It's the cat's house, I just live here.

Almost done (thank goodness)

2012-01-31T16:10:00.001-05:00

It's been a long time since I worked this hard on something I liked this little. The New Year's Eve mystery quilt top is almost finished. Two borders to go. This morning I cut out the borders and binding and joined the backing so when I attach that second border I can fold it up and get it out of my sight.

Why, you ask?

I have no idea, but I have grown to detest the quilt. Husband likes it for the purple and green colors and all the white areas (he likes bright colors and light designs) but I'm thoroughly sick of the fabrics and the construction. It started when I decided to make two kinds of blocks and cut up some of the subunits to add that darker purple square on the sides of them. I had thought about also using a narrow purple sashing between the blocks but the amount of effort involved put me off. Besides it makes a nicer pattern when the blocks adjoin like this.

But now I just want it done. When it's completed and quilted I may be able to look at it and say "that's interesting" but for now - yuck. However I felt about it I wasn't going to make it another UFO and clutter up the closet with it. Just get it finished.

New Year's Day mystery quilts......

2012-01-30T09:27:00.001-05:00

.....uh, you say it's almost February? Well, yes, I'm late finishing them. But the tops are done finally.

The first one is about 50 x 70, a good size for a charity quilt. I usually don't like quilts with light borders - they just seem to peter out rather than finishing - but this one was made by the directions and I didn't have enough of the green print that inspired the color scheme to make another border - it's the fabric in the bottom right corner square of the border. So, it's done, well or ill. The binding will be dark rose.

I frankly don't know what do to with this one. It's about 60 x 60. Husband liked it because of the bright colors, but I'm firmly on the fence. I love the border fabric, though. That's where the colors used in the design came from. I've seen other versions and they are more successful done in two color or monochrome. There's one in blue/tan especially on the Quiltbug site that's lovely. Mine - well, it's more like "Where are my sunglasses!"

I thought I was being fairly daring to pick the blue batik for the background instead of a trusty WOW print. The ivory turned out to the my accent in the corners and centers. That might have been better with a very dark color or bright lime green.

Quiltbug is having a Superbowl Sunday mystery and I'm going to do it again because their quilts are usually a good size for a kid's quilt. I have the fabrics picked out and the pre-cutting finished.

As for that purple and green New Year's Eve mystery, I'm still plugging along. Can't seem to get any enthusiasm for finishing it because the colors don't work for me. But Husband likes it because it's bright. I'm seeing a trend here!

Other than finishing the mystery quilts, I want to get a few more half-done projects out of the way before I am tempted to do anything else. There's a project on my design wall that was started during the Orca Bay mystery and needs only 11 blocks to be done, so that's next. Then I will force myself to complete assembling the NYE mystery quilt. After that, perhaps more cheddar bow tie blocks. Anything to get some of those project boxes off my table.

Border decision

2012-01-20T12:36:00.001-05:00

Not sewn on yet, but you get the idea. It's kinda cute. At the very least, it's a new cat bed quilt. Navy binding, I think.

Oh, there's the NYE mystery quilt there on the floor, waiting to be finished......I need to put together the last 15 blocks after lunch.

A cautionary tale

2012-01-20T08:55:00.001-05:00

I heard advertisements yesterday for a news program which was going to air an interview with the second Mrs. Newt Gingrich (as opposed to the current, third Mrs. Newt Gingrich). I didn't watch it. It all sounded too familiar.

When I was a kid I took piano lessons from a local lady who also taught a pretty little blond girl named Kathy. Kathy was enough younger than I that I really didn't know her well, but one of my mom's best friends was a relative of her mother's. As the years passed, mom heard from her friend about Kathy's life since the friend saw the girl's family often on family and social occasions. During the 1980's Kathy went to work as the secretary of a well-off man in a nearby town who owned a heavy equipment business. He wasn't Warren Buffett rich, but quite comfortable.

After a while mom's friend reported that the man had divorced his wife and married Kathy after having an extramarital affair with her. Kathy was still ensconced in the business office, presumably to keep an eye on her husband. They had quite a life, even taking the private jet down to the Caribbean to his vacation home. Mom's friend even went with them once and described the plush accommodations

Later, mom found out that the man had divorced Kathy for another fling he was involved with. When her friend told us, mom and I just rolled our eyes. The man had already proved that he wasn't above cheating on his wife when he married Kathy; she shouldn't have been surprised when the scenario was repeated with her. What convinced her that she should expect more faithful treatment from the philanderer we couldn't fathom.

Amusing myself with a couple of charm packs

2012-01-20T01:15:00.000-05:00

Nothing special, just a table topper. I'll join the rows and add borders in the morning. If I had been thinking further ahead I would have saved all the red charm squares to make the flying geese. I might do this one again in a slightly larger scale (these hourglass blocks are 3"; the inside of the quilt will be 36" square). I would like to use all red for the flying geese and autumnal colors for the hourglass blocks.

OR....ooh, I just had a brain flash. I bought a piece of this rose background paisley from Moda's "Luna Notte" recently. I pulled out a stack of coordinating pieces from my stash, rose to maroon, tan, brown and blues but hadn't decided on a pattern. How about rose/red for the flying geese, tan/brown/blue for the hourglass blocks,this print for the center squares in the intersections and the border? Cool!.

Rethinking (or thinking too much)

2012-01-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

I have dreamed up so many setting solutions for these blocks it's making me dizzy. I had decided on straight set, with sashing and decided to make two types of blocks, with and without the side squares in the second print. Then I made up several possible settings on point, with and without sashing. At first I didn't like the look where the print triangles intersected because the print is busy and it looked chaotic. But now with several rows laid out it doesn't bother me as much. I also bandied about whether to sash it in green or purple. And what do to with the corner half triangles - pieced or solid fabric? I can't make up my mind. Here is the EQ representation of my latest suggestion:

Compare with my purple sashed option:

Or this version:

Or green sashing:

Someone needs to take me by the shoulders and say "Make that one!"

Another wrinkly, thread-y finish

2012-01-14T15:53:00.001-05:00

It was laid out considerably flatter and neater until the cat got to it.

This one will be a gift later this year.

What a relief to finish all these half-done projects. What's left? A quilt using the Brackman "Lately Arrived from London" collection I'm calling "When My Ship Comes In", an Orange Crush variation that needs borders, those New Year's Eve and New Year Day mysteries, and adding the final border to my Orca Bay mystery. Of course I also have the Brackman Civil War Sampler blocks to set but I haven't decided what to do with them yet. And, I cut out a Blue Ridge Beauty during the Quiltville mystery that's about 1/4 pieced. And the Cheddar Challenge Bowtie blocks. Whew! Not as caught up as I thought.

And next.....

2012-01-11T17:30:00.000-05:00

You can see the sample border section on the upper right. This one is going to be a gift.

I spent the afternoon piecing together a backing for the other quilt from all my scraps. It used every square inch I had left, even though I thought I had plenty of leftovers and had actually bought generously for this purpose. Amazing how much goes into a backing.

Another one done

2012-01-11T12:46:00.001-05:00

It's wrinkly, it's thread-y, but it's done. Now to make the binding and decide on a backing. Perhaps all the scraps from the fabrics when joined together will be large enough. Hope so, because I wasn't bargaining on buying backing. Alternately, I have a green batik that might work.

Finish-it-up mode

2012-01-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

I'm in the finishing mood today. So many of my projects are languishing with only a few steps left to be done, so I pulled out one and started sewing today. I'm adding the final border to an album block quilt made of a Moda Laundry Basket Quilts collection. I'll post a picture as soon as I'm done.

I also need to put the New Year's Eve mystery quilt to bed that I started. I wasn't happy with the design as it related to my fabric choices so I'm going to rework it. Here's what was designed, and here's what I finally came up with:

Quite a bit different! I added sashing and chopped the side pieces apart to add another fabric square. When I finally get it done it will be very cute (and VERY PURPLE).

Not much progress on the cheddar challenge

2012-01-10T08:59:00.001-05:00

Ah, bow ties. When last we spoke of such things back in August, I had posted a photo showing these:

I made more, but became sidetracked with finishing mystery quilts, making Christmas gifts, and playing with new goodies. When the new Quiltville mystery was announced, I scurried around my sewing room neatly boxing my projects so the pieces wouldn't get lost. So Cheddar Bow Ties got its own labeled box, with an EQ visualization of the finished quilt:

Inside of which were the cheddar fabric, the proposed backing fabric, the navy and cheddar binding fabric, my finished blocks and blocks-in-progress, and cut squares for the rest:

Here are baggies of completed blocks and blocks waitin' to be a-bornin':

Cut squares for other blocks:

And finally my completed blocks, all 170 of them neatly pinned into stacks of 10:

I am loath to unpin the stacks and show all of them simply because it's a lot of work! But, you get the idea. All the centers are Civil War repro, mostly from Barbara Brackman's lovely collections. The solid cheddar is a Moda solid, and is a new favorite of mine. Now that the mystery is mostly done and I've caught up on other projects (which doesn't immunize me from starting more!) I need to get a-bowing. I only have 392 more to make that king size quilt!

Yes? No? Maybe?

2012-01-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

OK, I need your opinion. Here's what I'm thinking about doing to expand my border on Orca Bay:

That fabric is where the color scheme came from and what is going on the backing. I would love my quilt to be bigger and this is one way to do it. I kinda like it, but am probably too close to the quilt to be subjective. So what do you think?

It's done (yay!)

2012-01-08T12:07:00.001-05:00

It's finally done! I'm in the middle of stay-stitching the edge but had to stop for a while because I'm tired of wrestling this stretchy quilt. I must say, this is a pretty design although a difficult sewing job because of all those bias edges and string blocks. But, it's done!

Pretty much done, to be exactly honest. I'm still deciding whether to add a narrow gold border on the outside or perhaps a solid border of the fabric which inspired the color scheme. It would be nice if the quilt were a little bigger. This is a decision that can be postponed for now. I'll make the backing and binding and put it away for a while.

And, inspired by the colors, the name of the quilt is "Butterscotch Drops, Starlight Mints and Cinnamon Red Hots".

Now for the hard part. . .

2012-01-05T17:56:00.000-05:00

. . .putting the whole quilt together.

I finished replacing the center squares in the gold stars and laid out the quilt center in the floor. You can see there in the top left corner how much room I have to move my sewing chair! I need to get it assembled quickly and out of the way. I like my substitution. I brings the green into the red areas and the red into the green areas and balances the design, at least in my view. I am so eager to finish this quilt!

What to work on next? Well, I have both a New Year's Eve and a New Year's Day mystery quilt to complete - all I got done on each on the day was assembling the blocks. Then, I can try to finish a small quilt I started making of scraps from Mods's Fig Tree designer lines so I can get that off my design wall. Of course, I have other unfinished projects like assembling the Civil War sampler quilt and the EQ sampler quilt. And the Blue Ridge Beauty I started during Orca Bay. And the quilt my husband wants made out of cat fabrics. And the Cheddar bow tie blocks that have been languishing in their box. And. . .and, well a lot. Quiltwise, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. And I haven't even mentioned the black and white fabric I bought yesterday at Joann's for a black/white/lime green Orange Crush variation that is inspired by a lovely quilt I saw on Vivian's blog, Sew At Home On Pine Ridge. Take a look at the quilt in her header and see if you don't agree that it's the most striking version of Orange Crush you've ever seen. Bravo, Vivian!

I have to get some finishes logged somehow. It's getting ridiculous. I need to quit reading blogs and getting all this inspiration.

99.9% certain. . .

2012-01-05T10:30:00.000-05:00

. . .but still playing with possibilities.

After changing out the center squares of enough gold stars to make another layout, I tested the modification:

and I like it, I like it a lot.

BUT

I decided to check out a change that was suggested by several commenters (I think they meant it as a substitute to changing out the center squares, but I checked it with the modified gold stars) and got this:

Interesting, very interesting.

Which do YOU like, the first or the second? I still have some time before I will be committing to a design because I still have 18 centers to pick out and resew. What's the verdict?

Green centers

2012-01-01T15:50:00.001-05:00

I cut some green 2 1/2" squares and plopped them down in the center of the gold stars. See? The green centers tie in with the string blocks. I still don't know if I'm up for removing all the red centers from 28 blocks and adding the green ones. Still thinking about it.

Addendum: I've decided to replace the centers of the gold stars with green squares. Six done so far, 22 to go. It's tedious, but I like the results.

Going into analysis

2012-01-01T09:40:00.002-05:00

It's time to over-analyze a quilt design!

I'm sure you're dying to -- not.

Well, here's the situation: I printed the final clue for Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery quilt last night before I went to bed and I am conflicted (oh, when does this NOT happen, ha, ha!). Since it was already 1 a.m. and I wasn't going to start sewing at that time of night but was curious how my quilt would look, I laid out a 3 x 3 arrangement on the floor and took a picture:

And my initial reaction was - that doesn't work.

It's the little green string squares, which are perfectly adorable by themselves but sit there in the quilt like they fell from the sky. Was it the color? I tried darker green, dark or light blue, brown, orange, red, whatever. Nope. The closest thing that worked was shirting squares in the same fabrics as in the blocks:

I liked that; two color quilts are traditional and this was an honest example. I missed the motion of the string blocks, but figured that I could piece shirting string blocks if I really wanted them. But the larger question was, what was wrong in the original design?

