Happy Fourth of July

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July. Pat and I decided to have dinner at the lodge of a local ski resort and then go out on the mountain to watch fire works. Which we did. Except for being in airplanes, this is the first time we've been above the fireworks. We'd see the display and hear the boom 3 to 5 seconds later. What a hoot. But, what is wrong with this picture? We were freezing. I had long pants, t shirt and sweatshirt with hood up on and still I was cold. We thought it might be 65 degrees or so. No, when we were in the car off the mountain it was 60! No wonder I was cold!

I tried a new technique today for curved piecing or making framed pictures. It was really easy to do following the directions in Stitch, Spritz and Sew: Curved Piecing as Easy as 1 - 2 - 3 by Kathy Bowers. I've had the book since last year and thought

the technique looked intriguing. It took me a while to find the YLI dissolvable thread which the book suggests to use. My practice block used the frame technique -- I put a red frame over a fussy cut conversation print. Wow! It was easy and I love the look -- maybe I'm in love with the flying pig, who knows. My bottom point on the heart isn't very sharp so in the future I may try for that. I am hoping to use this technique in my hanky challenge quilt. I have got to get going on that quilt. It won't be big but it may take a few days to get it all done.

A Tale of Two Irons

If you remember the last time I was blogging I was complaining about my iron breaking. So I went out Tuesday and bought a semi-expensive Hamilton Beach.($35 -40) It looked like it might be nice for me... until I took it out of the box. It was fairly heavy and sat up rather high on it's heel. I could see me knocking it off the ironing board without meaning too. But the kick in the pants, so to speak was when I plugged it in and used it the way I would be using it: iron a bit, sew for 10 to 20 minutes, iron, pin, cut, sew, iron... you know, the way a quilter would use it. After 15 minutes it turned itself off. According to the directions, all I needed to do was start using it again. It would heat up within 2 minutes. Um, no, it didn't heat up. I turned it off and turned it back on. Um, no, it didn't heat up. I had to unplug and plug in the friggin iron to get it to work again. NO NO NO! That just doesn't cut it for me.

So, Thursday we were heading into Scranton to a Mexican restaurant and decided to check Sears for irons. (Hey, the restaurant was in the mall parking lot... it was the closest store that carried irons.) We bought a Sunbeam ($22 or so). I tried it to make sure it worked. AH, it shuts off after 30 minutes. You hit the button to turn it on and voila~! it turned back on. Both irons say to unplug them before adding water. Pain in the ... Both said to turn off before unpluggin and unplug when finished ironing. Gosh, amazing what you can learn if you read the directions!

Pennsylvania does not ban fireworks so at 11 pm we are still hearing booms from the fireworks. As Pat says the 4th starts two weeks before and last two weeks after today. Yep. Luckily Raggs isn't that upset about the noise. He's noisily chewing on a rawhide bone.

Tomorrow I plan to start on the frame for the hanky challenge. And, I've got two quilts ready to load on Ruthie. I'm waiting for some new pantographs to come in. Time for bed now!

Happy quilting!