Tuesday's Results

Whoops! I was planning to post last night, but after my husband got home from Open House at the school, we ended up talking for about 2 hours straight. I love talking with him and it was getting a little sporadic with the stress of school starting - but I did expect that. So it's nice to get back into the routine of just chatting with him. :)

At the sew-in yesterday I worked on my acrylic paint blocks. I got the stencils from WalMart and I'm hoping to make about a twin sized quilt.

While I was working on the bottom right block, my friend and I were discussing that it seemed to be a little faded around the edges. Another friend was coloring some blocks with fabric markers, so we "stole" one of hers and outlined the fish. Wow! I love the results, it makes the fish look completed. Now I wanna buy all the markers (21 colors I think). My friend said she'll order them for me, but it might not be for another month or so. In the meantime I'll keep making more sea-related blocks. :)

Of course I did my third hour - don't wanna get behind! ;) I completed the center blocks and started to add the scrappy squares around it.

Today it looks like I'll be adding the other two sides of squares and dare I hope to get some sashing cut?! We'll have to see! :)

Ok, confession time... I'm cheating, a little. No, not time-wise. But ever since I grasp the concept of Bonnie's Leaders & Enders, I've been pairing green and purple squares together. At first I made a bunch of 4-patches and they went into this quilt. Then using the leftover 4-patches, I started another one. I still had a ton of green and purple squares attached to each other... so I started to make them into a row so I could do this project.

I'm sure you're getting the point now... after a year of sewing green and purple squares together, I have a ton at my disposal and only had to iron some open to start attaching them to the block's sides. I am going to have to attach green on both ends to finish the strip and make it the right size for sewing to the block. I was able to squeeze in a few green ends so I'd be able to add it to the photo. :)

So am I cheating? Or merely being resorceful? ;)

Leah

Day Two, Hour Two

I did Hour Two from 6-7:05. The five extra minutes because I didn't want to stop in the middle of ironing. I only show 2 blocks, but I have all 12 of them like this.

Looks like tomorrow I'll have the center part of the blocks done and then will start on scrappy green and purple blocks for around the center blocks. It'll be very scrappy there. :)

Today I've been feeling kinda wiped out. I know I certainly tackled this hour with less energy than I did last night. My head has been feeling dull and woozy all day, but not really a headache. I don't think I'm coming down with something though, below my head feels fine. :) Maybe I feel this way cuz I skipped breakfast. Well, I won't do that tomorrow! I grabbed plenty of yogurt from the store today so if I need a quick bite, it's there.

Tomorrow is the bi-monthly Tuesday Sew-In. I'm likely gonna go, unless there's a big downpour. I also need to change the oil in my car and have them replace my wipers. They really stink! And of course, you only notice when you're trying to drive in the rain. :P

Perhaps a hot shower will ease the woozy feeling. :/

Leah

Downpour and Hour 1

This morning my husband and I woke up to rain outside. I didn't think too much of it and started my usual routine of checking messages and blogs. Then there was a camera-like flash in my sewing room with a heartrending BOOM! There was absolutely no pause between the time the lighting flashed and the thunder hit. My heart pounded so hard. I immediately turned off my computer and unplug that and the sewing machine. Not interested in frying my toys! :P

Then I grabbed the camera and stood on the covered front porch just watching the rain come down, down, down.

Nice river eh? ;)


And here's a matching pond. :)


This poor bird was trying to take refuge on our back deck.

Worse... we had to go down those stairs, wade through the water with laundry baskets in our hands and headed to the in-laws. I was wearing my Teva sandals and a skirt, so I didn't get so bothered by my wet feet. But my poor husband soaked his tennis and jean cuffs. But we just HAD to do laundry and were on the verge of having no more clean underwear. :P

I even teased my mother-in-law that they had added value to their property by the (rain-made) swimming pool in their backyard. The funny thing is that ALL the water is gone now. It may rain hard and heavy during the monsoon, but it sure doesn't hang around for long!

I'm sure many of you quilters know the 1-hour-a-day challenge that Judy's offering. Well, when she put up this post I just HAD to get started right there, right then. :)

I made an orderly list of things I hoped to accomplished in an hour and from 7 to 8 I steadily worked. Nope, didn't get everything done, but I'm pleased with my progress. I have the inside block parts cut, I have the HSTs ready to iron open. I am doing 12 blocks opposed to 20 like Judy though.

