Sunshine Quilts

Visit Other Blog

2007-02-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Don't forget my more active blog is here.

Work in Progress

2006-11-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

Back during the summer when I tried to switch this blog over to the beta version, things got really messed up and I couldn't use it for weeks. I started a new blog. Over on the new blog, I have the Quilt for an Hour project and I'm going to continue doing that project over there. I'm going to start updating this one more as a personal blog. Thanks for continuing here with me. We're fixing to go on a big, exciting adventure here! :) Judy L.

Lots of Sewing on Saturday

2006-09-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

About the 36 yards of fabric that I bought yesterday, you all almost made me feel guilty but I need to explain (translate: make excuses). I normally go to the quilt shop once a month to pick up and deliver quilt. When I went last month, that was during the August Fabric Diet so I bought nothing. I may not go back in October because I'm hoping to get back to Louisiana then. And, I make 3 or 4 quilt tops each month so I really do go through a lot of fabric. Vince pretty much watched football games all day, Chad worked and other than fixing breakfast and lunch, and a couple of loads of laundry and other minor housekeeping chores, I spent the day sewing. I find that working from the stash, especially doing quilts that need variety, I make such a mess! I am pretty messy anyway but I seem to be making more of a mess than usual. Yesterday I came up with the plan for the October Quilt for an Hour project. I love it and I hope you will too. You can't see it yet -- at least not til mid-September. I'd like to have it all quilted before I show it to you. I have the quilting idea in my head. It was for this project that I was pulling fabrics this morning. These squares are used in the top - how's this for a tease? Last night I got all the backgrounds washed, dried and ironed and got the purples washed and dried but didn't get them ironed. Look who I found all wrapped up in my purples as I was trying to get them pressed. Judy L.

Successful Trip to Quilt Shop

2006-09-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

They probably look dark in the picture but here's 36 yards of purples and backgrounds. I ran out of $$ before I got to the blues and reds .. will have to save those for the next trip. Going to get them all washed and I'll be ready to start a new project! :) Judy L.

August is History!

2006-09-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

September is here and I am surely glad to flip that August calendar over and reveal a new month. The "No Fabric in August" challenge is over and guess where I'm headed today! Yes, to the quilt shop - Village Mercantile in Boonville, IN. Vince is off today and we're going over there and then to Evansville to eat a fish sandwich at Culver's. We don't have a Culver's here but we're getting one some time after the first of the year. What am I going to buy? The purpose of the trip is to deliver quilts that were quilted and pick up more to be quilted but I am going to buy some fabric. I need backgrounds! I love small prints (not calico) instead of solids for backgrounds. I might add a few reds since I used so many recently. I need purples but Betty doesn't have a great stock of purple. I'm going to have to talk to her about that! I could use a few blues too. There's no telling what I'll get. With Vince there watching and if the new Bernina foot has arrived, I may not get as much as I'd normally get but . . we'll see. Judy L.

