Georgia on my mind

Here I sit in Charlotte Douglas Airport again, Gate E6 this time, awaiting my flight home. My trip to Georgia was quite the rolleroaster ride, and I am anxious to return to the familiar chaos that is my own life. I’m glad that my first trip of travel season is a short one, it helps me ease back into being apart from my family.

I spent Saturday night with my quilting buddy, Nancy, who moved away from Virginia in June and whose absence I feel acutely. She has a lovely home, and I’m sure you can understand my delight to sleep under a not one, but two scrappy Sunbonnet Sue quilts that her mother and grandmother made.

My visit with her was much too short, but this was a work trip after all, so Sunday afternoon found me on my way to my first college fair of the trip. Unfortunately, my materials weren’t on their way to the fair with me – the parcel delivery service (which will remain nameless) ignored the extra money I paid for Saturday delivery, and did not deliver my package. In fact, they LOST my package, and when they finally found it on Monday, they wanted me to pay an additional fee to ship it to another address. You know those cartoon characters with steam coming out of their ears? That was me.

But Sunday's fair went fine anyway, and that night I spent catching up with some of my best girlfriends, Celisa and Nikki. True and enduring friendships are such a blessing. We may not see each other for months or even years at a time, but we always just pick up right where we left off when we are together again.

Monday consisted of two more fairs, followed by dinner with a colleague – a long day that began when I left Celisa's house at 7:30 AM and ended when I returned at 9:30 PM. Today, there was another college fair, and then two high school visits. After that, what did I have but a couple of hours to spare before my 8 PM flight out of Atlanta to Charlotte. You know what that means…time to visit a quilt shop!

The closest shop to me was Little Quilts in Marietta, GA. I loved the entry,

and everything I saw inside. True to their name, there were lots of small quilts. I loved this little cutie

One thing that really impressed me was that many of the shop samples were hand quilted – I find that most often shop samples are either just quilt tops or are machine quilted. It was a treat to see so much hand stitching. Check out this little scrappy beauty, not just hand quilted but hand embroidery stitches as well.

But my favorite part of this shop was this treasure chest tucked away in the corner – scraps, beautiful scraps!!!

I plopped right down on the floor and got to digging through my version of “treasure”. They had a “fill a baggie for $5” deal, so I got a bag and had a ball.

In addition to scraps, I got lots of ideas - name quilts

Picnic quilts

And different style hats for Sunbonnet Sue.

If you are ever in Marietta, I encourage you to stop by Little Quilts – there is something for everyone, not just quilters, but those who work in wool, embroidery, hooking, etc. In fact, when I walked in the door, I overheard one woman joke to another, "I'm a hooker AND a stripper!" My kind of shop!

On the road, again!

Travel season has begun! I am posting from gate E24 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, awaiting my flight to Atlanta. Thank heavens for airports with free Wi-Fi! Of course, I have 3 books with me, but that's what I do on the plane. I hate to run out of reading material before the end of my trips, so I ration out my reading accordingly. I also have my 4th of July Tablerunner to quilt (big sigh of relief when my needles and scissors made it through security), but I thought I'd check out what was happening in blogland, first.

Besides, I got 3 (almost uninterrupted) hours of sewing in yesterday afternoon, putting the blocks from my Great Great Grandmother's Quilt into a top. Ta-da!

I love it! This is a quilt top that will definitely become an honest-to-goodness quilt sooner, rather than later.

I finished sewing it together just in time to make it to the tail end of our Quilt Guild Business Meeting (there were some very satisfying 'oohhhs' and 'aahhhs' during Show and Tell when I held this flimsy up - I'm not above wanting my work to be liked by others!), and in plenty of time for our featured speaker, Mrs. Jane Hall, foundation piecing expert. She brought quilts and slides and her sense of humor. She was prepared; I was not. I brought my camera case, but the camera was at home next to my computer. Doh!

Luckily, you can see her quilts on her website. My favorite that she brought last night was one of her most recent, Vinas Viejas.

You really have to see it in person to appreciate the complexity, though. Those borders have so much depth and texture because they are PIECED! Just awesome! I enjoyed her talk, and am envious of those in my guild who are doing an all day workshop with her today while I fritter away my time in the airport. Just know that there is a workshop that I WILL NOT MISS - Bonnie Hunter is coming to our guild in February. I don't care what is happening in the world of college admissions on that day - I will be at that workshop! (OK, everyone, all together now, knock on wood.)

