Home Stretch

Don't think I've mentioned this on the blog before, but I am closing the my quilt shop's retail location this Saturday, June 28. (Skip on over to the shop's website and have a look...all internet orders are 30% off.) To make a long story short, I've been busy with the shop, winding things down and tying up loose ends. I may be a little scarce around here for another month or so as I wrap things up at the shop, job hunt, and get moved east a little ways. Never fear, though, I'm still getting some crafting done here and there, and I'll keep you updated.

Now for some eye candy. Our little guild's biannual quilt show was last weekend, and I snapped a few pics. I'm very drawn to the older quilts passed down through the years to the current generation of quilters. These quiltmakers didn't get their panties (or bloomers or whatever) in a twist about perfectly matching fabrics or points. And I love the results.





Sorry, I'm writing this 7 hours after I originally started this post. I'm too lazy to caption these pictures, so just make up your own. It's been a long day, and I'm starting to get a little punchy. Even so, I'm thinking about stopping by the grocery store on my way home and buying a carton of strawberries so I'll have something to eat with my Nutella when I get home. Eh, screw it, I'll just have my Nutella straight up, on a spoon.

Flea Market Finds, Episode 1: The Fabric Menace

Okay, so I mentioned that I'd been to the local flea market. First just let me say that the flea market is a dangerous place for me to visit. I spent entirely too much money. Entirely. I felt the need to "adopt" half of the store. I spent a good hour and a half in there, and when it came to decision time I felt like I was choosing puppies to be saved from euthanization instead of shopping from a multitude of other people's castoffs . However, I'm really happy with what I bought, and like so many other things I want to buy, I have now forgotten about most of what I decided to leave behind.

This is part one of my flea market purchases, "Episode 1", if you will. (Please indulge me the corny Star Wars reference.)

First up is a piece of lightweight Winnie the Pooh fabric hemmed around the edges (it was labeled as a "baby blanket"), and a somewhat wonky quilt block. I'm not sure if the quilt block is salvagable or not as it isn't square and doesn't lay completely flat. That's a project for another day (or year).

And please ignore the wrinkles in anything you see here. I can't be bothered to iron just for pictures. I'll do that when I actually want to use the stuff.

In this photo, from top to bottom:

1. a bunch (haven't counted) of hand-pieced 4-patches.
2. over 3 yards of 36" wide pink gingham, which I am totally stoked about since that's the new Tie One On theme.
3. a large, oval tablecloth. Maybe has a future as a bag.
4. another table cloth, large & oblong. Love the pattern on this one...could end up as a bag also.
5. my favorite piece (from this group, anyway) a hand-embroidered baby quilt top. There are 8 embroidered blocks, set together with plain pink squares. Here is some detail of the blocks:
   

They're just too adorable. I can't decide what to do about this one, but I think I'm going to take it apart and reconstruct a small quilt out of the blocks, squaring things up as I go and probably using a better quality fabric or maybe even some quilt blocks to set it together. And maybe I'll even get ambitious and hand quilt it when I'm finished. I might be getting a little ahead of myself with that one, but it's a thought.

We're forecasted to get some really nasty weather tonight, so if you're reading this from, I don't know, anywhere in the Midwest stay safe. My hubby has requested this for dinner, so I'm going home to fry bacon and either embroider or crochet.

Stay tuned: Flea Market Finds, Episode Two!

Afternoon Adventure to Outer Space

Not too much going on here today. I've been longarm quilting for the last few hours. Here's a quilt I just finished up. I believe the pattern is Yellow Brick Road by Atkinson Designs.
I love this focus fabric - too cute!
And the backing fabric is pretty awesome too.I wonder who the lucky little duck is that gets to snuggle up under this quilt. No doubt the munchkin will have dreams of rabbits & rocketships.

Intervention, please

Seriously, people, it's time. I have a problem. I can't stop starting new projects. Typically I don't worry too much about having too many UFO's laying around, but it's really starting to get out of hand. I thought about making a list, sort of like a confession, but I'm not sure I can remember everything, so I'll save that for another day. For now, here's my latest:

It's the Babette blanket (pattern by Kathy Merrick and available from Interweave Crochet). I know I shouldn't have, but can you blame me? Take a look at the flickr group. Who can resist? Not me. Obviously. This picture is from last week...I know have all 50 2-round squares finished along with 20 4-round squares. Lots to go, but I'm making progress. Not that I'll ever finish it, because, ya know, that's not what I do.

