Success...of a Sort

I mentioned that I had a sizeable stash of 2 1/2" strips...
The strips stacked on the sides are the collection from a couple of years of strip exchanges with my guild and some I picked up as door prizes at the shop hop last summer. I owned about three or four jelly rolls myself, and then the rest came to live with me after my Mom passed away. She'd just hit a sale or something--I found a couple of shipping boxes with bunches of jelly rolls and bundles in her quilt studio. I gave some away to share the wealth. But I kept all the Moda.


So here was the first set I picked out.

The original jelly roll fabrics are in the middle. I chose five strips from my stash that coordinated. I waffled about the deep rose one right next to the strips (on the right) for the longest time, then finally decided it really gave it a nice pop.



And then I measured the strips.



And the deep rose one was several inches too short. Curses. Foiled again.



Back to the drawing board, and this time, my fat quarter collection. I tend to buy my fat quarters as sets of coordinates--more or less. Not always from the same fabric line, but if I pick up a couple that I like, I'll try to make sure I buy two or three others I know will work with them so I've got at least a solid foundation for a project. I always hate to break up a set.

Darn. Ended up choosing the green plaid (on the left) since it was pretty close in tone to the greens in the jelly roll. Not exact, but the white in the plaid makes it less noticeable. It works. Broke up a nice set, though.

And now I miss the deep rose. Sigh.

Off to press and cut...again. But I probably won't get the background cut tonight. I got my shipment today of the rest of the fabric for the border on the peace quilt so that's back up at the top of the "Must-Do" list. Once I get these floral strips cut, I'll be setting this puppy aside for at least a week, I think.

Anyway, problem solved. (Thanks, Jaye, for the offer of fabric, though! Appreciated!)
Posted by Picasa

Dang. And It Was Going So Well...

Another evening in, another opportunity to spend a few hours in my sewing room. Companionably, even, since my daughter is sitting on the floor in my sewing room with her computer (a long story having to do with hitchy wireless and ethernet cables), the two dogs are here, and my son's voice is coming to me out of my computer speakers since tonight's his DJ night on campus radio and I was streaming his show.

I was merrily cutting along to my son's music, not always my taste but I generally find it mostly entertaining. Everything was going swimmingly. His show ended just about as I finished up my last cut. I shut off my computer and went back to my cutting table to neatly stack all the pieces inside labeled plastic bags, when I decided to review the pattern instructions to see what I needed to cut next.

Wait....what? TWO 6-1/2" strips?? I had only seen that I was supposed to cut one of each successively longer size rectangle off of each set of 2 1/2" strips. But apparently I was supposed to cut two of one size, and I hadn't caught it.

I had leftovers of all of strips, of course, so at first I didn't think it would be that big a deal. Pull out what I thought had been scraps, trim it to 6 1/2", call it a day. But darn if five of those scraps weren't too short. Several more have some selvage showing at one end but it's not the white part--it's the part that would pretty much blend in, especially considering seam allowances. I could probably get away with it. But those five, there's no help for it. Even steaming the hey out of them wouldn't get them close enough for horseshoes.

So now I have to decide how to problem-solve. I've got some ideas but, frankly, ran out of steam. My daughter's school woke me up way early this morning with a robo-call to tell us school was closed so I'm about ready to head to bed as it is.

As my Dad always used to say, "Get a good night's sleep...it'll feel better in the morning."

Ok, Dad. Good night.

Stash Mystery Challenge project started

I'm still waiting for my order of the border fabric I need for the peace sign quilt, so I took advantage of a night "off" from that to start on my stash mystery challenge project. (The Stash Mystery Challenge is one I'm facilitating for my guild and I'm also running a slightly adapted version on my podcast. Check out the guidelines at www.quiltingfortherestofus.com, on the "Stash Mystery Challenge" tab.) This quarter's theme is "floral."

My take on the theme isn't actually using floral fabrics, although clearly I am. But the pattern I'll be doing makes pieced blocks that look like flowers. Very, very cute. The minute I saw the pattern in the book when I bought it a few years back I knew I wanted to make it for my MIL, but was still trying to clear the decks of so many other projects. I didn't even think about it in terms of this challenge until after I'd already published the challenge theme for the quarter and was trying to decide what I'd do. Doh. Of course!

