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.

Three more that I gave away.

I find that I do not have photos of all of the quilts that I gave away last week. I will probably go over to my daughter's and son's houses  and snap a few so I have a record of what I made. I know that in the past I didn't always take pictures and I have forgotten some of the things I made. Before my daughter and daughter in law left with the quilts I made a list of the quilts each one had and when I  looked at my list I was suprised that I was not sure what some of the smaller pieces are.

These are three more of the quilts my daughter took. I think I have shown all of them here before. the yellow table topper is recent but the other two Have been around awhile, living in my closet or cedar chest. She has already passed some of the smaller pieces on to family members which is what I hoped she would do.

Now I can access the things in my sewing room closet a little better and I can sew again without some of the frustration.

Here are a few more of the quilts that I gave away this week.

This first quilt is another 9 patch color wash. It in no way resembles the quilt I had in mind when I started. I was going to make it green and pink/ red but the quilt had other ideas and when that happens I go with the flow.. I cut the compound leaves from a printed fabric and fused them and machine appliqued them and the branch with a narrow satin stitch. It used to hang in my bedroom above the headboard but now I want something different. These are my daughters colors so I am sure she will use it somewhere.

The quilt below is one I gave Marty a few years ago. I had a bunch of 9 patch color wash blocks left from making the quilt at the top of my blog. I had made it too big for the space between the top of the sofa and the ceiling and I had to take off some rows and I used them to make this quilt which is about 24 inches square. The blossoms are cut from and oriental looking print fabric and machine appliqued. I hand appliqued the circle because I  thought it would be an easier way to get it perfectly round. Maybe it is not perfectly round but it turned out pretty good.

The next quilt was from a black and white class I took at the Farmpark in Kirtland, Ohio with Lynn Keough. It sat around for a long time unfinished until I went into a finishing frenzy and finished up a bunch of things that had been around awhile.  I had a few black and white quilts that never saw the light of day after they were finished, they just didn't play well with anything else. I made them because I had an idea but they didn't fit in my home or any of my kid's either. I decided that maybe this one needed something so I added the flowers.

The last quilt "Summertime in the Land of Oz." It was from a class with  Loraine Torrence at the Farmpark the same year as the black and white class. I don't do very well in classes. At some point my mind wanders away from the technique instructions and I start thinking about the composition and I have to say that everyone else seemed to be doing what they were doing an easier way than I was. Nevertheless it was a good class and I did learn some really useful techniques even though I learned some of them by doing it my way.

Gave away 20 quilts

I have had quilts in my cedar chest and quilts in my linen closet and 3 cardboard carpet rolls with quilts rolled up around them taking up room in my sewing room closet for way too long. I didn't want to put them back after our move. After I put everything away where it belonged and felt satisfied with the way things fit, I really didn't want to put those rolls back in front of all my shelves. That is where they have been living and I decided it was time for them to go somewhere where they would be used. My daughter and daughter in law came over this afternoon and they each took about 10 quilts. I told them to take them to use and not to put away in a closet unless they are seasonal. I let them work it out between them, who took what. Most of the quilts wee wall hangings but there were 2 bed size quilts.
These are two that my daughter in law took

This one is "Night Flight". It is about 40 inches square, a 9 patch color wash background, the flying geese and mountain scene is a appliqued circle of printed fabric. I appliqued the circle by hand.  At the time it seemed the easiest way.

The second quilt is "Moonlight Swim". It is about 24"x 40" and it is also a 9 patch color wash background with a hand appliqued circle of printed fabric . I guess I uploaded the photo that wasn't cropped but it wasn't easy finding  the pics that I wanted. These are 2 of my favorite quilts but I never hung them at home because they seemed out of place. I hung on to them for a long time but finally decided to let them go.

Ruth (yes my DIL is named Ruth and both our husbands are named John) also took the quilt below.

It is "Urban Renewal" named because the house blocks were made by a fellow guild member several years back and I acquired them at our guild flea market. I added the flag and put the blocks together and quilted it. The quilting was done by machine but I hand quilted quilt block stars at the tip of each roof with embroidery thread and "big stitch." I had this hanging with my patriotic quilts in the other apartment and though this apartment is the same space I decided not to hang anything in the space next to my door because in this apartment the carpeting doesn't go all the way to the door. It would have overlapped past the entry space and the look was unbalanced. Because it was long I had no other place to hang it.

Tomorrow if I can find the rest of my quilt pics I will post some that my daughter took.