More good news. I dropped my cell phone in a sink full of water on Friday, and the phone no longer functions. The good news about that is that I got a new phone. Isn't it pretty? It's called a rockr, which is cool, but I haven't "rocked" with it yet. My sister-in-law is 16...I'll have her figure that part out.
It does have a 2 megapixel camera on it, which I used to take this picture. A little blurry, but I think that's from enlarging it. And because I can't hold the damn thing still. Whatev.
This is my sad little camera. It's 5 or 6 years old, and a few months ago I dropped it and broke the battery cover (hence the scotch tape). I know, I'm hard on electronics. It's about time for a new camera anyway.

Last but not least, I got a new pantograph in the mail today for the longarm, so I decided to try it out.
It's called feathered curls. I'm really liking it. I think it could work on variety of quilts. I'm really digging how it looks on the back of the quilt.

This is a view from underneath the quilt machine. So if you've never sat under a quilt machine, this is what it looks like. Come by some time and I'll let you sit under my machine. It's sort of like sitting under a table covered by a tablecloth. Except when you sit under a table there is less of a chance of sitting on a straight pin. Yes, I've done that.

We're off on a long weekend to a graduation and to visit my folks, so the blog will be quiet until I get back next week. Have good weekend!

Someone bought my quilt!

Remember when I told you that I was making a quilt for the local community college's scholarship auction? Well, here's the quilt.

And the back. You can't see it very well, but I stitched down the cardinal in red thread, so there's an outline of a red cardinal on the back of the quilt. Cool, huh? (By the way, those white spots are lint...the backing is black flannel.)
And here's the best part....this quilt raised $280 for scholarships! Isn't that great?! I made a quilt for the auction last year, and it was a lot more work but didn't raise nearly as much money. So I was a very happy girl after this year's auction.

Here's something I just decided to do last night. It's a 4-patch stack-n-whack from the pattern 4-Patch Stacked Posies by H.D. Designs. I found the directions a little confusing, but I've done stack-n-whack before so I just went for it. After walking the dog and watching American Idol, I only had time to sew nine 4-patches, but I really like the way they're turning out. I've got the rest cut, so hopefully tonight I can sew them together in between loads of laundry. Oh, and the American Idol results show....can't forget that.

That's not all I've had up my sleeve for the past week or so... more tomorrow!

This and that

Sorry about the hold up on the pics. I said I would post some during the commercials of American Idol last week, but I chose to eat instead. Sorry. I love blogging, but if I have to choose between blogging and food, food wins hands down.

I was telling you last week that the mail had been good to me, and it has. For instance here's a pic of me and my new bag, purchased from Artsy-Crafty Babe.

Please ignore the dirty mirror and the lotion bottles. I didn't realize the mirror was that dirty. Guess what, it's still like that. Oh well. Anyway, I immediately transferred purses when this little beauty came in the mail, and I love it. Love. A lot. So cute, and just the right size. And did you notice the button pin on the handle? Love these. They are so much cuter in real life than they are in pics. I'm going to have to try some. Check her blog for more info.

And just because I didn't have anything better to do (yeah, right), I started a new quilt. I was straightening up in the shop the other day, and I ran across this pattern from Calico Printworks. I think the pattern has been here literally since the first day I opened the shop, but all of a sudden I was inspired by it. What do you think?

The paisley in the side-setting triangles is a bit overwhelming, but I think once the whole quilt it done it will be good. The quilt is big, queen-sized I think, so there are a lot more blocks than this picture shows. It's coming along rather quickly, and I'm excited to finish it. I have a million other things I should be doing (and other quilts to finish for that matter), but sometimes you just have to sew, ya know? I seriously think I have quilting ADD or something, because I can't stick with one project for too long.

Well, I think that's enough for now...we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Bring on Spring!

It's finally finished! I don't remember when I started piecing this one, and I don't want to know. It's finished, and after a brief tour at the shop, it's going home to be showcased in the guestroom (the only bedroom that visitors at our house get to see).

This quilt is rather large (75" x 93", I think), so it took me several nights to get the binding done. Most quilting books will tell you to use a whip-stitch or blind-stitch to hand sew a binding on a quilt, but I tried out a new stitch on this quilt that I think works much better for really hiding your stitches. It's called the ladder stitch, and I discovered it through Sharon Schamber's video on youtube. I've tried gluing down my binding like she does, but I didn't have my glue bottle rigged up properly, so I wasn't very successful. I think if I took the time to actually do it like she says, it think it would have worked. However, since I don't do that many show quilts, I'm okay with just using binding clips or pins to hold my binding in place while I stitch it down. I'm just not that picky.

