Ann's Summer 2009 Mystery

Ann's at it again! She just posted the cutting instructions for her Summer 2009 Mystery. The actual clue-giving day will be some time in August. She's not sure yet. You can always join in through one of her Yahoo Groups - this one is pretty quiet except around mystery time.

I accidentally saw the finished mystery top... so I know what it's going to look like, but I'm still excited to play! It's a clever design and it'll work well for a boy's quilt. My background is going to be the circles, the blue fabric is going to be the "focus" and the green will be the binding.

I bought the circle fabric from Cowgirl Quilter who's trying to raise money for her son's school-related trip. She's got $500 of the $2100 they need by October. She's been offline for the past few weeks, so she hasn't been able to entice me with buying more fabric from her yet. ;)

Leah

Saying "Thank You"

My parents gave my husband and I a very generous housewarming check when we moved. We used it to buy chairs to go with our dining table, a DVD stand, a computer desk for my husband (his old one became my new cutting table) and several kitchen items. I wanted to say "thank you" to my parents in a special way, so I made this card.

It's just ends and strings of dyed pieces sewn onto heavy card stock paper. I did take care to change my needle after sewing through the paper! :) Wrote a nice message (but forgot to say "Happy Father's Day"... d'oh!) and sent it off to them.

I'm sure that card won't be trashed like a standard store greeting card might eventually be. And a great way to use up bits of fabric. :)

Leah

A long time ago...

...in a galaxy rather near here, I used to have a small assortment of quilting items. :)

These pictures were taken in October 2003. I had 5 quilting books.

The top right one is still in my mom's possession. She did buy it after all, and watercolor quilts just aren't my thing.


I had about 30-40 yards of fabric total. I look at that pile and can only think "not enough background fabrics!!"

My tastes have certainly evolved over the years. I fell out of love with bigger prints and now enjoy tone-on-tone fabrics.

Funny how I can dye over a hundred yards of fabric in a week with my mom and still lament over not having the right shade I need! :P

Leah

Reviving a ghost

I finally got one of my oldest quilt projects into a top! I want to say that I started it in 2002? Yeah, my first year of quilting. It's Eleanor Burn's Log Cabin in a Day. Yes... you may laugh. :)

I got the first row sewn together and half of the blocks made. Since then, it was untouched. I got married, I moved to apartment #1 and still didn't do a thing. Moved to apartment #2, placed the blocks and strips near the door so I would see it every time I walked in or out of my sewing room, and still didn't do a thing! Moved to apartment #3 (this one)... hey, let's get it finished. :)


It took me a little creative thinking of the pattern I was trying to create. All I remembered was that there was a "star" in the middle and the greens made a "diamond" cross. I lost the paper I drew up the design and didn't think to look back at my old pictures.

Yeah, you can't really tell there's a star, the green dominates. Two things that surprised me about this quilt - one, I still like it. Two, my quarter-inch seam allowance was pretty good and I didn't have to do much fudging to get the blocks to nestle together. I'll thank Mom for that, she taught me the 5/8ths seam allowance for clothes sewing very well. :)

But quilt in a day? Ha! Not from this gal. Now I gotta decide... green border, blue binding; or do I do blue border, green binding? My husband was no help. :P

Leah

Presto! A quilt top

From cutting the blocks...



...to sewing them together...

(I love the view from my sewing table!)

...to a completed quilt top.

That easy! ;) Not pictured: the time it takes to do all that stuff.

And I'm so happy that I have ROOM to take a picture of big quilt like this. I love my new place. :)

Leah

Rainbow Fun

I'm jumping in Dana's giveaway:



I've had my eye on the Janome 6600 for some time, but I'm afraid I wouldn't love it as much as I love my Bernina. I just mostly lust after the 9" throat space for free-motioning. But if I get it for free? I'm sure I can fall in love with it. ;)

My fabric choice was the most mottled hand dyes I could find.

This includes my most favorite dyed piece.


It has other pieces like the one below.

I had a lot of fun looking over the many hues as I cut my strips.


The fabric looks pretty boring from the side though! :P

I was also able to get my sewing chair back... so now I can go back to quilting full time!

And here's to hoping that I'll be the lucky quilter to win the machine! ;)

Leah

Settling In

In quiet moments when I'm too cold at the computer (I can't believe I said that!) I get up and work in my sewing room to warm up. Just puttering, I have no goals until June comes.

