Easy Acccess to Blog and Quilting thoughts

Artquiltmaker fiddled around with my new computer this afternoon and now I can get to my blog without needing to remember how!  That has been a little problem for me as my computer literacy has stayed in 1992 and computers have progressed to 2012.  Amazing.

But on to more interesting stuff.

I mentioned in my last blog that I would tell you how it came about that I was hired to make a store sample quilt top for Quilters Quarters.  About three months ago there was an article in the paper about the shop.  Debbie, the owner, mentioned she was having trouble finding part-time help.  I went over a few days later with a resume on disk to apply but she had already hired a couple of people. While I was there I signed up for the Saturday Sampler class.

The Big Guy came with me for the first class as did Roxy Dog.  They explored the little mall where the quilt shop is while I went to the hour-long class.  They ate cookies from the Dutch bakery, found a Japanese shop with gluten free soy sauce, and rifled through all the sale fabric in front of Quilter's Quarters.  

The quilt we are doing is called "Birthday Blossoms" Each square is the flower of the month. April's flower is the sweet pea.  If we made two blocks we got entered in a drawing for a fat quarter.

 Kestrel Cousins

 I was so inspired by spending time with other quilters and lots of fabric that I did the first block, a second in different colors and a third at half size.  I did all the day after the class! 

 Pillowcase

The next week I made a pillowcase for the small block but it didn't look good on it so off it came.  

 Colby's Doggy Love quilt

 Then I finished the baby quilt "Doggy Love" I had been working on forever for Colby Butler, grandson of some dear friends. And also finished the quilt top for Colby's big sister, Kestral, whose infancy I somehow missed! Big brother got his quilt (an I Spy) almost the second he was born.

Official Class Block

At the May Saturday Sampler class I proudly did show and tell of all my stuff and Debbie pointed at me and said "You, stay after class!".  Which, of course being well indoctrinated by 13 years of catholic school,  I did. Whereupon she hired me to make the shop sample.

My Variation Block

So that is that story.

My half-size variation

Oh, yeah - the $60 worth of fabric I bought...story for another day, I think.

Rain, rain......

Started raining this morning about 10:30.  We are supposed to get two inches this week!  The winter so far has been very dry - only .5 inches in two days of rain up to today.  So I am glad we are having a good storm.  However, I do wonder why it had to start today, the only day of the week I have to drive over hill and dale to do my grandma business?  Murphy's law, I guess.

I have good new!  My old computer is working again!  The other day I decided to see if it would start.  I picked up the case it was in and smacked it on the floor a few times.  Then I took out the computer and turned it on.  Lo and behold - the mailto:d@# thing worked!.  So now my mission is to get wifi into the house again.  I'm thinking about getting one of those mobile hotspot thingies.  My main concern is price, second concern is reliability.  Don't want an inexpensive service that will go bankrupt like our last one did.  Any suggestions?

Had a good weekend.  Sunday the Big Guy and I went to Turlock to the Carnegie Art Center to see the Yvonne Porcella retrospective.  It was a small show, small venue, excellently done!  My overall impression is of lots of red silk!  The quilts require time to view them and benches were provided to give the viewer a place to sit while looking!  As everyone who is familiar with Porcella's work knows, it is exuberant!  And mostly very large. And, as I mentioned, red.

My camera was out of battery so I took pictures with my cell phone until the ticket taker came and told me no pictures were allowed (oops!).  I tried to send the pictures to my e-mail but my phone is still somewhat of a mystery to me and I couldn't figure out how to do that.  Need to talk to my techno nephew in Santa Barbara for some help.

The exhibit was inspiring for me, too. I remembered all the silk I have and am thinking of doing something with it. Something small that is easily finished.  I have had a quilt on my sewing table that I haven't worked on for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday I sat down and almost finished the machine quilting.  I have one more row of design at the bottom to do.  Needed a reference so pulled out three of my binders with reference material in them and looked through all of it.  That was fun.  I found lots of stuff I had forgotten about and lots of inspiration but not the reference I wanted (machine quilted water).  So then I searched through my small library of quilt books and found the Kathy Sandbach book I bought when I took a class from her years ago.  It had exactly what I needed but it was time to make dinner so never got back to it yesterday.  May work  on it tonight when I get home and can't sleep because I will have drunk at least one large cup of coffee on the drive back over hill and dale!

