I love Paducah!

Paducah, KY is maybe my favorite place to visit and I surely wouldn't mind living there. It's such a neat city and even more fun during quilt show but I love it all the time. First off -- confession time! I did buy fabric but not much and I can justify my purchases. Eleanor Burns (Quilt in a Day lady) had two huge tents (HUGE as in bigger than a circus tent I think). In one she had over 4,000 bolts of fabric for $4.00/yard. It was Hoffman, Kaufman, SSI and other name brands and that was too good to pass up. I didn't do bad though. My favorite was this USA print. I bought the whole bolt - 17 yards! But, this will make great backings for Quilts of Valor quilts for the injured soldiers so that was a good investment! I figure I can put one 45" piece the length of the quilt and put a solid on each side to make the backing wide enough for the quilt and that will allow more soldiers to get this happy backing on their quilt. I found these two, not that they go together but I liked them both so I bought 2 yards of each. I was a bit low on yellow so the one on the left is a good stash addition. The one on the right . . I just liked it a lot. This one will make a great backing. I'd love to make a quilt using these colors and use this one for the backing so I bought 7 yards of it. And last, I bought 2 yards of each of these to use for charity quilts. They'll be used in a quilt for a child and . . I just liked them both so they came home with me. I bought a few other things - rulers, booklets, thread, a jacket pattern, almost bought a sewing machine but didn't. OK . . the confession is out of the way. Here's what we really did. Tuesday morning Becky and I drove over to Paducah and arrived about 10. We went first to Eleanor Burns' tent city, bought fabric, bought her new book, had her sign it and drooled over all the quilts in Eleanor Burns' area. As we were checking out, they told us they also had a building downtown so we headed there. We stopped by the Rotary Club and saw the show/checked out the booths there. We also went by the bargain basement for AQS and Becky bought a few books but I didn't get anything there. Then we headed back to the park where we were staying. Connie met us and we went to Patti's Settlement for dinner. Here's Becky (right) and Connie (left) sitting out on our porch after dinner. Connie & her DH have a place near the park so she was staying there. Wednesday morning Becky and I headed back to Paducah for the show. Talk about crowds! Last year it wasn't nearly so crowded on Wednesday but this year, it was wall to wall people. The quilts were outstanding as always! I am always amazed at the talent exhibited at these type shows. Some of those quilts I could just spend hours looking at! We left there and went back to Eleanor Burns' site. She is not at the main convention center but at one of the city parks. We were able to catch her 4:00 show. She does three shows a day (10, 1 and 4) and she is hilarious! I used to not like her but now I wouldn't miss her show for anything. She is so funny and it is amazing what she comes up with as far as innovative quilting. Left there and went to Hobby Lobby looking for fabric Becky needed. Didn't find it. Went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and back to the park. We decided not to set the clock this morning and just get up and do whatever we felt like. Vince called at 8:30 and woke us up! I don't know who was more shocked that we were still in bed . . us or Vince. We hopped up, got dressed and headed back to Paducah. We walked around downtown, hit my favorite bakery (Kirchhoff's). They have salt rising bread and I love that stuff! I got 2 loaves of salt rising bread, 2 loaves of French bread, 4 key lime tarts, 6 sugar cookies, 2 cheesecake squares. So much for the diet! From there we went to the American Quilt Museum. Oh, I could stay there for days and days. The winners from many previous shows were on exhibit and those quilts are just unbelievable! Every quilter should try to go there at least once. Then to lunch, then we rode in a horse drawn carriage. Becky and I had never done that. The weather today was just gorgeous. Yesterday it was way too cold to do anything fun outside. We left Paducah, stopped to visit my friend, Betty, who was vending at a little quilt show in Grand Rivers and finally, back on the road to come home. We had so much fun. We ate way too much, probably spent too much but I can't wait to do it all again next year. Judy

Leaving for Paducah!

