Getting ready.

Good grief.  I leave for Kansas City (for the Machine Quilters Showcase) on Tuesday and here it is Friday and I am SO not ready.  Books to make.   Clothes to pack.  A myriad of other things to do.  And here I sit reading blogs, checking up on the forum, talking to my blog readers and generally not getting anything done I’m supposed to.

Thankfully, since I just taught my machine quilting classes in April in New Hampshire, I pretty much know what I’m doing in classes (but I need to print handouts, so that’d better go on the list…).

What I really ought to be doing is going over to Mom’s and setting up her new computer.  We bought it for her at Sam’s Club last night, and I’d be in pretty big trouble if I didn’t make it over there to set it up like I promised.

Oh and finishing that embroidered quilt that I mentioned in my previous post.  I started trimming it, but then I thought of something else that I wanted to look at on the Internet.  And here I sit.

I’m going now.

Really.

Watch me.

I’m walking away.

Any minute now.

S

Wagons, Ho!

Way back in April, when I was in New Hampshire, Mark and the boys had a project to work on.  The boys’ classes were reading a book called Pioneer Cat.  Making covered wagons was not required, but mine decided it was something they definitely wanted to do.  I took these pictures right after I got back and then completely forgot to share.

Make note of Will’s bison herd, as well as the man with the weapon.  There were several other “characters” that went with Will’s wagon.

The wheels?  Margarine tub lids.  As you can imagine, those were made by my husband.  He’s a genius.

Did you know that wagons were often painted blue?  Or that the wheels were often painted red?  I didn’t either.  I came home nad saw these and thought the tree of them had flipped their lids.

One of the suggestions for the project was to try to use recycled materials.  In addition to the margarine tub wheels, the base of the wagons and the “frame” for the cover are cardboard boxes, and the covers themselves:  those are old flyers from a town festival from 10 years ago.  The previous homeowners had left them behind and we had only recently discovered them inside a cupboard on a top shelf.  We have lots of cupboards and shelves in our house.

The boys also worked on a journaling project in conjunction with their Pioneer studies.  As near as I can figure, they were given a prompt that told them of certain events that had happened on a particular day and they had to right in a journal as if they were a kid on the wagon train.  Joe hasn’t brought his home yet, but Will’s is awesome.  They also had to illustrate their journals and you have to look closely, because the detail and humor he injects is pretty amazing.  8 year old humor, of course, but humor nonetheless.

I’ll have to try scanning a page or two.

I’d better go get working on that embroidered quilt.  The quilting is done, now to bind it.  I had intended to (a) follow the marked lines and then (b) add in some filler or flair of my own.  I got done with (a) and realized that it didn’t really need (b).  That (b) would be overkill on this project.  Keep It Simple Stupid.

TTFN-

Suzanne

Before and After

I’m catching up on some stuff I’ve been meaning to blog about, so this is a little bit of old news, but still blog-note-worthy, I think.

Before:

(OMG, did I really just show you what a slob I am?)

After:

If only I could keep it like this.  Already, a week later, I’ve got piles that need to be dealt with.

When Mark came home he said “What was all that stuff anyway?”

One full garbage bag said a lot of it was junk mail that needed to be trashed.  (Some of the stuff in the garbage bag came from inside the cabinets, too, it wasn’t all trash out in plain view).

Plus, those piles are pretty precarious — they look bigger than they really were due to the fact that there might be a book underneath a pile of paper, with some more books piled on top.

A lot of it was stuff that didn’t really belong in here, it just seems to collect.  I found several things I’d been looking for — including some jewelry that I thought was long gone.

Anyway, it sure felt nice to have it all clean for at least 5 minutes.

The scariest part?  The Before picture isn’t even all that bad compared to how it’s been in the past…..

I’m NOT going to show you the before picture of my Studio.  That’s just horrifying.  Unfortunately, I can’t show you an after picture either:  I haven’t tackled it yet.

There’s always tomorrow, right?

TTFN-

Suzanne

farewell to maggie. and jake.

Went out to the farm last night.

The grass was so gloriously green.  The field on the left had just been cultivated so it was a nice deep brown.    It likely got planted today.  Mark is out farming today and said it was mostly dry.  They’ve been pretty antsy to get into the field.  I think my mother-in-law is the one that is the most relieved, I’m sure my father-in-law was starting to drive her a bit nuts.

Over on the right, at the top of the picture, just beyond that dark lump (which is a pile of old fence posts:  that’s where the Bunny Tree can be found.  Well, tree(s) plural.  Where the bunnies live.  And where our family pets go to eternally chase the bunnies under the bunny trees.  For those that don’t know, my puppy Maggie unexpectedly passed away in March, she had only been with us for 2 months.

