Quilt Dedication - March 2017

We held a quilt dedication today.  Over 60 quilts made by members of our Victory Prayer Quilt Group and members of our congregation were dedicated to service and, over the next few months, will be distributed to family and friends of our church family as well as members who are battling cancer and other serious health challenges.

The phone photos I took yesterday were not very good, and there were bunches of things I had to do before the first service today, so I took these quickly between services--which will explain the images that include the tops of people's heads.

 When we have a dedication, all the people at the church service are invited to lay hands on the quilts as we pray together and commission the quilts for service.

 One of the exciting aspects of this ministry is that sometimes the quilts are treasured for years by the original recipients, and sometimes they pass them on to others who also experience healing beyond what their medical teams expect.

 The altar cloth is a collaboration of several members of our group created from a commercial pattern quite a few years ago. (I remember quilting it on one of my treadles in my living room.)

 Just as I'm fascinated by the colors quiltmakers choose to use, I'm fascinated by the colors which appeal to the people who choose a quilt to give or the people who choose a quilt.

 I'm not at all sure why that white black and red quilt is folded so small. (I did not set up that part of the display.)

Not all the quilts are pictured.  I think someone began talking to me, and because of the distraction, I thought I'd snapped a couple of photos when I hadn't.

In my family we've been praying for a cousin with lung cancer despite no known risk factors.  She is being blessed with lots of prayer support.  Yesterday the upper lobe of her left lung was removed in robotic surgery at Johns Hopkins.  Another cousin is in a rehabilitation facility in Lincoln, Nebraska following an industrial accident that has resulted in paralysis from the neck down.

Tomorrow Victory Quilters are getting together to sew some quilts appropriate for children because so many youngsters with connections to our congregation have faced some very serious health challenges lately, and we think we need a shelf for some fun, juvenile quilts to comfort therm on their journeys toward healing.

I have five days off from work and am soooo looking forward to time at home, and hoping I can manage at least one pajama day. I already have several things on the calendar the will require me to leave home, but if my scanner will work correctly, I may avoid a trip into Albuquerque. Then I'll have two more months until the end of the school year.

I'm also trying to get some new socks knitted--since socks I made eight years or so ago are wearing out at an alarming rate. Yes, I take my knitting almost everywhere--even to lunch today with the College Girl before she headed to the airport to pick up classmates and then back to her university. (I'm thinking we'll change her nickname to The Engineer, although she has begun work on her master's, and we should have a graduation not only this May but also next May.  I'm pleased with what a hard worker she is.)

I'm also marking five years post assault/brain injury. Only occasionally do I grieve what I lost in that injury and will never recover.  My journey since then has been filled with more blessings than I can innumerate.

Happy quiltmaking, knitting, and creating,....

Summer Romance I - the Quilt

More photos of what is happening with the Wisteria strips from Eleanor Burns' Zoey line for Benartex Fabrics.

 I needed eight of these "split four patches."

Of course, they need this seam allowance, so I couldn't just cut four-patches in two.

I also got to trim a few "baby triangles."

I also needed to piece four-patches to the ends of some strips.

Since this roll of fabrics was purchased last January, I searched the internet for an additional Zoey print.  I've purchased two prints from the line to use in borders, and they've been here for a while.  Yardage of these prints are fast disappearing from on-line shops that I've had experience with.  So, I decided to go with pure white, telling myself that the quilting will show up nicely.

Next I needed half square triangles that would finish with two inch and four inch sides.  I keep moving my sewing stuff around and have no idea where my 2-decades-old triangle rulers are!

Then I remember that even longer ago I had purchased a couple of boxes with a wide variety of templates.  These may have been from Quilting from the Heartland, but I no longer have the original box.

However, the set contained both needed sizes of triangle templates, so I did some more cutting and piecing.

Okay, we are back to work, determined that the next time I arrange things, they will not be in four different rooms!

This is going to be a really beautiful quilt, but I'm starting to feel more than a little anxiety that our school will begin so soon, and I want this top ready for quilting at least! (August 4th is such an early start date--and is happening because of the pressures of No Child Left Behind, Common Core Curriculum Standards, and Standardized Testing.)

Happy quiltmaking,.....

Reorganization, Explanation, New Quilt

I'm back, more or less, and wondering how long it will take me to catch up on blogs.

First came the reorganization of my quilting studio--which I've worked on for weeks and still has a ways to go but is a vast improvement.
I have a lot of shelves of organized fabric including many of the hand dyes I've done for the last couple of decades and have been somewhat reluctant to use:

                                                                   Yes, still a ways to go!

