Fil-Tec Glide Thread Favorite

Fil-Tec Glide thread is on sale this weekend.

This shade is Bright Gold 80137.  It's the last gold on their chart at the above link.  It's one of my favorites because it looks great on a huge range of fabric styles and colors.  It comes in 1,000 yd and 10,000 yard spools.  Lovely shine and glisten that makes the quilting even more beautiful.  All my machines love it.

I often use a contrasting color of Glide on the back of my quilts, but not always.

I do much of my piecing and sometimes subtle tracing or background quilting with this thread: http://www.bobbincentral.com/bobbinline.html

The link for the sale of glide thread is http://www.bobbincentral.com/glide.html?whence=

No, I don't work for the company; they're hundreds and hundreds of miles from me.  Just love, love, love their thread!

Happy quiltmaking!

Hunting Quilt

 What is this mess?  The trimmings from squaring up 48 half-square triangles.  Next time I'll use my old Omnigrid triangle rulers.  I forgot how much I dislike trimming squares.

Piecing done on my lovely vintage Necchi BU on the treadle from a 1919 Singer 66.  (I do still have the Singer 66, and it works fine, so I should find someone who would like to use it.)

Turned the triangles, 48 two-patch blocks, and 12 solid blocks into 12 Lincoln's Platform blocks.

 I drew diagonal lines across 24 squares.  (They're resting on a sheet of 12" deli paper.  I love that stuff--for sewing and organizing as well as in my kitchen!)

 I placed those squares on opposite sides of an un-pieced square and sewed on the line.

 ....Over and over again....
I love the hunting fabric, a gift from my dear friend Mary.  (It was a JoAnn's Fabric exclusive several years ago, but until this inspiration hit, I couldn't figure out how to use it.)

 Pressed the seams with my favorite itty-bitty steam iron--at least it's my favorite for piece work.

 All pressed.

 Trimmed--I often sew a second seam a scant 1/2-inch to the right of the line before trimming--not sure why I didn't do that before trimming this time.

 Lay out the plan.  Lay out two stacks of blocks.

 Seam, referring to plan.

 Check to be sure seams of blocks align.  The red in the Lincoln's Platform is a Robin Pandolph from several years ago. The little flowered red is a Peter Pan--I'm wondering if it was left over from a shirt I made for my father many years ago.  The beige tiny flower is from the 1980's when it was still hard to find 100% cotton for quiltmaking.

 Build the rows and piece rows together.

 Piece red inner border.

 Layer and baste with a few hundred pins.  (Pin basting because I took it to church to baste at our Victory Quilt meeting, and I didn't feel up to carting along the boards I use when basting with Sharon Schamber's thread basting method.  In hindsight, her method is faster--and is featured on you-tube.)

Pieced back--with some little surprises.

Ready for quilting.  Makes me nostalgic for hunting season on the farm in Illinois--although I usually stayed inside since there were always a few poachers who thought a hunting license entitled them to free game from other people's land and that they didn't even have to ask permission to hunt.  One year those poachers even included the president of one of the El Paso banks!
Guess I'd better get busy quilting and see how many more memories I recover!

Most often our Thanksgiving dinners included pheasant. On one of the little country roads near my work, I've seen a pair of ring-neck pheasants each day for the last several days. I don't even know if there is a pheasant hunting season here in New Mexico.

Hope your Thanksgiving Day is wonderful!

Honor and Grief

Thank you, to all the veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much for us.

My earliest memory connected with Veterans' Day is of the ladies in our small town who without fail sold paper poppies around Veterans' Day and Memorial Day.

 My grandfather, who was of the generation that was needed on the farm during WWI and too old to fight in WWII, always purchased a poppy when he went to town during the times they were being sold. I remember dusting the floor in his bedroom and always seeing several on his dresser. My father was a decorated veteran of World War II who seldom would talk of his experiences except with other veterans of the same era. My nephew recently returned from Afghanistan. As much as I value their service, I also honor the families who have sacrificed so much to enable their loved ones to serve.

[The photo above is one many that can be found at http://www.elpaso.net/~bank/ thanks to several small-town, very dedicated historians.]

Postscript:  It's been a perfect Veterans' Day--the sky gray with grief all day.  November is a difficult month for me because so many people who have been incredibly important in my life have departed this life for the next one during Novembers.  I'm hoping I'll be back on an emotionally stable footing for Thanksgiving, one of my most favorite celebrations.

