Shopping on the 4th

I had a minor episode of vertigo last evening and ended up going to bed very early and slept soundly until about 9AM. Today I am feeling quite well and fit. Fit enough to go to J Ellen's quilt shop and take advantage of her sale of red, white or blue fabric for $6 a yard.
I bought the red and white print on the left for the back of the  quilt I made in January at the 2nd annual Basement Diva Jelly Roll Race. The Jelly roll was Blitzen and I didn't get any fabric from that line while it was still to be found so today I was on a quest for a red backing fabric. I found several to choose from and this is the one that came home with me. I am ready to layer and quilt.


When I was in the shop last week I caught sight of the  Moda Honeycomb
packs, something new to me. I thought about it for the next few days and today one of them found it's was into my bag. I also discovered Moda Dessert Rolls but I didn't buy any  today. My stash is on a diet.

I spread out a few, but not all of them to look at. In the pack there is also a piece of template plastic the exact size of the hexagons and it has holes in all the corners for making a quarter inch dot for machine sewing; how nice is that.




I used to bypass the precuts, thinking they were a waste of money. Not anymore, I do not want to add anything to my stash. My goal is to have almost no stash except scraps and to buy what I need when I need it. Precut is perfect for that. Leftovers are small and can be counted as scraps. It is too soon to say how well this is going to work for me. I do think I will allow fat quarters for impulse buying if it will be appropriate for whatever color palette I am working on at the time.

We'll see.

Happy 4th of July

I like to bring out all my red, white and blue quilts from Memorial Day through Labor Day because all the summer holidays are American patriotic holidays so the quilts are my summer décor.

The only new red white and blue quilted items I made this year were some hutch mats; they don't say 4th of July like this one. This makes me think of fireworks.

Have a Happy and Safe Independence Day

Remember

to

Count your blessings

and

May God Bless America

Sewing

Jack said he needed to get out for a ride on his motorcycle as he was exhibiting signs of withdrawal. I knew exactly what he  meant. It has been many days since I have done any sewing/quilting and I was getting shaky.

I had the scrappy trips blocks sewed in to section of 8 blocks and for once I understood the way I had then stacked when I last took them off the wall. I had pinned the vertical rows together and labeled them left, center and right. I put them back up on the wall just to be sure and then I sewed them together. I got Jack to hold it up for me to take a pic before he went out for his ride; he was fairly cheerful about it. I told him if he held it up I wouldn't have to get up on a ladder to put it up on the wall.

It is not quite a flimsy; I have to add make the borders but I am feeling much better today.

At this point it is 48 x 72, a bit long and narrow. I really don't want to make more blocks; it would take 12 more to complete a pattern and would make the quilt square and it would end up bigger than I want.
So.............. I think I will make the side borders 6 inches and the top and bottom 4 inches (maybe). I am going to quilt the body of the quilt before I add the borders.

 I will see

 how it goes.

Almost Ready to Sew

I have been working away at decluttering and reorganizing every since Jack took one of my tables and gave me a tall narrow chest of drawers. I am hoping that this is the last big declutter and reorganization that I ever have to do. I have been brutal.
We got a 6 foot stock counter top from Lowes and Jack cut 6 inches off the end (with a handsaw) and fit it to the top of 2 of my short 4 drawer chests.
A friend  gave me 2 plastic drawer units that she was no longer using and they now fit under the counter top. we also replaced a 9 1/2 inch x 11feet shelf with a 12 inch by 6 inch shelf above the counter top.






 Because the counter top is deeper than the chests I have some space to hid things that I need to keep but use only once in a blue moon. toward the back between the sets of drawers is a doll bed piled with dolls and doll quilts that my grand kids play with when they visit. I need to keep that for a while yet.

This patched together photo collage below shows the entire 11ft. 5 inch wall  with my new counter top cutting space and my desk space. The counter tops do not match; for about 15 seconds I considered buying one to match to replace the desk. I let it go, I am just really pleased to have a cleaner, neater space. The new counter top replaces a 4 ft. Lifetime adjustable height table and a 2 x 4 adjustable height tray table that I couldn't have the same height because they wouldn't fit a long unless they could over lap.

