this and that on a Friday

DJ went out as the sun was lowering behind the tree line and discovered that the UPS driver had left me a box.  I'll tell you, my mom knows how to stuff a shoe box, LOL.

Not sure what I will do with this stack as it sort of depends on how much is left of the fabric---there is a blend-y sort of thing going on though with a few of the pieces.  Naptime, maybe??  If not, there are a few nice pieces of neutral background.  I think Mom may have added two pieces that I did not have set aside but that's okay too.   Some re-arranging of boxes on her end left had her wondering, she said.

That lovely, cheerful floral on the left is a  Hoffman "Country Side Collection" piece.  I'm thinking it might make up into a 4 patch posie??  Isn't that the fun part of quilting to pull out fabrics till you find a combination that will work together?  Already I am eyeing a blue tone and tone on the shelf, LOL.    Lois had recently used some 4 patch posie elements as block centers of one of her tops.  I'll point that out when it is turned in because I did not get a picture at the time.

A glimpse at the design wall----mostly leftovers and future projects.  Christmas blocks for the stalled out Oxmoor Christmas quilt.  The strip is a section of binding for my Christmas Patience Corner.  Leftover bowties from the 76 Bowtie QOV--that will work with with the next abandoned block project along with the various other nine patches etc stuck up there.  The plain squares are for quilt labels.  The just finished basket block is hanging for me to see before I put it up with the others and pull another out to stitch.  The two ziploc bags?  One is squares I pulled to make a few "Fight Like a Quilter" blocks for a fund raiser.  I like the blocks so may make more for a pro bono quilt so I did not file the cut squares back into the 2 1/2 inch square container.  Lastly, greens that my friend Pat sent for the paint chip challenge----I see watermelons in their future as in Button Up #8.  

Those foundation pieced flowers were something I started years ago from one of Carol Doak's books, Easy Mix & Match Machine Paper Piecing.  Now this was copyright 1995 and I bought it as a new book at the time.  Yep, old project and I remember stitching on it at Hands All Around Quilt Retreat near Lake Shelbyville in Illinois. I planned to make a wall hanging she showed on the back cover with butterflies, a sun, snails in the grassy area.  Well here is a link to the image.  Once upon a time I had all 6 flowers done but two of them wound up in a row robin for a friend on the old aCozyQuilt Bee list.  I think that the sky blue fabric has been used elsewhere over the years so these four may be "it" and added to another project down the line.

Here I am holding up Lauri's row---bad picture as I had a crappy digital camera at the time.  Lauri had a garden theme going and wanted the bright fabrics she had provided as alternating blocks.  I stitched up the Pieces from My Heart blocks from Sandy Gervais that said ""What Flowers?".  The dragonfly and frog blocks were slightly re-sized from Quilts from the Heartland Nature of Things, I believe it was called.  The lady bugs were also from that book but was actually a wall hanging that I scaled down to a 12 inch block.  And then you see the other two flowers on the bottom.

So back to present day, LOL.   I have not done much but re-organize files on the computer..... and read.  I had picked up a used paperback from Mom's stash Barbara Parker's Suspicion of Innocence for reading on the plane and finished it up  We picked up a couple more of the series at the library the other day.   DJ is reading the first one now.  I also buzzed through Kate Jacob's Comfort Food on Wednesday afternoon and evening.  I enjoy reading but often do not make time to do so.  Some days, it is all I can do to get through the local paper . When I get on a reading jag, it reminds me of summertime and going up to the town library a couple times a week because you had read through the stack you had checked out days before.  


This summer cold and the heat have been energy sapping so the cutting and batting fusing that I had mentioned in my last post did not get done.  I told DJ he is just lucky that I have gotten meals on the table as lousy as I have felt at times.  But the laundry is done, groceries bought-----I am going to live, LOL.  I do hope to get something done today though as I hate wasting time and I hate having stuff piled up in here too.  That action really stifles my creativity when I don't have space to work and need the table or whatever under that pile.