I opened up EQ this morning and mocked up the blocks, and then started playing. And it immediately jumped out at me. I didn't like the green string blocks in place because they didn't relate to a single thing in the rest of the quilt. Green wasn't used anywhere else, not in the Ohio Star blocks, not in the borders. I had kept waiting through the mystery instructions for the third color to appear again and was puzzled when it didn't. Now I know my subconscious quilt designer was saying that you have to repeat a color or an element in the quilt to tie it into the design. The green just sits there, as if to say "Where am I?"

If the green had been used for the centers of the predominantly gold Ohio Stars, with red in the center of the predominantly shirting Stars, it gives the green string blocks a reason to BE, a tie between the elements of the quilt. Here's an EQ mock-up:

See? The eye pops back and forth between the green strings and the green star centers and ties the whole thing together. I even added green binding to bring the color out to the edge of the quilt. This isn't just a problem because I used green. When I saw her quilt on the blog, the blue squares seemed to stick out at me but I hadn't analyzed why. Now I know.

There are a couple of solutions. One, I can unpick all those gold star blocks and add green centers - ugh! Or I can take the green out and make a two color quilt, which is quite cute:

I could even bring the red out into the inner border, but it might be better with shirtings.

Oh, what to do?

Addendum: I decided to change the centers in the gold stars to green squares. I'm doing it now. Boy, that's a lot of seam picking!

(Note to Bonnie fans: OK, you can hate me if you want. It's my opinion. You can love your quilt, but right now I'm not quite loving mine. I adore the string flying geese and the star blocks, it's just those small string blocks that are giving me fits.)

The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt

2011-12-27T10:01:00.000-05:00

After several years owning "The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt" book but not making the blocks, I have been seduced into joining Izazette's group by the thought of a lovely quilt made all of such small parts. The EQ BOM this year was 6" blocks and showed me that I can sew accurately enough to do them. I'll be starting the quilt in January. In preparation I've been thumbing through the book looking at the blocks. One, I have to admit, stopped me cold:

Look at it. Heavens, just look at it! Those pieced chevron bars, the triangles, the diagonal seams. All in a 6", YES 6 INCH, block. Yipes, there are 57 patches in that block. This looks like a job for foundation paper piecing.

I have found several other instances that give me pause. The author is fond of 5 x 5 blocks, which are difficult to parse out of a 6" square, and require cutting on 1/16" intervals that is often not very accurate. And she really seems to love those bias diagonal seams. This is going to be an accuracy workout.

And the mystery quilt looks like this....

2011-12-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

It's supposed to look like the bow on a package, and it's cute. I may add another outer border of the red print before I quilt it but for now, in the "Later" drawer it goes!

Mysterious times

2011-12-24T09:10:00.001-05:00

Oh, I'm living in mysterious times here. There's the Quiltville mystery, of course, and then there's Quiltbug's Christmas Eve mystery, a New Year's Eve mystery on the quilt-talk group and a New Year's Day mystery on Planet Patchwork. Not to mention Barbara Brackman's Civil War sampler, with a surprise every Saturday. How, oh how do I get myself committed to this many mysteries?

I used to be leery of them because I did a few and didn't much like the results. But Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mysteries are always wonderful, and I have enjoyed the last few mysteries I did in the quilt magazines, so I thought it would be entertaining to jump right in and do the two over the New Year's weekend since we're not going anywhere and won't have company. Plus, now that I have a sewing room my stitchery doesn't interfere with my cooking space in the kitchen. I can close the door and block off all the mess. It's all good.

I stumbled on the Christmas Eve mystery in an advertising email from Quiltbug. I have done their simple mysteries before and used them for charity quilts, and this one was a small table topper in Christmas colors, so why not? I can always use another decoration quilt for next year. They started posting instructions yesterday for cutting and color selection, and put up the first instruction for making oodles of HSTs (which had to be trimmed to size, yuck - I even did that on the kitchen table while monitoring supper cooking). Now the first instruction of the day has been posted and I'm finished, along with my Civil War block.

Time for breakfast. And then, making a pumpkin pie, sugar-free pumpkin custard for me, and haystacks. Do you make haystacks? They're simplicity itself, with just butterscotch pieces, pecans and those crunchy chow mein noodles. But they're addictive. Husband asked for some this year, and it will be hard to mix them up without sampling the goods. Dratted diabetes!

Quiltville mystery step 6

2011-12-23T00:58:00.000-05:00

...and a day early. Thank you, Bonnie Hunter, for posting the next step of the mystery quilt on Thursday so we could get our sewing done before the Christmas Eve crazies hit. And here it is the result of my work today:

I've got some ideas where those red string block triangles and gold/shirting triangles made in previous steps are going to go, but I mostly hope that the next step incorporates some of the third color, which is green in my case. The red and gold are beautiful, but I was initially thinking about a red/green quilt and would like a bit more green in the mix. In the meantime a comment from my step 5 photo that the golds reminded the viewer of butterscotch has given me a name for this quilt, with its buttery golds, reds and light greens: Butterscotch and Peppermints.

Orca catch-up

2011-12-20T19:25:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post my picture of Step 5 of the Quiltville mystery when I finished on Saturday. Here it is:

Still haven't got a clue what the design could be. You did good, Bonnie! No guessing this one!

Don't try this at home

2011-12-17T12:34:00.001-05:00

After producing untold dozens of cookies this week for everyone else that I couldn't eat, I decided to do an experiment this morning and bake some spritz cookies with Splenda that I could actually have. Admittedly, I would have to count the carb grams in my diabetic diet, and each spritz cookie would have 3 grams of carbs so it wasn't inconsequential, but it seemed a worthwhile experiment to have some Christmas goodies that were diabetic-friendly.

I settled on spritz cookies because almost every other recipe that I had called for at least some brown sugar, and you can't easily swap white sugar/white sugar substitute for brown sugar. It's a moisture thing.

In case you don't make them, a spritz cookie is a formed cookie made by extruding a dough through a cookie press which consists of sugar, shortening, egg, flour, a bit of salt and baking powder, and whatever flavoring you want - vanilla, orange extract, peppermint extract, etc. They are simplicity itself, and are a lovely sandy textured butter cookie. I have eaten them since I was a wee small child because Mom always made them at Christmas. I remember tossing them for our dog to catch in midair when I was tiny.

Anyway, I got out all the ingredients and fired up the mixer, cringing all the while at making more mess in the kitchen considering all the washing-up I had done on Wednesday and Thursday. As I mixed the dough, substituting Splenda for sugar one-to-one as the package directed, it seemed that the dough was a bit dry, but with a little mixing it fluffed up and formed up nicely, and went through the press just fine. I popped the first sheet of cookies in the oven and waited.

After ten minutes they came out delicately browned and looking exactly right. I let them cool a minute and carefully moved them to a cooling rack. After a few more minute of waiting, I popped one in my mouth.

YUCK!

First off, they didn't taste sweet at all. What happened to - you can bake with Splenda? I have made pumpkin custard with Splenda throughout the year and it turns out fine - not sugar-sweet, but recognizably dessert-like. These cookies tasted like baked flour balls. There was not a hint of the vanilla, no sweetness, no butteriness. Just crumbly flour. The cookies were so dry that they immediately broke apart into a lumpy powder in your mouth that was extremely unpleasant.

In short, they were a complete failure.

What did I do wrong? I am convinced that I didn't do anything, that it was the Splenda. Sugar has characteristics that make it absorb and hold moisture in food. If you watch "Good Eats" with Alton Brown, you know that in baking he classifies sugar with the wet ingredients in the recipe. Evidently Splenda doesn't do that effectively. And it didn't provide enough sweetness in the recipe to counteract the starchy flour. So, you got flour balls, not cookies. Not going to try that again.

If anyone has baked with Splenda and had good results, I would love to know what I could have done differently.

What's Christmas without a Bumble?

2011-12-16T17:46:00.005-05:00

My latest Christmas tree ornament acquisition:

I have a pretty traditional looking tree until you start looking closely. Witness this post from a past December. How many other people have an ornament that looks like a circular saw? Or a sock monkey? Or a radio that actually plays? I had to get Bumble to complement my Rudolph the red nosed reindeer with a nose that lights up.

Count your blessings

2011-12-16T13:17:00.001-05:00

A member of one of my Yahoo quilting groups is going through some very tough medical issues. Some of the group have banded together to make a quilt for her, and I continue to marvel at the love and selflessness manifested by a group of people who have probably never met face to face, and how readily they commit to supporting one of their own. It proves again what I have seen many times - quilters are some of the most generous and thoughtful people you would ever want to meet.

This also prompts me to sit down and evaluate just how lucky I am. Sure, I have health issues (and my husband has some that are more difficult to live with) but we are sitting here warm, dry, well fed, safe and relatively financially secure. And that's a lot of blessings to be grateful for.

As Christmas approaches, those of us that are on the lucky side of the coin toss should give thanks that we are OK. These sorts of things get buried in the back of our thoughts during the holiday hubbub, but we should never lose sight of all the good in our lives and be cognizant of how fleeting our good fortune can be.

Cookie-palooza

2011-12-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

Oh, it's that time of year again when I bake myself into a stupor assembling cookie boxes for neighbors and such. Not family because they don't live close to me, although I am going to make a batch of peanut butter fudge to mail to my brother-in-law tomorrow. But the people on my street get cookies, my hairdresser and her partner, the mailman, the trashmen, the lawn guy, etc, etc. Lots of cookies.

I have blogged about this before so I won't retread that ground, except to say that this year, like last, was different because with the diabetes I can't partake of the cookies. However, I want to know how they turned out, so I passed on lunch and blew my carb allotment on tasting. They're all pretty good.

Some, not all, of them

Just how many cookies did I bake? Lord, I have no idea. I lost count. But there are chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal, snickerdoodles (I would make them just for the name, but they are SO GOOD), spritz, orange, and coconut. Multiple batches of each - the dining table is covered. The only drawback is the smell of sugar and baked goods is about to make me barf. I'm making a pizza for dinner because I need spicy to counteract all this sweet.

After dinner I will spread out large pieces of waxed paper and portion out bags of each kind, then load the cookie boxes and write the cards. I can do this while "White Christmas" is on TV. Isn't that just the quintessential holiday evening?

What not to buy for your wife for Christmas?

2011-12-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

This article cracked me up. It said that household appliances were not a good gift for Christmas because no woman wants to be reminded that you think of her as the person who does the chores around the house. Well, not every woman is a looking for gold and diamonds under the Christmas tree.

I once got a really nice Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas. I was tickled beyond belief because I had lusted after this expensive mixer for ages and was happy to receive it. However, the reaction from the women at work was universally "Yuck! What a miserable gift!" I was mystified. I loved my mixer. It wasn't a gift that said "Gee, here's something to make you work even harder around the house." It said "Here's a Kitchenaid mixer because you wanted one and you love to bake."

I refuse to believe that most women are so mercenary that they wouldn't appreciate a practical gift. On the other hand, I spent my working life as an engineer surrounded by 99% men and maybe their opinions have rubbed off! Or maybe I'm just naturally practical myself.

If anyone is looking for a person to give a carpet cleaner for Christmas, I promise I would appreciate it!

More Orca Bay

2011-12-12T08:15:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post a picture of the step 3 and 4 blocks for Quiltville's Orca Bay Mystery quilt when they were done, so here they are:

Aren't those red string triangles for step 4 awfully cute?

And there are more gold and shirting bits too, from step 3:

We also had these parts from steps 1 and 2:

I still haven't a clue where this design is going! This is fun!

No surprises here

2011-12-08T19:28:00.001-05:00

An ironic side effect of using EQ to design your quilts: Remember when you didn't have a way to visualize your designs other than perhaps graph paper sketches? Remember when you started to join your blocks together and got your first glimpse of the completed quilt design, and what a kick it was, watching your quilt come to life.

Well, with EQ, it can be a case of "been there, done that". Unfortunately. Here's an example:

An EQ generated image of the quilt I made for a Christmas present:

An actual photo of the quilt:

See what I mean? Definitely no surprises there. Of course, the possibility of making a complete dog of a quilt has been vastly diminished, but after you draw and visualize the quilt, actually making it may become anti-climactic.

In some ways, the thrill is gone.

This is a little sad.

There's a Christmas in there somewhere......

2011-12-05T11:55:00.002-05:00

I have evaded, I have avoided, but now there is no escape. First I had to unpack my suitcase from my trip last week and do the laundry. Then I was catching up on the Quiltville mystery, the Civil War block of the week, the EQ block of the month. Then I was putting borders on a nearly completed project. Then I was making a pot roast for dinner and couldn't leave the kitchen.

Then I ran out of excuses. It's time to decorate for Christmas.

Up on the ladder I went in the garage storage closet, dragging boxes down on my head, packing them into the kitchen and piling them on the table, until I had this:

Oh good grief.

