Waste not

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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).