I set up all my quilting books and magazines in a nightstand. Looks like I have room for a few more. ;) The plug strip that the iron is in has a switch, so that'll make it easy on and off for ironing. And thanks to the weight of all the books, it won't likely be as fearful if I accidentally bump into the nightstand. Whereas if I bump into the ironing board, it's sure to knock over the iron! :P


I've been going over "Create Your Perfect Quilting Space" by Lois Hallock. She really stresses on having a "work triangle" set up, to make quilting easier. It's a lopsided triangle, but it's there. ;)

The sewing chair was stolen by my husband so he could play the drums on Rock Band 2. That was pretty much the only thing he asked for his birthday this year, and he was gifted enough cash to cover it all. Except for a new chair. :)


I'm pretty wiped out right now. I've been spending a lot of evenings cleaning up the old place. I seriously boo-boo'ed and accidentally got Oven-Off on the vinyl flooring. It left horrible brown splotches that put me into panic. Rubbing didn't do a lick, nor pouring straight bleach. Finally I took a moment to read what in the world Oven-Off is made out of... lye! Oh, ok, vinegar should counteract it. Sure enough, vinegar took out 98% of the brown spots. If you look really closely, you'll still see a few spots... but let's call it "wear and tear", ok? ;)

Leah

Half way there

Still moving! The weather hasn't been in our favor. It's either over 90 degrees or it's raining. :P I'm happy if we make two trips in one day.

The living room. No couch or computer yet. We'll be returning the TV this Sunday - it's just not working out for us (poor picture quality) and thankfully Costco has a great 90-day return policy. :)

Oh yeah, I "snuck" a sewing machine in the living room. Currently it's a plant holder, but I'd love to have it stacked high with quilts.


The sewing room. I ended up switching around the cutting table and (invisible) ironing board locations.

And one huge mound of batting! I'm promising myself that I'll get cotton next time, and I'll have 500 quilt tops waiting! Ok... maybe not. ;)


The bed(less) room. All three bookshelves fit on one wall, yay!

I spent some time unpacking books last night, and ran out of room. Rats. I think I'll use the top of the bookcases as another shelf.


My plants are doing well. Less than a month ago they were just little sprouts.

Hopefully next year I'll have all four Earth Boxes lined up at the railing, growing beautiful greenery. :)


Plenty of aches too. I have 10 bruises from my knee to thigh on my right leg. I have no idea how I got any of them, except the one on my knee - whacked it into the steering wheel. But my leg looks like an overripe banana. :P

Leah

It'll be this Friday

Eeeps! The big day is coming up. :) We swung by the apartment for a looky-loo this afternoon.


The living room, with a bit of the porch.

There's two plugs outside, so we're considering putting the chest freezer outside. It's our biggest relocation item that we're having trouble with. The porch is much bigger and nicer than we expected. I can easily see us spending many hours outside, especially since we won't be getting a lot of direct sun.


Next is the kitchen.

Hopefully the adjustment to no dishwasher will be smooth. I think it'll be ok, because I never put my pots and pans in the dishwasher. It takes several days for enough cups, plates and bowls to fill it up now. I'm the dishwasher now! ;) On the bright side, I won't mind using the good China so much, since I'll have to hand wash anyhow.


My quilting room.

Playing out an arrangement I could do. I'm not sure if I want the ironing board on the right side... but there's a handy plug right there. Who knows, I may find a much different arrangement once I actually have my quilting items in the room.


Peek of the quilting closet and the guest bathroom.

Very small closet. I think I'll just have to set up a bunch of wire shelves and line up my fabric on the wall. But I still have one problem. My monster batting roll!!! Can't stuff it in the closet like I'm doing right now. :P Gonna have to crank up the swamp cooler and keep finishing tops.


The master bedroom.

I'm hoping to jam all three bookshelves into the master room. Currently two of them are in my quilting room, but I do all my reading in the bedroom. Maybe two bookshelves in the bedroom and one in the living room.


I'll have to get more pictures when we move in. The master bedroom closet/bathroom has a lot of storage (we almost thought about putting the freezer there), but when there's nothing in that spot, plain walls look really boring. Trust me. ;)

It'd be very nice if I could get all the moving done before my husband's 30th birthday, which is May 23rd. That'd be a GREAT gift in my book, and I'm not planning on getting him anything as it is. :D

Leah

Hair Today

For an April's Fool joke on my husband, I got my hair cut. (Never mind that it took me a month to get the after photo!) Here's the before:

I have no memory of those curls and waves! One of the biggest reason for cutting my hair was to encourage more curls.


