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I need to clarify something from my last post. The pictures are NOT my customer quilt. The customer quilt I did is an oriental fabric bento box quilt in greens, red-oranges, golds and blacks. I've not even taken a picture of it yet - I need to do that. The quilt in the pictures is one of mine from a long time ago.Cheryl, I have a Proto with the Stitch Wizard, hence the name "Gandalf". Here is the post where I talk about "him". I really love this machine, and recommend it highly. For one thing, it's priced several thousand dollars less than either the APQS or Gammill machines. My rep is fantastic, which is really, really important.I keep forgetting to report on the Northwest Medical Teams auction. In the end I decided not to go - I was on a roll so I stayed home and sewed. I've not heard final numbers, but the live auction netted about $30,000. The silent auction and other donations usually at least double the figure. The last quilt went for the most - $2200. It was an all-wool quilt made by a group of firemen. They made a video showing how the quilt came to be, which was shown before the bidding for the quilt began. Our quilt, the first one in this post, brought $1000. That's the amount we decided we'd be happy if we got, so we were satisfied, even though we'd hoped for more.Back to work tomorrow - I need to head to bed!
I still found excuses to delay starting the customer quilt until this afternoon. I discovered that once again Bloglines wasn't informing me of updates, so I made my way around the three rings - Scrap Quilts, Quilt Mavericks, and Quilting 4 Pleasure. Found lots of new posts. I guess I'm going to have to resubscribe to all the blogs that aren't updating. Maybe tomorrow. It was nice to catch up with everyone.I went upstairs and loaded the quilt about 1:00 or so. I'm happy to report that it is 
done and looks good. Had a couple minor setbacks in the process - after two years I still have much to learn - but nothing I wasn't able to remedy. I finished about 6:30 so we had a bit of a late dinner but that's OK - Fred wasn't hungry anyway. The sweetie is now finishing cleaning the kitchen, and I'm heading upstairs to clean up the longarm room. I might as well load the next customer quilt while I'm up there - should help me procrastinate less with that one.Back to work tomorrow - what a wonderful vacation! Eye candy today is a quilt called "Fireworks" from an old Quiltmaker Magazine. I made it for a class sample at Daisy Kingdom in 1992. I've been handquilting it for years. Not that much left - one or two blocks and the sashing and borders - but since I quilt every quilt to death it's taking a long time. I've not touched it for at least 2-3 years - not since the arthritis in my hands made it painful to quilt for more than a couple hours at a stretch. I really need to get back with it and get it finished. You may wonder why I'm quilting the sashing the way I am - well, the rope wasn't wide enough and I hate to quilt in the ditch, so this is what I started to do. It looks a bit silly to me now, but it is what it is and that's OK.************
Gratitudes:1. Thanksgiving leftovers2. Soothing, restful, emotion-filled music by Kitaro3. King Tut thread4. Squizzers5. Good health for both of us************
When it comes to my quilting. It's a good thing I don't depend on an income from quilting to pay our bills. On the other hand if I did I might be able to find the self discipline. Instead of going upstairs and quilting a customer quilt I decided to clean the sewing room first. It wasn't very messy at all so I figured it would take little time. All was done, and the few triangles I'd cut for the border for Somebody's Home were sitting there waiting, as were a few pieces of fabric I'd left out for the border. I was in the middle of watching an old Masterpiece Theatre presentation that is 15 episodes long - Jewel in the Crown. So I put my best intentions aside and started the border. After all, I still have all day tomorrow to do the quilting. It took me the rest of the day today, but I finished the border about the same time I finished the last episode. It's a grand feeling - finishing another top and crossing another UFT (unfinished top) of my list. I really do like how this turned out - I think the border adds a great deal.No more excuses tomorrow - I'll be up early and upstairs quilting. As soon as I finish cleaning the sewing room. Shouldn't take too long to put the fabrics away that currently clutter the cutting table. I really mean it this time - there isn't another project out to distract me. Besides, I need the paycheck from that quilt because my trip to Schenck's depleted my business account. Nothing like money to motivate one!
I'm having such a wonderful break from work! First thing on Wednesday I headed to Portland to E.E.Schenck's, a fabric and sewing essentials wholesale warehouse where I get my batting, much of my longarm thread and other stuff. They open at 7:30 so I left early - totally forgetting I'd hit rush hour on the freeway. I think I could have slept in another hour and gotten there at the same time I did! I needed to pick up a 30 yard roll of batting for the military quilts my Tangled Threads group is working on. The son of one of our members is currently in Iraq as part of a tank company, so we are making quilts for the men in his platoon. I needed to buy more than that to meet my minimum so I HAD to browse a bit - of course! I found three new quilt books, four new patterns, several cones of longarm thread plus some new threads to try for piecing. I don't know why I worry about meeting the minimum - I was easily $75 over!