I've got more binding to do this evening while I watch Idol. I've been doing lots of machine quilting lately (for customers, not myself) so not much to show on that front. I broke down and made the dreaded trip to Walmart on Monday night. Along with all the shampoo and t.p. and other mundane stuff, some Easter candy found its way into my basket. It was a happy accident that my afternoon snack matched a piece of fabric that was laying around.

I know you can order M&M's in any color you want all year long, but I can never resist buying them on holidays. Easter is definitely my favorite candy-buying holiday.

7 random things

I've seen these things all over the blogs I read, and at the end the blogger says, "I'm not going to tag anyone, but anyone who wants to join, feel free." So I've never done it, because I sort of thought to myself, no one starts reads blogs to just to read about random people and their quirks. They want to see some friggin' sewing. Or knitting. Or whatever.

However, I was recently tagged by Misplaced Country Girl at Syotha Would Be Proud, and I decided to step up to the meme plate, so to speak. So for MCG and anyone else that might care, here are 7 random things about me. For everyone else, I threw in some pictures.

1. I can't stand to watch the toilet flush. Doesn't matter what's being flushed. Even if it's just the flush to wash down the blue water after you clean the toilet, it just grosses me out. The swirling just makes me want to upchuck. However, I am fascinated by the fact that in the Southern hemisphere, the water swirls in the opposite direction. Weird.

(The quilt that I finally got the borders on and quilted.)

2. I say "weird" a lot. Like something will happen, or I'll read a story on the internet or something, and I say (usually to my husband), "Isn't that weird?" Sometime he agrees, but usually not. A good example of something I might say is, "Isn't it weird that we've lived here for 4 years?" It's not really weird to live somewhere for 4 years. What I mean is that it doesn't seem like it's been 4 years...time flies and all that...but instead, I say that it's weird.

3. My earlobes are different (from each other, not from everyone else's). One is attached and the other is unattached. I never noticed until I was about 9 or 10 years old when my aunt pointed it out. It really made 10th grade biology fun... when we were studying genetics, one of my friends pointed out to the teacher my freakish deformity unique attribute, and she proceeded to point it out to the rest of the class. Word quickly spread throughout the school, and I'll never live it down. My younger sister said she even used me as an example in her biology class, 2 years later. That teacher still teaches, so it's quite possible she's still telling people. I have an odd feeling it could come up at my class reunion (10 years next year...aaaahhhh!).

(back of the quilt, freehand quilted with flowers from the Pajama Quilter Reloaded dvd)

4. I like green vegetables more than any other color vegetable. I don't care much for corn, carrots, or cauliflower, but I love peas, brussel sprounts, okra... just about anything green.

5. I like change. I've painted every room in my house at least twice (we've only lived there 3 years). I've had two different jobs in the last 4 years (tax accountant to quilt shop owner). And we're about to move to a different state. I don't like to eat the same meal twice in a row. That sort of thing.

6. I love to read and watch movies. I love to read pretty much anything. I really like adventure/fantasy type books and movies, not weird ones like on the sci-fi channel, but more mainstream ones like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Especially those two. One of my favorite things to do is put in one of those movies (I own all three LOTR and all five Harry Potters), and do some handwork, like crocheting, embroidery, or hand sewing a binding. I'm currently re-reading the Harry Potter books... I just started #4, Goblet of Fire. I wanted to go a Halloween party as Harry Potter characters last year, in part so I could crochet us some scarves, but my husband wasn't up for it.

(binding for the quilt, cut on the bias)

7. This may come as a shock to some of you, but I don't like cats. I know as a quilter I'm supposed to have 2 or 3 crawling all over my fabric stash, but I just don't like them. They're sort of creepy and slithery, like furry little snakes. Their litter boxes stink up your house, and they seem to spend all day watching you, pretending not to care but secretly forming some sort of plot to take over the house. Everything they do seems premeditated. Remember the movie Cats and Dogs with Jeff Goldblum as the dad? Enough said. Give me a nice, dumb dog any day.

I'm not going to tag anyone, because I think I'm the last person on the planet to do this meme.

It's a gorgeous day here...wish I was outside enjoying it. My husband and I are going to dinner tonight, to a pancake feed in the morning, and ordering pizza to watch the KSU/KU game tomorrow night, which means I don't have to cook for the next 36 hours at least. Add to that some time for sewing and shopping, and it's shaping up to be a pretty good weekend.

Apology to February

After my last post, I'm sure it's no secret that I tend to get a little blue during the cold weather months. By February, the charm of icicles and snow-covered vistas has worn off, and I find myself gazing longingly at my flip-flops. I got to thinking, and it's not February's fault that the weather is frigid or that I live in Kansas. So as an apology to February, I thought of some positive things about the month. Here goes:

• Cold weather is great for using my crockpot, especially for soups.
• Valentine's Day
• Lots of time in the evenings for sewing.
• My sister was born in February.
• Driving on the ice is tricky, but I needed a new paint job on my bumper anyway.
• It's the end of football season - I get the t.v. back until August!

