A few days away

DH and I are heading out tomorrow morning for a short trip to the Oregon coast. Tomorrow is our 39th anniversary. We will head first to Tillamook where I will visit Jane's Fabric Patch, and then we'll head to the Tillamook cheese factory. A few years ago we took the full tour to see how the cheeses are made - absolutely fascinating! This time we're going for lunch and ice cream - Tillamook ice cream is some of the best! Then we'll head south. DH has agreed to stop at quilt shops along the way - what a guy! We have reservations for two nights in Newport - right on the beach with an ocean view. I'm so looking forward to the trip. It's been years and years since we've had a chance to do something like this - Shadow just wasn't healthy enough for us to take off and leave him.

I spent most of the last few days baby sitting - taking care of Joseph is so much fun! Rick's mom is currently battling a bad asthma attack so I did her Wednesday in addition to my Tuesday and Thursday. Our nice weather is back - finally! - so we walked to the park yesterday. They have a baby swing, and I was eager to see how he liked it. He just loved it, and laughed and laughed the entire time he was swinging. Next time I must take my camera!

Fred set up the camper in the driveway this week so we could get it cleaned out, the water tank drained of antifreeze, and the beds remade. Today I finally had a chance to wash the sheets and remake the beds with our new camping quilts. Don't they look great? I can hardly wait to sleep under them. It was so satisfying to put the filthy worn out 37 year old down sleeping bags into the garbage. We've been using them as blankets by opening them up and stretching them over the sheets, but the down was so lumped and clumped that they were mostly unsatisfactory. We'll put a couple more blankets in one of the storage benches for cold nights, but I imagine with the wool batting these quilts will be all we need for most nights.

Peg at Happy in Quilting has issued a UFO challenge. Anyone accepting the challenge is to change at least five unquilted tops - flimsies - into finished quilts by the end of July. I've thought about this challenge ever since she issued it - should I accept it or not? I've finally decided hey - what the heck - why not accept it. I certainly have enoughed finished flimsies! So, starting with the Irish chain I loaded onto Gandalf last Monday, I'm pushing myself to satisfy Peg's challenge. Hopefully this public acceptance will spur me on to success!

Once again I'm caught up on my blog reading. I just stopped commenting and started skimming so it wouldn't take another week or more. seems like I've said this before - I sure hope I can stay caught up this time! Now that I'm current I'll start commenting again. I really miss doing that! Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll "see" you when I return early next week.

Today's finish

Last night I finished stitching the binding and the label on "Leftovers". I didn't like the green border when I first put it on last summer but it's really grown on me now. These two quilts will be so much snugglier than our ancient sleeping bags when we go camping this summer!

This morning I drove over to the Gateway Max (rapid transit) station in Portland to pick up Pam. I love meeting bloggers in person! Pam is down from Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband who is here for work. We had a very enjoyable day. Since Pam lives in Canada and doesn't always have the best access to quilt shops I figured she'd enjoy visiting a few around here.

Pam made me a lovely little bag that she filled with Canadian chocolate, yummy body lotion and a glasses case that she'd made. What a sweet thing for her to do! Needless to say the chocolate is half gone already. My close-up glasses are snuggled in their new pouch - so much more chic than an old black case from the optical shop!

First we went to Speckled Hen in Wilsonville, which was a featured quilt shop in the last Quilt Sampler magazine. I knew I could get in real trouble at that shop if I let myself. I came home with six fat quarters which were bought with a specific purpose in mind. I've been looking for lighter double pink repro fabrics that are period correct for my mid-century album quilt - I sure hope that's what I found. I'll know for sure when I take them to the next class to be OK'd by our instructor. I also got three stitchery patterns that I couldn't resist.

After a Starbucks stop we headed up I-5 to A Common Thread in Lake Oswego where Pam found a beautiful large print for a bag. Next we headed over into my neck of the woods to go to a funky shop in Battle Ground called Country Manor. Susan's shop is in an outbuilding behind her house. It's the best place I know of for finding a fabric that's been out for awhile. Once again it lived up to it's reputation - Pam found an old Moda print from the Wuthering Heights line that she's been looking for. I kept my hands clasped tightly together at the last two shops and managed to buy nothing - hooray!

We had a lovely lunch at Applebee's and then headed back to Portland where I dropped Pam off at a MAX station so she could head back to downtown Portland to meet her husband. It was so much fun to spend this time together! And thank goodness for retirement - I couldn't have done this otherwise!

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Gratitudes:

1. Sunshine on a cold winter day

2. A new friend

3. My Santa mug filled with hot tea and milk (who cares that Christmas is past!)

4. A sweet, fresh pear

5. Comfy, familiar blue jeans

Are you getting tired of hearing about UFO's?