I don't know why I dread this so much every year. Putting up the tree is easier, in some ways, than the Christmas village I did last weekend before I left to visit Mom. Here's a photo, although I don't know why I bothered to take a new picture since it looks the same every year:

Now, THAT takes a while. If you blow up the photo you can see all the little stuff that takes so long to unpack and place in the scenes - the people, the trees, the animals, the miscellaneous stuff like the lighthouse sign and the bird bath. It simply takes FOREVER to get all that stuff off the shelves and unbox the parts, to put away my husband's antique radios from the shelves in the living room and put out the bases on which the display is arranged, to string the lighting power cords. Of course, it's lovely when it's done and I would miss it dreadfully if it wasn't installed each Christmas, but the work, oh my, the work....

Compared to this, how hard is an artificial tree? Why do I cringe so at the job? Maybe it's the breakability factor. We have blown glass ornaments, which is a deadly combination when put in the hands of a perennial klutz. Or the going around and around and around to string the tinsel until you are dizzy. Or - who knows? I only am sure that I put it off until I can't any more.

All my quilt projects are caught up (except that I saw a great tessellated design done in blue and neutrals in the last quilt magazine I received, one that got me pulling blue fabrics and dreaming about it this morning - but I digress). I have leftover pot roast for dinner, I have no other tasks at hand, it's time to trim the tree.

Watch my back. I'm going in.

Another Orca Bay step completed

2011-11-25T13:12:00.001-05:00

Bonnie Hunter must program her mystery steps on a timer to appear automatically early on Friday. I never expected step 2 to be up and ready at 7 this morning. I was up at 7 only because a hungry cat had camped out on my chest, and it's really hard to breathe with a 12 lb weight pressing down on your lungs. So since I was up to feed Molly, I decided to go ahead and check for step 2 of the mystery quilt. Lo and behold, there it was. A quick trip to the printer and I had the instructions in my hot little hands. Then I started reading.
Oh. Oh. String blocks. Not my favorite but I decided that I WOULD make them and WOULD use them this time, unlike the last mystery where I spent all that time assembling them and then designed an alternate block instead. Those string blocks are still sitting in a stack in my sewing room, waiting for a home.

But these were only 3.5" square, and just 72 of them, and they were so cute, I decided to jump on it. I've got a busy week coming up. Tomorrow and Sunday I have to put up the Christmas decorations, then finish shopping and wrap gifts Monday and Tuesday, make sure there are groceries and such laid in for my husband for the rest of the week, and go out of town Wednesday through Friday to see my Mom. The best thing to do would be to knock out these blocks this morning.

So that's what I did. I grabbed a little breakfast, dressed in my comfy knit pants and started sewing. I don't have a string bin like many of Bonnie's fans because I don't use string blocks, so I had to first cut strips. Then, foundation papers from the leftover doodle pads from the last mystery. Finally I was ready to go.

I was amazed how quickly they went together. Even pulling the papers off the backs wasn't much of a job on the small blocks. And here they are:

So who's afraid of string blocks? Not me.

But.......there are more red string blocks coming. How many, I wonder?

Just can't take a break

2011-11-20T21:09:00.002-05:00

Like a good little obsessive-compulsive, as soon as I finished step one of the Quiltville mystery, I went casting about for a project that I could work on between steps. Although I had several groups of blocks completed and packed away, I didn't want to get into joining rows and assembling a quilt top because I didn't want to clutter up the floor with a block layout. I needed a project piecing blocks that I could pack away easily when the next mystery step was released on Friday. So, I decided to start making the blocks for a Blue Ridge Beauty from Bonnie Hunter's "Leaders and Enders" book. This quilt uses 6" blocks made from two HSTs and two four patches.

Arranged and colored in different ways it makes several traditional patterns, including Jacob's Ladder. This quilt will need about 200 6" blocks. This was a quilt that I had planned to make for some time since I found a beautiful blue paisley at Joann's. The paisley and a single neutral would be used for the HSTs and the four patch colors and neutrals would be scrappy. Joann's also had a matching striped fabric that will be the border.

So I jumped into piecing and already have made 400 four patches. After dinner I made 40 HSTs and assembled 20 blocks to test out the pattern. Here is the sample:

I think it's going to be gorgeous (of course, I'm a little biased!).

Zoom zoom!

2011-11-18T20:31:00.000-05:00

Step 1 of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery, Orca Bay, is up and I'm finished! 224 little quarter square triangle blocks in gold and shirtings. And I mean LITTLE - 2 1/2", they finish at 2". The lady likes to work small!

It sounded daunting but once I got started it went quickly. I even made a few extra because I have done stupid things before like losing pieces and accidentally throwing them away. So I have spares.

One thing I did this morning that I should have gotten out of the way earlier was to cut fat quarters of all the golds I used today so in the future I don't have to drag out a bunch of yardage at every step to cut just a few pieces of each. I had 21 golds and even more shirtings. The shirtings were in fat quarters already but most of the golds were in pieces of a yard or more. A fat quarter of each was more than adequate, and so much easier to handle. Before the next step I need to do that for my reds and greens.

New blocks using "Lately Arrived from London"

2011-11-15T08:54:00.000-05:00

I can't remember if I've posted about these blocks before. Several months ago I picked up some charm packs of Barbara Brackman's collection for Moda, "Lately Arrived from London" when I visited the rebuilt quilt shop in Georgia that had been destroyed by the spring tornadoes. I wanted to be sure they had enough business to keep going. Anyway, I loved the colors in the collection and designed a block I could make from those 5" squares.

It's not my favorite kind of quilt sewing because, using the charm squares as a basis, you end up trimming every subunit to size so it's going slowly. You've probably done blocks from charm squares before. The small HSTs are made by drawing diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines on pairs of charm squares, sewing on either side of the diagonal lines, cutting them apart on all the lines and trimming them to 2" square. You get eight HSTs from a pair of charm squares. Then you make the hourglass blocks with two pairs of charm squares, 2 dark, 1 background and 1 light. You make two sets of HSTs, pair them up, sew on either side of a diagonal line and cut them apart. You get four hourglass blocks that can be trimmed to 3.5" square.

I have 24 blocks so far and need 41. Anyway, here are some of the blocks:

and here is a EQ mock-up of the design. I had to go back and buy some yardage for the background, border and star points after I decided on the design. You wouldn't believe how many possible settings I came up with in EQ before deciding on this one!

Playing on the name of the collection, I'm calling the quilt "When My Ship Comes In". In construction, this was a Carrie Nelson type project. Ms. Nelson has published many patterns that start with charm packs or layer cakes, and I've made quite a few of them, but usually employing yardage or fat quarters so I could cut the patches exactly to size and avoid all this trimming. The trimming makes me crazy!

Counting down the days

2011-11-14T19:51:00.000-05:00

I'm all a-quiver in anticipation of the new Quiltville mystery. Am I ready?

Fabric:

Check!
Clean cutting table?

Check!
Rulers?

Check!
Specialty rulers?

Check!
Fresh cutting blade?

Check!
Plenty of bobbins and big ol' spool of thread?

Check!
Storage boxes and trays for pieces?

Check!
Favorite sewing machine repaired and rarin' to go?

Check!
New Rowenta iron?

Check!

I'm all ready! I can't wait until Friday!

Clearing the decks for the Quiltville mystery

2011-11-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

Friday is Q day - the day Quiltville's Bonnie Hunter launches her fall mystery quilt. In preparation I've been sewing like a demon, finishing sets of blocks that will be assembled later when their designs are finalized. There's the set of 25 pinwheel blocks:

and the 36 album blocks:

now all done and neatly boxed and labeled for completion after the mystery quilt is finished. I've even straightened my sewing room and cleaned off my work table, and emptied storage boxes to hold pieces during the mystery quilt's progress. I still have to load a stack of bobbins and fish my Easy Angle and Companion Angle rulers out of the storage cabinet. Then, I'll be ready.

I'm thinking of not sewing any more until Friday to be able to start fresh. Can I do that? Doubt it!

Morning visitor

2011-11-13T16:32:00.002-05:00

At 9 o'clock this morning I measured out a cup of dry cat food and went outside to fill hobo kitty's dish. The food has been disappearing at a regular rate but we haven't seen the little black cat for almost a week. I had to assume that it was visiting the food dish so stealthily that we never saw it eat. Usually, I only caught a glimpse of it by accident, entering or leaving the back yard, crossing the street or lounging on the front porch of my neighbor's empty house. Sometimes I would glance out the back door on the way through the den and find her speedily having a meal. As soon as she had finished eating she was off again. But it had been a week since either my husband or myself had seen her. We are a bit concerned but in the end know that we can't control the stray cat's fate. Hobo kitty belongs only to itself.

Anyway, as I cleaned and filled the food and water dishes I heard "MEOW!", loud and quite near. Startled, I looked around. Hobo kitty had never meowed at me. It had had lengthy conversations with my cat at the sliding door, but had never to my knowledge made a noise to a human.

"MEOW!" There it was again. I scanned the yard, and stepped over to look behind the azalea border around the patio. There, in the grass behind the nandina bush, was the tuxedo cat I had seen several days before. He (and I verified that it was a he) saw me and plunged into a meow-fest, snaking through the yard and across the patio in a sinuous path that never got quite up to my location. "Hey!" he was saying, "I notice you have cat food there. I could use a little cat food!"

At one point he got himself so wound up he worked his way over to me and gave me a head butt and rub on my leg. Just as quickly, he skittered away as if he had scared himself with his temerity. He continued to beg but wouldn't approach the food dish so I scooped up a palm full of kibble and laid it on the sidewalk by my feet. Tuxedo was on it in a flash and wolfed it down. Then he flew away again to the middle of the back yard to meow at me plaintively. I retrieved another handful of food and put it on the sidewalk again. Again Tuxedo came right up to me and ate it all. I repeated the action another time, but afterward he turned down a fourth handful and headed across the backyard. He meowed at me a few more times and then jumped the back fence and was gone.

This seemed like a cat that had been around people in his life. Had to have been around people, in fact, because cats only meow at humans, not at other cats. (That's an interesting fact my husband came across in his reading. Cats have a vocabulary of many sounds they use among their own kind, but the classic meow only happens to humans, like a special dialect they have devised to communicate with us.) He's terribly skittish, probably from living a tough life outside, but could definitely be tamed.

So now I may have two cats to help. I'm not sure if Tuxedo is the one that's been eating Hobo kitty's food for the last week or so. I'm not sure if Hobo is still around, or in fact if it's still alive. I have to admit that I went across the street to the empty house and searched under all the bushes, half afraid I would find a little black kitty's body. But there wasn't any sign of it. It may have left or may just be eating at night when we can't see its visits. In any case, I will continue to put out cat food, now that I may have two mouths to feed through the winter. And maybe Tuxedo will like the kitty house I made. Nothing has set foot in it yet, not even an opossum.

My baby's back

2011-11-12T19:15:00.000-05:00

Hooray! My Juki TL98E is back from the repair shop! It's humming along like nothing ever happened. The timing had gotten out of adjustment, so it was an easy fix. And it got a thorough cleaning and oiling, so it's good as new. Not cheap - they're minimum charge for a fix is $98 - ouch - but great to have it home. I used it this afternoon putting together the backing for my QCA mystery quilt, the large one. And I mean LARGE. 100" x 100". I tried to photograph it and had to push back the furniture in the living room and lay it out on the floor. And then couldn't get a good picture. Here is the best one:

And an enlargement showing a portion of the sashing and border.

I'm very happy with it.

Pinwheels

2011-11-11T14:44:00.001-05:00

Can't work on my Album blocks until my ordered background fabric arrives. Don't want to work on my QCA mystery quilt borders. Don't have the patience to fiddle with the small blocks on my quilt using Moda's "Lately Arrived from London". What to do? Start something new, of course. Don't know where I'm going with this, just making pinwheel blocks. They come from a book that I looked at over at Chattanooga Quilts, the new local shop, and I can't remember the author. Apologies to the creator of the pattern. Love the blocks.

The bottom three blocks might be rejects because the contrast in the center pinwheel pieces is wonky. The fabric is from a jelly roll of Moda "Etchings". I tried to use it all regardless of how well I thought it would work, and some strips just didn't have enough color/contrast from the backgrounds.

Family resemblance

2011-11-09T00:34:00.001-05:00

These blocks were in the planning stage when the QCA mystery started. If you look at the blocks in the previous posts from those mystery quilts I think you'll see a family resemblance. That's why I was able to guess the mystery quilt pattern just a couple of steps into the process. The diagonal blocks were already imprinted in my brain. I have 11 total made and 9 more to go before I start considering settings. Sashing? Borders? I don't know yet. I've been digging through the stash closet but haven't found anything I love yet.

I should have been finishing my other mystery quilt today. I only have one long seam through the center to sew and the borders to attach, but simply didn't feel like dragging a huge quilt back and forth from the sewing table to the ironing board so I worked on blocks instead. Tomorrow I must knuckle down and get it done.

QCA mystery quilt completed

2011-11-07T19:43:00.002-05:00

Terrible picture, I had to thumbtack the quilt top to the wall! But aren't those colors yummy?

And then there is this one - made from the leftover blocks of my large quilt that is still under construction (picture coming later).

I think I got my money's worth out of this pattern.

This sewing machine is making me crazy

2011-11-03T15:58:00.002-04:00

I swear, if I weren't in a time crunch, I would put my quilt projects away and wait for my Juki to get back from the repair shop. But I'm trying to make a quilt for Mom for Christmas and I need to get the top put together pronto so I can wheedle my longarm quilter into doing it soon.

