I'm ba-ack!

The thing about blogging is, if you let yourself get out of the habit, you let yourself get out of the habit. Truth of the matter is, I haven't been sewing. Jewels in the Castle Wall took it all out of me. But, I'm back in the saddle again!

Let me catch up, in reverse chronological order...starting with last night. My next door neighbor invited me to join a group called The Girlfriends. It's a local group of about 14 women, and every month they get together and do a new activity. Each member takes turns hosting the activity, and last night Tomicka and I chose a beading class at Beads by Design in Marietta. Everyone had a great time and walked away with a completed project...except me! While I was walking around the store, I remembered a glass pendant that I bought in Houston 2 years ago that I really wanted to use. So I learned the process and strung the beads when I got home...and take my word for it, it was very pretty. Was, because I hung it up to take a picture, but my phone was upstairs. When I came back, it had fallen and there were beads all over the floor. Drat!  I'll restring it later...(we all know what happens when I come back to something...later...)

And Quilting on the Square has a free Block of the Month Mariner's Compass  - and they also had a contest to get the first block completed. I stayed up until 1 to get it finished and sent in. And I won! Here is the February Block - Which Way is North? 

In December, my colleague Connie retired from Towers Watson. I had shown her a picture of the shoe quilt in progress, and she said she coveted the red and black shoe. So I made her a wall hanging as her retirement gift. I added a lot more buttons after I took this picture...that one little button looked lonely! It's called "Louboutins for Connie's Retirement."

In November I went to the Houston Quilt Show. The Houston Quilt show is indescribable...here is a view of the floor from the second floor:

This is the quilt that won Best of Show...It's called Harmony Within, by Sue McCarty. I wish you could see it in person. Talk about the picture not doing it justice... 

Every where you see the gold and red...that's not patchwork...that's quilting! The border...quilting.  The gold is quilted on a black background. See those meticulously placed pearls?



And finally - here are abbreviated pictures from Ghana! Only 108 photos....it wasn't easy getting that down from over a thousand, but it had to be done. OK - I'm back to blogging! Instead of a quote, here's a picture to close:



Georgia Quilt Show - Honorable Mention!

Spent all day yesterday at the Georgia Quilt Show! "Jewels in the Castle Wall" received an Honorable Mention. Again, the competition in this category was fierce, so it is wonderful just to be recognized! Isn't the Internet machine amazing? I "met" Leona on Facebook and sent her the quilt to be quilted. I finally got to meet her in person yesterday. This is the two of us at the show in front of the quilt.

This was the first place quilt in the Bed Quilt category - "Splendeferous" - it is an amazing quilt, lots of complexity and detail. The quilting is amazing!

Second place: - "My Sand Devils"

"Logs and Stars in Scraps" - Third.   This is an incredibly complex, non-strip pieced, beautiful quilt.

All the quilts in the show were gorgeous! So much hard work and creativity! For more pictures, if you're on Facebook, you can see them on the Original Sewing Expo's page.

As for me, I'm about to enter three weeks of epic back to back travel for work. I leave this afternoon for New York, then to Dallas on Tuesday. Don't come back from Dallas until Thursday.

The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it's difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine. -- Abraham Lincoln

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

I'm ba-ack! We had an amazing trip to Ghana! I have over 1000 photos, and will post a link as soon as I get them down to something manageable.

But first - "Not Fast Food" won first place in the East Cobb Quilt Show in the 2-person bed quilt category! I've seen photos of some of the quilts in the category, and am so humbled by the honor. This was a very competitive category. I'm posting a photo from Melinda's website because it has the ribbons attached. I couldn't attend the show because we left for Ghana the day the winners were announced. We had internet access in Ghana, so I received several congratulatory emails and texts while away! I'm still basking in the glow! Wow!

And more good news! "Jewels in the Castle Wall" was juried into the Georgia Quilt Show.  After Leona finished quilting it with metallic threads, it looked kind of like a brick wall, so I changed the name.  It is really a beautiful quilt!

More photos to come of the trip to Ghana later! So happy to be home!

