"Watcha Doin?"

My grands love to watch this show on the cartoon channel that has a cute little girl character who always wants to know "Whatcha doin'?"  She's got the sweetest little voice. 

So what's been going on that I'm not posting?  Oh my, what isn't??  LOL!

The end of February we went to one of the local shelters and got a cat.

Her name on the cage was "Miss Kitty".  She's about four years old and a little timid, although she's getting braver.  This week she sort of half climbed in my lap, and I can move around under her.  But if DH gets up and his chair makes noise she scampers.

 

Miss A is the big cat fan, and she and Miss Kitty are getting along pretty well.  I taught Miss A to sit quietly and extend her finger for Miss Kitty to sniff her hand.  Then Miss K generally lets Miss A pet her and brush her for a gradually longer period of time.  Although both Miss A and I have received an unintentional scratch from Miss K's back claws this week we don't think it's intentional.  When she's had enough she uses her back paws to launch off the furniture, so that's natural.  We've each only had to apply one Band-Aid! 

 

Last week Friday I went to the local elementary school for the Third Grade World's Fair.  Miss A was making a presentation on Australia.  Her board included foods eaten there, animals and people who live there, and the flag.  She posed as a tourist, and you can see her backpack in the picture.  She delivered a speech, which we recorded on mom's phone.  She talked so quickly she covered everything in 1 minute and five seconds.  The video sound is bad because of so many people in the gym.  It was very cute, and she got high marks.

Miss A giving her Australia speech.

I went on a yarn binge...  which of course was JUST what I needed!!  First I placed an order at the Loopy Ewe.  Well, I kind of had to because I had a credit there.  Right?  So I got some sock yarn in some yummy hand dyes and some more Bamboo Pop in spring colors.

 

 

Then just because I could, I stopped on my way from the World's Fair to my aunt's house last Friday and ran in at The Wool and Cotton Company in Greendale.  They had a sale and I found two skeins of pink cotton, plus these four gorgeous hanks of Silky Wool.  Miss A and I wound them into cakes on Saturday while waiting for Miss K to appear.    These are just four of the available colors.

I'm working on a ripple scarf that I hope to turn into a sort of cowl.  I wanted to knit one, but either the pattern was beyond my ability or I was having a complete brain fart the night I began, so I switched to crochet.  That was enough of a challenge for me.

 

The ladies at the church quilt guild meeting last Saturday were all having the same brain fart issues I was having.  None of us could string two sentences together without issue!  So I guess it was going around.  We were thinking full moon, but as it turns out, it isn't until tomorrow. 

 

Maybe we were early adapters!!

 

	New Moon: March 8, 8:54 P.M.
	First Quarter: March 15, 1:03 P.M.
	Full Moon: March 23, 8:01 A.M.
	Last Quarter: March 31, 11:17 A.M.

 

Anyway, we did manage to get some quilt tops sandwiched for quilting.  Here are a few of the things that were shown:

 

Diane showed us how to sew and assemble strip sets for a table topper.

Bonnie made several flimsies

Bonnie...

Bonnie the over-achiever!

Suzi quilted and now I need to add binding to an I Spy...

and a Jacks

And Suzi showed off her Tembas, which will go into the Mukwonago quilt show next weekend.

I've actually pinned my Lily quilt, and am preparing to gird my loins and sit down to quilt it myself... wish me luck!

 

 

 

Sew on...



Life In Wisconsin

Last week was brutal at least for me... I had a four hour dental appointment on Tuesday and a funeral on Thursday and Friday.  But there were some good things, I promise!

I got a whole stack of my New York Beauty blocks done... about a dozen out of the 36 I need for my preferred layout.  The second of two classes was Feb. 28.  I enjoyed everything except the scrutiny of the quilt police! 

I feel that I did my part though.  One of the other students was struggling with the concept of curved seaming.  Being a garment sewist myself, fitting pieces of odd shaping together is nothing new, so I held a little side class for this lady, showing her how if you measure at the seam line, the two different shapes are actually the identical size, so they fit together perfectly.  Never mind the whole cut edge, it works.  I think she got it, I saw the light go on in her eyes.  She asked me if I was a teacher.  :-)

I think I'm more like a coach, really... but I love it when people realize they can do it, whatever it is!

