Up on the wall

When I said I had to move my desk so I could put my quilts up on the wall Jack said he would do it. The desk is hard to move and he is able to reach the wall. I think he was worried that if he didn't do it I would be up on the ladder.
We put them up using thumbtacks. Yes I KNOW that is not the way to hang quilts. These are both small and they are not heirloom quilts and I have no room to have things sitting around waiting to be hung properly. Besides that, I have a hard time putting off my gratification. Eventually I  plan to have a large piece of Homasote on the wall so I can pin to it but for now this is it.
I cleaned off my desk for the photo and then I put almost everything away except the things I am going to work on. It has been several days since I actually sewed something and I am so ready to sew.

Productive week at home

A week ago I made this 15 inch little table topper centerpiece. I also made up some block kits  to make 12 inch fall blocks in case we had any new quilters come to our quilt meeting at church. The block kits can sit in the closet and be ready and waiting but I am going to quilt this sample and finish it and give it to my daughter. I made a table runner with the same fabric and give it to her and she has it on her coffee table. This will look  good on another table. The orange is a really nice, kind of bright burnt orange, even though it looks not so great here. 

They took down a  print that they had above the sofa and hung this quilt that I gave  her recently. It all goes together very well.This  was a  busy week in spite of not feeling up to par. I have had  a couple of rounds of vertigo and between that and a very productive cold, I  stayed home most of the week. In between wiping and blowing my nose and times when I felt like I was going to "hit the deck", I felt fairly decent at times and got a lot of stuff done. There is something good about not being able to go out and run around everywhere. I use the term "run" loosely, I don't run!

I spent the week going through everything in my sewing room.  Jack put my shelf back up and moved the telephone to my desk where I can't miss the flashing light on the answering machine. I finished my Gigi's room banner and  will  hang it above my desk when I feel it is safe to get up on a ladder.

I sorted squares that I had cut into various sizes  from scraps a few  years ago.  I am giving Betty all  of my 2 1/2 inch squares as I know I will never use them. I am also giving her a bag of odds  and ends. I am hoping this does not end our friendship.  I sorted squares  and rectangles for Donna Poster Scrap blocks and for triple  4 patch blocks. I know I will make those scrap blocks. I am keeping 3 and  3 1/2 inch squares to make  prairie points.  I recently decided not to put prairie points on something because I just couldn't face cutting all those squares and I found enough to make PP's for 2 or more quilts.

I consolidated and got rid of stuff and I have emptied 6 mailing boxes about the size that will hold a single 2 inch stack of printer paper and also 4 boxes 5 inches x 5 inches and  12 inches long.

There are two 10 x 15 plastic boxes with lids left over and also some empty spaces on my shelves.

I only have a few more things to put away and then I will set up my space for machine quilting and I will be  going  into a finishing frenzy. I may wait until tomorrow though for the frenzy.

Friends Quilt Together

Friends Quilt Together is the name of our group at church (it is a Friends church) and today was our monthly meeting. We are a small group and we get together once a month to sew and quilt. Today we were all working on something different. Debbie is a new quilter but not new to sewing. She is working on her 3rd quilt (? I think it is her third) It looks like a disappearing nine patch but she bought a pattern and is constructing it in a different way and doing a good job of it.

Below is a table runner Betty brought for show and tell. In the background is a scrap quilt that she made from scraps that people were throwing away. She says she is working at the end of the quilt food chain.  The overall impression is "bright" but there are many pieces of fabric that are not bright and some that Betty says are really ugly colors. I thought maybe I should re-think throwing out my really small  scraps . I thought about it and I am going to pass them on to  Betty along with some some so small..

 

Beth was working on an applique table topper with fall colors.
I didn't get photos of Dorine and Kim because Dorine had to leave early and Kim was just picking hers up  to work on it and I didn't get back  to her. As usual, I didn't get much done; only one block.

When I went home I took a nap and after dinner I decided I was going to hang my rulers before I break half of them moving them from place to place. I removed the shelf that was too high and put it away in a corner for now. You can see the 2 nail holes from one of the shelf brackets below and to the left the third ruler on the left.Then I worked on the layout for the rulers in EQ7 and hunted for some nails and hung my rulers. There are a few more that I never use that I have in a notebook file and there are a few on the wall that I don't use but they will  not fit in the file. I thought I had uploaded the photo that I cropped but here below my rulers you can see the mess I made moving stuff out of my way as I gathered up my rulers. I did get it cleaned up after I took the picture. This is definitely a giant step in getting things organized. Jack  said he will put my shelf back up  in the next day or two. I am not going to worry about it; it will get done when it gets done. 

Ta - da

I finished the letters in my banner and put them together. After I made the lower case g backwards I reread the instructions for printing and using the freezer paper templates and started over. I got the g the way I wanted it and I am happy with it but I am  not going to piece " the giggling gaggle of geese wearing goggles" anytime soon.

