Quiltathon

Today was another of Judy's Quiltathon days. (Patchworktimes.com) I decided to participate and failed miserably. Fortunately there are no Quiltathon police in my area. Just so you know, I do have wonderful excuses:
1. There was a breeze out on my back porch this morning so I grabbed my book and coffee and read while enjoying hearing the wind rustling the trees.
2. I had to answer several e-mails.
3. It was lunch time.
Finally I made my way to my Quilt Studio and started cutting out pieces for the next quilt I hope to make - a pattern by Rosie's Quilt Co. titled Come On-A My House. It uses lots of scraps and has houses, stars and trees - all things I love. About an hour into my cutting I started feeling kind of icky. I sat down at the sewing machine and made some more crumb blocks and then tried the cutting again. No way. My stomach was protesting. Was it something I ate at lunch? I'm hoping the icky feeling will go away soon.

All you Quiltathon people out there I hope you had a productive day. I will be lurking around the blogs green with envy.

Rd. to Indy flimsy

At last I finally got the borders on my Rd. to Indy quilt and it is now ready to send to the long-arm quilter. When the quilt comes back from being quilted, I want to add a piping of the colorful stripe against the turquoise binding.
In addition to all the containers of strips and squares cut from scraps, I also have this huge container filled with scraps. It overflows. Something needs to be done.
Using my stash of used dryer sheets as foundations, I began to try to my hand at crumb blocks. What fun!
Here are the results. I will definitely make more of these fun blocks. That scrap container should yield about 50,000 crumb blocks at least.
Today I'm thankful for .....

1. Peanut Butter (at the top of my list most days).
2. Anne Lamott (I'm reading one of her books)
3. Getting the ironing done.

Quilting

Our Bee group has decided to do a block exchange each month for a year. Here are 30 of the blocks that I made so far. The block which is easily done by cutting a 6" block diaganolly, sewing a 1-1/2" strip down the center and trimming the block to 5". It was fun to pick out fabrics from my scraps. I know that exchanging with my friends will give me a wonderful scrappy looking quilt.

Our speaker at Guild this past Thursday night was Gwen Marston who also taught two workshops. My friend Moe took her classes and the results are wonderful. You will see some colorful and LIBERATED quilts by following the links to these two women.

Today I am grateful for.........
1. Time to sit on the porch and read.
2. Colorful fabric.
3. Swiss cheese and Triscuits.

Bookcase

In my Quilt Studio I also have an area where I attempt to do some stamping and making of cards. The table very quickly gets piled high with stuff and then there is no room to work. The plastic storage bins on the side are hard to open and I don't often remember where I put different supplies. When my brother-in-law offered me an old bookcase that he was not using, I took him up on the offer. Here is my card/stamping area re-organized. I really need more shelves, but I worked with what I had and even without perfect conditions, it seems to be a better working arrangement.
The rolling plastic cart now houses unfinished quilting projects of which I have many. Unfinished projects don't make me feel as bad when they are neatly put away where I can conveniently forget them. (I'm hanging my head in shame.)

Stitching

The pattern for the Butterfly fob that I have been working on calls for this complicated vine/leaf pattern. I tried it three times and couldn't manage the correct counting of stitches so I gave up and did it my way. The fob is so tiny that no one (except you and me) will ever know that I didn't follow the pattern. Here is a closeup (sorry for the dark picture). Mine will be unique because of all the mistakes - or should I call them "stitcher's concept"?
Now to start the back of the fob, which is totally different from the front. There will be less of those eyelet stitches and more regular cross-stitch. Yeah!!!!!

This and that.......

1. The color challenge went on without me. I missed Brown and Red.

2. This is my back porch where I enjoy reading when the weather is right. Today it was PERFECT. See the temperature? 70 degrees, sunny with fluffy clouds and breezy. Such a glorious summer day. If all summer days were like today, I would love summer. 3. One thing I do not enjoy is gardening. About once a year I manage to pull some weeds or plant a small pot of flowers, but I'd much rather pay professionals. This plant by the evergreens is growing all over everywhere. I'm assuming it must be a weed since it seems to be taking over, but it looks better than most weeds. Does anyone know what it is?
4. Reading quilting blogs takes up a lot of my time. There are so many good ones out there, and I particularly enjoy hearing about new books and techniques, and seeing pictures of colorful quilts. I admit that I also enjoy the baby pictures and the dog/cat pictures.

5. Reading books also takes up a lot of my time. I finished a small book this morning, started in on another book this afternoon, listened to another book on my iPod while I took a walk, and have a book on CD going in my car.

