My Feed Dogs Are Down

Stems!

2011-10-12T10:53:00.003-04:00

I finally have something to show! I have been working on a class sample for my "level two" class. The pattern is called Stems and it's by Fig Tree Quilts. This one is quilted fully, but the class doesn't actually cover that part of it. We'll be covering 45 degree angles (i.e., triangles), sashing, and borders. If we have time at the end of class we'll also go over basic stitch in the ditch quilting.

Photos! I used a Kaffe Fassett strip roll for the leaves. I used King Tut for the quilting. I seem to not be able to quilt loosely. In fact, you may be able to see where I started if you zoom in and look closely at the full quilt photo -- it's the loosest part! I used two whole spools of King Tut (500 m each!) and actually had to quilt the last little corner in plain red Mettler. You can't really see it, though.

What I did at work today

2011-09-21T15:40:00.003-04:00

I love my new job!

Also, we found a leak in our laundry room that has resulted in this in our kitchen:
Let's hope that insurance covers it all!

Molly's first embroidery

2011-08-18T20:31:00.005-04:00

I'll spare you the details of why I haven't been around too much lately. Suffice to say part of it was the loss of both of our pets (we put Snickers down and then a couple weeks later our cat Garfunkel died on her own). My job situation has changed; I'm no longer working at Quilter's Corner, but I am still teaching classes there. I am, however, helping Swirly Girls Design out with their website and I'll be teaching a handwork after school program at my daughter's school. More on that last thing below. Oh, and my in-laws visited and my daughter turned seven.

In absolutely fabulous news, my husband passed his final actuarial exam! If you follow that link, you'll see a snapshot of the grueling exams he's had to take over the past several years (all ten items in the white part of the table at the top, and then the Group and Health track column below). He's now very near the bottom of the chart, working on his Decision Making and Communication Module. He's hoping to finish that by Monday, and get it graded (passing, of course) so he can go to the Fellowship Admissions Course in December. This should be a gimme. In the unlikely event his paper is not accepted, he'll just have to revamp it and get it done so he can go to the March Admissions Course. But of course, he's really hoping to get it wrapped up before the end of 2011. Me too.

So today a couple of my wonderful sewing friends came over and one of them brought her daughter. She got my daughter interested in doing some embroidery. Her first attempt is a really big running stitch, but then this afternoon I decided to teach her the backstitch. Here's how she did!
If you ignore the chocolate milk stains on the left, I think it's fantastic for a first attempt and just having turned seven! Next she'll do the bird at the top in blue. This gives me confidence for my after school program this year.

Anyway, with school starting in a few weeks and some planned sewing time on the horizon, I hope to update this blog way more often.

Okay, so now I have to go work on my round robin block for the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. The meeting is tomorrow night. Ah, deadlines, how I've missed you!

Snickers

2011-07-10T00:14:00.003-04:00

We've decided to euthanize Snickers on Tuesday at 5:30. She has peed in the house several times in the past few days. She's down to 28 pounds (from her typical weight of 55, which itself was on the thin side) and she has a really hard time eating. She is still mobile, but very slow and fairly stiff. She is responsive to us, and of course, that's the hardest part. But I worry that she might fall ill during the night and we don't hear her, or it happens while we're at work and we're not home. So I guess I'm preventing my friend from a potentially agonizing death. On the other hand, she doesn't seem in pain now. Part of me feels guilty because it was her peeing in the house that has made us decide to do this now. Is it just because we are lazy and don't want our house to smell like pee? It is for our convenience?

And Molly said she wants to be there. I hope that's not a wrong decision. Of course, if she changes her mind and wants to stay in the waiting room or the car or anything, one of us will be there with her and won't make her stay if she doesn't want to. But what if she begs us not to do it? How heartbreaking.

How NOT to make a memory quilt

2011-06-26T01:07:00.004-04:00

Here's the story of the other commission I recently had. A woman contacted me and said she had several squares of fabric that people had signed at a family reunion and she wanted them put into a simple quilt to be on display during subsequent family reunions. Sounds simple enough, right? So I said, "Sure!"

When we met, she handed me a plastic bag. All I could see was foil. Strange. It was fairly heavy. I didn't think too much of it until I looked at it much later, when I was ready to make the quilt.

Each of the fabric squares were different sizes, and none were square. They were various shades of yellowish beige. They were all separated by wax paper and foil. They had been "signed" with what appeared to be some sort of puff paint. The paint, or something else, had become very sticky. The wax paper and foil was separating the pieces of fabric. I had to peel them off of each other.

Too make things worse, there were stones, large beads, and plastic jewels plastered all over the blocks. And the writing on many of them went right out to the edge of the fabric. What a mess!

I quickly realized that I wouldn't be able to piece these fabric rectangles traditionally. First of all, I'd have to square them up, which would mess up a lot of the wording and designs. Plus, seam allowances would further ruin any legibility. And the glued-on bits were also often right out at the edge. I'd have to remove many of them to maneuver my sewing machine foot. In addition, I was concerned about the paint and stickiness when I went to press it.

So, I decided to raw edge applique. I went ahead and pieced the background fabric the client had given me, as well as the backing and sandwiched everything. I figured I might as well quilt at the same time. This wasn't going to be a functional quilt, after all.

First I tried a zigzag stitch. My foot stuck to the fabric so badly that I couldn't move it! I thought maybe a free motion foot would work better, since it hops up and down. Nope. It also stuck. I couldn't sew a straight line with it. My experiment was on one of the less sticky blocks and my stitches jumped and wobbled. I couldn't charge anyone for the mess that would have been.

In the end, I tied the blocks on. Even that was hard. I could hardly get the needle through the fabric!
I have been struggling lately with not having any sewing desires. This commission added to that greatly. I realized that I haven't sewn anything for myself in years. I think the Birdie Sling was the last thing I did for me. Everything else has been shop samples, class samples, round robins, commissions, baby quilts, gifts, auction quilts, and things for Molly. So, fair warning: if I "owe" you a quilt (or anything else), it might not come soon. I really need to do some fun sewing for a bit or I may never enjoy it again.

How to make a memory quilt

2011-06-20T23:34:00.005-04:00

So, recently I finished a couple of commissions. I'll talk about one in a later post, but for now, I want to talk about the one that I really liked. It was tricky to put together sometimes, but I think it came out great. I used the Slide Show pattern from Atkinson Designs, but I replaced the large blocks and some of the small squares with photos printed on inkjet fabric. One word of warning if you ever make this pattern, though: the twin size is huge -- much bigger than a standard twin batting. That's why the borders are so small. I had to trim them down to fit the batting!
The other change is that instead of making the rest scrappy, I just used one fabric, which is a mainly purple batik. If a photo didn't crop to a square well, I used the same batik to fill in to make a square (I've heard these referred to as "coping strips").
It was a graduation gift from some parents to their daughter. I am really happy with how it came out.Next time: How NOT to make a memory quilt!

Auction quilt, earrings and my poor, poor dog

2011-05-17T13:51:00.005-04:00

Whoo-wee, I've been busy! My new job at Quilter's Corner is going great! Also, the Richmond chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild is in full swing. Personally, we've also been busy with RT's exam, typical end of the year school activities, and purging all of our ridiculous junk in preparation for a big yard sale this Saturday. I love yard sales. I am happy to give things to Goodwill, but I like to at least try to get something for them first. Yard sale to the rescue!

One thing I haven't done much is sewing, hence the lack of posts. But I have a few things to show. the first is a not-so-great photo of this past year's auction quilt. I stepped into the project after the idea had been determined, so I didn't have much say in how it was put together. Basically, each child chose a country and then they colored the flag for it. This photo shows it draped over some chairs in the lobby of the school. The lobby chairs all have arms, so that's why it looks so lumpy.I have to say, this is not my favorite project. I felt like the kids didn't have much involvement in it (coloring? Really?) and so they didn't have the emotional investment they have had in the past. I don't even know how much it went for! Oh well. If I do it again next year, I'll make sure I have some say in what happens. With Molly being in first grade, this was a new classroom for her.

Over Spring Break I went to Corolla, North Carolina. They rented a house for the week and Molly and I were able to join them for a couple days so RT could study. I bought these earrings.
At first I didn't realize why I liked them so much. There were several styles, all using the same beads, but in different shapes. Later I realized these look like little quilts! No wonder I love them so much!

In sad news, Snickers is not doing great. She's 16 now, which is very old for a Belgian Malinois. She has been losing weight like crazy. For most of her life, she was 55 pounds. A couple nights ago she was down to 29. She still eats, but nothing sticks with her. The vet said she probably has cancer somewhere but she's so old she wouldn't be able to withstand the anesthesia for a biopsy, much less any kind of treatment. I don't know how much longer she'll be with us, but for now we just love her and pamper her as much as we can.
Those bumps sticking out by her waist are the wing-y parts of her vertebrae. And here you can see her backbone pretty clearly.

Those are her hipbones; yes, they are.
A dog with this much undercoat shouldn't show her ribs. But I don't think she's hungry. She eats with the same patterns as she always has (leaves part of her breakfast but eats it all at dinnertime). I think it's just not staying with her; the cancer is taking all the energy and nutrients. This post shows what she looked like in healthier times.

We have had her a long time. We got her when she was seven years old from the Humane Society. I never thought she'd be with us longer than she was with her first family. She's a wonderful companion and we are doing our best to show her that we love her. I don't think she's in pain. She doesn't pant or whine. And she still wags her tail and follows me around the house when I have food. So in that sense, she's just like she always was. What a good dog.

The Richmond Modern Quilt Guild has arrived!

2011-04-10T09:58:00.004-04:00

I'm so happy to announce that there is a new chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild in Richmond! We'll have our first meeting on Friday, April 15th starting at 6 pm. We're currently meeting at Quilter's Corner in Midlothian, VA. If you sew and are in the Richmond area, please come! We're going to have giveaways, food, and a beading demo by the wonderful Cathy Etter. If you've never met Cathy, you are in for a big treat.

I'm so excited to be a part of this!

Flannel goodness!

2011-03-31T20:18:00.004-04:00

I have very exciting news! I'm now working and teaching classes at Quilter's Corner in Midlothian! I'm so excited to be a part of this shop, and looking forward to learning a lot more about the behind the scenes details!

