Oriental, NC

Not a lot going on - we did watch the SpaceX liftoff yesterday.  Boat friends are in Titusville and got some great photos.  Even though they were 20 miles away, the video they shot captured the huge "roar" of the rocket until it was well out of sight.  (They have a great camera because this is a long-distance shot!)

Then mid-day our Manta friends Jim and Bentley on Salty Paws came down our creek and anchored!  Said hello to them on the VHF but we won't likely visit too closely.

Other than that, just enjoying the sunshine, finally!

Oriental, NC

I had some extra cloth left over from the quilt top and decided a nice finishing touch would be a couple of pillow shams. 


The logical letters were our initials, KM and DM.   Of course, the "M" is the most difficult to piece together.....

I did the same method as before, just sewed the triangles to uncut white pieces.

And trimmed off the white to make a perfect square.

Completed "M's"

The "K M" block, trimmed in grey.

And the "D M" block.  I know, they're very similar colors.

The completed "K M" pillow sham top.

And the complete "D M" top (upside down).  Unfortunately, I did run low on the blue border cloth due to a slight miscalculation.....one of the borders is 1" narrower than the others.  I hope it won't be be very noticeable.

Now I've got to ask my quilting expert (Sharon) how to proceed from here to construct the pillow sham backing!

Oriental, NC

Another dreary day....the local rain gauge says that we've had over 15 inches of rain in May vs a normal 4 1/2 inches.   We have 2 more days of this nonsense then a sunny week ahead.

Just a few minutes later....same view.  To say this is getting old is an understatement.

Ed and Cathy picked up our Walmart grocery orders - we've done this every 2 weeks now and it's working well.  I'm pretty well stocked back up on dry goods so most of my order was fresh veggies and such.

And it was time to defrost the freezer again....Duane cut a hole between the freezer and the refrigerator sides to allow more cold air to escape over into the fridge side.  This is how the later model Mantas are set up and we thought we'd give it a try.

If it doesn't work out like we think it will, we can always just plug it back up.

That's about it for the day - I had dinner duty on Sojourn - Grouper fingers, hushpuppies and coleslaw.   A few games of Hearts  (of which I was the big loser).  

Oriental, NC

Finished the last of the piecing for the top of the quilt.  Pretty simple, just bulky.

It was windy, so I had a lot of trouble getting the cloth to lay flat....

I need to order the batting material and the backing.....so the project will be on hold for a little while.

Otherwise, it's been another dreary day - on and off rain .....wow, I don't think I recall such a wet May!

Oriental, NC

I accomplished a good bit on the quilt....finished the "pattern". 

Now I'll move to the darker blue border.

These seagulls flew near the boat.  Caught a pretty photo.  (But don't want these birdies hanging around to make a mess!!)

Oriental, NC

Busy day! 

The one and only gladiolus bulb that we harvested from the side of the road last year has bloomed.  Beautiful but short lived!

 Went for a very nice long bike ride!

 Road all the way over to River Dunes - stopped at their Yawl Cafe for our first-since-March beverage away from home.  Ed donned the mask and went inside to order drinks - and very nicely brought them to us.  (They had waitstaff but we opted not to have them serve us.)  Their outside dining tables were separated by about 20' so definitely practicing good social distancing.

Had a nice relaxing chat at the halfway point.  Beautiful cool day.  Perfect for a bike ride.

We did walk down the dock to take a peek at the Manta Seamiles who we had met several times.  They currently are not sailing and live in Colorado.  The boat seems to be in fine shape.

Almost 20 miles!

 After a nice nap, it was What If's turn for dinner.  They decided it would be a perfect cool evening for a fire and a cookout.  They had very nicely gotten Beyond Burgers for me!  (They're the ones that look reddish on the grill). 

Cathy and I both had a veggie burger - very, very good!!

It was a bit too windy and chilly, even with the fire....so we retired back to What If for a couple of rounds of Hearts.  Good day!

Oriental, NC

No quilt progress today.....we did some boat chores.

Duane went to the top of the mast to change out the VHF antennae  still trying to chase down some static on the radio.

Did some cleaning and organizing.  Amazing a whole day goes by in the blink of an eye!

My turn to host dinner - and I'm out of bread.  So I pull out the 1 Hour Breadstick recipe.   I'm also out of ideas for dessert.  It dawns on me after I have the dough made that I can make cinnamon rolls.  Easy, peasy.   Just melt sugar and butter and make a jelly roll.  Cut out the buns and you're all set.  (More sugar and cinnamon on top while it rises).

The other half of the dough made the standard bread sticks to have with dinner.

The cinnamon buns turned upside down after baking.  They were delicious!!