I know I'm getting just a wee bit tired working on them LOL! But I accepted a challenge from May Britt and I don't want to back away from it. I really don't have a competitive bone in my body but decided I had to participate because of the number of my UFO's. You've seen both these pictures before but that's OK - it's been awhile - and I need to follow the instructions of our fearless leader.

The first is Crumb Chaos #2, recently renamed "Leftovers". This is the second quilt for our camper. Just as "Spare Parts" it was made from orphan blocks, triangle squares, flying geese, checkerboards, etc. It was funny how these two quilts used up every orphan I had without me needing to make anything else. I'd saved the orphans for years and years, never realizing there were two such fun quilts lurking in their midst. I loaded this one on Gandalf and quilted it yesterday. Today I made binding and machine stitched it on. It's all ready for it's label and it's hand stitching.The second is Joseph's quilt. Rick and Rebecca requested a quilt with animals on it. I finished the top sometime last summer. As Joseph's arrival was delayed again and again so was the need to finish this quilt. Now that we are expecting him by the end of February it's time to get it finished. I'm loading it onto Gandalf today and hope to have it quilted by the end of the week.

No more organizing for me today. I took a break and treated myself to a manicure and pedicure. Nothing else makes me feel so special, pampered and relaxed - unless it's a massage. I think I'll treat myself to that next week LOL!

Spare Parts is Complete

I'm happy to report another UFO finish for 2008. Tonight I finished stitching down the back side of the binding while watching a couple Buck Rogers episodes with my husband. He received the DVD series for Christmas from the kids. We are enjoying watching them - though some things now seem rather silly.

This morning I focused on refilling the freezer - there was no meat to be had! I spent an hour at Costco stocking up. After spending an hour or more repackaging everything into smaller quantities for the freezer I proceeded to reorganize my pantry and about half the kitchen cabinets. It's been so long since I did any serious cooking that I'd forgotten what I had and where everything was kept. Some very old foods got tossed. I had a large shelf full of empty tall plastic containers that once held things like macaroni, noodles and raisins but had long been empty. I washed all of those thoroughly and put them to better use keeping various foodstuffs fresh. I've made a partial list for one more shopping trip. Tomorrow I'll plan next week's menus and make one more trip to the grocery.

Tomorrow I'll also oil the longarm and give it a general cleaning and load "Leftovers" for quilting. Hopefully I can get that quilted by the end of the weekend!

Orphan Train Quilts

I'm happy to report that I finished quilting the first Orphan Train quilt - my husband's camping quilt. I've decided to rename it "Spare Parts" because very little of it was made from actual orphan blocks. There were many more parts of blocks than full blocks - flying geese, half and quarter square triangles, strata leftovers, etc. I really like how it looks. Tomorrow I hope to make the binding and machine stitch it onto the quilt. I'll save the hand stitching for Tangled Threads meeting on Tuesday.

I need to wipe down, clean and oil Gandalf and give him a new needle before I can load the second Orphan Train quilt - my camping quilt. I've renamed that one "Leftovers" for the same reasons I renamed the other one "Spare Parts". I'd love to get "Leftovers" quilted tomorrow if possible. I'll see if my back, legs and shoulder can take that much quilting for the second day in a row.

Speaking of Orphan Trains, "They Named Me Marjorie" arrived at my house yesterday from Holly. I'm eager to read it. There was nothing in the package to indicate who to send it to after I am finished. If someone knows who should get it next please leave me a comment - thanks!

Stash and WISP Report

Our weekly stash report is due to Judy L. on Sundays. I've been remiss up until now because I've not reported at all. Wouldn't you know it - for my first report I must confess to some purchases. I figure they were allowed, however, as they were all for borders. I still have lots and lots of strings to stitch into blocks, as well as 1016 Crumb Chaos blocks to sew into quilt tops. By the time I finished all of last year's charity and orphan quilts my border stash was more or less depleted. So I chose 2 1/2 yards each of six different border fabrics. These patterned solids such as Moda Marbles, Maywood's Shadow Play, and Michael Miller's Krystal make perfect borders for these quilts. Whenever possible I cut my borders on lengthwise grain - they just behave much better that way. I can get the borders for two quilts out of each of these pieces, so I feel they were a worthwhile purchase - especially since they were on sale at 30% off.

As far as stash busting goes I didn't do much last week. I used 1/2 yard to make the bindings on the two Christmas table runners. I'm OK with that however, as my current focus is both May Britt's WISP challenge and the Stashbuster UFO challenge. Until I start making backs for tops to be quilted I'll be using stash for nothing but bindings. And that is OK.

