New, new, new!

Lots of new things have been happening around here. Some of them good, some of them not good.

Not good? My dad. He's been having major health issues. So much that we know we're going to Michigan (for this third time this year) next week. And we may be going a lot more in the next several months. We couldn't see the logic in spending so much on hotels, etc. Plus, as you may know, we love to camp. Oh, and since RT passed his exam, he got a bonus. So all of this lead to us trading his old car, which was this:

The smallest car GM made that year.

for a new (to us) car, which is this:

Don't think they parked it there accidentally. Clever CarMax!

All so that we can tow this:

It's a popup trailer.

We tow it closed, of course.

Oh, and we're fostering this guy:

His name is Ollie. He is super sweet. He is 100% blind. In fact, he has no eyes, but he gets around just fine. If you know of anyone who might want to adopt him, let me know! He is next to no work. Unlike sighted dogs, he doesn't need lots of exercise or attention. But he loves people! We are still considering keeping him. We'll see how the Michigan trip goes!

I also tried out my gathering foot. Awesome! Who needs a ruffler? Not me!

And last, but certainly not least, I have tried a new pattern. It's Meg's Garden from Don't Look Now. It's part of a bee through the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. I am close to being ready to fuse it. I have tweaked it here and there since this photo was taken, but you get the idea.

 

Now, I've been told that I am a show-off. That I am a "big spender" and that I parade it around in front of people just to make them feel bad. I would hope that's not the case. RT has worked his ass off to get his Fellowship and he got rewarded for it. That went to the camper. The new (to us) car was a trade-in, and we didn't put extra money down, and now have a sizable payment to make. Rest assured, we are not drowning in money. We are FAR from rich. Our income is probably in the lowest 5% of RMS families. Anyway, I lost a friend over this, but I don't feel that I've done anything wrong. If you think I have, please let me know. I try very hard to not be a braggart.

Woo hoo! Over here!

Yes, it's been too long. I admit: I suck at updating this blog. Oh, who am I kidding? I suck at updating the RMQG blog, too. I guess I was not cut out to be a blogger. Oh well. But photos!

First is my new cutting table from IKEA. It's supposed to be for the kitchen, but it works great as a cutting table because it's counter-height. And look at all the drawers!

 Here's an in-progress photo of a small quilt I made for a high school friend that I reconnected with on Facebook. It makes me happy.

 Over the holidays, I realized I needed another gift for my father-in-law. So I took a photograph that he had taken and printed it out on fabric. Then I quilted it. Here, the binding is taking up too much of the photo (this is from before I had done the hand-stitching), but you get the idea. I think it came out pretty fantastic! I may try this with other photos in the future.

Stems!

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

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

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

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

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.