Going on this trip today is not all bad. Tonight, I will be staying with my quilting buddy, Nancy, who moved away in June. On Sunday and Monday night, I'll be staying with one of my buddies from back when I lived in Atlanta, and one night will be Girls Night Out with my twin sister's college roommate who has been a friend of mine for many years. And I don't have to cook, clean, taxi anyone around, etc for 4 whole days! Both boys mock-cried and clung to me when I left this morning, but they'll be fine. And I'll be back home on Tuesday night, and our reunion will be sweet all around!

Introducing my husband!

My husband has finally been convinced to contribute to a blog at work. He wrote his first entry this week. Can you say COMEDY? He agonized over it like it was a graded essay! He read it to me over and over and over... it was so endearing!

Obviously, he and I are very different. He is an extremely private person who is not interested in sharing his thoughts/feelings/experiences with many outside a very close circle. I'm about as transparent as a sheet of glass - my thoughts, feelings, experiences are all right there for everyone to see. His blog entry is a philosophical treatise that all ties together nicely at the end. My entries are stream of consciousness blather with punctuation and capitalization thrown in (my high school English teacher made QUITE an impression on me).

I encourage you to take a peek and see/hear/experience the man I share my life with. Many people think he is quiet, but they don't know the real him. The man can TALK! And WRITE, too, if the length of his post is any indication. But I found it pretty interesting, and hope you will, too. There are some funny kid stories in there, and one of my favorite photos of Jason of all time.


Introducing....my husband! http://wlusidelines.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/children-and-basketball/




Have a great weekend, everyone! Travel season starts for me tomorrow, and I am off to Atlanta, GA, but first, tonight, the guild is hosting Jane Hall for a trunk show. Fun, fun, fun!

My Free Motion Quilting journey has begun!

Last night was a rare night with nothing planned - no karate, no Cub Scouts, no drive-in movie, no errands to run, nothing! Ah, bliss! I used this chunk of time to head down to the sewing studio and do my practice stitching for Christina's Quilt-along at A Few Scraps.

First, let me say, wow! How different it is to sew with the feeddogs down! I felt like the material moved around all willy nilly, and I can't imagine I could ever sew a straight line without the dogs. But, I followed along with her instructions (well, as much as I ever exactly follow anyone's instructions), and did some straight lines, some zigzags and some loop-de-loops. Then, like she said, I turned it over to check out the back, and learned a little about tension. I've never adjusted my tension before, but I did for this project because there were some thread loops on the back of my loop-de-loops.

To see if I had fixed the problem, I tried some more curves, this time some hearts on a vine, at least that's what I'm calling it. Never mind that they are all different shapes and sizes and have some pretty harsh lines for hearts...

It was fun, but pretty challenging. I can tell I'm going to need lots of practice. And honestly, I'm not even sure what the stitches are supposed to look like. I guess we'll learn. I think/hope the first lesson will be posted on Friday.

When I emerged from my sewing room to rejoin the family, my bliss was shattered. My eldest had stopped up one of the toilets with his non-fruit or veggie-eating offering to the toilet gods. Out came the industrial snake. The only good news from that encounter is that it will be my husband's turn to deal with it next time he stops up the toilet.

Then, when I went up to put the boys to bed, I discovered that my artistic younger son had decorated the sink in yet another bathroom with 5 striped Aquafresh toothpaste "slugs". (They were actually kinda neat looking, but don't tell him I said that.) I grabbed some toilet tissue to wipe up the mess, but when I went to throw it in their trashcan, I noticed the bottom of the trashcan was covered with about 2" of liquid. As I leaned down to investigate, the smell hit me - URINE! What the @#&*! Who thinks to do stuff like that? Five year old boys, that's who.

I was proud of myself for not flipping my lid. I calmly walked downstairs to inform my husband of how lucky he was that I continued to stick around to deal with his NASTY children, then went back upstairs to explain to the boys that when they make extra work for me, not only does it put me in a bad mood, but it means less time that I get to spend hanging out with them and having fun.

So, at the end of the night, all my bathrooms were clean, at least. Once I got started I figured I might as well keep going. But I was shaking my head the whole time. I certainly didn't do stuff like that as a kid. I was an angel. I mean, really, look at me:

(Just don't ask which one is me, because I have no idea)

Whichever one of these cuties isn't me is my twin sister, Ericka. I found out yesterday that she is coming to an event held at my University later this month ON OUR BIRTHDAY! How awesome is that?

