Happy Birthday, America!

It's an old-fashioned family Fourth of July here at our North Carolina mountain home.

We spend lots of time at the creek.

We had a homemade fireworks show last night.

We also went to the Christmas in July festival in West Jefferson on Saturday.  This area grows a large supply of America's Christmas trees.

And the drone flew over and captured some of the family, friends, and dogs who were here yesterday.

God bless America!

Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue

We are going to be celebrating our nation's birthday in the mountains this weekend.  Here is a little bit of Americana to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The entrances to the Heritage neighborhood are all done up in red, white, and blue flowers.

One block up from us is Marshall Farm Road.  Where it is extended past Rogers Road, they have added a traffic circle, and have decorated with a huge fountain and two smaller ones.

All around the circular garden are American flags.

This large home in Heritage has a proper flagpole with the flag on display.

Star of the Garden, pieced and quilted by Jeanne T. McBrayer for Carolina Longarm Challenge

I hope you all have a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend!

Here's to the Red, White, and Blue

Honeysuckle growing through a blackberry bush Mountain wild flower misnamed "fire pink."
Monarda, also known as Bee Balm

Blue berries on cedar tree

Our national Independence Day is on Friday, and we are excited to head back to the mountains for the annual Float Down the New River. This event began years ago when the kids were younger. We would go swim in the river to cool off, and then someone started driving the boys up the dirt road to the cornfield and dropping them off for a leisurely fifteen-minute float. That looked like so much fun, that more and more people started floating farther every year. Now we are up to more than forty people floating several miles. If you think it is easy to get that many people up, dressed, fed, sun -screened, and waiting at the river with a big inflated tube, you have never seen a drill like this!

We have a large group at our end of the family compound: son Dave, his wife Emily, and four of their friends, as well as BIL Grady and three of his new family. Charlie and I are heading up tonight after he gets home. Can't wait! We hope the afternoon thunderstorms will hold off on float day.

I actually have been doing some "quilty" things:

1. 
   
   Finished machine-sewing the binding on the butterfly quilt. Now I have a nice hand-sewing project to hem the binding to the back.


2. 
   
   Almost finished machine-quilting the piano and guitar customer quilt. That was not too much fun. Writing all those words meant many stops and starts and lots of thread burying.


3. 
   
   Have been picking out fabrics and working on my drawing for the Grand Canyon art quilt.

Signing off now until sometime Sunday, as we do not have Internet access at our mountain cabin. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week! Happy Birthday, America!

Coloring Old Glory

We are getting ready to leave for our Fourth of July LONG weekend today. I am trying to get everything I need ready- for staying six days and having a huge group in for a pig-picking. Yesterday I found this little quilt flag that I bought years ago at the Capital Quilters Guild show. It is hand quilted by someone whose initials are HBC. Anyway, I thought I would have the red, white, and blue proudly displayed on the cabin. But when I retrieved this quilt from the closet, it had faded badly from being displayed in the hot sun on my front porch. Got out my Tsukineko inks- and PRESTO, CHANGO- it is now bright and pretty again instead of red, white, and gray!

I hope you all have a safe and happy Fourth of July! I won't be blogging again until next week!