By the way, don't worry about Mom seeing this post and spoiling her Christmas surprise. Mom is resolutely anti-computer, has no interest in learning how to use one and frankly can't see why anyone would. I once tried to explain about my blog to her and could watch her eyes glaze over as I spoke. So no one in my family is gonna see this!

Anyway, I'm trying to use my alternate sewing machine to put this quilt together. I wrote about it yesterday. It's a nice machine if you were making clothes or drapes or something, but for quilting -pfffft. Not so much. There's the strangely shaped 1/4" foot, first of all.

See that strange angle on the left side? It catches your seam allowances ever time. EVERY TIME. And pulls the fabric sideways so your seam's not accurate. You have to slow to a crawl and use a stylus to flatten every seam as you inch over it. And see the shape of the foot? It's 1/4" wide at the front, all right, but not the whole length, so you can't use a seam guide.

The needle adjusts from left position to center position, but not further to the right. You have to manually reposition it by hitting a button after you turn the machine on. And when you turn it off, it defaults back to the left position. Which is really not good if you're using a foot that requires a center needle. Do you have any idea how easy it is to turn the machine on, forget to hit that darned button and bring your needle down on the side of the presser foot? Far too easy.

The machine has the world's smallest bobbin. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped to fill it. And though it's a front drop-in kind it doesn't fill in the machine. You have to take it out and fill it on top of the machine like other sorts. If so, why make it a drop-in? Who knows?

And the machine stops in the needle down position. Which you can't change. You have to push a button to raise the needle. And you have to push the button before you raise the presser foot, because the button doesn't work when the presser foot is up. Why? Who knows?

It has a variable speed control built in (also can't be overridden) so that when you step on the pedal it starts VEEERRRRRY SLOOOOOWLY and then speeds up suddenly. The machine is insane.

And I cannot find any oiling ports on the whole sewing machine. The manual (which is in six languages, all mixed in together, how's that for irritating) doesn't talk about lubricating the machine. I have never heard of a sewing machine you don't oil. Is that something new? I figure this model has metal parts moving on metal parts like every other sewing machine in the world, why doesn't it need oiling? It SOUNDS like it wants to be oiled.

Finally, it has the world's dimmest built in light. I had to drag my OTT lamp over to the sewing table and position it about 6" above the sewing surface to be able to see anything.

I want my Juki back!

Who are YOU? (and other miscellany)

2011-11-02T14:28:00.001-04:00

Someone new strolled through my back garden this morning. And who are you, tuxedo cat? There must be a cat network, and I'm on it!

Also, I wanted to show the inspiration for my color selections for the Quiltville mystery coming up this month. I have had this fabric for a while and didn't find a use until now. It will be in the reds in the quilt and probably the backing:

See the greens and golds in the print? I just love it. That became this fabric collection:

I ordered a few more dark golds from Thousands of Bolts this morning so I can pull some of the more yellow pieces. I'm still wavering about making the greens light or dark. I will wait until they first show up in the instructions to decide.

Finally, a photo to show why I'm having a hard time with an accurate 1/4" using my dressmaking Juki machine. Here is the 1/4" foot:

Notice that the foot is only 1/4" wide at the very front and is larger back at the needle position, behind the narrow front of the foot. So it's harder to align the fabric seam allowance right at the needle. And see that angled part on the left side? It catches seam allowances and pulls the fabric off-kilter. Plus, since the feed dogs are so wide and it's a front load bobbin, there is nowhere to put a seam guide on the plate. The Juki HZL-E70 is very nice, but it wasn't built for quilters.

Bereft (don't worry, it's not too bad)

2011-11-02T09:46:00.004-04:00

I walk into the room and nothing is there. The table is empty. There are no cords snaking behind the drapes, tripping up my attempts to close them every night. There is no cover sitting askew where little kitty feet tried to move it.

My Juki is in the shop.

ARRRRRRGH!

Yesterday, it starting skipping stitches and making funny noises when it sewed. I tried changing the bobbin, cleaning it, oiling it, changing the needle, changing the thread spool, adjusting the tension. Nothing worked. Stitch-stitch-stitch-stitch-stitch-SKIP-clunk-stitch.

So, knowing that the Quiltville mystery is coming up on the 18th and I have to finish my QCA mystery quilts by then to get them into contention for Viewer's Choice, I packed up the sewing machine and lugged it down to the local repair shop,. I've never used them before - never HAD to - so with some trepidation I handed my baby over to the lady and winced. Then I took the lonely, empty carrier home.

I felt as if I had taken my cat to the vet!

Husband says not to worry, it's probably just out of adjustment. It's ten years old, after all, and I sew every day. He thinks there's no other Juki out there that age that has logged as many hours as mine. (Oh, but honey, you don't know quilters.....) He's probably right. It's probably not anything major. It was still sewing a beautiful stitch except for that occasional SKIP which broke my heart. The clunk came after the stitch didn't connect, so probably the shuttle timing is off. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm using my fancy Juki dressmaking machine with all the stitches. It's harder to get a good accurate 1/4" seam and the small throat is more crowded to deal with when wrestling long pieces. I don't like the shape of the 1/4" foot and the light on it is not very bright so it was more difficult to sew last night. I started on a small quilt using the leftover QCA mystery blocks to get my footing, but it just didn't feel the same.

I miss you, TL98E. The room's so empty without you.

More on the mystery quilt

2011-11-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

Just a little more info. I would really like your input.
Here are fabrics I pulled that match Bonnie Hunter's color scheme:

And here are my choices:

The neutrals would be the same shirtings. Is this going to work, or do they need to be darker?

New Quiltville mystery quilt

2011-11-01T12:35:00.001-04:00

Oh boy, it's that time again - when Bonnie Hunter starts a fall mystery quilt. I scampered to the computer this morning like a kid to the Christmas tree to see her post about color selections, and while I love what she picked, I may change them for my quilt.

The design is called Orca Bay and is based on a beautiful picture she took while in Alaska. Her colors are red, blue, black and neutrals. While I think her selections are lovely, I am ambivalent about making another dark colored quilt because my husband likes brighter, lighter selections. He doesn't appreciate all the brown I use and I fear that he will feel the same way about black. Truth told, I'm not a person who makes many quilts with black either. But Mom and I have been discussing the large number of red and green antique quilts you see and I started leaning toward making a red and green quilt this time. So, I substituted the green for the blue and bright golds for the black and came up with this:

I have no idea if it will work, I just have to trust and believe. And remember that Bonnie says "No whining allowed!".

On other fronts, I made a house for the feral cat we have been feeding. Since the weather started getting colder my husband has been worrying that it doesn't have a warm place to sleep. We actually have no idea where it goes most of the day and night. It will appear in the back yard several times a day to eat, and we will spot it around the neighborhood, but it keeps to itself. That is probably what has kept it safe all summer, that it doesn't trust people and is scared of cars. I don't want it to be too cosy with people, that's how stray kitties come to harm.

Anyway, we decided to make little Hobo (that's what I call it) a house. It had to be waterproof and warm and be able to shelter on the patio under the eaves. I decided to use a plastic storage box with a locking lid. I cut out a doorway with a saber saw - badly, it turned out because the plastic splinters easily. I had to cover the edges of the cutout with layers of packing tape to shield the cat from the rough edges and it looks really tacky, but it was all I could do. Then, I made a pad for the bottom and a liner for the sides and bottom to keep it warmer. I had heavy fusible interfacing and leftover fabric, fleece and batting, so this was easy.

She may love it, or she may never set foot in it. I may have made the world's fanciest opossum house. I don't know, but at least we have offered a warm spot for her to make it through the winter. We can't control her choices but I feel good that we made them better.

So, without further ado, I give you - Hobo House:

Please note the color coordinated box, fabric and fleece. I went overboard, but what the heck - it was fun.

Man, I wish I were in college again (even if I would never want to start over nowadays)

2011-10-27T14:49:00.003-04:00

Have you ever read something that is so outside of your life experience that your mouth practically falls open in amazement? I'm in the middle of that situation and it's disquieting, to say the least. I picked up a free Kindle excerpt from a book recently, a chapter from "Change.edu" by Andrew Rosen, which is talking about the current higher education system. The chapter I got for free is entitled "Club College: Why So Many Colleges Look Like Resorts".

Now, some time ago, I blogged about a Yahoo article on the changes in college dormitories since my college days. See HERE for that blog. Well, in the last several years, things seem to have gotten even more out of hand. The author takes High Point University in North Carolina as an example. Let's just say that his description of that university's facilities makes me want to go back to school again - and live on campus. What the money is being spent on seems to be all cosmetic - and has little to do with the academic program. Rather, it is applied toward spiffing up the luxe aesthetics of the campus and turning the on-campus housing into something that you couldn't even get at a Bahamas resort.

The thrust of his argument is that the expenditure of money at these schools - and it's a lot of money - is going very wrong, a proposition that I agree with. But I thought of another side effect of these cushy resort-style campuses.

Say you're 21 or 22 years old and have just spent 4 or 5 years getting a degree at one of these high-concept, luxurious resort campuses. Mommy and Daddy have spared no expense (and we're talking about $30,000 to $40,000 a year) to make your college years just swell. You've lived in a dormitory which rivals a Sandals resort and have been pampered within an inch of your life. Then you graduate, and settle down into the real world with a thump.

Maybe you're lucky enough to get a job in these tough times. Or maybe you graduated a few years ago and have managed to hang on to your employment. So now you want to find somewhere to live. You might rent, or you might buy a home. You start looking at what's available for the money you have (or the banks were until recently willing to loan you) - and that's when you hit the reality wall.

I happen to be a fan of watching HGTV, at least some of the programs. Three of them that I catch occasionally are "Property Virgins", "My First Place" and "For Rent". The first two follow first time home buyers and the third deals with negotiating a tough rental market in an expensive city. The common thread in all three is the ridiculously unattainable level of amenities that these newbies expect in their accommodations, right out of the gate. You watch them pronounce an 1800 sq. ft. house "just too small" for two people. REALLY? You see them pout and whine when there aren't hardwood floors, granite countertops, posh baths with jetted soaking tubs (I almost dropped my Diet Coke when one sweetie declaimed than she couldn't live without a bathtub - a shower was just too declasse I guess) and the ubiquitous stainless steel appliances. The last one always puts me on the floor laughing because I bought appliances several years ago and most stainless steel ones are black ones with a thin stainless skin on the door fronts, for which you pay major dollars. Just 'cause it's shiny doesn't make it better.

The point being, these precious coddled youngsters have no concept of working for the luxuries, they want them NOW. Have these colleges contributed to that? Have their egos been stroked to such an extent that it has never occurred to them you can't have everything in the world when you're a spoiled 24 year old? Is it the colleges, the parents, the culture, what?

Most of the residents at this college would be appalled at the dorm rooms and residence halls where I spent several years of my college days, astounded at the apartment in the 100 year old house (antique, but not in a good way) where I froze my butt off for one nasty winter (no insulation and windows that leaked like a sieve) and probably faint dead away at the idea that I finished college living in a mobile home (set in a trailer park and everything) because Dad and I decided it was a cheaper way to live and bought a used 1965 model 10'x52' trailer - avocado carpet and all. Pretty it wasn't, but it housed me and got me through school. Said trailer followed us to our first job and after a bit of remodeling and painting worked for hubby and me through a year of employment so we could save for a house.

I just have to ask: Is this why an astonishing percentage of young people are so bloomin' spoiled anymore?

Quilter's Club of America mystery quilt

2011-10-07T08:48:00.000-04:00

Just finished step 3 of the Quilter's Club of America website mystery quilt. Steps 1 and 2 were fabric selection and cutting so these are the first stitches sewn. The quilt is built on jelly roll strips and background fabric and so far we've just joined rectangles and squares. No guesses so far. No big challenges.

I'm eager for the new Quiltville mystery in November. Bonnie Hunter designs a mystery quilt you can sink your teeth into. She challenges you every step of the way to get outside of your comfort zone and the results are wonderful. Having said that, though.........please, Bonnie, no string blocks this time. I don't much like them, and still haven't figured out what to do with the ones I made for Roll Roll Cotton Boll and didn't use.

Things just aren't made like they used to be

2011-10-04T10:24:00.000-04:00

In the mid 1990's, I bought a T-fal steam iron. I loved that iron. It was cheap, it steamed like a demon and was nice and light and maneuverable. Alas, last fall it quit heating up. I assume that the thermostat burned out. However, I had gotten over 15 years from it, a nice long run, and used it every single day, so I consigned it to the trash with thanks and went out in search of a new iron.

Rowenta irons seemed to be the best made (and, gulp, the most expensive) that I found in town. I didn't want to order an iron because I wanted to pick it up and assess the grip and the weight. I decided on a Rowenta Focus that I bought at the local Bed Bath and Beyond. I brought it home, started using it and loved it.

However ------- a couple of days ago it started spitting water droplets when you turned it from vertical to horizontal. It had never done that before. The droplets came out of the holes in the sole plate so I was at a loss to fix the problem. I had had a lot of cheap irons in the past which did this, but the Rowenta never did. Then, I picked it up two days ago and found a soggy spot on the ironing board cover. I couldn't figure out where the water was seeping out so I put a wash cloth under it to absorb the water while I pondered the problem.

