Design Wall Monday June 21

I had my sashed log cabins up this morning, but decided to take them down and work on the new shirt quilt. I ended up with 4.5 inch squares alternating with 2.5 inch four patches. So far I am throwing them up in diagonal rows, but now that I look at the picture, the dark teal stands out a lot so I will either spread them out or throw in something else for balance.
Anna and Ryan are both at camp and Sydney is on a play date, so it is VERY quiet around here. Kurt is going on a short business trip tonight, so the quiet will continue for a while. Very strange indeed. I'd better use the opportunity to get some sewing done while I have the opportunity.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July to all the bloggers in America! I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. We spent the evening at a river front park that sponsors a festival every year with carnival games and food vendors. There is a fountain where the children frolic and play. Then the symphony plays patriotic music while the fire works go off over the water. Mom came with us and we met up with several groups of friends, some of whom we planned to meet, and some who just happened to be there. We all had a lovely time, with plenty of food and good company.
The kids all enjoyed themselves completely. Poor Sydney passed out cold about halfway through the fireworks and had to be carried back to the car at the end of the night. There is something very sublime about cradling a sleeping child in the middle of a bustling event. I know I won't get many more opportunities, so I'm trying to savor each one. Anna's friend Sierra was there with her mom who is one of my running partners. She had family in town as well, so there were quite a few of us gathered together.
I got up this morning for a run and got in a quick 6 miles. I've been trying hard to decide what to do about fall marathons this year, and I'm having trouble. I did two marathons three years ago, but for the past two years, I've only done halves. The first time because I was having back issues, and last year, just for a change of pace. I enjoy the half marathon distance, but I kind of miss the long marathon training runs. That sounds silly, doesn't it? I shouldn't miss a grueling 20 mile run. So we've been discussing the possibility of doing the marathon, but as a run/walk this year instead of a run. It would be something new to try, but might not be as taxing as trying to run the whole thing. We did the run this morning that way, and the time was about the same, but I'm less tired than I usually am. I'm having my running partner read the book that explains the theory of the run/walk and we'll take it from there.
Not much on the quilting front. I finished the binding on the OC and the log cabin quilt and got in a little practice on hand quilting using my new thimble lady thimble. So far so good, although I haven't quite got my rhythm down yet.

Miles to Sew Before I Sleep

I posted random pictures of the other two kids recently, so thought I should add one more and finish out the set. We had "me and mommy make-up time" this morning. I did 6 miles this morning on my run and now I feel good about the rest of the day. Something about getting up nice and early and accomplishing something makes it OK to slack off for a while after.
I finished the binding on the pinwheel quilt and started on the broken star. Gosh is it big! I just keep sewing and sewing and the end never seems to come. I also started the quilting on the Carolina Crossroads quilt, although I'm starting to rethink the grid thing. The backing is kind of puckery and maybe a meander would smooth things out some. It may be too late to change my mind though, I've already sewn quite a bit. I can't help thinking that if I keep practicing, my machine quilting will get better. I know other people do a really nice job on home sewing machine. I just keep seeing the gorgeous work that people have done on their longarms and wondering why my quilts can't look like that.
Has anyone ever ordered from Connecting Threads? I saw an add in Quiltmaker magazine and thought it looked good. They have several collections along with kits to go with each collection. It seems like a very good deal if the quality is decent, and they have free shipping with a $50 order. I held myself to only $56 which I thought was pretty good, and put in a test order. I think it would be a great place for my mom to shop for my Christmas presents (Mom reads my Blog, so this is a blatant hint).

Actual Quilting

I say I'm quilting all the time, but most of the time I may be making quilts, but not actually quilting. I spend more time cutting, piecing, or even pressing than I do quilting. My youngest daughter got a toy ironing board two Christmases ago. She was so excited about her new toy that she set it up immediately, found some doll clothes and got to work. As she stood ironing away, she told us she was using her sewing machine just like mommy. To this day she has trouble knowing the difference between sewing and ironing.
So today I worked on the actual quilting part of the process. Because my pattern was a star, I thought I'd try the obvious and just put a big free form star in the middle of each block. I'm not thrilled with the way it turned out. I think the pattern is too big and spread out. I like fairly dense quilting in the final product. My husband thought that the red thread stood out too much and the stars looked too free form. I'm not sure how else free form stars can look, but it's good to know that he's still willing to give me an honest opinion. I offered to send all my quilt out to be finished, but when he found out the going rate for that, he decided that as long as free form was a design decision and not a mistake that it was fine after all.
I am happy with the borders though. I used free form flying geese pattern that I think gives a nice effect. I also love the fleur-de-lis fabric that I used on the back. I rarely have back sized pieces in my stash, but I bought this a while ago and let it sit until I had the right quilt to use it with. The binding is on, I'll finish the hand stitching in the next few evenings and it will be good to go.

