Retreat & More

It has been a week since I returned from the HMQG Quilt Retreat. I -- and I think everyone else -- had a wonderful, productive time. Time away from our daily lives & the ability to do NOTHING but sew was exactly what many of us needed. The meals were great, the company was great, the only problem was it was just a day (or 2) too brief. Nearly everyone finished -- or made major progress -- on at least one project. Some had 4 or 5 tops finished by the time we left Deepwoods Retreat on Sunday. (If you want to learn how to make efficient use of your time, ask a busy Mom!)









I took with me the fixin's for about 11 different projects. I had decided that my first priority was the yellow zigzag top -- it was built on the diagonal & had outgrown my design door. As I was laying out the rows I was thinking I might use some of the remaining blocks on the back. But as I came to my last rows I ran out of blocks! I was short by 2!! I would have been panicked but I knew that I had some leftover fabric at home. I joined in on the jelly roll race & came in dead last. (Woo Hoo!) I had planned to work on my Swoon blocks -- I had all the parts for 8 additional blocks cut & ready to put on the assembly line, but I had mis-cut one element for all of them. And -- of course -- it was too small rather than too big. So I moved on to another project. I came home with 2 finished (well, nearly finished) tops, great memories & a desire to go back SOON!



I also came home with more fabric than I left with. There were awesome gift bags for everyone! (Thanks Fat Quarter Shop & Pink Chalk Fabrics!) I got 2 "cutie packs" -- 2.5 inch squares -- of Circa 1934 (I think these will be cute used with linen, maybe raw-edge appliqued) & a layer cake of Malka Dubrawsky's Stitched in Color!!!! I can't wait to begin something with that!





When I got home, I was still in that GO mode. I built a daisy cottage for an internet friend



& (finally!) worked on my blocks for the QuiltCon Block Challenge. After I got my stack of fabrics in the required colors, I was sitting at my sewing machine & noticed how they matched the little Avon mug I have sitting in my window. So that became one of my blocks. (I think it is pretty darn cute.)





Happy Mother's Day!!!

Advancing to Retreat!

12 in '12

Two this month. This one



and this one

One of the 7 Deadly Sins

Jealousy. Perhaps "envious" would be a better description -- and, I hope, not so deadly -- of how I felt reading about the recent experiences of several of my favorite bloggers. Why was I jealous envious? Because they

a. got to get away
b. got to get away with quilting friends
c. got to get away with quilting friends to quilt
d. got to get away with quilting friends to quilt with several of the Gee's Bend artists

Before you start feeling too sad & sorry for me (you are sad & sorry, right?), at this time next week I will BE AWAY! WITH QUILTING FRIENDS!! TO QUILT!!! The HMQG will be having our first Quilt Retreat!!!! No Gee's Bend artists, but I guarantee you we will have loads of fun! I have been so excited about this outing, I started 'packing' almost a month ago. I've been cutting & stock-piling projects, gathering sewing supplies, hoarding snacks & drinks (me to Shug: "Don't eat/drink that, I'm taking it to the Retreat!"; Shug to me: "We can buy you more in the WEEKS before you go.") I can hardly wait!!!

Anyway.

Reading about the time that niftyquilts, Bumble Beans & fiberliscious had at Quilt Camp caused me to go to my quilt closet & pull out this quilt.



This is the most Gee's Bend-inspired quilt I have made to date. The denim is from my, Shug's & my Dad's jeans & there is a bit of South African indigo fabrics. I think I made it in 2003 or 2004 but I have never felt like it is finished -- it seems to need something more, I just don't know what it is.

niftyquilts shared some of the quilts & quilt tops she & her friends bought after Quilt Camp. Seeing them prompted me to dig out this quilt.



This is one of the first vintage quilts I ever purchased. I've mentioned before how I am rarely moved to buy quilts, mostly I am content to look & enjoy, maybe, with permission, take a photo or make a sketch. But this one I had to have. The completion date is probably much more recent than the age of the top -- that variegated yarn was very popular in the 1960s. (I've always kind of wanted to take it apart, I don't like the way it was finished but I am afraid the yarn will leave behind big holes.) The gorgeous rayons are from the World War II era, late 1930s to early 1940s. I would love to know where & how the maker got the variety of prints that you see here. I've always thought it was luscious.

