Eight!

Do you remember a song from the 60's by Edwin Starr "Twenty-Five Miles" where he counts down the miles to go to get to his girlfriend's house?  THAT song has been playing in my mind...I actually do have it on iTunes, so I should play it today.

This is my least favorite of all the blocks...not because there are sooooooo many hard places to match up, but I think there is too much negative space (the light background). Maybe it will look better when it is quilted.

It was really hard...I spent all day yesterday working on it...This is another 112 piece block. The next one is a 104 piece block.

Y'all are gonna spoil me...and I'm already past my sell-by date.

Stephen Colbert

Ten, Nine...

I finished # 10 last weekend before I left for New York to see Jeffrey star in "Honk!", but I didn't have time to post before or after I got back. Then I left for Dallas (95 degrees!) and Chicago (45 degrees!)  There are 112 pieces in this block!

And now today I have finished # 9! Can I tell you how good it feels to be in the SINGLE digits? There are only 104 pieces in this block.

A bed without quilts is like a sky without stars

Sankofa -

The African American Quilt Guild of Oakland held their first ever quilt show on Saturday! It was sooooo good! You know that fear of throwing party and nobody comes?  Imagine if you throw a quilt show and nobody comes? Of course, you know your family and friends will come, but aside from that...Well - we need not have worried. There were HUNDREDS of people there! Family and friends, of course, but it was great to see all my friends from EBHQ...and members of my mini-group - Susan and Anne were there - oh, it made me miss California so much! Saturday morning, Doris, Regina and I walked Lake Merritt in the morning...

..., then I went to the show. This is my favorite quilt from the show...it is Swirling Batiks by Benita Jones...all those curves!

Sunday morning I went for a walk at Redwood before I headed back home. I am so out of shape...

This hill near 'bout kilt me. And this was the easy way! Redwood Park was about 15 minutes from our house...it was a lot easier to walk with such a beautiful place to hike so close to home. Farther down in the valley, there are waterfalls and more beautiful Redwoods.

No atoms casually together hurl'd

Could e'er produce so beautiful a world.

John Dryden

11 More to Go!

I am sooooo happy to have more finished than I have left to go. I'm happy to have finished this block, because I will not have time this week to do any more.  Tomorrow I'm going to dinner with Leslie, who is here from Washington, D.C., for a diversity conference, and Wednesday night I'm going to dinner with Anne and Jennifer. Thursday night I will be packing (oh, who am I kidding? I won't start packing until Friday morning when I leave!) for California. I might maybe wash Thursday night. The weekend after that I have to go to NYC to see my nephew Jeffrey starring in The Ugly Duckling. I have managed to be home for a bit, but then I have to go to Dallas and Chicago back to back. So if I manage to finish three more blocks this month, it will be a miracle.

I'm going to California because The African American Quilt Guild of Oakland is having their first quilt show. I will be showing the Liberated Shaded Nine-Patch, because I didn't finish the shoe quilt.

If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me. ~Song title by Jimmy Buffet

Halfway there!

12 down, 12 to go!  The blocks are definitely getting harder...way too many places to match up. After ripping these seams out about 3 times, I finally came up with the idea of using my walking foot. Duh!  So the problem is that even though my piecing is accurate, fabric shifts and stretches and pulls...and in some of the places where there are 12 pieces of fabric intersecting, the feed dog pulls the bottom fabric away from the top at an uneven rate.  Using the walking foot moves the top and bottom layers along at an even rate.  I mostly use my walking foot for putting on binding; never thought about it for piecing.

Never do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics.

10 down, 14 to go!

Ooh wee, this block was hard. I started it Monday night, just finished it tonight. Sooooo many places that had to match up. I just want to go out and buy a big old batch of Roxanne's Basting Glue. By the time I get to the end, I'll just be sitting in a corner babbling to myself. This is my favorite block, and since I got it to behave, I'm going to put it right in the middle of the quilt.

Whew! Time to go watch Top Chef. I hope Richard Blais wins!

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.   W. C. Fields

16 and 15

I  finished block 16 after book club yesterday and just finished 15...by the way, those are blocks left to go, not blocks completed. I'm confusing myself! I was trying to post these pictures side by side, but can't get them to post next to each other.

My goal was to finish 3 blocks this weekend, but we had a little excitement last night. I was sewing a block when a huge thunderstorm started. My sewing room is in the basement, and I could hear the hail as if I were outside. It truly came down in buckets. Then there was a huge burst of thunder and lightening, a spark and a flash and the electricity went out. A couple of minutes later, the electricity came back on, but the telephone was out, the televisions were out.  This morning Al went outside and said the sprinklers ran all night because the sprinkler controller blew out. The garage door opener blew out. Oh, and the alarm system. Can you say, whole house surge protector? But thankfully, the most important thing, my sewing machine is just fine! Since I was sewing at the time, I was really surprised when it came back up with no problem. It was plugged into a surge protector, but it's a cheap one that I really thought of as more of an extension cord. 

The piecing on these blocks is pretty good. Roxanne's Basting Glue is our friend.

The Atlanta Shop Hop was this weekend, but I didn't participate. I said the only way I would hop is if they would let me sell some of the fabric I have in my Resource Center!

Procrastinate! It frees up time to quilt!