Speaking of May Britt's WISP challenge - I've loaded my third WISP for 2008 onto Gandalf and started the quilting. This is my first orphan train top from last summer, which will be a camping quilt for one of the beds in our tent trailer. I'm quilting it with a pantograph of leaves - I figured that was appropriate for camping. I'm also using Hobbs heirloom wool, which should be perfect no matter what our camping weather. I hope to finish the quilting on this one either tonight or tomorrow morning. It will be so nice to toss the sleeping bags we are currently using. They were expensive down bags when we bought them 36 years ago. Now they are uneven, lumpy old bags with down that has migrated into wads in some areas and left other areas devoid of any warm filling. They should have been tossed years ago, but we needed to replace them with something first.

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Gratitudes:

1. No rain this morning to mar Fred's golf game

2. A new 120" tape measure

3. Leftover pizza for dinner

4. A warm bagel with light strawberry cream cheese

5. Shadow slept in this morning!

Morning accomplishments

I love staying home on a holiday and getting paid for it! Especially when it turns out to be so productive. I went to bed late last night - after 11:00 because I was reading blogs - but still woke up early this morning. This time it wasn't the dog - it was all the birds singing so early. It's been HOT for us, so all the windows were open last night. It was a veritable symphony of bird song that woke me. I thought I could go back to sleep, but my brain started working right away on my goals for the day so gave up and got up before 6:00 a.m.

First I finished the projects I started last evening - shifting stuff around in my sewing rooms in anticipation of getting my new furniture on July 25 when Ikea opens. I wanted to clear enough space so I could add another wide bookshelf.

Here's what I did:

1. 1. Moved all the kitted "Hussies" (Haven't Started Yets") out of the closet drawers and into four large tubs that I moved upstairs and under the longarm.
3. 2. Filled the closet drawers with all my cut strips, squares, bricks, etc. - basically all of my scraps.

3.Pulled out the dresser that used to hold cut strips and more hussies, and replaced it with the two rolling drawer stacks that were to the right of the filing cabinet, which opened up wall space for an additional wide bookshelf.

4. Sorted, combined, and cleaned the cubes under the cutting table. I'll have storage under the new cutting table but not nearly as much, so I had to reduce what was there to only what will fit in the drawers of the new table.

I'm not sure what the difference is but the room already feels larger. It's a good feeling! Just over three weeks now until Ikea opens. The doors open at 9:00, but they are having live entertainment in the parking lot starting at 6:00 am! I want to be there early so I have the best chance of finding all the shelves and cutting table in stock. Then I'm taking an entire week's vacation to redo the room. I can hardly wait!

When I finished with all that I sewed the final border on the first orphan top. I really like the blue border on this one. Now they are both up in the longarm room waiting for their turn with Gandalf (my longarm). Now I'm back to sewing mile-a-minute blocks. My next goal is to empty the crumb box and three boxes of strips. I should do well today. We aren't going anywhere because there is too much danger of fire as our neighborhood is nutty for great big expensive noisy fireworks.

Orphan top two finished

I put the borders on this one tonight. I chose this fabric because the color reminds me of the tall Douglas firs and other evergreen trees we camp under. Now that it's on I'm not all that thrilled with it. I think the top needed something brighter. That's OK - I learned something from this - and it's just fine for a camper quilt. I'll put this one on Fred's bed - he won't care what color the border is LOL!

I'll cut the borders for the second one now, but I won't get them sew on until tomorrow or Wednesday.

Another near finish

Since I posted the picture of the rest of the orphans this morning I've been sewing steadily. This top went together much more quickly than the first one because all the orphans were already sewn into bigger strips, squares and rectangles. There weren't quite enough blocks for the entire top, so I filled in spots with squares, little rectangles and strips that I pulled from my scrap bins. Not a single orphan block is left, and only a few of the fillers are left. The fillers will be tossed into the crumb box for mile-a-minute blocks, and the orphan block drawer remains empty. What a great feeling!

After dinner I may get the borders cut or I just may call it a night and focus on blog reading. My back is a bit sore from two days of sewing so giving it a rest would probably be a good thing.

Our daughter and son-in-law got another short DVD from Guatemala of their son. He's definitely growing, and still as cute as can be. They are still waiting on the preliminary OK of the DNA test from the US embassy. That's a 45 day minimum process so it may be another 2-3 weeks before all the paperwork moves on to the Protectorate General's office of the Guatemalan government.