Okay, I'm spent. I had thought of more positives than that, but I can't remember them now. Just a little interesting fact about February... last year we had a lot of ice and snow in our area, and in October (9 months later) the hospital had a record number of babies delivered. So I guess that's what everyone around here does during bad weather that doesn't know how to sew? Never thought of sewing as birth control before...

Anyway, on to quilting. Here's another quilt I started before Christmas. This quilt was actually my mom's Christmas present, but since I was sick I didn't quite get it done in time. I did have one row done that I wrapped for her to open on Christmas Day. I finally got the borders on today, and now I just have to quilt and bind it. Piece o' cake, right? Well, borders seem to be the biggest quilting hurdle for me, so maybe the rest will go quickly. One can hope.

February sucks

In Kansas anyway. Today it's cloudy and cold, and there is about an inch or so freezing rain and sleet on the ground. It's getting kind of soupy right now, but after dark it will freeze and form a solid sheet of ice. If it's going to be cold, it should either be Christmas or snowing. Otherwise, I have no use for cold weather...bring on Spring! This weather is also irksome to me today because the bad weather is keeping customers out of the store, so no one has seen me on one of my rare good hair days. Sorry, all of that makes it sound like I'm in a very crabby mood, which I am not. I'd just be happier if the sun were shining... who wouldn't?

The up-side is that I've a full day of longarm quilting with very few distractions. Here is the quilt I just finished...
And here's the back. You can always see the quilting better on the back.

I've been practicing my feathers, so I thought I'd put all that practice to good use. I hope the customer likes it! She lives out of town, so I doubt she'll be picking it up today due to the weather.

My local quilt guild met last night, and for the program everyone brought a project to designate as a (one-month late) new year's resolution. The goal is to finish your project by February 2009 and show it at that month's meeting. It was really fun to see what everyone is working on...one person even had a project that had been started in 1981! We all had a good laugh because I was born in 1980 and that project is almost as old as I am.

Anyway, here's the project I chose.

I bought this Santa fabric and some coordinating pieces in 2005, and I've yet to finish it. So far, I've got these blocks and drawer full of wrinkled strips. I don't have to have it finished for guild until Feb. 09, but I'm hoping to have it done soon enough to use at Christmas. That should be plenty of time, but you just never know with me. You know how I don't like to finish things.

I can hardly contain myself

Are these not the coolest containers ever?! I saw the Coats & Clark ones at another vendor's booth at the OKC winter quilt show, and I knew I had to order some. I love the vintage look. I have a couple of antique Singer sewing machines in their original cabinets, and these tins look so cool next to the machines. Plus, they're just so useful. I mean, who can't use a container for fat quarters, thread, marking tools, trims... all sorts of stuff. By the way, these are available on the shop website.


And this Disney Cars tin... my nephew's birthday is next month, and he is going to flip when he sees this. I'm going to try to find some small toy tools to put in it. If I can't find any, I might just go with candy. He already has a Cars quilt, or I would roll a quilt up and stuff it inside. I'm getting excited just thinking about him getting excited.

And....what's this.... is that a border? On a quilt of mine? It certainly is. I love this quilt, and I'm determined to finish it by the end of the month. Period. Because if I don't self-impose a deadline, it will never get finished.

On that happy note, I'm off to sew more borders!

Apron-y

I promised you last week that I did some crafting over my extended blog break, so here we go. First off, I made an apron for a Christmas family gift exchange. I actually won it back, which I was quite excited about! Most of the people on that side of the family like country/farm stuff, so I used fabric from Moda's Bunkhouse line. I love the worn-looking "bandanna" prints in this line.

The pattern I used is the Four Corners apron pattern by Vanilla House Designs, which I actually mentioned here in my very first blog post! I love this pattern...I talked about why I love it in my first post. In short, it is very quick and easy, and made a perfect gift (especially since I ended up bringing it back home!).

This apron is pictured in my first blog post, but here I am wearing it at my booth at the Oklahoma City Winter Quilt Show in January. (Not my fave picture of myself...looks like it needs be stretched vertically a bit. And I've had my hair cut off shorter since then. But at least it shows what the apron looks like on an actual person).

And because just about everything is cuter in a smaller size, here's the kids version!