Oh, yeah, sewing.... Okay, I made this quilt for Molly for Christmas. I even had it mostly finished for her to unwrap on Christmas day; I just had to add the binding. It took me forever to get it on the blog, though. Oh well, baby steps, right? There's really no pattern to it. I just cut pieces that were 3, 6, 9 or 12 inches (finished) and pieced them randomly. I bought the flannel at a shop in Michigan a couple of years ago when I went up there for my aunt's funeral. I'm hoping to make a small version for my newest great-niece (who is well past her first birthday) from the fabric I have left over.

The circle of life...

2011-03-08T21:09:00.006-05:00

Our cat, Simon, died a couple of years ago. We buried him in the back yard. Molly has been curious lately about what he might look like right now. We've been telling her he'd mostly be bones and some fur (we buried him wrapped in a towel and then put inside one of those heavy duty Harry and David fruit boxes). I assume that's about right. (Anyone know for sure?)

This past weekend we ended up cleaning up the yard. It started with picking up sticks and eventually involved some raking. Most of the leaves were late stragglers that had been caught up next to the fence and house. As I'm raking next to the fence, I kept thinking, "Now where exactly did we bury Simon, anyway? I must be getting close."

More raking; more wondering.

Then, my foot drops about 12 inches into the ground.
Huh. I guess I found out where Simon had been buried. Or, rather, the empty space where Simon used to be before he became fertilizer. The weird thing is, I didn't see anything in the hole. Maybe I had just packed the dirt on top of anything that might have been visible. Whew. Dodged a bullet there. We filled the hole with fresh compost.See it there along the fence?

Shopping, shopping, shopping!

2011-03-06T10:20:00.005-05:00

Oh, sure the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival had plenty of quilts on display, but we all know the real reason we go: shopping! Truthfully, I didn't buy much. Being an employee of a quilt shop means I see so many fabrics go by that if I had $1,000 to spend on fabric, I know right where it would all go! And tools can be ordered. No, for Mid-Atlantic, I had my eye on things that I couldn't get at Quilting Adventures. I only bought two things of note (other things I purchased were stocking up on things I could get for a bargain).

One is this ingenious kit. It's laser cut! Such perfect little pieces, down to the notches! It's tiny; it will finish at 16 x 20 total. The blocks finish at four inches. And those curves would be a bear to cut myself. Totally worth the 20 bucks.
I also bought these shoes. Yes, shoes at a quilt show! They are a little dirty in this photo as we were doing some yard work yesterday. But they feel awesome. I have to stand for long periods at work and I've been having some plantar fasciitis in one heel, and these shoes help a lot.
Also, you may have heard that Borders is in bankruptcy, so we did a little shopping there this weekend, too.

Books, 25% off!
Magazines, 50% off!
Good thing my birthday is this month!

Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival 2011

2011-02-26T16:24:00.004-05:00

Man, I am a bad blogger. Just when I think I'm doing well again, something like this happens: I don't post for six weeks! You'd think I'd have more to show for it, but no. Anyway, the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival is this weekend. If you haven't gone yet, there's still tomorrow! As I've mentioned in the past, my Monday night quilt group, festively called "The Other Women," often does round robins. This year we were able to put several of those quilts in the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival!

The way a round robin works is, everyone makes a center or a row. Then everyone passes it to the next person who adds on, and you add on to the one you've received. In the end, you get your quilt back. So for these two quilts, I did the initial piecing and then I also quilted it. Other bits were added by my friends.

For this one, I started with the center.
For this one I started with the row that has the blue waves. It's above the ducks.
My oldest sister, who lives in Oklahoma, was part of two of our round robins. This one is her quilt. I added the top and bottom rows with the half-circles.
This one is also my sister's quilt. I added the little tulip row.
If you want to see these or any others in progress, just click this link.

I didn't buy too much this year. I'll post photos later!

I'm in love!

2011-01-18T11:22:00.008-05:00

This past Friday, my wonderful husband and I went to lunch. I said, "I have no ambition. I think we need to get away." He said, "okay, where are we going to go?" I wasn't really meaning this weekend, but thanks to him, we ended up leaving the next morning and spending a long weekend in Philadelphia! I love that we have a small enough family and a great next door neighbor (who is always willing to watch our pets).

So, Saturday we went to the Mütter Museum. Their website isn't very useful, but it was a great museum to go to. It's full of medical specimens. Have you ever wondered what a 75 lb ovarian cyst looks like? Or are you curious about forensic anthropology? Or the skeleton of a man with a disease which causes his soft tissues to calcify into bone? They have it all. It's amazing. To hear a description, you might think it's like a circus side-show, but it's all presented in an educational, non-exploitative manner. In fact, no photos are allowed inside the museum. So here's Molly outside instead.We also went on a short horse-drawn carriage tour of the Independence Mall area (Molly's favorite part of the trip) and saw the Liberty Bell.On Sunday we went to the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Later that day we drove around and eventually ended up at the King of Prussia Mall. I have memories of going there on band trips in high school when we went to Philly to march in the Gimbels parade.

On Monday, we checked out of our hotel. We ate breakfast at a cute diner called Mrs. K's. We had been sick of eating at the extremely overpriced hotel restaurant (seriously? Nine bucks for a bowl of oatmeal? You're kidding me) and were very happy to have found it. The waitstaff was really nice and the locals eating there were friendly and chatty. And a bowl of oatmeal was only about $2.50. No website, though.After breakfast, we checked out Fabric Row. I only went to one shop and was a bit turned off. Maybe I went to the wrong shop. It was crowded and it was hard to see everything. I did buy a bit of fabric to make a ballet skirt for Molly.

The highlight of the trip for me, though, was a quilt shop we stopped at called Spool. This is why I posted that I was in love. The shop was quite small and didn't have a ton of fabric, but what they did have was breathtaking. No batiks, no blenders, no novelties; just designer prints and some solids (and a few shot cottons and Kaffe homespuns and stripes). But what they didn't have in quantity, they made up for in quality. So clean and gorgeous!First impression as you walk in:This is pretty much the extent of their fabric shelves. The only shelves you can't see here are a couple in the back where they have sale fabrics and some home decs.
Here is their classroom area. So cute with the coordinating sewing machine covers!
Another view of their display (really, their only one).
Their patterns.
Here is my haul. First is a laminate that Molly picked out. I need to make the Amy Butler kids raincoat for a shop sample. So I'll make two, so Molly can have one now!
Here's the fabric I bought, just because. It was hard to stop at five yards. The person helping me, who was super friendly, said that the whale fabric was designed by someone local. There were several of her designs there.
And I bought their two bags of scraps. Seriously, you could make something beautiful out of anything they had there. I figured even their scraps would be delicious. I bought the only two bags of scraps they had. If they had had ten, I probably would have bought all ten.
If you go to Philadelphia, visit this shop. I was blown away. So small, but perfect. Only the best of the best. There's a yarn shop next door called Loop that I didn't go to, but they seem to be connected in some way. If I were a knitter, or if I hadn't already spent over $100, I would have gone there, too!

Posh

2011-01-12T18:17:00.004-05:00

A couple of "yesterday's news" types of things today. First is a shop sample I made way back in the Minnesota Road Show days. The pattern is called Posh and it's from Maple Island Quilts. The line is a Christmas line from Riley Blake. You know how lime green, orange and turquoise are Christmas colors, right?Now that I look at the link, I see that I did post this quilt a while back. Oh well. It's bright and cheerful and I had forgotten that I had posted it.

And in sad news, my little wallet sample was stolen from the shop. Yes, stolen. This is not unusual. There are assholes in every group, even in the quilting world. It's a sad fact. Luckily it was a fast pattern so I can make another soon.

Little embroidery

2011-01-10T19:09:00.003-05:00

I have a very good friend, Meenoo, whose husband, Bill, does these terrific little doodles. Usually they end up in the recycling bin, but when I saw them for the first time I said, "I need to embroider one of those!" Meenoo thought I was nuts. But I got her to confiscate one of them and I recreated it in floss. This is my first time doing this kind of fill stitch. I think it's so cute! I gave it to Bill for Christmas.In Molly news, she has a walking cast on due to a sore foot. We're not sure of the reason for the soreness, but she's been a toe-walker forever and never grew out of it. The cast will stay on for a total of three weeks. She says it's feeling better. I'm not sure how much of this is serious injury and how much of it is pandering for the upcoming Oscar season. I'm hoping this cures the problem regardless of its origin.

New year, new projects

2011-01-03T14:08:00.005-05:00

Wow. I've never taken a blog break for this long before. Several things happened. One is that I went to a quilting retreat with my friend and co-worker Maureen. These are really fun! Sadly, in the three days following the retreat, both my car and my sewing machine bit the dust. The car was fatal. We ended up trading it in for a tiny commuter car for RT. The sewing machine wasn't fatal, but it took nearly a month to get back from the repair shop. And then there were the holidays and the flu and other such nonsense. On to photos!

I did more than this over the holidays, but these are the photos that are off the camera at the moment. These are some selvedge pincushions. I made a bunch and gave them to lots of friends.
Some people still haven't gotten theirs yet.
More photos soon, I promise. In the meantime, a word from Molly:

Tomorrow's menu. #1: we are going out.

My sentiments exactly, honey. :-)

Today I...

2010-10-27T17:35:00.004-04:00

...finished hand sewing a binding on a commission quilt and delivered it. Any day you can check something big off your list it's a good day!

Backing and quilting

2010-10-25T23:17:00.003-04:00

Here's a shot of the back of the black/white/green commission I'm working on. The block is a signature block from the baby shower. The backing is Riley Blake.And here's a photo of me quilting it. It's simple loops, but I love it anyway. I'm almost done with the quilting. I gave up when my thread mysteriously broke, even though I had changed the needle. It probably has something to do with the fact that many of the non-white fabrics are mystery fabrics, including home dec weight and flannels. It sure makes for an interesting quilt, though. It will have lots of texture for little fingers to explore.
It's actually quite bright in my sewing room, though you wouldn't know it from this photo.

black and white and green all over

2010-10-24T23:36:00.002-04:00

I'm doing another commission. About a year ago there was a baby shower where the guests were asked to bring pieces of fabric which would be made into a quilt. The baby just turned a year old, and I'm putting together the fabrics (along with some white) which will be given this coming week. Yowza. This is a really quick deadline. The top is done, though. Now I have to piece a backing (which includes a signature block) and quilt it. I'm hoping to do all of that and get it bound tomorrow so I can hand sew the binding on Tuesday. Did I mention I'm also teaching a daytime class all week? And I've been sick? At least that seems to be on its way out, after three weeks of feeling awful. Life sure is busy, isn't it?

