I give up!

Blogger just won't let me put the pictures where I want to in that last post. No matter what I try the spacing of the words is always wonky. I've tried four times - now I'm throwing in the towel. Sorry it looks so weird - I guess it'll just have to look that way!

Sometimes I have such a love-hate relationship with this computer!

Piecing Again

Sunday I pieced a dozen log cabin blocks for a friendship block exchange at the retreat next week. It felt so nice to be piecing again! I love appliqué, but I also love piecing. I've done very little piecing for a long time, and I missed it!



I didn't want to work on any of my appliqué as I'm saving it for the beach and the retreat, so I finally got around to dealing with my strings. I've been stuffing strings in baskets for years and years. I'd no idea how many of them there were! They were in a tangled, wrinkled mess - I had no idea there were so many of them. I had to start by pressing them - at least enough to get started. Then I found an old phone book ala Bonnie - I knew I had at least one around here - and cut out big squares. By the time I got to sewing I found time to make only two blocks. I wanted to see how they would turn out, because these are all really ugly fabrics. At least ugly to my 21st century mind. They are almost all from my 80's calicos - fabrics I gave away to charity about 5 years ago. It's neat that I'll have bits of those fabrics in a quilt this way - and they don't look ugly at all in the string blocks. I'm already thinking how I'll set them together. Maybe with black? Or how about cheddar? As Bonnie says, cheddar goes with everything!

A little bit was accomplished . . .

on my trip. Would you believe I forgot that most of my flight time would be at night? My eyes aren't nearly good enough to appliquéd by that tiny light one can turn on when all the airplane lights are dimmed. I got my eagle block finished, so when I got home I was able to stitch it to the other two blocks. Luckily I also had a book on CD to listen to so I wasn't totally bored.


I partially finished the Girl Gang tree block also - and that was it! I was all washed out on Saturday with the rapid time changes - at least I'm sticking to that story - so I spent the morning reading and then finished the tree block, the pineapple block and the snowman block. That allowed me to stitch all the bottom pieces together. Here's what that looks like now.

So I still have 5 or 6 prepped applique blocks to do. That's OK - we're going to the beach this coming weekend with the kids and their spouses so I'll need some handwork to take along. I also have a quilting retreat coming up the following week that I mainly want handwork for. So I probably still don't have enough for all that time and will need to find more hand projects to work on.

Reminiscing now . . . 1991 . . . both kids are now in high school with our daughter entering her senior year and our son entering his sophomore year. That meant lots of volunteering as parents to help with various school activities. I was substitute teaching then, with a long term maternity leave job all spring and starting a one-year half time extended kindergarten contract in September. I also became president of the quilt guild in September. I was teaching quilting at Daisy Kingdom in Portland Oregon. Helping dear daughter with the college hunt. It was an incredibly busy year! Can't believe it was 15 years ago now!

I've finished reading all the blog entries that were posted while I was gone. Didn't take time to comment as I wanted to get through all of them. I'll do better from now on and post comments again. It's really great to be home - I'm basically a home body. I get too lonely for (1) family, (2) friends, (3) sewing machine, (4) fabric, and (5) chatting, reading and posting about quilting with all my Internet buddies - not necessarily in that order!

Good morning to all!

I am back from my business trip and almost recovered - I'm really a lousy traveler when I fly. Took me until last night to catch up with all my email, and I've still not caught up reading everyone's blogs. Figured I'd better do a short post at least so everyone would know I'm still alive and kicking.

I enjoyed the walk down memory lane a few of you posted about. So here's mine:

In 1976 I was a stay at home mom with a daughter who turned two in June and a son born in May of that year. Two kids were 100 times more work than one! I was doing everything I could to stay home - we were so broke! I sewed all our clothes - even tailored a suit for my school teacher husband. I had a vegetable garden in our tiny backyard - filled every corner with garden! I canned about 1500 jars of fruit and vegetables, and froze what I didn't can. I taught piano in the afternoon to about 15 kids - most of whom didn't practice so they never progressed much - that provided money for milk and eggs in between the monthly paycheck. Sometimes I just played with my kids all day. Those were such happy times!

I need to get ready for work. I'll post about 1991 later today.

