Block 47 - this is not!

In case you are here on my blog looking for block 47, alas, it is not done yet.

 This is as far as I have got. Yes, I have printed out the pdf. and I have made my templates. Oh and decided this is a fabric that needs a second chance in the project.

In case you think I have been goofing off let me disabuse you of that notion.

Friday of last week was the first day of our quilt group three day retreat. I spent the first day cutting and stitching borders for my Grandmothers Choice blocks. See, I was trying to make progress.

On day two of the retreat I played hooky and went to the one day conference the Quilt Alliance was having in conjunction with a quilt show. One of the reasons I went was to see up close and personal all the ninety quilts that were entered in the recent TWENTY challenge the QA had - and here I am posing with the quilt that was made by a group I was part of which, much to our amazement, actually won the grand prize. (See my earlier posting on July 5 for more details about this.)

I had not seen the quilt up to this point! My portion of the effort was to create a setup suitable for a twentieth anniversary and photograph it.

 Here you can see a little more detail. As a side thought I was intrigued to see that the QA has custom made black drapes to hang these little quilts on - these are not simple drapes but rather simple quilts with minimal, but effective, quilting on them.

 The quilts were displayed in the foyer area - here's a general shot. Later in the afternoon the sun was pouring through the windows and I surely hope that the windows indeed do have a uv protective film on them as I was told they did.

 The evening before I went to the retreat I was busy making something for the snack table. I decided to use a recipe from my mother's recipe book. She was fairly sparse with her recipes - most of them simply list the ingredients. For this recipe I had to make many substitutions; the recipe was called Spicy Sultana Squares. Lacking sultanas (not well known here) I substituted a mix of golden raisins and currants. The mixed spice from the NZ recipe got replaced with allspice (hey, I was in a hurry and it was getting late in the evening). And the result got cut into oblongs and not squares. I stared off putting mixture into a 9" x 9" pan but that was too big and hurriedly transferred it to an 8" square pan.

However, the end result was fine and if you have never had my mother's Spicy Sultana Squares before you would not know of all the liberties I took with the recipe.

Day three of the retreat was spent working on a "secret" project - of course had you been there you would have seen the secret under construction.

Since the retreat I have had some personal family business to take care of plus I am working on a tight deadline with another quilt project (see paragraph above) that has to be completed and handed in by August 5. And I am doing hand applique on it. Sigh. Why do I do this to myself?

Guess by the time I get to the hand applique for block 47 I will be a little more practiced! Watch this space.

Gee, I hope there is an easy block for block 48 which will be posted tomorrow morning!