How does a sewing machine work, anyway?

2010-10-19T12:21:00.005-04:00

Check this out! It's originally from Wikipedia, and blogged from Deborah's In a Strange Land blog. I could never wrap my head around this concept, but this shows it beautifully!

6 Hour Quilt

2010-10-02T14:40:00.004-04:00

And when I say six hours, I mean start to finish!
Here's a closeup so you can see the fabrics better.
This is one of the Valori Wells sewing card patterns, though this particular one is not listed on her website. The fabric is from the Fun Flowers line by Lakehouse fabrics. Of course, we have it at Quilting Adventures. Did you have to ask?

Today I have awful laryngitis and taught one of my beginning classes. We soldiered through, but it was rough. I have a lot of classes coming up this month.

Camping!

2010-09-20T23:48:00.004-04:00

No sewing to show today but my family did go camping for the first time this weekend. Photos!
Campfire!
Beach!Dead horseshoe crabs!Tent!

Paul McCartney

2010-09-13T11:31:00.004-04:00

Ohh, it's been a crazy summer, hasn't it? I'm so glad that school has started. It give me time to sew! I don't have photos of everything I've done in the past few weeks, but I'll take and post them soon.

One thing we did in August was go to see Paul McCartney in concert! The day before we left, I found a Beatles t-shirt at Target, but it was in the toddler section. So I got the biggest one I could and made it into this little dress for Molly. If I had had more time and more fabric (don't we all need more of both of those), I'd have made it twirlier. The shirt has Ringo's drum kit on it. The skirt fabric is gray with white polka dots. Here we all are. My friend and quilting student Carrie joined us.
Here's Sir Paul! Yes, he's the tiny speck in the middle of the stage. Thank god for giant video screens.
How irritating are these small photos, anyway? I need advice, fellow bloggers: how do you deal with photos on blogspot? If I upload straight to blogger, I'm worried that I'll run out of space. So I upload to Flickr and then link, but they come out so small. What do you do? I want it all: larger photos hosted somewhere else so I don't have to worry about running out of room. Any advice?

Winner!

2010-08-30T01:42:00.004-04:00

I'm happy to announce that the winner of the giveaway is Julia of Julia's Sew Sweet and Special Occasion Clothing for Children. I'm sorry for the delay in getting the choosing done. I went ahead and entered the people in who had left a comment after the deadline. I didn't have as many entries as I thought. It's funny, I see a lot of people who come to the blog, many who come multiple times, but not as many entered as I expected. I know part of this is my inconsistency in posting. My excuse for that right now is summer. Once that's over I expect to be doing a lot more sewing.

I also wonder if I need to leave different types of messages. I feel like this blog needs a little more personality. I would love to include the occasional rant about general world views. But I would still want my blog to mostly be about quilting and sewing.

Regardless, I gotta do something. I want more readers!

Anyway, leave a comment if you'd like. I'd love to hear what you have to say. I'll leave you with photos of a baby quilt I made years ago. I think I posted it once before but it may be my favorite quilt.

Time to celebrate! Let's give something away!

2010-08-15T15:00:00.004-04:00

A few days ago it was my girl's sixth birthday. I love her to pieces. We went to the Cheesecake Factory and they fancied-up a sundae for her.In honor of her birthday and this being my 100th post (and the fact that I have fewer readers than I'd like), I've decided to do a giveaway! These five cute Riley Blake Boo to You Halloween fat quarters could be yours!
You get an entry for every one of these things you do:

1. Make a comment on this post (bare minimum)
2. Follow my blog
3. Include me in your blogroll
4. Mention my blog in your blog

If you're already following or have me in your blogroll, that counts! Just make sure you let me know in your comment how many entries you get based on the rules above. I'll close the entries Tuesday or Wednesday. We're going out of town later this week, so I'll pick the winner by random draw either just before I go or right when I get back on Monday.

One more Molly (as a puppy) photo for good measure.

time flies like a banana

2010-08-07T16:45:00.006-04:00

Photos!

For the Minnesota Road Show (which went fine, I think), I have a couple more samples to show. First is Ric Rac Rendezvous. It's a table runner to show off rick rack.Also, Posh, a wall hanging. Both of these patterns are from Maple Island Quilts.I also have the Raspberry Ripple purse. This pattern is from Melly and Me. It's not from the Minnesota Road Show, by the way. I think I forgot to show it when I did it a couple of months ago. Anyway, Melly and Me are out of Australia, and I'm not sure but I that their version of fusible fleece might be a little less stiff than ours. This baby has some heft! But I love the colors.Here's my round robin. Remember this one? It started out as just one strip with the wavy lines in it. My friends all added the rest of the rows. You'll be able to see a lot of our round robins at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February.And finally, Molly had her birthday party today. She had a Beatles party, so I made a yellow submarine cake. Those funky things in the water are her candles.

Little, purple, cute!

2010-07-08T12:18:00.003-04:00

Lots of projects going on now. I haven't written lately because I've been so busy! I haven't forgotten about the giveaway, though.

In Molly news, she got her first sewing machine. It's purple! It's pretty loud, but it is a real machine, with a real bobbin, so it meet's Mama's requirements. She's sewing together the pieces that were part of the shop display for our Scrap Therapy classes, which I'm no longer teaching.This Saturday at 2 pm, the Dumbarton Library is putting on a small production of The Little Mermaid and I was recruited to make mermaid costumes. This is an in-progress photo, but you get the idea. They're done now, and I'm pretty pleased, considering I did two start to finish in a couple of evenings. Ugh -- please ignore the disastrous state of my sewing room!I finished another bag for the Minnesota Road Show. I hope you're coming if you're in the area. It's only ten bucks and half is taught by me! This bag is Zippy Strippy by Atkinson Designs. It's not technically part of the road show, but I'm incorporating it anyway.And finally, I'm doing a project for a friend who I recently unearthed in Australia. It's been ten years since I've seen him and I'm so excited to make something that's not a required project. I was lucky to find some Australian inspired fabric. I'll post a photo when it's all done. This photo some of the quilting when I was just starting. I love pebbling.What I did was layer the print below the black, then I quilted most of the spaces, but left a few unquilted. Then I cut away the black layer to reveal the print below. I'm going to couch some yarn over the grey straight lines.

Z is for Zipper

2010-06-26T23:16:00.004-04:00

This little quilted bag is from the book Fat Quarter Fonts by Terry Atkinson. The bag is called Z is for Zipper and it was super easy. It has the letter a appliqued onto it. It's a little hard to see the letter here because my fabrics were both so busy, but I think it's cute.
The bag is lined with the letter fabric. The zipper was pretty easy to install. The only downside to it is that the seams are unfinished inside. I think if I did it again I'd do it with french seams.

The sample is from the same book as this quilt and is for the Minnesota Road Show coming up at the shop. I'm teaching it again this year!

Pointy points!

2010-06-14T12:51:00.002-04:00

I have a quilting group that meets monthly to do show and tell and chat with each other. We're called "The Other Women," which is a name one of the members came up with because she's cheating on another sewing group with us. Anyway, we did something new this past Saturday; we had a mini-class. We learned a different type of paper piecing, where you stitch with the fabric on top of the pattern instead of on the wrong side of the pattern as in traditional paper piecing. I'm not sure which I like better. This is easier in some ways, but takes more time in trimming because you can't use the Add a Quarter ruler (which I highly recommend if you do paper piecing).

Aaaanyway, I made a pattern called Emily's Star. The pattern is by Lynn Graves of Little Foot, Inc. So far I've made four blocks.My poor camera. It has a hard time with colors. You should know that all the backgrounds are blues and all the stars are various shades of red and orange. They're actually quite striking, not that you'd know it from this photo.

Look at the pretty points!
In family news, we got a Prius last Saturday. I've only used about half the tank of gas so far. Yahoo!

Oh, and in honor of my upcoming 100th post, I'll be doing a giveaway. I have no idea what yet. Stay tuned!

Commission T-shirt quilt

2010-05-29T17:23:00.004-04:00

I've been working on a commission t-shirt quilt. It will be a graduation gift for someone finishing high school. I like the way it came out (though I have realized that I have undercharged by quite a bit). This photo shows the quilt finished except for the binding and the label. I'm embroidering a label right now. I'm not sure if I'll be happy with the way it's coming out because I'm using one strand of floss and it looks kind of choppy. If I'm not happy with it, I just hand-write the label.
This is the backing fabric. It's a blue paisley in the Good Earth collection by Alexander Henry Fabrics. It's quilted in a variegated green with a meandering pattern. I meandered right over the t-shirt motifs. It seemed to work fine except for when the image on the t-shirt was especially thick. Then I found that my thread kept breaking unless I slowed way down.

We're also attempting to paint the master bedroom this weekend, which involves removing an especially ugly wallpaper border. It's going to be a busy one!

So this happened

2010-05-15T03:18:00.005-04:00

Yeah. It's my daughter's latest craft project. It's alpaca wool felted around a lump of soap. I think it looks more like something the cat coughed up, but her little hands made it, so... yeah. It smells the way you'd expect a wet alpaca to smell. The idea is that the soap gets embedded in the felt and comes through as you use it. So, of course Molly wants to take a bath with it now. Lovely.

And here's a glimpse of my latest contribution to the row round robin I'm in.It's 3:22 a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm really happy because I got off a video call a while ago with a close friend who I haven't seen in a long time. He lives in Australia now, which makes timing a bit tricky, but we slipped into conversation as if it had been only ten days since we last talked instead of nearly ten years. The internet is a wonderful thing. Now I want to send him something I've made.

hodgepodge

2010-05-10T09:15:00.003-04:00

The Quiltathon is over! There is still time to donate if you'd like (please do -- this link will add to my goal), but the work is (mostly) done. Here's a shot of most of my team, including Becky, Michele, Allen, Mary and Deb. Only Coni is not in this shot (sorry, Coni!).
We worked Friday night from 10 pm until 1 am. We got quite a lot of work done, though it's hard to quantify because we were working on three different quilts at once. Here's an arty shot of Allen's hands quilting one of the rows!
So far I'm in the lead as far as individual donations go, but the next person is really nipping at my heels. I really want to be the person with the most personal donations. So, if you've been thinking about it, or if you were one of the people who asked me, "what can I do?" while I was going through treatment, here is your chance to help!