Up early and ready to go

Woke up at 4:30 - don't know if it was excitement about traveling or nervousness about flying - or maybe a bit of both. I'm basically ready to go - just need to pack the curling iron after it cools down and my toothbrush.

I have at least 10 prepped appliqué blocks - probably more - that I'm taking with me. I know I won't finish them all, but they aren't heavy and I don't want to take the chance of running out of things to do! Typical quilter - I know.

Have a great week everyone - I'll "see" you on Saturday.

Basically a non-quilty day

It's a good thing I took a personal day on Friday - I needed all of this three-day weekend to do everything that needed doing. Today I ran basting stitches around all my circles and pressed them with the mylar templates inside, and that was pretty much it quilt-wise. I did pack my appliqué for my trip - and then realized they'd probably call my Omnigrid tote a "personal item" and not let me take my backpack also. So tomorrow I have to find something to repack it all into that I can put in my backpack.

Speaking of backpacks - I tried to find one of ours and apparently we've stored both of them in our tent trailer - which is in storage at our son-in-law's parents house. That goodness for kids - I just called our daughter and they have one I can borrow. I need something big enough for my purse, my stitching and food. Guess they just don't serve meals on flights any more, but I know I'm going to get hungry before we get to Indianapolis at 10:30 p.m. That will be 7:30 according to my Pacific body time, which is still after dinner. We take off about 1:30 -right after lunch. Looks like we have a one hour layover in Chicago, so hopefully we can grab a little hot food there between gates.

Had an unexpected visit from our son this morning, which was a nice treat. He and his wife live in Newberg Oregon - a little over an hour away - so we don't get to see them more than once a month or so. He was over here for further testing with the Vancouver Police Department - he's hoping to have a second career as a police officer. He's been unemployed for almost a year in spite of his college degree - he's a software developer who took a severance package from his company when they decided to move everyone to Florida. As much as I hate him being unemployed and worry about them a lot, I wouldn't have handled them being in Florida at all well. He had no trouble getting his first two jobs - one right out of college and another when the first company went bankrupt - but now most of the software developer jobs seem to have moved to India. He's sure he could go to work for Microsoft, but they don't want to move to the greater Seattle area because they could never afford a house up there. I've been holding positive thoughts and doing a lot of praying for them, but so far nothing. He really wants a career change to something meaningful in the community, so I'm hoping the police officer thing will work out.

Packed up my small number of winter decorations and got out my small number of spring decorations. I thought I had lots more, but I guess I was thinking about all the Easter things. I have 10 or so beautiful china cups and saucers - many that I inherited from mine and my husband's family - plus a few teapots that I love. I've put them out in the dining room and living room - they look so very spring like! Hung a St. Paddy's day wreath by the front door and called it good. Did four loads of laundry, took care of all the clutter strewn about, and got my suitcase mostly packed.

I sure missed stitching today!

Progress - slowly but surely

I put my "It's a Wonderful Life" prepped blocks up on my design wall so I could refer to them when I'm choosing additional fabrics. I decided to take a quick picture of them to show you. A couple of them aren't in the exact places they will be in the quilt - the top house and baskets are actually higher with additional blocks in between, and the winter house is actually farther to the right with a strip of star blocks on the left. I get a good feel for how things are looking even though parts are missing - so I threw them all up there anyway. Four stars to piece, and one more house to prep, then I'll be all caught up with the patterns that I've received. Aside from the fact that lots of appliqué still needs to be done. Minor details, right?

It's a Wonderful Life

I guess blogger won't allow more than 5 pictures per post, so I thought I do another short post about the "It's a Wonderful Live" quilt. The first picture is what my blocks look like so far. I have four or five star blocks to piece this weekend, as well as all the appliqué blocks I prepped. The second picture is what the entire quilt looks like. This is Jan Patek's version. The picture isn't the best - it's pretty dark in spots. I think she's going for spring at the top of the quilt and winter at the bottom, which is why the fabric tones get darker.

