Postcards for ...

At our last meeting the BRMQG folks talked about making quilt postcards. Maybe they are fabric postcards. Either way, I enjoyed the presentation. There was a lot going on, especially since we passed around a stack of, oh, 50ish. 

They were meant to be inspiration. I supposed they were, because the very next day I made these two. They will eventually be mailed (yes, postal service, if you please) to the little granddaughters in Rayne. I have no doubt they will be a hit as anything that arrives through the mail and meant for either one of them is a grand affair.

Note on the red one that I played with one stitch on my machine. I chose that particular stitch because I'd read it is supposed to look somewhat like hand quilting. I played with this stitch by making a change every time a started a new seam. Mostly I increased the length and decreased the width. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the play and seeing the changes in one stitch. After enough of that I drew two lines with two stitches I haven't seen stitched out. 

I love the idea of these! They are quick, fun little projects that allow for play, creativity, and practice. The first one I made is the bird card. You can easily see what I did--things I've done before. I figured I'd start easy. I figure the girls will drag them around for a day or so, stick them on a bulletin board in their "classroom" and eventually lose them. It's quite alright. 

Have you made fabric postcards? If so, please leave a link in the comments. I'd love to see them!

Thanksgiving, school props, and painting (Adam's finish)

Lots going on in the Marcotte lot. Firstly, we celebrated Thanksgiving in grand fashion with two meals on Thursday. One for the parents at noon because Papa can't handle too many people. About three is his limit, so we cooked a second meal for the kids for supper. 

That also gives the boys a chance to visit with their wives' families, and they can drop in on their grandparents a few at a time. No one gets left out this way. It's lots more work, but worth the extra effort since it means making things easier for the aging parents and it helps the kids arrange holidays with their families. Of course, there's nothing left of the food. By now everything has been eaten as leftovers or put in the freezer. 

Saturday and Sunday everyone just tried to rest and do a few things around the house. Adam and Richard had a special project going on. They built props for an upcoming school play. Can you guess which one? If you said A Charlie Brown Christmas, I'd have to agree because these are definitely CB props, but the real truth is that no one has really told me anything except to come see the cuteness. And, well, it is all kinds of cute.

Even better everything is made from left-over wood from a job or previous project. Even the mailbox is recycled. We replaced ours a few weeks ago and it had not found its way to the trashcan for pickup. Apparently we generate more trash in the fall, when we tend to purge the most, thanks to the cooler weather.

Adam retrieved it from somewhere, banged the dents out (it had been run over by a tractor) and mounted it on a freestanding pole. Then he painted it a very bright yellow. The flag was missing, so he even built a wooden flag that moves up and down. 

And now we're on to my current project. I'm working on another cotton painting. It's much like one in neutrals, beige and brown that I wrote about here. I also painted two in blues and wrote about those here.

I didn't like the beige one until it grew on me, then it became my favorite. I planned on painting a few using a green background but that hasn't happened. I supposed green needs to be higher on the list. At any rate this one is still a wip. 

The cotton bolls are still too dark and I need to add to the stalk. Cotton plants, you see, have many sharp limbs that do not bear unless the earliest flowers or seed pods are lost--as in eaten by a cow or destroyed by a storm. Then the plant is poised ready to put out new seed pods as soon as the early ones are lost.

It's interesting how much you can learn about a subject when you begin a "little" research just so your art is more authentic. Anyway, I'll show pics when the painting is complete and the frame is complete, and I pair the two. That may be a week or so, since my husband insists on making frames as though they will be seen from the front of the artwork. They are not but he's a perfectionist. And I am asking for a favor, so I guess we'll wait for a perfect frame.

In case you missed the pictures I took at IQS, all the posts are here:

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 1}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 2}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 3}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 4}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 5}

Saturday Sewing

I've started a new quilt top. It's somewhat like  AmandaJean's "Vortex" quilt. However, I've made other quilts that use only scraps in them.

