Dented Thimble Quilting

A WISP

2011-01-18T19:44:00.002-05:00

WISP::Work in Slow Progress

Before all the excitement about the new house and the drudgery of painting it, actual sewing took place around here.

I started these blocks this summer, kitted some pieces up to take when we went on vacation, and finished six or seven blocks. Some of them still smell of sunblock and that brings back memories of hard sunshine and the wind coming off the water in Maine. Isn't it odd how smells can do that to you?

Anyway, I finished the last two and I'm going to stop here. The blocks finish at about 8 1/2 inches, so this will be just the right size for a table topper or a wall hanging. I have just the right fabric picked out for lattice strips and a border, a beautiful repro blue stripe, but alas, I am also going to use the blue in another project, and I'd like to make sure I have enough to finish THAT one, so these little squares are going in a box until we move and I'm able to start machine sewing again.

The weather continues cold, gray, and dreary here. More snow is expected Thursday afternoon into Friday, so if the prediction stands, we could be looking at yet another snow day. I've had enough of January, thank you very much.

I'm itching, simply itching to start something new, but that would involve pulling fabric out of boxes I've begun packing and I just can't bring myself to do that. For now, I'm going to have to be content to work on the socks I have on the needles.

Notes From the Bottom of a Paint Can

2011-01-12T14:40:00.003-05:00

I know I said I wasn't going to spend a lot of time posting about home improvements, but I'm afraid that's pretty much all that's been going on around here.

The young(ish) couple we bought our new house from had some very definite ideas about home decorating. One, unfortunately for us, was that walls need to be painted with very dark, saturated colors. The dining room was a dark salmon color with an even darker stripe about 24 inches wide of what could only be called "oxblood" (about the color of a pair of Bass Weejuns). The oxblood color even extended to a square in the center of the ceiling. Two of the walls in the master bedroom were deep brown, and the living room and my new sewing room were blue.

I was optimistic enough to think that a couple of coats of our preferred cream-colored paint would have the place looking light and airy in no time. We began painting over New Year's weekend. And painting. And painting. By the time we had applied the third coat (primer, then two coats of regular paint) to the dining room and we were still seeing shadows through the paint I was getting a mite discouraged.

My daughter and her husband came to the rescue this past weekend. My daughter worked for two summers on the paint crew for the local school system and she actually enjoys painting, even the cutting in around the woodwork and the ceilings. The two of them brought some much needed energy and enthusiasm, and by Sunday afternoon we had more or less finished the dining room and gotten a good start on the bedrooms and the living room. As luck would have it, I got two snow days this week so my husband and I were able to paint some more, and I think we're almost there. Almost.

For now, at least, we're leaving the other rooms for another day. The kitchen (green, blue, tan, and dark mocha) and the bathroom (dark pumpkin) can wait for another day.

Out With the Old, In With the...

2010-12-31T10:56:00.003-05:00

The day after Christmas we picked up the keys to our new house. Well, new. Not new exactly; it was built in 1914 or thereabouts.

My husband and I have been looking around for a few years, not in any organized way, but checking out houses we've seen for sale and doing drive-by appraisals. It would go something like this:

Me: Did you see that house on the corner by the high school was for sale?

Husband: You mean the one with the swing on the front porch?

Me: It might need some work, but it could be really cute.

We would jump in the car and take a look. And it would be easy to talk ourselves out of it. Too big, too small. In need of a major overhaul. Too near the highway. Not close enough to work.

A couple of times we were interested enough to call the real estate agent and actually take a look inside. But, there was always something. A wet basement. Shoddy home improvements which would have to be torn out and redone. Or no improvements at all in the past 50 years, meaning that we would be renovating for the next ten years.

This fall we got a little more serious. We made a list of what we wanted. It was simple, really. All that time looking at different houses had given us a pretty good perspective on what we wanted, what we didn't want, and what we were willing to compromise on.

And then we found it. Not too big, not too small. Some renovations done, but done well, and in keeping with the age of the house. A big space for my husband to have his workshop. A nice light room for my sewing. On a quiet side street, but close to work.

This week I've been scrubbing down walls in preparation for painting this weekend. (Not that they needed scrubbing, really. The owners left it in immaculate condition. But, still.) And once we get it painted we'll be moving in.

Now I promise that this won't turn into a home renovation blog, because I think home improvements are really only interesting to the people who are doing them. But, blog posts are going to be a little more sparse than usual over the next month, as we disassemble this household and move it all over to the new house.

Wish us luck, please!

Christmas Time

2010-12-27T19:37:00.004-05:00

We had planned to drive up Christmas eve and spend the weekend with my daughter and her husband, but the weather forecasters started early in the week with dire predictions about bad weather and snow on Christmas eve and Christmas day. One to 2 inches! No, 2-4 inches! No, wait, 2-5 inches! Freezing rain! Sleet!

Fortunately my husband had nothing pressing at work, so we left a day early and were able to hang out with my daughter and her husband for an extra day. And, after all the doom and gloom in the forecast, we only got a couple of inches of snow--enough for a nice dusting on Christmas morning.

There is no direct route from our house to my daughter's. You can drive north on the interstate, then turn onto a country two-lane road for about fifty miles. Or alternately, you can first drive on an even narrower country road, then drive north on another highway. Neither is appealing. So when we started the trip and my husband, who was fiddling with the GPS, asked if I would like to try a more interesting way, I said why not.

Because if you don't try the interesting way, you might miss things like this covered bridge. I couldn't find out anything about it except that it was built in 1995. Not old and certainly not historic, but something nice to run across unexpectedly on a back road.

We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with my daughter and her husband, not doing much of anything except watching movies, reading, listening to Christmas music, and doing a bit of knitting. She prepared a lovely Christmas dinner with a traditional plum pudding for dessert.

Here it is, lit up with the flaming brandy. And it was delicious.

I hope your Christmas stocking was filled with good things!

2010-12-16T10:44:00.005-05:00

Just in case there is any doubt about the honey I'm married to...

We woke up this morning to a slippery, icy mess. I had some urgent banking business to do, and I was worried about just getting out to the garage. But this is what I saw when I opened the door. Tarps laid out over the deck.

And the stairs to the driveway with the ice chiseled off.

The driveway was an icy mess,

and a half-inch of ice is covering everything.

The temperature is hovering at the freezing mark, making travel on all but the most traveled and treated roads next to impossible.

I made it safely to the bank and back, but I think I'm staying in for the rest of the day.

Design Wall Monday

2010-12-06T17:14:00.009-05:00

Sadly, there has been very little sewing around here for the past couple of weeks. I did cut out a few more diamonds for another seven sisters block, but you can see progress has been very, very slow.

Since Thanksgiving weekend things around here have been busy. Work and just life in general have been getting in the way of crafty endeavors. I don't even have the excuse of Christmas preparations because I haven't started those yet. Yes, I am one of those last minute shoppers you hear so much about. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like things will let up this week either.

This weekend my husband and I took a weekend trip out of town. We both needed the time to get away and just relax. We drove down the road aways to Madison, Indiana, a small, historic town on the Ohio River. Our plan was to spend Saturday seeing some of the historic homes that are open to the public, do a little bit of shopping, and enjoy the wineries. When we arrived we found out that we had lucked into the weekend that Madison puts on a Christmas historic homes tour. So, instead of shopping, we took advantage of the tour.

As you can see from the pictures, we chose a very snowy day. It was cold, but most of the sites on the tour offered warm drinks and cookies. The house above is a restored mansion which belonged to James Lanier, a financier from the 1800s.

A bedroom from the Lanier house.

The tour lasted all afternoon and into the evening. Everywhere you looked you could see sights like the picture above; most of the downtown area features houses from the 19th century which have been restored and are owned privately, although some are owned by a foundation and are open to the public for tours.

It was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening, walking through the snow and viewing the homes. We've decided to go back in the spring when the weather is a little better and see even more.

You can see what others have been working on this week by checking out Judy L.'s Patchwork Times blog.

Crazy, Beautiful Trees

2010-11-21T13:05:00.003-05:00

So, here are some of the tree blocks I received in our sewing group exchange last weekend. (The color of the red background fabric is truer in the first photo. It's what I would call tomato red.)

Some are free-pieced, a la Gwen Marston, some are paper pieced and some are appliqued. I just love them. When I add my four blocks I'll have 24, just enough for a very vibrant couch throw.

Edited to add: I got to the bottom of the problem with posting pictures from my computer. Blogger has added a new post editor, which I had somehow clicked on. In the new editor, when I clicked on the "add image" button it didn't give me the option of adding a picture from my computer. I clicked back on the older editor and the problem seems to be solved.

A Busy Time and a Retreat Report

2010-11-17T20:40:00.000-05:00

I have been neglecting blogland lately--posting, replying to comments, and even, gasp, reading blogs. Not for anything major; I've just been overwhelmed lately with work stuff and life in general. So, this past weekend was a welcome respite as I was able to attend a mini-retreat with my sewing group. We had a great time: lots of laughing, great food, and some seriously focused sewing time.

I dithered about what to take, but it was pretty easy after all. I had a couple of projects still in their boxes from the last retreat I went to in September. One is this album or chimney sweep project which I'm sewing using a jelly roll of Civil War Homefront from Barbara Brackman.

By Sunday afternoon I had made some progress and I had a few more blocks to add to the growing pile. I am in love with this pattern. The pieces go together so easily. I counted up what I have left and I'll be able to make 20 blocks with the jelly roll fabric, but I would like to keep going, supplementing with my rather alarmingly large civil war stash.

And aren't these two blocks just the cutest thing ever? Don't you just want to gaze into each design? I love, love, love kaleidoscope patterns!

At one point I was afraid I wouldn't have enough of the the border fabric, but I was able to pick up some extra in September, so I can easily continue. This is a published pattern called Stacked Posie Supreme by Mary Lou Hallenbeck.

Our sewing group decided to do a block exchange of improv trees for this retreat. I'll have to put up a picture later since it was too dark by the time I got home from work today to take a decent picture. But I've got 24 beautiful, crazy tree blocks to play with. And I chose a completely out-of-character background fabric to put it all together. And, oh my gosh, making all those improv blocks was a very messy affair! There are bits and scraps all over my cutting. And floor. And ironing board. And sewing table. But it was great fun and I'm looking forward to our new improv challenge for next year.

I have a question...

Does anyone know why suddenly Blogger won't let me upload photos from my computer? I use Picassa to edit my photos and I store them on my computer. In the past I could click on the photo button on the Blogger tool bar and the window that appeared had a button that allowed me to search for the photos on my computer. Now, I don't get that choice. I have to upload them to Picassa web albums first. Did I inadvertently change a setting somewhere?

2010-11-05T19:29:00.029-04:00

Let's just say it hasn't been a good week, which is why it was so nice to come home tonight and find that my husband had finished making these candle holders. They are bits of a poplar bough which he sawed off a tree in my daughter's yard a couple of weeks ago. He sanded off the tops and bottoms and drilled holes for the candles. I love the way they turned out.

I am heartily glad that this week is over. I am looking forward to a bit of respite this weekend to get caught up on things around here and maybe, just maybe, I'll even have some time to sew.

I hope you have all the time you need this weekend to do what you want to do.

Design Wall Monday::A Very Little Progress

2010-10-25T20:10:00.000-04:00

Things have been very busy at work and we went up to my daughter's again this past weekend, so I've accomplished very little sewing this week. I did manage one more corner star for the Auntie's Pride block and have prepped the other. The rest will be filled in with the background fabric when I have the time.

And I sewed the border pieces on this block. I cut enough fabric for more sister's star thinking I might have time to sew over the weekend, but I didn't.

Not much to show for a whole week, is it?

You can see what others have on their design wall this week by clicking over to Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

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BTW--I am trying to pass the word about a virtual quilt show from Quilts in the Barn. Linda is posting pictures of absolutely beautiful quilts from a show she organized in Australia. All proceeds from her show went to breast cancer research. You can participate by visiting her blog and making a contribution to a breast cancer research organization near you. Check out my last post for details!

Want to go to a quilt show?

2010-10-24T19:43:00.001-04:00

A really, really fantastic quilt show? Right now? In Australia? Without leaving your house?

Linda C. at Quilts in the Barn organized a quilt show featuring quilts from the Secret Sewing Sisterhood group and it is super! Ninety beautiful, intricate quilts were displayed. The money raised is being donated to breast cancer research.

Now Linda is making the quilt show available on-line on her blog, a few at a time over a couple of weeks. All she asks is that viewers worldwide donate something to breast cancer research organizations in their communities. I'm sending mine to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

So, take a look at some amazing quilts and make a donation to help a cause that affects us all.

10-25-10 edit: Linda, not Julie, was the organizer of this fabulous show!

Design Wall Monday::Sixes and Eights

2010-10-18T20:52:00.000-04:00

Last week my daughter and her husband decided that they were tired of looking at the rotten old garden shed in the backyard of their new house. Demolition time! We drove up to help on Saturday. Well, my husband helped. I sat on the sidelines, wincing as huge pieces of the shed were hacked away and thrown into a monstrous pile ready to be loaded into a dumpster sometime this week. My contribution was a big roast chicken dinner for the happy warriors.

I did accomplish some sewing while they worked. This is part of the Auntie's Pride block. I bought the template set a few weeks ago. There are going to be three more half-stars around the center star. I love how this is coming together. The block will finish at about 12 inches. I can see it as a center medallion with lots of little LeMoyne stars around it. I'm not terribly sure about my fabric choices, but I had cut some scraps to try out the templates and get an idea of how it was all going to fit together.

I also worked on another Seven Sisters block. I would have kept going, but I ran out of cut pieces.

I put together the first block by sewing everything around the the center star, which worked out okay, but this time I tried something different which I like a lot better. I sewed the stars together in rows, then sewed the rows together. A row of two stars, then a row of three, and another row of two, then a continuous seam to attach each row together. Much easier and a lot less fiddly.

I still can't see making a lot of these, but maybe a wall hanging? I don't know yet. I'm still just playing around, and these little hand sewing projects are soothing to work on here and there.

You can check out what others are working on this week by clicking on Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times. As always, a big thank you to Judy for hosting this each week.

Glove Advice Sought. Apply within.

2010-10-15T20:29:00.001-04:00

{Insert sorry looking glove picture here.}

My husband was out of town most of the week, and while he was away I tried to knit a glove. I even took a picture of it, but I seem to be having camera issues, or maybe lighting issues since I waited so late to take the picture. Anyway, the glove is bad enough without a freaky picture of it, so just use your imagination.

Gloves are quick, I'll say that. Just three inches down the cuff, a few rows for a thumb gusset, and then you're ready for the really interesting parts. By which I mean the fingers. Somehow you have to take a cylindrical shaped piece and create four more cylinders coming out of it by some mysterious process of picking up a few stitches and casting on more stitches and then going back at a later time and and picking up and casting on MORE stitches and so on until you have four cylindrical things sticking out of your hand.

When you really think about it, hands are rather oddly shaped, aren't they?

I've started glove #2 and I'm just about to get to the interesting part. Wish me luck.

Seriously, if anyone knows of a book with nice clear illustrations of this mysterious process, drop me a life line, please.

Socks and Randomness

2010-10-10T13:23:00.000-04:00

Socks:

The weather has turned schizophrenic here--high eighties during the day and low fifties at night. Taking advantage of the cooler night time temperatures, I've finished some socks that I started last spring which have been waiting patiently in my basket all summer. I fell victim to a marketing ploy by an on-line yarn supplier (a willing victim, I admit) and bought several more skeins of sock yarn. I think my Christmas gift list is going to be heavily tilted toward hand knit socks this year.

Randomness:

-We tried the Sesame Noodle recipe from here last night. It was good. Really, really good. The trouble with NYT recipes is that here in the hinterland it is sometimes difficult to find all the ingredients, but everything was available at my local grocery store. I'm going to try the Quinoa-Black Bean Salad next.

-The house smells like chili. My husband is making a gigantic pot of chile from a recipe we got when we visited Texas a few years ago. The aroma from the chili will soon be overtaken by the aroma from the beef stew I just put the crockpot.

-I'm seriously thinking about expanding my knitting repertoire and trying gloves. I like the idea of it, but I'm thinking about all those fingers. I've done a lot of mittens over the years, but never tried gloves.

-The other night I was watching a video of John Le Carre's A Perfect Spy. When the main character was explaining his rather miserable childhood to the German couple he was boarding with, the lady nodded in commiseration and said, "There was no 'nest warmth'." Nest warmth? I'd never heard the term before, but I could understand what she meant right away. I assumed it was a German idiomatic expression, and last night I got curious about what it would be in the original German. I tried several search attempts on Google, but couldn't find anything. Finally, in frustration, I typed in "What is the German for nest warmth?" It came right up: Nestwarme. It means love and security, by the way.

-I dropped my iron for the gazillionth time, but this time it appears to be fatal. Any suggestions on a replacement?

-I've been sewing, but only in fits and starts on assorted hand projects. Nothing to show for it yet.

Maybe some pictures tomorrow?

What's On My Design Wall::Design Decisions

2010-10-04T18:14:00.001-04:00

I can't show what's up on my design wall today because it's a project I'm preparing for a demo at my next guild meeting. I was debating with myself about showing it, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for the guild members who read my blog. Hi, Sew 'n' Tell peeps!

I'm posting ABOUT it, though, because I took the design process challenge a while back and this project shows how I go about making a new quilt. Most people I know begin with a whole quilt in mind, maybe a quilt pattern they saw in a magazine or a store. They shop for their fabric. They cut. And cut. Then they begin sewing things together, and, before you know it they have a nice completed quilt.

