Tell Me Why

     This is what kept me awake last night after my show for the Patched Lives Guild:
Why is the space on a longarm sewing machine between the needle and the motor called the throat and not the armpit? 

     Since the Machine Quilting Show I quilted this orphan sampler for church. They are fun to quilt, but without any practice to memorize the quilting design for each block it was easy to get confused. So I ripped a little more than I would normally. I try to keep the quilting on the light side for these quilts, but sometimes it isn't easy. Maybe it is time I quilt one of mine again.  I see I will have to play with this new camera a little more. The color isn't the best. Here are a few closeups.

      It was great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd last night. More than one gal was surprised to see that it was me doing the program.  We both attend the BenFranklin club way over in Oconomowoc, and I never let on there who I was.  Sometimes I try to be just one of the gals and it is easy at a shop club as opposed to a guild meeting. Things aren't as "social" there.

     And here's a few things I learned at the meeting last night:
Grandkids can cramp your style, but in a good way.
I have lots more local mystery readers of my blog than I thought.
I have more than one "biggest fan" in Wisconsin.
Sometimes Walmart clears fabric at 75 cents a yard.

Happy quilting.

Our Acceptable Obsession

Last week I enjoyed the Machine Quilting Today Show for 3 days.  Lucrecia and I took a room for a couple of nights and did some sewing in our room between classes. I finished 9 more blocks for my Ladies in Waiting quilt. It was slow going at first cause I wasn't familiar with the machine. The back of the hotel bedspread works for a design wall in a pinch.

When I got home I dug out this multicolored print I'll use in the border. I still want to pick out a copper or brown for some of the blocks then I can get on with the border blocks.

More about the show. Many of the classes at a machine quilting show are only 2 hours long. They have classes for beginners and experienced, for longarm quilters or domestic machine users, for art quilting techniques, for competition and for those with a computerized machine.  And then classes that interest me. Predominantly freehand quilting.

The classes are usually pretty good. I like to take classes to see how the teachers present the material and gain some new inspiration and ideas.  And just imagine, I learn something new while I am at it.
 I only take a drawing or a demo class because I don't want hands-on with a big heavy unfamiliar longarm. Ouch!

The show itself obviously had some phenomenal quilts made for the competition. This show also has categories that are more for everyday quilts I guess. Maybe next year I will enter that category. Again I was disappointed there weren't more pieced quilts. Always the art and applique quilts predominate. The lighting was pretty bad, but next year promises to be better. My camera has a flash so the pictures turned out fine.

Now it's back to reality. I have paperwork and doctors waiting and have a "show" to give in Waukesha. Yikes!

Anticipating Autumn

 I've made only a few more leaf blocks cause I've been busy with the garden and the people I take care of.  One (of the people) has been particularly annoying lately. I need a vacation.

I am using a deep tone-on-tone brown from my stash as the background for the leaf blocks.  The color I call "creek bottom brown".  It is the exact color as the bottom of the creek complete with the leaves printed on it. I bought it after I saw a beautiful scene one winter day.  On the creek was the most beautiful ice I'd ever seen. It had a scalloped edge that  resembled eyelet lace. Along shore there was red-twig dogwood, golden dried grasses and the white snow. I thought that could be inspiration for someone that did applique. That's Not me. And no, I didn't have my camera with me that day.

So why I got the brown, I don't know. Now I have this luscious batik from Cathy Boo. I'm toying with the idea of using it with the leaves in a medallion set. I'll need to make a few more block before I can play with settings.  Maybe later this week.

Off the list

I'm still working on the pile of things I found laying around the sewing room. The Thimbleberries scraps were just a pile of 1 3/4" strips, so I made a dwarf version of the quilt "Autumn Applause" from my book S is for Scraps. It was nice to check another one off the list. And it'll be easier to tote this with me to lectures than the queen size version.

