Still lucky............................

I guess my lucky streak from Dec. & Jan. must still be in force. Last night at quilt club I won the door prize that Jane brought, a casserole carrier, a small wallet and eight BRIGHT fat quarters. She made the casserole carrier & wallet. Thank you, Jane.

We met at the library and everyone made it even though it was kind of nasty out with rain and wind. Linda P. hosted and fed us way to well, like she always does............and we all enjoy every bite!!

Today I sewed together a gazillion little 3 1/2" nine patches for the Double Delight. They're pressed but I still need to square them up. Maybe I'd be able to get away without doing that step but I've found that quilts with this many little pieces in each block go together so much better if I take the time to do it.

My sympathies go out to the Australians who have lost homes & loved ones in the fires. It's hard for me to imagine such huge fires, traveling so fast and burning hundreds of thousands of acres. It's so far away and yet the Internet brings it all so close. And now I read that tornadoes struck already in Oklahoma. It's so early in the year for that. One can only wonder what the rest of the year will bring.

I Must Be Really Slow...........................

My MLK Day of Service became more like a week of service. Last Saturday night I got out my drawer of r/w/b strips and my foundation pieces, cut the center strips cut and pinned them on the foundations so they were all ready to start sewing. Got started on that Sunday afternoon because I had to work Monday & then go to a granddaughter's basketball game. By Monday night I had 20 blocks done and it took me until yesterday afternoon to get the quilt top finished. I must be really slow.......... I want a patriotic print on the back & for a matching pillowcase so the quilting will have to wait until I get to town. I'll post a picture when it's all quilted & bound.

Cuttin' Up

It was so cold Tues. & Wed. that the best thing to do was stay inside and work on quilt projects. I spent quite a bit of time cutting pieces for the Double Delight mystery. Didn't get to do much on Thurs. since I worked at the library, but today I was back at it. While the pattern was offered in steps as a mystery I didn't start cutting until I had printed out all the steps. Then I started cutting..and cutting..and cutting, until this is what my Double Delight looks like at this point. Now I can sew..and sew..and sew. And THEN I get to trim...and trim...and trim. (Not really looking forward to that part.)

It's a big one

Here's a picture of the quilt I finished quilting last night.It's a big one.....99 x 102. The back is pieced out of leftover fabric from the blocks and sashing for a total coordinated look. The canvas leaders on my 10 ft. Premier table are 104 in. long so this quilt was pushing the limits. I know now how big I can go. I hope the young lady who pieced it will be pleased. It's a present for her boyfriend so I quilted it in a nice, gender-neutral pantograph called "Deb's Swirls." I really like that pattern and have used it on three other sports themed quilts. It's pretty but not girly looking and goes fast because it's a nice size.

Should I?...........Or Should't I?

Tonight when I should have been going to bed I opened up my fabric cabinets and started pulling out fabrics that would work for the New Year's Eve mystery quilt at quiltville.com. I don't really need to start another project & it definitely doesn't meet my goal of finishing things that are started. However, all the fabric IS from stash, and that meets the goal of using what I have. I have several quilt tops of my own that need to be quilted and a king size customer quilt that will take a while to finish. Why am I even considering starting another project? Especially one with as many small pieces as this one. Am I insane? The strange thing is that I have been thinking about how to make a quilt with blue, brown and pink and along comes Bonnie with this pattern. Maybe I'm meant to make it. Maybe it's destiny. Maybe it's karma. But not before I finish a couple of other things, I think. Problem is, now my mind is racing & I probably won't be able to sleep. Oh well, I can sleep in.

Cat blocks for Heartstrings finished

This is where I have been this afternoon.

Started out with this pile of pieces

and ended up with this set of blocks for the Heartstrings virtual block party for New Years Eve & New Years Day. They are very bright & cheerful & the quilt made from these will keep some child nice and warm.

These blocks are really quick & fun to sew. It's no wonder they're called Happy Blocks. The cutting is what takes the time. I have another two sets of 48 cut out and ready to sew so will work on that this evening and tomorrow.

Heartstrings Happy Blocks

These two piles are fabrics I dug out of my stash this morning to make Happy Blocks for the Heartstrings New Year's Happy Block party. The request is for bright, cheery fabrics for quilts for children, with novelty prints in the center and solids or tone-on-tones for the outsides of the blocks. The pile on the left is novelty fabrics left over from the alphabet quilts I made for my grandchildren, with coordinating TOTs. The pile on the right is bright cat prints with my hand-dyes for the outside strips. I'll make a complete set out of the cat prints and as many as I can out of the other novelties. This project starts out on New Year's Eve day and continues through February so there's plenty of time for making blocks. The blocks collected by Heartstrings for this project will make quilts for children who need something to brighten their days.