So cute! I especially love it in this "convenience" printed patchwork and oversized polka dot fabric by Loralie Designs. Makes me wish I had a little one to dress up in it...my niece needs to hurry up and grow into it!

I've also been trying to catch up on cutting fabric for quilts I have planned (before all my fabric is gone!). This pile is for the 2007 Kansas City Star block of the month, Borderland in Butternut and Blue. It only calls for 12 fat quarters for the blocks, but I want to have options!

I need to choose fabrics for this year's KC Star block of the month also. If you don't live in the KC area to get the newspaper (the blocks come out on the third Sunday of the month), you can buy the patterns here, or wait for the book to come out in October. Since I missed January, I think I'll wait for the book to come out...I won't get started on the quilt until then anyway!

Pajama quilting

Where does a week go? I mean, I know where mine went...I heard the flushing sound at the end of last week that cued the slow but inevitable drain of this week down the proverbial toilet. Sunday was the Superbowl, so I was at the shop in the afternoon and then watched the game that night. Monday went okay until my husband and I both came down with the stomach flu, which put me out of commission through Wednesday. Thursday.... that was just yesterday... let's see, what did I do... oh yes, scrambled to catch up from everything that doesn't get done when you're sick. Oh, and I got a mini-makeover! A quilter friend of mine sells Mary Kay, so we went to an "eyes-cream social" and ate ice cream and got eye make-up done...fun! I ordered a facial highlighting pen and a brow definer pencil. These are two items that are currently missing from my makeup repertoire (which is a very fancy word for the 4 or 5 make-up items that I actually use), but I'm very excited to get them. What a difference they make!

Sorry, that was starting to sound a lot like whining until I got to the makeover part, so let's move on to quilting. I've been using any spare moment I've had at the shop lately to longarm quilt. I'm really getting excited about longarm quilting lately. Quilting is just a fact of quilt-making that I never really considered much before. But now that I've been quilting for almost a year (eek!), I'm starting to spread my wings and experiment a bit more. I ordered Dawn Ramirez's new Pajama Quilter Reloaded DVD, and here's what I've done with it so far.


Cindy pieced this top the last time she was in the shop...before she broke her ankle. (Did I forget to mention that? Well, she did - slipped on the ice. I'm afraid I've been a bit self-absorbed lately =)
One of Dawn's basic flowers...
A flower, a ribbon, and some loops....
And more of the same. This is really just part of the basic stuff on her DVD. I really recommend this DVD if you've been wanting to learn some good freehand quilting designs. You don't need to have a longarm machine.. in fact, in the DVD she demos here designs on a whiteboard. Very easily translated to quilting on a domestic sewing machine.

I've got so much more to learn. As Dawn would say, practice and chocolate will get me there eventually. Sounds like a good plan for this evening, actually....

Frenzied

That's how I'm feeling right now. With Christmas looming not-so-far in the distance, I'm longarm quilting like crazy and trying to stay on top of my own projects. It doesn't help that I keep starting new ones...I just can't help myself! Every time we get in a new shipment of fabric or a new magazine, I dream up yet another thing to occupy my time. So my goal for the rest of the month is to finish up what I've got before I move on to anything else. We'll see how that goes.

Here's what is going on with all of the red and white circles I appliqued last weekend.

This is my very first stack-n-whack quilt. The stack-n-whack blocks were suprisingly easy to put together. If you look too closely, you'll see that they don't line up perfectly, but you can't tell from a normal viewing distance =). I've got the fabric up on the shop's website, with the kit for this quilt coming soon.

Last week I had to make an impromptu trip to Wichita to have my longarm machine serviced, and I just happened to need some ribbon, so I stopped in Micheal's. While I was there, I took a spin through the yarn aisles and found Lion's new organic cotton yarn. This stuff is sooo soft. There are all kinds of free projects on the Lion website, but I decided to start another afghan.

The pattern is simple enough. It's single crochet, working in the back loops. It's going to be so snuggly when it's finished. However, the yarn was $6.99/skein, and it doesn't go very far. So this one will be snuggly but small. Maybe another afghan for my sister's newest addition to the family (any day now!). The quilt in the background is a Turning Twenty that was done in the Scrappy Dots line from Judy Rothermel...still one of my favorites. I love polka dots. In fact, I just got some new ones in the other day that are a-dorable...more on that in my next post.

Free piecing

Here's something I finally got a chance to start on. I think I've mentioned before that I'm taking an online class from Tonya on free piecing. I haven't quite decided exactly what I'm going to make, but one of the first assignments was just to practice making letters. So I started with my name. What do you think?

If you want to try this technique, there are lots of tutorials at Tonya's pages at Quiltville.com.