Sneak Peak: Diamond Chain

Quilting on Diamond Chain is actually done but I'm only showing a bit of it until it's bound and ready for its glamour shots.  The pattern is also called Jewel Box, Northern Lights, Jacob's and World's Fair from what I can tell.  I've got an old booklet (1988) called Templates for 171 Four-Patch Quilt Blocks that I use to find interesting blocks to make.  Most of the names for the block came from that booklet.  (And, don't worry, I don't use templates unless I absolutely have to but it's pretty easy to figure out the block pieces without templates.) The name Diamond Chain came from a video by Jenny at Missouri Star.  I liked the block, found a big hunk of backing fabric and a bunch of scraps and kept making blocks until I figured I'd done enough.(You can see it here and here.) 

That's all the quilting I'm showing today.  I spent most of yesterday watching a couple of Accuquilt Zoom sessions.  I've been to a few educational sessions from AccuQuilt since we started staying home.  I consider a class/session a rousing success if I learn one new thing.  And, yep I did and right after the class I tried it and it worked like a charm.  It has to do with trimming the ends of binding strips to make it easier to sew the strips together.  (I think I'm going to be trying it again fairly soon!) 

I'm including this pic of a butterfly mainly because we've seen so few of them this year.  Wasn't he nice to pose so well for me?  Last year the Yellow Tail was a female because of some blue on the bottom of the wings. I "think" this one is a he. 

 

I believe I mentioned several posts back that I was giving up on my hummingbird feeder as I had seen no hummers visiting.  Well, within a week or so of taking the feeder down, cleaning it, and putting it away we saw one looking for it.  So, I made some more nectar, poured it in the feeder, and hung it outside.  We've seen a lot of single birds there.  I've never seen 2 birds flitting around the feeder but Pat says he has from time to time.  I'll keep supplying the nectar until we don't see any more birds. 

I've already completed a couple of my goals this week.  I'll be sharing how I'm doing on that sometime on Tuesday.  For now, I'm linking with Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Beauties Pageant #94, and Finished or Not Friday. I hope you can do a little blog surfing to see what folks are up to. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 2 - 17 - 2020

This was a very productive week on many fronts.

First off is the Valentine's Day "card" I made for my hubby -- a carrot cake (yum) with an attempt to make it pretty.  The colored sugar I was using wasn't fine enough to easily go through the doily I was using to make the design.  Oh well, I tried. 

I also finished piecing Diamond Chain blocks and have started sewing them into rows.  Here's the link to the Missouri Star You Tube video showing how to make the blocks. I've been working on these off and on for several months.  In the picture the bottom row has been sewn together. 

I'm hoping to get two quilts quilted this week.  One is a flannel quilt my friend Marlyn and I made from some cute monkey flannel she had.  The other is a table runner I made last year or so.  I'm hoping to get more of my finished tops quilted this year.  The only issue with that is I just don't have a lot of backing fabric hanging around to use.  I'm hoping to piece some fabric together but I'll probably end up buying more backing fabric.   Sigh.

On to the Panama Canal portion of our vacation.  Our cruise ship was going through just the first lock of the Canal to give passengers the experience.  I woke up early to see what was going on -- probably around 6 am.  It was gorgeous at that time.  A tug came along side.  I believe this is when the pilot boarded the ship and a narrator who explained what we were seeing.   

In the distance you can see the Atlantic Bridge that spans the waters of the Atlantic ocean as it leads into the Panama Canal. 

You can see a few other people were on their verandas watching the action.  I took a slew of pictures but will only show you a few of them.  

Prior to passing through the locks we watched and listened to movies and presentations about the locks and the history.  From 1881 when the French first attempted to build the canal until it was completed in 1914 over 25,000 workers lost their lives.  Many of the deaths were attributed to malaria and yellow fever.  Eventually, Dr. Gorgas, a U.S. army doctor, identified the spread of those diseases to mosquitos and began the successful campaign to control mosquitos. 