Notice I also made 3 maple leaf blocks. After seeing Judy's leaf quilt last week I was inspired to make a few when I was pushing around a pile of orange and yellow scraps from the Smoky Mountain Star.  It is still sitting out cause it is waiting for the border.  Yes, just one more of the items on the pile. Maybe tonight.

I've been liking the oranges and yellows for several months now and thought I'd do some sort of leaf design. After checking Google Images for autumn leaf quilts I decided to go with the traditional pattern. I guess there's no surprise there. I do have a setting in mind, but as always I will play with a pile of blocks and see if they try to persuade me to do something better with them.  I don't plan on a very big quilt so my block size is only 4 1/2". I love  them so far. Now, do I make red and green leaves, too?

I have NOT been quilting like I thought I would. We actually have been getting some rain, so I have been overdoing it in the garden, pulling weeds.  That means I hurt too much from weeding to do any quilting. It feels good though. So much is coming back to life and lots of new weeds have sprouted too. Today Mark warned me not to overdo it out in the garden and I said I had to cause he wasn't helping. 10 minutes later he stopped what he was doing and helped pull weeds in the flower garden.  I think that was the first time ever. Maybe his retirement won't be so bad after all.  So, I'm all smiles now and Brian is bringing over pizza . More smiles.

Miscellaneous Monday

Today I straightened up the sewing room and found a pile of miscellaneous projects hiding in every corner and hogging my cutting table. A few just needed a dab of glue, others are projects that were waiting for a decision on my part. The most recent addition are these antique Dresden Plates. The church ladies decided to use them for our next raffle quilt., but we only have 15. I'll make one more with my antique scraps. Then I'll show the ladies how to blindstitch applique the pieces to muslin.  I hope we choose the right color for the sashing.

Also on the list are a rooster  apron and hotpads and bonding together scraps of cotton batting using a fusible tricot lining fabric. The forecast through August is calling for drier and warmer than normal. I guess I will be getting lots of quilting done, cause working in the garden in this heat is the pitts.

For more inspiration, check out all the posts at Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Say Cheese

My last few days have been good. The cheddar Rolling Stone quilt top is done. It does get one more cheddar border but then it wouldn't fit on my wall. Mark says it has too much orange. That's what he thinks. It's the orange that is making me smile. Say Cheese. :-D

I also met my other goal for the week that I just set Monday. I finished the quilting on another comfort quilt. I hope to get another one going right away. May as well, it is still HOT outside. It did cool off a bit, and we still need rain so I haven't been working in the garden.

One thing I will be monkeying with this week is my new camera.  So far, I am not very impressed with it. I'll have to try a few different settings. Wish me luck. Sew long.

This, That or Some Other

I finished the quilting on the comfort quilt Lois put together. I'm happy enough with it, but it would probably be even better if I'd slow down. I'm still practicing that, but the machine is so light and it moves quite effortlessly. It sure is fun though and I didn't bother to mark a single line. Can you tell? Oh, well. I took this quilt off the frame and put another one on right away. It's been nice and cool in the studio and right now I'd rather be nowhere else. I'm glad I finished it in time to take to church tomorrow.

Since I put a few more kits together and made the Crumb quilt, I've made a mess in the closet. So I spent an evening organizing that. I came across this floral print that I thought would work with these extra 9-patches of mine. It'd make a small quilt unless another round of 9-patches were made in different colors.  I have more of the same pink If I decide to go with that.

I'll tear this off the design wall and work on the cheddar Rolling Stone quilt  next cause my goal for the week is to finally put that quilt together and finish another quilt in the studio.The cheddar is cut waiting for me. Oh, to have the patience of fabric. I'm still practicing that too. Now to go check out a few other Design Walls.

It all adds up

 I didn't get any quilting done cause I've been busy watering the gardens. But I did get this next comfort quilt on the frame. I didn't recognize it as  a kit I put together cause Lois often has other ideas. It's the same block, but she arranged the scraps randomly and then sashed it. Also Lois sometimes contributes her own fabric to the kit.