 

Weekend update

Saturday was Crafter-day for Shug & me. He goes early to his wood-turning group, I leave mid-day for my HMQG meeting. We don't see each other all day, each spending the day with their respective "tribe" & come home full of stories to tell about what we did & saw.

On Sunday, my plate was pretty clear. I could have worked on my QuiltCon blocks that I have been longing to experiment with, but now that I *could* work on them, I didn't *want* to work on them. (Please reassure me that I am not the only (crazy) person who does things like this.) So what I did do was stitch up some butterfly blocks for a flickr friend who did something nice for me. I made them with left-over pieces from the Shirts & Slacks quilt. I LOVE these butterflies & may have to make a whole quilt of them for myself!



And speaking of the Shirts & Slacks quilt -- it is finished!



I basted my HMQG row robin quilt & began quilting it with my new Brother machine (Frere Jaques) but ran into trouble. I'm sure it is just one of those rough patches in a new relationship, but I had to walk away from him for a while & didn't get very far with the quilting.

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.

I behaved myself

This past weekend, I wanted to start playing with my ideas for the QuiltCon Block Challenge, but I had quite a bit of obliged projects to finish up, so I worked on them.

I made up some samples for raffle blocks for our up-coming Houston Modern Quilt Guild Spring Retreat. I am getting crazy excited about going away with my Guild buds! (I also wanted/needed to do some more cutting of project parts to take with me, but that got postponed too.) Anyway, Tammy is our Swaps & Challenges coordinator & I am on her committee. She has some ideas & I have some ideas -- well, an idea -- for Retreat. Mine was for raffle blocks that we make while at Retreat. So I came up with a block & color-scheme & made some samples -- which I don't want to show until I've shown the group (next weekend).

So many of my Guild friends are SO good at making bags & pillows & pouches & pincushions & etc, etc, etc. They put me to shame. We have several members who are expecting babies & I offered to make -- well, something. I am at an especial loss when it comes to babies. But I found a cute fabric & bought some burp towels & I think what I made is pretty darn cute! But, again, I can't show them to you just yet -- the Mama-to-be is a visitor to my blog & I don't want to spoil her surprise!

Next Saturday, the Guild is gathering together the quilts & pillowcases for donating to the Star of Hope Mission. My quilts were done, but I wanted to make some pillowcases. There may be a million methods out there in the Internets for making pillowcases, but I've used the one from the ConKerr Cancer site. It is ridiculously easy! It probably takes longer preparing & cutting the fabric than it does to make the pillowcase. So I made 3 pillowcases to donate & 1 for me to keep! (I said I was good this weekend, not perfect!)



My final project was not so showy as the others. Shug wanted some fleece drawstring bags for carrying his wood projects to his wood-turning meetings. I had some fleece scraps left over from the red brick quilts & made up the first of several bags for him.

Retail Therapy

I went on something of a bender recently.

Not with vodka or gin, but with shopping. Very clearly, I was 'self-medicating', but, oh well, I'm not going to try to explain or defend it. It made me happy, it gave me pleasure, it didn't damage my liver.

I filled several virtual shopping carts with fabric (there is still one that needs to Proceed to Checkout). And they arrived in an avalanche.

There are the solids for the the Modern Quilt Guild block challenge. (That goofy piece at the bottom was on hand, I really want to try to use it.)



A bunch of pastel solids -- chalky and pale -- for an idea that I have knocking around in my head. I already had the dark gray and butter-colored pieces.



There is the stack of gray-ish neutrals  & a black & white polka dot that would be good background-y fabrics.



More pre-cuts than I need, but I wanted them. And that McCall's patterns print, because it makes me think of my childhood.



I even bought another sewing machine!  Are you trying to tally up what I already own? Let me do that for you: there are the Bernina and the Featherweight, my day-to-day machines; the Singer 99K and Singer 66 Lotus, both hand-crank machines; Mom's old Kenmore, still not in working order; Grandma's old treadle machine, not working either -- needs a belt. Tally: 4 working, 2 not working. So what else could I need, right? Well, in those brief, dark days when I thought the Bernina had croaked, I did some machine shopping. I've always said that my perfect machine would be a Featherweight with a big throat space (there is a name for that space, I can't remember what it is). And guess what, there is such a machine! So I bought it!!! So add a Brother 1500S to my fleet. It has an industrial motor & only sews forwards & backwards. It came with walking foot, quarter-inch foot, free-motion foot & some others. I've not done much with it yet because I don't want to change machines mid-project, but I am nearly done with the Shirts & Slacks & my next quilting project will be my HMQG row robin (seen in this very staged photo).