In the meantime our daughter-in-law continues to send Sophie pictures at least once a week. She is growing like a weed and can't be left alone for a minute because she is rolling all over the floor. Her favorite position is to be held up on her legs and feet - I think she may turn out to be an early walker that leads both of them for a merry chase.

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Gratitudes:

1. Another Mariners sweep!

2. Another empty plastic bin

3. Another cool day

4. An air conditioner for the longarm room

5. Strawberry waffles for dinner

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Here are the rest of my orphan "parts and pieces". I just placed them on the floor wherever they fit for now. Definitely looks like enough for a quilt without making any more. If it turns out to be too small after seam allowances are taken up I'll just toss some of my squares and triangle squares around the edges - with maybe a narrow stopper border inside that. Time will tell. For now I'm going to sew on strips to make the parts of equal sizes so they can be joined. Stay tuned - I hope to have a finished top - albeit minus borders - by the end of the day today.

Orphan top almost finished

I couldn't believe it when I discovered that I had enough orphan blocks and parts that I could make two quilt tops! I could have made one queen size top, but I wanted this for our tent trailer. Our sleeping bags are now 37 years old, the down is almost nonexistent in places, and most of the time we camp it's too warm for down sleeping bags anyway. Now we'll finally be able to toss them because we'll have two orphan block quilts instead - one for each bed. I'll put wool batting in them so they'll be warm when needed and cooler when needed - I just love wool batting!

Here is the first top - all finished except for the borders. I'm going to work on getting the second top together before I put borders on either one because there are still orphan blocks all over the sewing room. I love the way this looks - in spite of the fact that so many of the colors are so much brighter than fabrics I work with these days. It feels so good to be making something out of all these bits and pieces - and it feels especially good to get them out of the boxes and drawers in my sewing room!

Hopefully by this time tomorrow I'll have a second top to share - that's my plan anyway!

OK - I lied - just one more

I can't resist posting one more picture. I played around with what I had on the wall, trying to get a better balance of color and value. I like this better than what I had, but it still isn't right. I need more parts to play with. They are coming - but not as quickly as I'd like. Rats - too bad I can't stay home from work tomorrow! I sure could have fun!

I finished my Harry Potter movie-thon. Now I need to focus on listening to the rest of the books.

A fabric jigsaw puzzle - almost

The difference is I can chop off a piece if it's a little too long, or sew another hunk of fabric onto a piece if it's a little two short. As I've said before, there are very few actual orphan blocks in this work-in-progress. You can see a 25-patch in teal and purple and cream - that's a leftover block from the Double Irish Chain I made for my daughter to take to college. She had roommate problems her first year, and spent many a night wrapped in this quilt on the floor of friends' rooms. You can see part of the finished quilt in this picture of their kitty. There are a couple rail fence blocks left over from a baby quilt I made for one of my assistants at work. There is a nine patch or two and a pinwheel. There are lots and lots of leftover chunks of strata from various projects. And lots and lots of half square and quarter square triangle squares. There are even a few that I turned into Broken Dishes blocks - as Finn said this wouldn't be complete without a few of those. Some of the blocks you see on the design wall are already stitched together, others are not. I don't want to stitch too many together as I want to have freedom of placement for color and value balance. Many of the "spare parts" were enlarged by using the "mile-a-minute" method - very effective for a project like this. So far this is both the same and different from sewing string or crumb blocks - easier and harder at the same time. As the others it's been very addicting - in spite of my best plans I've done nothing but this all day. I didn't even go upstairs to watch the baseball game - instead I listened on the radio while I sewed.

On the ironing board you can see lots of trimmed "parts" as well as some still needing trimming and some needing pressing. I most likely won't get to all those before I have to head to bed, so I decided to post anyway before I finished. I still have no feeling as to how big this quilt will become. I'm pulling random strips of various widths out of drawers, have robbed my bin of 2" squares, and even robbed a bit from my tubs of half square triangle squares. I'd love for this to become big enough to serve as a quilt for our camper, or possibly a Hotel Hope quilt. I've had the same pleasure making this quilt as I did my Broken Dishes - revisiting fabrics from so many past projects. Once again I'm amazed at how fabrics have changed through the years and how my tasted have changed too. There are so many fabrics here that I'd never use and would never buy now - yet they all look great together in this quilt. There are even pieces from Amy the Calico Cat - scraps I happily took off her hands from the quilt she made of homespuns. Amazingly enough they look great mixed in with all the rest.

I probably won't show more of this top until it is done - after all, the pictures don't really look all that different from the ones I posted this morning. I wanted a record of progress made - progress I'm very happy with - at least so far.

