iQuilt

Helloooo! I still make quilts, I really do! I cannot believe that I have not sewn since April. My Bernina and all the flat surfaces in my sewing room were actually dusty. I have been so busy going hither and yon or getting ready to, that sewing took a back seat. Today was the day to get reacquainted with my Bernina. I started a new project using fabric strictly from my stash. Oh, the temptation to buy something new. There are some really super new collections out, aren't there? This fabric will be used to make 9-patches 6 inches finished.

These are 6.5 inch squares that will alternate with the 9-patches for the center part of the quilt. Sure hope this looks better once it gets further along cause I am having my doubts.

The pattern comes from The Quilter Magazine, March 2008 issue. I've already made the quilt once before and loved the results. I will probably add a row or two for additional length.

This book is so cute. I love cupcakes and this book has a little of something for just about everyone. Cupcake recipes, cupcake cards, knitted cupcakes, cupcake pincushions, you get the idea. The cover is so sweet and the size so small I like to just leave it next to my Bernina so I can gaze at it adoringly! No kidding!

Just a random street scene of St. Petersburg, Russia. I hope I am not boring you readers with my pictures of Russia, kind of like the neighbors' slides from their vacation to the Grand Canyon. You wish you could extricate yourself from their family room, but how? Let me know.

There were not many American fast food places, except McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and a Hard Rock Cafe. As a whole, the people were much slimmer than here. There's probably a connection there. You've got to love McDonald's in Cyrillic!

Me, relaxing onboard our ship.
Thanks for stopping by, and would love to read your comments!

Look At This!

Drove my daughter back to college in St. Louis about a week ago and we discovered a new Target. Not just any Target This one, in addition to the usual parking lot, also had a underground parking garage! This is the escalator from the garage to the store.

With it's very own shopping cart escalator! Here's where you put the cart to go down.

And this is where the cart comes out in the garage.

We thought this was so funny! We get back to my daughter's suite and her roommate really wasn't impressed. Ruth comes from Atlanta where apparently these super-duper-underground-parking-garages are quite common. Just goes to show you it doesn't take much to amuse these two Florida girls.

This is a random picture of clouds just for the fact I thought they looked so pretty. I am off to the quilt store, just to look you understand! There are so many new lines out, this place has some Jelly Rolls on sale.
Thanks for stopping by.

The Art of Procrastination

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I am a terrible procrastinator, or should I say terrific one as I am quite successful at it. First it took me two weeks to even get my pictures on my computer. I had been in Russia about three days when I noticed a black speck through my viewfinder and panicked. What to do! I have a really nice camera (God knows why as I certainly am not smart enough to know how to use it) but was clueless about what could be done about this speck. I eneded up taking the lens off and finding a white piece of something on the mirror thingy inside. Took a Q-tip and got rid of that. Anyway, I was intimidated by the whole idea that all 1050 pictures I took were going to have a black speck. Turned out offending speck did not show up in the pictures.

We flew to Charlotte, then arrived Munich about 8 a.m., and a few hours later to St. Petersburg, Russia. This is our ship as we cruised down the Svir River to the Volga River onto Moscow.

We spent about five days in St. Petersburg. This is the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.

This man had a bear cub on a leash and was inviting people to take pictures.

Street scene surrounding the church.

St. Petersburg was built on marshy land and has many canals. It's known as "the Venice of the north". The sun doesn't set until very late in the summer due to the geography of the city. It was very odd coming out of the ballet at 10:30 and being just as bright as 3:00 in the afternoon!

These are the massive columns supporting St. Issac's Cathedral made of a single piece of red granite.

I was just blown away by the beauty in these cathedrals. This is looking up at the interior of the dome.

A closeup of a mosaic. Such workmanship. We saw so many cathedrals most so old and beautifully ornate but rarely used by parishioners as church attendance is very low, around five per cent, a holdover from Soviet times.

Lastly, apartments with a man who looked to be nude while he was cleaning his windows! Maybe a bit too much of vodka or vivid imaginations on our part! He's in the center of the picture.

Up, Up and Away

Heading out the door for the airport on our way to Russia and Ukraine! Tell you all about it when we return the end of July, until then, happy sewing everyone!