Reorganizations of lots and lots of prints:

Little curtains over the shelves to protect them from light:

 I still have boxes of fabric, etc., about which I need to make decisions.

I do feel like I'm still healing from the "mystery virus," and I'm still not accomplishing as much as I'd like.  The good thing is that throughout this time my brain has continued to heal so that I now hear things, especially in music, that my brain is processing for the first time since its injury over 2.5 years ago.  Given how much I love music, that's a huge blessing.

I am back to quiltmaking at last, and tonight I get to layer this for quilting:

It's a prayer quilt for the husband of my grade school/high school friend Pat Orr.  Dave has finally been matched with a donor for a liver transplant, so I need to get this quilted, blessed, and on the way to Illinois.  I'm thinking his donor may need a prayer quilt too. However, the latter quilt can be selected from the  quilts waiting for distribution.

The panels in the above quilt were purchased several years ago, and I've been collecting additional fabrics to go with them, but up to this point the only thing I had used them for was for a door hanging.  They remind me of autumn during my childhood and youth on our farm near El Paso, Illinois.

School moves forward, and sometimes I do too! The polar vortex is headed in our direction (despite the fact that one of the writers on Accuweather said the Southwest would be spared).  I'm grateful our introduction to this one will probably not include the snow it's brought to much of the country.  (It's obvious I'm getting old because I talk about the weather!)

Happy quiltmaking...

Quilts Finished: Early August

The whirl of school has begun!  Whew!
Before I took the College Girl back to NM Tech and returned for my new year the following day, I finished three quilts:

This is a prayer quilt for my friend Kristina.  I'm sure she's received it by now, so I won't have to be concerned about ruining the surprise by showing it.  The border is a Grunge fabric in heavenly blue and violet colors. The rest of the fabrics are those incomparable Peppered Cottons by Pepper Cory for studio e. I used a variety of Fil-Tec Glide threads for quilting.

I also finished and presented "Sweet Loreta."  She loved her quilt, and I'm thrilled that I was able to make it and surprise her with it.

I finished quilting Judy's music quilt--

I managed to get this picture when we went to set up the sanctuary for the blessing.  I think it's interesting that Judy held it at this angle because in my mind I saw the right edge as the top.

Here's the scary stuff that was in my office when I returned:

Yes, a leak (that I repeatedly reported last April/May), complete with black mold, a trash can full of water, and plenty of evidence on the rug that the water had overflowed the can throughout the summer.  Our school is located in what was once a dialysis clinic, and the landlord has refused to do much maintenance and has been exceedingly reluctant to let us make any changes.

Anyone who has had experience with these kinds of things in public schools is likely to know the difficulty getting things fixed there as well. (We are a stand-alone state chartered school, so we are not part of a large district.) While we were in training, the landlord and his wife appeared wearing masks and finally ready to investigate and take care of the problem. While this was being taken care off, one of the founders of the school kept us frequently advised of progress.

However, there is more!  For the last couple of days the cooling unit in one upstairs section of the building failed, and the downstairs hallway has flooded. (Less than an inch of water, but still treacherous.)  To our amazement, one of the best rated plumbing/heating/cooling businesses in the city arrived to take care of the air conditioning, and then returned the following day when it failed again.  The same business sent other technicians to solve the plumbing problem, and they snaked the line to the street.  When it happened the second day, they returned again.   Here's the part that would be totally amazing at any other school: when I went back to my office after my upstairs class yesterday, having been told all students and staff would need to walk around the school instead of using the stairs, our Executive Director and one of the school Founders were the ones cleaning up the flood waters while the plumbers were on their way. I know from experience in other schools, that what usually happens in such situations is that the administrators ignore the problem and label the squeaky wheels as trouble-makers or, if they are more prone to action, stand around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for help to show up.  It's a mark of the high quality of the people I work with that the "people at the top" immediately pitched in and were doing the actual clean-up.

Furthermore, my experience over decades of teaching has been that teachers return for the school year knowing they have hours and hours of preparation to do on site after preparing at home for much of the summer, and are condemned to hours of "professional development" that consist of unpleasant interactions with administrators denouncing our teaching abilities and just generally putting the screws to us for not getting better learning results from children whose families are burdened by poverty and dysfunction.  By contrast, our in-service included 12 hours of training with a phenomenal trainer who truly helped strengthen us as educators and human beings, commended our positive school culture, and empowered us to build even stronger skills.  What a difference that makes!

I'm working with sixth grade students and teachers this year (we're a 6-12 school), and while we were all exhausted by the end of the week, it's great to have such a wonderful, talented, and diverse group of students to serve.