Boardering on Insane

After running several different bordering options past my husband (too busy, too patriotic, too complicated). I ended up with 2.5 inch strips of gold and red. I had both on hand, which is a strong selling point at 7 on a Sunday evening. I was almost done, and in for the home stretch when I realized I was two strips short of the red fabric. Still, I could sew the rest and have it all ready to go until I could pick up more red on Monday. At that particular moment, Bernie stopped sounding like a sewing machine and started to imitate a chainsaw! I am now very thankful that I kept my old machine when Bernie moved in. Ken has become my pinch hitter on two occasions recently, and I don't give him the attention he deserves. I ran Bernie into the quilt shop at 2 today, grabbed the kids, and then went to a faculty meeting and to the grocery store. By the time I was home again, I had a message waiting to let me know that they had fixed the problem and my machine was clean, serviced and ready for pick-up. Wow -- that is service. They are always so nice that I feel guilty for not shopping there more often. I try to support local businesses that offer unique services, it's just hard for me to pay $100 for a pair of running shoes or $1o for a yard of fabric when I can find it cheaper somewhere else. I try to overcome my thrifty nature, but it is not an easy task. I do go in whenever I need something special or when I want advice, I just can't make myself go there for random stash enhancement.
Because I was planning on spending most of the weekend on sewing (most being relative in terms of leftover time after regular weekend obligations like kids, husbands and dirty houses), I decided to set up in the formal living/dining room. I have room to spread my quilts out in there and I don't feel closed in. I have a very nice sewing area set up in the laundry room, and another craft area in the study, but I still enjoy the wide open spaces of our under furnished formal rooms. When we built our house four years ago, there was another option in the same model that added an extra room upstairs. I joked with my husband that if we added it to our house I could have a quilting studio! It seems silly to think about moving into a 3800 square foot house and needing more room, but I really do use every room in the house on a regular basis, and would love to have that one more -- even if it is totally unnecessary. So, comfortably sprawled, I started working on the first step of the orange crush mystery. I have miles of strip sets sewn, now I can iron and sub cut in front of the TV tonight. My husband has taken our son to cub scouts, so I can take sole possession of the remote control. Only two days into baseball season and I've been banished to the bedroom television twice!

Rationalization

It's not terrible to start a new quilt as long as you finish an old one, right? I can't resist another Quiltville mystery, so I had no choice but to finish something off. I had 81 out of 120 blocks done on the patriotic log cabin, so it was the lucky winner! I started to get a little wonky about 11 last night, but I figured no one would ever notice if every single log wasn't exactly in order -- right? As long as you stand back a bit and squint your eyes it is absolutely perfect. And since perfection is overrated, I think my artistic license will just add flavor. I'll let it age in on the floor of the formal living room overnight, and if nothing screams by then, I'll sew it together!
Then, feeling smug about finishing the blocks for the log cabin made the process of picking out colors for orange crush even more fun. My theme is rainbow sherbet, so I chose lemon, lime, orange and either grape or strawberry. I don't have a clear idea yet of how the scrap salad is going to play in, so I just pulled out anything in my 2 inch scrap tub that was bright or pastel. And in case there aren't enough scraps, I pulled a few more bits and pieces from the stash. All in all, not a bad days work.


Aha, as I was looking at the log cabin picture, I found twisted block -- just went to fix it -- so all is well

Slow Progress

There wasn't much time this weekend to sew, but I did manage to complete a few rounds on the last set of log cabin blocks. I think I have the right number of each color combination counted out, now it's just round and round we go. Mindless sewing is about all I've got time and energy for at the moment.
Tonight was our regular Girl Scout meeting, we made cupcakes and practiced our Irish song for Thinking Day. We tried Irish dancing, but kept bumping into cookie boxes! We had a cookie booth this weekend, and another next weekend. Just when I'm wondering why I do it, my daughter looks up at me with those sweet little eyes and says, "I'm so glad you're my leader Mom." Sigh....
I talked to my brother on Saturday. He has a job! I know that it won't solve all of his problems, but I can think of a number of issues that it will help. My mom has decided to bail him out, but with conditions. We'll see how it all plays out. I had a number of interesting comments on my decisions post. It seems that other people have similar issues to deal with. I still don't have any answers, but I do feel better for having articulated my questions.

Patriotic Log cabin layout

I was playing around with the layout for my log cabin quilt this evening, and came up with this. It's 10 by 12, with 8 inch blocks, it should end up about 80 by 96 before borders. Now I know how many of each block to make!
I put borders on the John Deere Quilt tonight, but the light isn't good for pictures at night. The flash doesn't reach from the balcony and everything ends up looking dark.

Stash enhancement

Here are the "extra" red white and blues I just had to have. I am using quite a bit of them between the two quilts I'm working on right now, and I hate to have two of the same color pieces in the same block. Why use three fabrics when you can use 30?

Log Cabin Blocks

Here are the log cabin blocks so far. I know I want a star in the middle, but after that I'm not sure what I want to do with the layout. I need to decide so that I know what how many of what kind of block to make. I have 4 all white blocks in the pipeline and then a stack of blue and red blocks as well as a few blue or red and white. Maybe concentric rings in a sawtooth pattern with a solid border outside?