Wednesday Discovery

Before my chicks left the roost, I stored all my quilting supplies in a large Rubbermaid bin which I moved from room to room as needed. Since I have set up in my daughter's old bedroom the bin has become home to larger pieces of fabric I rescued from remnant tables and other odds and ends.

This morning I was searching for some white to use to make those extra 16 blocks and I just dumped the whole thing out on the floor. Oh my gosh. I found another 9 pieced blocks. Why in the world did I abandon this? I can't even remember.

P.S. I found the white I was looking for, too.


Is anyone else going through tomato withdrawal? I threw away four perfectly beautiful tomatoes yesterday after we saw the news about the salmonella outbreak. Our tomato plants went in a couple of weeks late this year and so far this is all we've gotten.

Grow, little fellow, grow!

Another UFO

We seem to have jumped from late May to late July weather here. Temperatures have been in the mid to upper 90's here for the past few days. The word sweltering has been used around here a lot during the past few days.

Have I mentioned that my sewing room is NOT air conditioned? I can work in there in the morning, but by 1:00 or so the sun has moved over to that side of the house and it becomes too uncomfortable. I guess I could move the sewing machine downstairs, but instead I decided to work on some hand sewing this afternoon.

This hand piecing project is on my guild "Get it Finished" list and its number came up at our last meeting. I began it about two years ago when I first fell in love with hexagons, diamonds, and all the 60 degree shapes. It is actually farther a long than I thought. (Isn't that always the case with UFO's?) I remember at the time that I just wanted to make an old fashioned all over scrappy quilt not using any particular style of fabric.

I actually have eight rows of eight blocks. Already sewn together. Why, oh why, did I abandon this? Sixteen more blocks would make a twin size bed quilt. So, my goal for the next couple of weeks is to sew all the rows together and see about adding just 16 more blocks.

I had run dangerously low on the blue and bought more--it took me the best part of an hour to find it buried in one of the piles of stuff I've got laying all over the place up there. I really should take a day and try to organize things...but not today!



Over the weekend I got the inner border put on the Thangle quilt and got one side of the second (Thangle) border finished. Luckily for me, the Thangle border fit! That says a lot for accuracy with the Thangles, because my seams always seem to run a little wide. Tomorrow morning I plan to piece the rest of the Thangle borders.

We'll see how much of this I can actually accomplish!

It's amazing how a good night's sleep can change your outlook on life. I woke up this morning feeling as though I could conquer anything.

I got a good start on the Thangles this morning. They really are easy; I don't know why I haven't tried them before. I am the world's slowest at machine piecing, but I got 4o HST's done in about a half hour. That's about a third of the way done. The directions say to leave the paper on until after pressing them in order to prevent stretching. I took one apart just to check accuracy and it was right on the mark. I would definitely use these again if I had another project with eleventy million HST's.

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A couple of housekeeping items:

**Last night I was looking at my old posts and saw that the line spacing was really messed up, sort of super single spaced. I found it hard to read, and I imagine anyone else trying to read this would too. I checked around and found a fix on a couple of blogger help sites. With great trepidation I changed the code in the template (after saving the template to my hard drive) and fixed it. Yes, me, the original technophone fixed it! Hopefully the fix will take and it will be easier to read from now on.

**I have a new button from Quilting Bloggers. Mishka is organizing a list of quilting blogs on her blog. You can check out blogs from all over the U.S. and the world. She has everything organized by country or state. On her Quilting Gallery blog you can check out all the free pattern links she has organized. She has a lot a really good stuff over there--it's worth checking out.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend--I'm off to sew up some Thangles!

Lack of Zzzzzzz's

Two nights with little sleep have left me in a fog today. My head feels as though it is wrapped in white wool. It's very annoying because I wanted to try these:


out today. I'm supposed to be putting together a shop sample for the upcoming shop hop. The actual blocks had been done a while ago (not by me!), but no one has had the time to finish the sashing and borders. And truthfully, sashing and borders didn't sound so bad until I had a look at the pattern. It calls for about a million half-square triangles dancing around the whole quilt, made with these Thangles.

They are popular around here right now; everyone raves about how accurately you can sew HST's with them. I am looking forward to giving them a try, but not today. I think I'm going to need a clearer head to try a new technique.

Meanwhile I think I'll just pop in a movie and veg out. We got a couple of Val Lewton DVD's from Netflix that are calling my name...

Support Your Local Quilt Shop

Today was my first day of summer vacation. I just love writing that!

Report cards filled out, all materials safely tucked away in whatever spaces I can cram them, my desk cleared off (for the first time since last August), plan book and grade book turned in, various and sundry paperwork filled out, keys returned, goodbyes to the retirees said.

And so what did I do on my first day of freedom? Sleep in? Begin a new fitness program? Sew until my sewing machine started to smoke? No, no, and no.

I ran errands.

Unfortunately, my eyelids are programmed to pop open at 5:45 a.m. Actually they pop open when my alarm clock says it's 5:45, but the real time is more like 5:30. I keep the clock set 15-20 minutes ahead in order to avoid oversleeping, but that's a story for another day. So basically, I got up at the regular time, because by the time I remembered that I didn't have to get up I was already up, if you follow me.

