MY LAST THREE DAYS

Monday afternoon there was a knock at my door. It was Ellen, my artsy neighbor! "We're batiking, wanna join?" I only had a wedding (hubby's colleague's son) to get to in a couple of hours, but what's more important? I joined the ladies in Ellen's garage and had too much fun. The wedding? we went late (missing the shmorg) and ended up making it just in time for the ceremony! God works in mysterious ways :)!
This is Madi who used to be the principal of NYC School of Art and Design - I hope I got that right, Madi!

Melting wax for batiking.

Applying wax to fabric. I have no finished products to show you just yet.

I give it a try! After this there was no stopping me, right Ellen?! I forgot to get a picture of Ellen! You can see a great example of her painting expertise in the pic below next to Merri...

This is Merri with my son who wondered... where are all the men? Do men quilt too? I made sure to tell him it's perfectly OK. He wants to come to all my quilt meetings, he said!

And yesterday, the beach was so lovely.

But dare I say, I'm soooo tired of it? (I know I'll regret saying that in just one month.)

The water was so calm, bringing to mind liquid light.

Last but not least, today I went a little crazy in Joann's. I had ordered a bunch of fabric and thread from Paducah, but it's taking too long to arrive!

ROUND ROBIN

I am relieved that I completed my "homework." We're doing a round robin in my quilt group - blacks and whites, greys, and one color of your choice. I was going to choose a bright orange but I've been in love with this turquoise/aqua fabric for so long already I just had to use it. This is officially my first lone star, although I used a pattern from a book called "Stars Made Easy." There are nothing but rectangles and squares to cut, but there is alot of waste so I believe next time I'll take the plunge and do it the traditional way. It was a great way to make up a star easily enough, so I could get back to my summer and not have any pressure looming...

MID-SUMMER POST

Would you look at this guy? Mischief is his middle name. I actually have him trained - when he does something like this, I exclaim, "If you weren't cute, you'd be in WHAT?!" He replies, dutifully, "BIG TROUBLE!" Back to quilting...

I finally attended another quilt meeting and our group has grown from 3 to 8! I'm sorry I forgot to bring my camera. We all made breast cancer quilt blocks for that fundraiser in the magazine. They're supposed to be pink and white, 8.5". The group is trying to make their own top for the fundraiser. I frankly told them I am only up to doing this one block as I am busy with the kids and the other members are all older and settled. I think I did a pretty good job, and like it better that I made one special block. I made the big mistake of using tear-away stablilizer and had to tweeze out all the extra pieces for about an hour!

Check out that yellowed polka-dotted fabric. Stuart brought that for the group to share. It was his grandmother's from over 50 years ago. So retro, so cool! When I ironed it, the wrinkles didn't want to budge because it had been folded in one position for the entire 50 years! By the way, I cannot take credit for this design. I modified it from quilterscache.com. The woman who runs it was very gracious and just asked that I mention where I found it, as follows: This is the Sunflower pattern from The Quilter's Cache/Marcia Hohn.