Startled...But Resigned...

I officially begin my Christmas vacation today. We are dismissed just a bit early from work, and I now have just about two weeks off. Yay! Visions of quality time with family, thread and fabric dance in my head. However, yesterday I received a bit of startling news that has changed my impressions of what the next few weeks will bring to my quilty schedule.

Remember those five charity quilts that I was so thrilled to be done with and move out of my life? Ahem.

There's apparently a sixth.

My friend emailed me yesterday to tell me that she was surprised when her friend--the one who had helped piece the other tops--met her at an event and handed over yet another pieced top, apologizing that she hadn't gotten it done with the other ones. The friend also handed over some leftovers of the original fabric patchwork pieces.

My last email about the charity quilts to my friend had been, "Let's not ever do this again." Well, apparently, we're doing it one more time. She's handing over the pieced top to me on Christmas Eve at our service--presumably when I'm at my most-filled with charitable thoughts. I'll have to be, when this thing comes into my life. However, she did us both the favor of quietly disposing of the remainder of the patchwork pieces.

I'm trying to get over feelings of being haunted. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life...

Gift bag


Gift bag
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
My sewing abilities today are limited by a rather annoying sinus headache and related puffy eyes. Ick. I was planning on scooting out after work to do what little Christmas shopping I have left to do (not much gifting this year--more hanging together and playing games)...but I'm so wiped I decided to brave the crowds another day. We're decorating our tree tonight so I have to conserve my strength!

Meanwhile, our guild-that-is-not-a-guild is having its Christmas party tomorrow night, rescheduled from last week when we got snowed out. Sadly, I have another commitment tomorrow night I can't get out of, so I'll be missing my Christmas party. We do a Secret Santa gift exchange so I've gotten permission to drop my gift off at my LQS tomorrow morning and someone there will bring it to the guild meeting for me. How nice! And yes, I'm cognizant of the fact that means I'll be at my LQS at some point tomorrow. And they're having a sale. Hmmm....

In any case, I saw this gift bag tutorial on Alamosa Quilter's blog awhile back and printed it off--and tonight I decided to use it to wrap my Secret Santa gift. It worked well--thanks, Lynn! Much nicer than the gift bag I tried to make myself last year with no real idea of what I was doing. Finishing an edge? Really? Anyway--I like the results so I'll definitely be using the tutorial again.

By the way, the rather unusual shape isn't Lynn's directions. I chose to use a Christmassy fat quarter I had and didn't trim it up to be narrower. To tell the truth, I kind of like the sort of clutch-pursey look it ends up with. And who knows--my recipient may have some oblong gift she wants to give someday and it'll be the perfect shape. I can always hope, anyway.

In any case, I'm not going to tell you what's inside the bag--not that I think my Secret Santa recipient reads my blog. But just to be on the safe side, I'll keep it hush-hush for the time being. But isn't that bag just the cutest thing?

Here's the link to Lynn's tutorial.

International Quilt Festival Houston 2010 Pics--Finally!

So I ended up only posting about 30 of my 200 or some pictures from Houston partly because I'd been about halfway through getting all the citations put in when I lost the work I'd done...which sort of took the wind out of my sails to sit and do it all again. But I've uploaded ones that I found particularly interesting, inspiring, or just plain pretty.

Click on the photo to get to the album in Flickr. Have fun!

It's done!


Stack n slash
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
Here's my most recent UFO finish. This is a quilt for one of my nieces--it's a stack n' slash that started with a layer cake of batiks. (For my followers who aren't die-hard quilty-types--at least, yet--a "layer cake" is a stack of 10" squares, typically around 40 of them although that varies.)

You may also recognize it as the header for my podcast show notes page. :-)

I started this on a quilt retreat in May 2008, and I'm thrilled to finally have it finished. I love doing the stack n' slash technique--it's wonderfully random and I need a little random in my life. This was the first time I ever used the technique. I had so much fun with it that I've now done four total. The first one I finished was the flannel quilt I made for myself. After I made this batik one, I bought a second layer cake of batiks from the same shop and made another one for my other niece in this family (sisters). The batiks were completely different so that one came out a lot brighter. That's the next UFO I'll be finishing so you should be seeing pics of that one soon, I hope! The fourth stack n' slash I'm working on is another flannel one--this one I'm doing in Manly Colors and will give it to my husband. The blocks have been made--I'll get it put together sometime after the holidays.