I'll try to post more photos of Kristina's quilt later.  I'm still working on the tutorial for "Sweet Loreta."

I'm missing blog reading, and I have way too much to do, but I will continue plodding along here in our delightfully damp desert!

Here's one more glimpse of Sweet Loreta's quilt:

Happy quiltmaking...and knitting!

Quilting, Patchwork, Knitting, etc.

First I want to let you all know that although my little town received so much rain that we still have some puddles, to my knowledge there is no lingering damage from flash floods.  We do have a lot more green stuff growing than we've had in years--although technically we are still in a drought.

 This is the first quilting that has happened in ages--and I managed that only because yesterday was the monthly meeting of our prayer quilt ministry, Victory Quilters.  This is a wonderful star quilt pieced by Judy; however, it's going to be a while before I can show you the rest of it. I was gifted a Necchi BF (straight stitch) sewing machine that I took to the church; it was nice not to have to lug a sewing machine along when I went there yesterday.

 I just tossed it over one of my treadles so that I also could show you one of the wonderful lights from Ikea that my young friend Kim Larkin picked up in Dallas and mailed to me.  I've wanted one for years, but Ikea doesn't ship them.  They are available on Amazon for about three prices.  I'm thinking those of you who do live within shopping distance of an Ikea store might want to pick some up as gifts for your relatives or quilting/crafting friends who would have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a store.  The lamps have a heavy solid base and are very easy to assemble with nothing more than a screwdriver.  (I sent one to NM Tech for my daughter.)

The respiratory virus/infection that has had me down for three weeks or so did not prevent me from making some other acquisitions.

 Dillard's is selling these Southern Living Christmas Cookbooks for $10.  In Albuquerque the funds go to Ronald McDonald House; I'm not sure if that is true in all markets, but these would also make good gifts.

 I've acquired this purplee lace weight yarn thinking it will make a nice scarf or shawl.

 These are the socks I've been working on.  I started the toes months ago but couldn't decide on a pattern. This pattern was called an eyelit rib--it's free on Ravelry, but I just searched and couldn't find it.  In any case, it was a top down sock that I'm doing toe up.

 I've started this sweater with some of Auracana Chilean hand-dyed yarn rather than the Cascade in the directions. Download Here. (Yes, I easily spend hours and hours on Ravelry--to the detriment of blog reading.)

 These are a few of the wonderful Bow Tie blocks I received in the recent Treadle On Block Exchange. The block on the left was made by an educator in Gallup; Gallup was the first place I lived in New Mexico 25 years ago!  I haven't yet met her in person--but I'm thinking I should!

This is the 3S Shawl showing the first picots I have made in knitting. (I've made more than a few thousand in tatting!)  It's not yet blocked; I just tossed it over the back of the loveseat so I'd have a photo.   I thought it would be larger, but I had only 100 grams of yarn.  It will be plenty big enough to wear as a neck accessory or in the collar of a coat.  (I have another on the needles in a dusty pinkish red color which will be quite a bit larger.)

I've been keeping very, very busy; you know I've been just trying to ward off loneliness with Sweet Teen away at college.  I can see that I could end up being very, very busy but not enjoying things if I don't give some more thought and editing to my activities.  I would love to start a little needlework/handwork group of four to six people who could meet in my home one evening every couple of weeks.  I'm not sure I know enough people to make that happen.

I did get home Friday evening and miss Sweet Teen--but Netflix had arrived so I got to re-watch Tuck Everlasting as well as another film that's not worth recommending. The truth is that I just love the music in that film--and the Edwardian dresses. I'm coming home from school really exhausted--and am looking forward to another special ed teacher coming on board soon so that I can have a reasonable sized caseload instead of about twice as many students as I should have.

I'm really missing my blog reading--I get so spoiled over the summer.  I even have magazines I haven't had time to read!

Happy quiltmaking.....

Oh, My! and Zig-Zag Border Tutorial

 I'll fill you in on the "oh, my" later...but first the tutorial for making a zigzag border.  These dimensions are what I'm using for the Southwestern Sunrise, Sunset Quilt.  The 1903 Oklahoma quilt that has inspired not only this quilt but also another that I made over twenty years ago had a simple zig zag border.  The other day I found a photo of the original quilt, and I hope to scan it when I get a chance.  (We have a new router and some of our connectivity problems have been resolved.)

