A lovely weekend

Not just a Lovely Weekend, I might just call it a Perfect Weekend. Much of every day of the long weekend was spent playing with fabric & sitting in front of my sewing machine. This sort of indulgence is a rarity for me & I really enjoyed it.

It began with an early & long gathering of the HMQG.

I admit, had I not committed to meet several guild members to join a carpool to the meeting, I might have blown it off. But, boy, would that have been my loss!

Jessica Darling, formerly of Remnants/Fiber Culture in Austin gave a lecture & led a workshop of color in quilts. Besides our Basic Sewing Supplies, we were instructed to bring scraps -- then ALL of our scraps were dumped into the center of the room -- making what Jessica called a "scrap mosh pit"; we picked our Color Party from the pile. Then we sewed. And sewed. And sewed.

On Sunday & Monday, I continued with my blocks from Saturday -- they're made & assembled, all they lack is one border & I have a top.

Earlier in the week, I had promised myself that I would assemble my Christmas tree blocks. The trees were all made, my back was assembled (I LOVE the back of this quilt, but you're going to have to wait a while to see it), then because it had outgrown my design door, I had pinned the back & the blocks to a quilt hanging in our hall.

But the Evil Demon Cat, Pippa (do NOT be taken in by her angelic publicity stills!) had, not once, not twice, but three times pulled down my trees. What the what, Crazy Girl!?! The first time she helped solve a design problem, the other times she just made me mad. So I had to put them together to remove Temptation. Now I have a Christmas Tree quilt top 3/4 done.

I hope your weekend was as good as mine!

Hasty piecing

I've had my Madrona Road fabrics for weeks. I had a kind of lofty idea for using them, but it was going to be a bit of a challenge, so I stalled. Finally, I thought, if I'm going to get anything done in any sort of timely way (I had already missed the deadline for the MQG competition) I was going to have to simplify. So I went with squares -- very simple. The sashing & setting was/is (it still isn't quite done) time-consuming. But it's about 3/4 done & I kind of like how it is shaping up.



I had also gotten out my swoon blocks. I arranged the colors to my liking, then gathered them up to work on after the Madrona Road top. Fortunately for Pippa, I didn't get to them. :-)

 

Why do we do it?

That is, open our doors to creatures -- furry, feathered, scale-y. We know that at the very least they are going to cost us money, they are probably going to disrupt our lives, they are very likely to do a bit of damage to our stuff. And most of the time, they are going to break our hearts.

We called Audrey our Good Karma cat. She showed up one morning a few months after my beloved gray cat, Zane, died. She was thin but very approachable. We gave her some food & water, went to work & wondered if she would be there when we go home. Of course, she was. She moved into the house that evening as though she were coming home. When we took her to the vet, we learned that she had worms, yeast infections in her ears & a pellet gun pellet in her side. She was so malnourished that you could hear her joints pop when she walked. The vet determined her to be about 12 years of age. We always wondered about her previous life & how she came to be on the street at such an age. That was almost exactly 7 years ago. She chose us to give her a comfortable old age & we were happy to provide it for her. We enjoyed her, she enjoyed us -- we loved her & I think she loved us.

But we had to let her go this week. Her kidneys were failing. Treatments helped for a while but she was losing the fight.

I can't speak for everyone but I will tell you why I keep bringing these heart-breakers into my life. Because pets are like icing on my cake. When life is good, they are that little bonus, a langiappe. And when things aren't so good, they are there to amuse, console, distract. I've loved every one of my pets & grieved their passing.



Rest in Peace, Audrey, we'll see you later.

Whose room is it anyway?

Many of us share our homes and our creative spaces with someone else--room-mates, partners, spouses, children, pets. Mostly for better, sometimes for worse.
Many of us, too, have had those moments when we return to a project that was left out in an unfinished state only to find it altered by our beloved. With luck, we will do a Marge Simpson growl, grab the camera to document it, then precede to right the wrong.

Then there the other times.

I've had a few of those over the years. There was the vest I was making back in the day of vests. It was nearly completed and hanging on a hangar on the doorknob when Shug, who had been eating chips, walked by and picked it up to examine and leave behind greasy fingerprints. There is the triangular tear in my 'opalescent quilt' that I am pretty sure Pippa made. The quilt was hanging on the wall and she is the cat who tends to think that the laws of gravity shouldn't apply to her. There was Louis' first weekend in our house. He had yet to use the litter box, not used to the flushable litter we get. I was watching him closely when I saw him get into the chair where I had left the pin-basted quilt I was hand-quilting. At first I thought how cute, he is going to curl up on the quilt. Then I realized he wasn't going to sleep on the quilt, he was going to pee on it. I had to let it dry so that I could hastily machine baste it, get the pins out and get it into the washing machine.

This weekend something that has happened before--so I really should have known better--happened. I had left laying out the parts and partially assembled pieces for Lily's Quilts Dresden plate QAL. At 7:30 in the morning they were fine, but when I went back into the room at 9:30 I discovered that one of the cats had ralphed all over them. Now those of you have cats know that they puke--they puke quite a lot. And like I said, this has happened before--having to wash out quilt pieces in the sink, scrub down the table. But my cats tend to let a long time pass in between 'events' so that I let my guard down.

Happy Birthday HMQG!