YIPPEE!! The day has finally almost arrived. Tomorrow my friend, Becky, and I leave for Paducah. There's not one thing I need so I plan to spend most of my time looking at the quilts and maybe (that's a BIG maybe) looking at sewing machines. I think Becky wants a new one and maybe if we get a "2 for 1" deal, I'll get one. Wanna bet I don't get find that kind of deal? :) No internet while I'm gone. Not sure if we're coming back Thursday evening or Friday evening. Hope you all have a productive week!! Judy L.

Take a Good Look!

You can see it for the last time because I am going to use it ALL! After searching for hours last night for the perfect red and not finding exactly what I wanted, I found a piece this morning but I had already used a not so perfect piece so almost this entire afternoon was spent re-organizing and honest . . no more fabric is coming in. First picture - Fossil Ferns on the left, then yellows (I really am kinda low on yellows but NO!, I will not buy more), then patriotics with pink overflow on top. Way over on the right is black and whites with some color overflow on top of them. Second shot - pinks, purples, reds and oranges. I'm surprised at how many reds I have. Next are prints and things that I have 6 or more yards and they're hard to fold in half like I have the others so they're on the floor. Look at some of this stuff! What was I thinking??? Next are three stacks of greens and blue on the end. I'm thinking green may be my favorite color and I don't know it because I have more green than anything else. Or, maybe I never use green and that's why there's so much so it could be my least favorite color. No matter . . it is going to get used! Starting to think I might have just a tad more than I'll ever use?? This is starting to bug me! This picture shows stripes, Patrick Lose Marbles, some other tone on tones and some backgrounds. Ahh, batiks. Love to look at them, love to buy them but they're not my favorite to piece or quilt. I'm going to do it though! Three nice big stacks of them. Aren't they gorgeous? They'll look better in a quilt though, right? Last (finally) are two stacks of Moda Marbles. They used to be my favorite but I find them thinner and kinda flimsy now. I'll used them but I don't buy them like I used to. Want to guess what I will NOT be purchasing at Paducah? Judy

Tagged by Vicky

Six weird things about me. Goodness, I'd have a harder time thinking of six normal things about me! :) 1. I'm constantly whacking on my own hair. I come home from getting a hair cut and start messing with it. Hardly a day goes by that I don't whack a little off here or there. 2. I'd rather be home than anywhere else. Even when I'm excited about going somewhere, when it starts getting close to time to go, I want to cancel. I don't have any kind of phobia about leaving home, it's just that all the things and people I love best are right here. 3. Baseboards - The rest of my house can be a total disaster but my baseboards are always clean! I'm constantly wiping baseboards. Don't ask me why that matters so much. 4. This is probably pretty normal for quilters but I hate using my stash. There's more fabric here than I can possibly use in one lifetime but every time I start to use some of it, I almost panic . . what if I use it and then I need it? I'm getting better but it is so hard to use my stash. 5. When I'm cooking, I don't want anyone else in the kitchen or even talking to me. Same thing when I'm cleaning up . . just get out of the way and let me do it! 6. When I get in the bed, right before I fall asleep, I can't remember if the doors are locked and I get up to check them every single night. Most nights before I go to bed, as I'm checking the doors, I'm saying to myself "doors are locked!" and then it seems like a little alarm still goes off in my head in that last second before falling asleep and I have to get up and check them again. I hate naming names to do the meme so if you see this and you haven't done it yet, please do it. I think it's fun to learn about us all. Judy L.