That's about it for the day....almost chilly evening.

Oriental, NC

Another sunny day!  Our view to the north.

I worked much of the day on the quilt.  I've got a nice rhythm going on the grey border piecing.
Just threw what I've got so far on top of the berth to see how it would look.  Will really brighten things up! 

I did stop working on the quilt at about 2pm - my back was complaining....not in a hurry so took a nap!  Dinner was on What If - several rounds of hearts. 

Hope you're enjoying your Memorial Day weekend!

Oriental, NC

I was so happy to see the sun!!  Even a mostly cloudy sky was better than all-day-and-night rain!

I worked pretty much the entire day on the quilt.  First I trimmed each of the blocks to the 11" square measurement.  I ended up re-making 2 of them because they ended up too small somehow.   Then I cut out the 100 small grey pieces needed for the first border.  This is what was accomplished by days end.

It was my turn to cook dinner.  I'd seen a recipe in our little Carolina Country magazine that comes from our electric company.   The last page is always reader-submitted recipes and they're often very interesting.

Peas and carrot fritters -  I'd made sure I had the ingredients on the last Walmart order.  Turned out lovely and different! 

Here's the (greasy) recipe.    The tzatziki was wonderful,  Duane preferred to use ranch dressing instead.

Oriental, NC

It rained buckets, all day long....

I worked pretty much the entire day on the quilt squares.

Two of the flags are an "X" pattern - the M and the V flags.  For some reason, the pattern program from Sharon didn't give the dimensions of the interior pieces.

 So I decided to free -hand that a bit.  Instead of cutting the white pieces exactly per the pattern, I decided that simple strips would work, cutting them to fit after sewing.

Ready for final assembly.

And then cut off the extra.  Much more simple than cutting all the little angles before assembly.

The finished square.  I did this technique for the red/white "V" flag as well.

That's it for the day - all the way to "Z"!   Good fun.

A soggy run 5 steps to What If for dinner.  I brought guacamole and chips, Cathy served their last Mahi pieces and a wonderful cheesecake.  Yeah, I'm glad the batteries on our scales ran out back in February!!

Oriental, NC

Absolutely soggy day outside, so I got busy on the quilt.....


Got out all my new "tools" and started with the letter "A".

Very easy to cut these large pieces.

And then just started with the simple sewing.

All were straight seams until I got to the "I"....for this I did an applique technique.  I cut two cirlces and sewed them together.

Sewed them together - hard to see but I made cuts on one side, then turned this inside-out to make a finished-edged circle.

Then I got out my needle and black thread and carefully sewed the black circle in place with a blind stitch.  

 So here's one easy day's work.  Good fun on this rainy week!

Oriental, NC

I had a surprise in the mailbox!  Richard had sent me a birthday gift.  He is apparently making bread and he shared a little "care package" with us.    It's a wonderful "Spicy" loaf according to the label he enclosed.   Ingredients were jalapenos, garlic, olives and paprika.  Also included were bottles of Italian olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

We had some as a snack at lunchtime then again at dinner over on What If.  Everyone agreed that the bread was fantastic and unique.

Still extremely dreary here.....by Saturday we're supposed to clear out and have a very pleasant week. 

Finally got a package in the mail that allows me to start my next project!

I'd ordered this cloth 3 weeks ago - and it's just now arrived.

I'll back up and tell you the plan - I'm planning on making a quilt for our berth.  Right now, we just use a light fleece blanket.  When it's really cold, we have a heavy queen size quilt that I believe was on the Fountaine Pajot when we bought it.  But, it's solid color and not very interesting, actually sortof ugly.


I got the idea from a Facebook post on the private "Sewing On Boats" group.  Someone was discussing a website that posted about making table napkins using the patterns of the nautical alphabet. 

Here's a photo from the website -   (Purl Soho if you're interested)

She made individual 1' square napkins of each of the 26 letters.  Wow, that's a lot of napkins!!

Anyway, I wanted to use the idea to make a quilt that would be better fitted to our berth. 

I reached out to my sweet sissy-in-law-expert-quilter Sharon for some advice.   She has a great program on her computer that helps design quilts.  She spent a good bit of time one afternoon inputing the parameters for the quilt and sent me a fabulous document telling me exactly what size to cut each piece.  She even told me exactly how much of each color cloth to buy. 

Here's the pattern from her program.

And here is one of the squares detailed instructions for cutting.  (The "A")

I'm pleased with the feel of the cloth I got from eQuilter.com.  Amazingly it's 100% cotton fabric that's made in the USA!  Imagine that.

So I'll get busy for these next few rainy days and see how I progress!