Almost back to "normal"

We are pretty much all settled after our move and the water episode. The ceiling areas that were damaged have been repaired and the painting is done and it all looks good. We finished hanging all the curtain rods and brackets and the curtains and blinds are up.
My sewing room has been cleared of all of the stuff we had to move in there to get the work done but I still have some work to do before it is finished. I am not rushing it because I would like to get it arranged so that I am satisfied and not always moving things to make it better.
Today my sister in law, Martha, and I went to visit a new quilt shop that is opening this week; it is only a few minutes from her house. www.jellenshouseoffabric.com . We had a hard time finding the shop because their permanent sign is not up yet and the city of Lyndhurst only allows "lawn signs" on certain days of the week. I remembered the address and that is how we found it and it was worth the trouble. It is a nice shop, the owner is very friendly and the lighting is great. I think this shop will be a regular destination. So far all the fabric was from Moda but new things will be arriving. I am loving the new fresh colorways of all the fabric lines but it makes me not so enchanted with my stash which has become outdated because I have not been buying much except to finish what I am working on.

My Diva

I had a hard time getting started on this challenge last year when we got our panels and the rules. The rules didn't bother me as there is not one quilt police person among us, we consider rules guidelines to jump start the creative process. My CP would not start or rather became overloaded with more ideas than I wanted to use. I really wanted to make a small piece and there were so many Divas in the panel I could not decide which 3 to use and the really cute frames around all  the the images got me hung up on the color yellow, which I love but didn't want to use. In the end it was the house idea inspired by Freddy Moran's houses in Collaborative Quilts that helped me get started. Choosing one image to represent me I could add the things I like around the house.

I chose this image to represent me because  she looks friendly and she is not as sophisticated as the other white haired ladies. Her figure is kind of soft and lumpy, not exactly "toned", and I often stand like her with my hands on my hips. My favorite food is fresh, ripe, home grown, tomatoes.  My favorite color is red but I think every other color is in second place there isn't one I don't like ( well maybe tan).  If I had a yard I would have a garden full of flowers.  Sunshine makes me feel energized, though I have never been a sunbather, I love sunny days and love to look at the sun filtering through the trees especially when there is a light breeze ( too bad I didn't think to put a tree on my quilt). I colored the background around my Diva a sunny yellow with a crayon as she would not have white walls in her house if she had a choice.

When I was finishing up the embellishments on the quilt I told my husband I needed to go shopping for a belly button ring. There was a pause and he said "You know.............. maybe you ought to think about it a while before you go ahead and do something like that".  How could I not love a man who thinks that I might actually do that?

Diva Challenge

Our Saturday basement study  quilt group met last Saturday for the Diva Challenge reveal. Not everyone finished and one person was missing and one person just couldn't get started. All of that is OK, life happens, motivation/interest doesn't come, inspiration takes us in another direction. We get together because we like to experiment and we like each other and we have fun. We started playing with all the different elements in the "Beyond the Block" book by Linda K. Johnson and Jane K. Wells and then we started playing with the parts department elements from "Collaborative Quilting" by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston. When someone found the Sewing Diva panels the challenge was born.

 These are the rules

1) Use at least 3 motifs from the focus fabric

2) Add not more than 20 additional fabrics
3) It has to be finished and quilted by the next, Amish Retreat January 29 2010 or the next basement meeting following that.
4) At least 4 techniques from the book.

5) At least one embellishment

6) There is no size or shape requirement.

7) Keep it a secret until the reveal.

Kathy said she can see everyone sewing and hiding at the retreat. It should be noted that Jan and Ruth do not like the 10 extra fabric limitation (you can see above that the limit had already increast to 20) and Syd does not like the embellishment requirement.

Kathy said any correctionsor comments would be considered. 

This first quilt  of Judy's is really only the motifs and elements so far. That is Judy standing on the right and Jan sitting down helping to hold the quilt and admiring Judy's work. It looks like Judy is using a lot of different elements and her quilt will probably be "over the top" which is par for the course for her. Jan didn't finish hers and didn't bring what she had;  we will have to see it another day.

                                                                                                

The next quilt belongs to Kathy who is hiding behind it. Kathy keeps us informed about what is going on and sends us reminders before the meetings and newsy emails afterward. She is the one who wrote down the rules when we made them up and sent them to everyone so we all knew which ones to break what to do. She has dentil moulding and chevron elements in her quilt, which is finished and quilted.

Lori's finished quilt is below, she used squares on point and checkerboard and sawtooth borderes. She liked the same blond with the tomato hat and the sunbather that Kathy did.  All her Divas had really sparkly jewelry embellishments.

 Fran's quilt top below , like Lori's has checkerboard and squares on point frames and she framed it out with a narrow yellow border with some elements sticking out she likes the same blond and sunbather as Kathy and Lori

Lynn's quilt top uses Liberated stars along with her Diva motifs. Like Lori she also used a Diva from a different  panel, and there is that same blond again. I'm not sure if she used the sunbather as I didn't get a picture of the whole quilt. Some of her Divas are enbellished with sparkly paint.



The last quilt is my finished quilt. It is a self protrait (or maybe my complete opposite).
I use the required  3 motifs but only one Diva.

I wish my photography was better so you could see some of the details.