Tuesday was the four hour dental appointment.  I was having some crowns done.  Done?  Installed?  Inserted?  What's the term?  It was actually a THREE hour appointment but when the third crown was inserted for the test fit, I heard "Ooops". 

This is NOT a sound you want to hear at the dentist. 

It turns out the 'minor adjustment grind' took a bit too much off the edge and they had to make another one.  Lucky for me my dentist has a lab right in the office and the new one took about six minutes to make.

He also gave me a little card they had made up that says:

My dentist told me I need a crown, and I was like I know, right?

So now I'm a princess!  Ha ha!

My church friends told me since my Father is The King of Heaven, of COURSE I'm a princess.

Thursday was my aunt Dar's funeral service and Friday her interment.  That was sad but we did have a lovely visit with lots of out of town relatives who we don't get to see much.  And my goodness were there a lot of BABIES!  Seems my generation of the family (the first cousins, who spans a couple of decades) has lots of grandchildren of an age to have children of their own and they're so adorable and friendly.  It was fun seeing them and passing them around for cuddles.

Here's to better days ahead.

Keep calm and carry on...

Sewing Sisters Farewell

I've blogged before about my Friday Night Sewing Sisters get together at the home of one of my aunties.  It's attended by cousins on both sides of the family, and aunts, and sometimes a third generation of girls and sometimes boys. 

We branded ourselves Sewing Sisters.  One year we had these braided friendship bracelets made out of embroidery floss, and we swore to wear them forever!  They didn't last that long, but it was fun.

We almost always wear something red on Friday.  It started as a show of support for the troops.  But I think we all love red, and most of us look good in it.

Our hostess my Aunt Z was married to one of my mom's brothers -- so my aunt by marriage.  She's a good friend,  My aunt D, her sister, who also just happened to be married to one of my mom's brothers, is also a sewing sister.  And some of the cousins who come are the daughters of a third sister E (not married to any relative of my mother!).  (There are more sisters, just like my family theirs is big.)

This past weekend the two aunties and some of the cousins went to a quilting retreat out of town. 
On the last day of the retreat Aunt D slipped on the steps and hit her head.  The EMTs came and she went to the hospital.  Because she was on blood thinners there wasn't much they could do and she passed away of bleeding on the brain.

She was 84, the same age my mom would have been.  I'm consoled by the fact that she had a wonderful last weekend, didn't linger and didn't suffer.  And that she was a believer in God so she'll rest in peace until the last day and be raised up to spend eternity in Paradise.

Maybe there's a sewing retreat in heaven too.

Like my late mom used to say, I'd better be good so when I die, I will go there too and I'll see them all again.

Things can change in the time it takes to take your next breath.  If you love someone, tell them now.

Love on...

New York Beauty Part II

This past weekend I finished all the arcs for my New York Beauty class.  She said confidently...

I had chosen five colors for the spires, and I made five of each color for 25 arcs.  Then I spent some time auditioning center circles and backgrounds, finally deciding on the very expert advice of all my Facebook friends to do a navy outer corner.

I vacillated between black and navy.  I liked the black fabric and in principal it should have worked.  However, when I put the pictures up on FB, the blue 'sparkled' where the black did not.

So there!

I also decided to use red for the inner circle.  I love red.  And this fabric is pretty, a pretty print in a wonderful vibrant red!  What's not to love?

I made my two pattern pieces and cut them all out.  The next step would be to choose a layout.  I needed to decide what configuration this quilt top would take, which would determine how many blocks I would ultimately need.

Never being one for making things JUST like the pattern says, I looked at everything in the whole book, and can't decide for the life of me, although  I do like a couple of the wonkier layouts.  I decided against being to symmetrical by starting in the center with a full circle, but the one I really like has the blocks in groups of three and four.  Dang! 

Back to the sewing machine to make a few more blocks of each color!

Is it any wonder that I end up with a 'parts department'??

Sew on...