But I was really pleased at how easy it was to stick to working on the quilt for one hour straight. The list was a big help too - I didn't stop and puzzle about what would be best to do next. I didn't try to take breaks and lose my concentration. And it's fun to cross stuff out! :)

I'm hoping to see various progress through quilty-blogland tomorrow! :)

Leah

Full steam ahead!

Well, that new rotary blade sure did the trick! I spent another 2+ hours cutting and ironing today. Not a bad pile of ends and trimmings. ;)


I worked on a pattern called The Simple Cross. It's from Fons & Porter's Sept/Oct 2000 magazine. I was flipping through it again while I was in the bathroom and given the slump I was in, I figured a new quilt that was EASY to do might be a good idea. How many of you get inspiration from the bathroom? :D


The directions called for 2.5" scraps and 4.5" centers. I felt like that was just gonna be too big. So I drew up my own size on the graph notebook I recently bought. You can see that I boo-boo'ed on the bottom block and accidently colored the center. Better the paper than the actual block! :P


I'm planning for 42 blocks... but that might be a little big. I haven't really worked out the math on what the finished size would be. At this point I don't care, I'm sewing!! :)

No color should show up more than 4 times in the entire quilt. Almost a charm quilt. ;) But I'm feel great and satisfied now. Please remind me the next time I'm in a slump... to check the rotary blade! :P

Off to take a shower! :)

Leah

Motivation and routines

I've been in a sewing funk all week long. Well, longer than a week actually. I put together a block for my quilt guild's blotto (block lottery) and I was really hoping I'd win (they draw two names). The purple color was the fabric every blotto person was given - very pretty to me. :)

Well, I didn't get my name drawn, but I did sign up for the next blotto, due November and it's a Dutch Windmill. Maybe I'll win then! ;)

I also put $2 towards the two raffle drawings. They have a raffle drawing every 3 months and it costs a dollar a ticket. You can buy as many tickets as you want. Raffle is just stuff people have donated - fabric, books, stencils, etc. My two tickets were #0909 and 0912. Well, the lady calls out "oh-nine, oh-nine." Wow! I won! I got about 6 yards of fabric, a book, a sewing kit, a bookmarker and some lace. :) At least I could go home to my husband I tell him that I won... just not what I expected. :P But that didn't put me out of my sewing funk.

I tried to force myself to work with the exciting handdyes that my mom and I had made - should be easy right, cuz all the strips are cut. I was gonna do a Double Irish Chain, but I goofed on the color placement and gave up. When you're feeling low about sewing in general, it's sooooo easy to give up.

At least I didn't let my goof up go to waste and came up with another plan for the little 4-patches I already sewed.

I sewed a bunch of big and little squares together... but it still didn't give me a go-go-go feeling.

I tried cleaning up my tables, ironing board and the floor in general. I didn't feel like it was THAT badly cluttered, but I've heard some people say that is what gets them going in their quilting rooms. I worked on a few more blocks with my newly cleared spot... but that didn't do that trick.

So tonight I was thinking "good grief... I've gotten more fabric, a new book, a clean sewing room, lots of precut fabric to play with... what's wrong with me?!" And then it hit me - I have been dreading to cut up fabric so I can sew with it. It seemed so painful and tedious to sit at my cutting mat and slice away fabric. Then I realized... my rotary cutter blade is dull. It needed a lot of pressure to cut cleanly, it had the most tiniest little chip that caused it to skip over one THREAD of fabric that was incredibly annoying. Heck, it tooks me weeks to find that chip.

Yup... a $1.50 blade was killing my desire to sew! (Scrounge around on eBay for great deals on blades). I immediately inserted a new blade in and was feeling so much better. I whipped out a pile of fabric that I've been wanting to cut and reached my goal an hour later. Wow, that felt great. :) So tomorrow I'm hoping to sit at my machine and merrily sew for a few more hours.