I've also been making more tooth fairy pillows. I decided, after much harass--... er, encouragement, from my fellow quilters, that I should charge $15 instead of $10.
Lastly, I'm working on a commission piece. It's a t-shirt quilt for someone who is graduating high school soon. I have framed all the shirts in a green batik and am working on what to use for the background. Here they are on a solid, but I think we'll be going with something more lively. I do like how the one batik ties them all together, though. T-shirt quilts can be tricky because they don't often have a consistent color to them.
I'll be taking more commissions as time goes on. If you know of anyone who wants a t-shirt quilt made, let me know!

Please help!

2010-04-30T10:42:00.003-04:00

I'm participating in the Quiltathon for Massey. As you know, I recently went through treatment for breast cancer. The shop I work at, Quilting Adventures, is hosting a 30 Hour Quiltathon to raise money that will directly benefit support groups through the VCU Massey Cancer Center. All the money raised goes to them, and the quilts that we make will be auctioned off by various groups, also with that money going toward cancer support.

Please follow this link and donate to this great cause. My team needs more donations to win! You can search for me (Cheryl Schenck), and donate to Team 9. I'm also on Team 16, but I'm focusing money toward Team 9 since it's the one I started with.

If you want to stop by, you can do so all weekend. I'll be quilting tonight from 10 pm to 1 am (the shop closes at 9 pm, so don't try to stop by then), and also on Sunday from 3 pm to 6 pm.

Thanks!

fan mail!

2010-04-21T20:57:00.002-04:00

I've been making more tooth fairy pillows. Molly took hers to school for show and tell and to gymnastics and I have about 12 to make now. I'm charging $10 each, which covers my materials and also pays me some for time. It's a number I feel comfortable charging (much more and I'd feel guilty, much less and it probably wouldn't be worth it). I've been cranking out teeth tonight. Here are a couple more pillows. The red one is flannel. I'm also experimenting with tooth fabrics, because I only had a little of the Michael Miller home dec white that I used originally. So now I'm making teeth out of bamboo corduroy and NuSuede. The bamboo is slightly off-white, so I'm only using it for pillows that have no white in the background fabric.I also got a note from one of Molly's classmates. It is SO cute!

Gosh darn cute

2010-04-13T00:20:00.003-04:00

I made this tooth fairy pillow for Molly. I think it's just in time. Her bottom front tooth is awfully wiggly. I got the tooth pattern from Martha Stewart, though I did it differently from her. Mine is two layers of white because I hate when things shadow through. So it has two layers and was turned inside out. Then I topstitched very close to the edge. Then I attached it to the pillow (before stuffing) by just going right over the topstitching in order to make a pocket. I LOVE it!
I also made another shop sample. This one is Fire Escape by, you guessed it, Atkinson Designs. It looks super simple, and it is, but it's challenging to keep everything organized. It's supposed to be a throw size, but it's pretty big. It finishes at 60 x 75 or so.

Busy, busy, busy and auction results

2010-04-07T23:02:00.004-04:00

I haven't been posting, I admit it. I've been busy with non-quilting things, though I have lots in the pipeline. Unfortunately, my sewing room is a disaster, so not much is being done there, and it's spring break, so I'm home all day with Molly so nothing is being done at the shop. And somehow, I'm still busy, and often gone, all day long. Not complaining, mind you. Just explaining why I haven't posted.

But I was amiss in not letting everyone know that the latest auction quilt went for $1200! It was won by a friend of mine, so that makes it doubly great! The placemats only went for $15, but they were also won by the same person, so I'm happy that she got them.

In Molly news, we have a new tooth. I need to make a tooth fairy pillow, pronto! If you know of a good pattern, please post it in the comments! It's coming in behind her front teeth but I've been assured it will be okay in the end. I see orthodontist appointments in our future.

The Auction is Tomorrow!

2010-03-26T21:11:00.002-04:00

The 2010 auction is tomorrow. I even bought a new dress! Molly is having a friend over whose parents are also going to the auction. Wonderful Monica is going to watch them and they're having an all-out girly night.

Here are final photos!

Back:

Bargello placemats

2010-03-18T13:06:00.003-04:00

About a year and a half ago, we offered a class on Bargello Placemats. It was moderately popular, but we're no longer offering it. So I decided to donate the class samples to Molly's school for their auction.Set of four
Closeup of one placemat.
Back.

One of these days I'll get this kind of stuff up on Etsy. But what if no one buys my stuff? I put the value of these at $50, because honestly, that's about what I'd have to charge just to get any kind of profit out of them at all. The backing fabric alone is $10. Add to that the fronts, fabric lost while piecing, typical waste, binding etc., and we'll looking at at least $30 worth of fabric. Plus thread and batting. I don't think $50 is crazy considering it would be less than double my materials cost. But would people really spend $50 on a set of placemats?

Lego sewing machine

2010-03-13T19:40:00.001-05:00

All backgrounds done!

2010-03-11T14:01:00.003-05:00

Here's the auction quilt so far:All the background (white) is quilted. The little + signs are disappearing ink, so I'll make them go away, of course, before it's really done. Tomorrow I will go into school and have the kids pick a quilting pattern for their blocks. Then I'll quilt it in front of them. It's nice to be on the home stretch. Then, I just have to hide a few threads, make the binding, apply the binding and sew the binding to the back by hand.

curls, a friend and a house block

2010-03-10T21:29:00.002-05:00

I went to Target and bought some fabric covered foam curlers for Molly. She loved them and looked so cute! I need more practice, though, to make them lay right.I also sewed with Amy on Monday...
... and made a house block. This will eventually become a wall hanging for an advanced beginner class I'm doing. I'll tell ya, that fence will force you to perfect your quarter inch seam!

Mama's new toy

2010-03-07T20:50:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm making more progress on this year's auction quilt. On Friday, I basted it. This is the last time I do a true white background. There were so many threads to cut! I spent at least and hour and a half trimming threads from the quilt back.Also, my new machine is here! Don't ask, but it was actually available when I ordered it on Monday (they had one in stock, apparently, that I could have had). Oh well. It made me get a couple things done in preparation. But here she is! I've done some quilting on her already. Now I just need a name. Any ideas?

Dress done (except buttons)

2010-03-02T21:02:00.003-05:00

Here's the dress from the KwikSew pattern I mentioned in a previous post. I like my fabrics way better than the ones in their photo. It's all done, except that I need to add the buttons and corresponding buttonholes. I have never done this before, so it will be an adventure. One thing I did discover is that Aurifil thread (cotton mako 50) is not really strong enough to do gathering stitches. It's great for other sewing, though. It has hardly any lint, so it's become my favorite piecing thread.

New sewing machine!

2010-02-28T23:12:00.003-05:00

I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival this weekend and test drove a Baby Lock Quilter's Choice Professional. It's so fast! It only does straight stitch, but it has a huge space to the right of the needle and goes at 1500 SPM!

If you have any experience with this machine, please let me know! I'm very excited.

http://www.babylock.com/sewing/quilter-choice-professional/

Row quilt

2010-02-21T23:17:00.003-05:00

Well, tomorrow the next row on my row quilt is due. For those of you who don't know, it's a round robin but we're doing rows. So, one person starts the quilt, then passes it along to the next, who adds a row, who then passes it along to the next person who also adds a row, and so on. The original person gets the quilt back. We do ours as a surprise, so I can't show the whole thing in case the owner is reading this. But here's what my row looks like:
They're three dimensional flying geese. So, you could stick your finger under the legs of the triangles. They were really easy to sew. There's a video here at Ricky Tims' and Alex Anderson's The Quilt Show.

Remember how I said it was due tomorrow? I started it today. Yeah, I know.

Clothes patterns are a different breed

2010-02-18T18:57:00.006-05:00

I'm making a dress for Molly. Its first life will be a shop sample. I decided to be thrifty and trace the pattern onto cheap interfacing (a trick of Monica's) so that I don't destroy the original pattern. It's KwikSew pattern 3767 and it's going to be super cute! I'm doing the one on the left, in better fabrics.Anyway, I traced the outlines in pencil, figuring I'm going to cut them out anyway. But I wanted to make the notches and other notations permanent. So I traced them with a Sharpie. I ended up putting wax paper underneath so the Sharpie wouldn't bleed. But look at my hand!
There must be a better way. Help, garment sewers! What should I do in the future?

Playing with Paintstiks

2010-02-15T13:42:00.007-05:00

On the auction quilt, I've been wanting to include the school logo somehow. It's where I got the colors, after all. First I tried embroidering it.
It looks cute, but not bold enough. Then Ann at the shop suggested Shiva Paintstiks. Here is my first attempt. The colors aren't quite right (the light blue is too teal, for example), so I'm glad I did a practice run.
Here is the logo in the center white block of the quilt. I'm going to use my practice block and try outlining it with embroidery to sharpen up the fuzzy edges. But I am happy with the colors.I'll post photos of the embroidered sample when it's done, but I have to let the paint cure for three days first. I really don't want it to smear!

Quilt top mostly done

2010-02-11T23:25:00.003-05:00

The auction quilt top is basically done. I took it in to the school today to show the kids. I am going to try embroidering the school logo in the center block. Well, actually, I'll probably embroider one on a plain bit of fabric first and hold it up to see how it looks. If it comes out, then I can use that on the back. Anyway, the kids all did the nine patch blocks. The other squares are just to frame them. It's way more traditional than last year's quilt, but I think it's pretty. It's being auctioned off along with a book of fairy tales and a bedtime story read by the teacher. I'm hoping for big bids!

Waste not

2010-02-04T22:45:00.003-05:00

You know that technique for making flying geese where you sew a smaller square onto a rectangle on the diagonal and then cut off the waste? I save those little triangles. People think I'm crazy, but I do. And I use them as the last piece when I'm chain piecing. I even have some people who give me their cut off triangles! I take them happily.
This saves thread and time. No more having to hold onto those pesky threads when starting a seam! I have a large shoe box devoted to them. So far it's just held onto the sewn-together half square triangles, but yesterday I started pressing them.