Not me. I begin with a block design. It may be something interesting that just caught my eye. Or challenging. I like challenging, as long as it doesn't involve applique, that is. Or paper piecing. I may DREAM about a whole quilt with this new block design, but I concentrate on one block at a time. Next, I draft the block. If I can find the drafted block somewhere, so much the better; I like to see how the parts fit together and to get a feel for how I'm going to sew it. I have a big tablet of oversized graph paper that I use to draw the block or sometimes I use my ancient (and now defunct) EQ5.

Once the block is drafted, I take a look at how the colors are going to work together. Where are the lights? Which pieces need to be dark? If I switch things around, how will that affect the impact of the design?

Then, I choose some fabrics and I make a block. At this point, I tell myself that this is just an experiment, but it's really play. I love playing with bits of fabric and trying out different color combinations. If the block "works" for me, I hang it up somewhere and look at it for a while, sometimes for a few days. Do I like it? What could I do differently? What might make it better?

If it looks like it's going to work, I usually shop my stash to see what fabrics I have that will work with the block. Sometimes I can make do with what I have, but most of the time I find that I have to supplement with a little bit more of a particular color.

Is it any wonder that it takes me a long time to get a quilt finished?

But, the thing is, I LIKE working this way, even though it seems incredibly time consuming. My joy is in the making, rather than in the finished product. (Although, I have to admit, the finished quilt is always a big thrill for me. Maybe because it's such a long journey from idea to fulfillment.)

Later on in the month, I'll post about the demo quilt for guild.

This has been a long post, I know. I do have one quilty picture. I've gotten a start on another seven sisters block.

You can see what others have on their design walls this week by checking out Judy L's. Patchwork Times blog. (And with them, you can probably actually SEE what they're working on.)

Design Wall Monday::Seven Sisters

2010-09-27T18:44:00.000-04:00

Here is one finished Seven Sisters block. Phew! There are a lot of pieces in this one...

And I had to ask just how many pieces when this happened last night:

I was cutting some for another block and laying them out on the kitchen table when a breeze came in through the open window and blew everything all over the place. By the time I picked up all the pieces, I decided it would be a lot easier to just count them rather than try to lay them out each time.

Sixty-six pieces.

You can check out what others have been working on this week by clicking the link to Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times. And once again, a big "thank you" to Judy for hosting this each week.

Nearly Perfect

2010-09-26T11:41:00.002-04:00

Sometimes all the tumblers in the universe line up and you are blessed with a nearly perfect day. I had one yesterday.

After weeks of 90+ degree days, the weather broke Friday afternoon, and Saturday dawned with cooler temps and lower humidity and suddenly it was actually pleasant to be outside. I drove out to see a quilt show and hooked up briefly with some friends. The quilt shop across the street from the show was having a sale and I saw a lot more friends and guild members there, too.

Ordinarily I would have just gone home, but I decided to drive out in the country to a quilt shop I had never visited before, a little bit off my usual path. I took a chance because I wasn't entirely sure where it was, but I found it rather easily. There was a beautiful selection of fabrics, not big, but lots of things that I haven't seen at other shops in the area. I found a couple of fat quarters for a fabric exchange at next month's guild meeting and, heaven help me, a stencil set for yet another eight-pointed star block.

Yes, 2010 is shaping up to be the year of the eight-pointed star for me. There seems to be an almost endless variety of ways to combine these shapes, and I'm so enjoying trying them out.

Heading home, I passed the county historical society museum and saw a big banner proclaiming a civil war exhibit, and I decided to drop in and take a look. Since the museum is on a one way street I needed to circle the block and my route took me by an antique mall I like to visit from time to time. I stopped there first and spent a pleasant half hour or so looking around. There is always such a jumble of stuff in places like that. Victorian tables piled with garish '60's jewelry. Old postcards stacked in trays next to "vintage" Tupperware. Is it possible for Tupperware to be vintage? I ask you! A dollhouse just like the one my sister had as a child selling for $75. My gosh.

Eventually I headed over to the county museum with only about 20 minutes to spare. There I was doubled teamed by a wonderful older lady and gentleman who gave me a guided tour of each and every exhibit. I like history in general, but I find local history to be so compelling. I like knowing that the decrepit old brick building that I pass sometimes used to be the "opera" house and that the big church downtown was a way station on the Underground Railroad. Or that the beautiful neighborhood that I drive through on the way to work each day used to be a park where William Jennings Bryan spoke. Someone had done a great deal of research on the regiments from the civil war that mustered from this area, and there were exhibits on the battles they fought in. My two guides kept me past their regular closing time, and I had to promise to return so I could spend more time looking through the civil war exhibit. I left armed with brochures about other historical exhibits in the area and a schedule for the historical society meetings.

Altogether, a grand day.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.

There Are Certain Advantages to Google Reader

2010-09-20T19:18:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday, my computer died. Completely. EVERYTHING on the hard drive was gone without so much as a puff of smoke. My pictures, my accumulated patterns, my files, my documents. I had been pretty good about backing up all my files on a thumb drive, but in the past couple of months I had gotten lax, and I found, to my chagrin, that the last time I backed up anything was sometime in June. June!

I discovered two good things, though. Since Google Reader is web-based all the blogs on my list were still there. Yippee! (My Bloglines list is gone forever.) I also found out that all the pictures I've published on my blog are stored on-line, so they are still intact. Relief!

One more reason to move everything over to Google Reader.

And another advantage: with Google Reader you can set it up so that blogs written in foreign languages are automatically translated within the reader, saving you from having to pull up the translator each time you want to read the blog. Now, the translator is not the best; it is often clumsy and a bit surreal, but it at least gives you some idea of what the blog writer is saying.

Design Wall Monday::A Retreat

2010-09-20T19:00:00.001-04:00

I'm just back from a quilting retreat this past weekend in a beautiful state park lodge. It's a very popular retreat among the quilters in this area; for years the woman who organizes it had a waiting list and I feel very lucky that I somehow managed to get my name in. We work in what I would guess is the hotel's ballroom, with plenty of room to spread out, more than adequate electrical plug-ins, and the comraderie that comes from spending two or three days doing what you love with about 90 other like-minded women.

Even though there were so many quilters, the retreat is very well organized. There are plenty of snacks and drinks provided, several ironing stations, cutting stations, and even a vendor on hand to supply anything the retreaters may have forgotten at home and provide a shopping opportunity without leaving the sewing room. It's no wonder that everyone who attended this weekend's retreat signed up for the next one which is to be held in the spring.

I didn't get as much accomplished as I had hoped. I had to go in for a full day of work on Friday, so I missed most of the the first day. Oh well. I did get eight of my album blocks put together. The fabric I'm using is a jelly roll of Barbara Brackman's called Civil War Homefront. The picture above is giving the beautiful soft blues a greenish tint, unfortunately.

The colors are truer in this picture. I love how this is going together.

I did a quick trip into town on Saturday morning and scored enough of the missing fabric to complete my kaleidoscope posy blocks, but by the time I finished the album blocks late on Saturday afternoon, I wasn't in any shape to begin the careful cutting I needed to do, so that project got put back into its box for another day. Just knowing I have the right fabric to complete the quilt gave me quite a boost, though.

By Sunday morning I had moved on to hand sewing. I thought I'd post a picture of the difference a one little quarter inch makes.

On the right are 60 degree diamonds cut at 1.25" to finish at .75", measured from one parallel line to the other. To the left are the same diamonds, but this time cut at 1.50" to finish at 1". Pretty big difference, no? It makes a huge difference in sewing, too. I need to cut some more fabric to finish this little block.

You can see what others are working on this Monday by checking out Judy L.'s Patchwork Times blog. And once again, thank you Judy for hosting this weekly event.

What I'm Working on Wednesday

2010-09-15T18:17:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday one of the quilt guilds in town held a quilt show at the church where they meet. It's always fun to go to a local show because you get a chance to see what everyone has been working on, and around here, at least, you can also see a fair crop of antique quilts which people are happy to pull off beds or out of cupboards to display.

As I was walking around, one of the quilts on display brought tears to my eyes. It was a seven sisters (click and scroll down a bit). Do you know that pattern? It's one of my favorites and has been on my bucket list for years. This one had tiny diamonds of what looked like late 19th century pinks, blues, grays, and browns set with white, and the blocks were offset with solid dark green diamonds. At least they seemed to be green; the quilts were being displayed in the church sanctuary and the light wasn't the best. It seemed like an unusual combination to me, since I haven't seen dark green used much in antique quilts. According to the label, the quilt had been rescued from a junk shop. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I wasn't able to get a picture.

The diamonds were tiny, maybe an inch or less. And I really like tiny pieces. So, on Sunday afternoon after I finally got it through my head that I hadn't bought enough fabric for the quilt pattern I intended to work on at next weekend's retreat, I picked out some of my reproduction fabrics and cut a few diamonds. These finish at 3/4" measured across the parallel sides. Now as much as I like small pieces, these are a bit too small for me, so I'm going to try it again with diamonds that finish at 1 inch.

I'm not necessarily going anywhere with this. I'm just playing with them--one of my favorite things to do.

Design Wall Monday::Frustration

2010-09-13T19:22:00.001-04:00

Somehow another whole week has slipped by without a blog post. I really appreciate Judy L.' s hosting this weekly event, otherwise my posting might be even more sporadic than it already is. As always, you can check out what lots of other people are working on this week by clicking on this link.

There is very little on my design wall this week, except frustration. Last spring I fell in love with a certain commercial quilt pattern and I bought what I thought was a generous amount of fabric with which to make the quilt. Unfortunately, yesterday, MONTHS later, when I finally got the stuff out and began cutting (in preparation for a quilting retreat I'm going to this coming weekend) I found that I didn't buy enough. Grrrrrrr! I was able to fill in some with stash fabric, but one of the fabrics that I bought, that I truly loved...just not enough. So, to make the quilt, and I do intend to at least get a start on the quilt this weekend, I'm going to have to buy something else because I'm pretty sure that there won't be any left at the LQS. I'll just have to swing by the shop early Saturday morning and check out what I can use. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind. I mean, buying fabric is fun, but I would rather not have to spend a chunk of my retreat time hunting down fabric. And, I would like to add, none of this is the fault of the pattern--just my hurried reading of it in the quilt shop.

I've also been working on quilting my challenge quilt for the guild.

The challenge was to use this pattern to depict our favorite place. Mine is Maine, where we spent our vacation this year. Can you "feel" the water and the sand and the dark woods and the rocks and the sky? The picture isn't great, I know; for some reason, my camera has a hard time with these greeny blues.

I tried...and tried...and tried to free motion quilt this, but after my fourth attempt still didn't look good to me, I gave up, picked all the stitches out and started hand quilting. It's only 22 in. x 22 in., but still I would have liked to been able to machine quilt this.

BTW, the block is based on this.

Above is a detail of one of the corners. I think I unvented my own block, in Elizabeth Zimmerman's words. I was attempting some sort of pinwheel-flying geese combination here, but it turned out quite differently than I intended. All in all, I like it.

Design Wall Monday::Labor Day Edition

2010-09-06T15:39:00.001-04:00

I spent yesterday and today putting these blocks together. This is a project I began sometime last year; it started out as just an experiment to see if I could piece eight-pointed stars. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with this design. I love how the colored outer points seem to make the stars twinkle.

I started with two fat quarter bundles of a fabric line called Stars of Provence from Deb Strain. I bought the bundles on impulse with nothing in mind except that I loved the colors. Then I got inspired by a quilt I saw in the May/June 2008 issue of Fon's & Porter's Love of Quilting. At first I made a few stars with reproduction fabrics, but the muted colors didn't seem to suit the design. I was looking around for something brighter when I saw those bundles which had been sitting patiently on my shelves for so long.

I tried making a couple of blocks and I knew I had found the perfect fabric. My only worry was finding enough of the green to use as a background. Luckily there was a bolt of it left at my LQS, so I had enough to play with. I have enough white and another green in the line to be able to add generous borders, my next step. Ordinarily I'm not one to worry too much about using a particular fabric line for a quilt, but in this case I'm making an exception.

I was also pleased at how well it went together. Sometimes with blocks that have been made over a long period of time, especially hand sewn blocks, the measurements get a little wonky. I was able to sew the blocks together with very little easing, although, as you can see, I used enough pins to make a porcupine proud. I did lose a few points, but that's okay with me.

I enjoyed sewing the blocks so much that I'm almost sorry I've almost come to the end of this project. Have you ever felt that way? But there are so many more things I want to try out, including more with eight-pointed stars

You can see what others have on their design walls this week by checking out Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday::An Actual Finish

2010-08-30T19:12:00.001-04:00

I went to a mini-retreat with my sewing group this past weekend, and, TA-DA!, I actually have something new to show on my design wall today. This is a little wall hanging that somehow got stalled out over the summer. I had nine blocks done, but the other four blocks had to wait until this weekend when I finally got them put together, along with the sashing. I love this little block. It's a great way to use up odd scraps and to play with a lot of color combinations that I ordinarily wouldn't try. The pattern info is here, if you're interested. (I had to go in the WAY BACK machine, ahem, last June, to find it.)

Because I can't resist, here are some pictures of some of my favorite blocks:

And another one:

BTW these blocks are 8 inches, finished.

And, I got some other things done, too! Ah, it felt so good to be able to sit and sew.

I finished another of the basket blocks from the basket quiltalong at Piecemeal Quilts. The pattern is available right there on Sandi's sidebar. This is the third one I've completed, and I love her clear directions. Thanks, Sandi!

I did two other blocks at a retreat last spring, and I might have enough for a quilt top sometime this decade... IF I get to attend enough quilt retreats.

But that's not all. I got some of my civil war jelly roll fabric cut for the album quilt I've been eying here and there on the webs. I also picked up some Moda Bella solid for the background. I have the pieces for one block cut out, but didn't have time to get one whole block put together.

Alas, Sunday afternoon came too soon and I had to pack up all my stuff and come home.

You can check out what others are working on this Monday by checking out Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Have a great week!

2010-08-23T19:25:00.001-04:00

What do you do when you don't sew? Shop. Online, that is, since I certainly haven't had time to make it out to a quilt shop. In my last post I talked about the nosegay block that those of us in my sewing group had been admiring. We couldn't figure out how to make the kite shape for the "handle" of the bouquet. I went ahead and ordered the plastic template from Marti Michell and it arrived in today's mail. I don't know when I'll ever get to this, but at least I can cut the pieces when I finally have some time.

I was in a bit of a fog this weekend, trying to recover from my first full week of school and catching up on things I let slide during the week. By late Saturday afternoon I needed something I could do that wouldn't require too much in the way of brain power. I had been admiring the Willow Cowl (Ravelry link) and since it just needs one ball of sock yarn, which I just happened to have lying around, I fired up some movies on Netflix and started knitting.

I worked on it a bit on Sunday, too. Round and round knitting; all you have to do is keep track of is the number of rows in a simple pattern. Just what the doctor ordered for de-stressing after a long and tiring week.

School Days and a Nosegay

2010-08-15T16:30:00.002-04:00

School started this week. (Insert descending chord here.)

As you may recall, I moved to the middle school this year. I spent most of the month of May packing up the tons of teaching gear I've accumulated over the years and dividing it in two parts: a Mt. Everest size pile of primary (grades K-3) materials and a Mt. McKinley size pile of intermediate (grades 4-5) material. Mt. Everest got transferred by my always-patient-and-helpful husband and me over two hot and sweaty weekends to a storeroom I am lucky enough to have access to. Mt. McKinley was moved over the summer to my new classroom, just waiting for me. It took the better part of a week, but I managed to get all the boxes emptied and broken down and the stuff put away before the doors opened on the first day of school.

This week I felt as though I had started a whole new job. New procedures, new forms, new computers, new schedules, new students, new faculty and staff, new everything. This year is going to be an adventure for sure.

As far as sewing goes, except for my Friday night sewing group, I haven't picked up a needle for a week or more.

I do have a quilting story to share, however. Two weeks ago at our Friday night sewing group, one of my friends brought over two absolutely beautiful heirloom quilts that belong to her neighbors. One was an appliqued poppy, done in several shades of red and dark pink on white muslin, which I didn't get a picture of. The other was a nosegay pattern. I borrowed these pictures from my friend Anne's cell phone.

I know that had I seen this pattern in a magazine or book I might not have taken a second look, but in person it is truly amazing. This one looks as though it was sewn last week. All the fabrics are bright and unfaded and it showed very little wear.

We all began to try to figure out how to make the kite shape at the bottom of the bouquet. Anne found an older pattern, but it called for making 1-inch grid paper and tracing the pieces (remember those?). I thought I had directions for rotary cutting a kite shape, but it turns out that the angles are the wrong size. What to do?

Saturday I googled the pattern and I found one at the McCall's website, but I couldn't get the templates to print out at the right size. And then I saw several references to a Marti Michell pattern that was in the October 2010 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. The very selfsame issue that was sitting on the table next to my computer. In fact, we had been paging through that magazine the night we all saw the quilt. The paper templates are, of course, in the magazine, or you can order plastic ones from Marti's website.

It just blew me away that I had paged through that magazine so many times and never noticed the quilt. The quilt featured in the magazine is very pretty, but not "my colors". I guess my eye just skipped over it without absorbing what it was.

So another project is added to the list..

More Odds and Ends

2010-08-04T10:22:00.000-04:00

These blocks have been sitting on my design wall since last month. Each time I thought about cutting the lattice strips and starting to put this little quilt together I hesitated. Thinking it over, I finally decided that I really LIKE these little things and I want to make more.

So the other morning before it got too hot in my sewing room, I cut out fabric for a few more...