New York Beauties Part 1

So if you've read last week's post, I talked about becoming proficient in the making of the quilt block called New York Beauty.  That's my February OMG.

Last Sunday (yes, I went to a quilt shop on Valentine's Day!  What a nice gift to me!!) my friend Suzi and I trundled off in the threatening weather of an impending snowfall to one of our LQS's to attend a New York Beauty class.

This is the book the teacher had us buy for the class.

 

Hubster always seems surprised that I still sign up for classes.  He says "I thought you knew everything"... well, not that "know it all" kind of knowing everything, just a certain skill level.  Maybe.  LOL!

Anyway, I said I like taking quilt classes because you never know when you're going to learn a new shortcut or pick up a tip.  Unless the teacher is a member of the quilt police -- and if he/she is, then I just do my best to ignore that facet of things and try to remember not to sign up for anything ELSE the QP is teaching.

We had our supplies prepared, and were happy to get started.  I had purchased some non-paper foundation stuff that was suggested on the class list.  I made copies putting two arcs on each sheet, so if I get the hang of this I can go to town.

We roughly cut out our arcs and got down to business.  I decided to use batik fabrics, since I have a bunch of those and I love the concentrated colors.  I had thought I was going to make all my 'spires', as the pointy parts are called, in black with a white background.  But when I realized that my black fabric had a somewhat large print, and these pieces end up being quite small, I changed my plan.  Now my background pieces are going to be black, the larger triangles will be light almost white, and the spires will be various colors.  The pieces are still ending up small so a lot of the overall pattern is lost, but I like it better than I did the black spires.

I started with a nice bright green batik.

Let's see if I have this in the right order. First you place the fabrics right sides together, and line them up 1/4 inch past the stitching line of the paper arc.  The fabric is on the 'wrong' side of the fabric, so you can see where you're sewing.  You sew on the line.

Stitching from the 'point' end, up to the corner on the first two pieces to be applied.

See the thread hanging from where I started?  My seam slants to the upper right.

 

Then you pray that when you open up what you've just sewn, you have covered the entire area you intended to cover with each piece.  If you did a good job, you finger-press or iron, or use your Little Wooden Iron like I did.

 

Once everything is nice and flat, you fold back on the NEXT stitching line.  I used a folded sheet of instructions for a ruler I had in my sewing box to hold everything snug.

You have a big piece sticking out that has to be cut off.  Don't cut off yet!  You do not want to cut on the stitching line.  Ask us how we know that...

Lucky me, I had watched an episode of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting last week.  Mary Fons was paper piecing and she was using the Add A Quarter ruler at this point.  I just happened to have one of those.  It might have been on the instructions for the class, but regardless, I had tossed it into the box the day before.

Add a Quarter Ruler and Little Wooden Iron

So you apply the AAQ ruler to the folded arc paper, and THEN you cut off the excess.

Hold everything snug and cut with a rotary cutter.  I have a small mat I put just to the left of my sewing station, and voila!  You have added the seam allowance that you need in order to add the next spire or background piece.

For this pattern, you start with your background color, and add alternating spires and background pieces until there are five spires and six backgrounds.

I did learn from the teacher that the reason it is called New York Beauty is that the arc with its spires mimics the appearance of the Statue of Liberty's crown.  True or not, it made a good story!

Suzi and I each had several arcs made at the end of the class.  Homework is to make as many as are called for in whichever pattern we picked out of the book, and I think we're supposed to cut out all of the pieces that turn the arcs into squares.

These are the colors of my spires, jewel tone batiks.

So far I've done five of each of three colors...

And I have at least seven to go in these colors.

...the scraps I'm saving

The next pieces to cut.

More on this tomorrow -- NYB Part 2.

Sew on...

"OMG"

Since texting has become a big thing, all kinds of 'words' or 'expressions' have appeared in our vocabularies.  For example LOL, nearly everyone knows that means laughing out loud.  Or LMAO -- laughing my a** off, or ROFLMAO -- rolling on the floor, well you get it. 

One of my acquaintances went off last year about people saying "WTF".  They would say the letters, not the words but you know what WTF stands for, right?