Yesterday I went over to press some quilt blocks and when I picked up the iron, water poured out of the base around the electric cord. EEEEEK! I quickly unplugged the iron. I found that when you tipped the iron just a little past vertical with the sole plate pointing upward instead of downward the water in the tank all ran out. Evidently the water tank cracked and finally let go completely. Rats. I was back in the iron shopping business. After only one year.

I knew that the selection in town was poor, so I went back to Bed Bath and Beyond to look at the Rowentas. I know, I know - once burned twice shy. But really, there wasn't a lot to choose from. I ended up buying another Focus. This was as much as I was willing to pay for an iron, but I wanted one that really steamed and heated up quickly, so Rowenta was the best choice. Maybe I just got a lemon before; Let's see if this one lasts longer.

I did love the model names for the Rowenta irons, though. I could have bought a "Steamium". Isn't that a great name for an iron?

Let's twist again. . .

2011-09-29T22:12:00.001-04:00

This is a pattern called "Strip Twist" from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville website. At least, these are the blocks for the pattern - not joined together yet. I just cut these strips out yesterday morning. The blocks went together like wildfire. Joining the rows always takes longer for me. The colors are dark red, pink/rose, gray, grayed green and tan, with shirtings for the neutrals. I like the muted look of the palette. It was inspired by a photo on the Quiltville group of this quilt made using a collection called Azalea Trails.

I'm waiting on a brain burst for border ideas.

Weeding

2011-09-23T12:18:00.002-04:00

......No, not in the garden. I'm talking about weeding out selections for a scrap quilt.

I found a pattern online that I liked and decided that a rust print in my stash would be perfect for the outer border, and as a jumping off point for selecting fabrics. Of course, it would be scrappy - but the question is, how scrappy is too scrappy?

At first this was my selection. The rust focus print is on the top left, and the rust and gold next to it will be used in the pieced sashing and borders. I didn't photograph the mottled cream background fabric:

But then I got to thinking: is it TOO MUCH? I actually never thought I'd say that because scrappy is my "thing". But the more I looked at the stack of fabric and studied the photograph it seemed that the whole was waaaaay more than the parts, so to speak. It was screaming, not conversing with the viewer.

So I spread out the stack on the table and started thinning out to those fabrics which most seemed to relate to the outer border print. And I got it down to this:

A much more controlled selection which still picks up the rust/gold/olive/brown/tan palette of the print. It had more room to breathe. It had tonal range and variety in the prints, but none of the prints fought with the focus fabric. I was much happier with it.

This is a real admission for a "more is more" kind of gal.

Quilter's Club of America has a new mystery

2011-09-16T12:28:00.001-04:00

Quilter's Club of America online has started a new mystery. It's called "Worms and Jelly Rolls" and the pattern is by Debbie Caffrey. It might be worth joining the free membership if you like mysteries. It's intriguing. The first set of instructions is fabric requirements, and it consists of 2 1/2" strips, background, sashing, border and binding. So it's very jelly roll friendly. I spent the morning pawing through the closet and picking out 38 fabrics for the strips, 8 white on whites for the background, a gold tone on tone print for the sashing, and an indigo/red/gold/brown print for the border. Binding and backing are up in the air right now. I cut many more strips than required for the 62" x 75" mystery because I want to make it larger. No more steps until the 30th. Boo Hoo!
Anyway, I started out with these fabrics:

But ended up with these strips because I couldn't NOT make it very scrappy indeed!

Here's hoping it works out!

In or out?

2011-09-06T09:08:00.000-04:00

I have something more to consider about my Quiltmaker's Newsletter mystery quilt assembly. Since my colors differ from those chosen by the magazine, I have some leeway how I lay out the blocks in the outer border. Initially, I thought I would do it like this, which is more like the magazine's choice:

with the darker blue on the inside. But I tried it the other way round:

and I like that too. It separates the dark pink and the dark blue and points up the border somehow. On the other hand, I like how the light blue relates to the blues in the outer border in the first example. I'll have to assemble the top out to that border and then decide. In the meantime I can join the strips for all the borders and finish the center medallion, which is growing on me, by the way. If I had known that the dark blue would be the background for the blocks surrounding the compass medallion I would have chosen a different fabric, because I think it kind of sticks out. But that's one of those "don't cry over spilt milk" situations because I don't have the inclination to remake those blocks.

Oh, the terrors of mystery quilts!

2011-09-03T20:07:00.001-04:00

The new issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine arrived today. It contained the final installment of their mystery quilt, so as soon as possible after dinner I scrambled into the sewing room, pushed back the rows of the diamond log cabin and laid out all the pieces. I was on pins and needles whether it would work in my fabric choices.

There were a couple of surprises. The yellows aren't as prominent as I thought they would be. True, there will be an outside border of the yellow print and there's yellow in the center but it doesn't really shine out. The blues are a lot brighter than I figured and it makes the quilt darker. I guess it's OK.

This is a smaller quilt, 74 inches square, and I'm debating whether to try to add another border and enlarge it or just let it be what it is. I can put it on the foot of the bed or over the back of the couch.

This quilt was a lot of work and I'm kind of on the fence about it. What do you think? I'll post an actual picture when it's completed but I have to box it up and finish that diamond log cabin first. The primary reason I wanted to take a picture was that with all the color substitutions I did I had a hard time correlating it with the instructions and figuring out how it went together.

Diamond log cabin

2011-09-01T13:08:00.001-04:00

As soon as I finished the last block I threw them down on the sewing room floor for a photo. Man on man oh man this thing is WORK! This probably isn't the final arrangement and there are borders to cut yet but this is pretty much how it will look. It's cool, but mercy, I won't do another one. Too much stretchy for one soul to take.

You know how you can assembly line piece log cabin blocks, laying each new block on a long strip as you feed them through the machine? Not with this one, at least if you expect them to come out the same size in the end. I had to make wonky trapezoid paper patterns for each piece in the blocks, and even stranger shaped ones for the border half diamonds, and trace them onto strips as I made each block. I had sort of planned to make the design edge to edge but when it got to 80" square, I said "I'm done!"

The hobo kitty

2011-09-01T11:47:00.000-04:00

As you can see, the little stray kitty is still quite at home in my back garden. Throughout the day I will glance outside and see it, either in my garden or across the street at the vacant house. It likes to sleep on the porch. Other times, though, we have no idea where it goes.

I think it lounges behind the plants there because of the faint hope that a dumb bird will wander by on the way to the birdbath. It doesn't spend the whole day with us but comes by several times to eat and get a drink of water. Sometimes the kitty takes a break during its meal and relaxes in the shade. We put out a cup of dry kibble a day and it usually cleans the plate. We are in danger of having the world's only tubby feral cat! Come to think of it, this cat has quite the life. Food in regular and ample supply and none of that pesky petting stuff!

I have started to refer to it as Hobo Kitty, or Hobo for short!

Strange things come to mind when you're reading blogs

2011-08-30T09:28:00.002-04:00

A blogger I read frequently just bought a new car with GPS. It reminded me of a radio program I heard on NPR about people relying on GPS for navigation that ended badly. Myself, I have seen routes proposed by a GPS that truly go "round the barn" when straighter line routes or easier roads are available. GPS proposed to send my doctor onto a two lane toll road trip through eastern Kentucky on his way from Tennessee to Charleston WV hauling a huge trailer, because that way was a few miles shorter than staying on the interstate. Not smart.  I'm from there, so I hastened to convince him to stay on I-75 and I-64, and forget the distance saved. Maneuvering a trailer through the southern Appalachians wasn't for the novice.

In the worst case, people have gone out for day trips in the Mohave desert using their GPS to navigate on old mining roads and gotten very lost because the roads are not maintained anymore and some of them on the GPS maps don't even exist. (Why, oh why? I went through the Mohave once and saw all I will ever need to see of that place!) Some of these people have DIED. The radio told a heartbreaking story of a mom and her small son who got lost and were out in the desert for days before being found. She survived but the little boy died.

My only brush with the desert happened when we drove from Phoenix into Nevada in the mid 1990's. We had maps but I decided I should check with the hotel concierge before we left to determine the best way to go. She very sternly lectured me, an Eastern tenderfoot, about driving in the desert. Be sure there was a full tank of gasoline before you left. Check your car over, even the rental car. Take water with you, even if you were never planning to get off four lane paved roads. You never know what the rental car might do and you have to have water with you, either for an overheated car or an overheated person. If you don't know where you're going, don't drive at night. Get an early start. She made me know that this was serious business. It doesn't sound like the place for day trippers.

We didn't have any problems except for a monumental traffic jam at construction on the Boulder Dam road, which left us sitting in excruciating heat for hours without moving. Brutal. And, when we were on the move we were afraid to use the air conditioning too much because the  rental car ran very hot. So we rolled down the windows and "enjoyed" the 110 degree breeze.

On the way back to Arizona we saw a tour bus broken down on the side of the road in the Mohave, the driver talking on his radio (probably begging for a replacement bus to be delivered, pronto) and the poor passengers huddled in the shade at the side of the bus, sweating in the heat. Poor travelers.

On another subject, a Japanese blogger wrote about her school system having a geiger counter to survey the playgrounds for radiation contamination.  The kindergarten wanted to buy a geiger counter of its own to use more frequently. My, my. This led me on a search for geiger counters online, where I found a site that sells them exclusively (a sign of the times, indeed). The big boxy ones I was used to seeing at the nuclear plant where I worked cost $1200. I thought they would have been much more expensive. And they were selling like hotcakes, to normal people, not businesses or institutions.   Imagine a situation where having a household geiger counter is normal. My heart goes out to you, people of Japan, still wrestling with these terrible occurences.

I have GOT to stop looking at quilt patterns online!

2011-08-29T23:34:00.003-04:00

This is a Moda pattern for the Barbara Brackman group Morris & Company:

I love it. Not in those colors, however. I have a nice indigo print with reds and browns that will go well for the outer border, a dark blue for the rust bits, a darker gold for the inner pinwheels and a collection of blues, reds, browns, tans and golds from my stash for the stars and outer pinwheels that pick up the colors in the indigo print.

If I've gone to the trouble of pulling the fabrics from the closet you know I'm going to make the quilt soon. But how many projects in planning does that make? 6? 10?

I've got to stop looking at patterns.

P.S. I considered using my other Morris group (the blue/green/purple fat quarters) for this quilt, and they would work beautifully, but husband liked the other design for those fabrics. So I'm making that one for him.

Ripped off? Maybe - grrrrrrr!

2011-08-29T18:58:00.006-04:00

Over 10 years ago I bought my husband a beautiful gold crucifix and chain for Christmas. He had worn several silver crosses on silver chains throughout the years but the silver turned black and corroded, and the chains broke, so I thought that a nice 14K gold one would be a "keeper" that he could wear forever. He wore the crucifix on its gold rope chain, but that chain ended up snagging on his shirt collars and breaking several times, so in 2003 I researched chain types and decided that a rolo chain was the best style for him - nice smooth links that would not catch on his clothes, and strong. His old rope chain was 24 inches long, but he wanted a longer chain to wear under his shirt that would be easier to take on and off over his head, although the only time he took it off was when I cut his hair. (I was always paranoid I would snip the chain while trimming his hairline).

But, longer rolo chains were hard to find. Eventually, I located a 14k 30 inch long one on a jeweler's website. I had not dealt with them before but I researched the store and couldn't find any complaints. I ordered it and it was very nice. He has worn it constantly since then, until last week when a link broke. No problem, I thought, I'll just take it to the local jeweler that I trust and have it repaired.

Or so I thought. I went back to pick up the chain only to be told that they couldn't repair it because it wasn't solid gold. The gentleman informed me that the repairman tried to solder the broken link and it didn't act like it was 14k. They had sort-of repaired it but thought it wasn't going to hold.

Not solid gold? Oh, really? I asked him for his loupe and took a close look at the repaired link, and it was a mess. The solder joint was uneven and the little link was half burned through. It surely wouldn't take any stress in that shape. But the question remained, is it the fault of the chain or the repairman? Did he just do a lousy solder job and try to make excuses, or was I sold an incorrectly marketed gold chain? Is it really not solid gold? I have always trusted this jeweler but now I'm wondering if I should. Is it just a scam to sell me another chain?

This is a bad time to replace a piece of gold jewelry. Have you checked on the price of gold lately? It's astronomical. I went to a reputable jewelry website that we have used in the past and priced a 30 inch 14 k 2.3 mm rolo chain, nearly identical to his chain. $350. And Sarraf's has exceptionally good prices. Other retailers wanted up to $500 for the same chain. Ouch. But I want to get his chain fixed or buy him a new one. He is so used to wearing that crucifix that I'm sure it feels weird to not have the chain around his neck. I suggested buying a gold-filled chain in the meantime but he has the same problem with electroplated and gold-filled jewelry that I do - body chemistry so acidic that it actually discolors and eats off the plating. I found that out years ago. I can't even wear pierced earrings unless they are solid gold - an expensive problem.

I have located a jeweler in town that can test the chain and determine its composition. We'll run over there tomorrow and find out the news - good or bad. Or maybe they could repair it even if it's not solid gold. Husband said it didn't have to be the world's prettiest solder repair, just be strong.

