Sweet Quilts and a Quilt Back Sale

Here are the promised photos of the layered quilts Judy sent home with me.

 Judy said that in the original pattern these bordered squares were pieced into the quilt, but she appliqued them.

 She chose this wonderful print for the backing.

 Then she made a sweet quilt from fabric printed like vintage handkerchiefs.

 I love old hankies and once had a lot of them since they were frequently gifted to me when I was a child.

 They would arrive in the mail in birthday cards or "Thinking of You" cards--with 3 or 4 cent postage stamps!

 Over the years [decades] many have disappeared.

 I've picked up a few here and there in my travels.

 And a dear friend has sent me several.

 And all those "hanky memories" will come flooding back as I quilt these,

...especially the memories of how Mrs. Esther Lebo and Miss  Josephine Huffington would check each day to be sure each of us 36 students had clean hands, clean fingernails, and a clean handkerchief.

If you're looking for a sale on wide quilt backings, follow this link to the sale at Hancocks in Paducah.
(Sorry, I'm not sure how long the sale lasts.)

Happy quiltmaking.....

Another New Quilting Experience

 On this National and International Quilting Day I did have another new quiltmaking experience.  Today was our monthly quilt together for our Victory Prayer Quilt group. 

Although I took my Featherweight, it never made it out of the case.  I did get some pieces cut for another prayer quilt and some poor stitching ripped out of another prayer quilt.  I was looking for a possible fabric to add to the patches I had cut out when Judy said, "I'm not sure how to quilt these borders, although I know you'd put feathers in them."
I replied, "Yes, I would.  And if you'd trust me to use your machine, I'd be glad to put feathers on your quilt."  She trusted me, so I did.

 I'd never before stitched for more than a minute or two using a Bernina Stitch Regulator.

 In addition, while I know a lot of quiltmakers enjoy piecing and quilting with Connecting Threads cotton thread, this was my first time to use it. I do understand that the Bernina Stitch Regulators are quite expensive.  I didn't really understand that they regulate the size of stitches only with a range.  My stitches are equally as uniform when I do free motion on my treadles--and that came as a big surprise to me.

Judy found this Thomas Kincaid panel several years go.  Then she was fortunate enough to find very recently the coordinating all over print for the backing.  (Sorry, I didn't get a picture of that.)  I feel good that we were able to finish one quilt to the binding stage today--and happy that I was able to have some positive new experiences while helping the quilt make it to that stage.
I also am happy that she let me bring a couple other very pretty, already layered quilts home with me to quilt.  I'll try to get photos of them tomorrow.  However, I'm not at all sure when I'll get them quilted.  She has already given me other layered quilts that I haven't had time to finish.  They are really pretty, girly, and spring-like; I'll try to photograph them and get them on the blog some time in the next few days.

I head back to school Monday--I'm thinking it will be a pretty tough week with multiple IEPs and three days of state testing [and keeping kids occupied in positive ways during the times they are not testing].  Fortunately, as a senior, Sweet Teen will not have to test, although she was "chosen" to take the National Assessment of Educational Progress the week before last.  She will need to head down to the southeastern part of the state for an FFA competition, although she's not yet sure which day she will be competing.

I did get to Natural Grocers to pick up some supplements today, and I'm hoping they will help with the brain stuff I'm experiencing.  The numerous anxiety attacks I experienced one day early in the week have decreased dramatically, thank goodness, so I'm having only several a day.  I do hope they are merely a reflection of the date and not of a bunch of backward steps.  We definitely need a national data base to provide some clues about what is within the range of "common" when experiencing healing from brain injuries.

I hope you all have a fun St. Patrick's Day.  (Is the Chicago River still dyed green in his honor?)

Happy quiltmaking.....

Blog Lovin?

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 With Google Reader going away, I'm going to give Bloglovin a try.  (I already like the way it displays the blogs I like to read.)

I put a "Follow this blog with Bloglovin" button over on the right to make this easier for you.  However, if you are converting from Google Reader, you can just have Bloglovin import all the blogs you already follow--which makes following your favorite blogs even easier.

Alternatives: I've been following some blogs with "Feedburner," and I have a link to that in my side bar.  However, while I follow some blogs with it, I don't like that when I get an e-mail that there is a new post on a favorite blog, notification often comes a day or more after the post. In addition, the posts from a variety of blogs are announced like this:


when in fact the posts are from someone else's blog--or the blogs of several other people.