If I can keep working pretty steadily on it, I should get the top pieced by the deadline of the challenge in early March. If that happens, I can send it off to be long-armed and quite possibly have it back in time to give to my MIL for her birthday in early April.

This quarter's stash mystery challenge involves using at least 2 yards of fabric from your stash. I'm using 3 yards of the whites, plus a jelly roll. I did the math on the jelly roll--it comes out to a little over two yards of fabric. Woop woop! So, not counting backing and binding yet, I'm using over 5 yards of fabric. I did end up being half a yard sort of white to complete what I needed for the background--and, being a good quilter, actually bought a yard so I could have some slush room and put some back in my stash when I'm done. I pretty much depleted my tone-on-tone whites on this one. (You can't tell from this picture, but I think there's three different whites in there, plus a collection of tone-on-tone white strips from a strip exchange we did in our guild several years back.)

I actually made the jaunt out to my LQS for that half yard tonight as soon as I realized I was short--I only live a few minutes from it and since we're due for the same snowstorm covering half our continent tomorrow, I'm thinking I'd rather be snowed in with fabric than without it. Most people run to a grocery store--quilters run to the fabric shop. We have our priorities, after all.

Applique done!


Niece's peace sign
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
I finished the MQ blanket stitching on the peace sign today. And yes, it probably does look as wonky as all that. But it seems to work so I'm good. I still think it looks better in person, though. I'll just name it "Wonky Peace Sign" and claim it as an artistic decision. You can't see it easily in this photo (and enlarged is almost worse--cell phone pic and using Picnik's auto-fix which grained everything up but good), but the blanket stitch is black, which will work well with the borders.

I'm now at the point of debating said borders. I have the main border fabric--a peace sign print. What I'm auditioning on my design wall, though, is whether or not it needs a thin inner border first. I'm thinking yes. And I'm thinking a tone-on-tone black. The border fabric has lots going on (and thankfully, wonky, so yes, it's definitely an artistic decision). Although I could probably get away with just doing the one border, I think it'll be more effective if I just do a narrow, say 1", inner border in black and then the print border. Then bind it in black again. Should keep it from spinning off into psychedelic mayhem.

I also had a last minute panic about the amount of border fabric I have. I've got half a yard, which would have been plenty were it not a directional fabric. I would end up having to blend in lots of seams and frankly, I'm just not in the mood. So I just ordered another yard. Which means I'll have lots left over. And I did second-day-air. Which means I'm paying more for shipping than the fabric. But I'm still good.

I can always make her a matching pillowcase.

Peace Sign Progress

I know, I know. It's been awhile. Sorry about that. I was away over the weekend and have a cold that's not serious in most symptoms, but just making me all sorts of draggy. So I took a few nights off of doing much of anything. But tonight I finally got the next big step done in the peace sign--it's all fused and ready to go.

I figured out how I could have done this a little more easily...of course, the minute I finished doing it the hard way. I suppose that's the way it often goes--you have to do it once to see how it works. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, debating fusing methods and ended up going to my trusty MistyFuse. Love that stuff. Now I've got to find just the right thread for the blanket stitch. I decided against doing a funky color since I have so many funky colors a-happenin' already. I'm just going with a basic black, but I want something of just the right thickness and feel. Off to my fave LQS tomorrow after work, and perhaps a second, since my LQS primarily stocks embroidery threads and not such a wide selection for other stuff. There's another QS way across town that has a bigger thread selection so I might end up having to check both.

Thanks, crowefan, for telling me a grid pattern would look great. You convinced me!

Not quite the big "reveal"...but getting there


Zoe's Peace Sign
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
It's not done yet, but it's far enough along that I now feel like I can actually post a photo of it. This is the WIP that I've been referencing lately: my niece's wallhanging, a paper-piecing project where I worked from scratch, one that could have gone horribly awry any step along the way.