School has started this week - well, it started on Wednesday, but all teachers had to report in on Monday. I have manage to get myself out of bed, with contacts on at 8:30 every morning to watch Simply Quilts (also another ploy to get me in a quilty mood). It's a great way to start off the day though! :)

We've also been going to bed at 10pm, opposed to 2am or *cough*4am*cough*. That would be my husband. :D He's actually getting more sleep NOW than he was with his summer routine. But I really like this apartment, cuz if I get the desire to stay up later than he does... I can! We have DOORS now! I just gotta make sure I'm not too noisy. ;)

The only downside of my day is that I turned in my broken hearing aid almost 2 weeks ago and today I went to pick it up. It turns out that they don't actually repair the hearing aid, but swap it out with an exact model. I'm not clear if it's a NEW model or (more likely) a cleaned up/refitted model. But while it was sounding somewhat better than the problems I was having before... it wasn't as powerful as I was normally used to. Thankfully I persisted in my complaint that it wasn't powerful enough and the guy ran a test on the hearing aid in a special machine and found that indeed, the hearing aid wasn't up to the company's standards in power levels. So back the hearing aid goes. Cross your fingers that everything will be smooth when they call again. :/

But it's nice to be back home - I still miss my family and now the trip feels like it was months ago, instead of weeks ago - but I'm enjoying settling into a routine, cuz I get more accomplished! Heck, I even vacuumed the living room and bedroom today, which is a huge deal to me cuz I already vacuumed them once earlier this week. Yes... this is the same gal who would let 3 or 4 months go by in the old apartment before vacuuming. Housekeeping is easier when you have the space to do it! :)

Leah

Sarah's Quilt

I gave Sarah her quilt pretty much the first thing I stepped in my parents house. She absolutely loves it!! :) In fact she took it with her on the trip to Pine Mountain Lake.

She loves that it's purple, her favorite color for years. I pointed out the bunny quilting (which I didn't get a picture of *sigh*). Show mom the handdyed backing - it's a little splottchy. :P

On Wednesday morning before I left, I needed to go to the DMV with my dad cuz there were complications with my car registration. I also wanted to stop by my parent's company shop to visit with my aunt who works there and show her the quilt. I had to wake Sarah up at 7:10am and "steal" the quilt from her, the only blanket she was sleeping with! :) My aunt loved the quilt and commissioned me to make one for her granddaughter due in September. :)

Sarah got her own label too - first time I have tried "applique" cuz I didn't want to stitch through the quilt.

The quilt pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's site, Pineapple Blossom. I did it without any sashing.

I also remember to take pictures of Sarah's "award" quilts that she got from her show rabbits, Bambi and Zaeda. I'm not sure which rabbit got what, but she won pretty much because she was still legally a minor at the time and most kids don't have show quality rabbits.

BOB stands for Best of Breed and BOSB should be Best of Show Breed.

Sarah keeps these on the back of her bedroom door. If you want more details about Bambi, read this. :)

Oh, and the instructions to do a strippy binding are here.

Leah

Yosemite and leaving

On Saturday I woke up at 7:30 in the morning so I could up and ready for when we left for Yosemite at 8. It's about an hour's drive from Pine Mountain Lake.

We had planned to take the day easy - my brother had scraped the top of his foot in volleyball at boyscout camp (about 1 wide, 5 inches long) and couldn't wear shoes well. Pops (grandfather) also has a few heart problems; I forgot to pack my husband's tennis shoes and he was stuck with his sandals, and I was personally fighting with ingrown toenails that liked to cripple me after a lot of walking... but the whole point is that we decided to do the tour bus (just a bunch of seats in a row, no roof) of Yosemite, something we had never done before.

My sister and I decided that we would sit up front and she would sign to me what the ranger said. We checked ahead of time if this was ok with the ranger and she said it was fine. So at first we're the only ones in the front row (which can comfortably hold 4 adults, or maybe 2 adults, 3 kids) and at the very last minute a lady, her husband and teenage son hop up in the row! She kept trying to get me to move over more, but I kept saying I couldn't because then I'd just get whacked when Sarah started to sign to me. :P And it wasn't helping that Sarah and I were trying to face each other (ya know, so I could actually see the signs) so we were hogging a little more room than if we were facing forward.

