One down, three to go

Travel season has begun, so my blogging is likely to be sporadic until mid-October. I just got back from my first trip - ATLANTA. I love going to Atlanta because I get to stay with friends, one night with Nancy (mamanance), where we talk and quilt and talk and quilt and eat her yummy food and talk and quilt. Then two nights with a girlfriend that I met when I lived in Atlanta 14 years ago, one of those friends where you can be apart for 9 months and when you see each other, the conversation picks up right where you left off.

Quilting-wise, I spent my spare moments working on the August Birdie BOM block, trying to meander quilt my Chicken Soup quilt by hand (confession - I am picking out the machine quilting; I am just not happy with the results), and a stop in a new-to-me quilt shop, Red Hen Fabrics in Marietta, GA where I picked up some chubby eighths for my Let's Bee Together quilt and some Heat Press Batting Together tape. Has anyone ever used this? I am curious to see how it works since I have so many batting scraps that aren't quite big enough for a quilt.

Speaking of my Let's Bee Together quilt, I received another block; isn't it cool?


But here's what is NOT cool: On Friday night, while my kids were enjoying Parents Night Out at karate, I went to a quilt guild meeting and trunk show and then hit the grocery store to pick up food so my family wouldn't go hungry during my absence. I picked the kids up at 10 PM, and had them in bed by 10:30 PM, me, a bit later. On Saturday, I got up, made breakfast, packed, showered, and was on my way to the airport by 9:30 AM. Fast forward to 10:30 PM yesterday (Tuesday), when my flight landed and I went back to my car for the drive home. Guess what I found?

Yup, the groceries from Friday night. 4 days in a closed car in the Virginia heat. I think I know what a corpse smells like. Did you know that packages of Jimmy Dean sausage will explode when left out in the sun? Or that frozen pot pies nearly liquify? I don't even want to know what was growing on the inside of the bread bag, and I am thankful that not ALL of the yogurt containers burst.

I drove to the nearest gas station and pumped gas as a cover for my dumping $98 worth of groceries in their trash recepticles and then scrubbing the back of my car with antibacterial wipes. At 11:00 at night. Before an hour and a half drive home. With all the windows down and the sunroof open in an attempt to get some breathable air.

PLEASE, make me feel like I am not the only bonehead on earth - leave me a comment telling me something boneheaded that you have done. I can't be the only one, right?

Tension Troubles

My mother-in-law came through surgery OK, and now they just have to figure out what to do next. Thanks to all of you for your prayers and positive thoughts. It certainly made ME feel better!

But still, I've been tense this week. I've been chewing up the inside of my mouth. My shoulders are sore from being held so stiffly. I'm not getting enough sleep, and not sleeping very well when I do.

I really want to get this quilt done so I can send it up to her. So after karate and dinner last night, I went down to the sewing room to see what I could do about quilting it. First, I started with some straight lines - BORING! I couldn't make myself do more than 2 lines, which I will be taking out. Time to put on my big girl pants (borrowing from Em) and try Free Motion Quilting. A meander can't be that hard, right? I thought I'd practice on one of my hot pads that I had made this spring, the one I messed up on and left the space between the O and the T, the one I am definitely keeping for myself anyway:

OK, not too bad, I can do this. Of course, the hot pad is only about 8" square...

I got started on the Chicken Soup Quilt and the thread kept breaking. I rethreaded 3 times before I pulled the quilt out and looked at the back. Not only was the thread breaking, but the back had ridiculous loops. Obviously my tension was wrong. Maybe I should read my notes from when I tried free motion quilting once before. Why don't I ever read the instructions FIRST?? I had in my notes what tension works for me, what stitch length, etc. I made the adjustments and switched to new thread (why not? maybe it was the wrong thread and THAT is why it kept breaking), and started again in another place.

It isn't perfect.

The shapes are funny looking and in some places, much more angular than smooth, sometimes crossing over other lines of stitching even though I was trying hard to avoid that.

I am finding it very difficult to maintain the same speed throughout so that I can have the same stitch length throughout.

But I'm doing it!

Unfortunately, I have a bunch of stitching to pull out from the first thread...UGH!

You know, I'm also tense because of the book I'm reading. Someone from work read my blog and offered me her copy of THE HELP so I wouldn't have to wait for the library copies to come available. I'm really enjoying the story, but it is also making me tense. I just KNOW something terrible is going to happen. Despite my knowledge of segregation and discrimination in the US, reading about it still exasperates and angers me. But it is a good story, so I keep reading.