I've now gotten past the big scary mean piece that could have ended up being terribly traumatic--piecing that outer ring. B-T-Dubs, it's looking a lot more wonky in this picture than I think it is in real life, but who knows. Maybe it is that wonky. That just makes it more charming. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The colors also didn't come out true-to-life in the pic--the really, really dark strips are violet and dark blue, not black like they look here. It's a pretty happy quilt--lots of jewel tones. The background is two white tone-on-tone fabrics alternating--you can't really see it here but it provides a little bit of textural interest to the back without it being obtrusive. Once it's on white batting, I don't think the seams will show quite as much.

At the moment, it's just pinned up in rough approximation of its eventual shape; I didn't worry about aligning anything yet. I just wanted to see how it was turning out. I'll center it and make sure it's all even when I baste it. I'm going to do raw-edge applique with a blanket stitch in some fun color; I figured that would fit its sort of 70s-folksy/hippie vibe. And it's easier to boot. Win all around.

I'm debating what I'm going to do for an inner border still--I may do something with the leftover fabric from the peace sign (used a bunch of fat quarters and only needed a strip or two out of each). I have a cute peace sign print fabric for the border, so the inner border needs to be mostly fairly solid and plain. I've got a coordinating fabric to the outer border that I'll probably use for backing and binding, although I'm waiting until everything else is done to decide what kind of binding needs to frame it.

As for quilting, I'm debating between a simple grid on the background, or echo quilting. Leaning towards a grid, mostly because that will get this thing out of my house and on its way to my niece a lot faster!

That's all I'm going to do for today. I have a meeting in about an hour and a half and my son left me his cold when he moved back to college (and a messy room, but that doesn't affect me as much on a daily basis), so I think I'm going to crash with some hot tea for a bit and work my way up to meeting-mode.

Wrestling the Beast


Another sneak peek
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
I made more progess tonight and, most significantly, finally got down to wrestling the beast. What's in the picture is the easy part. The beasty part is currently resting quietly next to my sewing machine, building its energy up for our next round of battle, I'm sure.

Actually, at this stage, I have to say that I think I might actually be winning. But there's still a lot of punches the beast could make that could take me down, so I'm not quite crowing yet.

I do like the colors, though. You can't see them well in this picture because my design wall hangs in a particularly dark corner of my sewing room (not very handy for a design wall, sadly), and my camera broke right before the holidays so I have to make do with my cell phone. My cell actually takes pretty decent pictures--but not so much in bad lighting situations. So these colors are a little muddy. When it's actually done, I'll take a good picture. Maybe I'll own a camera again by then.

I do like paper-piecing. I just don't like having to figure out my own pattern.

Carol Doak to the Rescue


IMAG0553.jpg
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
I tried to get over myself tonight and just plough into the next steps on my niece's wallhanging. I've been finding all sorts of other stuff to do just to avoid starting on the paper-piecing for this because I'm still convinced it's all going to go horribly awry.

However, tonight, I decided I should just go ahead and start with the easy parts. There's three fairly straight (kinda sorta) segments that will give me time to get used to the process again before tackling the big, nightmare-inducing section that I'm sure is going to traumatize me before we're through.

So I pulled out my "Carol Doak Teaches You to Paper Piece" video and watched the appropriate segments to refresh my memory. I've only paper-pieced once before, several years ago, in a class. The finished class project still hangs in my kitchen today. Loved doing it, have always wanted to do it again, just haven't gotten around to it. Watching Carol's video reminded me how much I've been wanting to do this, so in addition to reminding me of the steps it also motivated me and made me want to tackle this puppy! And I just love her presence. Very soothing. "Of course you can do this, silly," she seems to be saying. Nay, she's exuding it from her very pores. "No worries!"

With my injection of Carol Doak, you can see I got a little bit accomplished tonight. Mind you, I did also cut all my pieces so I only spent about 20 minutes doing the actual piecing. It didn't take long to get into the swing of it. So doing these first three pieces should build my confidence for the last part...I hope.

Now it's off to watch a little TV and keep working on the binding for my other niece's quilt. Making progress all around!

Some Progress...

I wasn't sure I'd actually be able to get any sewing done today with a schedule gone awry, but finally pulled out an hour or so in the end and got the binding on my niece's stack n' slash quilt. I'm madly trying to finish the hand-sewing of that now so I can take it to show n' tell at my guild meeting on Tuesday night completely finished. I can certainly take it even if it's not completely finished--it would just feel better if I could call it done.