I'm really glad that Sarah signed the trip out for me though, cuz the ranger had a microphone headset and it would bounce a lot, so she would hold onto it with her hands, and therefore her lips were absolutely covered and there would have been no way I could have understood what was going on. She's a great sister and I'm really glad that she's getting her Deaf Interpreter's Certification. :)

There were a couple of stops during the 2 hour ride, and on the last one the lady and her family beat us to the row. So we were like "excuse me, can you step out so we can slide over to our seats?" And she looked kinda upset and told us to use the other door. We responded that we couldn't. Said it again. And then they finally get out so we can get it. Of course we couldn't use the other door, it was welded shut! :P

But thankfully that was pretty minor - Yosemite is very beautiful and distracts you from bad thoughts. :) And all these lovely pictures are completely at the credit of my husband. He did great and I didn't have to crop anything out. :)

After a late lunch, we decide that we're not going to eat dinner in Yosemite and just head back to PML. At one point everybody but my dad (who was driving) and me (who was licking a lollypop) had their eyes closed. I do think I fell asleep towards the end of the ride though. :)

We arrive at the cabin about 4pm, I was looking forward to another swim. It was going to be a simple dinner of lasagna with salad. Maybe card games in the evening. And then to our surprise... the power was out! It turned out pretty much the entire county was out of electricity, since noon. PG&E were saying it'd come on at 3... then 6... then 7...

Sarah just threw the towel in at that point. Started packing up her stuff, and 10 minutes later she pops her head in the kitchen and says "what do you want me to pack now?" Ohhh, somebody wanted to go home. :D And in the end, we all packed and we left a little after 7pm. The power came on for one second once, but it was still off when we left. We were sooooooooo hot carrying everything up the steps into the car (the cabin was on a STEEP hillside). The AC was on full blast as we left. :)

Dinner turned out to be Carl's Jr. - Pops' favorite place. We were back home around 10pm. We turned on the AC and I don't think it stopped running for another 36 hours. But it was nice to sleep cooler, since the cabin only had fans. :)

And we had the lasagna on Sunday night! :)

Leah

Pine Mountain Lake

While visiting my parents, they took all 4 of us kids, my husband and my grandfather to Pine Mountain Lake for a mini-weekend getaway. I have really enjoyed vacations in cabins - and except for the heat, this one was no exception.

For a really big lake... they have pretty strict rules about how far you can swim from the dock. Darn! But then again, I wouldn't want to get run over by a boat. :P


The water was absolutely great to swim in! I love fresh water swimming. :)

The only hard part was getting back onto the dock, because the ladder was half broken. The first time I tried to get up, a fish bit me on my inner thigh! It actually bit a skin tag that I had, and a week later it fell off. I guess the fish did me a favor? :D The second time I needed to use the ladder, I was kicking like mad - don't let the fish bite me! My brother helped me up then, but he's a little stronger than I expected and pulled my shoulder/back. A nap helped ease the tension though.

While my siblings and husband played Spade...


My mom and I played with the handdyed fabrics. What's a vacation without some quilting? ;)

I began to cut for my share of the FQs to take home, but then I got distracted by helping mom figure out some math for the paperpieced log cabins. Hrmm. Log cabins in a cabin. :P

Mom again - she really has a patience that I don't have for studying color play. :)


I had made breakfast that morning; fresh blueberry & raspberry pancakes and scrambled eggs with avocado topping. Dinner was an even bigger affair, but I "ditched" helping because I did breakfast. We had fruit salad, rice, BBQ chicken, bread slices and tomatoes with swiss cheese.

Below is my sister putting the finishing touches on the fruit salad. It had watermelon, canteloupe, honey dew melon, grapes, blueberries, raspberries and the grand finale of cherries. Yummy! :)


I grabbed a shot of my sister Sarah - she kindly bought two 2-day fishing license and we dragged 8 year old poles and wished ourselves the best of luck! Sarah actually caught a fish that morning, but let it go, since they're supposed to be at least 8 inches long to keep.


About 9pm that night we tried our luck again - I'm sure our methods would have made any fisherman cry. We even stuck our poles into the water hoping for bigger fish. But I actually caught a trout!!!!