I have a large scrap basket next to my cutting table just for reproduction fabrics and I pulled fabrics more or less at random. There is enough cut here for four more blocks; I'll sew those and then decide whether to go on. I think I probably will.

Design Wall Monday::One Thing Leads to Another

2010-07-26T13:16:00.001-04:00

I spent a frustrating Saturday morning dealing with real life stuff and nearly all of Saturday afternoon at the computer. At first I was looking for a mystery quilt pattern I could use for the guild--not too hard for beginners but with something of interest for more experienced quilters. Then I got a little sidetracked as it's so easy to do when hunting around on the 'net.

One of the quilts on my bucket list is called Album, or Chimney Sweep, or Chicago Pavements, depending on the source or the coloring. I just happen to have a jelly roll of Barbara Brackman's Civil War Homefront which would be perfect for this. Clicking around on the 'net yielded dozens of variations of this block. Bonnie Hunter did a scrappy one based on an antique quilt she saw. Mereth at Pages from Me did one with a paisley coloring scheme. She even has cutting and sewing directions for the block on her blog.

With a few more clicks I found myself at what surely must be one of the best sites for antique quilts, the International Quilt Study Center and Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Not only do they have a fantastic collection of quilts viewable online but they have several interactive features which make it easy to lose hours browsing through their collection. Which I did.

And there I found yet another block pattern to fall in love with. It's one I'd never seen before, and I finally found a name for it after searching through Jinny Beyer's great book Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns. It's called Sunshine or Spring Has Come, depending on the source or variation. I don't know what it is with me, but I like to know the names and histories (if possible) of the blocks I work on.

So yesterday I booted up my ancient copy of EQ5 and drafted patterns for both of the blocks.

Purely as an exercise to see if the rotary cutting measurements were in fact accurate, you understand, I cut out fabric for the sunshine block and started to put it together.

And that's why I have a completely new project up on the design wall today.

You can check out what others have on their design walls today by visiting Judy L's Patchwork Times blog. Thanks again, Judy, for hosting this!

This Isn't Design Wall Monday

2010-07-22T14:45:00.001-04:00

This isn't Design Wall Monday or even WIP Wednesday; somehow the week got away from me, I'm afraid. But I have been sewing a bit here and there and have three more star blocks almost completed. Most of the blocks have a dark and light blue center, but I felt that things were looking just a little too uniform, not enough surprise for the eye, I guess, so I tried a red and blue center. That red paisley print kept jumping out of the sewing box begging, "Pick me, pick me!".

I did, and I like the result. It remains to be seen whether I make more. Although I am enjoying making the blocks, I'm not feeling the love enough to want to make a ton of these. So far I've cut out enough to make nine blocks total (three more than my original plan), so despite myself this seems to be taking on a life of its own.

My husband was away over the weekend and I decided to take advantage of the relative quiet to work on the challenge quilt for my guild. I set up an ironing station and cutting station on the kitchen counter and my Featherweight on the dining room table and had a wonderfully productive two days of cutting and sewing. All the stuff that is normally clattering around in my head (what to do about dinner, is that load of laundry done yet, did I remember to take out the garbage, etc., etc.) just vanished as I got completely submerged in the moment. I cut, I sewed, I unsewed, I compared colors, I think I even invented a new quilt block. I wish I could get to that level of concentration more often because it feels so incredible to come to oneself hours later and see all you have accomplished.

This is just a teaser, I fear, because we are supposed to keep these under wraps until the big reveal next month. And of course I still have to quilt it. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do it on my machine. Here's hoping that I don't muck it up too much with my less than stellar machine quilting skills.

New England Quilt Museum

2010-07-17T11:28:00.000-04:00

After seeing the Mark Twain house and spending the night in Hartford, our plan was to drive north, skirt the northern suburbs of Boston, and pick up our son who was taking the train out from Boston to spare us the drive into Boston proper. Since we had gotten a very early start we had a couple of hours to spare, but we figured we could find something to do. Mid morning we pulled off the interstate at Lowell, Massachusetts for a pit stop at the McDonald's.

This is the first trip we've taken with my husband's GPS device. Despite a few quirks, as when it kept insisting we get off a highway that was clearly marked for our destination, go around the block and reenter the highway at the EXACT same point, potentially sending us into a never-ending loop through rush hour traffic, it had proved an invaluable tool for getting around unfamiliar towns and cities. Once you get used to a disembodied voice suddenly telling you to turn right (or left) in "point two miles," that is. One of its best features is that it can find restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and, as it turned out, tourist attractions that are close to wherever you happen to be.

As I came out of the McDonalds with my coffee my husband suddenly announced that there was a quilt museum nearby. Would I like to go?

He is a sweetie, isn't he?

So that's how we ended up at the New England Museum of Quilts. The museum is located in the downtown area of Lowell in an old red brick bank building. The special exhibition that was just ending as we were there was called, "Women's Writes: Signature Quilts and Their Stories." It featured quilts, tops, and blocks that had been signed or embroidered with names, either as friendship quilts or as fund raisers for various causes such as temperance or abolition. Some of the quilts were from the museum's permanent collection and others were on loan.

The museum area is fairly small, but there were about three dozen quilts displayed. Some were hanging on walls, some were draped over beds, and (my favorite) some were folded up in a dresser so you could open the drawers and see them close up. In addition to the display area there is a classroom and a library (!). I kind of briefly considered whether moving to Lowell might be possible, but then, sadly, decided not.

My husband gamely paid his admission, took a walk around the display area with me, but when I started another turn around the galleries, he opted to explore more of downtown Lowell on his own. Kind of a good thing, actually, as I could spend some time browsing the gift shop on the first floor relatively guilt-free.

Lowell has a quilt festival in early August which benefits the museum. It looks like it would be a lot of fun.

Mark Twain House::My Blue Stars

2010-07-15T10:24:00.001-04:00

When we were planning our trip to Maine, my husband noticed that we were going to be passing close to the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Connecticut. Mark Twain is one of our favorite authors and we had heard so much about this house that this seemed like a great opportunity to visit and see it for ourselves.

Now you have to understand that driving from Indiana to Maine is a long trip, three days in the car. And with rest stops and construction delays and heavy traffic through the bigger cities it's a little hard to plan to be at any given place at a particular time. But we made it, just barely, with a full 7 minutes to spare before the final tour of the day.

There are actually two tours, one of the house and another of the servants quarters, but since we arrived so late we were only able to take the house tour. No inside pictures were allowed, but if you check out this link, you'll be able to see some of the interior and take a virtual tour.

The interior was designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his associates (before his stained glass days). Every surface of the interior is decorated in some way, with stencils or carvings. It's almost too much to take in during one visit. Many of the furnishings are not original to the house, but the curators were able to recover a few, including Mark Twain's ornately carved bed. He liked to read in bed and had a gas line precariously extended from the chandelier to a bedside lamp.

It was definitely worth the scramble to take the tour. We seriously considered staying over in Hartford for another day and doing it again, but we had to move on.

There is some quilting content here!

I have been working on the blue stars. I'd cut out enough fabric for six before the trip and have four of them nearly done. Although I like the design, and I've enjoyed the sewing process, I'm not so sure about my color choice. They seem too much alike to me. I may just finish what I have cut out and lay them aside for now. Or maybe experiment with other color combinations? What do you think?

Back From Maine

2010-07-13T17:39:00.000-04:00

We're just back from a ten day vacation to the coast of Maine. Yesterday was a recovery day for me after the long drive home. Today I had to attend an all-day training session on a new computer-assisted reading program for next year at school.

Once I get the laundry caught up and the gear stowed and the maps put away, I'll post more...

Dry Ridge

2010-06-30T13:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I went on a road trip with some friends to the Quilt Box in Dry Ridge, Kentucky. The Quilt Box is something of legend among quilters around here, but this was my very first visit. (Unfortunately, the shop doesn't appear to have a website; however, if you Google the shop name with the town name, you'll find it.) Getting there is certainly interesting. You turn off the main road and drive a while, up hill and down dale. Then, when you see the little "Quilt Box" sign, which is very easy to miss, you turn into a gravel road and drive some more. At the end of that road on the top of a ridge is the shop.

That part of Kentucky is, I think, among the prettiest sections of the state. There are steep ridges with narrow little hollows and tiny towns nestled here and there. It's a beautiful drive along the country roads, especially on a bright, sunny, not-too-humid day like yesterday. When you get to the top of one of the ridges, you feel as though you are on top of the world. A bit of heaven, really.

The Quilt Box specializes in reproduction fabrics. Specializes. In my favorite fabrics. Oh my.

Some serious shopping ensued...

I'm leaning toward a pattern I saw in the August 2010 American Patchwork & Quilting magazine called Blue Jeans and Bubble Gum. It's based on a quilt in Pam Buda's collection. For that I need more blues, lots of blues.

And I have half-started another little hand sewing project using a block I saw somewhere or other that is going to need some reproduction blues:

I also needed some reds for the outer rings around the blue stars, because I really like this color set and I think I'm going to keep it pretty uniform for the rest of the blocks. I haven't decided yet how many more blocks--I'll just keep on until I get tired of making them.

On the drive back we got into a discussion about prewashing fabrics, and it turned out that all four of us prewash. I know some don't. I prewash because cotton fabric shrinks. It really does, I promise you. And there is the chance that, even with high quality fabric, the dyes will run. I always put my fabrics through the washing machine with a Color Catcher* strip, and sometimes the strip comes out of the wash unchanged and sometimes not. After putting in all the work to sew a quilt together, I don't like the idea that it could be ruined by running dyes in just one wash.

Take a look from the Color Catcher for the blue fabrics:

That last strip is nearly white, although to be safe, I think I might put the blues through one more time.

And the reds:

Enough said.

The weather here has turned glorious for the day. Temperatures are in the mid-70's, no humidity, clear skies, and sunshine. All the windows are open and there is a breeze shifting the curtains now and then. I hope this keeps up for another day or two!

*Color Catchers are available in most grocery stores in the laundry section. I believe they come from the same company that makes Shout, the stain product. They "catch" any loose dye in the wash water and trap it. I certainly don't own any stock in the company, but I think they are well worth the small expense.

Design Wall Monday::Some Relief from the Heat

2010-06-28T19:48:00.002-04:00

I finished six more squares, enough for a little wall hanging. They are just pinned up while I audition background fabric for the sashing and borders. The blocks are actually quite fun to sew and they use such small scraps that they hardly made a dent in the reproduction scrap basket.

I love the dynamic color combinations of antique quilts, and I think I'm getting a little better at letting go of having to have everything match, although I know I still have a ways to go.

These blocks are from Jill Reid's pattern in the June 2010 edition of American Patchwork & Quilting. It's called "Odds and Ends" a good name for a scrappy pattern like this, I think.

We've had eleven days in a row with temperatures in the nineties. It used to be that during a heat wave we would hope for a late afternoon shower to cool things off, even just temporarily, but any more it seems like we have such violent thunderstorms that now we just hope they pass us by. Storms like this one send us scurrying for shelter with one eye on the TV for the weather news and the other on the sump pump in the basement. Pretty to look at, but not so much to live through.

Early this morning a (blessedly!) weak line of showers moved through the area and cooled things off into the low 70's. Bliss! I was able to open the windows this morning and turn off the ac. And it only made it into the mid-80's today.

You can see what others in blogland have on their design walls today by checking out Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times

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Lucky Find

2010-06-23T17:05:00.001-04:00

The other day between appointments (hair and optometrist) I stopped in at a local flea market. I've never had much luck finding anything there, but I'm always hunting for a certain iron skillet to replace one we broke after 30 years. One booth that I usually gravitate towards first has textiles and old copies of quilting magazines. Sometimes the owner has an old quilt out, but usually they're stained or made of cotton/poly blends or just plain falling apart.

This time, however, I was very lucky.

It's a beauty! A hand-stitched grandmother's flower garden quilt top. There were a few little rust stains here and there, but overall it is in great condition. The colors look washed out in the photo above, but they are a bit truer below.

Each flower has a pumpkin-orange center with the red, white, and blue print around it. The outer rings have a wonderful mixture of conversation prints, polka dots, checks and stripes.

It had to come home with me. Think of it as a rescue mission.

This now joins the never-ending hand quilting queue.

Design Wall Monday::Odds & Ends

2010-06-21T11:02:00.001-04:00

Having fallen off the blogging wagon, it's a little hard to clamber on board again. I'm still trying to catch up on hundreds of posts on Bloglines; I haven't been able to get around and comment much lately.

The news here is the hot weather. This is the second day of a heat advisory; already today at 10:30 a.m. the temperature is 88 degrees (31 celcius). The forecasted high temperature today is supposed to be 97 (36 celcius). Thank goodness for a working air conditioner. Last year at this time I swear I remember wearing long-sleeve shirts, now the thought of that just makes me cringe.

All gardening has to be done in the early, early morning. Week before last I transplanted some of my Japanese painted ferns from the sunny front yard to the shadier back and they seem to be taking hold.

Everything back there still needs to be mulched, but that's a chore for another day.

Anyway, I finally have something to show for Judy's Design Wall Monday, although it's not much.

I found this pattern by Jill Reid in the June 2010 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting, called "Odds and Ends". The blocks finish out at a mere 8 inches. More itsy bitsy pieces. Sigh. I'm not sure why I've become so enamored of little pieces, but there it is. Seriously though, you could probably make a full-size quilt with just the contents of your scrap drawer using this pattern. It hardly made a dent in my reproduction scrap bin.

I've finished three blocks and have cut fabric for six more. And that's all. Just enough for a small wall hanging. I definitely don't feel like taking on yet another long-term project at this point. Not with all the UFO's piled up in the sewing room.

You can check out what others have on their design walls this week by reading Judy L's blog.

Have a great week!

2010-06-17T12:29:00.000-04:00

I certainly didn't mean to be absent for so long. Everything got very, very busy towards the end of May with all the things that need to be done at the end of the school year, plus having to pack up my classroom of a gazillion years in preparation for moving to a new school. Have I mentioned that I am somewhat of a packrat? As a special education teacher I never know what materials might come in handy "some" day, so I had drawers full of things to sort through and pack. And even better, I had trained the rest of the teaching staff to think of me before discarding older materials, so even when I was knee deep in boxes, I still had teachers offering me more materials! Thankfully, all is packed and (hopefully!) moved to the right classroom in my new school.

In the midst of all the packing, I did manage a weekend off for a mini-retreat with my sewing group. I was able to finally sew together all my Sister's Choice blocks.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Pink is not really my favorite, but the brown tones it down or butches it up, depending on your point of view. It still needs borders, but I'm going to let it marinate for a bit before I make a decision on those. For details on the pattern, check out my last post. I can't say enough about Bonnie's patterns. Her directions are clear and easy to follow, and the blocks went together easily.

Now that summer break has finally begun I'm looking forward to having lots more sewing time. Stay tuned!

Design Wall Monday::Almost Sewing Again

2010-05-10T18:41:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I finally got to spend a few hours in my sewing room. Unfortunately, it was such a mess that I needed to spend quite a while just straightening up. Under a pile of fabrics I had more or less just dumped on top of some project boxes, I came across these 20 blocks all finished and patiently waiting. I knew that I had bought some yardage for the lattice strips. It took a few minutes to locate that. Then I remembered that I had set aside something else for setting triangles. That took a little more digging. I also found the few extra pink strips that I had designated for the cornerstones.

I printed out the plan for the quilt from EQ and started to calculate what I was going to need to cut. I was scribbling my calculations on the back of an old envelope when I decided that it would probably be better to just put them in my quilt notebook so I wouldn't have to worry about losing the envelope. It took a few more minutes to find the notebook.

And when I opened the notebook I found that I had ALREADY done the darn calculations. Do you use a notebook? This one is a graph paper composition book which I've been trying to keep for the past few years. If I find a quilt design I like, I can sketch it out. I also try to write out the plans for each quilt I'm working on so they'll be all together in a safe place.

Armed with all the measurements I needed, I started cutting. I'm happy to say that all the lattices and cornerstones are cut. I wasn't able to get to the setting triangles before I ran out of time, but at least I know what size they're going to be.

And so....

I was finally able to get this thing laid out on the design wall.

The pattern is Sister's Choice from Bonnie Hunter at quiltville.com. As with all Bonnie's patterns, it has a nice efficient way of sewing the parts together. And it's a great way to use a jelly roll, as all the strips are cut at 2 1/2 inches. I needed a bit of extra yardage for the some of the background fabrics, but I was able to get 20 blocks made from a single jelly roll.

Now all I have to do is find some time to get it put together. No promises there...

You can check out what other bloggers have on their design wall today by clicking through to Judy L.'s Patchwork Times. I think you'll find that others have been way more productive than I have lately, but hey, any progress is good, right?

Not Sewing

2010-05-06T17:50:00.000-04:00

It's been a really busy couple of weeks, and I'm regretting that I haven't had much time to stop and enjoy the turning of the season. April and May are the best time of the year in this area. After the grays and drab browns of the winter months, it's wonderful to see the trees leaf out, the lawns green up and the early spring flowers begin to bloom.

I'd like to thank everyone who commented on the last post about my changing work situation. It took me a while to wrap my mind around such a big jump (going from teaching primary-aged students to middle school, if you haven't been keeping up), but I'm okay with it. More than okay, even.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much sewing these past few weeks. There's lots I'd like to be doing, but by the end of the day I'm usually so beat that all I can manage is a couple of rows on a pair of socks it seems like I've been working on for months. These are being knit with Plymouth Rockin' Sox yarn, a blend of superwash, bamboo, and nylon--which makes for a nice, lofty knit. And I love, love, love this color which reminds me of raspberries. The pattern is Wickerware. I think this is the third pair I've knitted with it.