The sad part is that unless people choose to select the "follow this blog with Bloglovin" button on the sidebar, when blogger gets rid of Google Reader, we'll also have no followers. Yes, Blogger has made the whole follower thing difficult for months now.  One of the nice things about Bloglovin is that we can follow lots and lots of blogs.  Some of the bloggers I like to follow don't post really often, and I don't want to miss their posts when they do post; it looks like Bloglovin will let me follow a lot more blogs too.

Taking a deep breath while I see how things will work out.

Happy quiltmaking.....

Quilting Fun.....Amazing

Here's what I did today.....

I took the prayer quilt I pieced.....

 Two friends and I went to Los Lunas...

 to visit a Nolting Long Arm dealer.....

 and I played.

 I've not spent more than 15 minutes using a long-arm until today.

 I've had e-mails from a woman informing me that there is a huge difference between quilting feathers on a long arm and quilting them on a domestic machine.

 That may be true for some people.

 I could benefit from some practice,..

 but I can't say it's all that different.

 It's still a matter of where the needle enters and exits the fabric and where it does it again.

 She said my feathers are already better than those of people who've practiced for weeks.  I have no idea if that is true.  But it was fun.  And much faster than quilting on a domestic machine.

 Afterward, we stopped at a quilt shop, a shop that sells vintage fabrics and notions, and a Swiss bakery/cafe.

It's very seldom I get to spend a day with friends, let alone quilting friends.  Now I also have something important to think about.

Happy quiltmaking.....

Prayer Quilt Top Is Finished

I've finished the top.  Since it was nearly 60 degrees without wind by 10:30, I was able to take some pictures outside.  (Of course, I first had to haul tumble weeds off to the trash, so my eyes are itching!)

 

 Below was the "plan."  Real fabrics are obviously much nicer than the plan.

I did decide to use a different dark red than originally planned.  It was part of the same small fat quarter pack, but I thought it added more interest than the dots would have. 

 

I also decided to add corner blocks on the first border. The inner border was cut 2.5 inches wide (27.5 inches long) with 2.5 inch squares of green added at the ends of the two longer side.

The border fabric is a Clothworks Laurel Birch fabric that I purchased from Over the Rainbow at least a couple of years ago.  I did not have enough to cut the borders lengthwise on the fabric, so I cut crosswise, piecing the two longer borders. These outer borders were cut 6.5 inches wide.  The first two sides were cut 31.5 inches long.  The two longer sides were pieced on the diagonal and then cut 43.5 inches long.

(Don't you just love that deep blue New Mexican sky?!)

This quilt used two fat quarters of each of the four fabrics plus a little over a yard of the border fabric. (I do have some scraps that I will put in a bag and pass on to our prayer quilt ministry since these are not colors I use very often, but some of the other quilters do use them.) I do have a slightly darker green that I'll probably use for binding. I'm thinking I'll use the two dotted fat quarters that I put to the side to help widen the backing.  The top finishes at 43.5 inches square, so I'll need the backing to be 51 or 52 inches (four inches added to the measurement of the top on each side). I'll also need to check out my batting to see if I have something I can use without piecing it.

This quilt will look great quilted in my favorite Fil-Tec Gold Glide thread 80137.

(It's not a metallic thread.) This gold thread is currently the last gold in the bottom row of their chart on the linked page.  (However, be aware that over time they change positions, although this number has stayed constant for several years.)  The advantage of this color is that it enhances so very many fabric choices.  It also comes in pre-wound bobbins.  (I use the smaller L size bobbins in my class 15 treadle sewing machines.)

Side note:  This is *not* the color of pine pollen coating everything in the Southeast! That thought helps me not go too crazy in Southwest winds!

I'm wondering how long it will take to piece the backing; I'm sure what will take the most time is choosing the main fabric.

If you like this quilt and my chatter about how I made it is less detailed than you need,  remember that you can follow Mary Lane Brown's tutorial on Moda Bake Shop. Just cut your corner triangles 2.5 inches and use two or three colors for them rather than just one. (I didn't know about her tutorial until she and I were e-mailing after I did my first post about this quilt top.)

By the way, the i-pad worked out great for my paperless notes; I did buy a new ink cartridge that needs to be installed; and then I'll need to coax the printer to function with the computer and wireless router.--I do not like the amount of time those techie things require of a non-techie person!

In the next few days I'll post some little quiltmaking tips that I photographed while making this top--just a few that make things easier for some of us.

Happy quiltmaking......