This is the shortest my hair has been, since I was four or five. And no, my hair's never been dyed, I am freshly out of the shower in the second picture.

I opted for a layered style, and it was important to me that I could be able to tuck my hair behind my ears if I wanted to. Took me about a month to adjust to it. I can squeeze it into a high pony tail for the gym, but buns and twists don't work out so well. I probably won't have it that short again, but good to know what it's like. :)


Our plans to tour our new apartment tomorrow got bumped... because they're installing new carpet and flooring. Yippee! So we'll swing by on Tuesday. And we're still moving in 8 days. Yikes!

Still haven't done that much packing yet. I did make another run to the thrift store to donate a small bookcase, a bag of clothes and a bag of fabric that didn't get taken by the quilt guild ladies. Crunch time now. :)

Leah

It's official!

Every thing's been confirmed and signed... we're moving! It's a mixture of excitement and panic. I have officially 13 days left to pack!

No sewing for me in the next few weeks. See the gray bin? I've overflowed two of those with fabric that I'll be giving away at the quilt guild meeting next week. Then this morning I got my guild's newsletter and the next two meetings are about scrap management and scrap busting quilts. Then there's a workshop in the middle of the month that strongly encourages you to delve into your pile of scraps to make the quilt they will teach.

Me? I'm taking the easy way out and letting my unloved scraps and fabric become somebody else's problem!! :D It's worth it to me, especially if it means that I take away the guilt of feeling like I need to put the fabric to use somehow, someday.

Next Friday we'll get a chance to tour our future home, and I certainly intend to have the camera with me. ;)

Leah

Blessings

We've been getting some good news this week! But first I want to show off my garden. ;)

The first box is the edibles - sunflowers, sweet pea and corn are all growing nicely. I'm using some EarthBoxes that my grandfather gave me last summer. My plants are doing much better!!


The second box is my herb box. I bought the rosemary and oregano late summer last year and they survived the winter. My basil in the right top corner didn't.

Then from seed this year, I have cilantro, chives (good luck seeing those!) and parsley. I hope to replace the basil sooner or later - I did make pesto several times.


Some other good news is that my husband received his contract for the next school year!! This is a huge deal to us because usually they make us wait until the middle or end of May. The other reason is because they HAD to let two people go. One was transferred to the science department, and the other is depending whether or not they pass some testing? I'm not too clear... all I know it's not my husband!!!! :)

Now we just need confirmation that the apartment is ours, and we're set. We'll be checking again tomorrow.

Leah

Slow Doings

It's been a week of little results, but that's ok. I did manage to get the borders on my Ann's Mystery quilt.

I even managed to cut some backing fabric. Still need to sew the two pieces together.


I've been doing a ton of baking and cooking! Our checking account has been depleted (due to buying a planned-for TV) and we have $6 left in our food budget. If you want something, you gotta make it or do without. :)

My husband was craving sweets, so I made Peanut Butter Finger Cookies from The Roux We Do cookbook. They're supposed to be dipped in chocolate... but I don't have any! Chocolate's not the first "drug" of my choice. ;)


We also have a tentative apartment. There's still some legal paperwork to be taken care of by the previous tenant, but since she moved to Ohio, there's a pretty good chance she's not coming back. :) Hopefully we'll get an official confirmation next week. We won't actually move until May 15th. I wish I could start feeling some panic or something to have motivation to start packing... but it hasn't happened yet! And I'm going to be on my own for half of the move. The last school week is the worst for my husband and he's unable to help me much.


Somebody send me some decluttering magic, please! :P

Leah

Just one Honey Bun

How far can you stretch one Honey Bun roll? Into a nice nap sized quilt, I say! ;)

It measures 50x74. I was able to get eight 5" bars from each strip. A total of 320 bars, split into five rows of 64 bars each.

I'm leaning for an orange thread for the quilting, but I'm just not sure. I think red would be too bright against the background fabric. Maybe it just needs to age a little first. ;)

It sure feels good to be sewing after my overwhelming week!

Leah

FQ winner

The winner is Kimberly!

I'd take it, too. I'm too broke to afford any fabric.

Sounds like she really could use some more fabric. :)

Leah