It's just a matter of sewing lots of scraps together. I tend to make sheets about the same size then sew those together to make larger sheets. "Murky Waters" is a good example of my process.

What I have under my needle will be more colorful since I'm using scraps from every bucket in the closet.

Most of the scraps are some were cut into 2½" strips. Those too small to be a strip turned into blocks. I have lots of strips! My plan is to use any extra 2½" strips for binding once the quilt is finished.

I'm stopping right here to define/explain my process and define scrap, slip, sheet and script. Those are the words I use in this process. First I sew small pieces together. I just keep sewing and sewing small pieces. Generally I try to match the sizes of two pieces but I might sew two small pieces to a larger piece without cutting anything--that comes later. 

When I have (about 25? 46? 97? I don't know) enough to be tired of this process, I take the whole thing and go to the iron. Press open to the darker side. Snip them apart and trim really jagged edges with scissors, take them all back to the machine. Now I sew them into slips of fabric. A slip is a small piece of joined scraps. Imagine that you tear a piece of paper to write a note. That's the size of a slip.

Okay so we have lots of slips, go to the iron and press, snip, trim using the iron and scissors. Important note: from this point onward, I look at the number of seams and press away from the side that has the most seams. The idea is to reduce bulkiness. 

I start joining slips into sheets. If two pieces are close in size, I may add a long scrap to the smaller one, then come back to sew them together later. It's not a big deal if they don't match up perfectly. Sew, sew, sew. Sew some more. Use up all the scraps and slips if possible. (It never is, but we can hope.)

By now you have the routine: sew scraps into slips. Sew slips into sheets. Sew sheets into scripts. (See what I did there? All writing words from an English teacher.) But I add a step at the end. After pressing the sheets, I take them all to the cutting table and cut one edge using my ruler and rotary blade. A square edge makes sewing sheets together much easier. I try to avoid having parallel seams on the edges as they can get sewn into the seam and cause bulkiness. 

Okay, so we have scripts. Hopefully many of them. I press and trim, then cut all four sides of a script into get squares and/or rectangles of uniform sizes. Sometimes "uniform size" means only two will match. Finished scripts go on the design wall so I can look at how they will fit together. Once there enough for a quilt, sew them together and there's a top.

So far, I have quite a few nice sheets. It's going to take many more sheets to get the queen size that I'm dreaming of. It's one of those I-don't-have-any-idea-why quilts. I think it's just to get back into the quilting groove. 

So on Friday I started sewing scraps together, just to be able to sew. On Saturday I started making sheets about 10" x 10"--give or take. Then had an idea for how to use them. On Sunday I woke up to another idea that I liked better. So I ripped out a few seams and started over. It's Tuesday and I don't like the pattern or the colors. However, I've got to stop this wishy-washy business and do something. To that end, I'm just going to keep sewing more scraps and slips and sheets and scripts. Something's bound to happen. Right?

A Camper for a Camper and other Christmas Stories

What family, temporarily living in campers, would give the one permanent camp child a camper? This. One. of course.

Poor child. Her own personal Barbie/baby doll camper as small as Grandmay and Poppa's. She's living in a camper the size of her new (in process of being built) house. And her dolls will have to share the smallest camper available to dolls. Wait, it's the size of the camper I'm sleeping in tonight. 

It's been a while since we've had a baby to open gifts. What fun! Doesn't the look on her face tell the story?

At some point we were finished opening all the gifts and moved on to supper. One of the advantages of having Will and crew living in the house is that they did the cooking. And it was delicious!

Earlier in the day Richard and I attended mass and spent some quiet time before the chaos began. When the kids arrived in the afternoon, we took photos in a sleigh that Will made just for this purpose. It started out a two-dimensional drawing, but he kept adding to the idea until it became a three-dimensional sleigh with a bench for sitting and two crazy log reindeer. 

Rich's parents were with us for gift-giving and supper, but it began "getting late" as soon as we served dessert. We love to play family games, so I made a few plans for after they left. Unfortunately they can't handle the noise and chaos of family games. Two of the games we played are below. The first was a hoot! Everyone wanted in on this game!