Working on Quick Prayer Quilt

I'm going to piece a happy little prayer quilt today so I can use it for some quilting practice.
Here's the plan:

A few decades ago when I first began quilting this block was called "Indian Hatchet," a name I really didn't like.  My feelings were probably the result of watching too many cowboy and Indian movies.
Lately I've seen it called X and O's. I think this quilt is going to look more like Life-Savers.

This quilt needs the following:
ten medium red blocks with green corners
ten dark red blocks with orange corners
eight green blocks with red corners
eight green blocks with orange corners
for a total of 36 blocks.

I'm cutting all my fabrics from some fat quarters that have been lying around waiting for a bright moment, so I'll begin by cutting my red and green fabrics into five-inch squares.  I'm going to place a 2.5 inch square on two opposite corners of each block and seam the small squares by stitching diagonally across the center. So I'll need the following 2.5 inch squares:
20 green
36 orange
16 red

I'm cutting the inner orange border 2.5 inches wide, and the outer red border will be cut 6.5 inches wide.

I'm definitely not an orange fan.  I like orange juice and orange marmalade, but since I'm not part of the 12% of women who look good in orange, I certainly don't like to wear it.  Back when I was living in a teacherage, my unit had bright orange cupboards and cabinets in the kitchen.  Took me quite a while to figure out why I felt angry by the time I finished cooking. I finally painted them white and enjoyed cooking again!  As I looked at this orange fat quarter, I realized that if I combined that print with massive amounts of white I could probably handle it.

So, I'm off to cut and piece, and then I'll decide how I feel about these fabrics that I purchased on a whim and probably should have left for another bargain shopper!

Below, you'll see Mary Lane Brown's comment calling this "Road to Tennessee," which is what she called her pattern with smaller corner pieces (cut two inches, finishing at 1.5 inches) when published in the Moda Bake Shop.  Her pattern is HERE.

I put this on my blog because my printer is out of black ink; now I can pull it up on Sweet Teen's i-pad as I work on it.

Happy quiltmaking......

Out of the Maze?

Just one of many quilts, large and small, waiting to be quilted. I've wasted a almost an entire morning, so I need to get going here.

However, I'm facing a few challenges.  I'm one year into recovery from the assault by a child and the resultant brain injury.  (My knees are hurting off and on, but I'm considering that only a very minor symptom.) I think part of what I've experienced the last few days is just my brain remembering and trying to come to terms with what happened.  First, let me say that I'm very fortunate because this week is "spring break," although we are weeks from spring; so at least I can deal with this stuff from the haven of my home most of the time. I've had horrible headaches, nausea, and panic attacks.  My hearing is still off--if I don't have a pocket and lay my phone down, I can't identify where the sound is coming from when I get a text or phone call.  (I'm thinking I'll just let my upper underclothing ring! Update:  I did; still couldn't identify where the sound was coming from!) I'm having olfactory delusions--practically choked on the smell of tobacco smoke when I went to bed last night.  The buzzing in my brain has returned, although I feel fortunate that it's intermittent.  I'm on an emotional roller coaster.  Any kind of overload of things to do and moderately stressful situations send me on a downward spiral. My short term memory is totally malfunctioning again--can't remember why I've walked into a room, can't cook without constantly referring to the recipe, can't remember what I just did or did not do.

And the point of this rant?  While in the course of world affairs, my struggles mean diddly [if that much], the health care system definitely needs to learn a lot more about brain injury and about how to help people who experience it.

Nevertheless, happy quiltmaking.....

Progress On the Needles

Another couple of inches on the Meadow Flowers shawl

 A few stitches on the pink, white, and beige socks.

 And some sock yarn purchases.

Yes, I also purchased the bag they are sitting on.  It's some kind of crafting bag--but I bought it because I can use it when I need to haul around the school computer.

The drive home from work today was as hard as the drive in some of our snowstorms--but it was all liquid and vapor---lots of running liquid in the streets of Albuquerque, much less on this side of the  mountains.  (Of course, that's the case because the growing stuff out here could really use some moisture since it's been a horribly dry winter.  Actually, this is the second year of our very severe drought!)  Anyway, I'm skipping Knit-Night and just hunkering down.  I'm officially on spring break--despite the fact that it is officially not yet spring!  I'm hoping I accomplish lots!

I'm going to share this post on Judy's What's On the Needles?   
If you visit her linky party, you can see what some other knitters are making.
 


Happy quiltmaking.....and some happy knitting too,

A Wonderful Tea for Destressing

De-stressor:  

A trip to Kroger/Dillon's/Smith's/Ralph's--or whatever it's called locally--to bring home a special tea.