I've seen several quilts lately that have used stack n' slash blocks as a border treatment, which I think is way cool.

This being made out of batiks, it's not as soft and cozy as it would be in cotton, but it's funky cool, which is what my niece is all about anyway. And it'll be relatively sturdy, which for a transitional-young-adult is just about perfect. I messed up some of the quilting but good, but she'll love me anyway.

Another finish! Woohoo!

Yippee! Well, with a slight twinge that I really should have been working on a UFO instead, but completely happy with the end results anyway, I now have a Christmas tablerunner to grace my coffee table for our upcoming holiday party next weekend. Yay me! That's two finishes right in time for the holidays. I'm not sure I've managed to pull that off before.

I just love this pattern ("Little Charmers II" by Heather Mulder Petersen of Anka's Treasures) and just love this fabric ("12 Days of Christmas" by Kate Spain for Moda). And my meander actually turned out pretty dang well! Must have been all that practice on my niece's quilt. So I'm very pleased with this one, all around. Simple, fast, and dang cute.

Even the back is cute. Not quite enough leftover charms for the back so I had to fill in with some red from my stash. I cut off one end in the picture but it's close to the same width on either end--I figured that would be less noticeable than a big chunk of red all in one place.

My stitches are much more even in length and there's only a couple of places where it got a little hitchy because my acu-feed foot--which is supposed to be up and out of the way when I'm not using it--kept catching on the edge of the fabric. Normally it is out of the way; that's not a real problem. I had just decided to quilt this sideways so the edge of the table runner was frequently up near that acu-feed and as I quilted it, the edge got a little poofy and poked up higher than it normally does. But all things considered, it went fine. As they say, "You can quilt that out."

Ok, it's back to the UFOs now. I promise.

A "Found" Day for Quilting

I work from home, so most times the weather doesn't affect my ability to commute to the office. However, when the rest of the office can't be in the office, it's a snow day for me too!

I worked half the day and then got a call that the building was closing down so I may as well take the rest of the day as well. Yippee! Let's see...what should I do...clean the mudroom or sew? Ahem.

Mudroom is still a mess.

The UFO I was working on is now at the point of hand-sewing the binding onto the back, so that's already moved out of my sewing room. I probably should have started the next UFO that needs to be finished, but I needed to do something fast and fun. I have some charm packs burning a hole in my pocket, so to speak, so I pulled out a pattern I'd used a couple of times last year as gifts and decided to make one for me this time. It goes together pretty quickly--within a couple of hours I had the front done and the backing pieced (the leftover charms from the pack that didn't get used in the front). So now I'm just debating how I'll quilt it. I imagine I'll just end up stippling, but I'm still pondering.

However, now it's garbage night and I need to get the kitchen cleaned up after dinner so I think my "found time" has officially been used up and now it's back to the workaday world.

Mudroom is still a mess. Maybe this weekend. Unless I find something else to sew.

Conversation with Hollis Chatelaine

I am still so excited about the fact that I was able to sit and talk with one of my "quilt heroes," Hollis Chatelaine, when in Houston. I have long admired her work and was especially pleased to be able to talk with her one-on-one about her initiative, "Imagine Hope," raising awareness of global issues through art. Check out the conversation in Episode 31, "In Which We Talk with Hollis Chatelaine." Quilting…for the Rest of Us » Episode 031 In Which We Talk with Hollis Chatelaine Nov 28 2010 - http://bit.ly/h2zLFs

Another sneak peek...the next UFO in progress

This will go to one of my nieces. Actually, it already went to her about three years ago. She got the pieced top wrapped up for Christmas but after she gave the appropriate happy comments I snatched it back. I'm hoping to give her the finished product this year for Christmas. The gift that keeps on giving. Surely I'm not the only quilter who's done that.

Pic 1 is the backing. Yep, it's batiks. And it's stack n' slash. I used a layer cake of batiks and loved the way it turned out. Just wait 'till you see the finished product!

I got it basted today and let me just say for the record, in answer to the perennial question, "What's your least favorite part of the quiltmaking process?", that would be basting. Hate it. In my opinion, it's a necessary evil. Necessary, but evil.

In any case, got it basted, did some practice free-motioning again to warm up, then decided to just start having at it. (Pic 2) My comforting theory is that my niece won't know the difference between good free-motion skills and almost-but-not-quite-functional ones. Thank God for small favors.