What I've Been Doing

Here's the quilt on my "design floor" that I put together on Friday. The blocks and pieced border pieces had been done for a couple months. I showed parts & pieces of it in an earlier post. Now I'm trying to decide if I want to put borders on it out of the fabric I bought for that purpose or just quit with the pieced borders and bind it in either black or strips of the hand-dyes pieced together scrappy fashion. Here's a couple pictures with the border fabric laid beside the quilt. What do you think?


I'd like to give credit where credit is due for this quilt design. I THINK it may be one of Judy L.'s QFAH projects. I made it from a picture I had saved from the Internet and didn't make a note of where it came from. I thought I would remember, can you believe that? :-)

What have I been doing?

Today I finished quilting the brown/cream/black "camper" quilt. I showed a picture of it before, as a top, so don't have one here. It turned out pretty good, though there was a tension issue on one row. If the back wasn't such a busy print I would have had to rip out the whole row & do it over, but as it is, I just left it. It feels a bit rough on the back but I think it will be OK. The thread came out of the intermittent tension and caused the problem.

Yesterday was the special assessor's recall election. A loooooooooong day. Worked 13 1/2 hrs at the polls, then made a 50 mi. round trip to the courthouse to deliver the ballots and that blasted, heavy, awkward voting machine that no one uses. The heater on my car doesn't work very well anymore and by the time I got home I was so cold I thought I'd never get warm. To illustrate---even though I started it 15 min. before I left the polls I had to stop at the 2-mile corner to scrape frost off the INSIDE of the windshield because I couldn't see out any more. Might as well borrow a horse & buggy from the Amish.

It was pretty cold here again today but the sun was shining and all the snow we got yesterday looked really pretty. Pretty cold. It's getting late, I have to work at the library tomorrow, so nighty-night.

One done!!

I just finished quilting my first customer quilt. The lady who pieced it is legally blind. She has help with the cutting but she does the sewing herself. She did a pretty darned good job. I have another one just like it to do for her too. Then I'll make and attach the bindings and a lady who helps her out will do the handwork.

Last night we had our FCE/Extension Club Christmas Party. One of our members invited us to her house and she & her husband cooked us a variety of Italian foods. It was all yummy but the tiramisu for dessert was wonderful. We all decided that her husband should give lessons to ours. He enjoys cooking, doesn't mind shopping, and while we were sitting around visiting he was in the kitchen cleaning up. What's not to like? I just wish I had taken my camera along to take a picture of the table. Jana has a knack for setting a pretty table.

Great food, nice gifts, grab bag fun and time spent visiting with friends. What more could we ask for? Well, maybe for our husbands to be more like Steve, but that isn't likely to happen.

Happy Monday

Well, at least the sun is trying to shine. We had a little dusting of snow overnight that is already starting to melt.

We had a nice quiet weekend, I had to work at the library on Saturday and my husband went to a late Thanksgiving potluck at his brother's. First thing that morning we went to Plainview to get my car, it needed to have the water pump replaced. I got the backing seamed and squared up for the "camper" quilt. It's all laying on the quilt machine table waiting to be loaded. I should have gotten that done yesterday but I was just too darned lazy!!

Last night I watched four episodes of Eureka on the computer. I always liked that show, but I don't think it's on any more. I like being able to watch shows online when I miss them on TV. The original CSI has always been a favorite & it's on on Thursday nights when I have to work at the library. Too bad CBS only keeps two weeks worth online, which I discovered when it was too late to see the first few shows of the new season. I totally missed Warrick getting killed and there was such a hullaballoo about that. But, hey, ABC keeps whole seasons online and I can watch all the Lost I want.

Saturday at the library turned out to be kind of busy so I'm hoping today will be quieter. I need to prepare for the Library Board meeting later this afternoon and I have a bunch of new books setting here that are cataloged but need to be processed for the shelves---spine labels, AR labels, stamped, plastic jacket cover put on. This time of year the patrons read more and it can be hard to keep something new and fresh ready for them.

Beginning the Season of Madness

We had a great Thanksgiving with family, everybody ate way too much, didn't even have room for much dessert. I took four pies to my daughter's for our TD supper and brought the biggest share back home. That's OK, pumpkin pie always tastes the best the next morning for breakfast, with a nice, hot cup of coffee. Left some pumpkin pie there since my younger GD wasn't feeling well and didn't get her fair share.After supper we spent some time going through the ads for today. Nothing popped out at me that would cause me to get up way before the crack of dawn & drive 60 mi. to Norfolk to fight the crowds. It's insane. I'd much rather sit in my recliner with my laptop on my lap & my credit card on the table beside me and shop online. So far, I've only bought one gift in an actual store. Like the title says, it's the season of madness, and I'd just as soon not participate too much.