It looks like a good part of the USA lower 48 are going to be in extreme heat situation if we are not already.  I just pray that there are no heat related fatalities with the sustained weather pattern.  I know my parents said it hit triple digits in IL---we were at 96 yesterday but fortunately without high humidity factors.  The a/c can barely keep up even set at 79.  I cooked  on the stove top, grill and microwave last night and still could barely stand to be in the kitchen though by that time the afternoon sun is barreling into the opposite side of the house. Now,even with the blinds drawn it is HOT in the kitchen with the sun on that side.  I am avoiding doing the prep work for the fish tacos with avocado sauce I plan on making for tonight.  The sauce and fresh tomato salsa should be done up ahead of time to meld the flavors a bit so I will go out there and blast a box fan while I do it.  No jalapeno peppers here though and I am putting the fish on the grill.  Skyler also is begging for his 2nd treat bite which he normally gets around noon if DJ does it but I am a softer touch and he knows it, LOL.  

Stay cool the best you can---and thanks for stopping by.

Ridin' the Rails and other stuff

I believe that I am about to "ride the rails" a bit though I did not officially sign up for the challenge Finn suggested. First, I didn't think I had enough blocks laying around here for inclusion in an abandoned block quilt. I had some appliqued butterfly blocks that the Belles had made, a nine patch basket block Theramae made, some oversized bowties from Beverly had done and some old BOM's of mine. Well, maybe I did after all.


I started pulling out block bits---some block components that were not stitched up leftover from previous quilts, a stack of peach colored HSTs from the snowball and Ohio Stars. I found a pile of odd sized big flying geese that needed to be used some way but the size discrepancy made the originally planned Cyclone blocks out. I also thought I could part with 4 log cabin blocks that were leftover from a quilt made for me in my old moderator days on a yahoo group---after all, I had the quilt and had not done anything with the blocks in about 8 years.

So I started in: the peach HST's turned into 5 churn dash blocks by raiding my 2 inch strip bin. The flying geese I trimmed down into HST's---the broken dish strip of 7 blocks. The remaining HST's of any color and stripe--friendship stars with hollow centers, six of them. I had a nine patch basket started when I demo'd it to the quilt group but hated the colors so I made another one from leftover backing bits. I finished the nine patch star that had been pinned to muslin for demo purposes. I stitched 3 "Here and There" blocks (those arrow looking things in the center top, from an early fall Quiltmaker in '89)

Then I looked at the old log cabin blocks. None of them measured the same size and I have had hard time dealing with that much non-precision. I pulled them apart Sunday evening and saw where the things had gone wrong. Yesterday I re-cut them---logs cut 2 1/2 are just kinda big in the first place--and re-sewed them back in the order they had been in---just remodeled. So now what???

Well, I got a phone call from my mom telling me that she had some blocks that she was sending (among other things--quilt tops for Pam's Mexico project that I will quilt up and donate for us). From her description, some of them might fit right in to the scheme of things. After all, two of the Wyoming Star blocks are hers (peeking out from underneath that green Grandmother's Choice). I'll hold up till the box arrives before I start tweaking things in EQ to see how this can all go together. I think I have two donation quilts in the making

What else? The boring but necessary. Errands. Fixed some reuben sandwiches for lunch and reheated Sunday's leftovers for supper. A search, cursorially, for the leftover basketweave blocks. Here I am making more as scraps arise and I cannot find the original bunch! I cut and sewed binding for two quilts, pressed some for two others but not the stuff I made yesterday. Pippi has developed an attachment for the pressing/cutting table lately so I have a hard time working around her when she is all stretched out. She is right in arm reach for pets and loves so I am not complaining. I am not ready to quilt the tops that it goes to yet anyway. Next week, but not this one. I am having too much fun piecing.