17!

Yesterday I started thinking about the East Cobb Quilt Show in September and somehow I started thinking about Not Fast Food and how I had planned to finish that in time for the show. I spent an hour looking for the pattern (when am I going to get organized?), and decided I can finish this...by June 15. Right. I don't know if I can or not...each block takes 8 hours...and I have 17 more to go, which means I need 136 more hours to finish it by June. OK, I'm going to give it a shot. Stay tuned.

Here's the block I finished tonight. Using some of the techniques I've learned from Judy Neimeyer, it came together a lot better than the previous ones. I didn't have to take it apart 90 times. Only 89 times.

Sew much fabric, sew little time!

Red and White Quilt Finished!

Check it out! Red and White Single Irish Chain...done!

I have to finish the back tomorrow, and then try to find someone who can move me to the top of the list for quilting. With the East Cobb Show coming up this year, I know everyone will be very busy.

I went by Tiny Stitches after Hoopsisters class at Atlanta Sewing Center today to ask Melinda if she had time to quilt it. As I suspected, with Shop Hop and classes and quilts already in the que AND she's going to market with her sister in May, she didn't have time. Melinda does beautiful quilting - she quilted Ra, Batik Sun Dance, and Salsa with Extra Guacamole on the Side. But, when you're that good, you're in demand. 

As I was looking around in Tiny Stitches, I saw the shoe panel that Bessie had been looking for! After she finished embellishing her cute quilt last year, she said she wanted to do another, but couldn't find the panel any more. I was surprised to see this panel, and thought maybe they had reissued it...but Melinda told me they had just found it when they were moving stuff around.

And I found these two great panels...I see them as the center medallion in a bigger quilt, but they are fantastic panels in and of themselves. I have to show these now, because who knows when I will actually do something with them?

I must get busy finishing my quilts for the East Cobb show...I want to show the Amazon Star, If The Shoe Fits, and Japanese Fans. I would LOVE to show Misty Blue Latte, but I'm not sure I can finish it. Well - I gotta get going, huh? 

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way - when you criticize them - you're a mile away and you have their shoes!

On a roll!

Finished the BQ2 quilt. All it needed was borders, but geez, piecing borders and a back took forever! I think it may have taken longer than piecing the blocks! This was just something I put together quickly.  I should finish the red and white quilt today. Back to work!

I didn't post last week because it was my birthday.  I was in New York, and celebrated my nephew Joseph's 18th birthday on Friday night at the Cheesecake Factory.  On Sunday, my birthday, we started out the day by doing yard work! The nice weather from the week before had caused stuff to start blooming, so we needed to cut the roses back and cut some of the overgrown plants in the yard. Al took me to dinner at Caper's Sunday night, and I was so exhausted when we got back, I went to bed!

Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.

Hi Sandi! Here's a closeup of a block...they're huge - 24" - which means it comes together very quickly...it's a weekend project for sure!



Rock Star from Mars

Guess what the name of the Amazon Star quilt is???  ROFLOL - 20 years from now it won't mean a thing, but for now, I think it is hilarious!

‎"I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total freakin' rock star from Mars."
Charlie Sheen

Finally Finished!

I finished the Amazon Star yesterday! Woo-hoo - something finished!  In the morning, I went to the Brown Sugar Stitchers Guild planning committee meeting for our Quilt Show, which will be in October/November. 

So now, back to the red and white quilt for Barbara!

What I Learned in Quilting School

Back from a great weekend at Quilting by the Bay in Florida! Judy Niemeyer is there all week, and I needed to get help with my Amazon Star and figure out why the star points weren't lining up. I redid the Mariners Compass part and it still wasn't lining up...and we all know that I'm anal about points matching. Judy was able to diagnose the problem quickly and set me on the right track!

Why yes, that is me next to Judy, hiding behind that gorgeous quilt! Judy was packing up at the end of the second day and Sue wanted to take a picture. I quickly grabbed the quilt to hide behind!  The quilt is a new pattern that is coming soon to a quilt shop near you...Cattails in the Meadow...and it is so pretty!

Those are my flat-out GORGEOUS Japanese Fans on the table. Want to see?

I am officially a Judy Groupie!

Why I don't do swaps!

But I forget that I don't do swaps! :)  The log cabin is my favorite block...it's a beginner's block, but I just love all the things you can do with it, and I belong to a Yahoo Group where it's a round robin...one person starts the round with the center pieces, then mails it on to another person who adds three logs, they mail it on to another person who adds three logs and so on until the last person sends it back to the original person. It's fun, because others are selecting the fabrics/colors that go on your block. Some of the swaps have themes, like this one is all scrappy, and there are rules.

OK - so if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I am anal about seams lining up and being straight and matching and all that...but when you are in a swap, you have given up all control over the straight thing. The last round robin I participated in, I actually loved the fabrics, and the seams were straight enough...so when they started another round, I thought, oh, this will be a good quilt to donate to Carrie Steele Pitts.  Today I got my first round:

Seriously?  Does this person own a ruler? That is not a distortion, that is how wonky that block is...and there are 18 more just like it!  So I promptly resigned from the swap. I hate to not keep my commitment, but do I really want this person working on my block? I don't think so.  

Yes, as a matter of fact, I would like some cheese to go with my whine!