The Battles We Choose & A Quilt in Progress

I'm pretty easy to get along with most of the time. Since Vince is Sicilian, I can't always say the same for him! :) So, I choose my battles very carefully. Here's one I think I may have won by subtly convincing him I am correct. I hate TV. I detest going to the movies. If someone wants to torture me, make me sit through an entire movie. I think there's something in my physical makeup that just does not allow me to sit for hours staring at a screen. On the other hand, Vince can turn the TV on when he gets up in the morning, sit in front of it til time to go to bed and then turn the TV on in the bedroom til he falls asleep. Chad can take it or leave it. He likes Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc. and he's a huge movie buff. That kid has a zillion DVD's (thus no money for a car or college!) but he has his priorities! :( I've asked for years to get rid of the TV's. My preference is to have one tv for local news/weather and now with the internet, I can get my news there. With the cell phone, the local TV station has some kind of weather alert where they call when there's a warning so I really could probably do without any TV's. That's probably not going to happen though. Anyway, yesterday we were at Sam's and Vince was commenting that it's just outrageous the price people are paying for entertainment these days. I kinda looked at him and laughed. I think we're paying about $75 for Dish. Not sure if that's right but that's the figure I used and I told him that in 10 years, we've probably paid $9,000 to Dish for what?? I just don't get it how he can be such a frugal person with the "things" we buy but then turn around and blow that much on staring at nothing and wasting valuable time. He must have thought a lot about it because he told me this morning that he's cancelling Dish. I have my vices - I love old gospel and old country music. My XM is either on Hank's Place (13) or Enlighten (34). Til last week, Enlighten was only available on XM through the internet but as of last Monday, it's a real satellite channel. Vince, of course, hates both those channels and likes the 70's music or the more current Nashville music. I can live with both of those -- just keep the TV off! I suppose there's two sides to every argument. If I were to sit in front of the TV and not sew (thus, not buy fabric), it would probably be less expensive. I'd hate to calculate what I've spent on fabric in the last 10 years! Ughhh . . let's not even think about it. Here's the top I've started with the fabric I bought last week. I'm having a bit of a dilemma about one of the borders but I'll hopefully make a decision on that today and get it done. It's about 50 x 50 now but will be 85 x 85 I think when finished. I needed to add another fabric because if I didn't, and if all the outer rounds wer that same dark red, there would have been two rows of the same fabric together and I didn't want that. Everything in the stash was too red or too orange or too pink. After making a huge mess by digging for all the reds I could find, I chose one. In the picture, it's the obviously pinky one but I don't think it looks so pink in reality. Too bad if it does . . it's in there now and it's staying. I'll use some more of it in the border and hopefully that will make it all ok. Judy

New Project & Another Older Quilt

I'm kinda getting out of order here but this is the next project I think I'll start next week. Won't be much sewing time because I leave Tuesday for Paducah. This is going to be a log cabin star quilt and it's maybe going to be entered in the Do You EQ? Contest. Here's an older quilt. This is from Eleanor Burn's Delectable Mountain book. I started this quilt one evening at home. Had to make a sample for a class I was teaching. Began pulling from the stash and the only background fabric that was big enough was a bolt of extra wide backing fabric so that's what I used for the background. It worked! Probably wouldn't have used these colors if I was buying new fabric but it's what I had so I used them. This was one of the first quilts I ever did with lots and lots of small meander and feathers and it was mostly something for practice. I put it on thinking I could do it all in a day or two (had customer quilts lined up to get done). Well, it took over a week and I was working day and night. I think the quilt was nearly 100 x 100. I was so pleased with it when I finished it that I decided to enter it in A Quilter's Gathering at Nashua, NH and it won a ribbon. It was around my dad's birthday and he mentioned that it would make a nice birthday present so that's what it ended up being - a birthday gift for my dad.

Quilting and more Quilting

I'm not going to post the entire quilt picture yet because the customer hasn't seen it but I love the way this turned out. It was a fun one to quilt. This girl does excellent work. I had planned on doing some cross-hatching in the border but when I began marking it, some of the triangles have extra pieces and that would have made the cross-hatching not line up with the nine patches so we had to come up with another plan. I think she'll be pleased. Finished this one yesterday, then had a T-shirt quilt to do that came through the quilt shop. Ugh! It was difficult. The lady had used the stretchy kind of interfacing so instead of stabilizing the quilt, it made it more stretchy. She had also used t-shirt knit for sashing and a t-shirt knit for the backing so nothing was stable. Got that done. Then I loaded a quilt for Betty (LQS owner). Not sure what the pattern is but there's some big rick-rack on it and I had fits doing a panto with that and not getting the rick-rack folded over the wrong way. Yesterday, I had planned to finish the yellow quilt, load the T-shirt quilt and then do some piecing on the snail trail quilt. Then when I realized the T-shirt quilt was going to be difficult, I decided to go ahead and quilt it and get it over with. Then I decided to load Betty's quilt and then do my piecing. When I realized it was going to be a struggle with the rick-rack, I decided to go ahead and quilt it and get that over with and just spend today piecing. Went to bed at 1 a.m. but I finished all the quilting and will deliver everything to the quilt shop tomorrow. So, I was going to spend today piecing. It's noon and I haven't touched the sewing machine. But when I finish this post, I'm heading to the sewing machine. I decided to go through some of my older quilts and share some pix. Here's one that I did several years ago. I did real cut-away trapunto in the border and used Rainbow thread in the quilt. It's all batiks and it's from Debbie Caffrey's Scraps to You, Too book. Judy L.

