Letters....something is not quite right

I fiddled around with the letters for my word  banner and figured out how to make the lower case "g" look like a letter and not the number 9. I made the upper case G by cutting pieces that seemed to be right and putting them together. I decided there had to be a better way.  I remembered that we had done some exercises from Ruth McDowell's book "Piecing Workshop" and we used freezer paper templates. I printed my letters the size I wanted traced them on freezer paper and made the lower case i. Not too hard, except the dot on the i was backward so I read the directions and printed mirror images. 

It was at this point I realized something was not quite right. I should have read through the instructions more thoroughly. This is a frequent problem for me.  I read just enough to think I know what I am doing and I forge ahead.  I am giving up on the sewing for tonight and I am going to read through all the  instructions before I begin again.

The reverse  image thing is something I have a  problem with and I blame it on being ambidextrous.     

I did  very strange things with paper piecing. If it wasn't for spell checker It would take forever correcting my typing mistakes because I transpose letters all the time. I can write without a problem but that is not an option with the computer.This same problems causes me to  mix up right and left on a regular basis. I never had a problem with  reading or math so I have learned to live with it and as long as nothing important depends on right and left things work out.  I have trouble backing up down a long driveway; I can back out of a parking place just fine but if I am trying to stay out of the  bushes on one side and the flowers on the other and I have to think about it I always turn the steering wheel the wrong way. I GO VERY SLOW and  make sure no one is standing in behind me as I go.

Now that I am getting older I would  start to worry about all this but  I HAVE BEEN THIS  WAY ALL MY LIFE.

One more thing done.

Saturday after I got home from our group get together Jack put up my other bulletin board and moved the first one up several  inches. We put the first one up before the the shelf unit was in  front of it and it was  partly covered . I think it was  just before the water incident and we just never got back to it.

The photo at the left  shows the bulletin board on the left side of the window and the one on the right is on the right side of the window. The tree outside the window is what our whole move was  all  about. We  have really, really ugly windows and now I can look at the tree and ignore the window. That  is a bonus because the  reason for the move was really about the shade from the afternoon sun. The clock on the bulletin  board  is  to the left of where I sit at my desk so I only have to turn  my head to see it or  look out the window. Right next to my clock is a license plate that belonged to one of my friends, it doesn't show up here because the flash bounced off of it, it says"GO QUILT".   

I am going to be patient about my design wall and I also want a  shelf moved  down several inches so I can hang all my rulers on the wall above it. I know if I had waited a  little longer to put up the shelves  on my desk wall they would be  where I  wanted them to say. I needed the shelves to put things on  so I could get organized but I didn't give it enough thought.

These are few more stars that I finished. I worked on the star point units on  Saturday. I worked  on them again on Sunday and  finished them late Sunday. It is not a fast moving project but I don't have any deadline so I don't have to be fast. GOOD THING because I am not fast. My pile of scraps is getting smaller, not fast, but it is getting there.

Fun day

Our loosely organized quilt group met yesterday. We have not been meeting to sew together on a regular basis for a while and it was good to get together. We all worked on liberated log cabins or stars. Everyone did their own thing with the idea; I made the star points for 5 liberated stars. We talked and  laughed together, we enjoyed just being together and we had lunch. There were 6 of us and 4 of us brought dessert. LOL next time we will probably all  bring salad. Nevertheless we enjoyed it all and we  really enjoyed our time together.

There were some people missing today and I missed them. I look forward  to our time together but life sometimes gets in the way of our fun.

We were busy catching up with what has been going on in our lives that we haven't settled on what we  want to tackle  as a new learning experience. (Remember we are loosely organized).

I have been blog surfing and I have become interested using pieced words in my projects. Being impatient I can't wait  for Tonya Ricucci's book "Word Play" to be released. I knew there  were  some alphabets in Electric Quilt and I knew there was a funky alphabet but I couldn't find it. I finally realized that EQ was  not  linked to Sew Precise in my new computer and when I linked it I found the alphabet. It is  for foundation paper piecing and that is not  my favorite thing. I used the letters as my guide to  draw new lower case letters in EQ7  that I can piece without the  paper and improvise as I go along.

This is what I did yesterday evening in EQ7.  I am going to make a 10 x 36 wall hanging for my sewing room. I am probably going to use black for the background but that would not show the piecing here. We'll see how it goes. I will probably buy the book when it is released as I am thinking that it will show me an easier way.

