The Quilt Police Are A'coming!

Yes, they surely are going to be in.  It's just a question of "when will they arrive?"  Do you remember my mentioning last week that I offered to finish a quilt for our guild show?  Well, I am almost finished, but oh goodness!, I've made a huge mistake.  

I can't show it tonight, I'm really worried that the QP will come knocking on my back door, guns blazing.  I'll tell you, but you MUST promise not to say anything to anyone for at least a few days while I finish it up and turn it in to the guild.  Promise?

Okay...so here goes.......

 I loaded the quilt back on the long arm backward, sort of inside out.  Actually it is inside out.  The problem with that?  Oh, not much, there's just a seam on the OUTSIDE of the quilt!  Yes, it's just ridiculous.  I started loading the back and realized that I had it upside down.  I wanted that seam near the bottom of the quilt, so I flipped it or turned it, or something that means it was wrong.

Oh, I'm so embarrassed

and ashamed.  

I do not want to rip out all the stitches that are in the quilt, and I haven't decided what to do. 

I have a few options, but none of them are good.  

I can rip out all the stitches (hours and hours of work), rip out the stitches along the seam and make it work), or leave the quilt as it is (and hope no one notices).  I just don't know.  It's a decision that I do not want to face.

Here's hoping that your day was great and your week is better.  We got a great splatter of rain this afternoon after which we sun came back out.  Sunshine, gloom and grey, sunshine.
Happy quilting,
Mary

Quilt Count

I played on Picasa 3 to build a collage and decided to use it as the new background on this blog, which I wrote about here.  While looking for photos of pictures for the collage, I began wondering how many quilts I've made and how many I have or can account for.

Well, I can't wonder such a thing and not find out.....that would go against my being or bone marrow or soul or something.  I just can't wonder and then just shut the wonder down.  Maybe an rock could but not me!  So I decided to count.......

I have this trunk from my parents in the studio that I keep some of my quilts in, so I started there--12 queen quilts and four small quilts are hanging out and having a whole party there.

Some of the small quilts are draped over the quilt frame from my grandmother.  I think I counted ten chilling by the windows and taking in the summer.  (There are now dark brown drapes protecting them from the sunshine....wouldn't want them to get a bad sun burn.)

More small quilts are in the vintage boxes that we hung on the wall.  It looks like there are 12 having a neighborly visit.  Have you been adding them up?  I think we're up to 38 that I found.  There are a few in the house and the kids have a couple.  Wait, each grandchild has one, so that adds another seven.  

Oh well, enough of the counting.  I'm saying there are about 45 or so among the studio, the house, the kids and the grandkids.  I don't know how many have been sold, but I do know my sister Angie has eight grandchildren who each have a quilt.  Oh wow, I'm out of control and can't seem to stop!

Okay now, control yourself, Dee......CONTROL.   

Good girl, here's the stop--a question for you:  How do you keep track of the quilts you make?  Do you document every one?  Do you know how many you've made in your lifetime?  

Whew! That was WORK!

This weekend was our annual church fair.  Richard and I are the "cole slaw people" which means we buy and donate the works for the slaw which is just a tiny part of the whole church fair experience. 

If you want cole slaw for 1,000 people, I'm your gal.  No, I can't take credit for work and knowledge I don't own.  So the truth is Richard is your man.   He knows exactly how much cabbage and "color" to order, how much dressing to pick up, how to mix it precisely for taste and texture, and how many ounces to serve each plate.  

All of this knowledge is necessary so that the ingredients come out just right and there's enough for every plate.  Because, trust me on this, if you run out early, or the taste is odd, or the slaw is hot, or there's not enough, or, or, or.....  

It doesn't matter what you add on the back of an "or," if there's an issue, it's going to be a horrible, awful, miserable, catastrophic disaster with dire consequences!

Do I sound like a drama queen?  Cause, I'm not.  Really, it's the hubs of the family who has the nervous tick and the non-stop dialogue.  It's a mantra really, "Do this, stir that, it needs to be right, serve 4 ounces, find the right spoon to measure the ounces, don't put too much, put a little more, it has to be 4 ounces, use this spoon, serve 4 ounces." 

Can you imagine this man?  Sure, he looks like a laid-back cute hubby, but give him a reason to be nervous and he's all about the jitters!  What if he were responsible for the main dish?  What if he had to make the whole meal?  For all 1,000 folks?  Oh, he would stroke out during the first nervous breakdown!

My job is simple: mix the slaw while HE pours in the right amount of each ingredient, then go do something else....anything else.  Anything not where the slaw is being served. 