Current Project and Concert

 This is a group project among several of us in the quilt ministry.  It will be an altar cloth that we use on the Sundays that the church dedicates the prayer quilts.  So far all I've managed to do is outline the figures in gold.....Never enough time for all I need to do!

This past weekend Sweet Teen and I got to spend some fun time together, but of course, I forgot to take pictures.
I did take pictures of her concert in the gazebo at the Plaza in Old Town Albuquerque, but they're not very good pictures.  And of course, we forgot to take other pictures.

We had beautiful autumn weather this weekend, and it was a great time for a concert.  However, we're expecting a 25 degree drop in temperature later this week--so I'll soon be regretting that I didn't manage the time to get clothes out of storage last Saturday or Sunday.  This is also the week for Parent Teacher Conferences.
Sweet Teen is doing a report on family history in one of her classes, so we also got to look through a box of old family pictures this past weekend.  We got in touch with a couple of my Kansas aunts to fill in some blank spots in our family tree and family history, and then learned there's a lady in Albuquerque researching our family tree because she's interested in some early New Mexico history that includes links to two of my uncles (brothers who married two of my aunts).  She's even spent a day with one of my Kansas cousins and his wife gathering family history.  (I had no idea.)
My maternal grandpa had 8 siblings, and my mom had 9 sisters and 5 brothers, so I have cousins I've never met.  In fact, in their entire lives, the 14 kids in my mom's family were together in the same place at the same time only three times that I know of.  There were 22 years between the birth of the youngest and oldest; all survived to adulthood; ten are still alive.
So nice to reconnect.  Sweet Teen and I are hoping to attend the next family reunion in Kansas in early June.
I feel remiss in not doing a better job of blogging.  I do love to blog--even enjoy taking pictures when I remember to do so--but life has been so intense since August that I've not been doing a very good job of it. It's so much fun, usually, to look back through my blog and remember what we were doing. However, while not blogging, fortunately, I've been doing a good job of driving and so have most of the drivers I encounter each day--but not such a good job of blogging.  Alas.......

Goodies - Yarn, Etc. & A Question

We awoke this morning to snow on the mountains around us.  Most of it was gone by early afternoon.  However, coupled with the low temperatures and cloudy skies the last couple of days, it's a reminder that winter is on its way--as was the fact that it was just so cold in the house that I had to turn on the furnace.  I'm dreading the winter utility bills!
So......
here are the goodies to which I succumbed!

 Plymouth Happy Feet sock yarn in watery colors.
Below, a magazine splurge.  Two romantic decor magazines and two quilting magazines.

Who knows if I'll ever make any of the quilts in the magazines, but they'll inspire my quilts anyway.

And the beautiful photos in Romantic Country and Romantic Homes will warm my senses and my heart as we head into winter.  Yes, it's obvious I'm not a winter person--although I might be if I could play in it and not have to drive so many miles in it each day.

Are you aware Wal-mart no longer discounts magazines (and the prices have gone up on almost everything else they carry)?  Okay, now I won't have to feel guilty when I splurge on a magazine at Smith's/Kroger's because at least I'll be earning points toward lower prices on gas.

The double nine-patch quilt in the above photos is one I made in the late 80's and early 90's before I started machine quilting.  Although I pieced it in Tennessee, the quilt brings back a lot of happy memories of an old house on Hill Street in Gallup with wonderful big windows.  I quilted in the dining room, where we still had room for a dining table.  The house had beautiful light maple floors;  I'd love to have light maple floors again!

I'm curious......Do you choose the quilts you're using according to the season?  Do you change to darker colors in the fall and/or winter?  Do  you stick with light colors in the winter to ward off the darkness of shorter daylight?  Do you stick to your favorite colors year round regardless of the season?

I quilted for a few minutes on a prayer quilt this morning--just a few minutes.

Happy quilting to all who manage time to quilt!.....

Sweet Teen & Homecoming

Homecoming was this past weekend.
This evening she was reminding me that in the "old days", i.e., grade school, when she earned C's and D's, I didn't get angry with her, but I'd say things like, "Your value as a human being has nothing to do with your grades.  Are those the grades you want?"
Now as a junior in high school, she has mostly A+'s, an A or two, and is very upset by her B in math.  She's not sure I'm happy enough with all her A's.  I figure they're her grades.  I'm happy for her, but they're her grades, not mine.  And apparently I'm not happy enough. She also remarked that in her psych class they've been discussing that most of the parents of the other kids put a lot more pressure on them to get high grades and get a lot more upset if they get bad grades.
I can't help thinking back to those couple of years I worked on her adoption.  What I was thinking then was that I wanted to raise a child who would be happy, a good human being, and capable of maintaining long-term intimate relationships.  That's pretty much what I still want for her--and that's pretty much who she is.  In seven days, she'll have been legally and officially my daughter for 14 years.  We've faced a lot of challenges.  I'm very happy that she is who she is.  I love that she's smart, introspective, reflective, and seldom acts without thinking.  In view of the fact that we are so alike in so many ways and so different in so many other ways, she wonders what is genetic and what is the result of nurturing.  It might be interesting to know, but I'm just glad she's who she is.