I did some stabilizing "stitch in the ditch" lengthwise, and now I'm meandering. But after a day on my feet cooking yesterday, I only got about a fifth of the way done before hitting a wall. It's going relatively well, all things considered. Now I'm going to crash and read or watch TV for awhile or something equally couch-potato-ish. I'll hit it fresh again tomorrow--if I pace myself, I have hopes of getting the top quilted by tomorrow night. Yippee! Wouldn't it be just wonderful if I could manage to get another UFO done before the weekend is out?

UFO Finish--yay!


UFO Finish--yay!
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
No more peeks....It's DONE! I had an unexpected marathon session last night: got the border quilted and the binding finished. I sat up past midnight hand-stitching the binding to the back--I was on a roll and didn't want to quit.

I'm so glad to have this wallhanging done. I was really looking forward to having it hang on my wall and then it just sat for a couple of years while I attended to other quilty matters, like my Mom's UFOs. But it's finally done and tomorrow will get hung on my living room where I've been picturing it ever since I first decided I was going to make it. I'm a happy camper tonight!

And on such a roll that after I stopped tonight to pick up the last few groceries I needed for tomorrow's feast, I made sure I picked up other supplies to get me ready for some serious quilty time on Friday and Saturday. I don't do the retail thing--I do the "hole up and regroup" thing. No better way to hole up and regroup than at my sewing machine. I already have the next UFO pulled off the shelf and sitting next to my machine ready to rock n' roll.

BTW, appropriate citations: Pattern is "Triple Rail on Point" from M'Liss Rae Hawley's "More Fat Quarter Quilts" (Martingale 2001). I love it and highly recommend it!

Mental Barriers

I put the "border on a roll" on my wallhanging tonight--all pinned, connecting lines sketched out (where I had to stretch a corner to get it to fit correctly). I've even done a little practice machine quilting since it's been awhile since I did free-hand.

Now I just need to get over myself and start quilting. Maybe tomorrow night.

Look, Ma--I'm Sewing!

I finally got some quality time with my machine tonight. Yay! I listened to a couple episodes of "This American Life" and a little bit of my son's radio show (college DJ donchaknow), and made significant progress on the quilting of my triple-rail-on-point. I'm not showing you the top just yet--you'll have to wait until it's done. The backing doesn't quite match the front color-wise--which you can't see in this photo since the lighting is hinky anyway--but it was inherited fabric and I had four yards of it so this was a good way to use half of it up. And it's a wallhanging, so no one will ever see the back anyway.

I'm stitching in the ditch but since it's a triple rail and I'm stitching every dang brick (or fence post?) it's a little bit on the pokey side. Mostly, after spending the day on the computer and then heading almost immediately to my sewing machine my hands and shoulders were getting a little achy so I'm calling it quits for the night.

Now I'm moving my center of operations to the family room couch where I'll watch TV, work on my newsletter, and sort through some more Houston photos. Good stuff is on its way, folks, but I decided to prioritize sewing tonight. I always figure it's good for a podcaster who talks about quilting to actually have some quilting to talk about.

Episode 29--In Which We Meet BabaBlankets posted

It's not too often that you can shop fabricy-goodness to your heart's content without feeling terribly guilty at the end of it. In the case of BabaBlankets, your spending supports an excellent cause! BabaBlankets is a social enterprise that sells hand-dyed, hand-crafted goods made in Ghana to help empower women and girls. The women learn marketable skills and are able to support themselves through their craft, and they develop a business acumen which serves them the rest of their lives. Additionally, BabaBlankets has the "Sistah Scholars" program to provide educational opportunity to girls in Ghana--when a girl is educated, she will then tend emphasize the need for education for her children in the future, thus raising up an entire community.

And no--BabaBlankets hasn't paid me to say any of this!

My work life is heavily invested in global issues facing women and girls, so meeting up with a social entrepreneur like Aminata Brown, founder of BabaBlankets, brings the many threads of my world together. Supporting opportunity for women and girls, addressing issues of poverty and access to education...and pretty pretty fabric...all in one place. Can't get much better than that.

Episode 29 of my podcast series is my interview with Aminata Brown in her vendor booth at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. We didn't have long, but we made great use of the time we had right as the exhibition hall opened and before she was flooded with customers. I hope you'll enjoy the interview and then hurry scurry to their website and support a great cause while feeding your fabric needs! (They've got lots of other great stuff, too.)