I like BIG

I know this doesn't qualify as miniature but it's really tiny compared to what I normally work on. These are little four patches that measure 1.5" finished! They go in the center of snail trail blocks that finish at 6". I think I could've made two whole quilts in the time it's taking me to make 48 of these blocks. I have 17 of them done and I think I'm committed to getting the remaining 31 done before I go to bed tonight. Maybe! :) Here's the snail trail block. Oh . . I forgot to post this: When I was at the quilt shop buying fabric last week, for one of the quilts, I had the background fabric as #3. I always have the background as #1 and I commented that I didn't know why I did that. I began cutting the fabric and realized I was cutting the background fabric using the cutting instructions for Fabric #1 which wasn't the background fabric so I screwed it all up. Some of it I was able to salvage and some of it I couldn't so I had to order more fabric. I'm hoping it arrives tomorrow and I can finish this top. This is the one I was thinking would give me headaches but I must have had my thinking cap on when I wrote the directions because everything was correct and it all worked out . . even with 6" finished blocks!! It's been a productive weekend here. We had a great Easter lunch -- baked ham, hash brown casserole, carrot souffle, spinach/strawberry salad and rolls. We had homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert. Lots of ham left over for the week and the best part . . a bone to make soup! Doesn't take much to make me happy, right? Judy L.

Proof!

I've said over and over that I'm a packrat but here's the proof! It was 1969 when dad bought me a Mustang and here's the business card from the guy who sold it to us. This business card is 37 years old! Shouldn't I be able to part with this thing? I no longer have the car (sure wish I did) . . haven't had the car in at least 30 years. But I figure if I've had this card this long and it makes me smile every time I see it, I might as well keep it. The card alone doesn't take up much space but it's the rest of the stuff. You can just imagine what all I've saved if I have this business card! Notice they sold Fairlanes, Falcons and Galaxies .. does Ford even make any of those things now? Hey, maybe this is a collector's item and worth something. Maybe I could trade it for fabric! :) Judy L.

Such a Mess!

My cutting area was out of control. I couldn't find anything and I couldn't stand it any longer. I hate to admit it but I've never been one to save scraps. Ends of strips, leftover squares, even sometimes leftover yardage .. in the trash. But that's all changed. I'm saving a few 1.5" squares for centers of log cabins but mostly I'm saving 2.5" squares/strips and larger. I don't have it all set up the way I want it but for here's a start. I used some plastic shoe boxes and then some little plastic boxes with flip tops. The strips are in the big plastic under the bed type boxes. Came home from the grocery store this morning and said to myself . . I can't stand this mess any longer so I got busy cleaning. It still wouldn't get me in the Good Housekeeping magazine but it's a heck of a lot better than it was. The bottom line is: I have too much stuff! I do not need more room, I need less stuff. That pile that's on there now is the current project. Think I can mess it all up again before dark? Yep, I know I can! Judy