After I got it together I showed it to my husband and he thought the m wasn't right. He doesn't make a lot of comments about what isn't right so when he does I listen to him.  I was not about to take this letter  out and  do it over so I fixed it with a black magic marker. I fixed the upper case G in the same way because the left top and bottom corners were too chunky. If you enlarge the photo you can probably see it but it doesn't show in person and it will be OK after I quilt it and up kind of high where I will hang it.

 This photo gives you an idea of how I put these together with the freezer paper templates. It worked   OK for this but I would not want to do this for many more letters. For one thing I kept losing my pieces even though I pinned the ones I wasn't using on my design board so I would know where they were.  I am also at a loss to explain why I choose to use black  all the time now that my eyes have grown old.  As I am looking at it, I can see that next time I will make allowances in spacing for the letter I or i. All in all, I am  pretty satisfied with it, after all it is a funky alphabet, right?

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).

New Look

I decided that I need a new look.

This quilt shown here in it's entirety is one that I paper pieced and I love it. I had it up on my sewing room wall and it will go back up over my desk when I get the design and bulletin boards up (I hope that will be soon). In the meantime I will be able to look at it here once in a while. That man just rolls his eyes when I mention going to Lowes for the stuff to make my design wall. I am being patient and sewing scrappy liberated stars and log cabins as I wait.

Liberated stars coming along

I have been working on my liberated stars and log cabin blocks the last few days. I can't say my pile of scraps looks any smaller but then I have only 8 log cabins and 7 stars finished and 13 more partial stars and my once half way organized scraps are "scrap salad" to steal a phrase from Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville. She said the ladies in her workshop all arrived with their scraps neatly sorted and after 2 hours they all had scrap salad. I understand that perfectly. 

Here is one of my piles of scrap salad. there are 2 more.

 I plan to straighten it up a bit not because I think it will stay that way but I know that in there somewhere are several partial log cabins. I chain piece for a while just adding  strips to each block in a random manner but then I will get a little compulsive about one or two blocks and add a strip and press and add another strip........ etc until it is finished. Then I go back to chain piecing and pressing again. It keeps me from getting bored when I mix things up in my routine but I lose track of things in the muddle I create.

These are the blocks I have finished, they will be 8 inches in the quilt. I never noticed that 7 in the star block on the top row until I put them on my flannel board. I may have to think of something clever to do with it or use it for something else or maybe make up a story about it.

Below are the partial star blocks. the centers are 4 1/2 inches and they have one set of star points sewed on.
After I made the first few blocks I cut my background rectangles to use for the connector corners 4 1/2 by 2 3/4 inches instead of 2 1/2 and trimmed them when they were finished. For me it always works better to sew first and trim to size. I also always trim out the triangle of background fabric after I make sure it is covered.

I really do miss having a whole wall for a design wall but I am going to do it different in this room so that I can also pin to the wall so I have to wait until my husband is feeling like doing it. For now my 32 x40 and 24 x 36 pieces of flannel covered foam core will do the job.
That man (husband) is feeling pretty good we have gone to the arboretum to walk and count frogs the last 3 days and he is talking about getting out tomorrow on his motorcycle and going back to the Y to workout on Monday.

Getting the scraps under control.

I had planned to have almost a week to get my sewing room stuff organized after we moved the furniture. I thought I would go through everything before I brought it over to the new sewing room and it would all be neat and orderly. The water episode took care of that and though now things are nearly the way I want them there are some things that will have to wait.
Last Wednesday my husband didn't feel well about dinner time and a little later he really didn't look good. We went to the hospital where he had a bunch of tests and was admitted. He had his gall bladder out on Friday and he is home and doing well but there are a few things to be done in my sewing room that I am not going to press him about. They can wait and I can still work. I'm just glad he is OK and getting back to normal. It seems like we have spent most of this last month "getting back to normal".

When we moved I found that I had several Sterilite boxes with the same kinds of fabric. There were 3 boxes with pieces that hadn't been cut and then there were 3 boxes with scraps of various sizes and shapes that I planned to use for "liberated blocks".  Last night I tackled the scrap boxes; some of the things had been separated in zip lock bags and most of them were a mystery to me as to why I had separated them. I went through all of it and sorted scraps by color and layed them out on three trays. I put the dark scraps aside. Larger pieces I put away in one of the boxes and I put small pieces that would be the start of the liberated log cabins and stars in a shoe box. This pile below is from the shoe box.
These are a few of the liberated stars and log cabins I am making. I plan to keep working on them until the scrap pile is depleted. I may cut some more strips to use from the stuff in the boxes.

I had started making 4 and 6 inch blocks without a real plan; I thought I would add them to my "parts department " blocks (like Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston do. I saw what Victoria (Bumblebeans ) was doing with her 15 minutes and I liked the light background on the stars. I'm not sure how I am going to set these or what size I will make; for now I am just going to keep working until the trays are empty.