A little whining and the Manteca Quilt Show

Well, Boo Hoo...I still haven't been able to replace my stolen computer.  Am at my daughter's house using one of theirs.

This year I was able to purchase health insurance! So I dutifully made an appointment in January for a physical.  It is now March (as we all know) and I am finally finished with all the specialists my new physician sent me to.  I also have the mother of all cold-sore throat- fluish sicks I have had in years.  Going on week three!  I blame it on going to doctor's offices and hospitals multiple times.  I am never sick and I hate this! 

Oh well, no one likes a whiner so I'll stop.

We've started planting our garden.  This morning, before coming to my grandson's I put in two different kinds of lettuce in our former herb garden.  We were going to put it in a garden box but we haven't managed to get that built yet.  So the lettuce is in the herb garden (which is cool and shady) and the onion sets are going in the ground.  We haven't decided where the blueberry bush, the blackberry vine or the tomato plant are going yet.  Maybe the Big Guy will have them planted when I get home.

I read something in the Chronicle this morning about blackberries.  The author said he thought there was one mother of all blackberry vines circled underground around the whole earth and they just pop up where ever you don't want them! But the plant was on sale and the berries are so good!  We will do our best to contain the plant.  Our plan is to have a trellis for it and keep it trimmed!

We also planted (last month) an apricot tree and a cherry tree.  They are about three feet tall and each had eight or ten blossoms and now have eight or ten leaves.  Very cute!  Maybe we will be eating eight or ten apricots and cherries later in the year!

The Big Guy's doctor sent him (at his request) to physical therapy.  It has helped him quite a bit.  He can now ride his bike.  He and Roxy dog go out every other day or so.  Roxy dog runs and BG rides.  They both love it and they both need it!  Roxy has lost  her little waist and is getting neck wrinkles so the exercise is good for her.

I went to the Manteca Quilt Guild show on Sunday.  It is a small show - only one hall of quilts - but it was very nice.  The featured artist, Jan Ayers, is a guild member.  She is very prolific.  There were four rows of her work.  I neglected to see the dates of the work so don't know what the time span was.  Her color choices for the quilts were lovely.

For the first time ever I did the show Make-n-Take.  So now I have a cute new pincushion!

I also went to two demonstrations.  The first was by Judy Mullins.  She showed the audience how to make a strip pieced quilt in a day with 800" of 2 1/2" x 40" strips.  She suggested a jelly roll or leftover fabric.

The second demo was on dolls and a really easy vest.  The dolls were really cute but I don't stuff doll arms!  The vest was just an oval with two circles.  The one shown was two pieces of jersey but I think fleece would be nice if the edge had some decorative feature.

The guild always has a jumble sale, too.  This year I bought some buttons and got ideas for Christmas presents.  Looked at all the books but nothing caught my fancy.

Found a piece of fabric for a quilt I have planned.  It has a hawk on it. The quilt is for my friends granddaughter, Kestrel.  And I think I will do the strip piecing bit I learned at the show.  I am in the middle of machine quilting the one for Kestrel's baby brother, Colby.  Almost done with it - just the bottom border to go.  Then the binding - which is already cut.

Well, maybe next time I am able to blog it will be on my own computer!

Flynn Frame

A few months ago I bought a used Flynn Frame from Amazon.  I had been thinking about getting one for quite some time and finally bit the bullet and ordered it.

When the device arrived I opened it up, read the directions, put it back in the box and stashed it under my drafting board.

On my regular Thursday visit to artquiltmaker we talked about quilting (as usual) and bemoaned the fact that our favorite long-arm quilter, Colleen Granger of So Little Time Quilting is currently unavailable.  Which, of course led to my stashed Flynn Frame.  We talked about practicing, what kind of fabric to use and ways to embellish the practice quilt.

So, yesterday I spent the better  part of the day putting the thing together.  I had to go to OSH to buy round tubes to roll on.  They didn't have the exact size I need so jerry-rigged the height with four drawing boards!