This "Private Selection" Acai, Pomegranate, and Blueberry Green Tea is amazing.  The fragrance is heavenly!  When brewing green tea, begin with water that is closer to 180 degrees F. than to boiling.  (At least that's the advise I've been given and try to follow.  The right temperature aids in brewing an even more perfect cup.
Breathe deeply, enjoy a beautiful magazine.  Let stress melt away.  Now that we have reached 11.5 hours of daylight, there's a lot more hope that spring is not too far away!

Happy quiltmaking.....

A Sweet Birthday

 One of the fun things about my birthday is that I share it with Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisl.

One of the sweet things about my birthday is that three years ago a sweet young woman whose mother was one of my teaching assistants and whose sister was one of my kindergarten students gave birth to a little girl on my birthday.  She named her Faith, and now Faith is three years old.  She was born in a year that was difficult for me, and although she has never lived closer to me than a thousand miles, she helped sustain my faith.

This year my birthday was marked by some additional lovely things.
Sweet Teen took me to lunch at the Swiss Alps Bakery and Cafe.  I've been wanting to go there since it opened, but we are so seldom in Albuquerque together at a time when we can go to lunch.  We had high expectations, for before there was a Swiss Alps Bakery and Cafe, there was a Swiss Alps Bakery, and on rare occasions during warmer months of the year we would sometimes be fortunate enough to find the Baker at farmer's markets.  There were no disappointments about our lunch at the Cafe.  Well, that's not quite accurate. Sweet Teen tasted the chocolate covered rum ball I selected for dessert and made the most horrible face I have seen since she was a preschooler. I wish I'd managed to take a picture of that face.  She says if she'd ever had any interest in consuming an alcoholic substance, it's definitely gone now!

 The lovelies in these two photos were waiting for me at the post office.  First one of those lovely, ruffled scarves that so many people are knitting.  Now I want to make one.  (Much faster project than socks or shawls.)

 The second is an old silver-plated spoon converted into a tiny pin-cushion by one of the women who was in some of the classes I taught 25 years ago or more at Chandler Fabrics in Dalton, GA.  Doris, who now lives in Ohio, made the pincushion and sent it to my friend Harriet, who sent it on to me.  It's just perfect for pins and needles for chairside when doing handwork.

Harriet also made the tiny tote in the first picture--it's the perfect size for a sock project--although at the moment it's quite happy cuddling my meadow blossom shawl-in-progress.

The magazines below are self-gifted.  I felt they would be perfect to flip through while enjoying a cup, or a pot, of tea.  I've flipped through one, and hope to get to the others very soon!

 I'm one of those people who just loves beautiful magazines.  I come by it naturally.  When I was in 8th grade, we were asked to do a survey of how many magazine subscriptions our families had.  Some families had none.   I stopped counting when I reached twenty-eight active subscriptions for our family!
 Of course, in those days, those 28+ subscriptions undoubtedly cost less than three or four magazine subscriptions today.  I hope to at least look at every page in these beautiful publications within the next week.  Think I can manage it?

Happy quiltmaking.....

The Quilt: A Bit Closer to a Finish

Oh, my!  Will this ever be finished?

 Actually, it is a big farther along than this strip of binding would indicate......because the binding has been stitched to the quilt, and I am swiping minutes here and there to stitch it down on the back of the quilt. My hands get tired from grabbing that tiny needle and pulling thread through much more quickly than they used to.

I've eager to get back to other quilting projects, bt I'm trying to discipline myself to finish this first.

I'd planned to take it to Friday Knit-Tea night, but we did not make the long drive home first, so I just worked on my meadow flowers shawl.

The reason Sweet Teen was in Albuquerque was that she was competing in the district even for History Day.  We talked by phone after she met with the judges;  she was upset, certain they had not even liked her project, etc., etc.  However, she did ask if there was any possibility if I could get to the awards ceremony and/or if I could pick her up at the end of the event.  I could not get away in time to make the beginning of the ceremony, but I get there.  She was astounded when she was announced as the first place winner in her division--so astounded that she had a hard time believing it was her name that was called and then getting her award.  (I wish I could have seen that!)

She moves on to the State History Day. The complication is that she will not be able to attend because her class will be on its way to Washington, DC for their We the People national competition.  Her teacher is hopeful they will be able to arrange for her to be interviewed either the night before or while their flight is on a layover.

I asked her to tell me a bit about why she was inspired to research this topic.  She said people, including adults, are always asking her questions such as, "Were you shipped from China in a box?" I am proud of her for making such a good effort--whether or not people choose to illuminate a bit of the darkness in their own minds.

Happy quiltmaking.......