Sadly, when my daughter went to bed tonight she discovered that her beloved guinea pig had departed this life for the next. He was about 4 years old, which is around average life expectancy for a guinea pig. But still. He was her buddy. She'd been making arrangements for him to go live with a friend of hers when she went off to college next fall--given his age, I'd been worried that he'd go to the friend and then pass away within the first couple of weeks, and how that would make both my daughter and her friend feel. So all in all, it's best that he move on now. This certainly isn't the first pet she's lost in her nearly-18-years, but so far, probably the one she was personally closest to. She'll be OK in a couple of days--tonight and tomorrow morning will be a little tough for her, in all "the firsts" (first time she doesn't have to refill his water bottle before going to school and so forth).

Does it make me a horrible mother to say, though, that I'm looking forward to getting that cage out of her room? Sigh.  I'll be extra nice to her tomorrow as my own little personal penance. She doesn't ever have to know why.

The Vacation is Over ... Report

My vacation officially ended yesterday--I had Friday back in the office. I'm very proud of myself, however. Typically I suffer complete amnesia over the holidays and it usually takes me almost a full day just to remember where I was on all my projects, track down which emails I was supposed to be responding to when, and figure out what I'm supposed to do next. This time, though, I did such a great job preparing myself for the break--leaving myself all sorts of bread crumb trails and scheduling pop-up reminders for myself for when I got back, that not only did I catch myself up in about an hour, I was actually able to make progress! Woohoo! Yay, me!

Unfortunately, not so much in my sewing world. Friday evening I pressed some fabrics. That was it. Not insignificant given that some of them had creases in them the size of the Grand Canyon after being in my fat quarter drawer for several years, but still--not particularly exciting. There is something very relaxing about pressing, though. I don't mind it when it's fabric. Hate it when it's clothes, but that's another story.

Today I did somewhat better--I got the background for my niece's wallhanging pieced. I did 6" (finished) squares--5 across and 5 down. I'd originally thought I'd use five fabrics in all, too, but then I realized that would mean I'd have little bits cut off several fabrics rather than using up most of a couple--so I switched gears and only used two fabrics. I think it probably works better, anyway. Tomorrow I start on the hard part. I'm paper-piecing a foundation pattern I had to design myself, my daughter did the math for, and I then tweaked the results. It still doesn't look quite right to me, but I think I can fudge it.

Hopefully, if I get some good time at the project tomorrow, I'll have some pictures to post.

Vacation Day 9 Report

Sorry--I skipped a couple of days in there!

Vacation Day 8 (yesterday) was a bit of a bust as far as quiltmaking is concerned. I had several errands to run in the morning which took me right up until about 2:00 or so. By the time I got home, I was feeling a bit draggy so I wasted a little time on the computer and then tried to tackle the paper-piecing project again (the wallhanging for my niece). The lines still just didn't look right to me, so now I've taken to just eyeballing them and redrawing them where they look right to me. I still have the lines from the original measurements my daughter made--but something was a little off. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I've had to cut the entire piece into workable sections so I think things may have shifted on her just a hair here and there while she was working. In the quilt world, we know "just a hair" adds up. So her lines are my current guides for sketching in something that looks more even. I think between her math and my eye, we'll come something remarkably close to what it should be.

In any case, by the time I'd messed around with that for a little bit, it was time to start dinner and then begin our family New Year's Eve festivities, which always include M&Ms and Settlers of Catan--just about in that order. We saw in the New Year and were in bed by about 12:30. Somewhere along the way we got boring, but boring can be quite nice.

Today, Vacation Day 9, had no sewing involved. Although I was wide awake at 5 a.m. (again I repeat, "why o why?" from a previous blog post), I was too fried from a short night (having sort of subconsciously kept myself partially awake until I heard my less-boring son make it home safe somewhere around 2a) to do much. I mostly got another load of laundry through so I could finish packing for our official, go-away-somewhere family vacation that starts tomorrow.

My apologies to anyone who is a listener to my podcast--I fully intended to get an episode out Thursday, Friday, or this morning--but between errands, working on my niece's quilt, and packing, it never happened. I'm so sorry! Next week. I promise promise promise promise!

