Can you tell?

The shirt stripe box quilt made from my MIL's quilt is getting bigger every day, so I needed to clear my design wall to make room.  An inner border, a pieced border and an outer border later, and this Spiral Log Cabin quilt was ready to come off the wall and into the "to be quilted" pile.

I LOVE IT!  It is 51" square.  Why did it take me so long to finish it, you ask?  Ah, the usual lament of the scrap quilter - I ran out of my background fabric.  I searched locally for more, but to no avail.  But I found another fabric that was close enough for me.  Can you tell that the background in the borders is different than the background in the blocks?  Take a closer look...

But you know what?  I don't care.  I've said it before, but the first quilting book I read, and the one that has had the greatest impact on me, is Roberta Horton's Scrap Quilts: The Art of Making Do. 

Do you have a book that has helped you to define your approach to quilting?

And back to the shirt stripe box quilt - it wasn't quite speaking to me until I turned the blocks on point.  BINGO!  This, I love!

As if that weren't enough sewing, I also sewed the binding onto the front of the last of the Hurricane Sandy Quilts that I have quilted.  Now to just have some waiting time to sew down the back.

The other thing I did this weekend was set up a website for the Quilt Camp for kids that I'll be running this summer just before my shop opens its doors to the public.  I put the link out on an announcement email at the University today and already got 4 emails from interested parties.  After work today, I printed out my corresponding brochure with the little tear off slips at the bottom and posted them in 8 or 9 places around town.  I am SO EXCITED about all this!  Can you tell?

I get by with a little help from my friends

A surefire way to keep your mind off feeling blue is to keep busy and surround yourself with others.  That was the strategy this past weekend.  We visited my husband's grandmother in Southeastern Virginia.  I though we were just going to a cookout, but there were at least 50 people there, so it felt more like a family reunion to me.  I knew next to no one, but pull out a quilt to work on, and all of a sudden you are surrounded by interested folks.  That was my strategy, and it worked wonderfully!  Everyone has a quilt story to share.  I even found a cousin who designs cards and signs, and he's working on a design for me for my new business.  Plus, I'm halfway done hand quilting the second rainbow baby quilt!

Back at home, I worked on the quilt blocks from my MIL's shirts.  I need to pull out some of them with wider stripes to give my eyes a break - those tiny stripes make me seasick!  But so far, everything is lining up pretty well, although I'm not being a stickler about it.  Let's face it, I'm not much of a stickler for rules and things being orderly.

The larger blocks are 8.5", the smaller are 4.5".  So far, I've used 4 sleeves total - who knew there was that much fabric in a sleeve???

Then yesterday afternoon we went to a cookout at a local friend's house (that's right - two days in one weekend when I didn't have to cook dinner!), and I was working on cutting up the rest of the shirts when a quilter friend got some scissors and gave me a hand.  My friends are the best!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Disappearing Act

It's been over two weeks.  A lot has been happening.  I just haven't found a moment to write.

I had a nasty cold that knocked me on my keister.

We had a major project at work that had me working long hours.

And my mother-in-law is in the hospital.  It isn't good.  "There's nothing more we can do" and "hospice" are the words coming out of the doctors' mouths.  I can barely hear them because inside, I am screaming "NO!"

She is in constant pain as her body betrays her, so the right thing to do is to pray for comfort for her in her last days, and peaceful acceptance for the rest of us.  My mind knows that.  But my selfish heart wants her to keep fighting. Her children need her.  MY children need her.  I need her.  For the 19.5 years that I have known her, she has been a rock, someone you could always go to for wise advice or a listening ear or to take action when action needed taking.  She is the glue that holds the generations together.  When she is gone, there is going to be such an enormous, ugly gash torn out of the fabric of our lives.  I can't even conceive of how our lives will change - not the day to day movements, but the foundation on which our family existence sits.

We dropped everything and went up to Pennsylvania to see her for 5 days last week. I brought with me the "Chicken Soup" prayer quilt I had started for her last time she was in the hospital a year and a half ago, but never finished. (I'm not going to restate the symbolism or the process for this quilt, but you can read about it at that link if you care to.)