One thing we can't do much about is the lighting, hence the cords allover the  place. Jack is going to put an under cabinet light stick over the cutting area and I am going to get an Ott light with an adjustable arm to put on the right side of my sewing table.

And that

should

do it!

Quilt Camp 2013 is Over

We finished up with Quilt Camp yesterday and it was exciting to me to hear everyone talking about "next year". I think we all had fun, the young participants and the adult teachers.

There are 3 quilts that will be quilted by long arm quilters and they may or may not come back to one of our Saturday meetings for help to apply their  bindings. We have 2 that quilted their quilts but did not have time for the bindings and we expect they will come back to our Saturday meeting for help; the other quilts were tied and were completely finished .

There was time for everyone to make one or two "made fabric" squares for the Falling Charms quilt that will be auctioned next spring to benefit the youth group missions. We will use "made fabric" squares as well as charm squares. Of all the photos I took I only had one shot of some of the squares that were in the background. Everyone enjoyed making these squares and one girl was going to show her mother how to make them. We had them use a lot of their own scraps but also from the communal fabric pool. I am thinking that it would be nice if they would come to some of our Saturday meetings to make more, maye even make a piano key border. We'll see.

Throughout the week I tried to get shots of everyone working but I missed some people. There was always a lot going on and as we moved along we moved into another room to layer up and tie the quilts.





When I took the pictures below the quilters were getting ready for the group photo. In the top left they all appear to be looking at our lone male quilter. In the top right they appear to be looking at the T shirt quilt.
On the bottom left they are smiling for the camera. On the bottom right we have everyone along with the teachers in the center row, that's me in the front row center trying to hide behind the quilts. We were missing one of the girls who was sick on Friday and three of the teachers who had other commitments. Kim who is our official photographer for Quilt Camp took photos of everyone who is missing and she will paste them in to fill in the gaps in our grouping that were deliberately left for that purpose . She also got shots of each quilter with their quilt and will paste their own photo into a group photo for each of the participants.

 At lunch yesterday we had a pizza party and one of the moms surprised us with an ice cream cake decorated with quilt motifs.

It was a great week.

Quilt Camp 2013 Day 3

As usual I underestimated how long it would take to accomplish a step. We did not complete all 9 quilt tops by the end of our second day. By the end of our third day (today)  we have 4 completed flimsies, 2 that are only missing the borders, and 2 that are very close to having all the blocks sewed together.

These 4 are the top row are the 4 flimsies. the 2 on the left will be completed by a long arm quilter, the third one in the row is layered up and ready to tie. The one on the top right is ready to layer; it is the same layout as the pattern but she opted for one frame fabric instead of 2 and it gives the quilt a different look. That third one with the yellow background is a little different layout. We argued talked about the layout and in the end let her do it her way, after all, it is her quilt. The lone male in the group supported her choice; when I said it didn't make sense he showed me how it did. OK I give up!

 
The pink flimsy above is ready for borders and though the layout is the same it looks different because of having an extra background fabric. This is a breast cancer quilt and will be donated. The other 3 quilts are further along that these photos show. These shots are from yesterday, one of them has the borders on today and the other two are nearly ready for borders. I'm not sure what happened today to some of my quilt photos; I was pretty sure I got some today of these last 3. I am also not sure what happened to the shot of the one and only T shirt quilt but it is bordered on 2 sides and will be ready to layer up early tomorrow.

Today during our break we had show and tell from the adult helpers.
the top 3 quilts are all examples of quilts made with small scraps.

  The three quilts on the bottom row are examples of different fun things you can do with different techniques and scraps.

These last 4 quilts are also from the teachers. The top 2 are front and back of the same quilt. I believe this is a wall hanging in her home.

The two quilts on the bottom row are possibilities for Quilt Camp another year for returnees.

We are expecting to make good progress tomorrow and hope all of the quilters will be able to make a few blocks for a collaborative quilt before the end of the week.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

More to follow.

Quilt Camp 2013 Day 1

Today was our first day of Quilt Camp and it was a productive day. Most of the teens are returnees and all but one of the adults have been quilting for a long time. I myself got off to a wrong start when I had to turn around and go back home for my hearing aids which made me about 15 minutes late getting there. We were planning for all the adults to be there at 9AM, an hour before the teens but most of the teens came at 9 as well.  Not to worry, even though we didn't have the hour than we planned to go over details with the adults all went along in the usual orderly chaos.