I'll have to trim them, which will take even longer than pressing them did, but when all is said and done, I'll have a bazillion little squares, about 3/4 to 1 inch finished.

In weather news, we got a bunch of snow last weekend. This photo was taken the next day, after some had already melted. Yikes! Virginia is not prepared for this. And we have another storm coming tomorrow. They've already closed schools.

Opinions needed!

2010-02-02T16:59:00.004-05:00

I'm working on this year's auction quilt. The kids have designed the blocks and I have them laid out on point. I want to put more small squares in the border but I'm not sure how to lay them out. I have gotten a few opinions but I want more! Keep in mind that this quilt will be auctioned off along with a storybook and a bedtime story by the teacher. It's meant to be a large throw for a child. It will be approximately 60 inches wide and will have some white on the outside before the binding, which will be blue/green. I am going to try embroidering the school logo in the center square (and maybe in more depending on how much time that takes).

So, which do you like and why? Please leave comments! The samples are all up on a design wall, and some of the squares are temporarily stuck up there. So ignore any crooked squares, please.

Asymmetrical border:

Symmetrical border:

Full border:
I'd like any and all feedback. Again, ignore the crookedness of the outside border, especially in the last photo. I was running late for my radiation appointment when I took it!

20 down, 4 to go

2010-01-21T20:04:00.002-05:00

I worked with the kids at Molly's school today to make their nine patch blocks. I swear, the pattern for this quilt has changed a dozen times since its inception. Anyway, a lot of parents came in to help the kids with the project. I was able to sew the blocks right there. It was very cute how interested in the sewing machine some of the kids were!
I had them stick the 2.5 inch squares to a paper with the block drawn on it, using double stick tape. Now to really figure out what this quilt is going to look like! Must. Make. Decision.

Auction quilt, 2010, and a project from the retreat.

2010-01-20T23:28:00.004-05:00

Way back at the quilting retreat I went to in November, it was raining when I unpacked and I had no cover for my sewing machine. So, I bought a half yard of the cutest polka dot oilcloth from the shop and made myself a cover. It's not fancy, but I'm proud that I didn't have a pattern or anything.
My big upcoming project is this year's auction quilt for Molly's school. I'm starting much later than I did last year, and with the radiation treatments coming up, things might get tricky. Last year at this time I had already finished quilting the top and was beginning the beading. Yikes. But this year, I don't plan to do much, if any, embellishing. So, things should go more quickly. All I have to show you today are some pretty little squares. But tomorrow I'm going to the school and I'll be sewing nine patch blocks with the kids. Parents are coming in to help, so I think things should go smoothly.

Haiti help

2010-01-18T10:51:00.001-05:00

An online friend of mine is auctioning off some of her beautiful quilts to support the relief efforts in Haiti. She's also going to match whatever the highest bids are from her own funds. Her quilts are really beautiful and she's provided me with lots of inspiration. Please check her site out!

Trip and row and guitar case

2010-01-11T20:46:00.003-05:00

It may be difficult to believe, but I do intend to update this blog more than once a month. It's just been a very busy December. I know, excuses, excuses. But we did spend several days on a trip to Wisconsin. We took Amtrak and got a sleeper car. It was great! No complaints, except that our room was hot, especially on the way out. I'm not a good sleeper, so this mostly affected me. Molly was fine, though. When you get a sleeper car, you're considered first class, which means you get free meals and you get to hang out in the first class lounge for layovers.
I also did a little (very little) sewing. Last Christmas, after a scare, RT bought a Wii. This fall, after I found out about the breast cancer, RT went out and bought Beatles Rock Band. I wonder what I need to do to get a new sewing machine. Anyway, Molly especially loves it and she has become quite the Beatles aficionado. Since we had practically unlimited baggage restrictions on Amtrak (another plus), we decided to bring it. We wanted to transport the guitars carefully, so we went to GameStop and bought a case for RockBand guitars. Unfortunately, our guitars were too big. So, at 5:00 the evening before we were to leave, I decided to make a quilted guitar case.
This baby holds two RockBand guitars, separated by a quilted panel. It's not quite done; I want to add a zipper to the top. For the trip, I had to saftey-pin the case together. It just made it look more badass if you ask me.

Yes, those are little batik rainbow skull and crossbones, thanks for asking!
I also finished my row for my round robin, only a month late. Oh well, as people keep telling me, I have a good excuse.
In health news, I will probably start radiation next week. This is sooner than expected. I'll find out more at my simulation appointment tomorrow.

After a long absence

2009-12-11T21:34:00.003-05:00

Sorry for my absence. I admit I've been lax in writing lately. I guess I've found what falls to the wayside when I'm feeling down: this blog. I keep up fairly well with facebook (if you read this regularly and you're not my facebook friend, do it!) but not with this. I guess it's because I'm limited in words on facebook status updates.So anyway, in cancer news, I've had my first surgery, this past Wednesday. I got the pathology report today and found that it is only intraductal, which means it's not gone to my lymph nodes and I won't need chemo. So that's good. The bad news is, even though they took out a chunk the size of my fist, they were only 1 mm away from the cancerous cells on the edge closest to my feet. So they'll have go back in again, probably this coming week, and do more surgery. This hit me fairly hard. I've been pretty good about putting up a happy face about all of this. Tonight, not so much.

I have gotten a few projects done, though, for Christmas. Molly's flannel quilt won't be done because the shop machines are off to their mechanics for a good cleaning and overhaul. The shop machines (especially the BabyLock Quilter's Choice I've been using) have a good inch and a half more space to the right of the needle than my rinky dink Kenmore machine has. When quilting a twin size flannel quilt, this is a very important inch and a half!

However, I did make Molly a pillow.
And I made a gardening apron for my father in law. He's from Wisconsin, don'tcha know. My husband made me take three photos before he decided his gut was sucked in enough for posting. Sorry, honey!
And I made my in-laws a log carrier. Both of the last projects are from the Sew & Stow book (this link is to Amazon, but you can also buy it from our shop).

No photos today

2009-11-12T10:11:00.004-05:00

No photos today. I'm starting to pack for a three day quilting retreat. I've never been on one and I'm very excited! I hope to have lots of photos to share with you when I get back Sunday night.

In cancer news, I'm going to the surgeon this morning for a consultation. I hope to have an idea of what my treatment will be after the appointment. However, I go straight from there to school (for Molly's ballet) and then to work, so I won't have much time to think about it. Tomorrow morning, I will take Molly to school, then pick up Amy to go to the retreat.

In dog news, I never did get around to telling you about Snickers's escape. She managed to get out one morning (a Monday). She was picked up by someone who lives in our neighborhood, and was kept in their yard for the day. She didn't have her tags on because she was wearing her Bite Not collar because she's had a lot of itching due to allergies. Anyway, she managed to escape their yard, too, and was found wandering Hungary Road the next morning by some other people in our neighborhood. They took her to a vet's office and then found my listing on Craig's List. So we got our 14 year old friend back. She had some gastrointestinal issues for a couple of weeks (which required two steam cleaner rentals). Recently, we discovered fleas on her and the cat. We must have fallen behind on applying FrontLine to the dog. So, we've FrontLined the dog and put something similar on the cat. They don't seem to be horribly bad, but I noticed bites on Molly's legs. I sure hope we can get rid of them. I've felt itchy ever since this discovery. Any ideas?

Oh, and Brittany loved her quilt!

New pattern

2009-11-07T20:29:00.003-05:00

Molly has a birthday party to go to on Sunday so I decided to try making something. I started on Friday. Did I mention my deadline problem? Anyway, here's an image of it in its compact form:
Here it is opened up.
Still not sure what it is? Here's a hint:
Yes, it's a fold-up tic-tac-toe board using the chalkboard fabric. I didn't like the way the roll-up chalkboard actually rolled. The chalkboard vinyl has no give, so it gets ripply when you roll it. This has fabric sewn in between the pieces of vinyl, so it can fold. The white stuff is elastic to hold the chalk.If I made another one, I'd do some changes. The way it folds, you can't have a full sized piece of chalk in the leftmost holder as pictured or the chalk would break when you fold the board. And I would make a way to make it look more finished. I'm not happy with my topstitching. But it's a prototype. Do you think this would sell at craft fairs? The million dollar question: how much would one pay for such a thing? It's for a girl who's turning six.

Joy in the New Year

2009-11-05T11:47:00.002-05:00

I'm joining in the Joy in the New Year challenge at Tallgrass Prairie Studio. I love Jacquie's work. The idea is that you count your UFOs and then, however many you finish by January 1, you get that number of entries for a prize. Join in! If you're like me, you need a deadline!

Addicted to deadlines

2009-11-04T10:17:00.003-05:00

I have a problem. I can't seem to get things done (quilting-wise, anyway) unless I have a deadline. Case in point, Brittany's quilt. I missed her graduation because I knew she didn't need the quilt until she went to college. Then, before September, I had a bunch of deadlines at work -- samples for a gift fair, class samples, etc. "Oh well," I thought, "it won't get cold in Texas for a while anyway." I worked on her quilt and had it 99% finished, and I found a flaw that I wasn't sure how to fix (I discovered a seam that had not been sewn together properly, but the quilt was all quilted). So I put it off. Then Halloween (and the associated costume) was looming. And then we lost the dog and I got cancer and things went all to hell.Front and back

I'm ready to mail it. I haven't trimmed all the threads and I haven't washed it (because I don't have a front-loader), but I'm sending it anyway. I'm so sorry, Brittany, that you had to wait this long.
How it looks on a bed.

Does anyone else have this problem? How do you get through it? I feel pretty shitty about it.
Obligatory Molly pose.

Halloween and bad news

2009-11-01T00:15:00.003-04:00

Molly's costume came out great! She was Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. I took a few liberties with the costume to make it more wearable for her. Monica from the shop helped me a LOT with the dress and cape.
I've been gone again because it's been busy. I mentioned in my last post something about doctor appointments. I found out Wednesday that I have breast cancer. It's early -- stage zero, actually -- so that's good. I'll know more after I meet with the surgeon next week, but I will probably only have to go through surgery and radiation. I'm hoping for no chemo.

Finally back!