I've got a mini-retreat coming up in a couple of weeks, so I need to start looking for something that I can work on. Should I start a new project, or buckle down and get something finished?

Somehow, April Just Happened

2010-04-22T18:05:00.000-04:00

It's been a very busy month here, and sewing has had to take a back seat for several weeks. I thought I'd try to get caught up with a bullet post.

* Beginning next year, I will have a new job.

* I've been assigned to the middle school.

* Not my first choice.

* I have taught in elementary school since the dawn of time.

* I like teaching elementary, especially the primary level.

* It could be worse. That's been my mantra. It could be worse.

* Lots of teachers (all over the country, not just in my little corner of the world) are losing their jobs, due to big cuts in education budgets because of the economy. If you know a teacher, especially a young one, give him or her a hug because things are really tense right now.

* It could be WAY worse.

* April is an extremely busy month at school. Annual conferences for parents of special education students. Retention conferences. Final preparations for statewide testing next week. After school tutoring. Projects to finish. More assessments to administer. All this in addition to the regular schedule, which is pretty busy to begin with. I am definitely ready for May.

* My daughter ran in the Boston Marathon over the weekend. My husband and I flew up to Boston to help cheer her on. I say help cheer her on because the people of Boston do a darn good job of cheering on the marathon runners all by themselves. But, it's the Boston Marathon; we couldn't pass that up.

* She was running around 80 miles a week to prepare. Anyone that dedicated deserves to have her own personal cheering section. If you happened to be in Newton, Massachusetts last Monday, my husband was the one standing on the lawn chair trying to get a picture of her coming down the street. I was the one yelling at the top of my lungs, standing next to him. I think we may have been doing a little dance, too, but that may be just in my head.

* He didn't get the picture because she whizzed by too fast.

* We had a great time hanging out with family that lives in the Boston area. We also had a great time eating at the wonderful restaurants in Boston.

* Cannoli at Mike's Pastry? The best. Simply the best.

* Sewing? Maybe this weekend.

Catching Up (Is Hard to Do)

2010-03-26T14:01:00.001-04:00

This week has been my spring break and I really needed the time. I was much more tired than I realized, so I spent the first few days just catching up on sleep. And that extra sleep really has helped. I got caught up on some neglected household chores and tamed the laundry mountain. True, there may be an errant dust bunny here or there, but I've got a few more days to get things more or less under control.

In the meantime, I've been dropping into my sewing room just for brief visits. The stars in the picture above are a hand sewing project. I have 14 more or less complete out of a total of 18 planned. These have been slow going, but now that I'm so close to the end, I'm beginning to feel the love again. I'm not sure about how to set them in a quilt; that's a decision that I keep putting off. The good news is that I have somehow managed to acquire quite a bit of the fabric I need to finish the quilt in a couple of different ways. It's just a matter of making the choice.

While traveling around blogland, I came upon a treasure trove of basket block patterns at Sandi's Piecemeal Quilts. Just lately basket blocks are especially appealing to me, and it seemed a good use for some nice bright fabrics I found on the remnant table a while back. These finish at 10 inches and there are nine different patterns on Sandi's blog--just the right number for a spring couch throw.

I also started working on the Civil War Tribute quilt. This is the first block I tried. It will be 18 inches and will have a smaller 12 inch twin. I didn't like the fabric I chose for the side triangles, so I'm rethinking. There are lots and lots of bias seams in this block, which called for some very gentle handling. There was a little bit of stretch, despite my determined starching, but I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Have a great weekend!

Design Wall Monday::First Day of Spring Break

2010-03-22T20:07:00.000-04:00

After nearly a week of warm, sunny weather, the first day of spring break was cold and rainy--perfect for staying inside and sewing.

My doll quilt jag continues. I finished the setting squares for this one today and got the main part of the quilt put together. Now I am auditioning fabrics for a narrow border.

The dark red?

Or the dark brown? Or neither? Something lighter? I think it wants SOMETHING, but I haven't found anything that I really like. (Sorry for the rather odd color-cast of the second photo, but the light here today is decidedly grim, and I photographed it with lamps ablazing.)

This little one measures about 11 1/2 by 16 inches, so adding a another couple of inches wouldn't hurt anything. Anyway, I'm going to leave it up there for a while and I'll keep trying different borders until I find something I can live with.

You can check out what others have on their design walls this week by reading Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Celebrate Quilting!

2010-03-20T20:22:00.001-04:00

I'm still buzzed from our Quilter's Day Out celebration.

We had hoped for a big turnout, and we got one. More than 200 people came to sew, to see our demonstrations, to chat, and to have a good time with quilting friends.

I did get pictures, as you can see, but at the last minute I got a little worried about someone not appreciating having their photo suddenly show up on the internet, so I'm just posting shots of our guild's quilt display. I had to wait until late in the day when the crowd had thinned out a bit to even get these.

I hope that you can see the wide variety of quilts and quilting styles we have in our little guild. A group of very energetic ladies set up the quilt display racks and got the hall ready yesterday so that we worker bees could arrive this morning just minutes before the doors opened and take our assigned places at the registration table, the goody bag handout, and the guild information table.

It takes a lot of planning and organization to make something like this happen. As I left this afternoon, this year's planners were already talking about NEXT year!

Happy Quilter's Day Out!

2010-03-20T07:07:00.000-04:00

Our guild is celebrating Quilter's Day Out today at a local church hall. We've got sewing demonstrations, door prizes, goody bags, a book sale, quilt displays, vendor booths, and food provided by the church ladies. I'm working from nine to four, which is why I'm up and around this early on my first day of spring break.

If I can remember to take my camera and actually take it out, I'll have pictures later.

How are you celebrating today?

March Retreat

2010-03-16T20:13:00.001-04:00

My previous experiences with retreats have been with small groups sponsored by the local quilt shop or mini-retreats with some of my quilting friends. But this last weekend I was lucky enough to get a spot at a popular retreat that was something quite different. There were 91 of us! We were spread out in the ballroom of a state park lodge with another group of quilters in a smaller room across the lobby.

The organizer is a former quilt shop owner who has been doing this for ten years now and who seems to have mastered all the organizational details. I arrived around dinner time on Friday because I had to work, but when I got there my place was all ready for me and I was seated next to a group of my friends. There were stations for cutting and ironing strategically placed around the room, and there seemed to be a never ending supply of snacks and drinks in one corner. It didn't take long for me to get myself unpacked and ready to sew.

It's an amazing experience to be in such a large group of creative, busy people. During breaks in my sewing time it was wonderful to wander through the sewing area and see what everybody was working on. I think part of the fun of a retreat is being able to meet and talk to so many like-minded people. No pictures, I'm afraid, because I forgot my camera, but I'm going to post a bit about what seemed popular later this week.

The main thing I wanted to work on was my little basket quilt. I won eight blocks in a guild BOM about two years ago and I had made a few more to be able to bring it up to a nice baby size quilt. After I evened up the blocks, it went together very easily. This little quilt is very dear to me because most of the blocks were made by guild friends. I plan to have the individual block makers sign the label.

The other project I brought along were some leftover nine patches from the 1800's doll quilt that I worked on last month. I had plenty of bits and pieces left to make another doll-sized quilt; all I needed was a soft double pink or dusty rose to use in the setting blocks. I was able to score the perfect fabric Saturday during a trip to one of the local shops. I've got all the fabric for the setting squares cut out and sewn into half-square triangles; I just need to find a few minutes to assemble the top.

I even had time to get started on yet another project that I've been mulling over for a while now. No pictures yet; I'll post some after I've made a bit more progress.

Have a great week!

Design Wall Monday::Little Things

2010-03-08T17:43:00.001-05:00

It's been a while, I know. Things have been very, very busy at work and my stress level has been through the roof. Most of the time sewing or knitting helps me maintain an even keel, but after a certain point I can't even handle those. Thankfully, things are finally calming down a bit and I can turn my attention back to something fun.

The blocks above are some that I won in a guild BOM back in 2008. Yes, two years ago! I won eight blocks (our guild was still pretty small then), and I had always intended to make a few more to eke out a baby quilt. I even bought some pastel floral fabric to use as a border and/or possible sashing. All of this has been biding its time in a bundle on a shelf in my sewing room.

I took the parts and pieces to the mini-retreat two weeks ago, and got started on four more blocks. Here are three more baskets with the handles yet to be tacked down.

There is one more that I finished just to check the cutting and sewing directions. It has been two years, after all. Pastels are not really my favorites, but of all the BOM's that we've done over the years, I think these little blocks are my favorite and I was very happy I was the winner that month. Everything is cut out; I just need to find a few minutes to sew all these bits together.

If you would like to see what others are working on this Monday, check out Judy L.'s Patchwork Times blog.

One thing that has carried me through the stress of the past couple of weeks is that I was able to grab a place at a quilting retreat next weekend. A friend of mine mentioned that she had heard that there were a few openings left and I called the woman who organizes it right away and secured my spot. Several friends and members of my quilting guild will be there. I am so looking forward to having some quality sewing time.

And I'm looking forward to spending some time this week just trying to decide what projects to work on. Sometimes that's as much fun as doing the sewing itself!

Eat, Quilt, Laugh

2010-02-23T15:39:00.000-05:00

I had a wonderful time at our weekend mini-retreat. This is the one that takes place at a LQS which provides sewing space, dormitory-style bedrooms (with quilts on each bed as well as quilts on the walls), a kitchenette, and a running tab on sewing supplies. We are known as the group "who cooks". Other groups who book the weekends either go out to eat or get take-out food, but we divide up the meals and bring our own. We think it's nicer that way, and the food is always delicious. One of our group lives only about 10 minutes away from the shop and she has generously made us a fabulous dinner each time we've gone on retreat. The rest of us pitch in for breakfast, lunch, and multitudes of snacks and drinks.

With lots of good food and laughter the weekend flies by. Even so, I am always surprised at how much I can accomplish.

I had planned to make the 1800's doll quilt featured on the Moda Bakeshop website and had cut out all the fabric before the retreat. This one is made from a charm pack and a half yard of solid fabric. Somehow, even when I was cutting everything into 1 1/4" strips, it didn't occur to me how small all those nine patches were going to be. These are tiny!

They don't look so small in the picture above, but look at the picture below: The 6 3/4 inch center block alone has 81 pieces! This is one I would like to make again. It would be fun to use 2 1/2 inch strips to make a larger baby size quilt.

I was amazed at how well everything went together. I think my machine piecing skills must have improved, because I know I couldn't have made anything like this even a year ago.

I had a lot of fun putting this together and I love the result, but the some of the directions were a little sketchy. Of course, it's only a matter of putting together a bunch of nine patch blocks, but I would have appreciated a little more idea of how many strips of each fabric I was going to be using. As it is, I only used about half of the charm pack, but I think I may continue making nine patches with my already cut strips and put them in a different setting. The doll quilt saga continues...

Two of us had ordered the new Gwen Marston book Liberated Quiltmaking II and another of us already had Collaborative Quilting, by Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran. After reading through both books we decided that we all liked the liberated style so much that we are to work on making and sharing tree blocks for our own liberated quilts. It's going to be a lot of fun to work on this project together. Stay tuned for pictures.

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Has anybody else noticed how weird bloglines has been behaving lately? I won't get updated posts from some sites for days, then all of a sudden five or six posts from the previous week will appear all of a sudden. Others seem to appear just the same as always. I wonder what is going on.

What I'm Working on Wednesday::Snow Days

2010-02-17T18:02:00.002-05:00

I finished the flimsy for the little doll quilt yesterday. I decided to go with the brown for the setting triangles after all and I love the way it turned out. If you haven't been following this, I found the pattern in an old Fons and Porter magazine from summer, 2008. It was designed by Kathleen Tracy, at A Sentimental Quilter. She is the one who wrote Prairie Children and Their Quilts. I love the look of these little six inch blocks--and it's nice to be able to finish something in just a couple of days.

We are on our second snow day of this week. The big (at least for this area) 8 inches of snow that hit us Monday has hung around because of the cold temperatures, like a house guest who just won't leave. The school district that I work for includes both city and rural areas, and while our city streets are for the most part clear, the rural roads are still icy and treacherous. The thing is, we've used up all of our built-in snow days for this year, so these "extra" days mean that we'll be in school until well into June. Not that I mind, you understand, I just thought I'd mention it.

This weekend I'm going to a mini-retreat with my sewing group, so I've spent part of the day trying to decide which projects to take with me. I've found that, for me, smaller projects are best in the cramped quarters at retreats. Poking around in the UFO boxes in my sewing room I found some small pastel basket blocks that I won a couple of years ago in a guild BOM raffle. I have eight completed blocks and this afternoon I dug up a yard of muslin and some pastel scraps. I cut out enough fabric to make four more blocks. I even found the fabric that I had bought to make the borders. It's plenty enough for a little baby quilt.

Another project that I've had my eye on is the Moda Bakeshop 1800's Vintage Quilt. It's a replica of an antique doll quilt. (I think there may be a trend here!) I've had a charm pack of Civil War reproductions just waiting for the right project, so this afternoon I cut those up along with the background fabric, also from stash.

And, just in case I finish (!) the other two I thought I'd start on The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. I have a rather large and over-flowing bin of reproduction scraps and crumbs which will be perfect. I don't think I'm going to try to make all 111 blocks, maybe just a lap size quilt.

Does that seem like enough to keep me busy Saturday and Sunday?

They are predicting another round of accumulating snow for Sunday night into Monday. Not that I mind. I just thought I'd mention it.

Design Wall Monday::President's Day

2010-02-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

It's President's Day today. Originally this was a holiday to celebrate GeorgeWashington's birthday, but since it got moved to the third Tuesday in February and its name got changed, I'm not sure most people are even aware of why we have the day off. George Washington was, of course, the commander of our forces in the Revolutionary War and also our first president, one of the U.S.'s most revered historical figures.

We have today off from school because of the holiday, but we would have had today off anyway because we are having yet another snow storm. So far we've picked up another 6-8 inches of snow and the weather service is expecting even more tonight. It's not looking good for school tomorrow either, with more snow expected over night and tomorrow morning.

It seemed like a good day to stay inside and sew.

I had all the fabrics cut out for the doll quilt, so this morning I sewed the blocks together. I love this little thing! The blocks are small, only 6 inches, and they went together very easily. It's hard to tell since they are set on-point, but they are an old block pattern called Prairie Queen, one of my favorites. I had actually planned several years ago to make a bigger quilt with this block, in fact I think I still have most of the fabric I bought for it in my stash somewhere.

I wasn't sure what fabrics to use for the setting triangles, so I auditioned several of them. The pictures above show the two I like the best. I would like to use that striped fabric for the top and bottom borders and I think it looks best with the brown, but we'll see. (And yes, I see now that the bottom right block is turned sideways. Whoops!)

While making up my mind I tried some liberated stars from Gwen Marston.

These are really fun to do and they work up really quickly. I'd like to make a few more with some of my Kaffe Fassett scraps.

You can check out what others have on their design wall this week by reading Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times. Thank you once again, Judy, for hosting!

Snowy Blowy Day

2010-02-10T18:29:00.001-05:00

We're on our second snow day this week. The snow moved in yesterday morning early and dropped about 4 or 5 inches by daylight, which is more than enough to call off school here. Then, last night the wind began to blow all the snow around and the temperature dropped into the teens. Everything froze. Our street, our driveway, even our steps were covered in a hard glaze of ice. The streets seem fairly clear now, but I'm betting we'll have at least a two hour delay tomorrow. We'll see.

Anyway, ahem. Ta-da! Look what I finally finished. I don't know why this simple little quilt gave me such fits, but as of now I am over the fits and the complaining and the whining. I promise. I finished up the last two seams this afternoon and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Borders, you ask? Borders? Well, yes there will be borders. Eventually. I checked through the stash this afternoon and I don't have anything big enough, so borders will have to wait until I can get to the quilt shop.

Toward the end, my seam sewing was not of the best. There is more than one intersection that I wouldn't want to have anyone examine too closely. I redid a few, but I decided to just accept a few imperfections on some of the others. It's done. That's all I care about at the moment.

By the way, I really appreciated all the comments I got about my struggles with this one. And I need to say a heartfelt thank you to Homemade Quilts by Granny, (a no-reply blogger) who commented simply, "I like your rail fence don't give up on it." That comment came along just as I was wavering about putting it away for another day. I didn't give up and now I have one less UFO to worry about.

I did quite a bit of straightening up in my sewing room while I was avoiding sewing the rail fence. I have lots of quilting books and magazines and they have overtaken my shelf space. Yesterday I sat down with a stack of magazines that I was saving only for the sake of one or two projects that I thought I might be interested in sewing. I was pulling out the pages for those projects and tossing the rest of the magazines when I came across directions for a doll quilt called Civil War Scraps in an old Fons and Porter magazine. I love the design, and best of all, it's really small. I need something little, something that I can get DONE.

I tossed some fat quarters in the wash last night thinking I could get a start on it today and then sat down to check around the blogs. I was amazed to find A Sentimental Quilter, Kathy Tracy, who is the designer of THIS little quilt and the author of American Doll Quilts, Prairie Children and Their Quilts, and Remembering Adelia.

I did a test block this afternoon.

I am so looking forward to working on this one.

Socks on the Needles

2010-02-07T23:00:00.004-05:00

Socks? Why yes, I've got some socks on the needles.

