Short Spring Break

Spring break was shortened this year due to the snow days we had back in January. Allen took off the three days with me, and we took a trip up to Hancocks of Paducah on Thursday for a quick get-away and fabric shopping spree for me. Like I need more fabric. We had a beautiful drive up there, dogwoods twinkling in the roadside trees. We had a fun dinner at a nice Paducah restaurant on the river too. We stopped at a couple of favorite spots in Nashville on the way home, but the trip back was not so pretty with thunderstorms just in front of us the whole drive.

Saturday was a grand day for us because our dear little Georgia Mae came for a nice, long visit while her mommy and daddy took some time off.



Here's Grandma feeding her. Just check out those long legs! She is eating well these days, and it will be fun to see how much she has grown when she goes to the pediatrician on Tuesday for her one month visit.



Georgia loves to snuggle, and she loves her light up seahorse that plays music, but most of all she loves Grandpa, right?



We don't have a pack and play or crib (not true - we have one but my grandson cut a hole in the mesh with my applique scissors when he was just 18 months old! ) We will get a new one, but for the time being, Georgia took her naps in a basket. She is lying on a quilt that my grandmother made for Shannon, so that means it was made by Georgia's great-great grandmother, I guess. It has embroidered flowers on alternate blocks. I never really liked the quilt, but it is pretty special that we can use it for another generation.



Ozzie was quite interested, but he was really pretty well behaved. He and Georgia will be buddies some day, but we didn't let him close other than for a quick hello sniff.



Much of the rest of my fun time was spent sewing. Yeah! This is Civil War Block of the Week 16 - White House.  I tend to not buy stripes because they befuddle me, but they were a requirement in this block. I like the way it turned out.



I am starting a new quilt with some bright batiks that remind of sherbet  for some reason. The block is called Winding Ways, and it is a curvy challenge, but I love the way the blocks go together and make secondary designs. I have four finished. This will not be a fast quilt. One block at a time tests my patience!



Half of a block...



And one whole one.

Since I feel like I'm going to want something straightforward to do in between these blocks, I am starting another one too -- a whole different ball game. This one is called a Red Cross Quilt, and they were made by quilters primarily during World War I to send to soldiers. Clara Barton started the Red Cross at the end of the Civil War, so I am assuming there were a fair number of Red Cross quilts made with scraps from that era.  The version I am making is very scrappy, and the blocks will be set on-point with a blue/gray background. Here is block #1 out of 72.



Did I mention that I am not ready to go back to school?

Catching up on quilting projects

If Georgia had waited until her due date, this would have been finished on time! However, it is finished now and delivered to the Miller home. Some day it will probably be on Georgia's bed since it is probably twin size. For now, it will be on the chair in her room so she can snuggle with her Mom or Dad in the dark of night.



This is the backing and maybe a closer look at my machine quilting.



Time to start some new projects!  The best news is that Georgia seems to be doing really well, getting hungrier and and starting to fill out those long legs! She eats about every three hours, and she is awake a good bit of the day now. I hope she grows to love her quilt -- and maybe someday, we can sew something together!

I got behind on my Civil War block of the week, but this week I caught back up by doing four blocks.



The first one I did, Week 12, was Louisiana.



Week 13 was Blue Basket. According to Barbara Brackman who is providing the patterns on her Civil War Quilt blog, "The name has two meanings. The pattern is literally a little blue basket and it also can recall the Little Blue, a river in western Missouri. The Little Blue formed valleys and caves along the Kansas/Missouri border, a landscape that provided hiding places and refuge for Confederate guerillas during the Civil War."



Week 14 was Fox and Geese, representing the standoff  for control of Fort Sumter in early April before the war began.



Finally, this week commemorated the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the war with the Confederate bombing of the Union fort in Charleston's harbor, and the block is appropriately named Fort Sumter.