2009-10-22T20:57:00.005-04:00

I am so sorry it's been so long since I've posted. My days lately have been so full, leaving before 8 am and getting home close to 9 pm. I've been sewing at the shop nearly every morning (and this week I have been teaching a class each morning). The afternoons have had anything from Molly's gymnastics or ballet, to meetings with her teacher (I'm the room mom this year), grocery shopping, dealing with dog issues, doctor appointments (for me or others), you name it. More on the dog issues and doctor appointments in a later post. I have too much show and tell!

First I have the Molly quilt. It's from the Fat Quarter Fonts book by Atkinson Designs. It's a smaller version of the name quilt. I know I've mentioned how much I love Terry Atkinson books and patterns before. This is great because the letters are machine appliqued on but have no fusible.Next are some Christmas pins I made for the gift fair at the shop a few weeks back. They're all quite small, maybe 2.5 by 3.5 inches or so. There are pin-backs sewn to each one. They could be ornaments or pins to wear.
And closeups. First is the reindeer. One of the antlers has gotten broken off.
Next is the holly.
Last is the tree. I don't like the green outlining, but I felt it needed something to make it stand out. Oh well, live and learn. At least it's small!
Last, my favorite project, Rudy. It's a pattern from Melly and Me, out of Australia. (Speaking of Australia, I recently had a dream that Simon Baker, who is the guy on The Mentalist, was asking me to help him pick out quilt fabric. Rowrrrr!) This little guy is the cutest ever. His feet are wool. I think the pattern wants wool scraps for the eyes, but I used buttons.

Halloween costume and a surprise

2009-10-05T14:16:00.004-04:00

I just got started making Molly's Halloween costume. She's going to be Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Monica is helping me, since I know nothing about making clothes. We're changing her costume a little, to be more kid-friendly.
I also got the cutest thank you gift in the mail from Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio. If you haven't seen her site, go see it! She gives me lots of inspiration.

Two for two!

2009-09-27T20:07:00.002-04:00

Well, we went to the Virginia state Fair today. Both of the quilts I entered won ribbons! The safari quilt got Honorable Mention in the Crib/Small Bed Quilt category.
And the auction quilt got First Place in the Art Quilt/Wall hanging category!
We're tired and happy here at our house!

Brittany's quilt

2009-09-23T15:41:00.004-04:00

I'm making some real progress on my niece Brittany's graduation quilt. What? Yeah, so graduation was a few months ago. I know. But in quilting time, I'm doing fine. Early, even!

Here I am working away at the quilting, at the shop with Amy. I had to buy new gloves because I left mine at home.
Here is the back. I love the back, maybe even more than the front! I know, it's a lot of white, but I've really been drawn to this look lately. And Brittany's a responsible kid. She'll take good care of it. You can see my loopy quilting on the right side. This is the biggest quilt I've quilted so far, so I wanted to use my most comfortable fill pattern. The label is near the top right, at the end of one of the strips of blocks. These were the leftovers from the front squares.
And here is the label. I embroidered it myself. I've decided I love embroidering labels. This is the wave of the future for me, I think. The metal you see in the "with" is from a safety pin on the front. It will be gone when I'm done quilting it.Today it was over 90 degrees so I contend that it's still summer.

Safari quilt

2009-09-17T22:44:00.003-04:00

This is one of the quilts I'm entering into the state fair. The other is the auction quilt, which you've probably seen before. Tomorrow morning, Amy and I will drive up to deliver them (she's entering a couple quilts as well). This quilt, which I call the Safari Quilt, was made for a friend who was having a baby. We fell out of touch (but have reconnected thanks to Facebook). Anyway, I had it nearly done except for one missing line of quilting and the binding. So it still fits the rules of being finished in the past year. I actually only finished the binding a few days ago! The design is mine. I took the safari pictures and cropped them. The giraffe's head sticks out of the frame because if I had cut a rectangle, a predatory animal would have been in the bottom right corner, looking at its lunch. So I took another giraffe image and appliqued it onto the brown border and green fabric. It was needle turn applique, and those horns are small! That's why there is blue fuzz showing a little. I may need to break out the brown Sharpie before tomorrow morning.
I was really anal about the layout. If you look carefully, you'll see that no predator is looking toward prey. I'm such a softie!

Pretty little wallet

2009-09-16T15:28:00.004-04:00

I made a quick shop sample this morning; this pretty little wallet. It isn't fancy, but I like the way the fabric worked out. I centered the motifs. It is the same fabric line as my Birdie Sling. It's a little hard to tell from the angle of this photo, but the sides do curve in. The pattern is a Valori Wells Sewing Card (available, of course, at the shop and featured in the upcoming gift fair). The only downside is that the fusible Velcro isn't sticking as well as I'd like it to. It's very humid here, and I wonder if that's not affecting it. Any ideas?

Another blast from the past

2009-09-10T20:04:00.003-04:00

This is the quilt I refer to as "Molly's quilt." I made it in a class that I took while I was pregnant with her. I finished it while we lived here in Virginia. I didn't really intend it to go to her, but I haven't made her a quilt just for her yet. I know, bad mom. Now that she's in school, maybe for Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Winter Solstice. I'm starting to get a little more sensitive about the religion thing. I don't want her to be confused. We're Humanists, you see (which in Virginia is a Big Deal). I'm not anti-Christmas, but I think she's going to start hearing more and more about the religious aspects, and I just want her to understand. We still do the tree and Santa and all of that.Closeup! There are hearts, flowers, wavy lines, loops and straight lines. It's not a twin, but it's the biggest thing I've made.
I have gotten something done in the past few days, but it's just the top and I want to wait until it's quilted to show it off. Stay tuned!

Roll-Up Chalkboard

2009-09-03T21:19:00.004-04:00

We have this new chalkboard fabric at the shop. It's great! It works just like a chalkboard, but it's vinyl (I think) so it's flexible. It doesn't have give like fabric, but otherwise you can sew right through it. We also have iron-on vinyl that you can adhere to fabric to make it waterproof. In this case, it's making the fabric chalkproof so it won't get stained. I tested a pattern that we'll have available during our gift fair which is the weekend of September 19th. It has a little pocket on the side for chalk and a cloth to erase.
Eventually it will go to Molly. The good news is that I made it on her first day of school, so it will be a surprise if I give it to her during the holidays. Here's a photo of her when I dropped her off at school. It's her first day of kindergarten, though it's still at the same school (with the same teacher and classroom) that she had last year.

Baby quilt from before

2009-08-27T01:22:00.003-04:00

I feel like I haven't been posting as regularly as I should. Partly this is because it's summer and I just don't have that much time to sew. This will end next week, but for now, I thought I'd do a little show and tell from my pre-blog days.

Today I'm showing you my favorite baby quilt. This was for my friend Sandy's baby, Cassidy. She was born in January of 2008. The quilt uses something like 58 fabrics and came entirely from my stash (except the borders and backing). I had shown Sandy some quilt magazines and she kept saying things like, "I like this one, but with a little more red and yellow." It's a pretty big quilt for a baby quilt. Those are my husband's feet and he's slightly over 6 feet tall.It was really quite a challenge to lay out. I separated blocks into ones with red, yellow, both and neither. I don't have a big design wall so this was done on the family room floor.

When I decided to just do straight lines for the interior quilting, I thought it would be a piece of cake. It ends up that I was able to quilt just two lines for the entire inside (they bounce off the borders). The difficultly was in that at some corners, I ended up having to shove the entire quilt through the space in the sewing machine. If I had meandered or done some other kind of free-motion quilting, the most I'd have to deal with would be half the quilt under the machine at once. But I am happy with the way the quilting came out.

Round robin

2009-08-21T23:44:00.005-04:00

Have you ever been in a round robin? I highly recommend doing one if you haven't. They're a great way to flex your creative muscle. Since you never know what you're going to get, you end up have to come up with a way to make it work, even if the piece you have has unusual colors or measurements that seem to be from another planet.

The round robin I'm in now is the fifth one I've been in. Two others were with my Monday night quilt group (as is this one), one was with a group at the shop and the other was with the guild. That last one didn't go very well, but that's another story.

Anyway, my Monday night group is doing another one. There are twelve of us participating, and my sister who lives in Oklahoma is one of them. There are enough that we have split into two groups. In this case, we're doing row quilts. So, you make your row, then pass it on and receive a row from someone else. In the end, you get your row back, with other rows, made by other people, as part of the quilt. Amy is in this round robin, too, but she's in the other group.

So, here's my sister's row before I added anything to it. It's huge!
I can't show you all of my row, partly because it's supposed to be a secret (though my sister doesn't actually read my blog anyway, so it's not like it matters that much), and partly because I don't have it all done yet. It's not due until Monday night, so I have tons of time! This is a very small part of it, maybe 3 inches wide.
If you haven't tried paper piecing before, you should. It greatly expands the choices you have in blocks. You can do some amazing things with paper piecing.

Nervousness and underwear

2009-08-14T01:37:00.007-04:00

I can't sleep. I'm on medication that seems to make me very sensitive to caffeine. That, and I'm nervous about the Minnesota Road Show. Are you sick of hearing about it yet? I think I'm nervous because these classes, short as they are, come with outlines which are close to scripts. So I'm anxious because I feel like I may miss something. I'm much better when I get to talk off the top of my head (I try my best not to talk in the other direction, if you know what I mean). Anyway, I have quilted the step-out piece for the tote bag section I'm doing.
Complete with little flowers. I used a shop machine and took my chances with the needle. I figured, it wasn't a big piece and I wasn't using especially thick thread. However, the thread broke a couple of times and I ended up borrowing a topstitch needle from someone else who was there. It turns out I was using a jeans needle. So, if you ever feel like trying to quilt with a jeans needle, don't bother. It's not worth the hassle.
Also, I had to go to the dreaded WalMart (I hate shopping there but we had a gift card) and bought some underwear for Amy. Can you blame me? I think they'll be way too big for her, though.