The one below is the sock I work on when I'm watching TV. All it needs is the final Kitchener stitch across the top, but I've been procrastinating. Also, I have misplaced the scrap of paper I wrote the pattern on. Not that I couldn't just write the pattern down again, but I know it's around here somewhere... The yarn is a lovely smooshy alpaca blend, which, according to the label, is from a local farm.

Now this one is stalled because the tip of one of my 1.5 needles broke off and I haven't had a chance to visit the LYS to buy a new set. The yarn is from Knit Picks, called Essential kettle dyed. The color is ivy. The pattern is one I've done before, called Primavera. The leg looks very narrow, but it stretches out to a nice complicated looking rib pattern quite simple to knit.

The ones below are Lorna's Laces in the Tuscany colorway. The pattern is Simple Textured Socks. All I need to do is that final Kitchener on the SECOND sock. That's all. I don't know why I procrastinate when it comes to doing that dreaded K stitch, but I do.

And these are Roundabout socks knit in Tofutsies yarn. You notice that I did manage to finish the first sock and I'm halfway down the cuff of the second. Tofutsies, by the way, is a combination of wool, soysilk, cotton, and chitin (a fiber from crab and shrimp shells which is supposed to have natural antibacterial properties). It comes in a variety of lively colors, knits up beautifully, and wears really well. These socks are the ones I work on when I'm watching movies on the computer.

And yes, I do have at least one more set of size 1 needles, so I could, if I wanted, start yet another pair.

Sock knitting is such a pleasure. Round and round you go, and before you know it, you arrive at the tip of the toes and you're almost done.

BTW, my LYS printed the Kitchener stitch directions of their business cards. I own several of them, but it still doesn't keep me from procrastinating.

Design Wall Monday::Blog Giveaway

2010-02-01T21:32:00.001-05:00

Well it's a little farther along than it was last week. I've got a little less than half the strips sewn together; the rest of them are draped over the ironing board just waiting to be sewn together. The truth is that I've stalled out on this, but I'm too stubborn to quit on it when it is so close to being done. Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to forge on. I am utterly determined that this UFO is going to be off the shelf and done before I start anything else.

You can check out what others have on their design walls by going over to Judy L's blog Patchwork Times.

Over the weekend I read a lot of the commentary surrounding the death of J.D. Salinger. For my group of friends in high school reading Catcher in the Rye was practically a rite of passage. I think I was about 14 or 15 when I brought it home from the school library. My mother promptly took it away from me, declaring that it was "too adult." Since I had to return it anyway, I just took it back to school and kept it in my locker and read it during study hall. I identified with just about everything in that book. It was a book that my friends and I discussed and debated on our own, outside of English class. How ironic that it is now considered "literature" and is taught in many high schools! When my own daughter was in high school, I wanted her to read it, but she didn't seem to find it as engaging as we did. I did dip into it a bit at that time, and I remember being disappointed because it seemed dated. Yesterday, however, I picked it up again and read it in one gulp and it seemed as fresh as ever. If you haven't read it, it's definitely worth trying.

And now for the giveaway news....the winner is Miriam, at Yellow Roses!

I'd like to thank everyone for all the wonderful comments in the past week. Blogging has enriched my life so much during the past three years and 200 posts and I appreciate everyone who stops by.

Felting and Give Away Reminder

2010-01-31T20:22:00.000-05:00

I've never felted anything before. Intentionally, that is. I've had my share of laundry accidents with an errant socks or two. Not pleasant memories. And after taking so long to knit something, it's a little hard to throw it into a washing machine full of hot water. In fact, every fiber of my being screamed, "No! Not HOT water!"

The two balls of Noro Kuryeon arrived last week and Saturday I finished the handles for the French Market Bag. A couple of people on Ravelry had mentioned that they would have liked the handles a bit longer, so I added a couple of inches to mine. According to the websites on felting that I consulted, knitted items tend to shrink more lengthwise so I thought two more inches ought to be just about right.

As you can see in the picture below, what I ended up with was a large, rather shapeless bag. What the pattern calls for is a large square, knitted from the center out. At the point where you have 200 stitches on your needles you quit increasing, and that next part is the sides of your bag. I continued to knit up the sides two inches past what the pattern called for in order to increase the depth of the bag.

Before:

Then I filled up the washer with hot water, took a deep breath and threw it in. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. After five minutes agitating in the water, it seemed as if it were getting BIGGER rather than smaller. I kept checking it every few minutes, and after 15 minutes I could see the stitch definition disappearing and that it was getting smaller and firmer. Those websites were absolutely correct; there was dramatic shrinking in the length, not so much in the width.

I spun out the excess water, then stuffed it with plastic bags to shape it and set it on the heating vent to dry (a suggestion from my LYS).

And after:

I love it. It's thick and soft. The yarn has a lovely hazy look to it, like autumn colors seen through a mist. Did I mention that I love it? It's just the right size for a take along knitting project, with plenty of room for a pattern book and a notebook.

Pattern info:

4 skeins of Noro Kuryeon color #185 for the body

approx. 3/4 of an additional skein for the handles

I used the original pattern for the body, but added 2 inches of depth and 2 inches for the handles

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As I mentioned in my last post, I'm trying to chase away the mid-winter blues by celebrating my 200th post with a surprise package give away. Anyone who comments this week gets their name in the pot. I'll draw a name tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Design Wall Monday::200th Post

2010-01-25T22:55:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since my last post, I know. January and February are not my favorite months. It's not really the cold but the dark and gloomy weather that gets to me. This afternoon, as I was driving home from school, the sky lightened just a little (there may even have been a faint patch of blue) and I could feel my spirits lifting.

Despite the general gloom, I have been doing a little bit of sewing. On my design wall today is this rail fence quilt that simply won't let me quit on it. I've sewn all the strips, now I just need to join the strips to finish the flimsy. I've put it aside I don't know how many times to work on other things, and each time it calls me back. It's gotten to the point where I'm not sure I even like it any more--I just want to get it done.

I've also been doing a lot of knitting. Somehow I've managed to get four partially knitted socks on the needles in the past month. How did I ever acquire four sets of needles? I finished a pair yesterday and promptly started a new one. I'll post pictures of those when (if!) the sun ever shines again.

My LYS had a sale on New Year's Day (40% off!) and I bought 4 skeins of Noro Kureyon with no plan for what I was going to do with it. I toyed with the idea of another scarf, but I have plenty and so does my husband. I searched around the internet and found a pattern for the French Market bag. It looked very simple and really suited to the rustic nature of the Kureyon. Unfortunately, four skeins didn't go far, so I had to order more. Once the yarn arrives, all I need to do is knit the handles and then felt it. It's my first felted project, so I'm not sure what to expect. Any advice would be welcome.

I have a hard time believing that this is my 200th post. I started reading blogs a little over three years ago and I found so much inspiration in the many blogs that I read. My daughter encouraged me to start one of my own and I've had a lot of fun writing it and meeting people from all over the world. The blogging community is very special to me.

So....in an effort to throw off this January gloom, I'm going to celebrate my milestone by having a 200th post giveaway. If you comment this week I'll put your name in the hat and draw a person to receive a surprise package. It'll have some quilty stuff and some other goodies.

You can check out what others have on their design wall this Monday by reading Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Snow Days

2010-01-08T16:21:00.000-05:00

We're on the second day off from school today because of the weather. While one unplanned day off is a lark, a gift from the heavens, by this, the second day, the joy is beginning to wear a little thin because I know the start of next week will be extra hectic without any lesson plans and preparation. But, oh well, that's Monday and today is only Friday and I've still got two whole days to go before I have to deal with it. Seize the day, right?

Back at the beginning of December I was seriously tempted to join the Civil War Tribute quilt block of the month club at the LQS. I don't have the best track record when it comes to BOM's, as I wrote about here. I loved, loved, LOVED the pattern, but I wasn't sure I wanted to get involved in yet another long term project, and I certainly didn't need to buy any more fabric. However, after scouting around on the web, I found a source for the pattern alone. It was a little pricey (okay, a lot pricey), but I'm considering it a late Christmas present. The directions look nice and clear, so I'm going to organize my civil war fabrics and get started on it.

The other night I read a post from Connie on Cootie Bug 2's blog about the snow suits that children wore back in the '50's and early '60's. Where I grew up, in a suburb of Cleveland, everyone had a two piece snow suit. The jacket part was just a parka as most kids wear now, and the leggings were made of the same thick material. They were like overalls, with straps that went over your shoulders and little stirrups that went under your shoes. You shoved your feet down into boots that fit over your shoes. They were a trial to put on and even more of a trial to take off, but they did keep you warm.

The first day after Christmas break when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my mom got me up, fed me breakfast, and got me into my snow suit for the walk to school. I've never been a morning person, so I was running very late, and my mom kept warning me that I was going to be late unless I hurried up. We lived in a neighborhood almost a mile from my school. There weren't many kids at our end of the neighborhood, so I usually walked by myself.

I remember that it was a very cold, clear morning and the snow was up to my knees. Some people had shoveled their sidewalks, so I was able to make pretty good time past their houses. Other people hadn't, so there were long patches where I had to wade through the snow.

The walk to school usually took me about 20 minutes, but as I trudged along, it seemed like it was taking a long time, and remembering my mom's warnings that I was going to be late, I kept trying to speed up, but it wasn't so easy walking through all that snow. At some point, it occurred to me that I didn't see any other children walking along, the way I did most days. By the time I got to the big turn in the road where I usually met up with some of the other kids walking to school, there was no one.

I was really worried now, sure that somehow I had dawdled along too much and I was going to be late to school. Really late. I tried to hurry up, and all the time I kept imagining having to walk into my classroom in front of everybody. Would I get sent to the office?

I hurried along, through the dip next to the big ravine, across the street, then up the big hill next to the stone wall. There were no other kids. None. All I could think of was how much trouble I was going to be in.

I hurried through the schoolyard which at least had been plowed, and got to the back door of the school. It was locked! I couldn't imagine why they had locked the door. Was this something they did every day after all the kids got there? I peeked into one of the windows, and the classroom was empty. Where was everybody? Was there an assembly?

I walked around the side of the school and tried the front doors. They were locked too. Now I was really confused. What was going on? I just stood there, unsure of what to do.

Just then, the door opened from the inside and Mr. M., our janitor, poked his head out. "Go home," he said. "There's no school today."

The walk home seemed much shorter than the walk to school!

Design Wall Monday

2010-01-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

I finished sewing the blocks for the Ohio Star Thursday and then on Friday, during a New Year's sewing day with my sewing group, I got them put together. All I need to do now is to put on some narrow borders. They will be white, and then just a narrow binding in some more of the Turkey red. It's pretty simple, but I like it that way.

I'm feeling pretty good about getting to this point; this is a quilt which I've intended to make since I saw an exhibit of antique quilts at our local art museum. It took me a long time to get it started, and I'm glad I finally got to see it through.

I love the crispness of the blocks. There may be a tiny chopped off point here or there, but the square in a square method makes a very neat Ohio Star block. I intend to hand quilt this with something fancy in the setting squares. I bought a book about antique quilting designs a few months ago. Now I just have to figure out how to draft one to fit the blocks.

You can check out other quilter's design walls (or design couches, as the case may be) this week by checking out Judy L.'s Patchwork Times.

Over the weekend I watched Netflix movies and knitted away on a baktus scarf. It's another project that I've been meaning to do. The pattern is so ridiculously easy--just garter stitch--that it made an ideal project to while away my last weekend before school started again after Christmas break. This is made from a single skein of Rio de la Plata kettle dyed merino sock yarn which has been in my stash for a long while now. The yarn is so pretty I was reluctant to do anything other than just pet it from time to time. And I had read on Ravelry about its tendency to felt and didn't think socks would be the best use for it. Knit in garter stitch on US size 3 needles, it worked up beautifully, although you can see that the colors started to pool in one part there on the lower left of the picture. It's about 46 inches long, and about 10 inches at the widest point. It's a nice thing to be able to drape around my shoulders or wrap around my neck without too much bulk.

Many people in blogland has been looking back at their completed projects for the past year and making resolutions about the number of projects they expect to complete this coming year. It made me a little curious to see what I had done. Looking back at my blog posts this year I discovered that I have done lots more than I thought I had, despite the fact that I usually feel that I'm working at the pace of a drowsy snail. I finished some older UFO's that had been nagging at my conscience. I started two new bed-sized projects, and I finished them. I started quite a few smaller things, too, and managed to get those done. Of course I've got lots of UFO's sitting around, but I'll keep plugging along on them, and I'm sure I'll get them finished some day.

One thing I've learned about myself this year is that I am a process quilter (and knitter). My joy is in the making of the thing, rather than in getting it done. In fact, the closer to completing something, the more my interest seems to wane. How about you? Are you process oriented or results oriented?

Customer Service

2009-12-30T13:26:00.000-05:00

On Christmas day just as I was about to start whipping the potatoes, my circa 1970 hand mixer gave up the ghost with a snap, crackle, pop, and a plume of acrid smoke. It all happened so fast that I thought it might have been my imagination. Except for the smoke. There was definitely smoke. So I very carefully unplugged the mixer and mashed the potatoes the old fashioned way.

During dinner we were lamented the mixer's passing, since the crowning glory of our dinner was to be persimmon pudding with a sherry wine/WHIPPED cream sauce that has been part of my husband's holiday tradition since...forever. I've made whipped cream with a whisk, but it's not easy. And I don't own an egg beater any more.

Then, he remembered that he had his mother's old KitchenAid stand mixer stored away. This mixer was a fixture in her kitchen until she and his dad moved into assisted living a few years ago. My husband can't even remember a time when it wasn't there. After a little digging around we found it and set it up. It works just fine. It whipped up the cream for the sherry wine sauce in an astonishingly short time.

But also in the box were with a lot of dangerous looking attachments and we had no idea what they were for. One thing looked like a meat grinder, complete with a wooden thing to push the meat through. There was some sort of attachment for pureeing and something for slicing and/or shredding (I think I remember her using that to shred cabbage for cole slaw). And a large heavy glass bowl with a spout and a hole in the bottom.

We were pretty curious, so we looked online to see if we could find a manual or some directions from KitchenAid itself. It turns out that this mixer is pretty old, probably from the '40's or '50's.

The Monday after Christmas I called KitchenAid to see if they could give me any information or if they had some sort of manual which would explain what the various attachments were for and how they worked. The girl I talked to didn't offer much hope. In fact, she suggested Ebay. She left me on hold for a few minutes, then came back and took my name and address and told me they'd check into it. What I thought was that she'd found a way to put me off.

Then, this morning in the mail, I received an envelope from KitchenAid with a copy of the original manual for this mixer!

I'd call that customer service, wouldn't you?

After Christmas

2009-12-29T15:24:00.000-05:00

We had a relaxed, mellow Christmas weekend. Once I had all the supplies laid in by late afternoon on Christmas eve, neither one of us so much as stuck our noses out the door until Saturday when my husband made the regular Saturday run for groceries for his parents. We watched a few movies, listened to my husband's new CD's, and I alternated knitting and sewing. We did bestir ourselves to cook a turkey dinner for Christmas day; somehow it wouldn't seem like Christmas without turkey and all the trimmings.

The week before Christmas I made a hat for my husband out of some yarn I found in the stash. No picture--he's wearing it today since the weather has turned very cold. That set me off on a hat search around Ravelry and the rest of the internet. I was looking for something else that would be quick and easy to work on in between Christmas preparation chores. I found a really nice pattern here for this hat.

Can you see the owl motif? It worked up very quickly; I think I had it done in less than a day. I'm thinking of getting some tiny buttons and sewing them on for the eyes. I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to knit hats. For one thing you don't need to knit a mate! The other great thing about hats is that sizing is less of an issue as long as it fits over your head and doesn't want to fall off too easily.

I also started on a long-delayed project for a red and white Ohio Stars quilt. I love Ohio Stars and this has been on the back burner for a long time. I bought a fat quarter bundle of turkey reds a couple of years ago and I had the plan of the quilt all set in my head, inspired, I thought, by an antique quilt I had seen in a book. The bundle has been sitting on my shelf all this time, just begging to be used. This weekend seemed like a good time to start it.

I used the square in a square ruler to make the little units. A friend of mine taught this as a class at the LQS a few years ago and it makes crisp, precise blocks. These blocks will be 8 inches, finished. You can see the units put together on my design wall (only the top left block is sewn all the way together). The plan is to make nine of these for a doll quilt or wall hanging.

After I got started on this I went back through my books to find the quilt that I was sure was my inspiration for this one. I couldn't find it anywhere, but I found enough ideas for other quilts that would keep me busy through the next decade. Oh boy!

A Christmas Wish for You

2009-12-23T23:04:00.001-05:00

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle loud and clear,

Merry Christmas,

Peace on Earth,

and a wonderful new year!

What's On My Design Wall Monday

2009-12-21T20:45:00.003-05:00

I pulled out the box with these pieces two weeks ago when I was looking for some hand sewing to work on that WASN'T itsy bitsy diamonds. The blocks have been sewn together for ages, but I needed to set them together and had been putting it off for one reason or another. In fact, I'd put it off for so long I had nearly forgotten about them and the project box had become buried under many other UFO boxes in my sewing room.

I'm a little further along than this picture shows. I took advantage of brighter skies on Saturday to get a picture of two of the strips together. I love the secondary pattern that is emerging there. Yesterday I worked on the third strip in between some other things. Each block is about 16 inches, and I have a total of 12.

My plan is to sew a four inch plain border around the 12 block set and then to sew a pieced border of the same half square triangle units in a zigzag pattern around that.