Treasure Chase
Necessary items: plastic wrap (Saran or Cling); small tokens, such as pony tail holders, candies, gum, lip balm, and so on. I also gathered a few odd things from around the house: safety pins, bobby pins, paper clips, zip ties, coins, ribbon. Anything small will work but avoid sharp, pointed objects.  

Start with a medium-size prize and wrap it in a wad of plastic wrap to form a ball. Then add more "sheets" of wrap around that to add to the ball. Cutting the wrap into sheets means the players will have to pick at the wrap to find the beginning of each. With each piece of wrap, add tokens enclosing them and pressing down to make the wrap stick to itself. It takes hours to use up a 300' roll of wrap. Several hours. Eventually I had a ball of tokens and wrap about the size of a volley ball. 


To play one person races to unwrap the items while the next player throws a die. We had already decided that the number to switch on would be three. When the player rolled a three, he took the ball and began trying to get items out while the next player tried to roll a three. It was such fun to see how the kids played. Some of us, it turns out, cheat. I loved trying to keep Lane from getting the ball from me. He's 6' tall, so reaching over me was not a concern. 

For the most part our games have no rules, and everyone just plays for fun. Some of our prizes were useless. For example, I included a sewing machine foot from an old machine. The idea is that no one knew what to expect, but it was fun to find out. I hate to admit but had any of the prizes been expensive, someone may have been hurt.


Candy Cane Catch
To play this game, you'll need candy canes, ribbon and prizes. Divide into teams of two players. One player (standing on a chair) drops the candy cane to the second player (sitting on the chair with back to player one). The player holds the ribbon out-stretched and tries to catch the candy cane on the ribbon. They may communicate but may not touch each other. The first team to catch the candy cane wins the prize.

You can find directions to both of these games on the internet. I found the first one here.  And though I don't remember where I found the Candy Cane Catch (my title), there are many holiday family games at Happy Home Fairy.

A finish,and a finish, and a finish!

Yes, three finishes! Remember that I joined a bee for a year?  I was to send a block a month every month for 2015. I was pretty good in keeping up with my monthly blocks until October.  Happily, I managed to get blocks to the monthly queens within a few days of the deadline. Some months I sent the blocks off early!  

A couple of bee members visited one month in the summer when we worked on a difficult block, played on the long-arm, and generally had fun.

French Roses block

Then October happened.  First there were issues with the pattern, and I waited out the math problems: I could only make matters worse.  My plan was to complete two blocks during the Thanksgiving break.  

However, in November I was deep into my own world of confusion trying to figure out how to get Building Blocks to cooperate with my plan. (That's the quilt that became two, and both were seeking independence.) 

Dealing with two additional blocks?  No way!  I sort of ignored everything in my life except EOC testing at work and Building Blocks at home.  And ah, the stress-filled exhaustion of teaching.

Christmas holidays finally arrived bringing with it three bee blocks, which were all giving me the evil eye.  I tried to look away from the guilt and shame of being so late, but eventually I had to face the horrible truth: I am a bad worker bee.  

Snowflake block

Fully rested (thanks to a wonderful Christmas break) and completely finished with Building Blocks woes, I began with the easiest block, French Roses, (see above) and finished quickly.

That meant I could face the snowflake block was applique, it made sense to go there. I created my pattern--which I thoroughly enjoyed--and when the block was finished, I was thinking what pretty pillows it would make.

Scary block (just teasing, I really don't know the name)

On to the final block--the one that required math--and when Rich came in an hour later begging to go out for supper, I was finished! A few photos dropped into Facebook and we were on our way. Breathing a happy smile.

Until we return home fat and sassy!  A FB note.  A gentle reminder: don't forget the last step.  Last step?!!!  I'd left off a step? Oh darn! I sure did. And it looks so good, too.
I can only say I must have been very hungry for Mexican salsa! Today I opened the envelope, and added the triangle pieces to increase the size to 17" so now all three envelopes can go out with the mail.  