ADDENDUM: I just dropped the chain off at another jeweler who says it is indeed 14k and it will be repaired by 4 p.m. Shortly thereafter an email will be sent to the owner of the first jewelry store who lied to me and messed up the repair informing them that they have lost a long-time customer because of their actions. Looks like I can't trust them anymore.

Fabric or design? (A "the chicken or the egg?" question.)

2011-08-28T09:23:00.001-04:00

Which inspires you first - the fabric or the design? Do you fall in love with a fabric and then have to figure out what to do with it, or do you canvass the shops with a design in hand?

I just bought a fat quarter collection that prompted me to ponder this thought. I was prowling Ebay in search of a Moda fabric from a couple of years ago when I came across a 34 piece fat quarter group of Moda's Morris Tapestry by Barbara Brackman. Now, I haven't been actively looking at the online stores because I was trying to cut down my fabric purchases. The only reason I was searching for the original Moda piece was because I didn't have enough in my stash to finish a project. But there they were, 34 lovelies just begging me to buy, beautiful blues and purples and greens, accented with a bit of aqua and gold.

But I couldn't splurge without a project in mind. I simply couldn't let myself buy more fabric to join the already burgeoning shelves in my sewing room without a plan in place. So I fired up EQ, downloaded the swatches from Moda (by the way, a GREAT thing, to be able to import images of all the fabrics in a collection) and started fiddling around.

I remembered a design from a Carrie Nelson book I have that I always thought was pretty but didn't like her choice of fabrics. So I grabbed that book, sketched out the blocks and started coloring in the patches. It didn't take long before I had a color scheme figured out. And here it is:

Of course, that necessitated buying more yardage for the border and binding! The outer border is wonky because I'm trying to decide whether to put the ribbon design fabric lengthwise or crosswise. Usually I would orient the design along the length of the border but I may get crazy and do it the other way.

All these blues, purples and greens look so fresh after the autumn and Christmas colors in my last projects. Almost spring-like. Too bad that it's not spring! It's a strange combination of summer and early fall outside. It's still 100 degrees (103 two days ago) but leaves are starting to drop from sheer heat exhaustion and drought. The word from the weatherman is that our fall won't be as pretty because of the dryness of the summer. It hasn't rained at my house in 30 days. But in my sewing room, there will be flowers blooming.

The shadow in my garden

2011-08-25T10:30:00.002-04:00

A month or so ago I began to see a black cat around the neighborhood. At first I thought it was my neighbor Marilyn's cat, but soon realized that this one had shorter hair and was much smaller than her pet. It slunk around the area, walking up Marilyn's driveway, appearing around the house across the street, sitting by the swimming pool at the house up the hill. It was never apparent where the little cat belonged.

And then one day, it appeared on my back patio, lying on the top step against the sliding door glass. It was a brutally hot and dry day, one in a string of them that wilted plants and tired out animals. I thought it was just enjoying the shade and the coolness under the eaves of my house. Then my husband and I took a better look at the poor animal. It was so thin you could count every rib. Its fur was dry and brittle. It had a scab on the back of one ear where it had tangled with another cat or animal. It was in bad shape.

It was starving to death.

When it saw us inside the door, it retreated a little bit, but stood its ground looking at us steadily. It was asking for help, for even a feral cat knows in direst need to hunt for a sympathetic person. And we had to try to help it.

I got two disposable plastic dishes and took a scoop of Molly's cat food and a pan of water out to the patio by the steps.  In a few minutes it was back, voraciously eating and drinking. Molly circled around inside the door, looking at the cat intently. She probably hadn't seen another kitty since her encounter with the stray cat a few years ago. Molly didn't know what to make of the new creature out on the patio. When the stray saw Molly, she arched, puffed and growled. My timid Molly ran around in circles, hair standing on end and tail out to full bottle brush status, confused and intimidated. It was like she was saying "What's the matter? What's the matter? Why is that cat so RUDE?" Finally, the stray disappeared and everyone calmed down.

Since then, we've continued to feed it and see it once or twice a day. It's a true feral, deathly scared of people and never socialized. It has filled out and its coat is now shiny black. It's also grown, because the poor thing was probably only 4 months old or so when we first saw it, just an adolescent, and completely unready to face life on its own.  I have seen it try to hunt and it's an absolute novice.  It had not been able to feed itself, and had probably been on the move for some time, looking for a place to live. Who knows how far it had traveled or what became of its mother and littermates.

For the last few weeks we have settled into a routine. Every morning after breakfast I put out water and food. By 10 o'clock, the stray has had a meal and a drink and wanders around the back yard for a bit. Sometimes it lies in the shade of the bushes. Sometimes it makes an unsuccessful attempt at catching a bird. All the backyard wildlife holds it completely in contempt; the birds don't even leave when it arrives for a meal. They know that this cat has no hunting skills and they are probably safe. Later in the day it will visit again and finish off the food. Who knows where it goes for the rest of the day. Some days, it will nap on the porch of the unoccupied house across the street. Generally, it is invisible as a shadow.

I continue to refer to it as "it" because I don't know its sex. My husband thinks it's a female, which breaks my heart because soon it will be grown and there will be kittens, which presages a hard life for all concerned. The life expectancy for feral cats is very short, and the mortality rate for feral kittens is high. And we can't support a whole colony of feral cats in the neighborhood.

But we weren't going to sit still for any poor animal starving to death at our back door. We know that it might not even make it through the winter, poor thing. I have begun to refer to it as Hobo Kitty, or Hobo, after what my husband once called it, but he steadfastly refuses to name it and personalize it because he knows that to get too attached will only lead to heartbreak.

So the little black shadow continues to slink through my garden, watching me with wary golden eyes, and I feed it and worry, and know that there probably won't be a good ending to this. It is far too wild to be caught, and even if it were apprehended and taken to the shelter, this cat is not pet material because it was never socialized as a kitten.  A trip to the shelter would be a death sentence in my town, because they don't keep unadoptable animals.

Soon it will start to get colder, and then what will it do? I am going to make a shelter on the back patio for it to provide soft warm bedding and a windbreak for when winter comes, but I'm not sure it will feel secure enough to use it. That's all we can do.

The shadow in my garden walks alone and keeps its own counsel.

Plaid loveliness

2011-08-23T20:34:00.000-04:00

I have to just hope that the recipient of this gift isn't reading my blog! Didn't the plaid quilt turn out wonderfully? I'm very pleased with it.

I've been working on some diamond log cabin blocks that I cut out a long time ago and got frustrated with, mostly because they were cut from jelly rolls and the stretchiness of the cross grain strips was making the blocks difficult to assemble without distortion. I wanted to mock up the design in EQ and decide on borders but can't for the life of me figure out how, or even IF, you can make non-rectangular blocks like these in EQ6. Does anyone have any idea how to make 60 degree angle diamond blocks in EQ?

Kindle-ing my interest in reading

2011-08-21T19:08:00.001-04:00

My birthday present is getting a real workout. Husband bought me a third generation, wi-fi enabled Kindle e-reader, and I just love it. I have already churned through eight books since my birthday in mid July. Now, I'm already a heavy reader, but this is exceptional, I think, even for me!

I was worried about the screen on the Kindle; I can get eyestrain looking at the computer screen for long periods of time and hoped that the e-reader had one that was easy to look at. I shouldn't have worried. It's like looking at a page in a book. The fonts are clear and the display doesn't glare. You can easily adjust the size of the fonts so I don't have to use my reading glasses. And, reading is less tiring when the text is displayed in a narrower column like on the screen. It's wonderful, really.

And I'm pretty happy so far with the availability of books. I have run into several authors that are not in Kindle format, but there are a good number of public domain books that are, and of course a lot of new books come out in Kindle versions when they're published. I wish the new books were a bit cheaper; there is so little cost in making them into the Kindle format they should sell for substantially less than the paper version and they don't. The newly published books are running about $10 or a little less each. I need to watch out that I don't overspend.

But I love digging up old free books. I've downloaded Trollope, Jerome K, Jerome, E. F. Benson, E. M. Delafield, Conan Doyle, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, among others. I just wish that the novels of Angela Thirkell, Barbara Pym and more by Delafield were available. ( In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of an Anglophile, at least in my reading.)

The recent newly published books I've read are a history of the British involvement in the Civil War, an account of the lives of Ambassador Dodd and his family in pre-war Nazi Germany (his daughter was a real handful) and a fascinating study of the generation just now hitting the age of employment call "Generation Me"; it's interesting to read a psychologist's take on these kids and compare it with my experiences with the new college grads at work before I retired. I also got a completely indexed and searchable Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which is very handy.

And not to mention getting my weekly New Yorker magazine in a format that won't clutter up the den. I'm in reader's heaven.

Too much.....

2011-08-18T23:17:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you get an idea and get too enthusiastic about it before you think things through. Or you mock up a design on EQ and it looks fine, so you go ahead and cut out your fabric, but when you make a few blocks it's a disaster. I'm in trouble here. The EQ model looked fine. (Thanks, by the way, to Moda for supplying .jpg files of their collections that can be imported into EQ. It's a great help, although I don't think anything could have saved me from this mess.)

I had a fat quarter collection of Halloween fabrics that I picked up on sale last year. At the same time I bought some yardage of one of the light background prints, the only one available. I thought it would work even though the dots were very contrast-y. I was going to make a quilt with a simple block. I liked the double hourglass I used in the small Christmas quilt so I enlarged it, and cut the fabric and the fat quarters into 2 1/2" strips to assemble the blocks.

Well, here's what I have when I made a few test blocks:

I just don't know. Is it too much? The light fabric is sooooo strong. This would be better with a different light fabric but I already have cut out all this and made 8 blocks, and I don't have extra of the darks to scrap these blocks and start over. I may have blown it and wasted the fabric.

I have a bunch of 2 1/2" x 10" and 2 1/2" x 5 1/4" rectangles of lights and darks. You make the blocks by sewing a light small to the center of one edge of a dark large, and a dark small to the center of one edge of a light large, make two of each and use the Companion Angle ruler to cut out your triangles from these pieces. If I don't make this I guess I can salvage the unused strips and cut out squares or bricks but there would be so much waste.

Am I in a pickle, or should I just keep sewing?

A few more bowties under my belt

2011-08-13T20:34:00.000-04:00

These are adorable, but if I make a king size quilt edge to edge with blocks, I need 576 of them. Really? Can I make that many of these little things? The thought is boggling.

Maybe a wide border. Or sashing. Sashing's nice. Or alternate plain blocks. Or.,....

Nope. Wouldn't be the same. Just keep on cranking out bows. After all, you only have 500 or so to go.......

Finished the fourth binding, and musing on the material requirements of quilting

2011-08-11T10:38:00.003-04:00

I just finished putting in the final stitches on the label of the fourth quilt. It boggles the mind how much sewing goes into a large bed quilt. On binding alone, in the four I finished there was just shy of 1600 inches of blind hemming! Astounding.

And the fabric! There is about 7 1/2 yard on each backing of these big quilts including margins, and anywhere upwards from 9 yards in a quilt top. The seams eat up a huge amount, as I discovered when I totaled what went into one of them. For example, the 100 inch square log cabin quilt I just finished had 64 10" square blocks, and two borders, the first 2" and the second 8". Each 10" block is 100 square inches but requires 162.5 square inches of fabric. That's 10,400 square inches for the blocks, 825 square inches for the first border and 3,400 square inches for the outer border, for a total of 14,625 square inches of fabric. Using an average usable width of 42" for a bolt of quilting cotton, that's over 9 1/2 yards of fabric and these were simple blocks without a lot of seams.

No wonder quilting is getting so expensive!

Third binding done

2011-08-10T16:59:00.000-04:00

Finished another one. This is a Carrie Nelson design called "Sweet Escape". It's just Jacob's Ladder blocks recolored and repositioned so as to make vertical chains of squares. Cute. I'm happy with it, and I'm happy that another binding is done!

Another binding done

2011-08-09T17:54:00.000-04:00

This is the quilt I couldn't bear to call the actual name of the block - Devil's Claw! It ended up being named Star Flower.

And yes, Molly has moved since yesterday. She just ended up sleeping in the same spot as her previous after-dinner nap.

One binding down, three to go

2011-08-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

Doesn't match the pillows and bed skirt. Doesn't match the drapes. But here is the coffee quilt I made for my husband, bound, labeled and done.

And there's Miss Shiny Eyes, ready for her after dinner nap.

Quiltmaker magazine mystery quilt

2011-08-07T16:26:00.000-04:00

Here's a photo of the Quiltmaker mystery quilt. I added the peach border and changed out the star centers from the fabric used on the points to that of the border. It's OK, but I wouldn't have set out to make it.

Hand sewing. Boooooring.

2011-08-07T12:07:00.000-04:00

Working on hand sewing bindings this weekend. My fingers hurt. I'm tired of hunching over the desk squinting at the striped binding.
I'm whining. I know.......

On other fronts, I completed the Quiltmaker mystery quilt - sorry, no picture, post one later. It turned out it wasn't a pattern I would have chosen to make, but oh well, it will be a good gift for someone. If I had known the color placement, I would have chosen differently. One danger of mystery quilts.