These photos were shot at the end of our first day. The pattern we're using is Warm Wishes and the photo in the upper left is a good example of the original pattern. We had a meeting 2 weeks ago to give some fabric selection guidelines and then everyone purchased their own fabric.

Some of the student quilters opted to use 4 patch blocks instead of  a focus fabric inside the "frames".  One of the girls is making a T shirt quilt. She has been with us for 6 years and has demonstrated that she can follow instructions and get the work done so we took a chance on letting her make something different and it seems to be going well. There are some ways in which a few of the quilts will be customized and that doesn't show up yet on the design walls.
There are 3 more quilts that I somehow missed in the end of the day quick photo shoot but everyone is moving along well and I think by the end of the day tomorrow we will have 9 Flimsies. I wonder if they all know what a Flimsy is.

More to follow.

Still Here

I have not fallen off the face of the earth; I have just been busy with other things. I have spent some time getting ready for Quilt Camp for the teens at our church and doing a few other things that are too uninteresting to mention. I wasn't able to go to our Basement Divas get together so no photos from there.
Ever since Jack took one of my tales to replace his desk and moved the narrow chest of drawers into my room, things in my sewing room have been in a mild uproar and that has taken my time. I am, and have been in the middle of a major reorganization and purge and declutter. Where in previous reorganizations attempts, I got rid of a few things and moved the rest of it around; this time I am filling up bag after bag of stuff to get rid of. It is going to take me another week to go through all the notebooks and boxes and magazine holders that are filled with papers from years and years of saving all my teaching handouts and revisions and instructions and warranties  for things I no longer own, etc., etc. Every once in a while I get my table cleaned off and carry the bags of papers to go to the paper dumpster and the garbage out to set next to our front door. Then I start in on something else and pile it all on the table again. Jack has been doing the same, going through years of saved bank statements and cancelled checks and old maps  etc that have been filling up drawers.

Well anyway, I am not going to post any pictures of the current mess but I don't want to be photo less so here is a photo of something I don't think I have ever posted.  I'm reaching back to 2006 for this one.




























This 25 inch square wall hanging was for a guild challenge in 2006. We blindly picked a crayon out of a paper bag and had to make a quilt the was predominately that color; my color was tan. I would never have chosen to make a tan quilt. I did more than the usual complaining about the challenge but in the end I really like it.  However I have not made another tan quilt. The other color I never like to use is gray and it appears to be a very popular background or negative space color right now. I am probably going to end up sooner of later with a gray quilt and I will no doubt like it.

Quilt Camp starts Monday and I will probably post some photos but there will not be any sewing here for the rest of June. I should be back to sewing and finishing up some UFO's in July.

Small Finish

I finished this little 6 x 9 inches piece today. I had fished it out of a box of odd stuff a couple of weeks ago and stuck it on my design wall so I would be reminded to do something with it.
Today, I just put some borders on it, layered it with 2 layers of fusible fleece and a backing, put folded triangles in the top corners and stitched on the inside of the borders and 1/2 inch from the edge. I trimmed the edge with a pinking blade. I put a piece of cardboard across the top edge caught in the triangle corners  and hung it above my desk. It was easy and quick and a light and easy reminder that I don't want to be a drip. Does anyone use that term (drip) anymore to describe someone who is a pain in the neck?

Birds of Ohio Challenge etc.

Our group from church met today and we had the revel of our challenge quilts from our Birds of Ohio challenge. Elaine printed up some photos from the Internet of birds that are native to Ohio and we blindly picked a photo from a bag to be our inspiration. We could interpret that any way we wanted. there was a size limit of 120 inches around the perimeter.

Five of us brought something to show today. Guess who forgot their quilt at home. I did however have a photo of it to show here.
Top row on the left is Kim and she picked two birds but decided to make only one quilt. Her birds were the Purple Finch and Black Throated Warbler; she use their colors for her inspiration. In the center is Kathy with her quilt inspired by the Blackburnian Warbler. Elaine, our challenge originator, is on the left with her Black Throated Green Warbler quilt.