Before we left yesterday I got the last two borders put on the "camper quilt" so now it's a completed top. I like the way it turned out. I thought the side borders might have a little bit of fullness even though I measured & measured & measured. I'll have to square up the corners & look them over again before I put it on the frame. If I still think they're too full I'll hit them with a hot steam iron & see if that helps. I haven't decided which pantograph pattern I'll use for the quilting, it's always a hard choice.

Since the day after Thanksgiving is the traditional day to start putting up Christmas decorations, I changed my blog background to a Christmas theme. Have you tried any of the backtrounds from TheCutestBlogOnTheBlock? They have so many pretty ones it's hard to choose.

Been sewin'

Last night about 9:15 I sat down to sew and got the blocks for my brown/tan/black "camper" quilt put together into a top. This picture isn't the greatest since I took it at night and couldn't get far enough back for a good picture. Today I want to get the first inner border put on and get the outside border cut and pieced. I want a black border between the two but discovered that I don't have enough of any one black fabric on hand to make one. I have some ordered from Keepsake Quilting that should be getting here any day and then will be able to finish. I've seen some of these Disappearing Nine-Patch quilts that I really didn't like but I think this one is turning out well. Here's a tutorial on making the Disappearing 9-Patch: http://quiltsatcs.blogspot.com/2007/04/disappearing-9-patch-tutorial.html .

NOT "No Buy"

I read quite a few blogs and email lists, including Stashbusters, and a lot of the participants are going "no buy". For some it's just fabric, but for others it includes books, tools, gadgets, whatever. The only things you are allowed to buy are things necessary to finish a project, such as batting, backing, sashing or setting fabric that you can't find in your existing stash. I don't buy nearly as much quilting fabric and quilting "stuff" as some quilters do, but I do try to "stimulate" the quilting economy ocassionally, as shown in this picture.

The quilt shop in O'Neill, Quilter's Candy Shoppe, hosts birthday parties for customers. I attended one for my friend Flicsha on Wednesday. The shop offers 15% discounts for guests, so we all get presents! :) I have plans for all the pieces except maybe for the small pile of remnants in the upper left corner, which I bought because I get tired of looking at the same stuff in my strip drawers all the time. I bought the Christmas prints just because I like them and I think I might be able to use them to put together a quilt from some Christmas blocks my group exchanged at our Christmas party a few years back and a panel I got as a gift or door prize or something. The rulers are to replace my old ones that are getting in pretty bad shape after all the years of use.I just love those Creative Grid rulers & I DESERVE them. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

What's been keeping me busy lately

Here's some of the things keeping me busy lately. This is Quilt #2 quilted on my Gammill Premier Plus. It's one of my eBay tops and is prettier in the picture than it is in person. Still needs to be trimmed and bound to be called finished.


The pantograph I used is called "Swirl" by Norma Sharp.





And, here are some quilt blocks and pieces waiting to be pressed. Progress on this quilt top has been slow and part of the reason is pictured below.



I've been dehydrating pears for the last two weeks and that's what is in the small dehydrator. The big one is my new Excaliber 2900 with nine trays. It's full of Golden Delicious apples sprinkled with a little cinnamon sugar. It holds about 3/4 of a 5 gal. bucket of apples and is wonderful. The little one holds about 12 sliced pears so I suppose it would hold about the same amount of apples. I'd be doing this till Christmas!!

I really, really wish blogger would make it a little easier to put the pictures where you want them. It seems like no matter how I try to position them, they go wherever they want.

My Baby....................

I've talked about my quilting machine in previous posts so here's a picture. It's a Gammill Premier Plus on a 10 ft. table. That's all the bigger I had room for -- both room size and purse size! LOL

That's the only actual quilt I've done since I got it over two months ago. I have some not-so-beautiful tops purchased on eBay that I'm going to use as practice pieces. Only problem was that I didn't have backings & batting so made a flying trip to O'Neill last Friday to get some. There's at least 35 yds in this pile. Not so good for my quilt club goal of using what I have but it's needed to finish projects and that's allowed.

I'll start with the least-beautiful eBay top and work my way to the one I like the best. Maybe by then my quilting will have improved enough to tackle one of the tops I pieced myself and REALLY like. Don't know what I'll do with the practice quilts, guess they could always ride in the trunk of the car in the winter or become donation quilts. While they may not be the most beautiful quilts ever made they will keep someone warm.

Something Quilty

Even though there were two buckets of pears waiting for me to do something with I decided I'd rather sew today. So I did the second row of stitching on the corner pieces of my Indian Hatchet quarter blocks. When I trim the corners I'll cut between the two lines of stitching and have my quarter block and little HSTs to use in another project.

The Indian Hatchet blocks will be combined with these 16-patch blocks made of my hand-dyed fabrics to make the top.

Partial Indian Hatchet blocks & black & white strip sets cut to 5" will form the inside border. I have some black fabric with bright dots for the outside border. I'll have to remember to post a picture of the top when it's finished.