It has been so wet, we haven’t been able to take Maggie out to the bunny tree.  Unfortunately, my in-law’s 15 year old rat terrier Jake died over the weekend, which meant that it was time to put Maggie to rest as well.

It was an absolutely gorgeous evening.  We took Katie with us, it was her first trip to the farm (we hadn’t taken her before because Jake is very territorial and he would not have liked her one single bit).  The boys got to run the excavator a bit, Mark is much more patient than I would be with that sort of thing.

That thing takes a lot of concentration to remember which lever to push in which direction in order to make the contraption do exactly what you want it to do (and where you want it do it!)

After the burial, they played in the mud some more and Katie and I wandered around the farm a bit so she could sniff out all of the new smells.

And so that I could take some pictures of interesting things.  Actually, I put my camera away before I saw some of the really interesting old farm stuff, I’ll have to go out again with a camera, the pile of old clay tiles was pretty cool, and would make for interesting art quilt inspiration.

This old cultivator was pretty neat:

At least I think it’s an old cultivator.  I probably should have checked with Mark before I started talking about farming equipment.

Katie and I are waiting for the boys to get home (they stayed at my sister-in-laws after school) and for Mark to get driven out of the field by rain.  We don’t really need anymore rain right now, but it’s coming, it’s just a question of when, exactly, it’ll hit.

Thank you to all of you that provided hugs and support when we lost Maggie.  I still really miss her, but at least she is now chasing the bunnies with Jake, Toby, Sarah, and Elmo.

Suzanne

Stars and Stripes: Quilt of Valor

I’m sure that by now most of you know that a Quilt of Valor (QOV) is a quilt that is presented to a combat wounded service member. Organizers are specifically trying to present these to the young men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with quilts, but any combat wounded service member can be a QOV recipient.

The foundation is always looking for help. You can visit http://www.qovf.org to learn how you can help with this project.

Shown above is the quilt I just finished that I’ve been talking about for the last week or so. The original quilt that this is based on is a quilt in the Smithsonian National Collection. It was made in 1861 and is 86 by 87. It was made by Mary Rockhold Teter for her son George who served in the Union forces during the Civil War.

The quilt is found in a book called Quilts: An American Legacy written by Mimi Dietrich (in 1996). Her book includes photos of a number of quilts from the Smithsonian, and the instructions to make quilts based on the original quilts. The replicas aren’t necessarily copies, a lot of times they are adaptations. Mimi’s adaptation of the Stars and Stripes quilt was only 38 by 38 and so I adapted her adaptation in order to make a quilt large enough to be a lap quilt for a soldier. (My quilt is 62 by 65).

When I first started making quilts, I never thought I’d ever want to make the same quilt over again. : I’ve since learned that even though you might be using the same pattern, you never make the same quilt. Something is always different (at least it is for me) and I will be making this pattern again. This quilt was a bit of an experiment: I was making do with what fabric I had on hand and had to make some choices I wouldn’t make if I had had a little more fabric. If I make it again, the stripes will be longer (and a bit wider) and the border will be a bit narrower (I think it’s a little out of proportion as it is).

Actually, as I was trimming it, I discovered that the side borders are an inch wider than the top and bottom borders. Don’t have any idea how that happened.

The applique was all done on the longarm (in fact, I didn’t even fuse the pieces down first, I just plopped them down where I wanted them and then went around them twice with a wavy stitch.  In fact, the quilt is even easier than it might look:  the center blue square is not pieced, it is an appliqué over top of the striped background.

I’d better quit talking about this quilt, though, and get it in a box and on its way.  I think I can get it to Alycia before Friday, but not if I keep sitting here.

Next up:  a post about the frustrations of trying to book a trip to Florida on a low-cost airline.

TTFN-

Suzanne

Nothing scarier

There is very little that is more terrifying than taking the rotary cutter to a quilt that does not belong to me.

A new customer (who does not quilt) has done all of the handwork on what will become a queen size quilt.  It’s in 3 sections, and before I could sew the sections together, I needed to trim the excess off some of the edges.

I’ve used my rotary cutter millions of times on plenty of quilts of my own without getting scared (well, except for maybe that first time after I cut myself.  I was pretty nervous that time).  Something like this embroidered quilt, though — if I make a mistake, I’m toast.