This is what I am supposed to working on---5 appliqued house blocks for the last of the row robin obligations. One is supposed to represent my house so I could make it a green ranch if I chose. It has to be done by Friday and the three day retreat I am going to. Fortunately it can be machine appliqued but I am half wondering if it might be easier to just do it by hand.
The stumbling block is that she cut the pieces out intending to hand applique them so they need to be trimmed down. That's not the part that has me puzzled though. There is no template available to get the shape drawn to cut out the fusible. How do it get it from that to stuck on the background?? I like to window that fusible stuff out so the piece is not so stiff so I don't want to just slap the stuff on the pieces. Suppose I can copy those sections and get a reasonable size replication?? Where do the windows and doors go in the scheme of things? Won't know till I try. Best get with the program..............
Oh, one last thing. Ginny, one of the members of my local quilt group, has just received word that two of her quilts have been accepted into IQA in Houston. She has a website where the quilts can be seen HERE--one of the accepted is a self portrait Faces in Cloth V and the other is her FIL, Faces in Cloth IV. Very talented girl.
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1:25 pm Edited note: Woohoo---copying the sections worked! I trimmed the two sections with straight edges down by a quarter inch all around and then copied off the peak-y one but made sure it was evenly cut first. Copied it and then I can rubber cement the piece to template plastic so I can cut the fusible. The roof piece, I did a little differently and just copied it, marked off the quarter inch lines all the way and then glued the corrected piece down to the plastic. Still need to cut those down to size and then mess with the Steam a Seam.
Also I thought of one other thing that I was asked about in comments and had meant to include in my post: what/how did I mark the quilting stencil for THIS quilt. Mechanical pencil with 0.5 HD (I think that is right--can't find the extra lead to verify) lead and a light hand. Then I washed the quilt with a Shout Color Catcher to get the markings out. Most of the lead disappears as you quilt but not all of it -- there is always an errant marking. You can use regular #2 pencils but be sure to keep a sharp tip on the pencil to keep as light a line as possible. I got a little Fiskar sharpener, free, from an office supply concern when I ordered enough 18 x 22 quardrile paper to last me a lifetime -- that thing is wonderful! Dual sized and mechanical but it works better than my battery operated Bostitch sharpener that probably needs the knife replaced. But I digress--for colors you might try Berol Verithin pencils from an art supply house. They come in myriad colors even the turquoise that we associate with wash out markers. Depending on what background color I am marking I have used red, silver, yellow. Test first though.
Now back to applique work. lchj

Sewing day

The group did not make the trip about an hour or so north of here after all as we were under a winter weather advisory from about 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. this evening. Figures, doesn't it? The one weekend that we plan something? There was a chance of sleet, freezing rain etc so we thought it best not to chance it. I will probably go tomorrow for the day--it's downright cold and damp but no precip in the forecast.

I did do a bit of sewing here at home though. NOT on any of the 7 kits I just cut, LOL. I had been considering combining some of the leftover blocks from previous projects and digging out a few blocks that we had made along the way and doing something with them. This morning I thought that a strippie might fill the bill--48 inches across would work for 6 or 8 inch blocks. DJ got up to find me digging in the bins for the blocks I had set aside. I hit the machine shortly after that, working in my pj's till about 1030.

Inventorying the blocks on hand I had found that the 9 inch finished nine patches would just need one more segment to get the length I wanted. I pulled a couple apart to rearrange them into a checkerboard. (The 9 patches and the framed nine patches were leftover from the two tops I assembled a week or so back.) I made one more framed nine patch block and borrowed one of Nancy's pink and browns for a little more variety of color. Made a three more album cross blocks so I could repeat that row again. I only needed to make one more 3D bowtie to complete that row. The hearts were from a old BOM from several years past---good chance to put some of them to use as well.

I am debating what color to use for sashing between the rows and the left/right border. I have a nice medium sky blue on hand that might work. A tan? I used some of it for a block background---it might just fade in? Black or navy? Not sure that I have enough on hand of either of those. I'll let the blocks hang for a while to see what trips my trigger but will take suggestions. Just feels good to move these blocks along--not doing much good piled up and waiting till who knows when. A something from nothing top that looks bright and cheerful. Maybe not the loveliest quilt ever made but hopefully it has some "kid" appeal.

I made the few half blocks and four patches for the Road to St. Louis that were needed to complete those kit components along with the missing framed 4 patches needed. What I probably should have been doing was sewing and applying the binding for that t-shirt quilt. Naw, I felt compelled to sew--after all, I have been waiting to do just that while working on the commissioned piece, quilting all those tops and cutting for two days.