Happy Easter!

People can be so nice

There is nothing like nice people saying nice things about you to help chase the blues away!

Claudia at Armchair Quilter and Deb & Mandy at Quilter's Crossing BOTH gave the the Liebster Blog award!! Claudia's blog is filled with family and great quilts (check out her triangles with free-motion quilted feathers and her amazing, minimalist quilt with dogs & cats & rabbits -- WOW). Deb & Mandy have a quilt shop in the opposite corner of Houston than me, so I am sad to say that I have never been there -- but it is on my Bucket List! Their blog features lots of fabric & tools & projects & fun in the shop. Thank you so much, Claudia, Deb & Mandy!! I am very grateful to you for your kind words.

There are rules with the Liebster Blog Award. I must

1. Thank my Liebster Blog Award presenters.
2. Link back to my presenters' blogs.
3. Copy & paste the blog award on my blog.
4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to five blogs with 200 or fewer followers that I feel deserve to be noticed and post links to their blogs on my blog.
5. Let the recipients know they have been given the Liebster Blog Award by posting a comment on their blog.

So, here are the blogs I have chosen:

1. Safieh is a fellow HMQG member. She is an extremely talented quilter & sewist & photographer. I love the images of her projects, home & pets. I feel lucky to call her an In Real Life Friend!
2. Diane at O'Quilts is traveling a path similar to mine -- we are both dealing with ailing Mothers and trying to find solace with our quilting -- sharing helps make the load lighter.
3. Cassie at elegantitus is awesome! I love her exuberant fearlessness & wish that I had been like her when I was her age. I would love to quilt with her & drink a beer (or 2 or 3) with her.
4. I discovered Dana at Water Penny  after seeing her charming quilt that looks like the cat got to it -- some of the blocks are straight, some are askew like we've all seen after our cats "help" with the layout. She also a gardener & is concerned with environmental issues.
5. I've been a flickr friend with Karen at capitolaQuilter for some time & was pleased when she finally started blogging. She is quite a quilter & is sharing her skills with tutorials on her blog.

I hope you check out the blogs of the wonderful women & enjoy their writing as much as I do!

12 in '12

I did an Indiana Jones-style diving slide under the closing door of March to keep up with my finishes this month. Being away for a week, 'recovering' for a week, both knocked me off schedule for 12 finishes in 2012. But these are simple quilts -- easy brick-like patchwork with fleece backs, finished like a pillow (no binding), straight line quilting. All they took was sitting down and doing the work. I made them "teen size" for The Star of Hope Mission. I hope that either a boy or a girl will find warmth & comfort with these quilts.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

I suppose that by their very definition, there is no such thing as a "good" disease. They are all debilitating and wasting to some degree, lesser or greater. They all cause the sufferer some sort of pain and cause the loved ones of the sufferer some sort of anguish. I am not trying to say that what I am going through is any worse than what people all over the world are going through every single day, I just want to say that Alzheimer's Disease SUCKS!

I am 800 miles away from my Mom, so there are as many as 5 to 8 weeks between my visits to her. With each of my last several visits, I saw a dramatic decline in her condition, less of HER there: sleeping more, increased confusion, increased difficulty expressing herself, decreased physical ability. One of the really crappy things about AD is that, because of the sufferer's difficulty understanding what is going on around them, they tend to be fretful, depressed and, sometimes, hostile. We are lucky that, by and large, my Mom is fairly content. She loves her room, she has a nice view of the pretty backyard of her facility, she likes most of the people that care for her, she likes many of her 'neighbors' -- though she says that many of them are "not all there". She likes listening to music, especially the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. We listen to it over and over and over again -- always new to her, but it has become etched in my brain. The bitter irony of 'remembering your favorite things' when you are 'feeling sad' is that it is not such good advise when not only can you not recall things you like, you can't even remember what you had for breakfast.