We all broke some of the rules and none of us finished by January 29, 2010.  Oh wellllllllll.............

Moved

We moved last Friday and that went well, we are just about done with all of the extra stuff like curtain rods, and shelves, and everything was in place in every room but the sewing room .
Then about 6 PM water started pouring out of our bathroom ceiling and it was a 1/2 hour before someone responded to shut off the water. the ceilings are wet in one end of our bedroom and my sewing room. The hallway ceiling is a mess and bathroom ceiling of course is a mess and will probably have to come down. A cleaning service came to suck up the water and set up a fan to dry out the carpet which will probably be replaced. I called our son to come and help us and we got Jack's computer amd the TV out   of the bedrrom.
At this point it is almost too much for us and I am not even going to think about who is going to move all the furniture out of the two bedrooms so they can do whatever. It will NOT be us.

I have been working on a post with our Diva Challenge pictures but Blogger is not working well and I am out of patience and out steam. The pics will wait.

A family birthday and getting ready to move.

These are from last Sunday. It is really hard to get 5 young kids together to take their picture. One of my GGK's had a birthday and this was his birthday present from his dad. The other three around the drum set are my GGK's; the boy behind the post is a friend. The photo below is the Birthday Boy and his cousin my other GGK.
It was a fun day. There were water guns and bubble guns and hundreds of water balloons and and electric cars and tractors for the kids to drive and just fun being together.

No quilt pics for a while; we are getting ready to move. We are only moving down the hall a few yards to a different apartment that is the same as our present apartment but the opposite layout. In case you think that is strange I will tell you there is reason to my madness.
We face due west and get full (hot) sun in the afternoon; the other apartment also faces due west but there is a large maple tree in front of it which shades the LR and DR. That is reason enough for me but it will also save us from having to move furniture around to get the carpeting replaced and then move it back again. Much easier to move it over a few yards down the hall once. I think this is the reason that sold my husband on the idea which he didn't think was so red hot to begin with. There are some other advantages as well.

Anyway my sewing machines are put away and all of the shelves around my sewing room are down and the rulers are all off the wall and the walls have been patched. Most of the shelves will not be going back up. I like the clean look without the shelves. A big plus for all of this is that I am cleaning closets and drawers and book cases and we are getting rid of stuff we haven't used or thought about in years. Because I don't always put things back where they belong, I find it necessary to clean closets frequently but it is usually just moving stuff back where it belonged. This is a step beyond that. I will tackle my sewing room closet next and I hope this time I will be able to let go of a lot of stuff I have saved "just in case I might want to do something with it".  All family members who are helping us move are also going home with at least one quilt (whether they like it or not)!

A visit with the GGK's

I have been having a busy week. Tuesday two of our great-grand kids (they will be 7 and 8 years old in the fall) came to spend the day with us. We went to lunch at Wendy's where they both got the kids meal with big glasses and a big nose. Grace's nose was crooked and one of the side pieces kept coming off so she threw it away but Ethan had fun with his, here he is with them upside down. After lunch we went to the arboretum and saw about 100 frogs, big ones and tiny ones and a few tadpoles.

They came again Yesterday and stayed over night. we thought we could take them to play miniature golf but the weather was just too hot for us to be out that long in the sun. After all, we are in the age group they have been telling to stay indoors during the heat wave. We went to Chuck E. Cheese instead where they were content to run around spending their tokens and we stayed cool. We had pizza for lunch which was surprisingly pretty good.and then used more tokens. When it was time to leave they took a long time to decide how to spend all their bonus tickets but eventually picked out a bunch of junk  some things they liked.  One of our grandsons (their Dad's cousin) comes to dinner every Wednesday. We were all delighted to see him, they swarmed all over him and I finished up dinner.  I keep only one leaf in the table and we can only fit two on a side. Of course they both had to sit next to him so he had to sit at the end of table so we could work that out. He likes the kids and I think he had fun too. After dinner we went to the library and picked out some books and a movie (the movie wouldn't play). The books kept them busy and quiet in the morning till I woke up. Their dad was picking them up at 2:30 so we didn't go anywhere today. We stayed home and they painted and made quilted potholders for their grandmother for her birthday. I set up my Janome Jem so they could both work at the same time and they picked out all of the strips and sewed them onto the batting. They used the decorative stitches on my Bernina to quilt them and I trimmed them and did the escape hatch finish. they wrote on the back with a Pigma pen and we were DONE. Phew!!!

Here they are with the potholders. Ethan was losing patience with having to have his  picture taken and Gracie is getting into posing with that great big smile. It is a vast improvement over having to sneak up on them to take their pictures.

The visit was fun. I love to see them and spend time with them but they sure do keep us busy. I lost my patience a few times and yelled at them for fighting and they informed me they were not fighting they were PLAYING!  As always, I am looking forward to next time.