Wednesday Wanderings

I usually go into work late on Wednesdays cause that's my day to work till closing. So I was watching Regis and Kelly...their main guest today was Shirley MacLaine. I've always admired her...she has always been a gutsy, talented woman. I don't necessarily agree with her version of the afterlife but she inspires me to do better and try more in this life. I have a friend who lives in New England who I've always felt close to. She is a bit older than me, very talented as an actress, singer, artist, quilter, and, dare I say, even as a woman. Watching Regis and Kelly today, and especially Shirley MacLaine, it suddenly dawned on me that Carole K. is my Shirley MacLaine! She's talented, artistic, loving, accepting, nurturing, bawdy, and womanly. She radiates life to everyone and everything around her. I love her laugh - it's deep and raucous and rumbles up from deep within her like a sound wave and encompasses everyone in its wake. One can't feel bad or unloved around Carole. Carole inspires me, especially in my quilting. I want to be Carole when I grow up! Miss you, Sarge!

I spent part of Sunday finishing some quilts that came back from the quilter a couple of weeks ago. Here is the first one: John's Retirement Quilt. John retired in January 2003 after 30 years in the Navy. At his ceremony, in New England in November 2002, we had a table set up with signature squares for folks to sign and wish him a good retirement or relay some anecdote from his career. I'd also sent many sqaures out to former shipmates and commanding officers and they'd gratiously sent them back with sentiments. Those squares languished in the UFO pile till recently. Now I can reveal them:


This is the entire quilt. The squares in the 3 corners are ones from me, our son and John, himself (I had him try out the instructions I wrote to go with the out of town squares...included it in his quilt as a laugh!). The bottom left corner has a patch that is the Navy emblem and says U.S. Navy - Retired. The border fabric is a Navy fabric I found...it measures about 56" across and 49" down. Will be hung in the great room so all can see it! And the next two pictures show how folks wrote their sentiments to John. I loved doing this quilt.


While I was living in Rhode Island, my bible study group from California wanted to come back for the Foliage season. Six of them flew out, I rented a van and took them all around New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island for a week. We each made a block (well, 7 of them - one for each of us) and exchanged them and we each were to make our own quilt to commemorate that tour. I called it the 2001 Cracked Pots Leaf Peepers Tour. I finally go around to putting mine together and that is one of the ones I finished this past weekend. Here it is!


This is the entire quilt, measuring 39" by 39". My block is the center one, depicting the logo for our tour. Since there were only 7 of us, that made it hard to set the blocks so I put some of them on point, and added 2 pictures taken during the tour. One is of the 7 of us, wearing our tour shirts backwards so you can see the logo. The other is taken at All-You-Can-Eat Lobster night at the Officer's Club. Those girls sure do love John...he's their hero!


Some of the girls forgot to sign their blocks and I have no idea who did them...Janet, Janet and Fran...let me know which block is yours so I can note it on the quilt. Dee, Dawn, and Kay, you all signed yours - good girls!!!

Next time, I'll tell you the story of the Cracked Pots....remind me if I forget! Till next time, thanks for stopping by.