So on to OMG.  It can mean oh my God or oh my gosh or oh my goodness, but one a blog I read a lot, I saw that the blogger used it to stand for One Monthly Goal.  I thought that was an awesome idea!

There's an actual OMG organizer, and you can link up and possibly win a prize if you want to participate...you can go here and read about it: OMG

I'm not sure I'll do it, but I love the concept.  It could be that for this month, I have a goal of whatever it is and I have about 30 days to pull it off.  I could do that. 

Or I have a goal to do 12 somethings a year, and if I bite off one each month it's doable.

This month my goal is to learn to make the New York Beauty block.  Well, I know what it looks like, and I've made paper pieced blocks before, and I've even done blocks with the curved pieces of the arc in NYB.  And since I'm a garment sewer too, and have set in the curviest of seams in attaching sleeves to armscyes, I feel fairly confident that I can get it done.

By learning to make NYB I mean I want to get comfortable with the process enough to make MORE THAN ONE block, and finish a project using them.  That's my OMG this month.

Because the more you practice, the better you get.  Doesn't matter what it is, piano, skating, public speaking, or curved seams.

To that end, I signed up for a class at a LQS that will take place over two Sundays in February.

http://quilt-agious.com/classes/

This is the book we're using, mine came in the mail last week.  There's a page you have to either trace or copy onto tracing paper or some sort of background, and you use that to make the "arc" portion, with the points. 

I tried to get the special paper the shop recommended to go through my home printer but that didn't work.  I does accept and print nicely on regular tracing paper, but the paper I bought specifically for this class was softer and you could leave it in without a problem if you so desire, according to the package.

My friend Suzi is also taking the class.  She had the same issue but got her templates printed at an office supply store on her paper and very inexpensively.  If I get a chance to do that I just might.  Note to self:  put BOOK and PAPER in the car in case you drive by the office supply store!

I'm looking forward to making some lovely arches so I can use up some of those batiks brights that are sitting in the bin.  Doesn't that book make YOU want to stretch your skills to do curved piecing?

Sew on...

Lost Weekend, or Down the Rabbit Hole Again

Remember that old movie with Ray Miland, The Lost Weekend?  Maybe some of the younger folks don't.  It was made in 1945 so it was an oldie but a goodie when I was young too... but I watched many, many old movies while I was babysitting and waiting for people to come home after bar close back when I was in high school.

Oh yeah, back when people hired babysitters and I made 50 cents an hour doing it!  Huh, that was so long ago I'm lucky I remember that.

There, did you see that journey down the rabbit hole?  I keep doing that...

Just like Googling things -- you start with one thing and if you're lucky, eventually you find what you wanted an hour ago when you started.

What is rabbit hole? - Definition from WhatIs.com

whatis.techtarget.com › ... › Consumer Technology › Personal computing

In a fall down the rabbit hole, an individual sets off on the path with a goal, gets

sidetracked by various events and changes direction several times along the way ...

 

Remember Alice in Wonderland?  The trouble that girl got into because she wanted to know what

the heck the rabbit was doing??

 

Sometimes I feel like Alice.

 

This weekend the intent was to spend some time in the sewing room doing some kit cutting for the

church group that meets in two weeks.

 

I didn't bring any fabric home from our cabinet, but that's OK because I could cut kits from my own

stash for the balance of the decade and not run out, and probably not miss any of it.  :-(

 

So I went down on Saturday around noon.  Then after a text conversation with Miss E, I got sidetracked

by a trip to the office supply store for school supplies that I didn't have in my resource center.  Followed

closely by a trip to Michaels and Target and Wal-Mart.  (Disclaimer:  I do not shop at Wal-Mart.  I hate

their 800 pound gorilla marketing practices and the cheap crap you can get there.   But I will wait in the

car while Miss E goes in for Free-dent Gum that doesn't ruin her dental appliances.)

 

 

That pretty much used up my afternoon.  I finished up the day with dinner and a good book.

 

Sunday after church I went down again.  THIS time I pulled various fabrics and made up some groupings

with a plan to cut out some Yellow Brick Road kits and some Tam's Patch kits.