I got the thing all set up and started rolling it around without the machine running to get the feel of it.  I found it to be quite awkward and also found that I do not have enough room, even for a twenty inch quilt!  So I'm looking to expand into the spare bedroom.

The other thing I found out by this dry run was that I need, at least at first, to have lines to follow on the blank quilt sandwich.  Also, the throat on the machine I planned to use only gives me five inches of quilting space.

Well, after all that the mounted Flynn frame, when taken off the sewing machine, fits perfectly behind the door of my studio.

Guess I'll get back to the food quilt.  More on that later.

Quilt Repair

Ozzy's quilt.

I'm in the middle of repairing, for the second time, the beloved quilt of a dear friend.  Our friend lives at the Community Housing associated with the Livermore Veterans Administration.  More than four years ago the quilt was among a group donated to the vets by unknown (to me), generous quilters.

An original block with two red patches from the last repair.

In my quilting life, I too, have made quilts to be donated to various organizations.  As I worked on Ozzy's quilt I realized that, had the maker known how treasured the quilt would become, she would have done as good a job with the quilting as she did with the piecing.  The blocks and sashing were hand-pieced with beautifully small stitching.  Had the quilting been done as meticulously, this quilt would have lasted much longer than it did.

The sad state of the sashing.

As I mentioned, this is the second time I have repaired this quilt.  Had it originally been quilted densely, instead of quickly, the fabric would not have worn out.  I can see from the wear patterns that light quilting allowed the fabric to move which created friction and eventually holes and tears on the top.

Two blocks I replaced previously with the added X quilt lines.

The last time I fixed Ozzy's quilt I quilted an X on each block. That bit of quilting kept the new blocks from wearing.  But the original blocks continued their downward spiral, even with the X quilting.

 

 I did not, last time, quilt any of the sashing.  This time much of the sashing needs repair.

So, you might be thinking, why don't I just make him a new quilt?  There are three reasons: he loves this quilt, it is faster to repair, and I have fourteen WIPs* in my line-up.  The good thing, for me, is that I know, next time I make a quilt to be donated, I will do a better job of quilting.  Sometimes donation quilts are our personal rejects and we don't spend the time on them we should.  But think of the recipients, often they are children who may have lost everything in a fire, or have been abused and are being removed from their home and all they are familiar with.  Or, like Ozzy, live in a nursing home environment where few personal possessions are allowed.  These donated quilts mean a lot to people, are well loved and much used.  The quilts and their recipients deserve our best as our quilt gifts are valued by their new owners.

Patching an existing block

I replaced most of this block. The upper right corner is original.

It is awaiting quilting.

*WIP: Work in progress; replaces the negative connotation of UFO, unfinished objects.

A work in progress, part two.

Yesterday I posted an image from my camera that I said I was going to make into a quilt block. Well, I didn't get that far yet (the fabric is on Mom's kitchen table) but I did get the drawing done. This is going to be 6.5"x6.5" which includes the quarter inch seam allowance. Ir may go into the food quilt I'm cutting patches for except how edible is this?

I think the triangle will be bias tape or appliqued down. The circles will be on top, raw edge appliqued to the base square. Or maybe the triangle will be stitch painting. As you can see, a work in progress. Also, need to do it by hand as I don't have my trusty featherweight with me and really dislike my Mom's machine.

Drawing inspiration from strange places

Housework seems to be my major occupation while I am taking care of Super G after her nosedive off the arm of the swivel rocker. But my creative brain still seems to work. We have no errands or appointments today so I am going to use this photo to design a quilt block.

Stay tuned!

Original cupholder

I recently lost my perfect travel coffee cup. I left it in a rental car! (Left a bra in it too, but that is another story!) In my search for another perfect travel mug I went to Starbucks, oh, yeah, I got coffee, too!

I found a really cool looking ceramic mug and shelled out the exorbitant price they asked, had it filled with coffee and found that it got really HOT! So one afternoon while waiting for my husband to be ready to go out with me I whipped up my own version of the cardboard sleeve.



It is three layers, backing, batt, and front and I embellished it (my husband is a little poky sometimes). It serves it's purpose well and I enjoy using it. Can't say as much for the cup and am still on the lookout for my perfect travel mug.