Lately I'm a paper piecing maniac. I got this elephant pattern from A Quilter's Ark by Margaret Rolfe. One of the gals in the Long Distance Quilting Bee wanted 'anything baby'. The pattern calls for embroidered details, like an eye and stuff. But I kind of liked it without all the details. I think a checked body and a plaid ear is detail enough. What do you think?
That title is a tongue twister. Just see if you can say it five times fast. This is one of the first blocks that I managed to make without changing my mind about the fabrics a gazillion times. I wasn't sure I was going to like it - too girly for me. But, I really love it.
The April challenge for the Long Distance Quilting Bee was to make something with blues and greens with a light background using our current favorite method. I continue to be intrigued with paper-piecing so that's what I did. Once again, I used a pattern from my favorite quilting book. One of these days I'm going to design my own pattern again, like this one.
We, the handicrafty sisters, met up at the Biltmore last week. Jill, a friend from California, was also there with us. The best memory is when we (Patty and I) decided not to eat lunch at Cedric's Tavern. We made this decision after the waiter had already seated us and had brought us our menus and water. We made this decision without the approval of Jill; and I might add, to the mortification of Jill.
Patty and I came to the conclusion that we were not going to pay $16 for shepherd's pie made out of lamb, or anything else on the pricey lunch menu. When the waiter came back to take our order, we told him we needed more time (time to escape). He left us to continue poring over our menus. We decided to make a break for it.
Before our exodus though, Patty's conscience pricked her and she decided to leave a $3 tip - one dollar for each water. While she searched for the $3, Jill quickly vanished. We found her seated outside, pretending not to know us. She eventually forgave us and even ended up laughing with us about it later that evening.
By the way, I just googled Cedric's Tavern and found out that Cedric was George Vanderbilt's beloved St. Bernard. For some reason, that tiny bit of trivia makes the story even funnier to me.
And, I just grabbed this image off of their website. I do believe that the table on the left is the one we were sitting at!
Postscript: Jill just confirmed that the table on the left is indeed the very table where the notorious incident occurred.