And it's 8 inches according to me, including the little bit of fake bait sticking out of its mouth. :P Sarah wanted to disect it... bleh! I think she cut open the intestines and got it all poopy. I was busy running off to the shower to wash off the OFF I sprayed on me that felt like super glue. My dad was trying to tell me to celebrate my other sister's birthday first, but I just simply told him to put his hands on my back. He kinda had to yank it off to get unstuck. Then as I was walking to the shower, I looked back and saw him trying to wipe his hands clean. Yes, I was THAT sticky! :)

So we celebrated Andrea's birthday - she's now 22 (she's in the blue shirt). You can also see my grandfather and my dad hanging around.

We had pineapple angel food cake with mint chocolcate chip ice cream... interesting combination! :P

And then we head to bed... and can you believe we did ALL the stuff I mentioned in ONE day?! No wonder why I came home with a few pounds less on me. :)

I'll have to tell you about Yosemite next... we left Pine Mountain Lake on an unexpected note! :)

Leah

Dyeing with Mom

As a Christmas/Mother's day (pick your holiday!) gift, I wanted to teach my mom how to dye fabric. I felt like it would be something she would enjoy, since she loves to play with color. Beforehand we bought a bolt of 15 yards of 90" wide fabric. I figured it to be 30 yards of "regular" width of fabric. I also bought 8 more yards of white on white for background fabric to go with the dyed fabric.

On Tuesday morning at 11 we start to set up for dyeing. I did warn my mom to wear clothing that she wouldn't get upset about spilling dye on. Just her clumsy daughter speaking. ;)

I mixed all the chemicals together (dyes and soda ash fixer). I showed mom how I just squirt a little dye in the cup, swirl it around to get the idea of the color and add more if I wished. No measuring for me. She caught on very quick and it ended up being me mostly keeping an eye on the time and adding the soda ash or more fabric (for value gradation). Mom was in her element playing and mixing the dyes together.

Yes, towards the end we deliberately spilled dye on the table and used our hands to "paint" the fabric. Very interesting results!

Here are some of the dyed fabric in various dishes.


We ended up dyeing every last inch of the bolt of muslin we bought - and most were in FQ size. In fact we started saying "ohh! We need more fabric... more fabric..." and used all of the 8 yards of background I got. Hey, we could always buy more. :) So almost 40 yards of fabric, all dyed in one day!


Did I mention that I can be clumsy? I had a few mishaps during that day. Including trying to stir a fabric in a cup twice and having a spoonful of dye fly straight up at a me. :P

I rarely cuss around my mom... but when that red dye splattered all over my shirt, my face and almost right into my eyes; I'm afraid a cuss word did slip out as I hastily wiped my face. :/ I definately have a permanent dyeing outfit now. This craft is not for the neatniks. :)

We had beautiful results! The only disappointing thing was how misleading wet fabric can look. We thought we had several darker pieces, but they didn't hold onto their color as strongly as we hoped for. So next time, more dye! More dye! We had quite a bit of red and blue dye left. Just a hint of yellow remained. And I did suggest we find some white underwear to dye... :D

But you can see some of the white on white fabric that was dyed. I think those pieces turned out really pretty!! There goes my already dwindling supply of background fabrics. :P

Mom wanted to do a miniature quilt with all the handdyes. So we picked something simple (log cabins, paperpieced) and she carefully went through all the dyed fabric picking the perfect match.

I do have to say that the dark is NOT one of our handdyes. It was bought at a quilt shop over a year ago and somehow it fits in pretty well with the handdyes. I hope Mom is still working on the blocks (36 in all) - said she'd email me a picture once she finishes them all. :)

The end results? Mom loves dyeing waaaaaaaaaaaay more than I ever expected. Now she wants to dye fabric by the hundred-yards. And I also enjoyed working with her very much. I'm not so strongly into the color aspect of dyeing, and I tire much faster than she does in trying to find different color combinations. But with both of us working on the dyeing process together, it was easy and fun. Plus, my parents have the perfect house for dyeing! Big garage with a huge dinged-up table, laundry sink near by to get more fresh water or rinse off; they have a boiler of a water heater, so I never had to worry about running out of hot water like I do in my apartment. No backaches or knee-aches from bending over the tub either! And Mom has a front-load washing machine, which I feel is better/more cleaner than top-loading machines. And there's no agitator to stress the fabric. Many hands sure make the dyeing process lighter. :)

And we pretty much split the fabric in half. Since they were mostly FQs, I cut 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3" which totals to 9" - half of an 18x22 piece. I did keep three 45x54 pieces (backings) and left mom with a 1-yard piece and another too-pretty-to-be-a-backing piece.