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. -- Lin Yutang.

Reflect and Remember

I know it has been so long since I've posted...I've been in California a lot with my stepfather (crisis seems to have passed), and the only quilting I have done has been putting binding on. 

"Survivor Tree" salvaged from the ruins of  the WTC in 2001

Today is the  tenth anniversary of September 11th.  We were living in California at the time, so it was just 6AM on the West Coast. I was up, getting ready for work - my morning habit was to listen to KCBS, All News, All The Time, Traffic on the 8's while I got ready. I still stream KCBS sometimes here, when I can't take any more of the hatred spewed out by the local right wing stations. But I digress... The newscaster broke in to say that a plane had hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center...I envisioned a small plane hitting the tower, tried to think of which one was the North Tower, and continued getting ready. Then they broke in to say that a second plane had hit the other tower. I woke Al up and asked him to turn on the television. He asked what channel? I said, if what they're saying on the radio is true, it doesn't matter, any channel. And indeed, all the stations had feed of the two towers on fire as we tried to figure out what this meant. Terrorist attack was not even on my mind. Later, one tower pancaked down in a tremendous crash, then the other.  My sister lives in New York, but I wasn't even remotely concerned that she would be at the WTC...she stays away from tall buildings if she can help it.  I lived in NYC in the 80's, and I still have friends there. Later I found out that everyone I knew and loved was OK. When I worked in Capital Markets for Bank of America, we used to stay at The Millenium Hotel (another blog/another time about wonderful memories of me, Susan and Joann in the Big Apple), and in the days that followed, we learned that the front of The Millenium was completely blown out when the towers crashed, but the hotel was still standing. Susan has been back,and said it is now a Hilton. I was supposed to be in Seattle that day, and I can't remember why I came back early, but I was thankful to not be someplace where I needed to rely on a plane to get back home.

I went in to the office, and I remember some out of town people who were there for a meeting having the presence of mind to get a rental car and get on the road right away to go home. I don't know if I would have thought of that...and then, folks couldn't get rental cars since they were all taken. Because one of the planes was headed for SF, we closed the office, not knowing if the terrorists might target skyscrapers in SF.

It's sad to think of the loss of life and treasure since then. I watched the coverage this morning of 9/11 and the opening of the National 9/11 Memorial.  I think the architects got it exactly right...the memorial is beautiful. It was great to see the progress they have made. 

Scient People Team Reunion - 8/11

From September, 1999 to May, 2001, I worked at a dot-com called Scient as part of the People Team (HR). We had such a great group of people - it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and we all came together so well, as evidenced by the willingness of so many of the group to get together 10 years later.  Even though we worked our butts off, many, many 12-15 hour days, it was the best job I ever had. I used to joke about being the Adult Supervision. It was a unique culture and great work environment. To this day, you could wake me up at 2:00 AM and I could still tell you the Scient Values (Spirit, Community, Growth, Innovation, Urgency, Excellence). We definitely drank the Scient Kool-aid. Even knowing that the whole dot-com thing would implode, I would still do it again. Look at the great friends we all made!

Then it was off to the annual retreat out in Danville...what a talented group!  I worked on the binding for the red and white quilt and on a couple of the mystery projects. It's always great seeing everyone, and then on Sunday I came back home. This is the mystery project and I just love Benita's choice of fabrics. The picture does not do it justice!

And once again, I came back from the retreat to find that all three of my quilts had been accepted into the East Cobb Show! 

So I've been putting on bindings and sleeves and today I dropped off all three quilts!  And "Not Fast Food", which is now renamed to "Jewels in the Castle Wall," has also been accepted into the Georgia Quilt Show!

OK, so I haven't blogged in ages, and I am headed off to Ghana on Thursday, so it will be another couple of weeks before you hear from me again. Until then, happy stitching!

I dream of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.