As each ship heads into a lock  locomotives, called mules, are attached to control its progress through the canal.  There are two fore and two aft on each side of the ship. 

Below you can see a mule at the front and the track that undulates with the land rising with the lock. 

This picture was taken looking straight down from our balcony.  From left to right you can see the deck of the balcony, the balcony rail, part of the black hull, a little water and then the side of the lock.  There is not all that much room between the ship and the lock.  Needless to say, I was not hanging over the balcony railing very long to take this picture


We exited the lock at Lake Gatun.  Many of the passengers had excursions to see more about Panama and the canal.  Only those of us who had excursions were able to disembark.  While we took our tour, the ship went back through the Panama Canal to Colon, Panama where we would meet up with the ship once it docked.  

I was lucky to get this picture of the ship as it started it's journey back through Gatun lock. Although it was cloudy the weather was comfortable for our tour of the Rainforest, Gatun Lake and Live the Experience Panama Canal. 

First up was a drive over the new Agua Clara Locks.  Then we went to the Panama Canal Expansion Visitor Center.  These new locks created a new line of traffic that allowed bigger ships to use the canal.  The new locks opened in June of 2016.  They were built with holding tanks that conserved some of the water that was used to raise and lower the ships.  

We enjoyed a movie, a snack, the view of the locks and a nature walk.  I'll be sharing what we saw on the nature walk and the rest of the excursion for the next blog.  I hope you are enjoying my vacation vicariously.  We had a great time, that's for sure. 

I'm linking up with my normal Monday linky parties: Oh Scrap, Monday Making and Design Wall Monday.  Take some time to check out what folks are working on this week. 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie 

Veterans Day 11 - 11 - 2019

Let us always remember the sacrifices our military members and their families - active, reserve and retired - made (and make)  to keep our country free.  I add the families because my dad was in the Navy for 30 years and my mom, brother, and I moved a lot thus making new friends and seeing new parts of the United States.  But, I think of my brother who went to 4 high schools.  While at that time I was just in elementary school and two different middle schools.  I moved my senior year of high school and to this day don't really think of the school as "my" high school.  Dad went to the University of Southern California in the Navy ROTC just before World War II broke out.  He didn't finish college but went active duty instead.  He retired as a Captain having commanded a fleet of destroyers, an oiler, several different destroyers and serving on admirals' staffs.  He saw duty in World War II, Korean war, and Viet Nam war.  "We" also saw a lot of duty at the Pentagon.  He led an interesting life, to say the least. Both of my grandfathers served in World War I and my brother served during the Viet Nam war but was stationed stateside.  That's quite a legacy of service to my way of thinking.    

On to quilting. I wish I could say I've made all those churn dash blocks into a quilt top but, no didn't work on those at all.  In fact, I put them away knowing I wasn't going to get to them at all for a while.  So instead, I'll show you what I did get done. 

I cut this out to take to retreat in October.  Diamond Chain is one of Missouri Star's patterns.  You can see Jenny demonstrate how to make the block here.  I had all the dies needed to cut this out with my Accuquilt Go. Bonus!  I've been taking this project when I go to my community's quilt group.  

We were at the beach house this weekend attending some property owner meetings so I grabbed these, my Featherweight, and set up a sewing nook overlooking the back yard.  I finished all of the units (at least I think I did) and got these blocks made.  I'll be at community sewing again on Thursday so hopefully I'll finish all the blocks then.  I thought they were going to look duller when I made my sample block but I guess I threw in a lot of fun colors so that livens it up a lot.  

With Christmas sneaking up on me I'll probably have to spend more time finishing (heck, starting and finishing) presents.  I've got a list to remind me what to do.  I've actually made some progress on two projects.  There is hope! 

I've noticed a lot of the Monday linky parties I've been linking with have stop posting. So today I'll be linking up with Oh Scrap, Monday Making, and What I Made Monday. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie