Happy New Year!

In a little less than 5 hours, 2010 will be in the history books!  From a quilting perspective, I didn't accomplish much.  So my word for 2011 will be "complete"...I will finish the Amazon Star, If the Shoe Fits, Bali Wedding Star, Celtic Wave and Dragon Star quilts in 2010.  And do the Fabric is Better Than Food challenge for O.V.s Christmas party, which involves a piece of green fabric that looks like Fairy Frost. Oh - and the TNT quilt from Hoopsisters, which I am starting to hate.  Looking at this thing, I could have pieced, quilted and embroidered it in the amount of time months 1-6 have taken. Months 7-8 are not yet completed because the 830 is not loving the water soluble thread required.  I'll finish it because I'm so far into it, and it's name will be, "Most Expensive Wall Hanging Ever!"  At $30 a lesson, we're $240 in to it just for the monthly designs/classes. 

"Most Expensive Wall Hanging Ever!"

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better person. ~Benjamin Franklin

Playing Catch Up

It seems like such a short time ago I was bragging about being on time with the TNT block of the month ...now I am desperately behind.  We are on month eight...I finished month four tonight...I was going to try to tackle month five before I go to bed, but sleep is calling my name.

I have to tell you, I don't love this quilt.  I'm not feeling it.  Each block takes about an hour to complete, so you are looking at 16 hours out of my life, which I guess isn't bad.  18 more to go, plus putting it together time.   

And I did get Al to drive me to Intown yesterday. And they did not have ANY of the fabrics for the Amazon Star. But they did have a 40% off everything in the store sale!  Called out to Tiny Stitches and they don't have the pattern either.  So I ordered the pattern online today, and I'll just keep working on this one this week.  I am committed to catching up on this and the Ribbon Bargello while I'm off this week.  Given that the temp will be in the teens tomorrow, it won't be hard to stay home and sew! 

Art ISN'T Easy...White Christmas!

All the joys of the holiday season to you and yours!  We had a white Christmas yesterday!

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...just like the ones I used to know..."

Irving Berlin

LOL - I have never known a white Christmas in all my years.  It snowed all day yesterday, and some of it stuck. We stayed in all day...I worked on putting the Amazon Star together, and I messed up...big time.  I did a terrible job on the the center Mariner's Compass...it's so pretty, but I didn't press it correctly, and it doesn't fit.  Don't ask me why I didn't notice until I started putting it together.  Worse - I don't have enough fabric. I am going to try to talk Al into taking me to Intown Quilters to see if they still have any of this.  I don't want to drive, although I've heard that the roads are in good shape and aren't icy at all.  I've already looked online to no avail. Intown has the best selection of batiks in Atlanta, and it's where I got most of these batiks.  But I bought them in March, and I'm not holding out a lot of hope that nine months later they might still have them.  I also need another pattern, which they probably won't have. 

Since I didn't feel like sewing after my discovery, I cleaned up my sewing room. Al came in and said he couldn't see any difference from before, then he said, "What's important is that you can see a difference."  And I can!

Piece by piece...

Art isn’t easy.
Every minor detail is a major decision,
Have to keep things in scale
Have to hold to your vision....

I started sewing at 7 AM this morning and I am just finishing now.  There's no place I can lay out 104 x 104.  Big Momma is panting hard. I've really completed two quilts...there isn't a single seam on here that I haven't had to sew twice!  All the sections are completed, now I will start "putting it together."

Every little detail plays a part...

Having just a vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution:

Putting it together...

That's what counts!  

(Still hearing Sondheim.)

 

The Art of Making Art....

...is putting it together.

What can I say?  It's Sondheim week in my sewing room.  As I sewed my final seam and started thinking about "putting it together," that song from "Into the Woods" kept playing in my mind.  The Barbara Streisand version. 

OK, so now all I have to do is put it together.
...Piece by piece...
...Bit by bit....

Getting Closer...

It's been a tough week at work...last night I was on the phone until midnight...but every other night I worked on the corner points for an hour or so.  Today I signed off at 7 and finished up the corner points to the Amazon Star.  The final part is the long spikes on the corner, which hopefully I can finish next week.  Tomorrow I head up to NYC to see Jeffrey, my youngest nephew, in a play.  Here are the corner points...I don't love the gold fabric here, but I'm hoping when it is quilted, it will tone down a bit.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation...

My Aunt Dot is visiting her daughter, Sebra, in Dacula, GA for the holiday, and yesterday Al and I drove out to visit.  As we walked up to the front door, Al said, "I don't think this is the right house."  I was thinking the same thing, because I remembered steps and this house did not have any.  I said, "Why's that?" and he pointed to the "McCain/Palin" bumper sticker on one of the cars in the driveway!  What was really funny is that he had his "Obama 08" cap on!

I've gotten a lot of quilting done over the last four days. I have pieced all but the outer ring on the Amazon Star.  I'm pretty certain I can finish piecing this over Christmas vacation, which would be a good thing to have at least one project finished this year!  Here is what one of the completed star points looks like:

Much prettier in person, and I'm getting excited about this piece!  I would love to enter it in the East Cobb show in September, but I can't remember their max size.  This might be too big.

I'm very pleased with the way the points are sharp as a tack and all line up and so far, it's lying pretty flat.  Once I start putting all those Y-seams together, it will be a different story, but so far, so good!

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often. ~Johnny Carson

Happy Thanksgiving!

