Almost Fall

Fall is my second favorite season, winter is my all time favorite, and there are signs that fall is almost here.  While at the cabin this past weekend, I noticed that the leaves on the dogwoods were starting to turn, along with some of the leaves on the poplar trees.







While taking a walk, I noticed a few leaves that had already turned and fallen off of the trees.  The weather was also a little bit cooler.

Acorns are also starting to fall.  At times it sounded like gun shots!!! The acorns are huge this year, this is after a poor acorn year last year.  For the first time in months, after putting out corn for the deer, no deer showed up to eat; they didn't have too!!  All of these acorns should make all of the forest creatures happy!!

After communing with nature, we went into Blue Ridge on Saturday afternoon for the Blues and BBQ Festival.  We had a great time!  This is the fourth year for this event and our second year going.  It gets better every year.  Of course there is great BBQ for many different local and some not so local restaurants, and food trucks.  The bands were great, we saw three of the five bands on the ticket for the day.  My favorite was Samantha Gray, she sounded just like Janice Joplin, wonderful voice.  If you have never been to Blue Ridge you should definitely go.  Fall is a wonderful time to go, ride the train, visit Mercier's Apple Orchard, go on a hike, or just hang out in town there are some great shops.

Worth Playing Hooky

It was definitely worth "playing hooky" today to attend the Lisa Bongean workshop sponsored by the Gwinnett Quilt Guild.  I had the best time, visiting with friends and learning a lot and I do mean a lot about wool applique.  I have been doing wool applique for a while but have never taken a class on the "correct" way to do it.  The project was the Welcome sign you can see here.  I didn't get it finished but that was ok, I learned some new stitches like the colonial knot.  I will never make another french knot again!!!  This is one of those projects that will not get put aside to finish someday, I will definitely finish it soon.







One project that I did finish today was this Halloween door pocket.  I started it a couple of weeks ago, and finished the applique part over the weekend I used my Jo Ann 20% off coupon to buy a few things that I needed including some fall flowers to go inside the pocket.  I think it turned out ok.  

Great Quilts

Wonderful Star quilt.

Red and  White Deletable Mountains Quilt

 Yesterday I blogged about the new book, Four Centuries of Quilts, the quilts of the Willamsburg Museum.  It is a great book, here are some of my favorite quilts from the book.  My favorites are the star quilts and the red and white quilts.

Rail Fence Quilt from the 1800's

Lone Star Quilt

 In addition to reading this great book I have also been working on Snow Happy wool applique blocks.  I have almost finished two of the blocks.  I did the wool for the kits for this pattern from Homestead Hearth so I decided to make it for my self.

Mitten Block

I love the red stripes in this heart block.

Can't wait to finish Snow Happy.

Great New Quilt Book

While on vacation this summer in Williamsburg one thing I looked forward to purchasing was a book on their quilt collection. Imagine my surprise when I found out there wasn't  a book available.  I looked at every quilt book in the book store at the visitor's center, there were some wonderful books and I found several that had to come home with me.  When I asked about about a book of their quilts I was told that a new one was coming out in the fall.  As soon as we returned I went on Amazon and pre-ordered a copy. It was pricey but worth it.  My copy arrived on Thursday, and it is definitely worth the wait.  Will post some of my favorite photos later in the week.

New (to me) Author

 Sometimes you are aware of an author and for whatever reason you just have never read any of their books.  One of those author's for me is Dorothea Benton Frank. Over the years people have told me how wonderful her books are but I just never picked up one to read.  That changed when about a month ago, my brother told me he had just read Folly Beach and how much he enjoyed it.  I decided then that I had to read it.  Oh, I have been missing out on some wonderful stories.  It is now one of my favorite books.  After reading that one, I checked out Bull's Island and The Last Original Wife from the  public library.  I really enjoyed both of them, but absolutely loved The Last Original Wife.  I can't remember the last time I laughed so  much while reading a book.  Will definitely be on the lookout for other books by this author.

September, already???

Where did the summer go?  I guess technically it is still summer, but I have been back in school for  a  month so to me summer is over with.  I have been keeping busy at work getting back in the groove of school.  I have also been trying to do some projects for fall, one thing I  am working on is a  wall hanging for fall.  This is a wool qpplique  pattern that I started on a couple of weeks ago.  Hope to get it finished soon.