It's quilted!

Hello, everyone. 

The new-and-old quilt has been quilted and it's ready to be squared up and bound. Woo-hoo!

Gooey Butter Cake

Hello, everyone. 

Gooey Butter Cake has always seemed like a cousin of Lemon Bars: a base that's more dry and a gooey top. 

It's a standard of Duke's Bakery in Alton, Illinois, where on Sunday morning after church the cars line up down the block as people pick up their  breakfast. The butter vanilla scent fills the kitchen while it bakes.

Update on the vintage quilt project

 Hello, everyone.

Today's update on the vintage quilt project: there is light at the end of the tunnel! Most of the quilting is done. (Perhaps 10 inches are left to go, approaching the left side from the center.) Then the binding, then it will be done!

Just to refresh, these are the vintage side

and the new side

The new side, and the batting, are a little bit larger than the almost-queen-sized vintage side. There will be a bit of trimming after the quilting is done and before the binding is added.

The large "tile" block near the top is from the My Favorite Color Is Moda book. The log cabins and the angels and other various scenic-centered blocks are from stash. Yes, there are still a lot of orphan blocks in my stash! 

The vintage side has a lot of stars that were made from crumb quilting, in a huge assortment of clothing fabrics of the 1930's. Cotton muslins, various blousings, even cotton flannel are represented. The green, red, lavender diamonds that form the hexagons around the stars also incidentally form a 3-dimensional block at the intersections of the hexagons. All of the vintage seams are hand sewn. 

So, leaving y'all to resume the rows of quilting and hoping to finish Real Soon Now....

Texas themed quilting fabric

Hello, everyone. 

I am on various quilt oriented email lists. One of them is Art Gallery Fabrics. Recently the promotional email was about a Texas themed collection called "The Road to Round Top", that being a prominent and well known geologic feature in, IIRC, central Texas. It's a big hill, basically, and I think there is a walking trail to the top.

This is the set of fat quarters in the collection.  The greens are on the gray side, and the whites are on the vanilla-custard side. I already have some other fabrics that go with it, too. 

It's so pretty.

I feel like a table runner out of this pattern would show the fabrics nicely. 

Or maybe a Friendship Braid type of table runner, like the ones in various Youtube videos. 

Memories from the Camino del Norte

Hello, everyone.

Someone we know is going to walk along the Camino del Norte ("the Northern Road") to Santiago, and it brought back to us memories of that walk in 2018. 

The morning after we slept in Tapia de Casariego--at the very scenic but very basic municipal albergue in an old school house--we walked along beaches and stopped for breakfast coffee at a small hotel. As we didn't stay there, we probably forgot to get a sello in our credencial to remember the visit. Thus, we didn't know the name of the lovely place with the gorgeous beach view! Until today, that is, when I was prompted by the memories of our walk to look into Gronze.com and study the detail maps. 

Then I found it! The giveaway was the porch fence visible in the window of the photo on Google Maps.

One of our photos of the beautiful Playa de Penarronda, lots and lots of sand with a collection of interesting rock outcrops

On the porch of the Hostal with a glass of Aquarius sports drink

Someday I want to go back to that little place and spend the night there, enjoying the serenity and the views.

The hostal is exactly along the walking path of the Camino del Norte.

Corraling sewing tools

Hello, everyone. 

As the weather here is still standard south Texas August heat, I'm inside enough to notice occasional little things that could be done.

A case in point: the long tape measure I use for taking diagonal lengths of quilts, or similar things, has a tendency to come unrolled when being handled. Or just lying in the drawer! I decided to make a small pouch to hold it.

The completed pouch. Embroidered lettering set out with my Hatch software and my Janome embroidery machine.  Fabrics from stash and also the zipper is from stash. 

I really need to do some more little organizing projects like this. Needles next? We'll see.

In this summer heat, some flowers are happy

Hello, everyone. 

As mentioned,  we're in August heat and this year it's a warm one.

Our pink crape myrtle, as long as they get a bit of water, are happy to bloom in clouds of pink froth.

Other plants that are happy: bougainvillea,  canna, jasmine, Lantana. 

The young dragon fruit has made a flower,  but it's too soon to tell whether it was pollinated.

There was a brush fire a few miles away yesterday. 

Driving around. The fire went out before night, happily.