You know what DIDN'T stress me out? On Monday evening, I watched the 1985 version of Anne of Green Gables, all 3.25 hours worth. No wonder it was on TV as a miniseries when I was a kid - it is LONG! But so good! I never even considered not watching the whole thing from start to finish. (I spent the whole time wondering, though, who cast Megan Follows as Anne? She's perfect for the role in temperment, but in the book, Anne is supposedly not pretty, and in my eyes, Megan Follows is gorgeous!) And while watching, I was transported to that magical place (in my mind), Prince Edward Island, and felt myself relaxing. I finished my June Birdie BOM (leaving me just August and September left to do at this point, which I will take on my first work trip this weekend):

and I made some more progress hand quilting my Pick and Choose Quilt. Will I EVER finish that quilt? I am starting to wonder...

Quilting as prayer

My mother-in-law, Wilma, is an amazing woman. She is kind and generous, brave and fierce, gentle and loving, funny and intelligent. I love her dearly. Unfortunately, she has been battling cancer for years now - breast cancer, uterine cancer, colon cancer. But, like I said, she's brave and fierce, and she's been doing an amazing job at keeping cancer at bay and living her life. We found out this weekend that her current threat is not responding to treatment and she's going to have surgery. Today.

I'm thinking positive thoughts. After all, she's fierce and brave, remember? Last night, I just felt like I had to do something, so I went down to the sewing room. At first, I thought flannel, something cozy for her lap while she is convalescing. I started picking out fabrics, but they were all so bright and saccharine. When you are sick, you don't need candy, right? You need chicken soup. I made a pot of homemade chicken soup on Monday. My kids have had the sniffles and coughs for two weeks now, and it was raining, and it just seemed right. So I set out to make a chicken soup quilt for Wilma, nothing fancy, no measuring, made from basic ingredients plus leftovers from other projects, but made with love, made with prayer.

Out came the shirtings and the homespuns and a baggie of HSTs that I got from someone down the line. I put my heart into it and I put her heart into it. I made a ribbon to symbolize her fight against cancer. I left an opening in the border with some HST arrows to show the way for that cancer to get out, out of her body and out of her life.

With every stitch, I thought of all the memories we've made over the last 18 years - the family gatherings, the vacations, the births and birthday parties, the board games, the movies, the sitting up late into the night talking. With every stitch, I sent positive, healing, loving thoughts her way, willing those doctors to fix what is wrong with her once and for all, willing her to have the strength to fight and persevere and triumph. With every stitch, I prayed for 18 more years with her.

Bee Activity

We had our office retreat this week. Longtime followers will remember that we go to a wonderful lodge in the middle of the Virginia countryside, Fort Lewis Lodge, for two days of debriefing and goal-setting and bonding. I absolutely love it there! It is so serene and beautiful (with a quilt on every bed!). I didn't go kayaking this year, but I did go for a walk/run, spent a few minutes in the hot tub, and ate embarrassingly large quantities of their fantastic food. I justify myself by saying, "Well, it is a retrEAT, after all!"

(this photo, lifted from the Fort Lewis Lodge website, is of the outdoor pavilion where we have our meetings and where we hang out in front of the fire after the days work is done. Seriously, if you are ever visiting SW Virginia and looking for a spectacular place to say, I can't recommend this place highly enough)

When I arrived home on Thursday, I received my fabrics for the September Bee Block. I whipped it up yesterday, and will put it in the mail today.

I also received another of my August blocks back. (curious - even though I got my fabrics out to Bee participants early in the last week of July, I've only received 4 blocks back so far in the first week of September - is that normal?) Anyway, this block was worth the wait - it is wonderful!

Plus, she threw in some bonus black and white prints for me - I love the one with the fancy ladies walking their fancy dogs!


My quilting goals for this long weekend are to finish my June Birdie BOM and prep my August and September blocks so I can take them on the road with me (my first trip of the travel season starts a week from today - back to Atlanta), to make some more progress hand-quilting the Pick and Choose quilt, and practice some free motion quilting on some hot pads for my kitchen. My home life goals for this weekend are to enjoy a campout with the kids, complete my online training for cub scout den leader for this year, and clean up this pigsty I call a home.


I understand there are some people out there who actually enjoy cleaning. Are any of you strange creatures reading my blog? If so, do you want to come visit me?

If only I had a 22" waist!

I finished my niece's circle skirt! For some reason, the last row of gathering wasn't so onerous last night.

I made a binding for the bottom hem...

Added an elastic waist and tied a ribbon in the front...

And I swear to you, if my waist were only 22 inches, I would keep this for myself! Wouldn't it be fun to flounce around in this?

Perhaps I need my head examined, but I am seriously considering making an adult-sized one! And I will not lie, I tried to squeeze into this one...it looked mighty cute around my knees!

I hope she likes it - ONE Christmas present done!!!

Can we rewind to the weekend, please?