Demo sample making and yummy food

2009-08-08T23:06:00.004-04:00

I haven't been sewing much lately. My back has been sore and I was worried about hurting it again. But, deadlines loom, so here we go again! Tonight I worked on a demo piece for the Minnesota Road Show. It's the body of the Farmer's Market Tote. I will essentially stop this one about halfway through, just before assembling the bag, so people can see what the piecing looks like. The fabrics for this one are very different from the last one I made. This one has big, bold prints.
Also, RT made some fantastic shish kabobs last week on the grill. They were marinated sirloin and they looked so yummy I had to take a photo (sorry to any vegetarians out there):

Mending day and a little applique

2009-08-01T16:03:00.004-04:00

So, remember the twirly skirt I made Molly a while back? I had bought a white t-shirt so that I could applique one of the motifs onto it and I finally did it! I also applied some crystals, because a little sparkle never hurts. It's a little puckery, but I am too lazy to have used stabilizer, aside from the Wonder-Under that's fusing them together.
She loves it! I also fixed an old Gap dress (from a yard sale) of hers. I swear it was made with the cheapest thread imaginable. I've had to fix nearly every seam on the thing. And I fixed a stuffed animal and a little beanbag. She's happy. You can see part of my stash behind her here. Yes, I have two drawers dedicated to purple. Want to make something of it? And the plastic bin is full of my scraps. It's bursting.
RT even got into the mending spirit. Here he is reapplying a button, all by himself!

Good as new!

2009-07-25T21:37:00.002-04:00

Snickers seems to have made a full recovery! We took her to the vet on Tuesday afternoon and she was already perkier than she had been for a day and a half. The vet gave her a once-over and didn't find anything unusual. So, she took blood and we got the results Wednesday night. Everything looked fine, except a few abnormalities. Her liver enzymes (maybe?) were off, but the vet said that can be a result of old age and if anything they were good for a dog her age. And her white blood cell count was up, but if she had some sort of infection or illness, that could account for that. The thing the vet found most alarming (other than our story of her behavior) is that she had lost five pounds. And really, by Wednesday evening, she was more or less back to normal. She now gets some wet dog food (which she LOVES) to help put on a couple pounds again. She's always been svelte and is now looking positively skinny.

So we think that she just got sick and had a much harder time fighting it off than she would have a few years ago because she's older. We'll take her in to get weighed in about three weeks. Other than that, things are fine as far as the canine member of our household. Yippee!

The last bag for now

2009-07-21T22:46:00.004-04:00

This is the final bag I've made for the Minnesota Road Show. It's from another Terri Atkinson book. I'm having a moment. I can't remember if it's from Happy Hour or Let's Do Lunch. I know it's one of those! Probably Happy Hour, but don't quote me. Anyway, I'm happy with how it turned out. The diamond is actually a pocket (set askew).
Here's a closeup of the quilting. I used fabrics from the Rhythm and Blues line from Red Rooster.
In other news, I'm worried about our dog, Snickers. She's been acting pretty sick lately. She didn't eat anything except a little bread all of yesterday and most of today. I did entice her to eat some wet dog food tonight after I got home from work (she normally gets only dry). She's also lost five pounds since we took her in for shots about a month to six weeks ago (though I think at least a pound of that was from shedding her winter coat). She had a really hard time getting up and peed and pooped in the house a couple times, which is really unheard of for her. Here's a photo of her enjoying the freak snow we got this past winter.
Snickers is a 14 year old Belgian Malinois. We got her from the Humane Society when she was seven years old. She's a very sweet dog. Since we've moved to Virginia from Wisconsin, she's suffered from terrible allergies and has lost most of her hearing due to ear infections.

Anyway, she's a little perkier this afternoon (when we took her to the vet) and evening so she may hold on for a while. But I felt I wanted to post about her now, while I can. I really thought she might die last night. But nope; she's wagging at me right now.

Tie dyed t-shirts

2009-07-14T21:48:00.004-04:00

Molly and I took a class with Monica at Quilting Adventures for making tie dye t-shirts. Molly is technically a little young, but I was there to help her. It was great fun! Here are her creations:

The blue and red stripey one was done by folding, and the red, yellow and orange one was done by twisting it around a clothespin and then rubber banding it to death.

My friend Sheila was there with her two nephews, and Amy was there with her two kids. Here's a photo of Amy and Monica.
And then I just had to add this photo of Molly laughing. How I love this kid.

It's... another bag!

2009-07-02T22:56:00.005-04:00

Here's another bag for the Minnesota Road Show. This one is called Terry's Tote and it's from the Terry Atkinson book Happy Hour. It was super easy; I finished it in about an hour and a half start to finish. It took three fat quarters, a half yard of lining and batting. The stuffed handles are kind of cool, though I feel like they might not hold a lot. I have to figure out how to attach them more securely if I'm going to carry anything in this (they're just tacked on by hand now).

It's a bag!

2009-06-30T14:33:00.003-04:00

I made another sample for the Minnesota Road Show in August. I, along with another teacher, will be doing demos all day long! This is a tote bag made from a Terry Atkinson book called Let's Do Lunch. I love Terry Atkinson patterns. This one is a quilted tote. The lining is simply the back side of the quilt sandwich. It even has a pocket inside with a zipper. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've installed a zipper! Anyway, I love the colors and can't wait to get it back so I can use it myself!

Father's Day gift and finished table runner (well, almost)

2009-06-24T08:44:00.008-04:00

So, it's a little late, but I thought I'd post photos of the absolutely fabulous frame Molly made for RT for Father's Day. The frame was a very cheap one from Michael's; so cheap, in fact, that it didn't come with glass, so Molly's photo got a little wrinkled. We have more, though. Most of these buttons were harvested from the pants I used for the golf pants quilt. If you look closely at some of the ones on the left side of the frame, you'll see an S. Yeah, that's for Sansabelt!
Here's a closeup of the work. There's lots of glitter! I'm still finding blue glitter in my cereal in the mornings.
Oh, and in quilting news, I finished the curved piecing table runner for the Minnesota Road Show. Well, except some of the hand stitching on the binding.
Here's a closeup of the quilting. This is the closest I've ever come to quilting feathers. I tried to replicate the viney plants in the blue fabric. It's hard to see, but I did the same in the blue areas, too.

Row Round Robin

2009-06-18T12:55:00.002-04:00

Tonight is the start of my Monday night quilt group's round robin. This year we're doing row quilts. It's the same round robin that Amy is in, but there are so many of us participating (12, I think), that we split into two groups. We swap every other month, so, the first group had their first swap in May. This way everyone gets to see some new progress every month. We do our round robins as surprises, so the owner (the person who did the first row) won't see it until the end. This means that I won't be able to post very many details about them for the next year or so. You'll have to wait until the very end!

Aaaaaanyway, I enjoyed the curved piecing so much, I decided to go with it some more. I managed to break the shaft part of my Curve Master foot, but that's okay. I also discovered that I don't actually need the adapter they give you. This design was similar to what I have had in mind for this row quilt all along; it's just executed a little differently. Here is my row. It's nearly width of fabric:

It's supposed to look like water. So people can add sky, fish, plants, whatever they want. Here's a closeup:
Goodbye, sweet little row! See you at the end of next summer!

Wordle!

2009-06-12T15:18:00.004-04:00

Check out my Wordle!You can make your own at http://www.wordle.net. All I did was copy and paste from the last page's worth of posts, and took out common things like "posted by Cheryl at blah blah blah." Some of this appears to get cut off, at least in my browser. But you get the gist of it. Fun stuff!

Curved piecing!

2009-06-07T00:19:00.002-04:00

I'm making a shop sample of a table runner that involves curved piecing. I've done a little (very little) dabbling before, but this is really the most I've done. There will be leftover curved pieces as the border. I'm using the Curve Master foot and it's awesome. This was so easy, and zero pinning. Really!

Crabtree Falls

2009-06-02T16:22:00.005-04:00

We went on a hike to Crabtree Falls on Saturday. It was great fun but I'm still sore! Snickers, our 14-year-old dog came along, too.

Molly was very excited.
Here you can see the bottom of the falls. The steps you see behind are part of the hike. It's about 1.1 mile, but mostly up!
The falls went all the way up the mountain.
We saw lots of these pretty white flowers. Anyone know what they are?
A tired trio. But we had fun!

Birdie sling

2009-05-27T23:39:00.002-04:00

So, I made a Birdie Sling in a class on Monday. This is a typically horrible photo of me.
And Molly got to hold Amy's new puppy!

Quilting progress

2009-05-25T00:17:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's been a busy weekend! So far, we spent much of Saturday at a birthday party and doing some shopping. Today I worked. Tomorrow I'm in a class at the shop (and hope to have more to show from that tomorrow) and my Monday night quilt group.

I also got the top of the golf pants quilt finished!
I spray basted with with 505, and added a couple of pins for insurance. The thing is heavy, even though it's not very big. I ended up going with thin batting because of that. Some of the wool is very thick. I also have almost 2/3 of the quilting done. I hope to get more done tomorrow morning before my class so I don't have to change everything on my machine around and then change it back again. Plus, I'm encouraged by how much quilting I got done tonight.

Golf pants quilt progress

2009-05-21T11:20:00.005-04:00

Well, I have over half the top finished! I started this morning with only blocks, and some were not even trimmed yet! So, I'm happy. I might even be able to finish the rest of the top this afternoon.
If I do another one of these, I will definitely use half inch seam allowances. All the squishy wools make the seam allowances seem to shrink. And boy, am I happy I used muslin. This is three rows; there will be five in total.

Ironing has been challenging, too. Because there is wool, cotton, poly, and a few unknowns in here, I'm afraid to turn my iron up high enough to get some of the fabrics to lay flat. Ah, well, it should quilt out. :-)

Sing the praises of pants!

2009-05-09T22:23:00.005-04:00

I'm working on my first commission. Well, kind of. I once quilted a very small wall hanging for someone who was putting it in a craft fair. But this is the first quilt commission. I'm making a throw out of a deceased gentleman's golf pants. My cutting area is overrun with pants!I'm doing a simple square in a square. This block is deceiving because the center pants happened to be patchwork already. In reality, there are only two fabrics per block.
So far I have 14 out of 30 blocks done. I'm trying for contrast between the two fabrics so that in the end I can alternate between light and dark for the outsides of the blocks. They'll be set 5 x 6 and the blocks will be trimmed to 9 inches finished (I hope). I am piecing them on muslin, which is a decision I'm glad I made. You can see here where I've done a little fussy cutting.
Wish me luck on this project. They're not the fabrics I'd normally work with, but it's been reflective for me. Plus, getting paid for making a quilt is very nice! If you don't hear from me in a few days, listen for muffled sounds coming from my sewing room. If so, send help!