To that end I designated myself the ticket taker.  I stand at the window, take and count dinner tickets as customers arrive, bag up the correct number of plates while chatting them up so they forget how long they stood in line.  Is that not the perfect job for me?  Rich has the nervous breakdowns; I chat it up with total strangers.  We are GOOD!

An artist drawing of our pretty little church (internet photo)

 So now, at 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, it's safe to say we lived through another fair.  It got a little iffy last night while I helped with Bingo.  I called Bingo numbers just a smidgen too long and all that loud talking and laughing gave me a headache, but it was fun and I slept really well, so this morning I was ready to go at it again.  


This afternoon I had even more fun picking up the handmade bench that I won.  It's really pretty and is the perfect length for our mud porch.  I'll add a cushion and we'll put it to use putting on and taking off muddy boots and shoes during the winter.  There's just enough space under the bench for storing those boots and shoes so they don't have to come in the house.  If I didn't know that Mr. Walter Riche made the bench, I'd consider it sent straight from heaven.  Wouldn't you agree?

New Look

I have no idea what brought this on.  I guess it had something to do with a blog I read recently on which the writer explains how to create a really cool blog header with photos.  I tried her method but ran into two issues: 1) I do not have the right software and, though it's free, I'm iffy about downloading stuff, then 2) trying to do something as cool on Picasa 3, I got stuck.  

Actually, it's a good sort of stuckness (isn't that a word?).  I was stuck building a collage.

In Picasa you just drop pictures onto the work space and then arrange them as you want.  

Easy Peasy!  

Fun, fun!  

Stuck!  It's hard to stop once you start.  So there I was, playing and having fun finding some pics of my quilts and then....I had an idea.  Apply the collage to my blog.  Yes indeed!  I'm all about having fun, being creative, and (here's the kicker) actually using what you've created.

Three days later and I'm still not happy with the looks of things.  I want this blog to be a new awesome, you know?  



Not the ordinary, everybody is saying it awesome.  Not just the everyday kinda cool, but really, truly, honestly, AWESOME COOL.  (only not that loud)

So, after building a collage, figuring out what Blogger is willing to let me do (there wasn't much) and fighting for days to do some little something, such as change the font size (that was insanely slow), find the tabs bar on the "Simple" design (it's on the bottom), put all the writing in the same color (never did get that accomplished).   [whew, that sentence frag is too long, I'm starting over]  So, doing all that, it occurred to me that I have lots of quilts.  I wonder how many..... 

So I stopped playing on Blogger and went to the studio to count.  There are lots, you know, a whole lot.  

That's for another post, however.  For now I'd like some feedback, so please take a moment to leave a message and type a word or two about the new look of the blog.  I'd love to get other perspectives, and don't fret over whether I'll be hurt if you don't like it.  I'm a big chick!  I can take it....honesty only, please!

October Guild Fun

On Monday the Cotton Quilters Guild held it's monthly meeting and, because it was Labor Day, I was able to attend.  Generally I miss out once school begins, so this was a definite treat for me.  

We have several ladies who are also members of the Patience Quilters Guild in Alexandria, and one of them had a large container of finger pin cushions and several wrist pin cushions.  I didn't even bother with trying on the finger ones: I am very sure that I would be distracted by it.  I did find a wrist one that I liked, and at 50 cents, it was quickly mine. 

There were all manner of items on the agenda, but I was a late arrival and had to sit in the back, which means that I couldn't tell you half of what happened.  

There was some discussion of attending the Houston Quilt Festival, but because the majority wants to go during the week, I'll be working.  

In September our guild will have its own show at the museum, and I have plans to enter the quilts I've made in the last year.  I volunteered to help in whatever way the guild needs on the Saturday of the show.  Donna has asked that I be in charge of the silent auction.  That should be fun!  I'll make or donate a small quilt to add to those already donated.  

There's always a great time of show and tell.  I added my name to the list and showed the two small table runners that I made for the church fair--great way to get a plug in for the church fair-- this Christmas runner and the fall one that I wrote about here.  

The Christmas table runner is a fun, easy project that gave me a great opportunity to use the specialty stitches on my Bernina.  I used them to decorate the ornaments.  Definitely give it a try if you want to play with your stitches.  Do take a little more time with the zigzag applique stitches so they're more even than mine!  I didn't the fusible that I normally use, so the appliques moved around and gave me fits.

As usual we had wonderful refreshments of cakes and drinks and some time to visit and chat with friends.  As we were getting ready to leave, I took a look at all the items that have been donated for the show booth.  The money that is raised will be used for a variety of things.  

I noticed this pretty little quilt top on the table and offered to quilt it, thinking that more people would be interested in purchasing a completed quilt.  


Today while we were in Alexandria, I picked up enough yardage of an off-white flannel for the back.  The top is made of a cheater panel and two borders.