Thankfully, the quilting goddess was smiling on me yesterday and I trimmed without incident.  I even pieced without incident:  everything seems to have lined up the way it was supposed to, and as soon as I get the QOV on the frame finished, this embroidered piece is up next.

I hope all of you have a great quilting day (without incident as well…) and I’ll be back later with a picture of a finished QOV.  I hope.

Suzanne

Sleeping Beauties

This picture cracks me up.

Four cousins: who actually got a fair amount of sleep.  We gave them the evil eye at about 10 PM, and I think they were tired enough that it didn’t take long before they were all snoozing.  I’m not sure why they decided to sleep on the couch, but that’s where they decided to end up.  They tried to convince us that all 4 could fit, but then Joe decided that sleeping on top of the TWO air mattress/sleeping bag thingies would be fun.  You can see that he actually managed to slide off.  He’s probably lucky that no one fell off the couch on top of him.

My Mom gave me a copy of a book by the Yarn Harlot.  I’m enjoying reading it.  I especially like her method of darning socks.  She stands over the garbage can and says “Darn It” as she throws the holey sock away.

TTFN-

Suzanne

The winners

My assistants are busy watching SpaceBalls, so I decided to just use Random.org to generate 3 random numbers to determine that the winners of the pattern give-away are:

#3 Paula:  ZigZag 9

#16 Leah:  She specifically mentioned Galaxy, so that’s what she’ll be getting.

#33 Tina: Who also mentioned Galaxy, but since Leah was first….so she’ll get Red Hot Leftovers

If you didn’t win, here’s the link to where you can purchase the patterns:  http://www.iowastarquilts.com

Congratulations to all three of you (I’ll be e-mailing you!), and thanks to everyone that commented.  I wish I had enough patterns to send to all of you.

I’m trying to get a QOV done to send to Alycia in time for her to present a pile of QOVs on Friday.  She currently has 41 on hand, and hopefully I can get this done in time to make it at least 42.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I was working on a pillowcase to go with the QOV.  I was attempting to use my serger on the seam and I had to admit defeat.  I don’t know if there is something wrong or if I’m just missing something.  I should probably take it to a Bernina dealer to have it cleaned, looked at, and most likely:  have someone show me how to use the darned thing.

I have some photo’s to share, but the camera is on the other side of the house, so that’ll have to wait until (a) later or (b) tomorrow.

TTFN-

Suzanne

Busy day

And only a very little bit was quilt related.  Sheesh.  And all I did was sew some fabric together for a QOV I’m working on, and work on a pillowcase to go with it.  I’m using Vicki’s directions for making the case.  I thought that I’d drag my serger out to try to serge the seams and doggone it, I still can’t….quite…get it threaded properly.  I’m missing something with one of the looper threads.  Is that what’s it would be called? it doesn’t go through the needle, it comes up from the bottom.  anyway. moving on.

That killed more time than I care to admit, but I think I know what I was doing wrong, so I’ll go try again…maybe tomorrow, since it’s almost 10!

Part of the evening was spent entertaining my niece.  We had invited her brother over for a sleepover and she decided she wanted to come, too.  She spent a bunch of time playing with the boys, but after supper decided she did’nt really want to go back out and play anymore baseball.

I was going to show pictures of what she and I did, but then I remembered that her Mom occasionally reads this blog, and I’d better not give away the surprise.

Sorry to have been so mysterious in yesterday’s post.  I’m just not quite ready to talk about what’s going on until some more details are worked out.

Mark and the kids are playing Pirates of the Caribbean Scene-It.  I think it’s about time the whole crowd found it’s way into a bed.

At least, I think *I* need to go to bed, so I’ll yak on ya later –

Suzanne

Eating an elephant

We’ve made the decision to go ahead and try to implement this big (slightly) whacky idea I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

The making-of-the-decision is a huge weight off my shoulders, but now there is a new weight.  The OMG-there-are-a-million-things to do kind of weight.

Don’t you just love cryptic posts that don’t come out and tell you what they are actually talking about?

Yeah, me too.

Some of you probably know what I’m talking about.  Some of you can probably guess.

Some of you will be thinking that I’m just insane.  You are probably right.

Right now I’m just trying to remind myself of my second favorite saying.  (In case you’ve forgotten, or need to laugh again, my first favorite saying/motto is the one about being a horrible warning…)

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.

TTFN-

Suzanne

p.s. you have until Sunday night to comment on this post if you want to a chance at one of the 3 patterns that are up for grabs.  i’m wishing i had a whole stack of them so that i could sell them to all of the non-winners.  since i don’t, be sure to visit the link in that post where you can buy them.