I'm using felted wools and ultrasuede in my blocks in addition to cottons. The cat, the school boy's hair and the books are felted wool. The book straps are ultrasuede. The house is "The Winter House" on the bottom of the quilt. The "Spring and Summer House" and "The Fall House" are two of the blocks I'm prepping today. I don't like the fabric I sewed to the top of the winter house. It's a blue and white plaid that I really liked, but I discovered it's way too light when I took the picture. Today I took it off and will find something else that works better. I'm sure having fun making this quilt!

"Preparation Days"

Tuesday afternoon I'm flying to Indianapolis, Indiana for a conference for work. I absolutely hate to fly, so I'm hoping that stitching will keep me busy enough to make the time pass quickly. When I've tried stitching in the past I've just been too nervous - reading seems to work better. But I'm not in the middle of any engrossing books right now - just finished "Stash Envy" by Lisa Boyer - so I'm going to try stitching again. I'm behind on almost all my BOM's; this will give me some time to catch up. So yesterday I prepped 8 different applique blocks.

Here are the blocks I prepped for "Its A Wonderful Life" - Jan Patek's 2005-2006 Girl Gang quilt. It's a typical Jan Patek quilt - lots of different sized blocks and a lot of appliqué. I'm doing this one totally from stash. I'm sticking to her basic color scheme, but changing it a bit. Hers goes from light to dark from the top of the quilt to the bottom - the picture isn't the best - but mine is going to be more even in color value.

This is the second block of the Jan Patek and Cherie Ralston 2006 mystery quilt. I really like the reverse appliqué on the flower blossom. The other piece of fabric is there under the flower fabric - it will show when I do the appliqué.


Here are the blue berries and all the flower centers for the next block. I like to use the mylar circle method. I run a gathering stitch around the outside of each fabric circle. I pull the gathering thread tightly, encasing the mylar circle inside. This makes a very smooth circle. I spray them well with fabric sizing, then press until dry. Once they are cool I release the basting stitches and take out the mylar circle. Works like a charm - perfect berries and flower centers!

Here are the next two blocks for Heirloom stitches. The flower centers go on these two blocks. I've had the basket block pieced since last weekend, but am just now getting to the appliqué preparation.

Finally I thought I'd show you the eagle block. The banner is finished. I had to rip out about 6 applique stitches to change the placement - took about 10 seconds. Seems like it took forever to place the three parts just right - especially the part in the eagle's mouth, and get it stitched down "just so" with tiny stitches. I heaved a big sigh of relief when that was over. Doing the rest of the appliqué will seem like a "piece of cake" after than part!

This and That

Reading Vicky's post about Mardi Gras reminded me I let the entire celebration pass without showing you my Mardi Gras quilt. One of the Tangled Threads returned from a visit to New Orleans a couple years ago with a panel and a couple matching fat quarters for each of us. She challenged us to do something with them by the beginning of Mardi Gras the next year. Here is my quilt. Not at all colors I usually work with, and I never make things asymmetrical, but this turned out to be lots of fun. I got the idea out of an old quilt design book by Judy Hopkins called "One of a Kind Quilts". We had pillows, a small wall hanging strewn with beads and feathers, a purse and other small quilts on revelation day. It was a lot of fun.

Somehow I managed to volunteer to co-chair the making of our little guild's 2006 contribution to the Northwest Medical Team Quilt Auction next November. Our community has been putting this on for several years, and the amount we raise gets bigger each year. Last year it was over $40,000. Northwest Medical Teams are made up of doctors, nurses, dentists, surgeons, etc. who volunteer their time to go anywhere in the world where they are needed to deal with either natural or man-made (read war) disasters. I know they were very active in the hurricane recovery efforts in Louisiana. Anyway, my co-chair chose the colors and patterns. Not at all what I usually work with, but it certainly helped me use up some stash. We're showing this to the guild tonight and scheduling work parties to get it finished. I was supposed to make blocks in the opposite colorway also - white center and white outside ring - but I didn't discover that until bedtime last night. I didn't look at the picture closely enough, and the second block layout was two pages farther into the article. I thought the blocks were set with white sashing. Oh well, we can pass around the magazine picture to give them the idea. This is from an AP&Q - last December's issue I think. I don't like the pink at all - I'm going to take it off that block and substitute another color.

It's been a very busy week had work - hence no posts since Sunday. Got to get in the shower now - duty calls!