I have been grabbing minutes here and there to get some sewing done.  The borders are ready for the cheddar Rolling Stones quilt and the blocks are done and the cheddar has been shrunk.  Hope to cut it tonight when I get back from town and running errands. And Yuck, It's hot out again. Nuts! I've got paperwork piling up too.

Shrinking fabric

Working on the crumb quilt inspired me to go through  my scraps. As a result I made this handful of blocks that will go into samplers for church and one rolling stone block for my Cheddar quilt.

I have 2 more blocks to make and I can put the Cheddar quilt together. First I need to preshrink the cheddar. I am a firm believer in preshrinking.  Not sure why I bother with the antiquey fabrics cause to me, the puckers are part of the old look.

The best way to preshrink is often debated. Some quilters don't shrink at all cause they like the puckered look or the sizing in the fabric when they cut and sew. Some just prewash a regular laundry cycle and hope to get any excess dye out at the same time. Some believe that you simply have to get it wet and it will shrink.  And some think that it needs the heat when it drys. Maybe it's time for an experiment.

I give it a short cycle in the washer and dryer and hope to get it out of the dryer before too many wrinkles set. I DO like to iron but I am not nuts. And WHY do I believe in preshrinking. It's simple, I don't like surprises. It probably goes back to my youth when I made a beautiful red crepe blouse. Mom washed it and it shrunk. Not happy with mom. Maybe if I hung it on the hangar long enough, it would stretch out and relax like the bridesmaid dress of my daughters. It shrunk, but the lining didn't. Shrunk by at least 5". Months later the dress and the lining were the same length again.  I wouldn't expect that to happen with cotton fabric, but still, I just prewashed the back for the raffle quilt. Starting with a big 108" square hunk of fabric it shrunk only 1" in width AND 7" in length! making it a mite too small. I've also seen 44" cotton fabric shrink 4" in width. So today I shrink the cheddar.

Crumb Quilt done

Yes! I survived the heat wave of 2012 while hubby was home on vacation. Must be cause I was able to sew. And yes, I was able to sew cause of the heat wave. He was bored. It was toooo hot even to go to the lake.  Sew, I was able to get the crumb quilt together. Too much fun.

It's rare that I put a sashed quilt together without cornerstones. Getting the blocks lined up isn't easy, but I succeeded here.

I discovered a trick I will have to try again. I was working at a sunny window and could easily see through the fabric to see that the seams were lined up. Great tool, the sun.

The crumb quilt is now in the stack to be quilted. The stack is only 6 quilts high, not counting my personal tops.The raffle quilt should be done today, too. I intend to make a bigger effort to quilt a little every day. That's opposed to piecing. I tend to do that while I talk on the phone.


I hope you were able to quilt through the heat. Check out the links on Judy's page to see what everyone else has posted on Design Wall Monday.

I must be quilting

I must quilt more than I think I do. Here is another comfort quilt that I quilted. I left it in the studio and found it when I loaded the raffle quilt.

I must not quilt enough though. I forgot to change threads on this and quilted with white where I wanted to use blue. Good thing it wasn't important.  Also on the raffle quilt, I forgot to line up the first row of the panto correctly, so that goofed me up a bit. At least I didn't have to do any ripping. That is what I get for not using pantos very often.

With Mark off of work this week and temps hovering around 100 degrees I am pleased to be getting some sewing done even though he has me helping him with a project outside! With him retiring soon, I have been practicing for his retirement. "I still have work to do." Paperwork is next. Let's see if he understands why my  office door is closed. I suppose he will have to practice that too.

2012 Raffle Quilt

I guess my wall needs to be a bit bigger! I put this quilt top on the frame today. It's the raffle quilt for St.Peter's Fall Festival. I need to get it quilted in the next week so Rita can get the binding on and we can get it on display.  I'm afraid I'll run out of thread before I'm done with it so I better go order some more.

If you recall, this is the same block I used for my block exchange, shown here. It sure was a good choice for a group project. Floating the star allowed all the blocks to be trimmed to the same size so adding the sashing was a breeze.