I could tell it was a Monday morning without even looking at a calendar. I took the dogs to the vet this morning for check-ups and Rosabelle vomited in the car. While washing it out at a gas station, I was wondering to myself if I was going to smell like vomit at the office all day when it occured to me that I forgot to put on deodorant this morning in my rush to get both kids and both dogs out of the house on time. Great, I am going to smell like vomit AND sweat today. Can we just rewind to my wonderful weekend, please?

Hurricane Irene brought us some wind and rain, but nothing we couldn't handle. More importantly, she brought us BEAUTIFUL post-hurricane weather! No humidity and temps in the low 80s during the day and low 60s at night - and it is supposed to be like this all week! I'm in heaven! (in case you didn't know, "almost heaven" is in West Virginia, "heaven" is in Virginia)

Saturday was busy with quite a bit of running around and volunteering accompanied by the blustery weather, but Sunday was wonderful and relaxing. I didn't even shower and dress until right before bedtime when I put on clean pajamas! It was Jason's 9th birthday, so I made him some banana bread for breakfast, we opened gifts, and we lounged about for most of the day. For me, lounging includes sewing. I made a pillowcase dress/nightgown for Anika from a 50 cent pillowcase she helped me pick out at the thrift store this summer. I am much happier with my stitches and construction with this one than with the first one I made a couple months ago.


(note: this is a child-sized headless mannequin, NOT my 6 year old son. What kind of mother would ask her son to model a dress for his cousin!?! Although most 6-year-olds will do almost anything for chocolate...) I'll be sending this off to her once I whip up the other pillowcase that we bought into a nightgown. I would have done them at the same time but the other one needed a different thread color, and there is a limit to how many times I am willing to change the thread in a single day.

I also started working on a Christmas present for my niece - a patchwork circle skirt. The tutorial can be found at http://indietutes.blogspot.com/2007/05/patchwork-circle-skirt.html. I love the dresses in the tutorial, but wow, I had no idea how challenging it is to "gather". Each successive row has 1.5 times the number of patches, and you somehow have to sew them together. The first two rows were a struggle, but I powered through. When it came time to add the third row, I thought, "No way is this going to work!"

But it did.

I was hoping that 3 rows would be enough, so I tried the skirt on my "child-sized headless mannequin" (no photo), but realized that if I didn't add another row, my niece would be getting a lot of unwanted attention everytime she bent over. The 4th row of blocks is over 10.5 feet long!

I called it a day once I got the blocks sewn together and a binding sewn onto the bottom of the row - I won't be attempting to "gather" that row until I have been fortified by a good night's sleep, a cup of coffee and a soothing fragrant candle. All I have left is to sew on the 4th row and sew on a waistband. (I have elastic in there now, but I'm in the process of taking that out because I thought of a better way to do the waist, I think.)

I would love to make one of these for myself - how fun would it be to flounce around in one of those? - , but the effort might just put me over the edge and into the looney bin. Maybe if I used rectangles instead of squares so I wouldn't need so many rows... (not that my legs are that long to begin with) It bears considering, and wow, what a stashbusting project!

To calm my nerves after all the "gathering", I started watching McLeod's Daughters on Netflix. I have found my new Netflix addiction! First, it was Gilmore Girls, then Brothers and Sisters, now, I can't wait to see what happens next on that beautiful spread in South Australia. And there are 100 episodes - woo hoo! I'm only on number 5, so lots of viewing pleasure ahead of me. I was watching on my big 110" screen in our home movie theater (which still isn't painted, by the way - wasn't that my grand plan for my summer vacation?), and the scenery was BREATHTAKING! Was that filmed anywhere near where any of my Australian friends/followers live? If so, prepare a room; I'm coming to visit!

Inspired!

Yesterday, with a whole afternoon and evening spreading out before me with no plans, I felt inspired - inspired to let some of you know how much you inspire me!

When I started blogging, it was to chronicle my quilts: the process, the dates, the fabrics, the techniques, the ideas, the finished products, the frustrations, the triumphs. I had no idea there would be this awesome community of people who would greet me, challenge me, encourage me, support me and INSPIRE me. Thank you!

So armed with some quilt magazines and the materials I have collected to make postcards ALA Julie Tulips with my Cub Scouts this fall, I started playing. Here's what I have come up with so far:



More to come, for sure!

Nellie, all stuffed and ready to nap, sat guard over my workspace.

When Donald saw Nellie, he immediately reached out his arms for her.

I think he was disappointed when I told him that I made her for me. Perhaps I should make one for him, too!

Last night, after nearly gluing my fingers together making postcards, I decided to go downstairs and make one quilt block. After all, there I was cutting up quilt magazines - I couldn't help but be inspired to sew! The one quilt block I made was a log cabin block - a 44" square log cabin block. You know those quilts, usually baby quilt size, that are made of just one block.

That is what I was going for, but as it now stands, I'm not really feeling it. It needs more. What next? Ideas are most welcome!