A Little Fabric Shopping

A trip to the quilt shop and 37 yards of fabric came home with me. I hadn't planned to go but realized today was the only day I could go for at least a week so I called the shop to see if Betty was there and she was so I headed to Boonville. This is not really stash enhancing because all this fabric has a purpose and hopefully will be quilt tops in a few weeks. The first fabric is going to be used to make the quilt similar to the one I made for Vicky. The background is a tiny check. These fabrics don't look like something I'd buy but I surely do like them. The next fabrics . . they're kinda boring but I think they're great for the quilt I'll be making. The background is a tiny dot. I love dots! Hopefully the quilt will be pretty because it's one of my favorite patterns. Maybe I should make it first and then the other two that I'm more excited about the fabric . . those will be my reward for getting this one done. Why do I have to bribe myself to do what I have to do? And, last (sunglasses please!) is going to be a fun quilt. The white with black circles is the background. The black with white circles is the sashing/borders, the gold will be for stars and the brights will be around the stars. The brights are Starr hand dyed fabrics (another gift from Vicky). I had wanted to use them on something for the book but never could quite find the right place for them. I think this will be perfect!! After these three are done, there is only ONE more to piece and I am SEW happy about that! Judy L.

Dog Names

Jane asked me how we got Speck's name. Years ago we had watched some little old man on HGTV doing folk art chairs, tables and things. I can't remember if his name was Speck or if that was a nickname. Chad was probably 9 or 10 and he and Vince were always coming up with goofy names for each other. Vince started calling Chad "Speck" and he would get so mad. Then it was 3 or 4 years later when we got Speck. We were driving home from the next county over (Speck is from Ohio County, KY) and we were throwing out names. We were thinking of calling him "Buzz" (Vince is a Georgia Tech graduate), then Vince called Chad "Speck" and since the dog is kinda speckled, Chad said 'Hey, that's a good name for him!' and so it was. My first dachshund was named Soccer. Kristy, my niece who is now 31 (she'll kill me if she reads this) was 3 or 4 and she had imaginary friends, Steve & Linda. When I brought the dachshund home, she said "Oh, he looks JUST like Soccer!" We asked who was Soccer and she said he was Steve & Linda's dog so .. that's how he got his name. I think we might get another one . . Vince mentioned it today. Not quite sure I'm ready for that but puppies are so cute! Maybe a wirehaired?? Maybe after a good night's sleep, I will come to my senses and realize a second dog is NOT what I need! Judy L.

Another Stash Top

(OMG! I just looked at this on the desktop and the background looks lime green. I like it but it's really a weird shade of grayish yellow so before you think I have worse taste in color than I really do . . the colors may be showing up totally wrong! You get the idea though.) Here's another top from the stash. I pulled out a bunch of fabrics last night and cut them all. Made all the HST's this morning (thank goodness this is a small top) and when I started putting the blocks together, two of the colors blended and the pinwheel type design was lost. So much for making a test block BEFORE cutting ALL the fabric. I really wanted to get this top made today so I had to dig through the stash and found these. The green has the pink and rose in the print so it does all kinda go together. There's still a pieced border and a solid border to go on there but that will have to wait til tomorrow. I think I will have to do some longarm quilting tomorrow and put this top on the back burner for a few days. Duty calls! Customers are waiting. All this sewing is sew stressful for Speck. Doesn't he look like he's having a tough day? He sleeps on his pillow on the sofa while I'm cutting fabric (he has a better view of what I'm doing from the sofa) and then when I move to the sewing machine, he wraps up in this fabric that has been washed but not ironed. Now it will have to be washed again but I think I'll wait til I know I'm going to have time to iron it all. He's such a spoiled dog, but isn't he cute? We have a privacy fence around the back yard and Speck loves going out on sunny days. Today all the neighbors were out working in their yards and he kept barking so I'd make him come in. Then 5 minutes later, he'd be at the door wanting to go out again. The only way he will come in without me having to go out and pick him up is for me to say "TREAT" and he comes running. Since we all have postage stamp yards, the neighbors can hear me and they think it's hilarious that I have to bribe a mini-dachshund to get him to do anything. I love my dog! Judy

I'm so DUMB!