Wednesday was pouring rain and Fred couldn't golf, so we went shopping after I returned from Schenck's. We decided to spend the money that was piling up in our entertainment savings - we hardly ever go out anymore it seems - on an Ipod. We'd both been thinking about getting one - and neither of us realized the other had been thinking about it until Fred said he might ask for one for Christmas. This is better - this way it belongs to both of us. So we started at Best Buy and came home with an 80 GB Ipod. He's been totally occupied transferring our music CD's ever since - he's completed the classical and now is working on Christmas music. From there we went to Barnes and Noble so he could spend the gift card I got him for his birthday, then on to Costco for food 
and more. It was nice spending the morning with him like that - we've not done that for a long time!We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. A relaxing morning with Fred on the computer and me piecing. We headed to my friend Kim's house for dinner about 2:30 or so. (Kim is the Tangled Thread whose son is in Iraq.) There were eight of us - three Threads and our husbands, the sister of one Thread and her friend that we'd not met before. Kim is an incredible cook and worked for two days on the gourmet dinner she served us. Good company, good conversation, wonderful food - what more could one ask for!
Yesterday was our Thanksgiving with our kids - they all spent Thursday with their spouses' families. I did an easy meal - lasagna, green salad and garlic French bread so I was able to do most of the prep before they arrived. They all got here about 1:00 or so, and we had a marvelous time playing with the dogs, chatting and playing lots of games. I've learned that the date of a holiday isn't all that important - if I can't have them all here on the holiday itself it's not a problem as long as we pick another day to celebrate. The important thing is doing it - the date really isn't important.I've also been getting in some quilting - of course! I finished piecing the blocks for the current installment of 
my Jan Patek mystery quilt, so I'm all caught up with that. I also pieced blocks from the current installment of Heirloom Stitches and started prepping the appliqué. Ran into a bit of a snag with that. One block is a basket with a pieced bottom anand appliquéd handle and flowers - and the piece of fabric included for the handle was WAY too small. I can do some of the stitching, but since the handle must go on before two of the flowers I'll be stalled part way through. The kit for the other block, which is all appliqué, is missing all the green fabrics for the leaves and stems - which must be done before anything else on that block. So I'm at a standstill with that one too until the online shop sends me the missing fabrics and a replacement for the handle fabric.
While I was pinning the Heirloom Stitches blocks back up onto the design wall I discovered a mistake in a block I pieced several months ago. I can't believe I've not noticed it until now! It's definitely staying the way it is - if it took me this long to notice it then I don't think it matters. I wondered how many of you spotted it when I posted the block the first time, and were just too polite to say anything? How many of you can spot the mistake now? It's the blue, red, gold and green block.I'm heading out for a haircut soon, then need to spend the rest of the day upstairs with Gandalf. I have a customer quilt to deliver on Tuesday, and another one needing special custom quilting that is due by the second week of December. So my own quilting will be taking a backseat the rest of this weekend. At least I did make a little progress on my November goals - though it's evident now that many of them will move on to being December goals. That's OK - I finished other things I didn't plan on working on, and that is a good thing!*************Gratitudes:1. Family holiday gatherings2. Chelsea's pregnancy progressing nicely3. Tangled Threads friends4. A relaxing vacation5. A break in the rain so my hubby can play the golf he so loves*************
And here we all thought bloglines was such a great thing. It saved us so much blog reading time because we knew whose blogs to read when. That's just fine and dandy - when it works. I think it was sometime on Sunday that it finally occurred to me that bloglines must have stopped working. Finally the "plumber" arrived to confirm our suspicions. And I still think it's not fixed. I spend yesterday and today clicking on every one of my registered blogs - 158 of them! - and found lots and lots of posts that I didn't know about. Hopefully I've caught up with all of you. I tried to leave comments for many of you, but I'm sure I missed some. I guess the silver lining in all this is that I was able to delete a few - blogs that hadn't been updated for at least two months, and blogs I "tried on for size" and learned they weren't "my cup of tea". (How's that for overdoing the use of trite expressions?) I sure hope the "plumber" gets the bloglines fixed before long!In the meantime, I'm counting the minutes I can leave work and be free for 5+ days. About 55 now - and counting.