Fireworks

Because our little town has multiple fireworks factories, the homecoming game includes some pretty spectacular fireworks displays.

My little camera managed some interesting photographs--and a couple captured some things that my eyes missed.

I do love fireworks, despite the fact that our residents buy so many that the 4th of July fireworks last for hours and hours.

As I was leaving the house to get Sweet Teen after the game, across the sky, above the fireworks, streaked a meteor.  The meteor took my breath away.

The fireworks are like all the prayers we lift up for friends and the friends of our friends.  We're blessed by them. What really takes our breath away is the recognition that we have a Lord whose love streaks across the cosmos blessing us, confirming his love and presence.

Parade Blues

I escaped from my workplace early so I could see Sweet Teen in the homecoming parade.

I was misinformed about the parade route--so was part of the police force, for that matter.
Missed the parade.  Missed my daughter on her float.  (Of course, the high school can post all kinds of [un]important messages to our phones and their website.  But they are incapable of posting the parade route. And a call to the city offices yielded more misinformation.)  Wonder how many other parents missed it.  I do know of at least one auntie who missed it. We had a lovely chat about the community while we were waiting for the parade.
However, here are some pictures from one of our city parks.  I love these sculptures that reflect our community's history.

 And I love this gazebo in the same park.

Makes me remember all the summer band concerts in all the town parks in the part of the country where I grew up.  Sadly, I don't think they ever have band concerts in this park.  I love the gazebo and all the reminiscences it inspires, just the same.

And I have to admit that the very best parade I ever saw anywhere took place in the Midwest decades ago when I saw a 10 or 12 year old boy marching down a street with his snare drum and most of the neighborhood kids marching along behind!

Quilting--At Last! An Update!

 Struggling morning glories--actually, struggling as of two weeks ago.  The ones in the pot now have yellow foliage, despite several rain showers and good drainage.

 The ones along the fence are fading too.  Hopefully, I'll be able to capture some seeds for next year.

 These quilt tops and pieces have neither changed nor moved in probably three or four weeks.  John Deere theme is for my nephew's son. I thought the blue and yellow would be for his daughter, but I'm changing my mind.

 This is the machine that has been doing the majority of my piecing and quilting for the last couple of months.  Since it's in my living room in front of the north-facing windows, it's in a good spot for sewing--except when the afternoon sun has made the room too warm; then I've reverted to the 1936 treadle in the real sewing room. Of course, I've been doing very little quiltmaking--that's what happens when the daily commute consists of three hours of rush hour traffic!

 Non sequitur: Antique orphaned pillowcase picked up at Angela's Attic.  It's from around 1910, although who can say when it was appliqued and embroidered?  I always wonder if something unfortunate happened to the other one or if the needle worker just never managed to finish it.

 One of my sweet little students is struggling with seizures; we've had to call the ambulance three times in the last couple of weeks, most recently yesterday.  The drugs she's being prescribed just aren't controlling them, and she's had several hospital stays, so I picked up this prayer quilt this morning.

 I couldn't find any that I had made in the cabinet of blessed quilts at church, so I brought this one home and added some quilting so it would be a bit more interesting and because I needed some prayer time for her.

 

I used Glide thread in the edges of the center blocks, a multicolored Superior Threads Rainbows Thread in the white border, and a variegated gold Rainbows Thread in the next border.

It's hard to see anyone sick, but it's even harder when it's a sweet child.

I did quilt a lovely, cheerful log cabin prayer quilt--because my lovely friend who pieced it was intimidated by all the white.  I had a grand time quilting it--lots of variegated threads, lots of feather quilting--but I forgot to take a picture of it.

I hope my lovely friends are getting more quilting done than I am! I do love both quilting and blogging (along with dozens of other things) and really hope I can manage to post more regularly.  (Oh, the other thing that's taking so much of my time is creating learning materials for students for whom my school district provides none.  There are times I wish creating learning materials were my job!)

Happy quiltmaking......