6. No quilting, sewing or stitching today. That happens a lot.

Stitching & Color Challenge

When we (bloggers) show pictures of our work, no one knows the agony that went into the work. This is my progress on the Butterfly Fob. The agony that went into it..... I discovered that the butterflies are done with the wrong color of floss and the beige backstitch border was almost done when I discovered two huge knots on the backside. I re-did the backstitching to eliminate the knots, but I'm not going to re-do the butterflies. They took too much precise counting to get them positioned just right. I don't need to go through that again. Since it is a fob, there is still another side to do and I will do the butterflies on that side with the correct floss. Today's color challenge is BLUE. Here is a BLUE cat in a quilt my friend made for me.
A quilty BLUE lampshade in my Quilt Studio.
A BLUE magnet to pick up those fallen pins.
A BLUE quilt carrier bag.
A turquoise BLUE woolie. And to go along with it all, I was feeling kind of BLUE today. A good night's sleep should help to change that color.

Color Challenge

Today's color challenge is GREEN. (See yesterday's post for color challenge explanation.) I did not sew today and never even entered my quilt studio, so my GREEN pictures are from my office.

A GREEN stapler. A GREEN calendar.
A GREEN lampshade.
GREEN walls.
And a very dusty GREEN plant on the top of the bookshelves.
First thing on my To Do list for tomorrow is to dust that plant!

Challenge

There is a clever challenge at Cinderberry Stitches. Every day for five days post 5 pictures from your quilt studio of things with the chosen color. Today's color is pink. Here are my five pictures:

A pink rotary cutter.

A pink (and purple) seam ripper.
Pink fabric in the quilt I'm currently working on.
Pink thread and a pink handled scissors.

Pink fabric. (Hmmm - pretty)And a pink button box. I know, it doesn't look very pink in this picture, but it is kinda pink and is in the shape of a heart.
I wonder what the color will be for tomorrow.

Progress Report

All the blocks for my quilt are done and I've started putting them together. I ended up changing the green four-patches to a lime green. I wanted a kelly green but alas, my stash did not have one little bit of kelly green. I'm happy though with the lime green. I hope to finish putting the blocks together tomorrow because I'm anxious to try out borders. In the stitching department I managed to finish the square of eyelets and was delighted when everything met up correctly. The next step is to add pink butterflies. It will be nice to work with a color.

Did you notice the Quilting Blogger button on the left side of my blog? It is a great resource to find other quilt blogs, and at the same site it has Quilting Gallery which is a resource for instructions and free patterns.

Stitching and Quilting

Last night I took a stitching class taught by my friend, Brenda. She is a master stitcher and I always learn something new from her. The class was for this Sweetheart Tree "Rhodes Butterfly Fob". I used a doodle cloth for the class and did fairly well. Today I started in on the project and had a difficult time. I understand how to do the stitches, but the fabric is 32 count and I do not have good eye sight. After making many mistakes, I tore it all out and started over again. With my face plastered against the magnifying glass, I was extremely careful to double check each stitch. This tiny bit of stitching took me several hours. Here is a close-up. Not perfect, but acceptable, and since it is teeny tiny, I don't think I will get arrested by the stitching police.
It was a relief to stop stitching and make some easy four-patches for the Road to Indy quilt. I was disappointed with the green row. I wanted more of a kelly green, but since I'm taking the fabric from my stash, this was the only solid looking green I could find.
The green fabric below is a lighter and more kelly green, but it has lime green hearts also. I'm not sure how it will look, but I may give it a try tomorrow. The blue batik fabric is one I am considering for the outer border. I will probably make a 1-inch inner border using one of the darker solid fabrics from the quilt.
Would anyone like to offer some opinions or advice? It is always welcome!

Paper Piecing

My cousin asked me to do some paper piecing projects for her - a ladybug and a flamingo. Here is the cute little pink flamingo.
Then I needed to make a bookmark for a book club friend who is moving to Canada. Since she has dual citizenship, I decided to paper piece a little American flag and attach some Pledge of Allegiance fabric with a tiny "Liberty" bell to hang out of the book.
It seems that many days pass by before I find the time to post to this blog. I read a few blogs that post almost every day and wish I could be that faithful. Part of the problem is that I forget to take my camera with me when I leave the house. There are plenty of interesting things to post, but the pictures are what make the story come alive.

I don't always leave comments, but here is a big THANK YOU to those blogging friends that have such interesting blogs and good pictures to accompany their stories.