Meanwhile, we're off to Disney World. It gets more fun the older my kids get--even now that they're basically adults. Or maybe I'm just more relaxed now that they're tall enough that I can't lose them in a crowd anymore.

Vacation Day 7 Report


Sneak peek 12-30-10
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
7? Am I really on day 7?

I'd hoped to get a little further today but to be honest, knew I probably wouldn't. My daughter had a friend over to spend the night last night so today's schedule included driving said friend home; then meeting up with some cousins at the planetarium for a show, then all the cousins and my sister coming back to our house for a little XBox Kinect action and dinner. I did a slow-cooker hot beef sandwich thing (with potato chips and baby carrots on the side) so getting dinner for everyone took a grand total of about 20 minutes all in. So no hard work involved, no stress, just most of the day spent with other people. Which is what the holidays are about, after all.

So, all that taken into consideration, the hour and a half I got to work on quilting projects this morning while the girls were sleeping in actually felt like a bonus.

The picture is my current Work In Progress--WIP--or Quilt in Progress--QUIP. I'm doing a wallhanging of my own design for my 10-year-old niece at her request. My design includes a paper-pieced shape on a pieced background of 6" squares. The paper-pieced shape (can you guess what it is from the picture?) is paper-pieced because I want to do 2" strips of fabric throughout.

I had to blow up the image and have it done on a large-format printer at a copy center. Then this morning I taped it to my sewing room window which faces east so it gets great morning light. Perfect lightbox, although I have to reach a little to trace up high. Didn't do a bad job, though. Then I had to figure out how to break the shape down into sections to trace onto the foundation paper--sections that not only fit on the size of foundation paper I was using, but also make sense once I start piecing them.

My next step is to mark the sections with sewing lines for the strips to make sure I get everything to fit the way I imagine it to fit.

Mind you, I've only done paper piecing a couple of times before and always with patterns. And although I tried using EQ7 to do this, my learning curve was far too steep for the time I had. I ended up just using EQ for my math (figuring out the dimensions of the quilt, etc.), and then I'm figuring out the rest as I go.

This will either be the best work I've done so far, or it'll be a hot mess. I alternate between the two thoughts almost by the minute.

Vacation Day 6 Report

Ah....much better. Day 6 was the vacation day I've been hoping to have since the beginning of the week!

The thread still broke...but much less often. Moving up to a honking big needle really helped. (But I'm still not a big fan of YLI now. I'm more sold on my faithful Aurifil every day.) I ran out of my variegated thread on the last stretch of border, and switched to a plain fuschia thread. I don't think anyone would notice unless I pointed it out.

I'm still no great shakes at machine quilting, but at least I can call it done. This is one of those times when I rest in the arms of the quilter's saying that, "Done is better than perfect." This is so not perfect.

Technically, not done yet either. Tomorrow is Binding Day. I know lots of quiltmakers hate the binding step but I find that I like it. First of all, it's something I've gotten pretty good at in the last couple of years since many of Mom's UFOs only needed binding done. I think I spent about 6 months just doing bindings. So it's nice to come to a step in quiltmaking that I actually have some confidence in. But I also find it meditative, and I know it's the home stretch.So Binding Day is exciting. But hey, I did remember to fuse the label on there before I started the quilting so it's already labeled. Yay for me!

I can't do anything with my other niece's quilt yet--I'm still waiting for the fabric I had to order online because I couldn't find anything suitable in my LQS and not-so-LQS's. I ordered 2d day shipping to get it this week so I'd have time to tackle it while still on vacation. I thought that would mean I would get it today, but I think that would've only been if they'd rushed to put it in the mail the second I clicked "submit." Tomorrow's good enough. I'll get the binding put on the one quilt in the morning and then start working on the other as I can until I get the fabric. I'm hoping to use mostly stash fabric but had to order the border fabric so I need to get that first to make sure what I have in my stash will work for the rest of it. Keep your fingers crossed for me--I don't really have time to do any more fabric shopping for it.

I'll post a picture of this week's completed quilt once I have the binding on there. It looks pretty good...from the front.

