The first annual Descendants of Leonard & Agnes Ruesch Family Picnic

Agnes and Leonard would have loved this:

Lots of good food contributed by everyone

Good company (of course!) and even some new friends
An opportunity to dig through an attic full of treasures

A baby shower for two moms and three babies
A brief sprinkle followed by a rainbowSome soccer for the cousins
(Check out those hats on the little guys! Grandma and Grandpa's hat collection was a big hit!)
Laughter around the campfire

And Sunday morning pancakes with Ruesch's Pure Wisconsin Maple Syrup before all was over
Yup. Grandma and Grandpa would have loved it.

Orange Fizz

The orange quilt is progressing nicely. Well, it was progressing nicely. In fact, all drunkard's path blocks for a cute little quilt were completed until my copy of Valori Wells's Radiant New York Beauties caught me eye and refused to let go. My orange quilt blocks are colorful and cheerful and all those good things, but they seem lack a certain pizazz. What they need is spark.

Valori's book bursts with spark. Unfortunately, although Radiant New York Beauties provides patterns for several sizes of blocks, it does not provide the 6" block needed. So, armed with inspiration and absolutely no experience in creating curved patterns, I decided to create my own. A draftsperson I am not. After a laborious attempt with impressive looking rulers and graph paper, my first few pieced arcs looked just as I hoped, but proved to be the wrong size. Duh. I added the side seam allowance twice. Good thing a practice run was made before any type of mass production took place. (If you look closely at this practice piece, you 'll notice that I also cut into the arc while trimming the piece, rendering it completely useless even if it were the right size. Perfection is not running rampant in this endeavor.)Today, new patterns are ready to go. "Drafting" might be an overstatement for my method of tracing combined with folding and connecting the dots to create patterns. No matter. They will work. A smattering of spiked arcs will add just the kick this quilt needs. The new working title is "Spiked Punch." Or, "An Undaunted Search for the Perfect Punch." Or something else.

Happy Anniversary to us

Last night was our book club anniversary celebration. Three years and counting of some good reading with some great friends. Once again, we exchanged our book-related anniversary gifts after rating our reads (14 books) for the year -- The Book Thief was ranked number 1 by each of us. Yes, that should be a clear message for you to read it. The fact that Mary's number 2 was my number 14, shows there are no guarantees we'll all share the same impression of our reading selections.

The gifts I gave reflected my two favorite books; The Book Thief and Little Bee. As it happened, the day we met at Stevens Point's Wooden Chair restaurant to discuss Little Bee, Mary ordered her usual tea. The honey she was served came in the cutest little honey pot.

It was so cute, in fact, that I ordered three of them as soon as I got home that day ... and an anniversary gift plan was hatched.

First, I made some hexagons and pretended in this blog post that there was no definite plan for them, which really is the case for the little pile of them still in the baggie. Next, I gathered up all of my "word" fabric and found a nice variety for the petals the Dresden Plate that was forming in my brain. The following Saturday's quick run to the Cotton Thimble in Wisconsin Rapids evened out the black on white fabrics with a musical print to honor Papa from The Book Thief, a bee print for the backing, and things were on their way.

I'm not sure I would approach this in the same sequence again, but after having the hexagons and petals assembled, the hexagon centers were hand appliqued to the plates; the Dresden plates in turn were hand appliqued to background. Of course, that could have been done by machine, but one of the rewards of this project was the reminder of how much I enjoy the look and feel of hand applique and these were just the right size to enjoy the process without becoming overwhelmed. After cutting away the excess background fabric to eliminate bulk, the Dresden plates were layered (right sides together) with the backing and batting and stitched together.

After turning right side out and pressing, the table mats were machine quilted. That's right. No binding. (I do placemats the same way and really like the less bulky finish for table use.)
Fun little projects that make me look forward to another year of books to inspire our next anniversary celebration gift exchange.

Orange you glad

For whatever reason visions of back-in-the day bridal/baby shower punch jumped into my head at the same time an overwhelming need to make an orange quilt rose to the surface. I'm sure I could find the punch recipe if I tried, but it should suffice to tell you that the pretty orange punch featured scoops of orange sherbet. The flashback to punch inspired a few trial drunkard's path blocks. They went together like a dream. Yes, there is an orange quilt on the near horizon.
Drunkard's Path is one of those blocks I've long avoided. Curved seams? Yes way! I'm using Fons & Porter's curved seam templates and really, these 6" squares go together very smoothly.

Interestingly enough, the description on the templates notes that they were featured in a Fons & Porter 2004 issue, and I know I ordered them right way, so perhaps this quilt isn't exactly a spur of the moment event after all. It's also not the quilt featured in that issue. The magazine is long gone. No matter. The pretty oranges are looking good and I'm having fun...and part of that fun comes from the working title of this quilt ... Punch Drunk.