First I had to go to the dentist. Yuck. Then I had to gas up the car. Double yuck! Then I realized that I better plan my errands rather carefully because I don't want to have to gas up the car again for a long, long time. So I made a massive loop around the city and managed to get everything done.

And you know what? One of my favorite quilt stores is on the way to the drugstore on the other side of the city where my father gets his prescriptions filled. So it wasn't really out of my way to stop by there to see if they had the perfect fabric I need for setting squares on a project I'm about to start sewing together. And the fish market is near the drug store, so that worked out okay. Grilled salmon for dinner tonight--great! After I dropped the prescriptions off at my dad's my next stop was my very favorite local quilt shop.

My LQS is kind of like my Cheers. (Where everybody knows your name.) When you walk in, the owner just kind of involves you in whatever is going on at the time. Today was the big spring cleaning in preparation for the shop hop coming up in a couple of weeks. The shop hop is a very big deal for the LQS because it brings in shoppers from all over the area.

The preparations for the hop take weeks. New store samples need to be made. Kits for quilts need to be cut. Many, many fat quarters need to be cut and bundled. The Big Quilt needs to be made. (The big draw for the shop hop is a special quilt. Individual kits for the blocks are available at each of the participating shops. If you visit each shop you will be able to buy the kits to make the entire quilt.) Store displays need to be planned and set up. This is a lot for the owner of a small shop to do on her own, so she has solicited help from all her friends.

I'm glad to help out because I know how difficult it is to run a small business, especially a niche business like a quilt shop. Margins are razor thin. Competition from big box stores can kill you.
I want her store to succeed because I like being able to go into a friendly, welcoming place to do my shopping.

I have friends who talk about the bargains they can get at the big box store. Sure, you may be able to save a few dollars, but what kind of service do you get? Does the girl behind the counter help you find that one certain fabric that will add zing to your quilt? Does she sit down with a calculator and pencil and help you figure out just how much material you're going to need for the borders? Does she know anything about the right kind of thread to use for your quilting? Will she special order books and patterns for you? Will she troubleshoot problems you have with a pattern?

If you are lucky enough to have a friendly LQS, remember to support it. A small locally owned business gives back to the community in ways that big box stores won't.

I will now climb down from my soapbox.


Thank you very much for all the kind comments on my last post. I've got about half of the first border done--hopefully tomorrow will be a sewing day around here!

Baby Blue

This is the little blue baby quilt I've been working on. As I mentioned in my last post, my original color scheme didn't work out because the lime green I wanted to use turned into a ferocious NEON green when it sat next to these blues.

I wish I could understand why or how colors do things like that.


Here's a close-up of some of the blocks. I'm trying for something soothing here; I'm hoping the monochromatic color scheme is helping to achieve that. I'm going to float this center panel with a narrow white border (Kona snow, my favorite white!) and then add a border row of on-point squares around that.

I have a very soft yellow that I might try to use as a narrow border beyond that, but I'm not sure if that will work with all those blues. I have lots of all the fabric left, so I'll keep experimenting until I find something I'm pleased with.

I would like to back it with a flannel to make it extra snuggly. Has anyone out there used flannel as a backing? I've only worked with it once and I hated it because it frayed so easily. And shrinking was a major issue. But for a backing? Fraying wouldn't really be an issue with that, I hope. I'd welcome any advice. If I do decide to hand quilt, has anyone had any experience with that?

These little nine patches went together so easily; it was a joy to work with them. I can't think why I don't use them more often.

I'm making this quilt for a friend of mine who had a very premature baby boy just a month ago. He is still in the hospital, but doing well and gaining weight, so we're all hoping for the best for him.

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

This is our last week of school. I can't believe I am able to say that! It seems as if this year has just flown by. Three of my very dear friends at school are retiring this year, so in many ways this year's last weeks are bittersweet. The turnover for teachers at our school is very low, so we've all become very close over the years. On the other hand, the retirees are definitely looking forward to some rest and relaxation so I'm happy for them.

Back Again

I haven't felt much like blogging for the past month or so, and there has been very little sewing going on around here anyway.

Last weekend, however, I did manage to put in some quality time in the sewing room and got quite a bit accomplished.

First, a bit of play. I found a really nice fabric at Hobby Lobby while I was buying yet another lot of balsa wood for the DI team months ago. It seemed perfect for serendipity blocks, but it took me this long to get anything together. I have about 10 more of the hexagon blocks and I even made some with diamonds, but I don't want to put them all together, so I'm just going to use the individual blocks to practice machine quilting once school is over and I have some time to play with the sewing machine.



And I finally got the borders on the serendipity quilt from this winter. I haven't decided whether I'm going to hand or machine quilt this one--it lays pretty flat, but since my machine quilting skills are still in the novice stage I think I might lay it aside and try to hand quilt it at some point.

I also started what was meant to be a simple little nine-patch baby quilt for a friend, but the colors are not working out. The lime green I had planned to use turned into a rather ferocious neon green when put together with the blues I wanted to use. Back to the drawing board on that one, I guess. I've picked up some other blue fabric and I'm going to work on it this afternoon while I watch the Indianapolis 500 on television.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!