This is a long-term project that I am making entirely from scraps. Yesterday I cut some more pieces for the pieced border, but I've only got about a quarter of what I need cut out. For a while there I was being really good and cutting a 5-inch strip from any likely fabric I brought into the house to make the dark triangles and squares. When the project box got buried I fell off the wagon and so I've been going through the scrap baskets looking for pieces large enough. There are plenty, believe me.

Sewing these block units together has been really satisfying this week. Not too fussy, not too demanding--something I can pick up and put down when other things come up. I doubt I'll get the whole border sewn together right away, but I'll keep plugging along.

You can check out Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times to see what everybody else has up on their design wall this week.

Twas the week before Christmas...

2009-12-18T17:35:00.005-05:00

This was a very busy week and I am heartily glad that I am at the end of it.

--All out-of-town Christmas gifts have been bought, wrapped, and mailed out.

--I have shipping confirmations for the on-line gifts. Amazon and L.L. Bean, I love you!

--We made it through the last few days before the Christmas break at school with no major meltdowns (either the kids or the teachers). The classroom parties seemed to go well and I didn't see any students in the office. One of the perks of being a special education teacher is not having to do room parties with dozens of sugar-crazed kids. I count that as a perk, and heaven knows, there aren't many. The other side of the coin is that sometimes my students don't handle the change in the routine well and become a little too sugar-crazed and they end up in the office or my room for a time-out. Not this year.

--My Secret Santa gift recipient really liked her yo-yo garland. You never know with a hand made gift, so that was gratifying.

--I only had to stay for about 45 minutes after school on Friday getting lesson plans ready for the week after break. I had all that extra time, you see, not having to deal with sugar-crazed children.

--I slept around the clock on Friday night and woke up late Saturday morning feeling that all was right with the world.

--The snow they predicted for Friday and Saturday gave us a pass, although the Weather Service keeps threatening that there might be some on the way. We don't handle snow well here in southern Indiana, and even a couple of inches sends us into a frenzy of panic-buying of milk and bread.

I have a little more shopping to do, but this week I'm going to be able to slow down and enjoy the last few days leading up to Christmas.

I hope that you can too.

Design Wall Monday

2009-12-14T16:42:00.003-05:00

I've stalled out on the Sister's Choice blocks. Half of them are still up on the design wall and the other half have drifted onto the floor, where I pick them up one by one and put them on the table. What I need to do is buy fabric for lattice strips, but in order to do that I need to figure out how much I need to buy, and in order to do THAT I need to spend a little time with a paper and pencil. I don't think it's going to happen this week. I have a design idea I drew up in EQ, but the yardage estimates for the lattice and the borders seem extremely generous; I think EQ wants to figure yardage based on length of fabric rather than width.

This week is shaping up to be very, very busy. It's the week before Christmas break and there are just tons of things to get done before Friday. Even if I do figure out my yardage needs, I won't be able to get to the LQS until Saturday at the earliest.

I did get nearly all of the out-of-town presents on Sunday morning. I headed out early in the morning, well, early for me considering it was Sunday. I was home a little before 1:00 with a trunkful of Christmas stuff and a back seat full of groceries. Once we finally mail off the Christmas presents I'll be a lot less stressed out. Those should go out tomorrow if I'm able to get everything wrapped tonight. We'll see.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon working on a yo-yo garland similar to this one for my Secret Santa person at work. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it last night and I've already taken it in to school. I think it turned out really nice and I hope she likes it.

You can check out what everyone else is working on by checking Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Please Don't Make Me Go Out There!

2009-12-12T15:06:00.003-05:00

I say it every year, right about now: "Why didn't I start my Christmas shopping earlier?!"

Every year I make the same resolution to start my holiday shopping RIGHT AFTER Thanksgiving and every year I...don't.

I had to go out this afternoon to pick up some fabric for a Secret Santa gift I'm making for someone at school. I was also supposed to stop by the grocery store for a few things. And, I thought, maybe I can pick up a couple of Christmas gifts at the mall. Let me just say that we live in the shopping mecca for this area. Picture four county's worth of people funneling into our little town, all intent on bargains and parking spaces. It's gridlock out there!

I made it to the fabric store, but somehow couldn't manage to work my way over to the grocery, never mind the mall.

Call me a coward. Call me a wimp. Call me anything you want to, but you can't make me go back. I'll give it another try tomorrow morning. Early. Very early.

My stack of stars continues to grow, but I'll spare you yet another picture. I took a bit of a break the other night when I found a group of bitsy kaleidoscope hexagons I made a few years ago as a practice for another quilt. These little things were made from 2 inch strip sets, and although they're not the best for showing off the repeating pattern since their colors are so subtle, I've always loved them and had them tucked away for something. (Click on the picture to enlarge it and you'll be able to see the repeats a little better.)

It took just a few minutes to cut out some triangles and set them together. This little block reminds me of a tussie-mussie, a kind of small round bouquet popular in Victorian times. I think I'm just going to sandwich it as it is and use it as a table mat.

Design Wall Monday

2009-12-07T17:39:00.007-05:00

Design floor, that is. By the time I got home this afternoon about 4:30 it was too dark to take pictures in my sewing room, so I laid these out on the living room floor.

It's been slow going with these blocks. They are very fiddly to sew, although I'm getting better with them the more I do. I have been working on them during my Friday night sewing group, but I wasn't getting much done. Yesterday I decided I'd better devote some more time to them or this project will take, oh I don't know, roughly forever.

I've got ten done, or at least to the finished star stage, and I've prepped enough diamonds for two more. At first I was only going to make 12. Then I liked them so much I decided to go for 15. After playing around in EQ this morning I've got a layout that I like that will use 18.

They are very soothing to sew, once you understand how to line up the diamonds. And yes, I'm a big-time pinner, even with hand sewing. I get the centers lined up, then make sure the intersections at each end are lined up correctly. In the end, its quicker to do that than to sew and maybe have to rip back. There are so many bias edges in these that I avoid ripping if I can.

We were awakened this morning at 5:15 by a telephone call. My husband answered it since the phone is on his side of the bed. He sat there so long listening and nodding (and looking very serious) that I thought something awful must have happened, but it was only the new automated calling system to let us know that we had a two hour delay this morning!

We got the famous southern Indiana "winter mix," which is snow, freezing rain, and sleet. Not a fun thing to drive through before dawn. By the time I left for school it had quit and the snow quickly melted off. But, they are forecasting a winter storm for tomorrow. It looks like I'll have plenty of time to sew some more stars.

Edited to add: Sorry! I forgot to link you back to Judy L.'s Patchwork Times. You can check out what others have on their design wall this week by clicking on the link.

I Don't Know If I Can Resist

2009-12-03T21:42:00.003-05:00

Okay, block of the month quilts. They sound so easy. So foolproof. Make a block or two each month, right? Easy, peasy. At the end of the year, you've made one nice size quilt. Quilting on the installment plan, right?

I've only made one, or sort of made one. It was in the early days of a LQS and I bought into a civil war block of the month. Some months I loved the fabric choices, other months, not so much. Some of the blocks never got made, and with the others I made two--one with the store's fabric choices and one with my own. I had it quilted over the summer but I haven't bound it yet, although the binding has been sitting right there on my ironing board for a couple of months. It's actually my husband's favorite and is on our bed right now in all its unbound glory. It's at the top of the list, though. Maybe this weekend. Maybe.

Then, yesterday I got the monthly newsletter from another LQS, featuring this quilt as a BOM for next year. It's designed by Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith for Homestead Hearth. Fabrics by Judie Rothermel. Oh my.

My inner conflict goes something like this:

PRO: It's so beautiful!
CON: Yeah, but it's also huge! It'll take forever to sew!

PRO: The fabrics are going to be gorgeous.
CON: Don't you have a rather large stash of fabric already? Hmmmm?

PRO: Well, yes, but it's so BEAUTIFUL! And look at all those intricate blocks.
CON: And do you really NEED to start another project?

PRO: Yes! And the blocks commemorate civil war battles. I'd have a great excuse to get back into all my civil war books.
CON: As if you needed an excuse...

PRO: Why, it'd be educational, I tell you! You BELIEVE in education...
CON: ****

And so it goes. And I think that Saturday morning I'm probably heading over to the LQS. Just to look, mind you. Just to take a peek at it.

Am I insane? Is anybody else out there going to try this?

**************************************************

And, in the spirit of education, Fat Quarter Shop is offering the BOM here. In case your LQS isn't. This information is strictly for educational purposes, okay?

2009-12-01T21:52:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here. My daughter and her husband drove down Wednesday night and my son flew in on Thanksgiving day. With my husband's sister and brother there were seven of us at the table for dinner.

I love that moment before we begin the dinner, when the candles are lit, the food is laid out, the wine is poured, and everyone is eying the platters with anticipation. That's the moment I work for all day. Is there a word for that sweet expectancy?

I finished binding the blooming nine patch quilt with just a few days to spare and was able to present it to my daughter and son-in-law for their wedding present. It was only five months late, but who's counting? Hopefully, you'll be able to click on the picture to see the quilting. Vivian, my machine quilter, thought the fabrics looked like the ocean, so she quilted it all over with swirly designs that look like waves and whirlpools. I love the way it turned out.

This is not a great picture, I'm afraid. The sun just wouldn't cooperate, and the center looks washed out. This quilt just doesn't photograph well.

Having three extra people in our tiny house for the weekend meant that space was a bit tight. My daughter and son-in-law slept in the back bedroom where I normally use the computer. And my son bedded down in the half of my sewing room that I was able to clear out. I had to stack fabric bins and boxes willy-nilly, my poor sewing machine barricaded in the corner.

No computer and no sewing for the weekend. It was hard, let me tell you.

I did start a sock last week, using a free pattern called Wickerware, which I found through Ravelry. I was happily knitting along all weekend during the short bits of time I had until Sunday night, when I noticed that my pattern wasn't looking like the picture. Not that it looked bad, mind you, but really NOT like the picture. Unfortunately I was already at the heel at that point.

I frogged it. NOT so much from a dedication to perfection, but I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to reproduce whatever mistake I had been making, and since I really love this yarn, I would like to have two semi-identical socks to wear.

So here is my progress so far.

The pattern, by the way, is not at fault, just my hurried and careless reading of it. It's super easy to memorize and is knitting up into a nicely nubbly pattern. The yarn is called Socrates: 30% baby alpaca, 30% merino wool, 20% bamboo, and 20% nylon. In the picture it looks gray, but the color is more like prewashed denim. Soft, soft, soft, with a bit of sheen.

Mini Quilting Retreat

2009-11-24T16:00:00.004-05:00

It's another gray November day here, not really the best for taking pictures, but I wanted to post these because I'll be busy for the next few days and I probably won't have a chance to blog again for a while.

My little sewing group had a retreat over the weekend and I got a LOT accomplished. This stack and whack had been languishing in a project box for too long. The hold-up was that my cutting mat is too small to cut out the 22 inch squares I needed to make the setting triangles. Not that I couldn't have found someone who would have let me use their large cutting mat, but I never thought about it when I had the opportunity. I cut the squares at another retreat (two retreats in one month, yippee!) but didn't get a chance to put the whole thing together.

Now it's done. The irony is that I took this stack and whack class from a friend and got every block done that day. Every. single. block. A speed sewing record for me.

Sewing the borders on was a real bear. Sewing width-of-fabric borders to length-of-fabric borders is tough! One gives and stretches while the other won't budge. I persevered, though. That's one of the advantages of sewing at a retreat--no distractions and no excuses to quit when things get hard.

I really love kaleidoscope blocks and will probably be making lots more of these.

One of the activities that we had planned for the mini retreat was making little bags, and I even brought fabric which I intended to use. Those plans changed for me when I started putting together this little quilt. Now, I don't buy a lot of patterns, but this one just caught my eye last summer. I blogged about it here. It's called "Winter Retreat" by Pam Buda at Heartspun Quilts. I fell in love with these little blocks. The whole thing will finish out at about 35 x 35. (I am planning slightly larger borders than those called for in the pattern.)

When I started this on Sunday morning, I got on a roll and couldn't stop. It almost seemed as though it was sewing itself together. It needs two more borders which I have already cut out, and I plan to use it as a table topper this Christmas season. Well, some Christmas season, ahem.

The mini retreat was wonderful. There is nothing like a whole weekend with my sewing peeps. The retreat takes place at a quilting shop, so there are no worries about running out of supplies or sewing ideas. One of my friends lives nearby and loves to cook, so we were treated to Saturday night dinner of Julia Childs' beef bourguignon and Queen of Sheba chocolate cake. We've already planned another retreat for some time in February. I can hardly wait!

I have tomorrow off and I will need to spend it house cleaning, because my family will be coming here for Thanksgiving. It's been months since we were all together, so this is a weekend I am really looking forward to. I hope all my U.S. friends have a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving. For everyone else--have a great weekend!

Monday Update and Some Actual Quilting News

2009-11-16T20:37:00.006-05:00

If you haven't seen this, you should check it out at TECHknitting blog. Techknitter, in this post, puts into words better than I ever could why I feel such satisfaction in hand crafting. Even if you aren't a knitter, I think the two theories she discusses apply to any hand craft.

Below, you see the latest sock I've been working on. This is a simple (free!) pattern called Primavera. It's just 5 rib rows, then one easy pattern row. But look at the effect! Techknitter calls it "work to glory ratio." I've always thought of it in my head as "bang for a buck," much less elegant a term, but it's still the same idea. The simple pattern turns an ordinary sock into something a lot more special.

I knit with KnitPicks Essential yarn, fingering weight, Wine Kettle Hand-Dyed. I love the feel of this yarn as I knit with it, and how the pattern is so well-defined. It's for a gift, so I hope it holds up well.

I also love Techknitter's discussion of product and process in crafting. I think it applies equally well to quilting or any other craft that requires long hours of work. When I look at one of my finished quilts, I see the quilt itself, but I also "see" how and when and where I made it. I remember the choices I made as I was constructing it. I remember matching the bits of fabric, pinning them together, and the lovely feeling of things going together the way I wanted them to.

And, ta-da! Some actual sewing has taken place here. A couple of years ago I won a jelly roll at a quilting retreat and I had been looking for the perfect project for it. Well, by way of Gudrun and Bonnie at Quiltville, I found a great pattern called Sister's Choice. All of the blocks can be made with 2 1/2 inch strips, and I had more than enough to make 20 blocks (although I did have to supplement some of the background cream). Now I just need to get some border fabric and some more cream for setting triangles and I'll be able to put it together.

You can check out what others around blogland are working on this week by checking in at Judy's Patchwork Times blog.

Remiss

2009-11-12T15:42:00.003-05:00

October was not a great month here at our house. It was an extremely stressful time for my family and me, and I'm very happy that we are done with October and we are now well into November. Happily, things are on a more even keel around here, and we are all looking forward to Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season.

Early in October I posted about one of my quilts for the Blogger's Fall Quilt Festival and I was notified that I had won a prize. It was a great surprise and I was looking forward to a package arriving in the mail.

Then, well, the other stuff happened, and when the package arrived, I put it to the side thinking that I would deal with it later. Somehow the package got moved into my sewing room and there it languished until this afternoon when I suddenly realized what it was.

My goodness! It's an entire block of the month set for a quilt called "A Little Bit More...About the Bears," by Canadian designer Dorothy Baker. It is darling!

Thank you so much, Dorothy, for this wonderful gift! I am very sorry it has taken me so long to acknowledge your generosity.

And thank you to Amy at Park City Girl for hosting the Quilt Festival and giving all of us a chance to share our work with each other.

Back for November

2009-11-09T16:40:00.005-05:00

I did, in fact, go to the Fiber Arts Festival in Corydon. Was it that long ago? It WAS that long ago.

The festival is held at the Harrison County Fairgrounds, just on the edge of the town of Corydon. Although the weather prediction had been for rain and cool temperatures, it turned out sunny, cold, and windy that day.

There were a few animal exhibits, although not as many as in the past. I think the goats and sheep (which I didn't get a picture of) were very happy to be covered in warm wool coats.

There were quite a few people there, although these pictures make it look practically deserted. Mainly people hung out in the barns with the vendors because of the strong, cold wind blowing most of the day.

One yarn store had set up outside, and the vendor and her helpers were wearing most of the shop samples in a vain effort to stay warm. Each time a blast of cold wind blew through, they worked in concert to hold down their tarp and the tables where they were displaying their wares.

This year it seemed as though the weavers and spinners had the most booths. Each time I visit the festival I think about maybe taking a spinning class, but that's going to have to wait until I have a bit more free time. KnittingDragonflies was able to take lots more pictures of the wool available from the local farms, so check out her blog for more pictures.

I ended up with a Crazy Zauberball. I fell in love with the long, long color runs on the display samples. And, as I am a total sucker for kits, I bought a little one to make a couple of washcloths for Christmas presents. It's a wonderfully soft cotton and the knitting instructions sound interesting. I also found some handmade soap to go with them.

Fiber Festival

2009-10-16T17:16:00.002-04:00

I'm heading out tomorrow to the Southern Indiana Fiber Arts Festival at the fairgrounds in Corydon, Indiana. The festival features knitting, weaving, and crocheting exhibits and supplies.

The weather promises to be cold and drippy, so be sure to wear your woolens!

Hopefully I won't forget my camera again this year so I'll be able to share some pictures.

Fall Festival 2009

2009-10-14T16:26:00.002-04:00

Here is my entry in the Fall Festival virtual quilt show being hosted by Amy at Park City Girl. I was hoping for a better picture, but it is raining here and this is the best I can manage today.

This is one of my earliest quilts. When I began making it I had just learned about our local quilt shops and, wonder of wonders, fat quarters. I remember driving out to a quilt shop aways out in the country around this time of year to look for fabrics. All the fall colors on the trees were there in the shop in the lovely little bits of fabric I bought for my quilt.