I'm just thrilled that she loves it so much and plan on dyeing every time I visit! :)

Leah

Back home again

I'm back home... as of yesterday. But I was waaaaaaaaaaaay too tired to even think about posting. In fact I fell asleep on my bed, fully dressed. My husband eventually woke me up so I could take my contacts out. I had one heck of a time trying to undo my bra strap - I was just too tired. I was ready to cry and my arms were about to fall off and I finally called my husband to help me. Even he had trouble getting it to unsnap. I started to wonder what the plane ride did to my clothes... then he got it off. Phew. I'll keep him after all. ;)

I just finished uploading 161 pictures! I'm interested in staying sane, so I'll be doing certain amounts/groups when I post, and certainly not all at once! But definately some goodies and quilt-related stuff. :)

Below is another picture of Mrs. P and the quilt I finished for her. I tried so hard to upload this picture in my previous post, but blogger just stomped their foot and told me no way. While the photo is a little more blurry, it's more true, color-wise. And I got to crop it. I couldn't find the crop option on my parent's laptop and it was driving me mad. :P


So... I'm slowly trying to catch up. I've whittled my email from about 800 to 529. A lot of deleting. I did a lot of errands today too. The electric bill was due TODAY (and I'll bet the bill came on the day we left too...) so I went to the post office, electric company, dropped off a bag of clothes to the thrift store, library, bank, walmart, the store and paid rent! Are you tired yet? ;)

When I came home, my husband wasn't there, but some potatoes were cooking. Turns out he felt like grilling up some steaks, especially since he got some new BBQ'ing tips from my dad on our vacation. They turned out really great! And he also had great timing. Not more than 15 minutes after he finished grilling the meat, the clouds started pouring out heavy rain for a while. But check out my husband! ;)

Definately a keeper - he took pictures of me when I was dyeing fabric with my mom and I was a wreck! I even accidently dyed my bra. :P Let's just say I now have a permanent "dyeing" outfit. :D

Leah

Giving the quilt

We surprised Mrs. P with the quilt tonight at dinner. She didn't even know that I was in town. :)

We met her and her husband at Chef Chu's, a chinese resturant. I gave her the quilt first thing, she's thrilled with it. :)

We spent over 2 hours just talking (that's my mom's head on the left of the picture) and visiting. When we got our fortune cookies, mine read something like "You have a gift of seeing beauty in ordinary things". Mrs. P's read "Some unexpected visitor will bring you good blessings". We all had a good laugh, because I'm the unexpected visitor and I brought her a quilt. :)

Helen in the UK: No, my arms weren't too sore from the quilting - I used low loft batting. But my bum and legs were REALLY sore from crawling all over the floor to pin the quilt. :D

Anne K: I had to laugh at your comment about how sqaure the blocks look... because Mrs. P is the one who cut out all the strips the old fashioned way: scissors. :P So they're probably not as straight and true as rotary cutters can be. It wasn't a problem though, I just sewed them like if they were any other block. The strips were cut at 2.5", so if I needed to, I could stretch and "make it fit" as needed. If I try to sew a log cabin with logs smaller than 2", then yeah... mine will be wonky too. :) Oh, and I ironed after each strip.

My parents got a laptop and it found my camera to be agreeable with its hardware... but in the photo program, I just couldn't find the crop button! At least I was able to resize it to less than 33% of the original. But this makes me want a laptop... just cuz. ;)

Turns out that my brother isn't going to have a Court of Honor yet, cuz his Eagle Scout project didn't work out... he has about a month to get his new one finished (Once you turn 18, no Eagle).