Hey now, I'm a rock star

2009-05-06T10:48:00.004-04:00

That song has been in my head since yesterday. Anyway, I found out late last week that this week is Teacher Appreciation Week and that our classroom families were going to make dinners for Molly's teacher and the assistant teacher. Since there are 21 or 22 families involved, it seemed like that might be a lot of food. So I volunteered to make placemats for them instead. This was late last week, but I had so much momentum going on the castle tote bag that I didn't want to stop doing that. So I started the placemats yesterday morning. And I finished them just after midnight last night. Molly had a long day at school, which helped, but I also worked in the evening, which didn't help.

I first worked on this set for the assistant teacher. I found out that she likes bright, trendy, Amy Butler-ish fabrics. These aren't Amy Butler fabrics, and they aren't even all from the same line, but they go well together. I made the tops from some leftovers from a class sample I did (which also happened to be placemats).The next placemats are for Molly's teacher. She likes dark colors (especially purple) and clean lines. The colors here look much brighter than the placemats do in real life. That one on the top left does not read a pink when you see it in person and the purple border is much darker.
For both sets I made the backs about one inch larger than the fronts and batting, and then wrapped the back to the front for the binding. I normally wouldn't do this, but I wouldn't have been able to hand stitch eight bindings even if I had started these as soon as I heard about the dinners. So this was my solution.

On the first set, I used Steam a Seam, which I had used on the auction quilt, and it worked fine there. But it didn't work fine here. My needle kept getting caught by the SaS and skipped a bunch of stitches. I didn't realize at first why the machine was skipping stitches (and panicked, thinking I wouldn't be able to do the second set), but finally realized why. When I did this on the auction quilt, though, I stitched from the front, so the needle was going through the batting before the binding and SaS. Could this have made the difference? Also, the binding on the auction quilt was bigger so my needle might not have been actually going through the SaS. So, for the second set of placemats, I just used binder clips. This worked well and it will be the way I do this in the future if I do bindings this way.

The other issue I found was that I was unable to truly miter the corner's perfectly. So the corners of the bindings meet, but there's a gap at the corner of the placemat. The effect is that it looks a little like the corners get chopped off. On the plus side, they all look like that, so it looks consistent at least. I also didn't have time to quilt the placemats, so they'll have to be spot clean only unless they want to give them back for a day or two so I can quilt them.

Castle Tote

2009-05-02T13:57:00.003-04:00

I don't know if you remember the tote bag pattern I bought at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, but I'm finally working on it. It's been taking a long time to make! There are many parts. I've actually done more than what you see here, but you get the general gist of it. There are two pockets on each side, a large one and a small one. The piece on the right will be a round tower and the red will be the tower roof. One will go on each side. I took this photo a couple days ago; now I actually have some pieces quilted. I'm quilting them with green variegated thread to look like vines. The windows are fused on and I still have to satin stitch around them. I'm not great at satin stitch, so we'll see how it goes. The pattern (Castle Keeper Tote by Needlesongs) is well written, if long and intimidating. But the only unsewing I've had to do was when I made a mistake, either by not paying attention (hello, it's right sides together!), or by not actually following the instructions and realizing that yes, she knew what she was saying when she said "a smidgen." If I make it again, I think I might change the order of the quilt sandwich, though. There is some stiff interfacing inside along with batting. The order she has you sew it causes the interfacing to be on the outside and the batting on the inside. I think it might look better if the batting were on the outside. But then it might look too quilty. We'll see. Anyway, I'm very excited to get it done, even though I have other projects breathing down my neck.

New beginner class

2009-04-26T20:50:00.004-04:00

I have a new beginner class coming up called Four Patch Lightning. Here's the sample:
I just finished it a few days ago, so it counts as a Spring to Finish! The class is a replacement for my other class, which, while fun, had a few drawbacks. One is that it didn't have real borders. The other was that it just had too many fabrics, so was hard to buy for. This one should go better, I think.

Online Quilt Festival

2009-04-22T15:51:00.003-04:00

Amy at Park City Girl is holding an Online Quilt Festival. Here's my entry. It's the art quilt that I made for my daughter's school fundraising auction. I had each child in her class (it's full of three-, four- and five-year-olds) dye fabric with Dye-Na-Flow, then made them into this quilt. There's lots of beads and some embroidery, too. The whole story is scattered around on my blog, since I started the blog partially so that the parents could keep track of the quilt.

Twirly skirt done!

2009-04-19T20:37:00.003-04:00

Okay, the twirly skirt is done! I put some giant rick-rack on the bottom. Molly can't wait to wear it to school tomorrow. She had to try it on tonight, post-bath wet hair and all.

It's VERY twirly!

A cute Molly story: We were at Home Depot and there was a bag of fertilizer spilled on the ground. She asked what it was called and after we told her she kept referring to it as "turtleizer."

Twirly skirt!

2009-04-18T08:25:00.005-04:00

So I decided after dinner last night to make a twirly skirt for Molly. It's a fairly easy pattern, except that I made it on the fuller side, which made the gathering a pain. The pattern is from Angela's blog Dangit Ange! and her website Cornpatch Creations and I found her links on Beth's Sew Mama Sew! site. Whew! That's a lot of URLs.

Anyway, I think I may invest in a ruffler foot if my girly girl keeps wanting twirly skirts. I need to stop by the shop today to see if I can find some cute trim for the bottom of the skirt. It's also a little short, so I am going to find some cheap Target shorts for her to wear underneath. I'm also going to get her a full length mirror for the back of her door. That will keep her occupied for hours.

As usual, the photo doesn't get the colors quite right. I don't know if it's my camera or my monitor or what. I'll post another photo after the trim is on the she's wearing it. That could be this afternoon!

Graduation/College quilt

2009-04-16T11:06:00.004-04:00

I'm so sorry I've been bad about posting. Last week was spring break and we went to DC for a few days and somehow this four day vacation took three days of planning ahead of time! Anyway. I'm working on a few projects and might have a finished one to show you in the next few days. In the meantime, here are some blocks on a design wall to show what the quilt for my niece will look like. She's graduating from high school this year. I hope to get it to her before college starts! She picked out almost all the fabrics herself. They're mostly very large prints, so these are just going to be 8 inch finished squares. The photos here doesn't really do the colors justice. The whole thing is much airier looking in reality. Not sure how to quilt it, though. Any suggestions? It will be a twin.

Spring to Finish

2009-04-07T20:47:00.002-04:00

Jacquie at Tallgrass Prarie Studio is doing a little motivational contest. The idea is to finish as many projects by the end of April as possible. I'm in! I have way too many projects (and have two or three more in my head). I'm going to finish as many as I can, starting after we get back from Washington, DC.

Buncha photos

2009-03-31T15:33:00.008-04:00

First off, I need to thank Ana at A Sew Groovy Chick for her kind words and award. One of these days I will do my own awards. However, as you may have noticed, I've been so busy I've hardly posted at all! I will pay it forward eventually, I promise. Not saying how long it will take, but I'll do it. :-)

Okay, on to photos! I finally finished my pencil roll (sort of like Amy's). It will be a birthday gift for Molly's friend Sarah. It doesn't lie very flat with the pencils in it. Oh well.

I also finished a class sample for the Scrap Sack. It's a Scrap Therapy project. This one will take two classes, I think. The photo is a little blurry.
Finally is a quilt that I was using as a sample for my beginner class. However, we have decided that it's not a good candidate for teaching people how to quilt. So it's going to my new great-nephew.
Here is the back.

Final auction quilt posting

2009-03-29T01:06:00.000-04:00

Hey there. I'm tired but I wanted everyone to know that the auction quilt went for $700. This is actually a little low compared to some of the class projects, but I was told by a number of people that the amount things go for often has more to do with which parents are in the class than what the project actually is. I got a lot of really good comments about it. The person who won it isn't even a parent from Molly's class. She just loved it!

Class sample

2009-03-21T23:35:00.003-04:00

I finished the top for a new class sample today. It's called Lucky Stars. I think it will be a three session class for people who've taken a beginning class but still want to go kind of slowly. This photo looks a little skewed because it was turned 90 degrees.

Done, and done!

2009-03-18T09:45:00.006-04:00

The auction quilt is officially done and turned over to the school. It's still on display in the lobby, along with the other auction projects. I had to take it back to do some final beading because there were two buildings with no beading whatsoever. Also, I needed to put a little dab of glue on each beading knot. This actually took more time than expected. The glue is to make sure the knots don't unravel over time. The beading thread is at once slippery and sticky. It's very fibrous, and feels kind of like dental floss. But at the same time, it's sticky. If my thread knotted unexpectedly while I was drawing it through the quilt, I often couldn't get the knot undone. This was especially true when I didn't have a certain color thread and therefore used a Sharpie to make white thread the desired color. I have many of the cool colors of thread — blue, teals, a couple of shades of purple — but I didn't have orange or red.

This is one of the blocks I beaded last. It's turned sideways here. It's technically beaded fringe, but it stands up off of the quilt. Only the ends of the fringe pieces are sewn down. I can't decide if it looks good or it looks like the building is being attacked by some sort of plant-like aliens. Eh, what's done is done!

Here is the back. Everyone always comments on the back, and since it's often the first thing they see, especially if I'm pulling the quilt out of a bag, they think that's it! Don't tell anyone, but the fabric is 90 degrees off. You can tell if you look at the flowers and their stems. I did a double hanging sleeve because the quilt is wider than one length of fabric and I was feeling stingy. Plus, that's one more place to anchor it on. The label has a map of the quilt which is numbered along with a key telling people which child did which building. There's also an explanation of the ingredients and techniques. And how to care for it. I always feel a little self conscious putting labels on quilts, but not in this case. I also put a copyright on there for my design. I hope that wasn't too obnoxious.

For those who are on facebook, I'll post a bunch of photos, including closeups of most of the buildings. And now I get to take it off of my UFO list!

Class sample

2009-03-11T16:35:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I posted, I know. Part of it was burnout from the auction quilt. The other part was warm weather over the weekend. I have been working on a new class sample. It's a Terry Atkinson pattern called Lucky Stars. I'll be teaching it in a follow-up to my beginner class. I have to say, this pattern is one of the best written patterns I've used. It's very detailed and it's obvious that she's actually made the quilt (as opposed to writing a pattern straight out of EQ6 or the writer's brain). It's also very forgiving. Anyway, there will be scrappy rectangles surrounding each block. I'm hoping to have the sample done by later this week. The spring colors are fun, and it's unusual for me to use a white background (or any neutral, really). I'm just strange that way.