The binding has to take first place because I let it stack up since the first of the year (blush) except for my niece's quilt. Now I have to get all this completed before my nephew's gift quilt comes back from the longarm quilter. After all those gift quilts at Christmas I was totally burned out on hand sewing bindings so now I have four (four!) to finish. Sigh

Here's a non-whining reason for this post, the center of a little Christmas quilt I need to finish:

Cuteness progress report

2011-07-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

Haven't joined the blocks of the outer border yet but here it is so far. I love this modified spool block. It's amazing how much work these little 4" things are, though.

It is my aim to have enough small Christmas quilts to decorate this holiday season. I want to take down the ones hanging up now (back hallway, den, main hallway, master bedroom, sewing room, computer room/guest room) and substitute Christmas themed pieces. I never took down the quilts on permanent display before during the holiday season, mostly because I didn't want to have to store them and they were some of the prettiest ones I had made. But the whole house needs to be festive. And I should make some more table runners too. This is the time to concentrate on these projects, when I've got 4 or 5 months to finish them.

Tomato time

2011-07-29T16:49:00.000-04:00

One thing about home grown tomatoes - they're not as perfect as the perfectly colored, perfectly round tomatoes you see in the grocery, but are they ever good. Three kinds here, Brandywine, Celebrity and Roma. I see pasta in my future.

More Christmas (in July) cheer

2011-07-29T15:29:00.000-04:00

A few mini-spool blocks from Carrie Nelson's "Schnibbles" book, using the Woodland Holiday collection. I had two charm packs and a yard of the red and cream toile so I started making these 4 inch beauties. I have a border planned. Stay tuned.

Another one chalked up as finished

2011-07-28T16:04:00.000-04:00

I am trying so hard to complete all the almost-finished quilt tops I have lying around before I start something else. I finally got the last two sides of the outer border on this one this morning. It would have been done yesterday but we went to a movie. The last Harry Potter installment. We'd seen all the others, so what the heck. I have to admit I wasn't so fond of them, but I'm not the target demographic, and I've read sooooo much fantasy and sci-fi in my life that nothing in that genre seems new to me.

Anyway, this is my version of the all-plaid gift quilt that's going to the longarmer tomorrow. This one is larger because it's for us. I really need to slow down because we're running out of storage room. But these are such nice colors for fall I couldn't resist.

It's Christmas in July

2011-07-26T15:27:00.001-04:00

And here's the final product after all those peeks, a Christmas quilt for us. I've made several of them but given them all away. This isn't super-Christmass-y, it's made with Lecien's Antique Rose collection. The red and green color scheme is enough Christmas for me. The pattern is "Zuzu's Petals" from Carrie Nelson (don't you love an "It's a Wonderful Life" reference?). I think it's going to be gorgeous.

I'm trying to finish all the stuff I have languishing on my side table in an incomplete state before I launch into more Bonnie Hunter Cheddar Challenge bowtie blocks.

Another tidbit

2011-07-23T11:34:00.002-04:00

A beribboned border. Of course you know this means a mitered corner. Oh, wait a minute.......rats.

Sneak peek

2011-07-21T14:33:00.001-04:00

Just a little something I'm working on. Cute? I thought so too.

Addendum - why was I up so early?

2011-07-17T11:10:00.001-04:00

I didn't mean to get up and start sewing at 6:30. But at 6 a.m., I was awakened by the sound of a lawn mower, a large riding mower that was very loud indeed.

I looked at the clock and winced. Who in the world was mowing this early? I looked out the window at the head of the bed, and across the street a rider on a John Deere mower was industriously tackling the soccer field behind the local grade school. It was barely light enough to see where he was mowing.

AND IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING! AT 6 A.M.!

OK, I feel better now. Just had to vent a little.

I shot off an email to the school board member responsible for that grade school emphasizing that I was not happy about this state of affairs. He can pass it on to the maintenance department. And if he doesn't answer me that he did run down the person whose bad idea that was, he's going to get more email from me - until he does.

Mmmmm - cheesy!

2011-07-17T11:04:00.000-04:00

I promised myself I wouldn't buy any more fabric this year. My appetite for new quilt stuff had gotten admittedly a bit gluttonous, and the only thing to do was to stop cold turkey. The local quilt shops were closed, so I wasn't being temped as much.

But then, Bonnie Hunter posted this on her blog and bam! There went my best laid plans!

I wasn't even a huge fan of the color called "cheddar", that golden yellow shade from the 19th century. I bought a jelly roll of Civil War repro fabrics and didn't even use those strips. And I seldom use solids for backgrounds, prefering the marbled/mottled/WOW fabrics for texture. But when she posted a picture of those oh-so-cute bow tie blocks with the solid cheddar background, my heart melted. I wanted it!

So I dug out my box of Civil War repro and those two strips of cheddar solid and started to work this morning early. I had enough cheddar to cut out 24 blocks (I'm making mine 4" square rather than her 3", but they're still petite and cute.) And now I'm in love.

Here is the progress so far:

I found more of the fabric online at Hancock's of Paducah and ordered 5 yards. The only thing is, do you know how many of these bow tie blocks it will take to make a huge quilt like we like them, without borders (like her antique inspiration)? 529. Ouch. 24 down, 505 to go.

Games quilters play

2011-07-13T09:49:00.001-04:00

I'm busily laying out my Arnold's Attic fabric quilt top this morning and am indulging in one of those games quilters play when they are trying to decide the configuration of scrappy blocks. It's called "Are these fabrics too close together?"

Don't tell me you haven't done this too.

You've sorted the blocks into stacks for each row, assuring that the main colors are distributed evenly between the stacks, and then you start to lay them out on the floor (or, lucky you, on your design wall) in rows, carefully assuring that a repeated color or pattern is not too close to its brother block, stepping back repeatedly to see that the colors are evenly dispersed throughout the quilt. And when all the blocks are placed in position, you see one that won't work. Say, a red block is too close to another red block. Or that large green floral is in a block right next to another block with that same floral. So you move one of the offending blocks.

And then it's too close to another repeating color or block. So you move another one. And another one. And another one.

There's only one solution to this situation.

Stop. Breathe. Start sewing.

It's a scrap quilt. In the great cosmic scheme of things it's highly likely it won't impact the look of the quilt. And it's almost impossible to create a layout that evenly distributed all colors/fabrics throughout the quilt every time.

And guess what? No one else will see it.

So make your best shot at the layout, step back, take a picture if you want because it's always easier to objectively evaluate a layout in a photo, and then - start sewing. Perfect isn't gonna happen, but if you obsessively stay there, rearranging blocks, nothing is gonna happen.

So you sew, girl.

Here is the layout so far. Borders to follow. If the hot weasther holds I might have this finished by the end of the weekend, because I'm sure not going to go out in the yard when it's this miserable. Thanks for the input on the border question, because I've made up my mind. I'll show you later.

Tomato heaven

2011-07-12T16:54:00.000-04:00

It's almost tomato avalanche season again. Here are my two Brandywine plants:

They're in front of an 8 ft. fence, by the way. Now THAT'S a tomato plant!

Which?

2011-07-11T10:38:00.014-04:00

OK, folks, it's voting time again! (Gee, what would I do without the collective brain power of the blogosphere?)

Here's the deal: I can't decide on the border design for this quilt. I started out enlarging the design I used for the previous gift quilt, using a Arnold's Attic Fat eighth bundle and a fat quarter bundle of Arnold's Attic wovens (gorgeous,BTW). I started out with this idea, but when I laid it out on the floor it looked too dark:

I know husband thinks so too, even though he said it was pretty, because he doesn't like the darker, muddier colors like I do. So I started to work on alternate designs to lighten up the look. I came up with this:

And this:

And finally this:

EQ and a hyper-active imagination are a deadly combination! Now I'm stuck with five possibilities and I can't decide. I like them all, you see. I'm most puzzled about using the light neutral on the outer border of the last design. Does that look like the quilt just "drifts off" or does it have a complete looking finish, if you get what I mean? The binding will be a brown mono print, if that helps.

FYI, the piano key border pieces finish at 2 1/2" x 5", so some of the EQ representations show them too wide, but you get the idea.

I'm open to suggestions. Still making the blocks in the center so I have some contemplation time. What would you do?

Addendum: The more I look at them, the more I'm leaning toward number 4. Help!

One border shy of a full quilt

2011-07-08T20:52:00.002-04:00

You'll have to imagine a green homespun plaid inner border in the gap - the fabric's on order. (Oh, and mentally press the quilt top while you're at it!) Otherwise, here is the plaid quilt. It's going to be a gift for a family member. I'm going to make myself a version of this one. Love it!

Plaid facts

2011-07-07T20:34:00.005-04:00

Working with all these plaid fabrics has been interesting. They fall into several categories and each has its drawbacks and peculiarities.

First, the thrift store dress shirts. I used a white and blue tattersall shirt for the background on all the blocks and that fabric is a dream to work with. Silky, finely woven, doesn't ravel, takes a press beautifully, and doesn't stretch. The only thing that I found was that the plaid was distorted and pulled out of square in some places in the making of the shirt and some of my pieces aren't completely square with the plaid lines, but it doesn't worry me. I wasn't in the mood to wet and block the fabric, so I just took at as it is. I don't have any more of these shirts but I need to hunt for them. This one was a designer brand (don't remember which one) and the quality shows in the fabric.

Then, my old homespuns which date from the mid nineties and came from a fat quarter bundle of plaids I bought from Keepsake Quilting. These are a very different animal from the homespuns I purchased recently. They are thinner and more finely woven, they don't stretch and they don't have that annoying (at least to me) brushed finish on one side. They are a pleasure to work with, which is more than I can say for the newer homespuns, which are too stretchy and loosely woven and have to be handled carefully. They are from good brands, too, so they aren't cheap stuff. Just a pain to work with. I like plaid bindings so I buy them sometimes but every time I regret it.

There are other recently purchased wovens, however, that are a breed apart. I refer to those yarn dyed plaids sold by French General. These are finely woven, silky and beautifully made and I wish I had more of them but they seem to be hard to find. I bought a Maison de Garance wovens fat quarter bundle last fall; half were these lovely plaids and half were more usual chunky homespun weaves in stripes. I like them too, but not as much.

And finally, the casual plaid shirts from the thrift store. These are a real mixed bag. Some of the shirts were well known brands and are made of quality stuff, and others less so. You have to be very careful when you're thrift store shopping. I found one plaid on my last Goodwill run that had beautiful colors but the fabric was too flimsy to seriously consider. A few that I bought are so tightly woven with such fine threads, however, that you can barely get a sharp pin through them. They are prime goods.

I recently ordered a yarn dyed wovens fat quarter bundle of "Arnold's Attic" from Moda that I will incorporate into the Civil War sampler blocks using that collection's prints, and I'm eager to see how they handle and sew because the plaid pickings locally are pretty slim. I looked for plaids at the Hancock's and Joann's in town and was disappointed with the plaid selection and fabric quality - too loosely woven and stretchy and the colors were awful. I've also ordered a yard of a pumpkin colored plaid from Buggy Barn to use as the binding on this quilt and am curious as to how it will work.

But for the backing of this quilt I decided to use one of the printed plaids from a recent Moda collection, Lilac Hill. Homespuns just seemed too stretchy and unstable in a large piece, and might be a pain for the longarm quilter to handle. I have to remember to ask her what her experience is with these.

How about you? How do you feel about using homespuns in your quilts? Do you mix them with other cottons? Any problems quilting them? I'd love to know.

Mad for plaid

2011-07-05T18:18:00.005-04:00

In my normal, monkey-mind way (to use a Buddhist expression), I seem to hop between projects, usually just before one is completed. If I have a quilt down to the borders, I will get distracted and cut out another project. No finishing what I have started first, not for me! Why have one project going when you can have four? I finish them all eventually.

Last night my attention was captured by an all-plaid quilt in the same book as "On Golden Pond" that I'm finishing now (only three sides of the border to go). It was set on point with alternating Shoo Fly and Hole in the Barn Door blocks surrounded by plaid triangles, with a pieced border, and it was completely made of plaids. It was adorable. And I have a storage box of shirts from the thrift store that hadn't been cut into yet. So what did I do?

Yup. I cut out a quilt this morning.

In my defense, I woke up feeling lousy, with aching knees and a sinus headache, and the thought of my planned morning (treadmill time, jump in the car and take it for state inspection, hit the grocery and the credit union on the way home) just wore me out thinking about it.

So I didn't do it.

It's one of the lovely perks of being retired. Having a bad morning? You don't HAVE to do anything you don't want to do (with some limits). So I didn't.

I was happy to find that my blue on white tattersall thrift store shirt was large enough to cut out all the backgrounds for the blocks, lending a bit of order to a scrappy design. That is something I use often - a single background fabric in all the blocks of an otherwise jumbled color quilt. And I had enough shirts and homespuns to include 28 different plaids in the quilt, which makes a nice variety. I also have enough left that I can piece the backing if I want.

So here are a couple of the little cuties:

Civil War Sampler

2011-07-04T11:18:00.003-04:00

My Barbara Brackman 2011 Civil War Sampler blocks so far: This is gonna be deeply cool! Thank you Barbara Brackman!

The perfect blue

2011-07-01T18:09:00.004-04:00

So this is the paisley that was driving the search for an alternate setting fabric: And this is what I finally decided on:

The rich dark blue I wanted, a few more cream colored flowers and not so much open space between them, the shape of the spriggy design to coordinate with the paisley. Perfect!