Out of chaos . . . a little less chaos!

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted! I've spent the last few days on the computer in a valiant effort to catch up with my blog reading. Hasn't happened, but at least I'm not as far behind as I was.

The little sewing I've gotten done involved stitching my chaos of block parts into larger pieces - working toward my goal of having everything fit together into large 12" blocks. I matched things according to their sizes, not paying any attention to whether or not fabrics "went" with each other. I subscribe to Sharon Craig's believe that everything goes with everything, so the only rule I used is that the two pieces couldn't be exactly the same color. What fun I had playing with all these pieces! I'm still not ready to start designing with them - they are still too varied in size - but I'm getting closer. I threw lots of them up on the design wall again for a new picture - I really love what I'm seeing! I'm going to allow myself only a couple hours today to play with these, as I have other things I need to finish first.

My friend Kim loved the way I quilted the African quilt I'm happy to say. She disagreed with my believe that I'm not ready to do elaborate feather wreaths on her quilt, but accepted my decision. She gave it back to me so I could baste it for her - she's decided she will hand quilt it instead. I have it on the machine and it shouldn't take me more than an hour or so to put in the basting stitches. I can do that during the ball game today.

I also have a quilt repair job that I need to do. I totally forgot about this one when I happily stated that I had nothing left here that wasn't my own. I've had this one for a year or two - it's time I finished it and returned it to the owner. I belongs to our son-in-law's sister, and was made by her grandmother. It's warn very thin over some of the back, and some of the patches on the front have worn partially away. I need to applique new pieces over the front patches and then do what I can for the back. It may need to have an entirely new back - I've not yet decided. The backing is turned to the front for the binding so putting a new backing over the old one won't be that much trouble. I don't have any fluffy pink yarn to tie a new backing, which is how it finished now, so I'll have to figure out something else for the ties. I've committed to finishing it by the end of the month, so I need to get started today.

Thursday we celebrated our 38th anniversary in a very quiet way - dinner at Applebees and then an evening at home watching Felix pitch a great game in a Mariners defeat of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Felix, our staff ace, hasn't been himself since he came off the disabled list so it was great to see him pitch well again.

Yesterday we had all the kids here to celebrate our daughter's 33rd birthday - which is today. I woke up with the realization that I'd forgotten to order the ice cream cake - horrors! Luckily I've been getting our "cakes" from the same Baskin Robbins for years, and the owner is a fellow quilter and guild member, so she did a rush order for me and I was able to pick it up when we returned home after dinner. It was a very nice visit - even though Sophie has now reached the age where she doesn't want to be held by anyone other than Mama or Daddy. By the end of the day she warmed up a little so I was able to get a quick snuggle with a happy girl instead of a protesting one. I'll be happy when this stage ends!

OK - that's enough rambling from me. As I have lots of plans for the day I guess I'd better get in the shower so I can start being productive!

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Gratitudes:

1. Jelly rolls, jolly packs, and charm packs

2. Ten pounds lost!

3. Warm rain for the garden

4. Summer vacation for DH

5. Hot tea with milk

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Chaos

Inspired by Finn, Bonnie and Tonya, I took my box of "orphans" off the shelf and started throwing them up on the design wall. I love the "orphan train" quilts they've been posting. The idea of making something from almost nothing - note my similar obsession with strings and crumbs - is so appealing. I decided it was time these saw the light of day and became part of a quilt too.

Oh my - talk about chaos! I've not tried to arrange anything much in this picture - I just randomly threw stuff up on the wall, moving it or turning it if too many similar shapes or lines were together. I can tell immediately that I'm not yet ready for this. Or maybe I should say my orphans aren't ready for this. You see, most of my orphans are not full blocks. Instead they are stray half and quarter square triangle squares of oddball sizes, strip sets, little four patches, and other odds and ends from my years of quilt making. The sizes are just too varied and in many cases too odd for me to work with comfortably "as is". Maybe some people can work in this size chaos - I know I can't.

So the first order of business is to make these into sizes that will fit together without too much problem - maybe finished sizes of 3"x 3", 6"x 3", 9"x 3", 6"x 6", 6" x 12", 12" x 12" and so on. I have drawers full of strips I can sew onto these and chop off as needed in order to make turn the parts into sizes that will fit together.

Once I do that I will be ready to go back to the design wall and begin again. I'm really looking forward to that. In the meantime I'll take these down and start "chunking" them into manageable sizes.

don't get me wrong - I love the chaos of colors, prints, shapes, and values! These are what will keep my creative juices flowing as I turn this into a one-of-a-kind quilt.