My crumb blocks are done. I made them 12" instead of 10", so I ended up with only 20. I hope to sash those next.

Welcome to everyone that's stopped by through Judy's blog. She has a great thing going with her Design Wall Mondays  where you share  a link with her.  But I guess you already knew that. Check it out if you haven't.

Cooking up a Crumb Quilt

Things were kind of hectic with my people last week and it put me  in the mood for some mindless sewing. The bag of crumbs was getting full, so I thought I'd play with those to relax me. This is just a few of the 30 or so crumb blocks that are almost done. For this quilt I chose not to use any pieces with angles other than a square corner.

Normally I wouldn't keep individual pieces as small as those shown below.  I've asked the girls to keep the extra pieces left over from their comfort quilts or the ends of the strip sets that are too narrow for the pattern  as long as they are over 1 1/2" wide. Sometimes I can make an entirely different block with the leftover pieces and it goes in the orphan block pile. Otherwise, I save them for Crumb Quilts. They sure are fun and fast to make. I started the 30 blocks yesterday morning.

Other quilters call these Mile a Minute Quilts. A true Crazy Quilt would be similar, except they would have fancy embroidery. That is so NOT me. 

The ladies surprised me at church last week. We got the raffle quilt top together but not without a few glitches. I brought it home to put on the border and quilt. I will get a picture of it before it goes on the frame. I still have to prep the backing.

Cheddar in my quilt

I made two more blocks and had to spread it out to see how many more blocks I need in what colors.  There are one or two that I don't like and might remake. Otherwise I am loving it. I think it's the cheddar color that I like. Or maybe that there aren't any stars. I was planning to put the blocks on point, but changed my mind. It is always so much easier to set them straight and I don't think these blocks would benefit from being turned diagonally. 

I finally found the muslin I used in the border.Glad for that because I need to make two sides longer. It was hiding in the living room! It was in a basket  holding my grandmothers flower garden. I'm using the same muslin in that quilt.  I have been looking for it all year. Tells you how much I have been working on the GFG. But now I think I know how I want to finish that, so  maybe I will get back to that soon.

 I promised a picture of my birthday gift from my sister. Here he is. Ain't he a beaut? He looks so proud.  His body is covered with dried peppers. I guess if I don't want the real thing, he'll have to do.


Occasionally when I finally get a chance to do a little sewing,  I can feel the tension leaving.  Life has been a bit hectic for the Bongs lately cause the people we take care of haven't been well. I am so glad that they waited till I would be here to help Mark. I just might have to start worrying silly about him handling things alone when I am gone. This morning Lucrecia came over and I offered her a brandy. Get the picture???  Making those two blocks helped and now I will go for a walk. Who needs brandy anyway?

Seeing Star Points Again

I'm back from a great trip to Indianapolis. I drove it -  SW to Beloit first, then east past Bloomington, IL. The route had very little traffic, especially compared to around Chicago (the alternate route). The guild meets at a beautiful old church on the North side of the city. Shoulda taken a picture. As it was I had only my cell phone to take pictures with and they weren't very good. See?
 

These are the only photos from the Thirtysomething workshop that were worth showing. The gals in class were lots of fun and I was so glad that they were all willing to play with their Thirtysomething pieces to see what designs they could come up with. It will be interesting if they finish their assignments and send me a picture someday of their finished top. Some say the class should be advertised as a mystery class cause they don't even know what they will end up making. However, I do give them one detailed pattern they could follow. I am sure some have a hard time deciding in the end. I did need to remind them they could always make another one.

 
 This trip was a bit unusual because not only was I there for a guild lecture and workshop, but also a visit with my sister. She joined me from Pennsylvania. She attended the guild program Thursday and the next day while I was in class she went to the Indy Speedway track and museum. Sat. morning we went to the Garfield park conservatory. Now I know what kind of vegetation Lucrecia gets to enjoy in Panama. Very unusual flowers.
I also brought her a few of mom's things and she brought me a few things, too. You'll see.

