Relay for Life Event

Here's my little booth with lots of baby quilts, some table runners, lots of key fobs and lanyards and a few wool pins.  By the end of the day I had earned a respectable $160, even though the turnout was not huge.

Other vendors arrayed around the track.

 Some of the organizers getting funky to "Proud Mary."

 Kenny (team captain and dj for this event) and his sister. Thanks, Kenny for inviting me to be a team member and vendor!

The bouncy house for the kids-- and for the adults at the end of the morning.  This event was the kick-off for Relay to Life season. People came to sign up for teams, take a few laps in the spirit of the event and raise some funds for the American Cancer Society.  I was able to make a nice donation at the end of the day.

Gale

10-10-10

Gale

Dolley Madison Quilt Guild Show

Here are some of the lovely quilts displayed at a quilt show I found quite by accident last weekend. I was at a farm picking pumpkins and mentioned to the owner that I have a quilt blog and she told me about the show and where to find it. So off I went.

In addition to seeing some lovely quilts, I picked up a box full of quilting magazines for $1 and a few fat quarters from the Dr. Suess collection.  It was a nice little quilt show.

Gale

Three Halloween Wallhangings

 I started these late Friday night, finished them on Saturday and took the photos on Sunday. This one was made with freezer paper templates from a pumpkin coloring sheet I found in the copy room at school. It is raw edge applique.  This one is for Glory-- who has been asking for a door decoration for some time now.

 This one is my favorite and is already hanging in front of my sewing space so I can look at it while on the computer or sewing.  I laid the three pieces from the pumpkin pattern above on some cool fabrics leaving just a little space between each piece. The resulting shape was a pumpkin that was wider and still nicely shaped. I just cut around the outside of all three pieces. These are stitched with machine blanket stitch using my Brother machine. I used Sulky blendable 12 weight variagated thread in the orange, yellow and green colorway. The quilting is done with green thread that sort of blends into the background of leaves.

This is a snowball block made with an orange swirl fabric and some Kona Coal.  The eyes, mouth and nose are made with scraps left from some other recent projects. I used stitch in the ditch for the outline of the pumpkin and then FMQ in swirls for only the orange part.

I am loving these fabrics from various Halloween collections. I found them at Fat Quarter Shop.

Gale

Liberty Mills Farm Outing

On Saturday I visited Liberty Mills Farm in Somerset, VA. This is their first year growing pumpkins, creating a corn maze and providing other activities to the public. You can visit their website here.

The corn maze is divided up into several parts. The time to complete them ranges from 20 minutes to 4 hours. Can you guess which portion I traveled through?  That's right, I am not much of a walker. 

The owner told me that they plant the corn on a grid system with the rows planted in 30 inch swaths. They plant the field north to south and then go back and plant it again east to west. That makes the rows come up like graph paper. Then when it was time to cut the maze out they used a grid drawing to determine where to cut the paths. The maze is hand cut, probably with a mower of some kind.

Here is a view of the pumpkin field from the kiddy section of the corn maze.

One of the farm's collection of John Deere tractors.  Nice!

They planted 10 varieties of pumpkins at the farm this year. It was interesting to see the different kinds available.  Of course, I only wanted cool, weirdly colored and textured pumpkins. I can get plain orange ones at the grocery store.  These were all priced by size, except for the really big ones, which they weigh before pricing.

 Right before I went to the maze I saw a tree dropping Osage Oranges on the fenceline. After inquiring of the farm owner about them, he had his son gather a couple of dozen of the wonderful green balls for me.  No extra charge!  I love to decorate in the fall with Osage Oranges, but usually have a hard time finding them.  Love them!

I also picked up some gourds which were grown on the farm. Later the same day I stopped at a flower/produce stand in the town of Orange and got some apples, an oddly shaped green pumpkin and some great photos.  The bounty of the season is displayed by my porch now.

Later I will tell about the quilt show I saw on Saturday, also in Orange. I didn't know about it ahead of time, but got directions from the nice folks at the farm.

Gale