Belated Vacation Day 5 Report


Sneak Peek--Current UFO
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz
Someone commented that I hadn't posted a sneak peek yet, so here it is. Sorry--I was so frustrated that I didn't even think about showing off what I was working on! Today is going much better, though. But I get ahead of myself.

Yesterday (Vacation Day 5) I was still feeling really wrung out and overly tired, even though I'd gotten a good night sleep. I think it was just my usual "Get Sick on Vacation" routine--you know how you're stressing to get everything done for work before being gone and then running around at home getting everything ready for the holidays....and then you're finally done and your body takes over. I didn't feel overly stressed about anything but I guess I just wore myself out. So I sort of gave myself yesterday as a vacation from vacation plans! I tried quilting for about 15 minutes and messed it all up (including two more thread breaks) so I bagged it for the day. My husband took me to a movie ("The King's Speech"--loved it!) and out to dinner. I spent the rest of my free time during the day playing mindless computer games.

And today I'm feeling much better. So, after dropping my car off at the shop this morning--my son followed me and brought me back home--I decided to once again tackle the quilting. I changed needles once again (went up to a jeans needle this time), and messed with the tension some more, and things seem to be working a lot better now. Knock on wood, no thread breaks so far and I've been at it about an hour.

So hopefully later tonight I'll have a much more positive Vacation Day 6 report to make!

Vacation Day 4 Report

5 a.m. Wide awake. Why, oh why?

7 a.m. Nursing second cup of coffee,  planning my day, watching Bourdain's "No Reservations" season 1 on Netflix and trying not to get too grossed out by the cow stomach being served on TV to be able to eat my own very reserved cinnamon raisin bagel for breakfast.

Catch up on blogs, watch a little instructional quilt DVD, call to make an appointment to bring my car in for an oil change and tire rotation to see if that fixes a slight wobble in my steering wheel (7-year-old car with 139k miles on it--I take slight wobbles very seriously these days). Told I can bring it in Wednesday. Super.

9:30 a.m. Call Staples copy center to pose the quilter-specific problem to them of having to expand an image 385% so I can use it as a paper-piecing template. Answer all sorts of questions. We decide my best bet is to size the image at home and save it to a flash drive--they'll print it on their wide format printer. I decide I'll figure out how to deal with the fact that I wanted it 27" in diameter and they can only print 24". This is after several days of trying to figure out how to get my home printer to print the image using several sheets of paper. Apparently my model doesn't want to play in that sandbox.

10:00 a.m. Head out the door to run errands, studiously ignoring aforementioned wobble in the steering wheel.

10:15 a.m. At the camera shop with my digital camera to find out if there's any hope. It stopped working with no warning right before Christmas. Go figure.

10:30 a.m. Find out it will cost more to repair than the camera is worth.

10:45 a.m. Leave the store with prices and features of several new cameras in my head, but am not quite ready to make the financial commitment yet. Interested to see that the smaller pocket-sized cameras have about the same abilities as my cell phone camera. Love the progress of technology.

11:00 a.m. At Staples copy center, explaining my needs to a clerk who looks mostly disinterested. She prints off my image on wide format and sure enough, it clips two sides. I say, "I'll figure it out--good enough." Then I smile sadly and say, "And I'm sure I'm going to kick myself for having said that when I get to that point." But it should be an easy fix. Should. Be.

11:15 a.m. Decide to treat myself to spending a gift certificate from my Secret Santa and using a coupon I've had for awhile at my LQS. My car has the route memorized. I almost don't even have to have my hands on the wobbly steering wheel.

11:30 a.m. Wandering aimlessly through the shop. Finally settle on some "stash fabric"--half yards of blenders in various colors. At the last minute, I tossed on the stack a bolt of a great, springy/summery floral that will make a fantastic border. Find out everything in the store is 30% off. "3 yards!" I exclaim, throwing caution to the wind. Can't use the coupon since there's a sale, but the coupon was only for 20% off anyway. Why is it, though, I can never actually use a dang coupon when I try? Crumple up the coupon and toss it in my purse--it expires before the sale is ended.

1:00. Home, leftovers for lunch, excitedly head upstairs to my sewing room to tackle the machine quilting on my niece's quilt.

1:02. Interrupted by daughter with several questions.

1:03. Interrupted by husband with a few more questions.