Am I wrong?

This morning, I sat in a meeting from 8:30 AM until 12:15 PM, a succession of people from across the University making 20-minute presentations to a group of us, one after another. I came prepared with some hand quilting to keep me focused. However, one of my co-workers looked at me askance and said, "Are you really going to quilt while the President is talking?"

I thought nothing of it - when my hands are focused on quilting, my mind can zero in on what is being said. The same is true if I'm watching TV; without something for my hands to be doing, my mind often wanders (or shuts off and I start to snooze). But it made me wonder, was that rude of me? Would YOU bring handwork to a presentation, whether it be quilting or knitting or embroidery? Would you be offended if someone were doing handwork while you were giving a presentation? Inquiring minds want to know!


By the way, I got a block quilted on my 4th of July Tablerunner during the meeting - 3 blocks down, 2 blocks and the border to go. At this rate, it might actually be ready for next 4th of July! I'm not sure why I am quilting a tablerunner so heavily...


I also received some squishy mail earlier this week, some early birthday love from Char at Cloth Stitched - lovely fabric and a sweet handmade card. Thanks, Char!

Please pitch in your two cents!

So much has happened since my last post. Here are the highlights:

• I had a lovely overnight retreat with my co-workers last week. Not only did I leave the two days feeling re-energized about the recruiting cycle ahead, but I got to sleep under this quilt
  
  and in my free time, I went for a walk along the river, paddled around in a kayak, read in the hot tub, stargazed on a star deck, and played Apples to Apples with some crazy people (also known as my co-workers).
  

• When I got home, I found that I had won a giveaway from Cathy A. at Wondrous Woven Magic. It is so perfect, fabric I probably wouldn't buy for myself since I am in a "safe" fabric rut, but which I think is lovely, so I can't wait to see how I'm going to incorporate it into my current and future projects!

  

• My brother and I organized a cook-out at my mom's house yesterday. I brought blanched green beans tossed with sesame oil and garlic salt, garbanzo bean salad, watermelon, and hot dogs & sauerkraut. My brother added the most delectable ribs I have ever tasted and a wonderful pasta salad. I am still full. I brought my kids, my hubby and my dog to add to the melee of my brother, his girlfriend and two kids, my mom and her three dogs. It was loud, but it was a blast. So much fun that I forgot to take pictures.

In between these events was the event for which I am asking for your opinion. First, some background info. Every year, my twin sister and I get together for a long weekend of exploring, shopping, and crafting (she knits, I quilt). It is a fantasy of mine that one day, we will have a cottage industry, peddling our textile wares. Dreams have to start somewhere, right? So a couple years ago, we decided that we'd get some stuff together and set up a booth at a craft fair of something. Well, while my sister wasn't able to join me in this adventure, but I finally did just that this weekend. On Saturday, I woke my kids early, and we set up a booth at the once-monthly flea market at the drive-in movies. I borrowed a canopy from a friend (which I managed to break and now I'm not able to find a replacement, but that's another story), hung some quilt tops from the back and sides for shade and decoration, and put some of my finished, extra, "I've made so many of these what am I ever going to do with them" stuff out, along with a price list and some homemade business cards. I also set up my Ulmer Frame with a quilt that needs finishing, thinking I could get some quilting done while I sat there.

In one sense, this adventure was a complete failure - I didn't sell a thing! In another sense, it was very encouraging; LOTS of people came by my booth and stayed to chat and admire. I got so many compliments that my head swelled to twice its normal size. When one woman remarked, "Oh my, look at your perfect points!", I nearly swooned! People left and came back with others saying "this is the quilt lady I was telling you about." One person took a photo of my booth. I didn't get much quilting done because I was talking with people the entire 4 hours that I was there! I brought 20 business cards, and 19 people asked for and took one. I left feeling pretty darned good about my morning. I realize that if I were to do this again, I would want to choose another venue - this flea market was much like a giant yard sale, where people were looking to buy used clothes for 50 cents or hand me down toys for the kids for a quarter. I'd be better suited to set up at a craft fair or street fair or something.

