When life give you lemons.............

Make Limoncello!

On my recent visit to San Diego I plucked about

20 lemons or so off of my parents abundantly producing

lemon tree.

The lemons in the picture look kinda scraggly, but that

is because I have painstakingly peeled and/0r grated

the lemon's waxy skin off of it trying really really hard

not to get any of the white pith which could make the

limoncello bitter.

I place all of my lemon peelings in a glass jar
and add a bottle of Everclear and a bottle of vodka.

This mixture will "brew" in a dark room for 3-4 weeks

and then be ready for the next step in the process.

It has been a really busy week so far.

I was able to quilt two customer quilts.

This lovely basket quilt is Maryanne's

and this pastel beauty belongs to Liz.

My daughter Jenny is attending a baby shower

for one of her high school friends this weekend

and wanted to make a gift. So she came over

a couple of days this week and make this really

cute "Hanky Blanky Pet".

(By Black Cat Creations

http://www.black-cat-creations.com/

designed by Judy Reynolds)

Jenny did the hand embroidery on the cat's face and

made the blankie out of super soft minkee.

I bought this pattern several years in Olympia Washington

while I was visiting Bayside Quilting!

I was thrilled to see the pattern used

and it sewed up into a really cute little gift!


We had one kinda bad thing happen to us this week.

I arrived home on Sunday from my Quilting Road trip

and my dear daughter and son-in-law invited us over for dinner.

(Very sweet of them to think of that!)

(oh, that's not the bad thing!)lol

We took my car and left Mike's truck at home.

So when Mike went out to jump in his truck to
go to work on Monday the sound was horrendous!

On Saturday or Sunday night someone had cut the

catalytic converter off of his vehicle!

The mechanic who fixed this said that we had a very

nice thief...........I guess he cut off the converter

without damaging any of the other parts.

Now there's a bright spot for ya!

Silver lining in a dark cloud!

I still have not completely unpacked my "goodies" from

my trip to the Long Beach quilt show.

I got some new stencils that I used this

past week while working on some trapunto.

I'll be posting that sometime next week.

I've designed, marked, stitched and

now have to work on cutting away all that

thick batting.

It's a labor of love I'll tell ya!

So until next time.........try to stay cool!

Queen Mary

Another really neat thing that we got to do when we were in

Long Beach was visit the ship turned hotel

The Queen Mary.

What a treat!

Here we are at sea..............

The interior of this ship is gorgeous.

Hardwood floors and panels galore.

They just don't make em like that anymore.

Drinks anyone?

The best part of this story is that while we were waiting to hop on the downtown shuttle bus

to go over to the Queen Mary

we started talking with another lady

who just happened to be a quilter.

Turns out she was from Arizona and

on the Zoe's Trunk quilt shop tour bus.

She was staying at the Queen Mary!

Come to find out you can only get aboard this ship

if you are taking a tour OR are a hotel guest.

Our new friend Carolyn waved us in

by showing her key and claiming us as her guests!

Thanks Carolyn!

Celebrity Stalking

Waiting patiently (?) at the Long Beach Quilt Fesitval

to meet with Elenor Burns.

Featuring Christina and Carole.

These two friends who are HUGE Elenor Burns fans.
Thier sole purpose in going to the Long Beach Quilt Festival
was to meet Elenor Burns. They were prepared to wait in line
ALL DAY if neccesary to meet Elenor. They brought books and fans and pictures for Elenor to sign. They even brought the pictures of the Egg Money Quilts that we all worked on for over a year.
You might even go as far as to call them Elenor Burns Stalkers!
Okay, not really stalkers, but they were

just tickled pink to finally meet Elenor

Well, as you can see in the above video, they finally got to meet Elenor
and she was just a sweet and gracious as can be.

Here they are with thier finished Egg Money Quilts

Christina

Carole

Oh, did I forget to mention that they provided Elenor

with signed copies of the above pictures?

Elenor keeps a scrapbook so

Carole and Christina will now be in it!

Stalkers that we were, we went BACK to see Elenor again

later in the day.

Here is a picture of me, Kathy, Christina, Carole and of course,

Elenor!

Design Wall Monday

Dancing Stars

A Cozy Quilt strip club pattern by Daniella Stout

http://www.cozyquilt.com/Aspx/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=417

My design wall contains a quilt top that needs some borders.

I just got back from the Long Beach Quilt Festival yesterday

and this was a quilt that I put on the wall to measure so I could

figure out what fabric I needed to purchase to complete this quilt.

Well, I didn't get the fabric for this quilt, but I sure did come back

with my head full of ideas for existing Phd's (Projects half done)

and future quilts AND ideas for quilting existing tops!

Tomorrow I'll be posting stories and pictures about the quilt show.

But for now I'm off to get some QUILTING (ie...work!) done!