Who WAS the President before George H.W. Bush????*

I haven't posted in a month of Sundays...literally! It has been a month since the last Sunday I posted. I've been to California twice since then, headed out there again on Wednesday, instead of going to Montana to the Quiltworx Retreat where I belong. I've been trying to help my 81-year old Stepfather, who has decided to give away the little bit of money he has to a bunch of scammers from Jamaica. I'm not sure if it is Alzheimer's or if he truly does believe he has won $2 Million and all he has to do is send in his life savings to get it. The few moments of quilting have been spent putting the binding on the red and white quilt.


















We took him to the Dr. to have him declared incompetent to handle his financial affairs. Like when you call someone to work on your computer and it works perfectly, the day we took him to the Dr., he was 110% focused.  The title of this post comes from some of the questions asked to determine his cognitive ability.
"Who's the President of the United States?"
"Obama!"
"Who was the president before that?"
"Bush"
"Who was the president before that?"
"Clinton"
At this point, I was starting to think myself, who was the president before that? After thinking long and hard - Oh yeah, George H. W. Bush.  And glad I didn't have to answer the question... who was the president before Bush 41? 

* Ronald Reagan

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get
old, people won't think you're going gaga. - David Ogilvy

Leona is Amazing!

Check out Leona's step-by-step of how she is quilting Not Fast Food.  I'm really excited about the potential use of metallic threads:

TURBO QUILTER: Great CLIENT Quilts Inspire Me to Draw Original Quilt Motifs = A Lot of FUN#comment-form

--Americans will not be happy until we can fry oxygen.  Andy Borowitz

Not Fast Food

It was pointed out to me that I had not posted a completed picture of Not Fast Food...so here it is!  Non-quilters always ask, "How long did that take?"  There is no easy answer to that question - I know they mean, "how long did it take to sew the dang thing," but how long did it take has to include agonizing over fabric choices, cutting fabric, arranging the layout, etc.  I went into KiwiQuilts last week, and I was telling one of the customers that each of the blocks took between 10 and 15 hours (most took 15) to sew, and that I named it Not Fast Food because I was a White Glove at the East Cobb Show in 2009, and a gentleman said to me that he was glad that quilting had not gone the way of fast food. I thought of him when I was working on this piece and the first block took about 10 hours to piece. Tracy thought that was really the name of the pattern, and had not been able to find it.  Hmmmmm.....wonder why?  It's a Block of the Month from Starr Fabrics. You can buy the whole kit at once and save on postage, but I would recommend joining their mailing list, and when they have their 12 days of Christmas sale or another sale, they'll send you a note and you can get it then, or buy it at one of the quilt shows. I bought it at the Chicago show a couple of years ago, and it was 50% off.

I am sooooo glad to be finished with this. I learned a lot, and my piecing got so much better by the end. It is off to Leona Harden to be quilted.

I spent the day Saturday down at Quilts and Fixins in Jonesboro to sell Raffle Tickets for the East Cobb Raffle Quilt.  This picture does not do it justice. I met lots of quilters and we sold lots of tickets, so it was a good day!

I owe, I owe, so off to work I go! Have a great day!

I have not lost my mind - it's backed up on disk somewhere.

Freakin' Rock Star From Mars

I made it under the wire with my entries to the East Cobb Quilt Show. I did not finish the shoe quilt, wasn't even able to get it to a point where I could pretend it was a quilt. So I have two entries this year: The Amazon Star on the left and Not Fast Food. The Amazon Star needs some work, as it is not quilt show worthy. It has the World's Biggest Feathers (tm), and I have to try to figure out how to fill them in.

And I finished piecing Not Fast Food...

I took them to the Post Office at 4:45 and told the attendant that I needed them postmarked today!  to which he obliged. Having sewn for hours every single day for the last couple of months, I am now going to work on the Brown Sugar Stitchers Treasurer's Report, and then, bed.
"Forty percent of Americans would not vote for Obama if he personally saved them from drowning." Bill Maher

Paper Piecing

100% of the quilters surveyed (me!) love the sharp points and intricate designs you can get with paper piecing, but hate taking the paper off. Not only is it a pain, but it's messy. I started taking paper off last night at 7, finished at 11:30, only took the paper off six blocks and I have a million little pieces of paper on my sewing room floor. I started out trying to put it in the trash can, but that little extra motion was taking up time, so then just started dropping it on the floor. As I was sweeping it up, I decided to share, because 85% of the people who read this blog want to see my messy sewing room floor.