The car trips north and south back home were beautiful. Spring was bursting out the whole way: bluebonnets and paintbrush in Texas; redbud and fruit trees in bloom all along the way; wheat fields covered in that new, neon green; spindly-legged calves and colts among the herds of cattle and horses. Life renewing itself.

For some reason, a factoid I remember learning in paleontology popped into my head. If you take a sponge -- not the bright blue rectangle by the kitchen sink, but the simple sea animal -- and push it through a fine mesh screen, its cells, disassembled by passing through the screen, will re-assemble on the other side.
I am hoping my heart has the same ability as the sponge and will become whole again after all of this is over.

Rainy Sunday

We got quite a lot of rain on Sunday. In fact, we have gotten quite a lot of rain so far this year. The official rainfall total is 15.78 inches, normal is 7.84 inches! The really interesting thing is that last year it took until November to accumulate the amount of rain we have gotten so far this year! I think the drought may be over!



Luckily, I did not have to get outside for anything so I happily spent the day in my studio -- cutting, piecing, quilting, planning.

My Quilt Parts box is quite literally overflowing, in fact it is now two boxes! I cut Swoon block parts and lots of half-square triangles for another project I am playing with. At the beginning of the year, when I was making my to-do & to-finish lists, I neglected to include what I made for the MQG Habitat Challenge. I always intended for it to be the center of a medallion-style quilt, so I cut up & pieced some my bonus fat-eights (thanks Bry!) to add a few more borders.



I quilted on one of the red brick donation quilts and did some quilting on my Shirts and Slacks quilt. I wish there was such a thing as a quilting Garmin -- "Turn right at the junction of the pink print and the blue solid" -- because somehow my layout of this thing is *really* complicated. Since I don't know of a quilting Garmin, I made a quilt map that is proving to be a lifesaver! I think I have made only 1 mistake so far! Yay!



I also spent some time looking at books & thinking about the QuiltCon block challenge & juried exhibits. The colors for the block challenge are so fun! And the bonus is that the blocks will be used in a raffle quilt & as donation quilts for Austin Children's Shelter. And I aspire to have a quilt hanging at the first QuiltCon!

Plan B or Life Teaches Me a Lesson

At the beginning of last week, I had just completed and sandwiched my Shirts and Slacks quilt. I was hopeful that if I worked very (very) hard, I might, I just might, get it done in time to enter to possibly hang with the Modern Quilts at this year's Quilt Festival. I was coming home from work, would quilt for an hour, eat dinner, watch a little television, then quilt some more. I was going to have all day Friday for quilting, so there was a chance I could get it done.

 

Then Life stepped in.

I was just using up my first spool of thread & changing it out for a new one (if you are doing detective work, this is a key bit of information). I threaded the machine, tapped the foot peddle to bring up the bobbin thread and -- nothing, nothing moved; I could feel a hum of the motor, but the needle didn't budge. I took out the hook, cleaned & oiled it, rethreaded the machine, turned it off, turned it on, tapped the peddle, and -- nothing. I was so disgusted, disappointed, depressed -- I even cried a little.

The next day I started doing research on sewing machine repair places & possible new sewing machines. I got out my cutting matt and began cutting. If I couldn't quilt, I might as well do something constructive & productive. I got out a bag of mixed reds that I brought home from the last HMQG work day. Do you remember me telling you of the mountain of fabric that Mabel St. Martin gave us? ("Mabel St. Martin" is how I've begun to refer to that nice woman who donated the 6 bags of fabric. If it sounds disrespectful, I don't at all mean it to be: "Mabel" was one of my Grandmother's name & "St. Martin" is the name of the church where the Guild meets.) Anyway, I had gathered about 30 different red fabrics to make a quilt (or quilts) for donation. One top is done now (pieced with the Featherweight) & I'm ready to lay out another.

 

I finally decided to take my machine to the closest place. I've taken it there before & I am not in love with this place, but they are an authorized dealership & if there was a computer problem then I thought they would be the best to handle it.

I set the machine on the counter & the woman was beginning to write up the work order when she noticed that the little lever you flip to fill a bobbin was flipped -- you know, the one that disengages the needle. It is right up there near the thread spindle &, well, I guess I flipped it when I replaced the spool of thread. I was now disgusted, relieved and felt really, really silly. No repair needed, no new machine needed (though I am thinking about getting a non-computerized, deep-throated industrial machine for quilting).