I don't imagine anyone has noticed - unless you are paying more attention that I figure you probably are - but as this year has progressed I've deleted one 2006 quilting goal after another. I started out with four, then three, then two and now just one. I don't even remember what #4 was I crossed it off so long ago - knowing within the first couple months of the year that it wasn't going to happen. Goal #3 - use up more fabric that I bought - stayed up a little longer but not much. Just wasn't going to happen - especially with me concentrating on UFO's. Goal #2 involved making at least 4 completed tops from sets of friendship blocks. I did complete one, but I know that's going to be it for this year. I'm not going to work on any of the others until next year. So I figured one was certainly better than none, so I deleted that goal a few minutes ago. That leaves only one goal - the goal that was the most important of all - and one that I've achieved. One out of four is better than I've done in the past, so I'm happy. I've decided I like monthly goals better than yearly goals anyway - I plan better for shorter time spans. Of course I've not come close to accomplishing any of my November goals, but I still have a little bit of hope. After all, I'm going to have 5 days off in a row. And it's not a race and it's not REALLY about goals - instead it's about creating something beautiful with my hands, something for us all to enjoy, something I really enjoy doing. It's one of the things that makes my life worthwhile. And that is saying a lot, I think.
I have the center of Somebody's Home all ready to finish. I appliquéd the star onto the house block, and stitched the three star blocks together and onto the house block. I made the row of four patches for the other appliquéd stars, and prepped all the other appliqué. I "cheated" on the dog and used my pigma pen to ink in his eye, nose and mouth. If I feel really ambitious later I can still do them with black embroidery thread as the pattern suggests. I wanted to make a dalmation as one of our "granddogs" is a dalmation named "Leia" - after Princess Leia in Star Wars, of course. But I couldn't find anything in my stash that looked like dalmations. I have black dots on white backgrounds, but they are all totally regular in size and pattern and it just didn't look right. So this dog will have to do. All the appliqué pieces are "glued up" and ready for hand work. I finally found a shop with the tiny bottles of Roxanne's glue - the shop in Coos Bay when we were on retreat last month - so I don't have to deal with the long needle-like spout on the big bottle getting clogged up. This is the first time I've used the little bottle and it's great! I'm going to appliqué today while watching Star Trek - Deep Space 9 - Season 1 - borrowed from my kids. Then the Apple Cup this afternoon until I leave for the quilt auction. Right now I'm having a hard time deciding whether to go or not. I'd have to get out of sweats and actually dress, put on makeup, comb my hair, and worst of all - lose the sewing time I'd have this evening. I really want to go, but I really want to stay home too.I got quite a few questions about the invisible appliqué - I'll write a post about that sometime in the next few days.
Hmmm . . . I must have another post with this same title, because when I was almost done typing it popped up in the way things do saying "is this what you are wanting to say?" I guess my creative mind is still asleep this morning.I'm so far behind with blog reading - I apologize to everyone. I've no 
excuse other than the fact that lately I've just felt driven to be in the sewing room working on UFT's, so I didn't want to waste that urge. I'm going to try to catch up this weekend. Many of you have written several posts that I've not read yet. I decided if I always started with the top of my bloglines list then I'd never catch up to those in the last part of the alphabet, so lately I've been starting on the bottom of the list. Worked all the way up to the "L's" last night, so started at the top of the list again.Cynthia has been making 
some marvelous things with orphan blocks lately, including bags. May Britt has shown us a bag she's made with orphan blocks. Orphan blocks are so much fun to play with. Makes me want to make a bunch of blocks, some I've never made before, so I have blocks to play with also. Oh dear - we'd all make much better progress with our UFO's if we could turn off our brain and prevent it from coming up with new ideas while we are working!When I first started working on UFO's I had many small sets of blocks 
left over from teaching. I decided I didn't want to make more of any of them so I'd have enough for a quilt top. Some I packaged up and sold at the guild bazaar during the quilt show. Some were combined to make a red, white and blue quilt I use in the summer on the couch. When I had only a few left I decided to try some bags. These were very simple, flat bags with a draw cord at the top. Very easy and quick to make and great little gifts. I had a lot of fun with them, and used up every single 
spare block I had. It was a great way to deal with UFO's, because I crossed a bunch of them off my list very quickly making these.
************Gratitudes for today:1. Two finished quilt tops this week2. The fun I'm having working on an old project I've not touched in several years3. Chocolate pumpkin cake for breakfast (you are a BAD girl Patti!)4. Our sweet gum lost only three giant limbs in the windstorm5. The rains have passed for now and it's a beautiful day************
Once again everyone around us got snow - enough that it really counted. North of us Kelso- Longview schools are closed. Pictures south of Portland show roads in a mess and snow falling. East and west of us too. Those of you who watched the Seahawks-Green Bay game know how hard it was snowing in Seattle.
Here is what we have. I took the pictures now because I leave before it gets light, and if I wait until this afternoon it will be all gone. The cars are across the street at our neighbors, and the third picture is of our lawn. And since this fell while we were sleeping we didn't even get to see it falling. It was just enough to make most of the schools 
two hours late - including my husband's - but only because the back country roads are probably worse. This is good for those who must commute, but what a disappointment for those of us who always wish for snow - including yours truly.
we will get to it. I made this as a class sample when I taught at Daisy Kingdom, and I've always loved how it turned out.