 

Show n' Tell of my Houston Haul

OK, so when it's all laid out on my cutting table, it looks like a lot. But I'm very, very excited about what I bought in Houston. Some fabric, some patterns, a kit or two, some sewing machine feet, a couple of books.... Mmmm. Presents for me.

I only looked for things I couldn't easily get at home or hadn't seen on the Internet before--anything very different, or new. I didn't buy a single swatch of Moda. Instead, I sought out new designers, ethnic fabrics, and simply stuff I hadn't seen before.

I've posted pictures and given websites and such in my flickr album--the photo here is just a taste!

Sorting through photos...

I have over 200 pics of quilts that impressed me in some way or 'tother in Houston. Since it would be overwhelming and take days to post them all, I'm now facing the onerous task of choosing just those that particularly speak to me. Too hard! Too hard! I'll get something posted by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to formulate my thoughts into something that make sense for podcast episodes--I'll probably be posting a couple this week while everything's fresh in my mind, then go back to my weekly schedule.

Anyone else go to Houston? Tell us about it!

Heading to Houston

I'm almost done packing and tieing up loose ends so I can be footloose and fancy free at the International Quilt Festival in Houston the rest of the week. Woohoo! Me and my BFF/BQF Kate board a plane at an almost ungodly hour tomorrow morning--at least, early enough that I won't sleep a wink all night for fear I'll sleep through my alarm.

I'm packing as light as possible so I have room for goodies! I'm also packing a totebag to use during the event and to bring any overflow home as a carry-on. I'm ready.

Not doing any classes this year but am doing a lot of the lectures and a couple of the banquets. I can get emails on my cell phone so send me an email if you want to try to connect while we're there. I'd love to meet you!

I'm also going to pin my logo to my nametag (somehow) so be on the lookout. It'll be sort of like Where's Waldo, without the funny red and white striped shirt. I'm not going quite that far, although it would be a fashion statement...of a sort.

For anyone not there, I'm going to try to remember to do a lot of tweeting, so get yourself a Twitter account and follow me: sandyquiltz. I'm going to try to do my quilty journalist best to report on my experience.

OK--time to go haul my jeans out of the dryer so I can pack them too. What--you don't leave your laundry until the last minute? Where's your sense of fun and adventure, timing the last ding of the dryer cycle to make sure you hit your plane on time....

The light at the end of the tunnel

Finally, at long last, my computer seems to be healed. My deep, but uneducated, suspicion was right--it was actually a virus affecting the wireless router causing the problems. We have several computers that all use the same router when they're in the house. Every computer had issues here in the house, but when the laptops left the house, they were fine. I kept googling "virus in wireless router" and coming up blank because routers don't actually get viruses themselves.

However, this virus gets on your computer and then changes the settings to your router and redirects it to another server...or something like that. So any of the computers could've gotten the virus in the first place and it changed the router, and then we all had problems. Can't recall all the details because I'm not an IT person myself but it has to do with DNS and other geeky acronyms. In any case, I did yet another search, but this time on the Dell tech support forum which I hadn't checked before, and there it was.

So I was right--it was the router all along. My nephew (who is an IT guy) and I took the steps suggested in the forum to fix my router and I haven't had a problem since.

Sadly, that means the second reformatting was completely pointless. Dang. Two days I could've been happily sewing and instead I was babysitting my computer for hours on end while reinstalling. "Enter." (Wait.) "Enter." (Wait.) "Yes." "Accept." "Enter." (W...a...i...t....)

Sigh.

One step forward and two steps back

Well, at least, a step forward in the quilting world. Two back in the computer world. Pshaw.

I finally got my wallhanging basted tonight. I had the brilliant idea to clear everything off my cutting table and haul it away from the wall so I could walk all the way around all four sides. The wallhanging and backing were only a few inches wider than the table, so although I couldn't tape anything down I could keep it pretty smooth while I was working. No crawling around on my knees! Yeehaw!

The downside was my doofus Golden who insisted on always flopping down right where I needed to stand next, so I was shoving him progressively around all four sides as I worked my way around. And he kept licking my toes. Blockhead.

Anyway, the wallhanging is pin-basted and ready to go--and nothing on my calendar tomorrow night after work so I should make good progress.

On the computer side, I'm about ready to throw mine out the window. But 'nuff said about that. I'm trying not to think about it anymore for the night.