Summer Romance I Quilting: Corners

Yesterday I stopped and fiddled in my sketchbook to decide what to do in the corners.

These were both possibilities.

However, I do like to draw spines into the quilt, and I knew my blue and purple markers were almost dry, and Busy Bee Quilts was having a 25% off sale on everything if I got there before ten.  They were out of blue markers, but one of my favorite clerks talked me into buying Frixion markers--which I've been terrified to use.  She told me that if I got them and didn't like them, she'd buy them back from me.  So I bought a package, came home, wrote all over a white scrap and watched in amazement as it disappeared in seconds with heat from the hair dryer.  Okay, I was willing to try it on the quilt (and am hoping it will never reappear, although I do launder my quilts). Yes, I have friends who swear by them, but I was still skeptical.


Of course, when I actually stood in front of my quilt, I changed my mind about how to quilt it.
Quilts do have a way of speaking about what they want.

These large corners are going to feature what I sometimes call the Oklahoma Seed Pod, which is the larger portion of the photo above.  I call it that because I've only seen it on one other quilt (except for mine), and that was made in 1903 in the Oklahoma Panhandle.  I traced the design sometime around 1986 and love to use it and a few of its variations in my quilts.

For some reason, I was really struggling with the quilting today; then it occurred to me that I had invested in Hartley Micro-handles, so they went on the machine, and I'm doing better now--although I still seem to be doing sub-par work for me.  Nevertheless, after I take this break, I'm going to get back to work.

I'm also very unhappy with how much my starts and stops show up, so I'm going to start tying off and burying my knots--which will be pretty easy and fast for me after several decades of hand quilting, but will take more time than anchoring by machine.

Before my daughter left for her manicure and a few hours with her best friend, she came into the quilting studio to tell me goodbye, and asked, "Is that quilt for us?"  Yes, it will be part of her inheritance, but I hope to sleep under it for several decades first.

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,...


P.S.: I'm getting some lovely comments from no-reply commenters (is that a word?) to which I cannot respond.  So if you are a no-reply commenter (you might want to check your profile to be sure you have it set the way you want it set), please know I'm not being unappreciative or ugly about what you have to say.

Post Post Script:  Yes, I'm still quite nervous about the Frixion pens, but if white lines appear, they will at least be white lines on white fabric.

What is this?....

Here are some hints:

A few months ago, I made this.

 Today I made this:

Here's the exterior:

 As usual, quilting was a lot more fun than choosing fabrics and piecing.  It's pieced from more leftovers, mostly from Sweet Teen's college quilt.

Here it is with a couple of the Velcro dots in use:

Here's a side view:

Now you know, don't you?  It's a keyboard cover and stand so Sweet Teen can use her Kindle and Keyboard instead of hauling her laptop to class.  (She's also in the market for a new, smaller laptop. She says she has never once used her laptop for spread sheets--and that's why the "experts" she consulted suggested she buy the larger laptop in the first place.)

She did figure out that if she could take Chem II this summer, she could save a semester of college.
Unfortunately, the only class she could get into is 50 miles from home; so two days a week we are arising at 5:00 a.m., and I'm constantly reminding myself that saving the expense of a semester of college is definitely worth it.  (Secretly, I'm also praying she stays in materials engineering so that we don't end up with that extra semester anyway.--She's still hoping to do research in the field of nano-medicine.)

Second question:  What are these?

These are several pieces I'm likely to use in the American Made Brand 50 States American Blog Tour that began May 19 with a visit to two states each day.  My entry will appear here June 19 since New Mexico was one of the last four states to become part of the United States.  You'll find links to all the blogs here: http://americanmadebrand.com/blogtour/

Please let me share why I am so happy to be part of this tour.  These fabrics are made from cotton grown in the United States, processed in the United States, and milled and woven in the United States.  (We do grow cotton here in my state, but I don't think that's where AMB cotton is grown.)

I love the hand of this cotton, and I think all users will feel that way.  My secret hope is that one of these days they will weave some "shot-cottons" too.

I'm shocked that it's been so long since I've posted.  Life has been busy (but good), and today, Memorial Day, is my first official non-work day.  Since my next school year starts August 6, I'm going to try to be very productive this summer.  I love having time to sew, quilt, and have choices about my time, but of course, I love being a special ed teacher too, so I do have to make trade offs.  One of the trade-offs for the last two or three months is that there has been no time to read blogs.  So I'm sneaking some peaks at some today--how I've missed my blogging friends!!--and am hoping my own readers haven't forgotten that I exist! (There will be some prizes when my day on the American Made Brand blog tour happens!)

Oh, we've had 1.17 inches of rain!  That makes me very happy too!

I'm linking to Judy Laquidara's Design Wall so you can easily access her blog and that of other wonderful quilters.

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,...

More Piracy of Blogs

Attention: rohaler, fayefuxu, and tkdot. Get my blog off your sites!


Once again many bloggers are finding strange stats on their sites indicating that their blogs are being pirated.

Here is a snapshot of my statistics:



and this:

Why people think they need to pirate stuff from our sites--especially those of us who are just teeny-tiny in terms of readership--is totally beyond my comprehension.

A word of caution--if we see these sites in our statistics, we do *not* want to go visit them.  Most often they are sleezy, spam or virus contaminated, and often pornographic! They make sure there is no way to contact them without contracting or seeing things that are definitely not things we want in our lives!

Too bad the great openness of the internet leaves us with little choice but to scream, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

Oh, vampirestat (don't go there, either) is a "bot", and it visits almost the second I post, as do several others. And, lucky us, the filmhill bot is back too. (No, don't bother to go visit there either.)

Know that commercial that suggests, "Mom needs to step up her game"?  So does Google.

Okay, back to something fun, like quiltmaking......