I couldn't decide between the two quilt blocks, so I used both. I like how on the corn and beans blocks the flying geese seem to fly toward the center of the block, while on the rambler blocks, the geese are flying away. Incidentally, I read somewhere there was a superstition that if you gave a quilt of rambler blocks to a son, that would mean that he would leave home.

One of the best parts about making this quilt was choosing the fabrics for each block and seeing how they worked together. Some blocks are subdued, while others sparkle and really stand out.

I hand pieced the quilt, cut the material for the borders, and then put it away. Years later, at a quilt retreat, I met a wonderful longarm quilter. This is one of the first quilts I ever "sent out" to be quilted. I wanted heirloom quilting on it because I had spent so much time planning and piecing each block.

As you can see, she did a wonderful job. The lattices are all feathered, and each individual block is quilted beautifully. I'm really glad that I waited to find someone who would take the time to do such an incredible job on the quilting.

Design Wall Monday :: Nothing

2009-10-12T18:17:00.003-04:00

The rail fence quilt is still on the design wall and I haven't made one smidgen of progress.

Nor have I worked on any other quilting projects. Not. One.

Life just kind of got in the way this week.

What I have been doing is lots and lots of sock knitting. There is something about the rhythm of knitting which helps me deal with stress, and since there has been quite a bit of that (stress, that is), socks are practically knitting themselves off the needles these days. And because I'm spending so much time knitting, I decided to make a lot of socks for Christmas presents this year. How's that for turning lemons into lemonade, or something like it? Some of the recipients are readers, so I'll not show pictures just yet.

Let me say, thank goodness for Ravelry. If you knit or crochet, take a quick look around the site. It's like the central office for the on-line knitting community.

It looks like things will be calming down a bit this week. Maybe I'll be able to get up to the sewing room and get the last few rows done on the rail fence. Maybe.

If you would like to see what others have been actually working on and what they have up on their design wall, check out Judy L.'s Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

In the meantime, I have some socks on the needles that are calling my name...

Kayak

2009-10-07T17:20:00.010-04:00

My husband has wanted a kayak for a long time. He's browsed on-line catalogs and Ebay, looking and longing. The problems boiled down to two things:

*What kind and what size?
*They cost so much!

Then, earlier this summer, both of us happened to see an article in the local paper about a man who had a kayak building school in the Big City near us. The ironic thing was that the article ran in the sports section, which neither of us usually reads. It was serendipity.

Problem number one was taken care of because at the school they used an old method of sizing the kayak to the individual based on their height. The second problem? Let's just say that Santa came early this year.

All summer long my husband has been driving over to the Big City a couple of nights each week after work to build his kayak. These are not the short, little boats that you usually see for white water kayaking, which I was most familiar with. These are long, narrow boats built in the Greenland style, used originally by hunters on the open seas. They are built of hard woods and pine, held together with pegs and lashing. They did use some screws to attach the keel strips, I believe.

Along the way he's met some new friends and learned a lot about kayaks.

The weekend before last was the great kayak launch. Would they float? Would they tip?

Here he is making a last minute inspection:

A blurry (sorry about that!) detail of the sewing job he did on the outer skin:

Stepping into the water:

And floating away:

I love the sunshine showing the ribs in the above picture. He chose the clear coating over the outer skin so that he could see all the interior details of the boat.

It seemed a little tippy at first, but after a few strokes across the water, it was pronounced stable and comfortable.

There are still a few things he needs to finish on the boat and some more equipment to get.

But stroking your hand-made kayak across the lake on a beautiful afternoon? Priceless!

I'm Back for Design Wall Monday

2009-10-05T16:47:00.005-04:00

I'm back and feeling well, but the same can't be said for most of the people I work with and the children I teach. It seems as though everyone is either getting sick, is sick right now (and therefore at home), or is just getting well. We've got colds, flu, flu-like illness, and now, to top it all off, a couple of cases of hand, foot, and mouth disease. All of us are looking forward to this Friday, our fall break, when hopefully the cycle of illness will be broken, and we can breath a sigh of relief.

The ironic thing is that the weather here has been lovely: cool nights followed by beautiful, mild days. Doesn't seem like cold and flu weather, does it?

The pictures above shows the sum total of sewing I've done in the past two weeks. Actually I think that two of the blocks were done before that, but at least I've put the background fabrics on all of them. I guess you could call this my design "floor" Monday. The rail fence is still taking up the design wall, but I haven't made it into the sewing room to work on it for a long while now.

You can check out what others are working on by reading Judy Laquidara's blog Patchwork Times.

Incidentally, I found an interesting blog called Letters of Note. These are letters, memos, telegrams to and from some famous and not-so-famous people which are fun to read. It's definitely worth checking out.

Achoo!

2009-09-30T17:49:00.002-04:00

I've been laid low by a particularly nasty head cold and have actually taken a sick day. With the arrival of swine flu in our area, we've been encouraged to stay home if we're sick. Not that I needed much encouragement.

Hopefully I'm on the mend and will have something crafty to blog about later in the week.

More Random

2009-09-25T16:09:00.002-04:00

Nancy at Blogging, Near Philadelphia mentioned this afternoon that Blogger seems to have had some sort of hiccup and has reset some commenters to "no-reply." Well, I just checked my profile and that is the case for me, even though I hadn't been in the dashboard for months. You can check your settings by following the directions at Sew Many Ways. Judging by the number of messages I've seen lately about "no-reply" bloggers, this may be the case with many people.

A couple of situations at work have resolved themselves over the past week. I am hoping this will mean less stress for me and that I won't come home from work every day feeling as used up as I have for the past month. So far (two days worth) I've felt a lot better and had more energy.

I have both of the Most Frustrating Socks to the Kitchener stage. The second one was easier than the first, but there were still a couple of places where I had to frog back. No pictures today because it is dark and rainy.

The rain continues. We are under a flash flood watch until tomorrow. The stand pipe is standing and we continually monitor the water levels in the street outside.

Hey, it's Friday! I'm looking forward to some quality time with my sewing machine this weekend. Have a great weekend!

Flash Flood Redux and Design Wall Monday

2009-09-21T19:32:00.009-04:00

There has been enough rain.

Yesterday was warm, but rainy. It kept up pretty much all day. Just as we were finishing up our regular Sunday night dinner with my dad, the rain seemed to pick up. We dawdled for a while, waiting for it to subside so I could drive him back to his apartment, but finally because it was getting late we decided to go ahead and go.

Cue the deluge.

By the time we drove to the end of the street, I could barely see the road. It felt a bit like driving into the business end of a fire hose. That lasted for about five minutes, then let up. Just as I was beginning to draw a sigh of relief, the fire hose started up all over again.

My strategy was to drive really slowly and watch the center line in the road. That was working, until we turned on to a side street and the center line just disappeared. I could dimly see the car ahead of me turning the corner where I needed to turn and it looked an awful lot like the water was up to the bottom of the doors of the car. The center line hadn't disappeared--it was just covered in water.

As we turned around in a parking lot I mulled over going back home or trying a different route. I decided to try the different route. Again, the rain let up a bit so I could see where I was going. But, as we got on the street where my dad lives the situation was getting steadily worse. The torrents of rain started again, making visibility nearly impossible, except for the brief snatch of time the wipers cleared the windshield before the streams of rain hit it again.

We made it another block, just to the driveway of the apartment building. Now, running parallel to the road we were on is a drainage ditch. The driveway for the apartment building crosses the ditch, then bends around as you drive toward the front doors. Last night the ditch had flooded. It was impossible to even see where the driveway was because the water covered everything. Just to underscore that, there was a car IN the ditch at a sickening angle. Evidently they had misjudged where the driveway was.

Ahead of me I could just make out cars backing up and trying to turn around to come back towards us--evidently the road had flooded there. To the left was a side street with water flowing down it (toward us!) like a small river.

I opted to turn into the side street and look for a place to safely turn around. We drove out of there very carefully and slowly and picked our way back to my house. My dad spent the night comfortably in a motel near us.

Phew!

We got nearly 6 inches of rain over the course of the day yesterday. Four inches of that rain happened in the hour I spent trying to drive dad home.

If you think we've had enough, check out the Atlanta area where they've had even more, and their rain is continuing.

************************************************************************************

Just so you won't think this is turning into a weather blog, there is some quilting content here. I worked on the rail fence quilt Saturday afternoon. I've got all but the center strips put together. Working on this quilt has been fun because I have enjoyed remembering when and where I bought all these fabrics. Some of these are scraps left over from other quilts and some were just pieces I bought because I liked them. It's a good feeling to use up these scraps that have been sitting around in baskets and bins for a good while.

The blocks are 3 1/2 inches. I think I'll have enough of the fabric I'm using for the setting squares to do 12 x 15 blocks. It's possible I may be able to eke out more, but we'll see. I'm going to use another, darker fabric for the outside triangles. With a border this may end up being a small twin size quilt.

I'm participating in Judy's Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Check out her blog to see what others have up on their design walls.

Wishing all of you a dry (or at least a flashflood free) week!

Random

2009-09-18T16:57:00.004-04:00

Another busy week at work. I've been meaning to post something, but all I have are little random bits and pieces.

I have about 3 inches done on the other Most Frustrating Sock in the World. I didn't take a picture, but just imagine the sock from the last post, only smaller. I haven't had any major problems so far, meaning that I've only had to unknit twice. I'm calling that a success.

My laptop developed some sort of wasting disease. I had, quite literally, worn out the keyboard--the "c" key had fallen off, a couple more were a little wobbly, and the space bar only worked on one side. Then it got very, very slow. The sound was distorted, and videos quit working. AAAAGGGGHHHH! Life without Hulu! The horror! My very able and computer savvy husband found me another laptop and we've moved everything over, except for my Firefox bookmarks, which somehow didn't make the jump. We're going to work on that before the old laptop passes on.

I found the time somehow to get a couple more rows of the rail fence quilt put together, but not enough that it would be worth taking a picture. Hope to work on that this weekend.

I'm taking a yarn dying class tomorrow at the LYS. I'm not too sure what to expect, but it will be fun since I'm doing it with friends.

Everyone else is talking about their cool fall-like weather. Here in Indiana it is cooling down into the 50's at night, but the daytime is still like summer with temperatures into the high 70s and low 80s. It makes for some interesting decisions on what to wear each day.

I'm still hunting for the Sister's Choice directions using a jelly roll. I dunno, maybe I just dreamed it up? If you've seen it anywhere, let me know.

If you haven't heard or read about it yet, check out Leah Day's 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs blog. She's creating a different free motion quilting design for each day of the year. Good instructions with great videos.

Have a great weekend!

Monday?

2009-09-14T18:36:00.006-04:00

Is it Monday already?

We spent the weekend taking care of some family business, so there was very little time left over for crafting. In fact, my design wall looks just about the same as it did last Monday; I've finished a couple more strips of the rail fence blocks, but not enough to show any real progress, so I'll spare you another design wall photo.

I did work on this sock. Oh boy, did I work. This is the one that narrowly missed being thrown out the window last weekend. The yarn is incredibly slippery and splitty. Loose a stitch on this, and you'll find yourself frogging back row after row trying to catch it.

For every completed stitch you see in the picture, I've probably knit three or four. The leg has been pulled back and reknit at various stages three or four times. I did the heel four times. The heel gusset has been redone three times, once because of an incredibly bone-headed mistake I made, but the other times were due to stitches that simply dropped themselves and then started a race back to the beginning. It's virtually impossible to pick up a dropped stitch because the yarn is so splitty. I even dug out my size 0 needles in an attempt to pick up stitches and it still didn't work.

I've never had this many problems with yarn before.

On the other hand, the yarn is soft without being too fuzzy. I love the colors and how they are playing out. I love, love, love the pattern I chose: Roundabout Socks by TheYarnarian. It's an incredibly easy, clear pattern with only one pattern row (the other is a knit row) and it makes that lovely spiral.

Can you tell I'm psyching myself up to get the second sock done?

*****************************************************************************

I have a request. Several days ago whilst reading around the quilting blogs, I came across someone's directions for making Sister's Choice blocks using a jelly roll. I know that Bonnie at Quiltville has a really good tutorial for the block using scraps, but I would love to find those directions for the jelly roll again. If you've seen it, could you send me the link? I'd really appreciate it, since I have a jelly roll which would be perfect for it.

9/11 Eighth Anniversary

2009-09-11T17:06:00.004-04:00

This morning as we talked about the date in my little third grade math group, I tried to explain the significance of September 11. The principal had called for a special moment of silence to commemorate the tragedy and the kids didn't really understand. As we talked, one girl piped up and said 2001 was the year she was born. The others all realized they were tiny babies when the attack occurred. Their main concern was whether any planes would crash into our school, so we talked that one through.

I remember that I was administering a state-wide achievement test to another group of third graders that morning. When we stopped for a rest break, the maintenance man told me that a plane had hit a building in New York City. I immediately thought of a story I had read about a small plane hitting the Empire State Building back in the '40's. But, when we broke again an hour or so later, he told me that another plane had hit the other tower, and I realized that something dreadful was happening.

It was like that all morning. Testing, taking a break, and finding out another piece of the horrible news. By lunch time some parents were coming to school to take their children home. Everyone was terribly worried, but we went on with our day in order to keep the students from becoming scared. Hearing about the events in disconnected bits over the course of the day was very hard--it wasn't until I got home that afternoon and I was able to watch the news for myself that the enormity of what had happened hit me.

We found out later that the brother of a colleague of ours had been in one of the planes that hit the Trade Center.

Today my thoughts go out to her and to the others who lost loved ones in that vicious attack.

What I Did on My Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-08T19:30:00.005-04:00

I had big plans. Oh my, yes. I had sewing projects I was going to work on, projects I was going to finish, things to do. Big plans.

Instead, I could barely get myself off the couch. Tired, draggy, pooped out, that was me this weekend.

I did start a sock, but the yarn was being very contrary--splitty and slippery, so I gave up on that before I tossed it out the window. Which I was sorely tempted to do.

I started browsing through Ravelry just to see what was new and I came across a nice simple scarf pattern using yarn I already have. If you remember this post from last year, I made a couple of entrelac scarves, one for my sister and one for me, each in a different color. I happened to have a couple of skeins, one from each project, left over. It's Plymouth Boku, a wool-silk blend with luscious colors. One is a colorway called Autumn, all orange, pink, brown, and jade. The other is called Ocean, with blues, greens, purples, and teals.

This scarf calls for 2 skeins in 2 different colors. It's all garter stitch. Knit 2 rows of one, knit 2 rows of the other. Just the thing for vegging out with a bunch of movies over a long holiday weekend. I love how the colors seem to alternately glow and fade and then glow again as the scarf grows longer. I'll probably have enough to get 40", which is short for a scraf, but garter stitch tends to stretch, so it'll be okay.

Things seem to be settling down this week as we get into a routine we can live with. Maybe I'll be able to find some time to get into the sewing room.

Been Knitting

2009-09-05T09:04:00.002-04:00

As you can see, there's been some sock knitting going on around here. I've been working on these four pairs (plus another pair which didn't make it into the photo session) since the weather turned warmer last spring. There isn't much rush to finish woolen socks when the temperature is hovering in the high 80's.

I don't suffer from second sock syndrome, but I do put off doing the Kitchener stitch until there is no alternative, such as needing the last two needles holding the final stitches on one sock to start a new sock. As a result, I seem to have acquired multiple sets of size 1 knitting needles. The Kitchener isn't hard, but neither is vacuuming the living room* or cleaning out the refrigerator. They are all just chores I procrastinate on for as long as possible.

You can also see that I love self-striping yarns. When I start out to buy sock yarn I tell myself to get something plain so that I can try one of the beautiful lacy patterns I see all over the internet and in knitting magazines, but then I see all those lovely colors twined together into one skein and my resolve vanishes. You just never know how the colors are going to play out, and that makes the knitting a lot of fun.

*About vacuuming the living room? Let's just ignore the dusty floor there in the picture. I'll get around to it sometime today. Right after I Kitchener the pastel sock, 'kay?

What's on My Design Wall Monday

2009-08-31T17:03:00.005-04:00

Last night my husband fixed dinner (chicken on the rotisserie on our gas grill), and because I was still in sewing mode and had the extra time, I worked for a while on this long term project. A while back I had cut lots of strips for a log cabin border that didn't work out. I kept all the strips thinking that I might use them for another log cabin or a rail fence quilt.

Now this isn't as organized or efficient as Bonnie's leaders/enders, but whenever I have a leftover piece of fabric I've been cutting off a 1 1/2 inch strip, piecing the strips into threes, then cutting them into 3 1/2 inch squares. Some weeks I don't do any, other times I might make three or four. I've accumulated quite a bit, and I keep them in a shoebox under my sewing table.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to take to my Friday night sewing group and when I accidentally kicked that shoebox, I thought, why not?

I have about 150 squares so far and, as you can see, I've still got a lot of strips that have been sitting around waiting to be pieced. I try to find strips that are approximately equal length so I don't waste too much.

This probably will only yield a throw size quilt, but now seems like the right time to move on with this.

You can check out what others are working on this week by visiting Judy's blog. It's also a great way to find new blog friends and find some inspiration for your quilts.

So what are YOU working on?

Done At Last!

2009-08-30T16:15:00.005-04:00

It's been hard to find any sewing time this week. The beginning of the school year is busy. And it seems to be taking a while for me to adjust to going to bed early (i.e. 10 p.m.) and getting up at the crack of dawn (i.e. 6 a.m.) after a summer of sleeping in. I am in no way a morning person so my snooze alarm has been getting thwacked quite a bit this week. By Friday night I was just plain exhausted.