I had tried to do some free motion quilting on it and hated it, so put it aside when she got better.  When she went into the hospital this time, I pulled it out and frantically started pulling out all those ugly stitches to put in the kind I know, the kind that soothe me, the kind that allow me to say a little prayer with each pinch of fabric.

When we got to the hospital, I laid the unfinished quilt over her, and she raised her head, smiled, and said, "Plaids."

I chose the homespun plaids and stripes because they remind me so much of her.  No nonsense. Sturdy.  Useful.  Nearly every shirt I see her wear is a plaid or a stripe, as is much of her furniture.  She kept the quilt over her in the hospital, and I worked on it while I visited her.  But then I realized, as slow as I quilt, I'm not going to finish it in time.

When we came home, I brought it with me to attach a binding, and I'm sending the unfinished quilt back up there to her.  The prayers are still in it, even if all the stitches aren't.

Meanwhile, the day to day movements of our lives continue.  Valentine's Day. I didn't think much about it until the kids came home buzzing about it yesterday.  I refuse to buy anything, but here was a good opportunity to use up some of that Halloween candy that lingers in my home.  The kids missed the bus, but they finished their Valentines - Dum Dum Butterflies and Pixie Stix Cupid's Arrows.

Plus, I stayed up late last night to make my 3 Valentines some mini cheescakes.  No photos yet because I need to buy some fruit to garnish the top.

Tomorrow is the last day that the Blankie Depot is accepting quilts for Hurricane Sandy relief.  I got three more in the mail this week that my guild helped to finish

Plus, the Star Quilters Guild in Roanoke, VA got 3 in the mail.

Same border, but this is a different quilt!

I still have about 5 tops that I have finished but haven't quilted yet.  I'll get them done eventually and send them to eQuilter Quilt Relief - 5000 Quilts, as they are still accepting donations.  THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you who contributed.  Check your mailbox in the weeks to come for a little something from me.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.  Oh, and I did find the time to send the giveaway winnings out - the winners were Vivian from NC (no blog) who won the book and Jane from Jane's Fabrics and Quilts, who won the scraps in the polka dot Chinese takeout container.

Sewing on the road

I left home on Friday morning, not to return until the beginning of July.  While I brought a quilt that needs hand quilting, I wasn't convinced I wanted to be away from my sewing machine for that long.

Solution:  I brought it with me! 

And since I couldn't bring my whole stash with me, I collected up all of my Goodwill pillowcase purchases (OMG!  How did I end up with 19 pillowcases?  Especially considering that I've already upcycled 16 of them into reuseable grocery bags and aprons?) as well as some of my 2" squares to play with.

17 of the 19 pillowcases I have amassed through my pillowcase purchase addiction.

I spent Friday and Saturday at Princeton University where I presented at a conference and was interviewed on camera for publication online - nervewracking!

 

On Saturday night, I drove up to my MILs in Easton, PA where my kids were waiting for me.  I surprised them with an all day trip to Dorney Park (an amusement park) on Sunday.  I conquered my fear of rollercoasters and had a ball!  I even went on the ones where you go upside down!

Today, I walked my niece's dog while the boys rode their bikes all over the neighborhood (we live on a dirt road that goes straight up a mountain, so riding on paved roads is a treat for them), then went to the movies to catch Madagascar 3.  Needless to say, my kids have not stopped chanting "Circus, Afro, Circus, Afro, Polka Dot, Polka Dot, Polka Dot, Afro!"  Heaven help me!

After the movie, I decided to channel my inner Em and brought my sewing machine outside onto the deck to sew.  Time to tackle those pillowcases! 

Sewing on the deck

Two down!  Someone in my family will be getting some reuseable, washable grocery totes. 

Why is it so hard to photograph stripes?  The one on the left is red, white and blue stripes.

I love the 5 I made for myself, and use them every time I go shopping, whether for groceries or anything else.  Maybe tomorrow I'll make aprons.

I love vacation!

On the road

We hit the road after work yesterday. We spent the night at my mother-in-laws last night. For those of you who followed my old blog, she is looking and feeling MUCH better. I'm so glad I prepared all this handwork to do on this trip. I've been working on securing the scrappy blue binding on the Crumb Cake Stand quilt for my sister, and I like how it is looking. I hope to have it done by the time we get to her house tomorrow afternoon.

Well, the road is calling! I'll check in again at a later stop.