New Book

Wish I could say I've been sewing but this is as close as I've got. This is the new book by the mother/daughter team of Pam and Nicky Lintott. Their first book was just great so I bought this one from Amazon sight unseen, so far I do not think it is going to disappoint.

This one from the book is called Damask Rose, so pretty and feminine. Just one jelly roll, four fat quarters and fabric for binding.

This is another winner, Hidden Stars. I made this one year using Christmas fabrics and a starry-beige for the stars. All in all, there are eighteen projects in the books using jelly rolls, layer cakes and/or charm squares.

This is what has been occupying my free time, getting ready for a vacation. I keep second guessing what to bring for weather so different from here (Florida). And to compound the problem, we are flying a local airline (once we get to where we are going) that puts strict weight restrictions on all luggage. Don't you just hate that when you get somewhere and you ended up leaving something out you should have brought?
Well, decisions must be made as we leave tomorrow. Be sure to come back the end of July as I plan on having a giveaway, maybe with something from our vacation to Russia.

July Fourth

Still no sewing going on here, plenty of running errands, shopping and general planning for another upcoming trip though. I hope you all have a wonderful and safe July 4th and hope to post again before I leave.

Just came across this nice essay in the LA Times that pretty much says it best,

"Each Fourth of July is celebrated in the time-honored way -- fireworks, parades, cookouts and, oh yes, recommitment to the fine principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence: those "self-evident" truths and "unalienable" rights.

It is curious, however, that so much of the inherited lore around the Fourth of July is based in misapprehension.

For starters, the day itself, July 4, isn't exactly America's Independence Day. John Adams believed that July 2 would become the significant day in the new republic's calendar of celebration. That's because it was on July 2, 1776, that delegates from the 13 Colonies at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in fact voted to proclaim independence from King George III and his ministers.

What happened two days later? A decision to make the July 2 decision public. The delegates gave the statement they'd agreed on to a printer, and the "broadsides" he published carried the July 4 date.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the physical document revered as the Declaration of Independence, a vellum scroll kept in the National Archives in Washington with 57 signatures proudly sitting at its foot, has no claim on being the unique founding document. It was hand-copied later. As to the signatures of those who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, they were added later still -- some were inscribed by new congressional delegates, men who hadn't even been in the room on July 2.

Moreover, although generations of American schoolchildren have learned that the declaration's author was Thomas Jefferson, this is also a slightly inaccurate portrayal of the facts. Jefferson did indeed draft the text, but others in the Continental Congress had their own views about the best form of words to use. The last paragraph, for example, containing the words "that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free independent states," was in fact penned by another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee.

In 1776, there was no public proclamation, no formal "declaration" read to the Colonists on either July 2 or July 4. And the news that resolutions against the king had been adopted could of course only travel at the speed of the fastest horse and rider. Therefore, the celebration of any selected day as the birth of the nation could only ever be a convenient fiction.

Nevertheless, in 1777, the members of the Continental Congress did decide to note July 4 by not meeting. A small and very low-key celebration was mounted, and everyone went to church. There was some talk of muskets being fired, but gunpowder was in short supply as the Colonies were at war.

Each subsequent year, celebrations were held in towns and cities, and each began to develop traditions for observing the day. The text of the declaration was read aloud. Dinners were held, often in the open air, with elaborate toasts, commonly 13 in number representing the original Colonies. Fireworks were from early on a feature of the day. Parades of the local great and good took place in town squares. By the time of the 50th anniversary in 1826, the traditions of the public celebration were fully established.

Perhaps it is best to see the Fourth of July as a story that, although not strictly speaking true, nevertheless conveys a belief: that the nation came into being on a particular day in 1776, signed, sealed and delivered. And each and every Fourth of July, as if for the first time, the story is both celebrated and instantiated, "America" -- by simple force of a declaration -- is founded again.

Today most of you will take the day off, put some hot dogs on the grill and open a few cans of beer. Some, like the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1992, will unfurl the Stars and Stripes and sing "Happy Birthday." But however one chooses to celebrate independence, may it also be remembered that the birthday of the nation, and the declaratory act that founded it, created and continues to create an architecture of belief. In 1776, it had the power to change the world. For good or ill, it still does." ~ Peter de Bolla