Back at it this morning, but I have an appointment for a facial at 3, so I can't work on this all day today. 

79% of all statistics are made up.

Still working on it...

Sashing on all the rows, everything all lined up, pieced border pieced...I should finish it up by Friday.  I was hoping to finish it this weekend, but piecing the border took longer than I thought, and making sure that all the blocks are lined up is going to take longer than I expected.  I didn't get started on it until about noon today...our sprinkler system is out and I had to hand water all the new landscaping we put in last year. We've had mid-90's weather for the last two weeks, so no water has really started to take a toll on the plants.  I have a jillion hydrangeas.  Which just for the record, I have never liked. Don't ask me why I let the landscaper talk me into them. 

"I'm from Georgia where the tea is sweet and accents are sweeter. Peaches are the ladies. Summer starts in April. Macaroni and cheese is a vegetable. BBQ is the state food. Y'all is a proper pronoun. Chicken is fried. Biscuits come with gravy. Everyone is Honey. Someone is always getting their heart blessed. And we are all "fixin" to do something.” Jerome Cade

Happy Memorial Day!

Remembering those who have lost their lives in service to our country, as well as those who have served and are now serving in the military and the sacrificies they are making.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning up several of the blocks on Not Fast Food that were way wonky. One thing I can say is that I have definitely improved my paper piecing skills over the course of these blocks, and that's what it's all about, right? When I look at the blocks I pieced initially and the one I just finished up, seriously, they are like night and day.

So today I started putting it together.  The pattern calls for a 3 1/2 inch sashing, but when I laid it out, I didn't like such a big sashing....the blocks looked too far apart, and after all that hard work, the sashing just kind of drowned the block.  So I made the sashing 3 inches instead of 3 1/2.  And I squared the blocks off to 12 1/4."

So this will be set on point, and I was so careful when I cut the setting blocks...you can imagine my consternation when those end setting blocks didn't fit!  And then I realized...duh!  Of course they didn't fit - the top was now quite a bit smaller than the pattern. So I'm going to clean it up at the end...dividing 7/8" and 1/4" is just too hard for my pea brain.

When someone asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway. 

And Done!

Woo-hoo!  Just finished the last block!  Yippee!  It took a little bit longer because I wasn't paying attention and cut off the seam allowance (on the left)...duh!

Don't ask me what I was thinking...I have never cut off the seam allowance before. A little bit of scotch tape and it was all good. I had to resew 5, 6, 7, and 8, because I cut those off with the seam allowance, but it could have been on the other side where I would have had to resew the whole dang thing.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.  Wayne Gretzky

One! Ha, ha, ha, ha, One! One more block to go!

LOL - Now I'm The Count from Sesame Street!  It's because this block drove me in-sane! Aaaaugh! I want to be like Oprah and savor this last block..."no bitter, all sweet," reflect on the journey, the takeout meals, the unwashed clothes, the missed holiday celebrations while I was sewing.  Maybe have Chris Rock or Tom Hanks come and help me look back on how far I've come since that first block...instead, I think I'll just try to get 'er done.   Wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.  Benjamin Franklin

Two!

I really wanted to finish this block before the world came to an end today at 6, but we had a guild meeting, an applique class after that, and then I went to the sewing machine hospital to get my machines back!  Yippee!  The 200/730 is sewing beautifully!  They didn't charge me for the 830, but my back is hurting so bad, I left it in the car! 

"BREAKING NEWS*******RAPTURE HALTED: Because of discrepancies surrounding His "manger" birth, Jesus was unable to produce His original long form birth certificate, so the Rapture is temporarily on hold while Trump hires investigators to track down the 3 wise men who were "supposedly" witness to the newly born Jesus back in the day. Unfortunately, this means MONDAY will still come as originally scheduled."