Knot What It Seams by Elizabeth Craig (Sutherlin, OR)

Knot What It Seams by Elizabeth Craig
This was a quick and fun read.  This is the second in a new series by Elizabeth Craig about a small southern town filled with some unusual folks - a sheriff that would rather be reading Thoreau than catching a murderer, an elderly driver thinks sidewalks are part of the road when she drives (pedestrians beware!), a mail carrier that likes to use people's mail to blackmail them....and then there's the quilting guild called The Village Quilters that is made up of even more quirky members.

The main and the more sane character is Beatrice, a recently retired folk art museum curator from the city.  She is also a new member of the guild, but a novice quilter.  She finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving dead quilters, quilters' with extreme competitive attitudes, judges with even larger egos and opinions of what they consider a show quilt.  In the meantime, Beatrice's next door neighbor and leader of The Village Quilters is busy trying to lure some of the best quilters from the other guild.  There was more talk of competing than quilting in this story, but I still enjoyed it....quirky characters included!  It would be a dull world without them.

On The Cutting Board

Speaking of quilting...here's what I have been up to for the last few days.  I'm almost done with the two owls.  I just need to quilt them and they will be ready to list in Etsy.  

Owl Mug Rugs

I finished appliqueing the lion to the Jungle Stars quilt and I have started working on the elephant.

I used permanent fabric markers along with crayons and some embroidery to accent the elephant and lion's face.  

And, I started working on the second quilt with the same design using paper foundation.  It certainly goes together a lot faster than most of my quilts.  I have three rows done within a short six-hour time.  That includes setting up and breaking down my sewing areas.

I had more of the focus fabric for this quilt so it will have six blocks across and six blocks down.  I don't have to worry about adding borders like I did to the Jungle Stars.