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.

Bits and pieces

Wow! Thanks so much for all the compliments, everyone! This orphan top sure was a lot of fun to do. I couldn't go to sleep last night because I was still fitting parts and pieces together in my head! So I slept in this morning and haven't made any progress on the second one yet.

Marcie wanted a closer look at the quilt on the bench - happy to oblige. This top was one I made years ago - I would have gone much scrappier now. I still like it, however. It is from a book I've had for years calls "Yeah, Yeah, USA!" It was one of the first quilts I finished after I got my longarm, and after I'd become acquainted with Bonnie's Quiltville site. I busted quite a bit of stash making that backing! There are several more projects in the book that I want to do, including a large - 36" I think - Uncle Sam doll that will look great on the rocker in the summer.

I'm happy to report that after a temporary loss of focus resulted in a couple pound weight gain last week, I'm now back in stride. This morning the scale showed a loss of another pound and a half, which makes a total of 11 1/2. Hooray! And I've even gotten back on my exercise cycle for three days in a row! My goal is to lose enough so when we go back to our "standard" dress code at work after Labor Day I'll be able to fit into all the work suits and dresses that have hung unworn in my closet for almost two years.

Speaking of work - it is now less than a year until I retire!!!!! 364 days - but whose counting?

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!

A perfect weekend . . .

That's what I'm expecting. Why? Because there is nothing I have to do - I can spend the whole weekend sewing! Last night I finished the repairs on my son-in-law's sister's quilt so they can deliver it to her tomorrow. Tonight I'll baste my friend's quilt that's on the machine while I watch the Mariners beat - hopefully - the Blue Jays again. And the rest of the weekend is for my own sewing! I hope to have the orphan top together by Sunday night, and at least one of my own quilts quilted. Should be doable!

I put out all my red, white and blue summer decorations last month. In past years I've left my spring teapots and tea cups on the buffet and dry sink, but this year I put them away because I wanted to find some patriotic dishes for the summer. I've been looking and looking but couldn't find anything. Yesterday I thought to check the "one stop shopping center" where I get my groceries. I don't know why I didn't look there before, as that's where I found the great fall things a couple years ago. Wouldn't you know it - they had just what I've been looking for! And since the 4th is almost here they were all on sale for 25% off. I love how they look. I don't know what it is about new dishes - they just make my heart sing. I think if I had the storage room and money I'd have as big a stash of dishes as I do of fabric!

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Gratitudes:

1. Cool weather

2. A mid-week day off work

3. A $6 red and white checked table cloth for the dining room

4. A bed full of white Shasta daises and blue-purple lavender

5. A scale heading downward after a disastrous week weight-wise

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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.

Site meter

I still don't have my site meter back, unfortunately. The weekly report I received this morning indicated that I've now received over 10,000 visitors. Amazing! I can't believe so many people are interested in what I say and do!

Unfortunately I can't figure out any way to tell which visitor was number 10,000. I suppose if I forked over the money for an upgrade from the free meter I could, but I'd much rather save that money for something else!

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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