Here's the rub. Several people inquired about the quilt tops I had hanging for shade and decoration. They didn't want the little stuff I had already made, they wanted me to finish my big quilt tops for them. The thing is, I never imagined that people would want those, so I hadn't thought of pricing. I felt like an idiot when asked how much it would cost to buy the finished quilts; I didn't have an answer for them. So, several people left me names and phone numbers and told me what quilt they wanted, and asked me to get back to them.

HELP! I have NO IDEA! Please chip in your two cents...

1) The quilt tops are all approximately twin size or slightly larger. They are all made from scraps. Since I didn't purchase the fabric for them, (in fact, much of the fabric was probably given to me) I don't feel right incorporating a fabric cost into the price of the top. Off the top of my head, I thought $50 for the unquilted quilt tops. Does that sound about right?

2) And then, of course, I am a hand quilter. I am slow. And I am not a professional, by any stretch of the imagination. I was thinking another $150 to finish off a top with hand quilting, including the purchase of the batting and the backing and binding fabric.

That ends up being a $200 quilt, machine pieced, hand quilted. How does that sound? Please be frank with me. I'm swimming in uncharted waters here. I don't want to under-value my time and creative efforts, but I also don't want to over-inflate the value of what I do.

And if it matters, here are the quilt tops that were inquired about:

I await your opinions with bated breath!

21 kids, 23 hours

Jason's 8th birthday was this past Saturday, and our weekend-long celebration was lots of fun, but I sure am dragging now! After a double feature at the drive-in on Friday night, on Saturday we had a joint 8th birthday party for Jason and two of his friends who all have birthdays around the same time. We didn't get around to sending out invites to Saturday's party until Friday, so we felt certain that not too many kids would show up. Boy, were we wrong! 21 kids showed up for the party, held at a cabin on a creek in the George Washington National Forest, and only one kid's parent stuck around for the festivities (beyond the parents of the 3 birthday kiddos). I am amazed at how well all the kids got along, but I've gotta admit, it was hard to relax with that many kids under our watchful eyes. And of course, we planned activities that our kids like thinking there would just be a couple kids, activities that become much more stressful the more kids you have around. They:

• caught toads and crawfish in the creek
• went fishing
• played water balloon games
• did target practice with a bow and arrow (gulp!)
• did target practice with a bb gun (double gulp!)
• roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over a campfire (no, you can NOT throw crawfish into the fire!)
• played on the swingset and ran around and played kid games like tag, kick the can, water gun tag, etc

To top it off, it was a campout party. The kids were invited to spend the night with us. In addition to our 5 kids, 5 other kids decided to go the distance with us. Of course, only 3 lasted the whole night (hey, kid, couldn't you have your nervous breakdown about camping out BEFORE 10 o'clock at night!?! Especially when we have to drive 5 miles out to get cell phone reception and your parents are 45 minutes away!?!). Needless to say, it was a late night. I was in our 8 person tent with 5 children and one other adult. One kid talked in his sleep all night and kept sitting straight up in his sleep. He was also a cover thief, and he woke me up as he pulled my blanket off me. Thank goodness for my drive-in movie quilt; it has gotten lots of use since it was finished. I had a deathgrip on the quilt and rolled to a corner of the tent to stake out my territory. I was cozy and warm, but I was terribly uncomfortable. Next time, I'm bringing an air mattress!

The last kid got picked up at noon, 22 hours after he had been dropped off, and the parent of another birthday kid and I just collapsed into lawn chairs for another hour while our children enjoyed some archery practice without a million other kids in line. I've learned my lesson - never assume that they won't all come, assume that they all WILL COME and limit the guest list! My sensitive, diplomatic son didn't want to leave anyone in his class off the invitation list, but even he admitted to me that there were kids there that he didn't really know.

All's well that ends well, though, and they all had lots of fun. Not a one left without pouting or crying because he/she didn't want to leave.

So, you can understand why I was feeling a bit bedraggled when I got home, and why no real sewing took place this weekend. I took a shower and a nap, and spent the late afternoon finishing another Beverly Connor book (a Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery - it's official, I am now a fan). My brain is too tired to try to come up with a solution to my "make it bigger without having enough fabric" dilemma with my GGG quilt, anyway. So for now, I'm starting another book and getting a full night's sleep before starting the week tomorrow. I wish I could say it was going to be an easy one, but we have an overnight retreat for work midweek. (*sigh*) There is just no rest for the weary.