 

Tam's Patch block

Yellow Brick Road Pattern

 

We purchased the Yellow Brick Road pattern because it uses up fat quarters, and I have or can cut a

LOT of fat quarters from both my stash and the church's.

 

After lots of sorting, I was ready to start cutting so I looked for my binder of church quilt patterns.  We

all have copies of the same patterns so I don't have to include the pattern with the kit.  You pick up the kit,

go home and pull the corresponding pattern from your book and you're off.

 

This is kind of how it went:

 

11:00 a.m. Where is that binder?  It's white.  Oh good, so are the other two dozen binders I have.  Well, it has
"Church Quilt Patterns" on the spine.  Doesn't it??  Not on the shelves behind the sewing machine.  
I'll look on the shelf behind the ironing board.  Oh, I should iron these blouses and put them in my
closet.  Ugh, two flights up again!

 

11:30 a.m. What was I looking for?  Oh yeah, quilt pattern binder...two flights down.   OMG -- what
the heck did I do with it?  I made a table of contents for it and everything!  Hey, here's a bin of
Christmas fabric, I should look at that.  I love Christmas fabric.  I should condense these bins.

 

 

 

 

12:00 noon There's that solid gray I was looking for!  What's it doing in this bin?   This would make
a nice addition to my fat quarter pile for YBR with that print with the gray background.  I'll start a
new pile.

 

12:15 p.m. I need to go to the bathroom.  I'll get some more iced tea while I'm up there.  Hey honey,

how is the pot roast coming along?  I'll add a little water to the pan before I go back down.  What's
on TV?  Nothing, oh, here's a cooking show I saw, you'll like this one, it's only a half hour long.

 

1:00 p.m. Back downstairs.  I think I need to clear a path.  I'll just move this bin of doll clothes
into the back room... I need to take this bin of yarn upstairs to the spare bedroom.   Upstairs again.
OOOO, I should pull this pink yarn and cast on one of those baby sweaters with the hood. 
What's in this bag?  More of that sparkly holiday Red Heart, I'll just put all those skeins in one place...

 

1:45 Quilt pattern binder!  I'd better get back downstairs and find it.  I'll take these quilt mags

down with me.  OUCH!  I stubbed my toe on the small file cabinet in the corner as I walked back into

the basement.  I wonder what's in there again, there used to be some graph paper in the bottom drawer. 
Miss E was looking for that yesterday, I can get rid of something if she'll take it.

 

The drawer is sticking a little.  I'll give it one good pull -- Hey!  Quilt pattern binder!!  There it is,

way in the back. Success!

 

Now where's that rotary cutter again??

 

I DID get some kits cut...  so the ladies will have something to sew going forward, as soon as I

take the bag of kits to church.

 

Sew on...

 

 

 

 

Oh Scraps! And Other Messes...

For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get back into my sewing room and get some things done and organized and cleaned up.

Key word:  Trying.

Danged if every time I go down there I don't go into some rabbit hole or other.  Like playing with my paper stash, or pulling out all my magazines from a box and spending all afternoon doing that instead.

I need some motivation.

And I need some pictures to post to make this blog interesting. 

In January, my buddy Suzi and I managed a mini-shop hop.  We went to one local quilt shop and signed up for a class.  OF COURSE we bought some stuff.  Why would we not.  Just for fun we compared totals and ended up spending nearly an identical amount not only at each shop but to each other's totals.  Crazy!  The second shop's totals were within pennies of each other!

I picked up a couple of patterns

And an assortment of fat quarters

 

Then last Saturday Miss A and I were doing some errands, picking up library books, stopping at Michael's for some art supplies, and then we ended up at our local quilt shop.  Again.

Actually this time I was picking up a pattern I ordered, so there WAS a purpose to the trip.

This was their display, I bought JUST the pattern.  I have a scrap stash to work through...

 So I'd better get busy and use up some of that stash I have because it's threatening to take over the house again.

Oh, and we stopped for lunch and a treat.

Sherbet in January, just the thing, right?

Sew on!