Weekend Retreat

Our small quilt group  at church  had a retreat this weekend at Camp Fitch in Pennsylvania. There were only 6 of us but we had a great time and everyone accomplished a lot. Camp Fitch is a YMCA camp on the shores of Lake Erie and the setting was lovely. 

These first  pictures were taken Friday shortly before sunset from a deck above the beach, near the dining hall. This is what you can see from inside the dining hall. the third photo is the reflection we saw  in the dining hall windows when we turned around to walk  back to the building.

This picture was taken Saturday after lunch from the same deck.

This was Sunday morning about 8AM. A big change but still a great view. I could watch the water for hours.

The movement of the water and the bubbling and sparkle of the sun on the water and  the colors of the sunset reflecting on the water in different band  of color holds me entranced.

Our lodge was a short walk away from the dining  hall and our sewing  space, it could have accommodated 18 people but there were only 6 of us so we  each  had our own room and bath. LOL my room had 4 beds but I only used one.
Our sewing  space was across the hall  from the dining hall  and  was nice and bright and had windows on 3 sides. The large square tables were about 4 ft  square which made a great work space.

This photo with Darlene in the foreground shows most of our work space. To take the picture, I am standing in front of my worktable, which is in the corner by the window walls.
As I said everyone  accomplished a lot. Darlene cut out a table  runner and place mats and started working on a Christmas panel.

Betty pieced some scrappy blocks using lots of left over scraps from many projects from a number of different people. Betty and Caroline also did  some hand quilting.

Dorine was very productive (she always is), she made 400 plus 4 patch blocks from 30's fabric

Below she has  grown tired of the 30's project and is working on a baby quilt for our church baby quilt stash. She started the quilt late Saturday and finished today. I would have taken  a photo but I had already packed my camera in my suitcase because I didn't think  there would be anything more to photograph.

This is Beth's quilt top that she finished this  weekend. She had finished the blocks before she got  there . she put them together and made and added the border on Saturday. then she started another project and made a good start on that one.

Caroline worked on  some hand quilting and finished a black and white quilt top (with a touch of color.I didn't get a pic of the finished top  but here it is when she was  laying it out.

 

I was able to put together the backs for 2 QAWM quilts and layer them up and they are all ready to machine quilt as soon as i set up my room for quilting. This is one of them below.

I made a few blocks for our stockpile of blocks for baby quilt for our church. Our plan is to have everyone make blocks for the stockpile and we will put them together with wide strips of a suitable focus fabric beween rows of pinwheel, friendship star, and churndash blocks. Having a stockpile of blocks will make it easy and fast in case we need baby quilts  quickly. 

These are a few  of the 6 inch blocks we have been making. We made up little kits to make 3 different blocks from the same 2 fabrics

All  in all  it was a good weekend, lots of fun and fellowship. We set the date for the next retreat before we left today.



New learning curve

Yesterday we went shopping for groceries  and ended up buying a new computer (it is along round about story). My new computer had XP installed with the disk  for Windows 7 in the box. I will  not be denied the opportunity to cause myself a big headache so I installed Windows 7. It is like starting a new  job, I think I know all the basic  stuff but......... everything is a little different and not where I thought it would be and my new keyboard  puts extra spaces or no spaces beween my words. I am  still getting used to a different internet service as well.
Well anyway, having to start all  over with getting  set up again with my Internet connections I  have been looking around and finding things I need to sort out. I found that I can look at all of the comments on my blog in one place when I sign in and there were some I never knew were  there. I also  found that  although people have commented that they tried to leave a comment on the blog, there is no trace of the comments. I don't thibnk I can fix that myself it seems to be a blogger problem. So.... I set up a Gmail account to use on the blog. LOL that was another experience with having to make a lot of choices. My main problem with learning anything is that if I don't find what I want to know after reading  so many 30 words I start looking elsewhere. Sooner or later I will get it all together. I am happy with my new computer because I am able to work without getting hung up and  left hanging at every turn but there is a  lot to do.

This is what I have accomplished so far with the scrap salad pile.Even though the pile  of scraps seems bigger than ever there are 20  8 inch log cabins in the stack and 12 finshed stars in the stack on the yellow fan fabric that I plan to use as setting  triangles. There are 8 more stars  in progress but I think I only need 16. I think I will set them on point and use a prairie point edging.
Between this and learning all the new stuff with the computer I am going to have enough to keep me from  getting impatient  with that man about my design wall. I know he will help  me sort  out all the  computer mysteries (like which slot to use for my camera  memory card).