourning Shift by Kathleen Taylor
Cold Front by Kathleen Taylor 
these 4 books (first book was in April reading list) were written by a South Dakota author, her descriptions of small town life and South Dakota are wonderful and very funny.  Her fiction has recently been formatted for e readers.

Dakota a Spiritual  Geography by Kathleen Norris  book club also a South Dakota writer and wonderful descriptions of the prairie and small town life in South Dakota. It is also a brief history lesson on the farm crisis in the 1980's. It is about life, community, and faith. non fiction

The Quilt before the Storm Arlene Sachitano
The Invention of Wings Sue Monk Kidd the story takes place in the early 1800's and is about a white girl and a slave girl growing up at the same time on the same plantation. Two very different points of view.


Seize the day--Ann--

Power Sewing

 Some days I just need to get behind actually in front of my sewing machine and put the pedal to the floor. There is nothing like the roar of the machine to make me feel like I'm accomplishing something. I've been moving this quilt from one out-of-the-way-spot to another out-of-the-way-spot until it is time to move it out of the room. Out-of-the-way-spots unlike safe spots are obvious and actually in the way. The only way a quilt gets out of the sewing room is to be ready for the binding and that is the next step.  feeling the power--Ann--

Pick of the Morning

a gallon bucket of snow peas! happy pickin'--Ann--

Snail trail

My second snail trail quilt top is sewn together, it is 45" by 58" so will be a nice baby quilt size. I cut additional half square triangles from 7 1/2 inch squares to make each snail block 13 inches.

 I thought a square in a square block could also be made by cutting  click tutorial the corners off a square and sewing it back together but to get the seams to meet the corner points I had to trim each round of triangles and in the final round I would be trimming 3/4 of an inch from each side of the block. I thought that wasted a lot of fabric so if I ever sew a square in a square quit I will be cutting the appropriate size squares into half square triangles.  What started as a 12 inch square will become a 7 1/2 inch finished block with sharp corner points just inside the next square. --Ann--

South Dakota

The South Dakota prairie is as green as I have ever seen and my hollyhocks are loaded with blossoms. Life is good--Ann--