And this worker bee can hold her head up (almost level) again.

Linking up to 

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Bags and packages and buckets...

Apparently I'm not good at saying "Thank You."  On Saturday when two friends from my current bee group came for a play date, Erika gave Kelly and me each a little bag that she'd made.  Check it out--a pretty little bag! 

Open it up to discover, Yay!, a mini-charm pack and thread wax. How sweet is this?!  Yes, I do like it all.

Check out her very well-made gathers.  And the fabric!  Could a seamstress like it more? 

That was Saturday, then today I received this in the mail.  Of course, it didn't look like this: I played with the picture to remove some information.

I like packages.  Especially when I'm surprised by them.  I'd assumed that the Michael Miller Co. had run out before they got to me.  I guess they didn't. 

So I opened the package and found--ta da!

Michael Miller's Glitz 

After a little photo session with all the fun things, I decided to get some work accomplished.  I cleaned.  First, the refrigerator.  Oh no, I do not have photos of that!  You would not want to see the science experiments that were going on.  I will say, though, that when the in-laws came by, my mother-in-law complimented the clean fridge, but that's all you're getting.

After all the pats on the back I figured I was on a roll and should go into the studio, where the scrap pile was almost as high as the laundry.  I tackled the scrap pile.  Piles of yellow, tan, and green, meant a fairly well-kept studio.
    

I even put them away, something I never do with laundry! Wait for it, yes!  I did return the buckets to their rightful places in the cabinet.  Another pat on the back!

What have you done lately that deserves a pat on the back?

Quilters' Play Date

I've met a couple of quilters online by joining first the Louisiana Traveling Quilt Bee.  Soon after I joined the Bee Great Quilting Bee.  I've already finished the quilts from those bees and written about them: you can read about the resulting quilts by clicking on the title links. And here.



Of course, there's lots of emailing and chatting when you're in a bee.  After all, someone has to keep track of what has happened and what is going on.  During one of those conversations, I decided to invite my bee mates over for a play date.  Two ladies took me up on my offer, and on Saturday I had company over. 


Except I never really considered them company in the formal sense of the word.  I felt that I already sort of knew them since we've been chatting and sewing together for a while.  But, we had never met in person. I did stalk them on Facebook, but I assume they stalked me, too. Isn't that what everyone does?  

So, on Saturday Kelly and Erika arrived. We hugged and said hello and visited a bit.  Uhm, a while.  Actually, we talked a lot! but we made a plan--work on the July block for our bee queen, have lunch, work on individual projects and share quilts along the way.

Good plan!  Except the blocks were harder than we thought.  And we got confused.  The directions (I've decided) were written with two choices but that's not clear.  So we started with one option and followed directions right into option two, which cut fabric that had been cut correctly following directions in option one.  Arrgh.  Don't be fooled by the smile in this picture. It was stressful at times. In the end, we figured it out. 

I'm using the term we loosely, though.  I did no math.  And I didn't pick up the cutter or the clutter.  I just sewed.  Erika saved my hide on that one. I told her I want her to visit on a regular basis: she cut, she pressed, she organized the blocks.  

Really!  All I did was sew.  Half-square triangles.  Flying Geese. Nine-patch (finally).  Well, I talked, too. But you know that!  

We finally got the block finished and I helped Erika set up a small quilt on the long-arm so she could play.  

She had such a pretty little quilt!  We talked and figured out what she could do and then she played.  And love it!

Look at her beautiful smile!  This is her small quilt almost complete.  She doesn't have much to do at home.

At about the time that Erika finished her small quilt, Kelly completed her bee block.  So we celebrated.

And so, all three block are finished.  I had a few seams left on my block, but it didn't take long to wrap those up.  Now to get them into the mail tomorrow.  Then to load a fresh quilt onto the long-arm and get that one out of the way.
What are you working on this week?