Another Finish

I finished the quilting on my nephews John Deere Quilt. I did more of the triangles in the border and I am loving them! I used a simple meaner in the middle with a dark green thread, and I was quite happy with the overall effect. I stitched on the binding this afternoon and now just have to do the hand work. Somewhere I have a label that I made for it with cute little tractors. The quilt is called John Deere on the Courthouse Steps and is for my nephew who loves tractors as well as his dad the lawyer. I'm hoping to send it home with my mom who is visiting us this week. She is headed to Orlando to accept an award that she is getting for her job. Her husband was supposed to come with her, but had to cancel at the last minute. I'm going with her instead to be her one plus at the awards banquet. I was supposed to be at a girl scout thing this weekend, but I'm sacrificing for good old mom. It helps of course, that the girl scout thing was a nose bag dinner and platform tent, while the banquet thing is three nights at a super luxury hotel. Am I a great daughter or what?
Hey -- speaking of being proud of myself-- I even edited my sidebar to show my two new finishes. That's four for the year, and three of them were even on the list! Does anyone else ever make a list and then add things to it that are already finished, just to feel a sense of accomplishment? I can't be the only one.

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.

Leaders and Enders

I went ahead and finished up a couple of Irish Chain blocks from my leaders and enders project with extras from my mystery quilt. I wanted to see what the colors looked like together and get an idea of how the pattern was working out. I think I need to pay more attention to value as I put the four patched together, but I'm still seeing the overall pattern as I look at the layout. This isn't a finish now sort of project. I'm happy to keep it going as leaders and enders, and now I have an idea of how many dark, medium and light squares I need to restock my 2 inch basket. I think this quilt could live in the toy room when it eventually gets done. The bright colors would be happy there.
I went to a quilt show this morning put on by our local quilt guild. Both of my running partners came with me, which I thought was incredibly nice of them, as they are not even quilters. There were so many really beautiful quilts there. I saw several in Bonnie's pineapple star pattern, but not any Carolina Crossroads. Asymmetrical log cabins were very popular, as well as at least four prairie braids. I think someone must have offered a class for so many of the same pattern to show up in the same year. Even so, the color choices and designs were completely different and gave each of them a very different look. I love how you can take a traditional pattern and make it your own.

Progress

I finished step one of the Orange Crush Mystery. I think I'm going to call mine Sherbet Crush, or maybe Rainbow Sherbet Crush. I'm thinking Rainbow Sherbet and Orange Crush Float is a little too long. Anyway , it's 150 four patches with a two inch base square. I had a "leaders enders" project going which was an Irish Chain with a two inch base, so I pulled that out as well and used some of the leftover two square sub cuts to move a few four patches along to the next step.
Tomorrow is the local quilt guilds semi annual quilt show. I'm not a member because they seem to hold most of their meetings during the day (there are a lot of retired people around here). Apparently there is a waiting list to join, but you can get into some of the smaller circles without being a member of the main guild. Unfortunately their meetings always happen on nights when my husband is off playing volleyball, so I've never been able to try one out. I don't know why the idea of joining a group is so intimidating, but I just never quite manage to do it. I didn't realize that the show was this weekend, but my running partner called to tell me she read about it in the paper. She is not a quilter, but we worked together to make t-shirt quilts after our marathon. She just finished tying the final knot in her quilt and says she isn't ready to start another, but I was thinking of pulling out my running themed fabric to tempt her into starting something new.

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

Itchin to get Quiltin

Life has been busy around here with Easter and ballet recitals. Work seems to stay hectic no matter how hard I try to get caught up, and my laundry must be reproducing itself in the dark of night. Spring break is right around the corner, and summer vacation can't be far behind!
I have more projects started than I know what to do with, and yet, I saw the Orange Crush mystery quilt coming up and thought I had to participate! The first clue won't be posted until Monday, so I'm rationalizing by devoting the weekend to finishing some things up. I haven't decided yet what I'll do, but I am definitely going to make some sort of significant progress over the weekend.

Weekend Update

The in laws were in Florida on vacation this week and came over for dinner on Friday night. We were all sitting out by the pool chatting when I heard this exclamation from upstairs. My son had spotted a nest outside and thought it was wasps. We all went up to examine and determined that it was a bee swarm! The picture isn't the best, but there was no way we were going to open the window. I know it wasn't there last weekend, because we cut two palm trees down right in front of the eve in question and we would have noticed. We called the exterminators, but before they called back the swarm was gone!
I started an Easter table topper, I think it will be called Hunting Eggs. I'm using the circle technique that I saw Dale Flemming do on Simply Quilts. I'm making a table topper to give to a friend who hosts an Easter Party every year. My husband thought the colors were too subtle, but I didn't want to go with anything too bright as my friend is sort of a pastel person. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with the sky yet. I thought about seeing if I could make some clouds using the same technique.
Check out my grout! The kitchen floor was next on my list of chores I keep putting off. My husband suggested muriatic acid, and wow did it clean! I think it was actually dissolving the top layer of grout, but it looks so sparkly clean! You can also see our new kitchen table in the picture, which we were forced to buy when the leg fell off our old table again.

Sewing? Not So Much.

This weekend was our local Girl Scout Camporee. It is for all the troops from our local service unit, which is quite large. Last year there must have been 600 girl scouts all camping out. This year the weather was somewhat less than ideal. Older troops camp for two nights, the first of which brought tornadic activity and torrential downpours. Most of the older girls packed up that morning and never came back. We were lucky to be slotted for the second night which was supposed to be dry, but with temperatures in the 40s. I know to people up north that might seem quite balmy for this time of the year, but not to us Floridians! Most of our kids don't even own a winter coat and have no concept of dressing in layers. I spent a good portion of the weekend explaining that long pants are warmer than capris and tennis shoes are warmer than flip-flops. They just don't get it.

I think they all had a good time, and learned many valuable camping skills. For some this was the first time they had ever camped or slept away from home without parents. Those are big steps for them. Even putting up a tent became an adventure in teamwork.



I'm itching to get back to some sewing which I just haven't had the energy for recently. I got some antibiotics for a lingering sinus infection and am starting to feel human again. If I can just adjust to daylight savings I'll be good to go.

Reorganization

One of my neighbors was working at a local craft store when they went out of business. After the store closing, they threw out all sorts of shelves and fixtures. This was an extra display stand that she saved from the dumpster. It originally had a big top portion with crown molding and hooks for hanging stock. I pulled that off and used part of it to construct a new top. I'll trim a cutting mat to size and attach that for a perfect counter height work surface. The bottom is made for 12 x 12 paper storage with room for all of my paper separated by theme and color. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. And best of all -- it was free!I went to a crop on Friday, this is one of the pages I made with pictures from my sons room. My husband painted superheros on his walls, and I was so happy with the way they turned out. Of course that was two years ago, and now he's into Pokemon, but I don't think the superheros are going to disappear anytime soon.