this and that updates

Norris and I have been busy doing some pretty mundane chores this week, so here is a picture from a few weeks ago when my beautiful sister Joyce came to visit as our first house guest. We were taking lots of pictures of the fabric layout for the quilt we started, to replace the one on her bed from about ten years ago - but finally, getting into the car on our way to the airport, I said, "hey let me take a picture of you in my new house!"

I think she has suitcases in her hands.

As Joyce was leaving, my good friend and quilting partner Dorry stopped in for a night to see our new place. She was making a trip to Atlanta where her son is starting his third year of engineering school at Georgia Tech. She has been following our blog, and had suggested we needed a name for our retirement home. She and I both, on the same day, came up with Chestnut Ridge.

I don't know when she found the time, but she had made this spectacular pieced quilt top for Norris and me, incorporating a bear and trees surround by the Bears Paw blocks for the center, bordered by Flying Geese colored like all the granite of our mountain side.

The white space around the motifs is specially designed to give room for quilting that shows. Dorry has incorporated fabrics from some of our other quilting collaborations in various parts of the quilt.

And for another original and personal touch, she interpreted one of the chestnut pictures we had posted on the blog a few months ago as an applique for the upper corner. She certainly captured the essence of the chestnut leaf, but particularly those teeth for which it gets its Latin name Castanea dentata!