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!

Neither rain nor hail, but actually snow and ice are a different story...

Last Sunday my "Maui Flower Power" was featured in O.V.s newsletter - perfect for the winter chill! 

Then Sunday night, we had about 5-6 inches of snow in the Atlanta Metro area. When I went to bed, it was starting to flurry a little, and when I woke up Monday morning, we were blanketed in snow. Al, of course, needed to go out in the snow, despite the fact that everything was closed. On the news, they were saying, "Don't go out unless you have to. Everything is closed. There is nothing to do. Take our word for it." The bank was closed, Publix was closed, restaurants were closed. I had stocked up on Saturday, so I was absolutely ready for the storm. I had chocolate, toilet paper, bread and soup...all the basic necessities!  My friend Carol was here from Seattle, expecting to go back Monday, but over 1900 flights were cancelled at the ATL.

Tuesday was a bit worse, because it warmed up a bit, then went down to the teens overnight, and the snow was now...ice.  Al went to Wal-Mart and came back to report that there were long lines, but basically, everything was closed and there wasn't much on the shelves. He said once you got off our street and onto the main road, it wasn't that bad. If we had known, we would have gotten a couple of bags of salt, because Wednesday he tried to get out and couldn't...the snow was a solid sheet of ice, several inches thick, and our driveway slopes down. 

Thursday morning I heard the newscasters talking about how they had broken up the ice in their driveways with shovels and hoes, so I passed that along to Al, who went out there with garden tools, and he was able to get enough traction to go out again...to Wal-Mart, which was still standing.  The bank opened at noon. We got mail! By Friday, everything was back to normal, although there was still a lot of snow on the ground. 
  

And Barbara asked me to make a quilt for her son Aaron's Godparents, who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in February.  I normally don't do commission requests (no time, takes the fun out of my hobby, and hello, do you know how many UFOs I have?), but for a soror, for Barbara, and for 50 years, I made an exception. Yesterday we went to KiwiQuilts to pick out the fabric...I'm just going to do a single Irish Chain, which will go fairly quickly, and let the contrast of the red and white do all the work. It was my first day out, and it was good to get a breath of fresh air!  Still a few patches of ice, but it was in the 50's and a lot of the ice melted. Barbara and I went to a great restaurant for lunch - Capers - it was absolutely delicious.  I had a steak salad that was perfectly cooked. Will definitely go back!

I always do a test block.  This didn't take much time I'm pleased with the results. 

"Would whoever is praying for snow please stop?" Church sign

Lord, Deliver me from Y seams!

This is now sewn together.  I'm like a 16th of an inch off on that inner circle, and I've resewn it 20 times, so I've just decided to put this down for today and work on the Brown Sugar Stitchers Treasurer's  Report.    

If you are going down a road and don't like what's in front of you and look behind you and don't like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path! Maya Angelou

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