1:05. Almost interrupted by son--told him he was old enough to find the cold medicine in the bathroom on his own (I treat his colds differently now that he's 20 than I did when he was 10) and closed myself in my sewing room.

1:15. Have my machine set up for free-motion quilting, and am practicing on my "practice sandwich" I have on stand-by. Fiddle with tension, speed, rhythm, until I get the results I want.

1:20. Start in on the quilt.

1:27. Thread breaks. Shoot.

1:40. Thread breaks. For pity's sake.

1:45. Thread breaks. Oh. Come. On!

1:50. Thread breaks. (Censored.)

1:51. Sitting on computer reading blogs.

We all went to a  matinee movie after that--I realized in the car on the way over I was really tired, and I almost fell asleep twice despite it being a really good movie. By the time we made a quick stop at a grocery store on the way home, I was bone-numbingly exhausted. My husband is making dinner while I took a hot bath and I'm am now trying to wake up enough to get through until a reasonable time to go to bed. I'm hoping this is just my early rising and not coming down with something. I'm the only one in my house that didn't get the cold/flu that made the rounds a couple of weeks ago, and now my son is going into round 2 with it. I think I'll have orange juice with dinner.

Here's to Day 5 being more successful all around.

Vacation Day 3 Report

OK, so I skipped Vacation Days 1 and 2--but sort of the normal, expected stuff happened on both those days. Groceries, a little cooking, wrapping presents, then Christmas Eve and Christmas celebrations. Very nice, very relaxed--my fave way to spend the holidays.

So, today is my first official Vacation Day where I can decide what I do. My original plan was to have a pajama day. DH is at a football game, so my kids and I were just going to hang and I was going to spend copious amounts of time at my sewing machine. But while I was cleaning the kitchen yesterday morning I got thinking about other parts of the house that were bugging me. I have definite tendencies towards being a "work first, play later" kind of girl--I knew I'd be a lot more relaxed about spending time at my sewing machine if other more homely tasks had been taken care of first. I ended up working a deal with my daughter in which we spent today tackling her bedroom. Long overdue. I've been telling her that if she didn't get it hauled out before she left for college, DH and I would go in there with garbage bags and make the decisions for her! She's a bit of a pack-rat *. Her door is the first one that gets closed when we have guests over.

I allowed us a couple of hours of slow-wake-up time, then we got to work.  I instituted the "Clean Sweep" method--ever see that TV show on TLC a few years back? It's a great method for cleaning out clutter; I learned a lot from it. I've used their "Keep/Sell/Toss" method several times, although we substitute "Donate" for "Sell" because I refuse to do a garage sale ever again (but that's a blog entry for another time). I designated three areas in the hallway outside her room and set up garbage bags in appropriate places, then laundry baskets in the "keep" area. I then planted myself in her room and I'd hand her something--she'd have to make a split-second decision which category it fell into and place it accordingly.

There were two rules: 1) She couldn't snark at me at all during the process (and she did great--we actually had a good time!); 2) the "Keep" side could only end up as large as the "Donate/Toss" sides combined. She did pretty well at that, too, although I left her with instructions to see if she couldn't downsize her Keep pile by about another 25%. Then, after vacuuming and dusting, we tried a new arrangement of her furniture, got rid of one set of shelves that never worked well, and repurporsed a table from the basement to hold her guinea pig cage and accoutrements. Personally, I love the new room arrangement--she looks like she's got so much more space. But my girl is not a huge fan of change so she's got an expression that's alternating regularly between a pout and a smile--she can't entirely decide what she wants to feel. I told her if she wants to move it back again later, we can do that. She just has to give it a fair shot.

Now my part of the job is done, so I'm taking a few minutes of recuperation time and watching one of my quilt instructional videos, then I'll get to my sewing machine. Meanwhile, she's finding a new home for all the stuff still in the "Keep" pile in the hallway. I told her my only remaining rule is that nothing end up in stacks on her floor. We probably will go out later this week and get her one more set of shelves--she could use them. One thing I don't mind very much? Most of the stacks on her floor were books, notebooks for writing short stories, or sketchbooks and drawing utensils for her artwork. I can't really argue with those habits too much!

(*gross understatement)

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.