I rested up yesterday and today I finally got to the sewing room to put the borders on the Quiltalong nine patch. I really wanted to get this to the flimsy stage so I could move on to some other projects. I don't know why this was such an issue with me; I've left plenty of other UFO's in the lurch to begin new things, but anyway, I did push myself to get it done. And I did.

I'm really pleased with the way this came out. It's such a happy looking little quilt. I was able to use quite a lot of odds and ends from the scrap baskets, although I did fill in with a few fat quarters I bought in order to give it some variety. I'd like to back it with some yellow fabric like some of the older scrap quilts I've seen.

At first I thought I would just tie it, but I've decided to go ahead and take it to the longarmer for some all-over quilting. Baptist fan maybe?

Many thanks to amandajean for hosting the quiltalong this summer. It was lots of fun to participate. She has already started round 2, if you're interested.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trimming the Blooming nine patch and sewing on the binding. Now I need to hand sew it down and that will be done. I'm not sure where this new-found dedication to finishing projects is coming from, but it's nice to have a few things in the "done" column rather than sitting around in piles in the sewing room.

The blue and white quilt came back from the longarmer this week looking really good. I should start working on binding it, but hey, I don't want to go too far with this finishing business. I've got a couple of projects in mind and I don't know how much longer I can keep myself from starting something new.

Going back to work also means less time on the computer, so I am very behind in reading blog posts and replying to comments. I hope to get caught up soon!

What's On My Design Wall? Something Different

2009-08-24T21:08:00.003-04:00

We had a wonderful time at our weekend mini-retreat. There was lots of laughing, sewing, good eating, and fun. It's nice to be able to get away from real life for a while.

The nine patch is put together, except for the border, but it is too big to hang on the design wall, so I've put up my Provence star blocks.

I love this star design. The plan so far is to set them with plain setting squares of the same green as the background of the squares, so that they look like flowers (or stars) in a field. I need to get a few more done before I can tell if that plan will work out. I had bought a little extra green earlier in the year, but this weekend I bought more, so I think I'll have enough to do what I want.

I also found some more of the white. I had been running very low on that, so finding it means I can make many more stars. I also found some more of a blue in the same line last week, so I think the borders will be taken care of. At this point I have seven complete stars, but I can make many more.

This afternoon I learned of the death of an old friend and fellow guild member, not unexpected, but sad nonetheless.

Instead of sewing tonight I pulled out a simple stockinette sock I've been working on sporadically. There is something very calming about the simple rhythm of knitting round and round. Unfortunately, as you can see in the picture, I dropped a stitch five or six rows back, so I've frogged as much as I've knitted tonight. I just find it better to keep my hands busy.

You can check out what lots of other bloggers have on their design wall by checking out Judy's blog.

Heading Out

2009-08-22T08:36:00.002-04:00

This was our first full week of school, so I'm feeling a little discombobulated. After a layabout summer it takes some adjustment to get used to rising early and putting in a full day's work again.

Two good things this week: I got my Blooming Nine Patch back from the longarmer and I FINALLY got the quiltalong nine patch top put together (except for the border, a minor technicality). No pictures yet, but they're coming soon.

This morning I'm heading out for a mini-retreat with my weekly sewing group. This is the one that takes place in the quilting shop that has an apartment on the second floor. If you've ever fantasized about living in a quilt shop, then this retreat is for you. We sew in the shop's classroom all day, then sleep under their beautiful quilts in the apartment all night.

I'm taking along my new Kaffe Fassett fabrics to make a bag, my Provence eight-pointed stars, my current hand quilting project, and some knitting. Is that enough for a 24 hour retreat? I'm just about packed up and getting ready to head out the door.

Have a great weekend!

Design Wall Monday

2009-08-17T17:46:00.005-04:00

I had a great weekend.

There were several errand-type things I thought I would have to do on Saturday, but it turned out that I didn't, so I had a whole precious day all to myself. I spent a couple of hours in the morning sewing and I got a lot done on the nine patch. The piece above is three of the strips sewn together. The picture below shows the four other strips. Three of the strips are complete, so I only have one more strip to do! Well, that and assembling the last four strips and sewing them to the first part. But still! Progress!

Saturday afternoon I went over to the Big City to check out the Kaffe Fassett selection at the quilt shop because that's what I want to use for a bag I'm planning to make at next weekend's mini-retreat. I spent a very pleasant hour putting together a red-rose-brown collection for my bag.

An extra bonus for me was that I found some more Prairie Paisley AND some Sunflowers of Provence fabric while I was browsing through the store. Both of these are becoming very hard to find, and I still feel that I need more of each to finish working on those two quilts which I have been neglecting for the last month.

You can check out what others have on their design walls this Monday by checking out Judy's blog.

Duck, Duck, Goose

2009-08-13T19:24:00.002-04:00

Near the retirement community where my father lives is a man-made pond which serves as a basin to catch rainwater and prevent flooding in the area. It is home to a large population of Canada geese and these mallard ducks. The population has grown so large over the past few years that it spills out toward the retirement community and a nearby shopping center.

Just across the street from the pond is a large field where, I assume, at least some of the ducks and geese have nested. The tricky thing is that this is a pretty high traffic area, and the birds often cross the road leading their babies back and forth to the pond. When that happens, all traffic screeches to halt to let them cross.

It reminds me of a book that I loved when I was a kid, Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. It tells the story of a mother duck and her ducklings who stop traffic in Boston on their way to the pond in the Public Garden. When we visited the Boston last year we saw the bronze statue of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings right next to the pond in the Public Garden. If you haven't come across this book, check it out. It's a great story.

Of course, by this time of year, our ducklings are pretty grown up. It's hard to tell the juveniles from the adults just by looking, but the adults are still pretty protective of their offspring.

The reason I stopped and took the picture was that I saw a pair of geese that looked different than the rest. They were black and white, but they were too shy to let me take their picture, so I guess I'll have to check out the pond again.

Design Wall Monday

2009-08-10T20:26:00.002-04:00

Not much has changed on the design wall this week, I'm afraid. Cleaning up after the storm and setting up my classroom took up most of my time. But I put together two more strips, so now I have three out of seven done. It's getting there, slowly. I am determined to get this one together before I start a new project--and oh, I am dying to start something new.

Maybe next week?

Check out Judy's blog to see what everyone else has on their design walls this week.

More heavy thunderstorms are moving through the area after the hottest day we've had so far this summer. The stand pipe is already set up so we can rest easy tonight.

Along came the sun and dried up all the rain...

2009-08-08T15:49:00.007-04:00

...although as you can imagine, the sun shining on all that saturated ground makes things pretty steamy around here. It turns out that we got TWICE the average August MONTHLY rainfall in about an hour and a half. Apparently three weather fronts all met over the metro area and decided to stop and chat for a while.

Things are pretty much back to normal. I mopped the basement with a bleach solution. Twice. Now when the air conditioning kicks on it smells a bit like a swimming pool. Not too bad, all things considered. I was going to throw away the sheets we used to divert the overflow into the sump pump (blech!), but instead I tossed them in the washer with hot water and a cup of bleach. Twice. They actually came out clean. The shoes we wore to wade through the water also got the bleach and hot water treatment. After drying in the sun for a few days they also seem to be okay.

Aside from cleanup duties I haven't been doing too much sewing this week. This morning I cut the gold material for this test block for the Provence stars. Not the best sewing job, but the pieces are the right size, so I'm going to go ahead and cut the fabric for the stars I have finished. It is hard to get these to come out square because of all the little pieces. They are a LOT more fiddly than six-pointed stars. I have only done six so far, but I've got lots of diamonds cut out and I'll continue to piece stars as long as the fabric holds out. I've got a couple of setting ideas that I want to try out.

School starts up again next week, so posting may be sparse for a while. The first few weeks are always exhausting; I don't anticipate being able to get a whole lot of sewing done. But some friends and I have planned another mini-retreat in two weeks, so I have that to look forward to.

Have a great weekend.

Flash Flood

2009-08-04T15:03:00.006-04:00

I woke up this morning about 8:30 to a massive thunderstorm. Wind, lightning, hail, and lots and lots of rain. The weather service figures we got between 3 and 5 inches of rain in about an hour and a half.

By 9:30 you can see what it looked like in our front yard. The plastic garbage bag above came floating down the street along with someone's recycling bin spilling plastic bottles and other assorted junk.

This is the worst flooding I've ever seen on our street. As we watched the water rise, we hurried to the basement because when the storm sewers stop up, the water backs up into our basement. We have a stand pipe to put into the floor drain, but the drain pipe for the set tub next to our washer was gushing water. My husband (the hero!) was able to lift off the set tub and plug the top of the pipe and we set up a levee made of old sheets to try to direct the overflowing water toward the sump pump.

That's me standing in the street trying to unplug the storm sewer with a broom handle. It wasn't blocked up that badly; it's just that there was just too much water.

By noon the waters had receded.

Things are much worse around the metropolitan area. They are advising people to stay off the roads because so many of them are flooded and there are power outages all over the place.

Hopefully, this rain will let up soon. If not, we've still got the canoe in the backyard...

*smile*

Design Wall Monday

2009-08-03T19:29:00.002-04:00

I was able to work on this for a little while this afternoon. If you look really carefully at the picture you'll be able to see that I have the first row on the left sewn together. I decided to use lattice and cornerstones rather than long strips the way Amandajean did in her quilt. There will be a bright fabric cornerstone at each block intersection. I had some squares left over, but not nearly enough to put a border around the whole thing, so I will just finish it off with a simple white border.

My progress has been slow. Glacial, even. Last week I couldn't seem to get to my sewing room, and I'm afraid this week won't be much better. I need to put a few hours each day at school getting my classroom set up and I've got several other obligations to take care of.

The hand quilting on the Mexican Star quilt is also coming along rather slowly. I try to get a little done each night, but I haven't reached the point where I feel like I've achieved any kind of rhythm with it yet.

I'm simply itching to start something else from my long to-do list, but I'm holding back until I have most of the hand quilting done. The Mexican Star quilt is supposed to be in a quilt show at the end of September and I would really like to have it finished with time to spare.

I really appreciate Judy's hosting of the What's on Your Design Wall Monday. Check out what everyone else is working on by clicking on the link.

Saturday Post

2009-08-01T12:58:00.004-04:00

Believe it or not, here in southern Indiana we are getting ready to head back to school. School for us begins during the second week of August. School registration was this past week and some teachers have already been in to start setting up their classrooms.

Somehow I didn't put a single stitch in a piece of fabric this week. And instead of working on some really long overdue knitting UFO's, I started on this cowl, which I mentioned a couple of posts ago. The yarn is Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy in Midnite Sun. A little pricey for me, but I love how the colors are playing out. The pattern is from Knitty.com.

I'm not used to working with cotton. It doesn't have the stretchiness of wool or wool blends, but it drapes in a beautiful way when knit in this gauge, and I really like what I've got so far.

Have a great weekend.

Somebody Just Doesn't Get This Knitting Thing...

2009-08-01T10:47:00.002-04:00

Check it out.

Add this item to the "terrorist fist bump" school of absurdity.

Cutting Lattice Strips

2009-07-28T16:45:00.010-04:00

Today I had a light bulb moment. Probably most people know this already, but just in case you haven't thought about it, I thought I'd share.

There I was this afternoon, wrestling with 3.5 yards of white Kona cotton for the lattice strips of the quiltalong nine patch I've been working on. My usual way is to cut lattice strips 2.5" WOF (width of fabric), as you see below:

I like to fold the fabric over and cut four thicknesses at a time because it's easier for me to handle on my smallish cutting board that way. As I started to sub-cut each strip into 6.5" pieces, I was getting four pieces and what you see below as leftovers:

Now, I don't really mind the two little squares, but I do mind the folded over pieces because I have to take them back to the ironing board, re-press, and line them up again before I make the second cut. I've done this lots of times before, but today I stood there and wondered if there might be a better way.

Then I thought, what if I make the cut the other way around? Instead of cutting 2.5" strips, what if I cut 6.5" WOF strips and then sub-cut those into the 2.5" lattices?

So I tried it. For each 6.5" strip, I was able to sub-cut 4 sets of 2.5" strips--that's 16 lattice strips.

I'm pretty sure there was less waste. The little strip you see to the right in the picture above is what was left over, and that was from 16 pieces. It measures a bit less than 1.5" when it is unfolded.

It is much easier to go from large to medium to small when you're cutting. I also like that the lattice strips are now cut on the grain because there will be a lot less stretch as I assemble the blocks.

Since I was in cutting mode today, I also cut and assembled the binding for one of my nearly finished quilts. Maybe I'll actually be able to get it sewn on some time this week.

Something to Share

2009-07-26T13:12:00.002-04:00

I tried this recipe for Moroccan Tomato Soup from the New York Times a week or so ago and we liked it so much we're having it for the second time tonight with dinner. It's a wonderful way to use your beautiful ripe tomatoes without having to heat up the kitchen because it's a cold soup.

I don't often try NYT recipes because here deep in the wilds of the mid-west it is difficult to find many of the ingredients they use without having to go on a grocery safari, and who wants to have to do that?

This one, though, calls for regular off-the-shelf ingredients and turns ordinary tomatoes into a wonderful spicy soup.

Instead of using a food mill (which I don't have) I peeled and seeded the tomatoes and gave them a whirl in the food processor. I halved the amount of garlic and left out the salt (we're on a low-fat, low-sodium diet). I also substituted flat leaf parsley for the cilantro, since I picked up parsley by mistake when I reached for the cilantro at the market.

It tastes good the second day, too. If you have any leftover. Which you probably won't.

Enjoy.

2009-07-24T10:49:00.003-04:00

I seem to have taken an unintended blogging (and quilting) break this week.

What I did work on was a cowl using Noro Silk Garden sock yarn using this pattern. I bought the yarn last winter, I think, but I couldn't find anything to use it for, except socks. The yarn is soft, but nubbly, so I didn't really think socks were going to work. If I'd bought two skeins I probably could have made a small shawl, but alas, I only had the one.

It measures about 24 inches in diameter and 15 inches long. I used size 8 needles, which were probably too big for this yarn, but let me tell you, it drapes beautifully. I think it will look good under a jacket this fall. I was amazed with how much I was able to get out of this one skein. I liked the pattern so much that I bought a few balls of cotton yarn to do it again.

Hancock's of Paducah was having a sale on select fabrics. Sigh. It's hard to pass up fabric at half-price. I always justify it to myself that if I don't like the fabric when it comes I can always use if as backing or something. But these are really beautiful.

And these reds. Can you believe that there was a time when I didn't like reds? These are just wonderful.

I've been collecting Turkey reds for a while to make a red and white quilt and I think I probably have enough to get started. One of these days.

I haven't forgotten the bindings for my two big quilts. Once I've fortified myself with another cup of coffee, my plan for today is to get at least one binding put together.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Done!

2009-07-18T15:43:00.002-04:00

Done, done, and DONE!

I'm very happy (can you tell?) to finally have this one done. The colors still aren't exactly true, but the little sunshine we have today is thin and fleeting.

This goes to the quilter on Thursday.

The pattern is Blooming Nine Patch from Tradition with a Twist: Variations on Your Favorite Quilts by Blanche Young. I followed the pattern the whole way, no variations on her variations, so to speak. The directions were clear and easy to follow. This one finishes out at about 72" x 82". I played around with the idea of adding borders, but I am leaving it as it is.

I hope you all are having a great weekend.

Antique Quilt Dating

2009-07-17T13:17:00.004-04:00

I won these Antique Quilt Dating Guides from a Friday give away at Quilting Gallery. One is for quilts from 1775-1900, the other is for quilts from 1900-1950. Let me tell you, they pack a lot of information into a really small format. They are small enough to tuck into a bag if you're heading out to an auction or yard sale.

They are right up my alley, so to speak, as I am very interested in quilt history. Not that I'd ever be able to afford an antique, but who knows what you'll run into at the local thrift store?

Many thanks to Michele at Quilting Gallery and Kim Wulfert, who is the author of the guides.

The nine patches are back up on my design wall. I bought the sashing material and I'll start working on putting this top together as soon as finish the blooming nine patch. Progress on that has been very slow, although I have been working on it every day this week. I have already lined up a longarmer and I am due to drop it off next Thursday, so I better get busy and get it done.

A Finish

2009-07-14T16:06:00.003-04:00

I've taken advantage of the lower temperatures and humidity for the past couple of days to try to tame the weeds and the ivy in the flower beds. The ivy sprawls everywhere given half a chance and the weeds will hide out under the other things and then just suddenly pop up fully grown. It's kind of satisfying to yank out those ivy vines.

When we lost the two trees in the front yard we lost the benefit of their heavy shade; most of my beautiful shade plants are sunburned and ragged looking. I guess I'll have to be looking for some sun-loving perennials.

I actually finished binding the smallest quilt on my list. It's about 31 x 31 inches. As soon as I finished the binding I popped it into the wash and it came out all nicely puckery and squishy.

It's the largest thing I have machine quilted on the Bernina, and I'm still a beginner at this so we won't look too closely at the actual quilting, okay?

I made it using a package of charm squares and a bit of neutral from my stash. I still can't find the pattern; it looks like it might have been a casualty of my sewing room clean up a few weeks ago. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can credit the designer.

I'm down to the last four nine patches for the quilt along at crazy mom quilts. I have the fabric cut, but I ran out of time this afternoon, so I guess I'll take it up tomorrow. Right now I have to clean up and get going to my book club meeting.