Things have been a little bit crazy at work...we're in the midst of a merger, and there are so many deadlines and not enough time. One of the best things about the merger, though, is that for the first time in my professional career, I have the day after Thanksgiving off without having to take a personal vacation day.  I worked at Bank of America for 28 years, and banks are not allowed to be closed four days in a row (rule instituted after The Depression to prevent runs on banks.  The idea was to give people access to their money), we barely had Thanksgiving Day off at Scient, and it wasn't a holiday at Watson Wyatt.  I will do some work, because I haven't done expenses in about four months, and my office looks like a disaster, but it will be good to get up when I feel like getting up in the morning!

So today, I did quilting in between cooking dinner.  I am not going to work on anything else until I finish this project.  This is the Amazon Star that I started at Asilomar last March in Judy Niemeyer's class...I worked on the center Mariner's Compass when I went to the retreat at Toccoa last month, and I've just finished the outer star points today.

Which one of these is not like the other one?

One of the reasons I'm so slow is that on repetitive pieces like this, I sew them one at a time.  I've found that I have a short attention span, and when I'm chain piecing, I don't focus (today I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) and I end up making mistakes and having to unsew.  Even with unsewing, I didn't do tooo badly with these star points, and only had to redo the one.




Here's what I've finished so far:

This is laid out on the floor of the pool room, since it is already too big for my design wall.  Finished size is 104 x 104, which is where the name "Amazon Star" comes from.  When I find my camera, I'll get a better picture posted.  The colors are really pretty on this, and they're not coming through on my iPhone photo.

Sorry I haven't posted in ages.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to post to my blog at least once a week. 



May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious,
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner,
Stay off your thighs!
~Author Unknown

Lots of Quilt Activity, Not Much Quilting Going On

On Saturday, September 18th, I went to the show quilt show put on by the Chattahoochee Evening Star Quilt Guild.  They put on a great show!  I was invited by Julie, who was in my Bali Wedding Star class last year.  That little stinker has finished her quilt, quilted it herself, AND won first place in the show!  That is just wrong, especially when you consider the stage mine is in.  Here's her gorgeous quilt:

Then on the 19th, Brown Sugar Stitchers did quilting demonstrations at the Atlanta History Center. We arranged the quilts from hand piecing to machine quilting, and the demonstration the same way.  I was exhausted by the time we left. 

 

Beep...

I dialed a number and got the following recording: "I am not available to come to the phone right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. Please leave a message after the beep. I am making some changes in my life.  If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."

But who's counting?

Who's keeping track of UFO's (Unfinished Objects) for me? You know, projects you've seen started on this blog, then next week, look! Another great project! Started but not finished!

And now, this week - look! Another great project started! Earlier this year I promised Tracy that I would teach a class for her - little did I know how utterly bored I would be with this quilt. So when I was in the store last week, she asked me when I could do the class, and I couldn't put it off any longer. AND she sent an email out, so I really couldn't put it off any longer. But look how much I've gotten done just this week! Halfway there!

The color is not coming through correctly, but it's red and black. Here is the one I did in like 2005:

Best. Project. EVER!

Ann always does such a great job with the retreat...she does her best to make it special and fun -
she always makes a gift for each participant, plans at least one mystery quilt, gives us each a pattern, and let's not forget the games! So our gift exchange is that you are given a number and you choose your gift based on your number...then the fun begins! We have done the gift exchange where you can keep your gift or choose one of someone else's, but we have a variation on that theme. Ann has made up Quilter's Dice, and if you roll a double you get to choose a gift, and if you roll the guild's symbol, the gift is yours and no one can take it. Sally chose my gift, and the oohs and aahs when she opened it were very rewarding! Well worth the time and effort. But it kept getting taken away from her! And she kept winning it back by rolling doubles! In the end she lost it on a double that was rolled by Teri, so I am going to surprise Sally with a wallhanging. She worked hard for it and we all had lots of fun!

But the best project? This key hanger thing!

My keys can't get lost! Well, they can, but not as

easily. My mother used to say I would lose my head if it wasn't attached, and that is as true today as it was 50 years ago! Case in point...I just spent most of the weekend looking for my iPhone. I knew it was here, because I had it on Friday. And I knew it was here because Mobile Me (the Best App ever! Well worth the $100 a year) said it was. But where? Not in my office where I had it last, not in my sewing room, not in my closet, not in the laundry room under a stack of clothes. Mobile Me has perfected the science of finding lost things...now that you know it's in the house, but where, you can send out a little signal! But I still couldn't find the dang thing! Finally this afternoon after eliminating all the places I thought it was, I gave the beeping signal one last try and looked in the garage. Voila! A very faint signal! From my car? Move the car outside...nope...from the garbage can! Either I scooped my iPhone up with some stuff I threw away on my desk, or I had it in my hand when I was throwing something else away. Anyway...I'm a happy camper. Until they make a little GPS signal with beeper for keys and glasses, which will make someone very, very rich, this key chain thingie is fabulous! And it only took about half an hour to make!

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'll bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!

For the Retreat

I've mentioned in the past the retreat that I go to in the Bay Area - at San Damiano in Danville. I don't think I've mentioned that we do a gift exchange...Friday night, after dinner, Saturday night after dinner, and then on Sunday, but I'm never around for that one. So, I've got one gift done.

It's a panel that I've quilted and added borders to. It took all day, much longer than I had planned, but there it is on the left. I see that my quilting needs to be redone. It looks kinda bad, huh? My straight lines aren't. I think I'll redo it with a filler that doesn't require a lot of accuracy. Why is there never enough time to do something right the first time, but always time to do it over?

Life may not be the party we hoped for... but while we are here we might as well dance!