 In the bottom row on the left is Dorine with her paper pieced Hummingbird. She enlarged the pattern on her computer and printed it. The original was a much smaller bird. In the center is Debbie's quilt. Her bird was a Red Breasted Nuthatch. As there is no red in the quilt, I am assuming that her inspiration for the birdhouses was perhaps their nesting habit. It is a fun quilt with pretty fabric and we were free to interpret our bird any way we wanted. The last quilt is mine that I forgot at home.  My bird was a Blue Winged Warbler. Kathy's and Debbie's quilts are still  at the flimsy point, Elaine's quilt is hand quilted and the others are machine quilted.

We had some other show and tell as well. Kathy has a beautiful quilt for a graduation gift that she has almost finished. I wish I had taken a close up of the fabrics because they don't show up well when  I enlarge the photo. the darker of the block fabric is zebras and the other has gnus and  either tigers or leopards or maybe both. The quilt on the right is a hand quilted baby quilt for Elaine's soon to be born grandson. The fabric is just too cute and she has made some other items from the fabric as well, including a darling bib with the monkey fabric in the center.

These are some blocks that Gail is working on for a Quilt of Valor. I am not sure of the size but they I think they are larger than 12 inches.

 

 

Sorting, sewing, knitting

After we moved things around early this week I started working on my box of 2 inch log cabin strips. It was such a jumbled mess that anytime I though about making blocks I  decided to do something else instead. I dumped the whole box into a collapsible laundry hamper last week and I had been adding to it  as I was cleaning up.  I finally got busy making order???? out of chaos. I separated the lights mediums and darks and loosely separated the strips by length. It is better than what it was. then I had a bunch of 11/2 inch strips that had found there way into the mess and I sorted them out. I had a lot of red and blue strips and I thought I just need to make something with them right then and there.

Jack had taken my old printer a few months ago when it refused to print in black (it prints black for him, go figure) and it was on top of that chest that is now in my sewing room. Now it has to sit on his desk (formerly my cutting table) and he doesn't have a lot of room for all his stuff on his desk. so he set his lamp on the printer, along with that male essential, the remote. He didn't want to scratch to top of the printer so he was using this, which is one of many brand new knitted dishcloths.

As I was sorting out those red and blue strips inspiration struck. and I made him a mat. I didn't want to do a lot of fussing around with decisions about what strip to put next to another so I did it jelly roll race style. I just sewed odd lengths together end to end until I had 168 inches and folded the long strip  in half and sewed and folded and sewed etc. I layered it and sewed it pillowcase style and turned it.
Now I don't have to decide what to do with those strips and I have satisfied my need to sew something.
I am still not able to do much sewing. All this moving stuff around has left me with a bunch of stuff shoved into my sewing space until it can be put away (somewhere?) or picked up and taken away.
In the meantime I will work on finding places for the stuff that no longer has a designated home and I guess I will knit some more dish cloths. I think I like making them because I enjoy the colors and  the way the pattern falls together with the variegated yarn.

No Sewing

There has been no sewing here for at least a week. Jack decided he needed to change his computer desk so he would look down at his monitor instead of up. Looking up has caused him sinus problems and he had been working with one thing or another to work something out. He took one of my 2 ft. x 4 ft. cutting tables with the adjustable legs and lowered it and we spent 2 days moving things around. We weren't sure the table  would work out so he took mine to try and we will replace it.

Now I have a new addition to my sewing room. It was in the corner of our bedroom next to his desk where it would no long fit. I don't really mind having it but it requires some adjustment to everything else in my sewing space. That is the keyboard tray from his desk there against the wall. Our grandson is going to take the desk (soon I hope) and then I can get things arranged better.

We almost never move furniture but we have spent days moving things in the living room too. We also had to shop for a new smaller end table and lamp because we moved Jacks recliner a little bit at a different angle to make a little more room in the dining area. Now we won't have to move the recliner if we put the leaf in the table for company. There used to be a smaller easier to move chair in that place but Jack reclaimed his recliner and it had to be moved, why else but so it was closer to the TV. Of course one thing leads to another and I now want a small bookcase and a new coffee table. I am tired of shopping so it won't be this week.

I am ready to get back to some sewing.