I didn't get much in the way of sewing done this weekend.
But the weekend was not a loss...because Saturday was our monthly meeting of the Houston Modern Quilt Guild! And it was our first anniversary! Now, I am sad to say that I was not one of the founding members, I joined in April or May, but I think am not going too far in saying that I am part of the core group. The big news is that we are growing so that it is now uncomfortable to meet in member's homes! I will be a little sad to loose the cozy, bee-feeling of our small group, but it is exciting that we are gathering more and more members.
I especially enjoyed this meeting because....I got birthday presents! Last month it was decided that the way we would deal with birthdays would be that the person's whose birthday it was last would give a gift--something handmade, a bit of fabric and a bit of chocolate--to the person whose birthday is next. I thought this was a very clever idea--and not just because I would be the first to benefit! My gift-giver was Safieh. Saf has done and continues to do lots of swaps and I am always amazed by her creativity and sewing ability. She gave me a couple of fat quarters, this very cute pouch (even though it says "pens & pencils" I will use it for sewing things), and some real French chocolate! I also got a bonus gift from Amy--a second pouch with her famous tiny hexagons!

 

The round and row robins continue, though many of them probably will soon be pulled as they are now big enough to be quilts. This time I brought home Fi's round. I've been looking forward to working on hers and have had fabric set aside for it for some time.



Our next group project is a charm square challenge. We are using Moda's Central Park by Kate Spain. Today (Sunday) I began pulling fabric--only half a yard!!!-- to use with it.



Many of us brought along our red, white and blue wonky stars for Jen. I mentioned before that she has made many, many Quilts of Valor but, because of shoulder surgery was going to have trouble meeting her promised quota---HMQG to the rescue! See our work here.

I also pushed the dust mop around and though I didn't get to the vacuuming, I don't feel that the weekend was a loss!

Pretty good weekend

In spite of this sign of End Times--right at the foot of the bed!!!--I got up and got through the day unharmed.



After a week of frigid temperatures (I know we on the Third Coast are wimps about the cold, but it was in the upper 20s F (-0 C) this week! That is COLD by anyone's measurement!) it was in the 50s on Saturday and the 60s today, so I took advantage of the balmy weather and got a good walk in on both days. I did some cooking for the week: lentil soup on Saturday and beef stew today. And I even got to spend some time in my sewing room.

I added to Constellation Wonkulae and like how it is coming along.



I put the circle skirt circle quilt back on the design wall and am VERY excited about the elements I am thinking about. What do you think?





And I got this little throw quilt out to finish machine quilting. There isn't much left to do on it, so it shouldn't take too long.



Now, the stew is simmering, I have a bourbon and lemon soda in hand and I feel satisfied with the weekend's accomplishments.

There are many ways to skin a cat.

No, I don't mean these two, though there are times I would like to.



Not long ago (I've only been blogging for a bit more than a month now!) I put an image of this quilt top out there on the internets.



I got a very nice comment from jeninemd saying that she loved my colors and the drunkard's path pattern. I was *this* close to responding, thanking for her kind remarks but, (please insert slightly condescending tone here) it isn't a drunkard's path. It is 4-patch circles appliqued onto a...solid.....background...... Wait a minute! It is a drunkard's path! I thought I was being so clever, pushing beyond the pattern, coming up with something new. All I did was reinvent the drunkard's path!!!

It goes to show that there really isn't much out there that is really NEW. When something really NEW comes along, it is like a breath of fresh air. I have a lot of fun with my quilting, but I don't think that I will be lifting anyone's kites!

Here is the second top I got from the same layer cake. Not new, but bright and pretty and very different from the first one.

Oops, I'm doing it again.

It may be just me, but I have found that I am much more productive when I spend less time on the internet. ;-)

I got quite a bit done this weekend, *most* of it towards my New Year's to-do list. And I got things done in spite of my feline assistants.

Here, Louis helps with piecing and laying out my first bluebonnet and plaids New Wave row:



And here Pippa does her part to pin-baste a quilt:



I also cut out all of the strips that I had pieced for the hexagon quilt. (I got some useful suggestions from the awesome Cauchy about backgrounds.) And I did some cogitating on the quarter-circle, mustard and blue quilt; I want the rows and columns to be odd numbers (to inhibit the the urge to pair up the blocks) so I may already have enough blocks to go ahead with them.

But then...

My last two trips to Joann's have resulted in this stack of brown fabrics:



I had no plans for a brown quilt; no one I know wants or needs a brown quilt (including me!); but these fabrics seem to want to be a quilt! But that isn't on The List!

Also, The Modern Quilt Guild has announced their latest challenge/contest. There has been a monochromatic quilt I have been thinking about for years, but it has never made it onto any to-do list. I am kind of thinking that now might the time to dust off this project.

But, but, but The List!!!!!

So we are early into the second week of the New Year, and already my "List" seems to be going the way of so many lists of the past.
(And I am enjoying every minute of it!)

Meow-y Christmas, y'all.

Butterscotch 4-Patch Circle Quilt

I didn't love this pattern when I first saw it. It is a Jaybird Quilts design and appeared in Quilts and More. Then I saw my friend Bry's version of it and quite liked it. (She hasn't posted hers yet.) I said to her, what if the patterned fabrics were 4-patches? and went home to look through my stash. I found a layer cake that was a perfect candidate. I also had on hand the butterscotch Kona solid that went perfectly with *some* of the line, so I pulled the patterns that 'went', cut them into fourths, sewed them back together, cut out the circles and placed them on the solids. I'm not a fan of the frayed look so I loosely zigzagged the circles into place.

I also have a second, slightly smaller version made with the rest of the layer cake--though I didn't do the 4-patch thing with it.

Here is a photo of when I was trying to find a lay out I liked.