I was hoping to find a burgundy flannel to match the "sashing" between the prints.  I did find a pretty green, but it also did not match correctly.  Rich found the off-white and it's almost a perfect match.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to piece the backing and load it on the long arm.

After our doctors' appointments, several stops to run errands, and a shopping spree to Sam's, we ran in to Hancock's Fabrics for some muslin while it's on sale.  I found a nice bolt of about 12 yards. 

Book Review: Wild Life

I just finished Cynthia DeFelice's short novel Wild Life, which is a perfect read for a young boy.  The hardbound book that I picked up from the library has a large print type, which really helps in reading quickly.  I can barely wait for Thursday when Ms. Sarah's class of eight graders comes in to check out books.  This will definitely be on the book talk list.  The following is a short version of the synopsis from the Cynthia DeFelice website:

Erik Carlson has just passed the New York State Hunter Safety class and is all set to go on his first-ever pheasant hunting trip, when his life is turned upside down. Erik is shipped off to North Dakota to live with Big Darrell and Oma, grandparents he barely knows. Oma seems nice enough, but Erik finds Big Darrell to be unwelcoming and downright mean. When Erik rescues a dog that’s been stuck by a porcupine, Big Darrell says he can’t keep her. But Erik has already named the dog Quill and can’t bear to give her up. After finding his Uncle Dan’s shotgun and camping gear, Erik  runs away with Quill, certain that they can make it on their own out on the prairie. Family relationships and old secrets complicate this wilderness survival story.

At only 175 pages, the book is a quick read that tugs at the heartstrings before it settles down to a quiet life on the prairie.  I generally visit the author's website to get a feel for her interests and so that I can tell students whether she has one and, if so, what I think.  Definitely this website is one to brag about--visit the pages entitled "How I Write a Book" for an interesting take on a writer's process. 

Why don't you take a look and tell me what you think.  Isn't it a fun little peek into a writer's life?  If you write or blog, do you find that you write and rewrite as much?  

Give up and move on!

On Friday I decided to try my hand at paper-piecing.  I had already designed a table runner in EQ7 that I thought would be easy enough.  There are only three blocks and three borders, although each block has about 25 pieces.  


I wanted to enlarge the size of the blocks so that it would be easier to work with and so the fabrics would show, but that became a problem when the scanner/printer decided to take a square block and make it into a rectangle.  I have no idea how I managed to do that, I set the scanner to copy at 150% but it warped the block.  

First I had to figure out what the problem was, and honestly, that took some time.  Then I tried to figure out how to make it work without reprinting all the papers I'd already wasted.  In the end I had to rescan and reprint all of it.  I did get the block reworked and enlarged to a 12 inch block and sat down to sew. 

I chose some pretty fall colors with a plaid that pulled everything together to serve as the center of the block and as one border.  (The colors are washed out in the photos, sorry)  I made a couple of mistakes and had to rip out stitches, but those were silly mistakes that I figured would be easy to avoid as I continued to work.  

Then the disaster happened.  Well, to me it was the last straw, anyway.  I'd sewn in a whole run of pieces, trimmed, pressed and begun on the next run when I realized that one of the pieces was backwards.  Okay, rip it out and reset it.  The next piece was too small and didn't cover the whole area that it needed to cover.  A closer look and I realized that I'd cut all my pieces to small. 

This is what frustration looks like: 

I had precut most of my fabrics, and since I don't like lots of scraps, had to figure out what to do with all that waste.  I didn't deal with on Friday, though.  I tossed the balled up piece of paper with the fabrics still attached into the trash basket, hit the lights and closed the door.


I went back into the studio on Saturday with a new attitude and an idea.  The whole point of making the table runner was so I'd have something to donate to our church fair bingo table this coming weekend.  So with that in mind, I started playing with a tried and true method of piecing a background and appliqueing some flowers.  

The waste from the night before easily became flower petals that I cut on the Studio cutter.  And instead of making several blocks, I decided on a large rectangular background with wide borders on the two end.

The background is actually a peach with more color than here.

After tossing on a few flowers, I tried my hand at cutting some gourds, for a real fall decoration and liked it enough to cut a few more.  

I layered and pinned the table runner down and got busy with the quilting.  I decided to micro-stipple between the appliques so I could practice.  

As I'd get to each applique, I quilted around the outer edge and add a few lines of quilting in the center, then move on.  By Saturday evening I'd completed the table runner and am much happier now that I have something to donate to the fair.  

 Not too bad for a project that had such a bad start, don't you agree?  What do you do when you become overly frustrated?  Would you have kept at it longer than I did or given up before I did?  

If you have some way of handling your frustration, please share.  I let annoyances get to me much too quickly and could use some coaching adjusting my attitude.