Tomorrow is church quilting. We are planning to work till the next raffle quilt top is done. HA. If I quilt at all this week, I will be surprised. Lots of catching up to do.

Smoky Mountain Getaway

My trip to the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina for the Quilt Symposium was uneventful. Thank goodness the grief began on the way home with a storm in Atlanta that delayed my trip 6 hours. Good thing I really like Airports. I think I get it from having grown up near one. We would often walk up to the park to watch the planes land.

  The symposium itself was wonderful. Over 300 beautiful quilts, 20 vendors and a few hundred quilters.  I was lucky to get these three pictures from my Thirtysomething class.  My camera has been acting up for a few weeks, so I will be getting a new camera in the near future.  I hope I have these projects identified correctly. The one above was by Kathi Culler.

The next one is by Judy  Slater. And the bottom one by Diane Berdis. I really liked that the gals chose some of the options I presented. I like to think of my designs as suggestions. There was alot of talk in both classes about "the next one I make like this" So with any luck they'll send me jpegs.
Students promised to send me pictures from the Infinite Stars workshop, too. Some of the gals stayed up till midnight finishing their stars.
After 5 days, it was good to get home. I have been watering the gardens all day today, it's been so dry. Otherwise things are the same as always. Love it.
 

Smoky Mountain inspiration

Going through my contracts for lectures and workshops, I was suddenly struck by the logo for the 2012 North Carolina Quilt Symposium. It was designed like one of my Infinite Stars and it was in orange and yellow. Imagine that. Better yet, check it out here. So I couldn't think of a better way to use SOME of my yellows and oranges. This is the start. I plan to add a Thirtysomething border. And to think I will be there teaching both my Infinite Stars class and a Thirtysomething class. Wish you could be there. And if you are, be sure to say "hi".

Perfect spring days

Little time at home leaves little time to quilt. But I did get these blocks made for Sue H.

I'm not complaining because it was a glorious weekend in west-central Wisconsin. We attended a beautiful outdoor wedding in Tomah on Saturday and spent Sunday in the middle of the woods. I don't have time to post now, but watch for a new page added to the blog telling or showing what we notice in the great out of doors. I live in a rural area somewhat like a nature preserve and we also own a chunk of land in the forest up North. I love it as much as some probably love their fancy cars. I call it my Mercedes.

I'll be back. Till then, happy quilting or whatever.

What can the future be?

My Rolling Stone quilt is progressing slowly. I made 3 more blocks. I am pretty sure I know what setting I'll use, but not sure how many more blocks I need. I'll leave that project out till the top is done. It'll be interesting to see what else gets in the way of me finishing it.

We finally got some rain, so I am pulling weeds and not up to cutting or quilting too much.  I pulled out the orange prints again. It'd be nice if they told me what to do with them.  I feel a need to work with some bright colors after the last several projects. Orange and yellow sounds yummy. My yellow flowers haven't started to open yet this year.

Blogger's Spring Quilt Festival (button at right) had over 500 entries. It was impossible for me to visit every blog, but I found a few I'd like to visit again and the links will be good for (ever?) Then Amy will start up another one next fall. I found that Blogging has replaced my  magazine subscriptions. I haven't been happy with those for years. I was surprised how many "modern" quilts there were. Equally surprised how much I liked them. Yikes! What is happening to me. Yellow and Orange??? Modern style quilts??? What could be next???

On with the Borders

It didn't take long to get the borders on this thing. Now it is officially done. It will officially become an active PHD again when I have pieced the backing. And I think I have just the fabric. I could almost quilt this next. Sounds like fun, I have been wanting to quilt a sampler.

I have a 4-patch with sashing going in the studio now. I think I will play with some techniques that don't require marking. Cause really, if there is something about quilting I don't like to do, it is marking for quilting. This 4-patch is perfect for some freehand quilting. You'll see. Nothing elaborate mind you. It is a comfort quilt.