{sigh}

Shug said my lesson from all this is that "things aren't always as bad as they seem". I thought that my lesson was for me to "get my priorities straight" & to quit trying "get above myself". Anyway, I guess I learned something, though I am not sure what just yet. "All's well that ends well" or something like that, right?

12 in '12

I neglected to get a proper photo of the corduroy quilt that I finished up back in January. So here it is --



As soon as I got my scrap swap partner's scraps, I very happily and eagerly got to work and finished that project. It is a small finish, just a pillow cover, but a finish all the same. I perhaps shouldn't be showing it until I reveal it to its owner, but I really like it and want to show it off.



My 3rd finish this year was begun and finished this month. I made it for 2 reasons: first, to have across the foot of the bed during our brief, but sometimes chilly, Gulf Coast winters; secondly, I hoped to enter it to possibly hang in the Modern Quilt Guild's exhibition at this year's Quilt Festival. But, it is far too BORING!!! In my mind's eye it was interesting and edgy, but in reality it didn't measure up. The quilting doesn't show, the fabrics are kind of bland, it just turned out flat. Well, it will still keep our toes warm when it is cold and damp. They can't all be winners, right?

The weekend

Saturday morning, I met with several of my Guild members and we slashed our way through a mountain of donated fabric. We coordinated and cut up fabrics for kits for making simple quilts for The Star of Hope Mission. The quilts will be for kids, from infants to teens; we will also be making pillow cases. It was so much fun & we got so much done! We'll have a sewing day early next month. (An interesting insight: an anonymous member of the church where we meet gave us 6! big bags of scraps. It was such a variety of fabrics -- everything from old calicos from the 70s or 80s to some very recent fat quarters. There were lots of 2 or 2.5 inch strips, which made us wonder if the former owner had tried making the water-color quilts that were so popular quite a few years ago. But we all commented on how much our fabric stash says about us: how long we've been quilting, our tastes, who we sew for, etc. We also wondered about the person who gave up all that fabric -- does she just no longer quilt or did she pass away? I hope the former.)



Shug was out of town, so I was on my own Saturday evening. I set up a satellite sewing station downstairs in front of the tv -- my Featherweight on a little folding table, my adorable baby Bohin iron & a little cutting matt/ironing surface. (Not that Shug would mind me sewing downstairs, I just had blocks all over the floor, making it a bit difficult to walk around!) While I watched a movie (one I had seen before, cuz these blocks took a bit of concentration) I set together the Shirts and Slacks blocks. I rummaged through my fabrics and have found a suitable back -- in honor of the make-do mentality of my family, I want to buy as little as possible for this quilt. I probably even have enough batting to use.

Where is the time going?

I suppose it has happened gradually, but I seem to have completely lost control of my time. There hasn't been a  big change recently, but I feel that my wheels spin all of the time & I don't get very much accomplished. I am trying to keep on track with finishing existing projects before beginning new ones, but I'm not having much success with that. I began & have nearly finished a project that I hope to enter to be hung in a Modern Quilt Guild show at this year's Quilt Festival -- but I'm not feeling the love. I will hold off judgement until I wash & crinkle it in the dryer. The postage stamp quilt is getting its river system quilted onto it -- again, not loving it. The next thing to quilt will be my HMQG row robin quilt; I'll do it very simply so it should go quickly. I have the Shirts & Slacks blocks spread out on the floor to assemble -- I am looking forward to seeing them all together. And there are one or two new ideas that are trying to nudge their way to the front of the line. But mostly I am feeling kind of dis-satisfied with what I've done & what I am doing. {sigh}
I am keeping close to my heart a recent post from the awesome completely cauchy: Life is not a competition.

My birthday was earlier this month. I was taken to lunch with work friends, I was taken to dinner by Shug, I got some funny & sweet cards & I got these lovely gifts:



The vase came from my boss, the bag came from the adorable wrongturnrojas & the hot pad & fat quarter came the talented Safieh. Love the givers! Love the gifts!

I think I can, I think I can

HMQG did a scrap swap last month. We have 2 months to complete a project for our partner using the little bits they provided plus any extra we need to add to make something that we think they will like. As I have mentioned before, I have never participated in any of the blog & flickr based swaps & bees -- I don't know why really, fear of disappointing, fear of biting off more than I can get done. Anyway, the only swaps I have done have been our HMQG row robin that we did last year & now the scrap swap.