Since the patches of this Triple Irish Chain finish to two inches square, I'm coordinating the zigzag border by using pieces that will finish to the same size.  While for my first quilt I made the border of triangles and rhomboids drawn the old fashioned way with templates, I used speed methods to cut and piece this border. Yes, our methods have changed quite a bit in the last quarter century.  I remember carrying the pieces and border for that earlier Irish chain almost every where I went where I would have to sit and wait for a while.  I even remember putting the last pieces together as I sat waiting in the office of my optometrist in downtown Gallup.  In contrast, this border actually has more pieces but is totally machine made.

To make the triangles at the outer sides of the border, I cut squares 2.5 inches X 2.5 inches, and instead of rhomboids (some people just call them parallelograms), I used rectangles cut 2.5 X 4.5 inches (so the border finishes four inches wide).

Since the squares become triangles, I mark a diagonal on the squares, lay them on the rectangles, and sew on the marked line. 

 My tip for speeding the process is to layer four squares (which were already layered since they were cut from two layered 2.5 inch strips cut the width of the fabric). Since I like to work at my machine, I put the the four squares on a round of soft shape foam.  (I purchased the soft foam at the Dollar Tree--I used them to make manipulatives for my classroom, and this was a leftover circle.)

 I mark the diagonal through all four layers with an old tracing wheel.  (I don't know if these are still sold. [Update:  Cheryl says they are still available.] While I have a couple of vintage ones, I also have found some in thrift stores.)

 I layer a square on a rectangle and sew across the square. And actually, I sew just to the side of the marked line enable more accuracy when the square is folded.  I do chain one shape after another during this process.

 Then when I fold the square over, I get a more accurate seam allowance so the edges of the fabric all match.

 Then I trim just the the triangle that is the second [inside] layer to cut down on bulk but retain accuracy.

 I use the 4.5 X 2.5 rectangle to help me stay accurate.

Then I repeat the process at the other end of the rectangle.

 Because we wish to create this V-shape, we need to either stitch two sets in opposite directions or stitch pairs to form the V.  Because of the way this fabric was dyed, it made more sense to me to stitch the rectangles in pairs.

 Then the two rectangle units can be stitched together.  Because of the layers of fabric in this method, I press open the seam joining the halves of the chevron. When the fabrics in the V meet well, we know we pieced accurately.

 Above and below are closeups of how the thread runs just next to the marked line.

 I marked it the lines on these patches just to show you how I obtained accuracy.

On my vintage Singers and Necchis my marked line just kisses the inner edge of the presser foot.

I did stitch these in sets of two, pressed them from the front, and then trimmed out those inner triangles while watching a rerun of Downton Abbey--have some more to trim tonight as well.

I'll try to post a photo of a zigzag border strip tomorrow.

Okay, here are the "oh, my"s.

Oh, my, how wonderful to be working at a school where the culture is supportive of the students' efforts.
I do like my new job!

Oh, my, winter has arrived. We awoke to ice and snow this morning.  Not deep.  But it did lead to some accidents that kept I-40 closed for over four hours.  Fortunately, we were able to take Old 66 to church.
Low tonight is expected to be 11 F.--and when they predict 11, experience tells us it may well be much colder.  I'm thinking it's time to load the Christmas CDs into the player.  I have tomorrow off for Veterans' Day, but my daughter has school.

Oh, my, we do become accustomed to our conveniences.  Although I had spent well over an hour on the phone with a Wi-Power Technician a few nights ago, we were not able to get my computer connected with the new router.  So I've been playing around and gradually getting our devices back on-line.  Finally, this afternoon I was successful getting the laptop back on the network.  I'm sure I did nothing we hadn't tried countless times before, but this time it worked. A somewhat related "oh, my": When I visit blogs (something I haven't managed to do as much as I like lately), I notice that I'm identified as a "visitor from Oldsmar, FL.  That's the home of Wi-Power, but I live at least 1500 miles from there! (Update:  Wi-Power technician stopped by Monday a.m., and we added more cable and moved the router to a higher location.)

Oh, my, I do love old recipes.  One of my favorite comfort foods from my growing-up-days-on-the-farm was bread pudding.  The bread I made yesterday was not so great--affected by errands, bad timing, etc., so today I cubed it and am making bread pudding--which smells great, by the way!  On the farm we had bread pudding throughout the year, (because we always had chickens, milk cows, and plenty of eggs and milk) but for some reason at this point in my life, bread pudding and late autumn/early winter just seem to go together.  Whenever I have holidays, I seem to spend a good portion of the time cooking.  It's hard to get other people to comprehend that I really don't love cooking, but I do love cooking for people I love.

Thank you to all the Veterans who have protected our nation, too frequently at great personal sacrifice, and to our citizens who are willing to speak up and acknowledge them.

Happy quiltmaking......