I've been having a blast and have been chatting with my mom and sister til my throat is sore. I still can't believe how alike my baby sister and I are, even though I haven't communicated with her since October. When she picked us up at the airport, we were both wearing similar outfits. A light shirt with an image and words and dark blue pants. She just got contacts, and we both had our hair pulled back. Twins, with 4 years between us. ;) Oh, and it turns out that we both bought ourselves new bathing suits recently and we both got new purses - she was walking into Safeway a week ago and her strap broke. I was walking into WalMart Thursday and MY strap broke on my purse. Just too funny. :)

Today I spent the afternoon with my mom. We went to WalMart for certain dyeing supplies - like measuring cup, buckets and I picked up some flower stencils. Then we went to JoAnn's to get muslin for dyeing, and phooey! They only had about 1 yard of white 44" left. I ended up buying a bolt of 90" wide and we'll just have to cut down to what size we want. But I'm glad my mom is so excited about dyeing fabric. She also wants to make a miniture quilt while I'm here too. :)

Time to catch up on email!

Leah

Yipee!!

Yesterday was my second wedding anniversary. Whoo!! This is my favorite wedding picture of the two of us. I know we're just laughing at the weird positions the photographer was making us do... but we just look all glowy and happy. :)

He gave me a humorous anniversary card that I'm going to keep forever. :) We went out to lunch at Applebee's and he complimented on my new capri's - that sure made my day! (And after lunch, I bought myself another pair. :D)

The other news is that I've been working on Mrs. P's quilt. I believe I'll be seeing her this Saturday, so I want the quilt to be done before then. She started it over 15 years ago! Time for it to be finished. :)

She originally was doing the quilt-as-you-go block method. I have an idea how that works, but I just couldn't figure out how to add the borders. Then when I was inspecting the blocks, I noticed that the backing fabric was looking pretty chewed up where the thread was. I took a wild guess that it was sewn with 100% polyester thread. It bothered me - the quilt hasn't even been used and it is already developing holes. :(

So I went ahead and undid all the blocks she had sewn (9 of them) and redid all the blocks (20). I felt so much better knowing that her quilt could have a longer life now. I also bought new cotton backing for the quilt.

Here I'm trying to pin the quilt - I could only do half at a time! I pinned it every 7 inches. Crossed my fingers and hoped for no puckers!


I started quilting it about 4:30 this afternoon and with lots of breaks, I was about halfway done at 8:30. Then I started to really tackle it and got the other half of the quilt done at 9:30. Things that make you go hmmmm! ;)

It's about twin sized, maybe a little short in length, but definately wide enough. I still can't believe I got it quilted in one day!

And here's the back - would you believe I found the same fabric the darkest/last logs are in the quilt top? I was dropping my jaw, this quilt is over 15 years in the making, what are the odds of me finding matching fabric?! And the more funny part, the selvage said "Copyright 1990". Ohhhh. :P

But whew... I started this on Monday, July 3rd and I'll likely be done on Friday. That's gotta be the fastest quilt I've done! And the good news is that it's looking pucker-free. :)

Busy days ahead - tomorrow I need to get the binding on and start hand sewing that down. I need to buy some ant bait so we don't come back home to an ant-filled apartment. I need to make some copies of paperwork for my dad. I want to buy a new bathing suit. :) Oops, lets not forget packing. Mustn't forget the quilts or the dyeing stuff... think a list would help me? ;)

Friday we leave for Phoenix and will land in California around 10pm. I'll be tired! Saturday is my brother's Court of Honor, where he gets awarded his Eagle Scout ranking.

So who knows when I'll be posting again. I'm definately bringing my camera with me, so at least there should be fun photos later. :)

Leah

Two Headed Sheep

Yay! I finished the customer's quilt on Sunday afternoon. She doesn't need it til August, but it's nice to get it out of the way before my trip.

This is the front of the quilt, 36" square. I quilted wavy lines in the cream fabric.


This is the back of the quilt. I didn't have enough yardage to make a seam-less backing, so I took all my leftover HSTs and basically made it a double-sided quilt.


While I was handsewing down the binding I came across what would happen when cloning goes wrong...

Those poor sheep make me laugh - what are the odds of me sewing something like that, unknowingly? :)

I made an order for books from an online site - should give me plenty to read when I'm visiting my parents! I also placed an order at Dharma for handdyeing powders and chemicals. I'll have to buy the muslin when I'm there. I'm not sure when I'll have time to dye, but I really wanna show my mom and sister how to. :)

Leah