And I love the experience! It is so much fun & such a learning experience trying to make something that you hope someone else will like. Somehow it is different than making a quilt as a gift for someone, often the quilt is for a non-quilter & for a loved one, so you know that they will love it. But the bar seems to be higher when you are making something for another quilter.

I was lucky, my scrap swap partner was pretty clear about what she wanted. She wanted a pillow to go with a pillow that she had made. Easy, right? I knew pretty early on how I wanted to use her scraps -- I wanted to experiment with Victoria's 15 minutes play, making fabric with the scraps & cutting it up for a block. I love how it turned out, but won't show it to you yet. Then came the scarey part -- DA DA DAA -- the zipper on the back of the pillow! Queue screeching sounds. I haven't put in a zipper in eons & was really afraid. But after quite a few emails back & forth with pillow-expert Safieh, I bundled up my courage & plowed ahead. And of course, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I put it in more like a dress zipper, I think the style now is for more of the zipper tape to show. But it is in! I'm so proud!



The rest of the weekend was spent working on a project that I hope to enter for the Modern Quilt Guild's show at the Quilt Festival this year. I'll give you a little peak --

The Swoooooooon Train

Yes, I jumped aboard.
What an awesome block! I have yet to see one that I don't like. Because of their size (24 inches square) they make a real statement. Here's mine:

Quilt me a river.

From very early on, this postage stamp quilt reminded of the township and range plating system so much in evidence in Kansas. When I was in college, I spent one summer working for the Kansas Geological Survey measuring gravity across the state. (If you stay in one place all day and measure the gravity, you will see 'tides'; when the measurements are plotted on a graph, there will be two high points and two low points each day -- solid earth tides, just like ocean tides, caused by the pull of the moon. The data we collected helped reveal the Kansas sub-surface.) We drove the country roads of rural Kansas and they mostly follow the grid of the one mile squares of the township and range. This may be the source of my love of the geometric and rectilinear! Anyway, I love the tidy order of these crisp postage stamp squares, but they seemed to want some.... geography.

So I am quilting a river system on them! Well, sort of. There will be a diagonal line with two 'tributary' lines coming in from either side. Then, I will just sort of echo-quilt the rest of the space.

We'll see how this works out....

Looking back, looking forward

As have many of us quilty bloggers, I have been looking back on the old year and looking with anticipation and hope at the new year.

I didn't have many completions last year -- only 6. I am pretty pleased with all of them, but, well -- six.



I hope to up the ante this year. My HMQG amigas Amy, Liz and Safieh have started the "12 in '12" Challenge. At first I thought "NO WAY!" But then I thought this just might be do-able. I already had my first finish: I put the last tie into my corduroy quilt and while it isn't strictly *my* quilt (OK, it isn't at all my quilt, I just finished a completed top), I *am* counting it. It took a while because all of the cats LOVE it and one of them is nearly always sleeping on it. I ran it through the washer and dryer and it seems to not be as jewel-bright as it was and the ties have lost the "crows flying over paddocks" (thanks Rachael Daisy!) look that they had -- now they look more like night crawlers -- it is still a wonderfully cuddle-y quilt.



I've got FIVE quilts ready to be quilted or tied. One is already 'under the needle'. And once I free up some of my safety pins, the others are ready to be sandwiched.



I have partially assembled parts for FIVE more quilts. I may have all of pieces cut for the Shirts and Slacks quilt (made with my Mom's shirts) and I have been working away on it recently. It still makes me a little melancholy working with them, but I really want to see them turned into a quilt. Also here are those hexagons from the beginning of 2011, a more-than-half completed lemon-y zigzag top, the indigo stars that I began last summer and a new project, just begun, inspired by a painting by Sol Lewitt.