And this is what it's going to look like. It's big, as usual. When they get this large, I run out of floor space when they are laid out for assembling the rows and I almost can't scoot my sewing chair out.

And I think it's fabulous! Thanks to Carrie Nelson for another great design. It's called "On Golden Pond" and it's from her book "Miss Rosie's Autumn Quilts" which is unfortunately out of print. I had to get it on interlibrary loan. There's another design, an all plaid quilt, in it called "Flies in the Barn" I would love to do with some of my thrift store shirts when I have enough variety.

Which color?

2011-06-29T13:36:00.006-04:00

I can't decide which color to use in the alternate blocks of this Lady in the Lake variation. At first, I thought this gold/cream/blue tweedy checked print fabric was the right one to alternate with the gold and blue paisley, since the Carrie Nelson uses a brown tweedy print in her pattern. I searched everywhere and couldn't find a print like hers. FYI, her alternate solid blocks are gold paisley too: But then I tried this dark blue:

And then a slightly more muted blue with a bit more cream in the print:

which I like but I don't have enough of it. If I want to use it I'll have to get online and find more.

ARGH! I can't decide. I'm going to try another navy blue with a smaller cream print that I have on order from Thousands of Bolts. I needed dark blues anyway, so I ordered three yards in case it works for this quilt.

What do you think? Husband likes the middle one. I like the color too but the print is a bit too aggressive beside that busy paisley.

So close.......

2011-06-29T13:33:00.003-04:00

That's the first of my Roma tomatoes, which I was watching in anticipation of spaghetti sauce to come, until today I found it on the ground with a large bite taken out of it. Rabbit, chipmunk or squirrel? Who knows - the only thing that matters is that it wasn't me enjoying this tomato!

"Carrie-ing" on

2011-06-14T16:55:00.005-04:00

Another Carrie Nelson design: This one is called Scarlet Begonia. I just love Carrie Nelson's stuff. Of course, I enlarged it - 85 blocks now, to make it 94" square, which is the new standard size for us. I had the red fabric (Regency Collection III by Judie Rothermel) and I had bought a fat quarter bundle of Barbara Brackman Civil War repro which worked very nicely with it. Still haven't decided on the backing and binding.

I would like to find a blue/red stripe for the binding but haven't seen anything that would work in the meager offerings at my local Hancock's and Joann's. I don't like the selections in either store. Joann's fabrics are usually too bright and modern for my tastes, and Hancock's are just all over the map - all over except for the styles I like, it seems. I went out yesterday looking for shirtings because I had used up most of mine in this quilt and couldn't find a thing in either store. When I asked for shirtings at Joann's the lady led me to a table of tropical shirt prints - you know, parrots and tiki huts and such. Ahhhh, no.

Both local quilt shops are now gone - one closed and the other was blown away by the April tornadoes. I could drive about 25 miles up the interstate to another town with a quilt shop but haven't tried it yet. Perhaps this week I'll take a look when I go out to do other errands. It's time for another food donation to the local food bank and I want to buy several box fans to donate to the Salvation Army, which distributes them every summer to low income households without air conditioning.

It's difficult for us to understand how anyone could live in this town without the A/C. I know people do, but I feel very sorry for them when we get in one of these heat spells. Husband says that the summer heat actually makes him ill, and it's true. When our heat pump broke several years ago during a 100 degree stint, we had to buy a window A/C for the bedroom and he stayed in there for five days until the new unit was installed. If he tried to go out into the rest of the (very hot) house for any length of time it got him, but good. He's one of those people who don't perspire and his internal temperature just goes up and up until he's sick. Or, as his sister has done several times, keels over in a dead faint. I think I remember her saying that happened at an outdoor estate sale one summer, and at King's Island once.

I'm getting so much sewing done because it's been in the high 90's and I can't stand to step outside, so I sew all day. After dinner I run out and water everything; I might lose some of my new shrubs but I'm trying to preserve them. It takes a lot of water with this kind of temps and red clay soil. Hang on, azaleas, it will be fall someday. In the meantime, the tomatoes are growing - they are the only thing on the place that likes heat.

Well, Molly probably would like it a bit warmer inside - she sleeps under the quilt at night. A cat is never warm enough.

It's upgrade time

2011-05-31T13:54:00.006-04:00

I'm steeling myself for an upcoming internet blackout. My husband has ordered parts to upgrade his hot-rod desktop computer, and in about a week when they arrive, he will dismantle the beast and put in all the new parts.

And then nothing will work.

Please understand, this is NOT a slam against my husband. He knows more about computers than I will ever imagine I could, and he's a retired electrical engineer who's been messing with these boxes since - well, since they've existed. He builds his own computers. But when you upgrade, it's ALWAYS SOMETHING.

We've been through this before. It never goes as smoothly as you think it should and he always has to cope with irritating unexplained problems. He always solves them, but it's a hassle. Please don't ask me the details - I don't ask, and I don't want to know. Around the mid-90's, I gave up my complimentary subscription of InfoWeek at work and never again tried to keep up with the fast moving computer industry. If anything goes wrong with the laptop, I walk into his office and say "Oh, honey?"

He's also moving his desktop to Windows 7, so that adds a little extra fillip of mystery to the process. He told me I should also upgrade my Vista platform so all three computers would be on the same operating system, but I'm frankly terrified to try that. Will everything I run work on the new Windows version? Who knows?

I even cringe when I download updates. I'm a strong proponent of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In fact, don't even touch it.

He wanted "bright"

2011-05-23T10:29:00.004-04:00

My husband likes bright colors a lot more than I do. I veer toward the muted, dusty range of hues. But this quilt is for him. The fabric collection is "Java" by Deb Strain. The pattern is "True Blue" by Carrie Nelson, with a modified border by me. It may not be Kaffe Fassett bright, but it's a stretch for me. Now that I've completed all 100 blocks, I'm taking a break to work on some applique for a while.

Toronto's "Slut Walk"

2011-05-23T09:43:00.010-04:00

Have you read the news story about this? Briefly, as a result of public reaction to a comment by a member of the Toronto police, organizers staged a demonstration at a local park which culminated with a march to the Toronto Police Headquarters on April 3. Here is the remark that set off all the furor:

In January, Toronto Police Const. Michael Sanguinetti told a personal security class at York University that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized." Sanguinetti apoligized for this comments, but his apology failed to satisfy walk organizer Sonya Barnett. "It was evident that if you're going to have a representative of the police force come out and say that then that kind of idea must be still running rampant within the force itself and that retraining really needs to happen to change that mentality," she said. A statement on the event's website says: "Toronto Police have perpetuated the myth and stereotype of the slut, and in doing so have failed us."

Well!

I would like to know the context in which the remark was made, but no one is reporting that. Was he talking about walking alone at night? Going out to bars? Was it a general comment about personal actions? I may be a little old fashioned about this, but I think understanding what the constable meant involves analyzing his remark with respect to what other comments framed the statement. Let's hear the whole paragraph, so to speak, not the sound bite. It also becomes relevant to know to whom he was speaking. Consider the audience and context of the remark.

Don't get me wrong. This is NOT "blame the victim". Rape is about power, and far too many rapes happen. If your attacker breaks in your house, if someone grabs you while you're on your way home, if someone whom you trusted turns on you, what could you have done to prevent that?

But let's talk about other situations. Imagine that you're out clubbing and drinking with your girlfriends, or meeting someone on a blind date. Personal safety experts give all sorts of advice to young women in those situations. Don't let your drink out of your sight, for fear that it will be spiked. Don't go into a secluded area with a stranger. Go out in pairs and keep together for safety. Meet strangers at a location away from your home. All good ideas. But consider this scenario:

You're set up on a blind date with a friend of a friend. "You'll like him," you're told. For safety's sake, you make arrangements to meet at a local watering hole, where you're a regular. You dress what you consider attractively for the occasion, to make a good impression. Maybe for you that means a shorter skirt than usual, or a lower neckline, or tighter clothes, or (God forbid), low rise pants that let a bit of your undies peak out the top. I'm thinking about the clothes store next to my hairdresser's shop which has window displays for what they call "clubwear". Let's just say that this isn't what you wear to work!

You walk through the door and he sees you for the first time. He doesn't know a thing about you at this point, only what his eyes tell him. And depending on what he sees, what he may be thinking, if he's a certain sort of person, is "Jackpot!" A few drinks later, you're both somewhat impaired in the thinking process, and he starts to wonder if his first impression is going to pay off. This could get ugly.

Rewind that and redress yourself in a little more conservative, more modest attire. You don't have to look like Marion the Librarian, for goodness sake, just don't put everything right out there. If you say "But no one will pay any attention to me!" I have to ask if people attracted to that sort of display are who you really want to meet. (Old fogey alert! But I AM an old fogey, so I get to say what I please.) Was this what the policeman was talking about? We don't know because we aren't told.

There were picket signs on the march which proclaimed "My short skirt has nothing to do with you". I always hope that people aren't that ingenuous, but I'm always disappointed. Here's a news flash: everything we do, say or wear affects how we are perceived by others. Do you want to control the message, or have the message control you?

PS: I expect rabid comments to this post. So be it.

Are you still making quilts?

2011-05-15T21:30:00.005-04:00

That's what someone dear to me just said this evening (names are withheld to protect feelings all round). I mentioned that I have been working on bindings for several days because I let my completed unbound quilts stack up this spring and had several to finish. "Are you still making quilts?" Like, "How many quilts do you need?" "Where are you putting all of them?" Or, maybe, "Don't you have other things to do?"

Ouch. I hastened to explain that one was for my niece, one was for my husband's couch in his den, and another was a larger quilt for our bed. As if I had to justify making quilts. And I was upset for feeling like I had to justify what I do.

Maybe I'm reading too much into what was said. Maybe it was just a passing comment. But it was still an ouch.

Can you tell me where to get this tape?

2011-05-15T10:28:00.002-04:00

Take a look at this picture: See the tape that is marking the ruler? It's translucent plastic and clings to the ruler without adhesive (kind of like the old Color Forms toys). I had a roll of it that I used it for years to mark cutting lines and alignment points and such on my rotary rulers. Now that I have used all of it, I can't remember where I bought the stuff or what it is called. I can't even remember if it came from the fabric store or the office supply. What it is, I haven't a clue. I don't even know if it was originally meant to mark rotary rulers, but it worked perfectly for the job.

Does anyone know what this stuff is and where to buy it?

Weeds

2011-05-14T14:13:00.005-04:00

Whenever I weeded my flower beds or even my flowerpots, I always found a multitude of seedlings of one certain kind. I didn't know what sort of weed it was, but it seemed prolific and very vigorous. It had one or two pairs of leaves atop a long stalk and a pretty good sized root for a young seedling. They were under my azaleas, in the tomato patch, in flower pots on the patio and by the driveway, even among the evergreens. They didn't seem picky about the amount of sunlight or water, and every specimen I pulled up was thriving. I wondered if other people had trouble with these weeds. Were the seeds scattered by the wind? What were they, anyway?

Finally, I pulled one out of a flowerpot that had a recognizable remnant of the seed casing still clinging to the roots and all was revealed. They were sunflower sprouts. The squirrels weren't just eating the seeds from the bird feeders, they were burying them too, and the seeds were germinating.
If you want to grow sunflowers, I can hook you up with some squirrels that are excellent horticulturists.

Short attention span

2011-05-07T23:02:00.004-04:00

This is a cute little block: Well, it is until you have to make 52 of them. I suffer from quilter's ADHD - badly. I get sooooo bored when I have to make the same thing over and over and over......

That's why I like scrap quilts. Even though you are making duplicates of the same block, with different fabrics they don't look the same. Lessens the repetition factor.

Today I was so bored that I stopped working on these to complete attaching some borders and make the binding for another quilt. I went back to this block later but I don't know how far I'll get before I jump over to another project for a little relief. But, I still have 20 of these little things to crank out so I had better develop some discipline and get to it.

You wascally wabbit!

2011-05-07T17:36:00.011-04:00

We've been watching at least two rabbits in our backyard. I thought it was just one until I got a good look and compared sizes one day, and realized that we have a whole bunch 0'bunnies enjoying the yard, although who knows where they live. So, we have several rabbits hopping around on most days, eating clover and investigating my flower bed.

Now one has done more than investigate. You can see it in the picture below, stretched out behind the salvia, the remains of a demolished penta plant under its back feet. Does anyone know which annuals rabbits don't eat?

QNM mystery quilt

2011-05-06T21:24:00.004-04:00

Anyone doing the Quilter's Newsletter Magazine mystery? I just decided to pick it up halfway through and am catching up on the blocks. In truth, it didn't look very interesting until the third installment, but when I saw that block I got the mystery quilt fever again. My colors are very different from theirs - hope it works.

I have made all 8 of the block at top left and all of the ones on the bottom row - 10, 8, 4 and 4, respectively. I still have 32 of the one on the top right to finish. We've also cut some strips - for the border and some others, use unspecified. I have to admit that they have me stumped on this pattern. The top left one finishes at 7", the top right one at 4 1/2" and the bottom ones at 3 1/2". How they fit together I have no clue.

Trust and believe - the mystery quilter's mantra.