When it comes to webpages, I am so dumb! I started at 8 a.m. working on my web page because it was seriously needing updating. By noon, I was making some amount of progress. By 2 p.m., I had screwed everything up and was worse off than when I first started. Here it is 1:18 a.m. tomorrow and I might have it. Let's just say that I have as much as I'm going to have for now. It's my Judy Laquidara page so if anyone is feeling bored and wants to check it, I'd be really greatful. I know it isn't perfect yet (and may never be!) but it is a start. Thanks for all the kind comments on the pattern in the magazine. I seem to always be at the right place at the right time. Those two were the quilts that I had already shown you the back side of (ugh . . bad grammar but I'm too tired to re-arrange the sentence!). I had hoped the quilting would show up better in the magazine so I'll take come up close pix maybe tomorrow . . if I decide to get out of bed. My goodness, how many hours can one person sit at the computer? One day soon I'm going to hate quilting and hate the computer . . I feel it coming. I thought of everyone I know who quilts and can do web pages and was seriously thinking of making a phone call and offering to quilt every quilt C. J. makes for the rest of her life if she would re-do that web page for me. C.J, if you're reading this, you almost got a phone call! The quilt that I posted yesterday . . that one is for the book. I just had to share that one because I like it so much! And, even if I say so myself, I am impressed with the colors. Nothing neon and even Vince liked it. He's more boring basic when it comes to colors. He would be happy if every quilt I make from henceforth is a shade of tan! Taco Soup is made for tomorrow. I have good bread so it's Taco Soup and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches for Sunday lunch. Thank goodness it's cold again. Nite . . Judy

And Now It's Quilted!

I like this quilt a lot. Maybe I'm growing up! I like this color combination. When I look at my stash and the quilts I've made, I think green really might be my favorite color. Quilting this one wasn't on my "to do list" for this week but I didn't get to go to the quilt shop and I really wanted to see this quilt finished. For those who asked, I did get this quilt totally pieced and quilted since Monday but I spent ALL day Tuesday making copies of my patterns. The morning was spent at Staples making 1700 double sided copies. The afternoon (and late into the night) was spent folding and stuffing bags. Then Wednesday morning was spent doing the invoices, packing boxes, printing mailing labels . . the part of this business that is NOT fun for me. Before you get to thinking I have extra hours in my day, remember that my only child is 18 years old and has way too little interaction with me. Vince was out of town so I was all by myself all week except for my Monday night quilt group. Thank goodness for the 1st and 3rd Mondays when I get a chance to talk to real live humans. Hopefully this weekend I'll get one small top pieced and one small top quilted. Doubtful it will happen but it doesn't hurt to hope, right? Judy L.

She Does Quilt!

This is the top made with the fabric I showed earlier in the week. I still have to finish the border. The orange Fossil Fern was too orange so I swapped it for a Moda Marble gold which really works better but it's hard to tell in the picture. I love the way the border is turning out. Since I took this picture inside, the colors are all whacky but the border is a light green, the Moda Marble gold and then a Moda Marble olive. I'm thinking I'll do the Daisy Swirl panto on it. I was afraid no one believed I was really a quilter since it has been forever since I have had a quilty related blog entry. Judy

Back to Quilting and Goodbye Norm

Norm, Peggy's garden gnome, has been a wonderful guest! I think he enjoyed his trip to Louisiana. He's leaving here today to head to Texas to visit Peggy for a while. Here he is perched atop a roll of batting for the final goodbyes. Goodbye Norm, hope you have a wonderful trip. Thanks Peggy for allowing him to visit with us. We had quite a storm here last night. A few roofs blown off (thankfully not ours!) and some gas pumps down at the corner station were blown over. That seems kinda strange, huh? Tornado sirens never sounded so it must have been just heavy winds. Some of the worst hit parts of TN were the areas we drove through on Saturday so we're counting our blessings today that we missed all that and the worst of the storms missed us. Chad is back to school, Vince is back to work and I'm back to quilting. Vince will be traveling for the better part of the next couple of weeks so I am hoping to get LOTS done. This is the fabric for the quilt I started yesterday. Maybe not what I would have chosen had I been at the quilt shop but this all came out of my stash and I'm pleased with the way it's looking. I've loved the orange paisley fabric for a while and didn't have a whole lot of it but there was plenty for this project. Feels great to use 9 yards out of the stash. Judy L.