And I have stacks of fabric that have been tugging at my sleeve, saying they are tired of being just yard goods, all wanting to be quilts. There are SEVEN incipient quilts here -- a few I even have ideas for how I want to use them! Those goofy, really old-school calicos that I just can't bring myself to get rid of, I am thinking of using them with Jenny's Quick Curve Ruler (or maybe some of the Japanese prints that I have stowed away -- or maybe BOTH). My quilter's eye has been taken by i'm a ginger monkey's Swoon-Along. Perhaps the Marcia Derse prints would work for that. And elegantitus is doing a Gentleman's Fancy man-quilt -- I am thinking about those browns that I got at the beginning of last year for that. I want to make one of those jelly roll race quilts, the Just Wing It roll would be perfect. The Modern Quilt Guild will be having a juried show at this year's Quilt Festival -- I have an idea for those Stonehenge prints that I hope will be awesome. The charm squares and text-y prints came together just recently, maybe something inspired by Rex Ray? And there are the gorgeous Echinos that my Mother-in-law gave me for Christmas.....



So with the things that are more than a pile of fabric: 1 finish, 5 to quilt, 5 pile of parts -- that is 11 quilts right there. Then the 7 more that are just fabric and glints in my eye -- that's 16. And the many more that I'm sure will grab my attention this year, shoot, I could probably finish 20 -- or MORE!

Easy peasey, right?

Pimp my blog

My blog-iversary came and went in early December. I was away from my computer at the time and by the time I came back, holiday preparations were in full swing. So it went un-remarked.

But I've been wanting to change my look for the second year. A while back, my awesome e-friend elegantitus gave me a very sweet surprise gift of my blog name with my Habitat challenge quilt as the background and I've been wanting to use it. So please stay tuned and please be patient as I work out the bugs and get the blog looking the way I want it.

Everyone have a fun and safe New Year's celebration and I wish for you a Happy, Healthy and Blessed 2012!
Talk to you next year!

Not a smitch of stitching.*

I know I am not alone: things have been so busy & hectic that unless we've been burning the midnight oil to finish gift projects (not me, thankfully -- this year I recognized my limits) we've hardly made it into our sewing areas at all.

I've been finding it hard to get into the spirit of the Holidays. I've been tired, sad and grumpy. But I finally sat myself down and said "Get a grip!!!" So I am counting my blessings and trying to see the glass as half full. Then I started thinking about this picture --



I think this was the Christmas that I was 5. My Mom got me a Shirley Temple doll a few months before Christmas, then spent lots of time sewing her a wardrobe. Now before you start thinking that I am *much* older than I really am let me point out that Shirley Temple is a contemporary of my Mom's. The dolls were re-issued when I was little and, probably as much for herself as for me, she bought one. I don't really remember this Christmas morning, but I have always loved this photo. There is Shirley down there under the tree. And look at the tree! All the little outfits hanging on hangers!! This is what Christmas is about!

So I dug out old Shirley and her clothes. I washed and pressed them, dressed up Shirley and hung the rest on the tree. (Which we only put up yesterday.) Since Shug and I will be home this holiday, we can do a little decorating. And while we will miss being with the families, I am heaving a big sigh of relief to not be traveling. I got out a few more things and it is really beginning to look and feel much more like Christmas.









Season's Greetings to Everyone and a Happy, Healthy and Blessed 2012!
love, Beth aka Smazoochie


* My thanks -- and apologies -- to Zuzu Bailey.

Old dogs, new tricks

Recently, several of us HMQG-ers met at Safieh's house for an afternoon of sewing and chatting.

Fi brought her blocks to assemble this quilt. She laid out the blocks on Saf's design wall then asked for advice on how to sew them together. I said that I always assemble my quilt tops either row by row or column by column. Saf said that she sews hers together in sections -- fourths, sixths, whatever is easiest and most logical for the project. Then there is only one seam that is the length or width of the whole quilt.

Wait! What!?!

Now I have been quilting for about as long as Saf has been alive and I have ALWAYS assembled tops either row by row or column by column. And ALL those long seams ALWAYS make me cranky! It is one of my least favorite parts of quilt making -- even though the product is the finished top!

Sections?!? That is GENIUS!!! This is one of the things I love about our group: our mix of ages, of skills, of knowledge.

So with Saf's method in mind, I began putting together some of the blocks made with my Mom's shirts. I still need quite a few more blocks. I think this will be fairly big, maybe 6 or 7 by 8 or 9 blocks -- so 48 to 63 blocks. And I have 20. Ouch, I have quite a way to go. But it is satisfying to see a bit of it with "my" new construction method!