Queen of Procrastination

2006-08-31T21:47:00.000-07:00

No doubt I'm not quite normal! I love to quilt! I love to piece, I love to quilt, I love to make feathers . . so why do I put off the things that need to be done? I had this one quilt to be quilted. It's called "Heat Wave" and it has some snail's trail blocks and space in the border for feathers. I have put off quilting that quilt and I don't know why. I needed to quilt it when I started making the quilts for my great-nieces. Did I stop after they were pieced and quilt Heat Wave? No, I went ahead and quilted the quilts for my great-nieces. I went ahead and bound them! Did I stop there and quilt Heat Wave? NO! I made the X's and O's quilt. Then I loaded Heat Wave and started quilting it. I had two tops that have to be delivered tomorrow. They were both pantos and shouldn't be a problem to quilt . . unless I put them off til the last minute . . . which I did! It took me twice as long, if not longer, to quilt Heat Wave because, even after it was loaded and I loved how it was turning out, I still procrastinated. I finished quilting it last night, loaded one of the quilts for a panto. The plan was that I would get one finished before lunch, load the second one and get it finished tonight so I could get to bed early. Started quilting the first one and got side tracked . . how badly did I not want to quilt? It was fairly cool this morning so I pulled some weeds. OK . . enough of this. I have to get this quilt done. Came in, cleaned up and quilted for a while. Then I stopped and found something else I could use as a sidetrack - I cleaned the bathrooms. Chad usually cleans his own but I had some new cleanser and I was having so much fun, I cleaned his bathroom too. OK . . stop! Get this quilt done. I finally finished it about 2:30. Then the mail lady came. And, there was my fabric for the backing for the X's and O's quilt. I decided, even though I'm not going to quilt it right away, I'd go ahead and piece the backing. Got that done. Made myself get back to the quilting that has to be delivered tomorrow! I honestly thought about loading the X's and O's and quilting it . . knowing I'd miss the due date tomorrow for the other quilts. Thankfully I didn't let that happen! Got the second one loaded. But before I started quilting, I got sidetracked again. Let's see . . the windows haven't been cleand in a while. I cleaned the inside of the windows on the back side of the house. The outside cleaning will have to wait til the weekend. Back to quilting. This quilt has to be finished tonight. Made a few more rows and oh .. wait .. I think I'll make a pie. I have pears and I love pear pie. But Chad doesn't like pears so I'll make him a buttermilk pie. That's two pies I can make when I should be quilting. So, here it is almost midnight. Both quilts are finished . . way later than they should have been. We have two yummy pies, clean windows . . well, they're half clean, and clean bathrooms. Am I proud of myself? Not really! I must learn to stay on task and get things done and stop letting myself find other things to do! Judy L.

A Little Horn Tooting

2006-08-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

According to the AQS website, the Projects, 2006 issue is out and . . you may recognize a familiar name on one of the projects! Yes, one of my projects is in there. I haven't seen the magazine yet.. I don't know if it's in the book stores or if they're starting to arrive in the mail boxes of AQS members but you should be seeing them soon. Last time I had an article in the American Quilter, they seemed to arrive at the four corners of the country before mine arrived and I'm right here 2 hours from Paducah. I'm not complaining . . I can wait patiently for my magazine to arrive. I'm thrilled to have a project in there. Judy L.

Look What's Working!

2006-08-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

In the event there is anyone here reading who didn't know what happened to me . . on August 18, I tried migrating to the beta blogger. I migrated to a dead end street in blogland I think because I could never access my blog after that day. I begged blogger, I pleaded with blogger, I even said a few bad words to blogger and I mostly got canned responses . . we know you're having problems, we're doing our best to help you. Finally, some really nice person named Alexander must have taken pity on me and I received a few e-mails from a real human. And, now it works and that's a good thing. Google owns/runs/manages Blogger and I'm not going to say anything bad about them because I'm so happy to have my old blog back but .. I will just say I'm going to keep both blogs running for now and I hope to have something totally new soon. If it's all the same with you all, will you please read the new blog. Don't forget you can set yourself up an account at Bloglines, and subscribe to my blog (as well as anyone else's blog) and then you can just go to your bloglines page and you'll know right off the bat which blogs have been updated since you last read them! Eventually, we're all going to have to switch over to the new blogger so . . it's been nice knowing you all! :) Judy L.

Hour #5

2006-08-18T06:20:00.000-07:00

Now it's time to add the squares around the block. There are several ways to get this done.

You could cut individual 2" squares. Seems like too much trouble to me!
You could sew together 5 - 2" strips for the sides, and 7 - 2" strips for the top and bottom, then cut them into 2" segments. I have a hard time keeping seams perfect straight when I've added this many strips and all your sections of squares would be the same.

Each block requires 24 - 2" squares. If you're doing 20 blocks, you'll need 480 - 2" squares. If your fabric is 40" wide, that means you need a total of 24 - 2" strips.

Here's how I did mine:

Cut 24 - 2" strips from a variety of fabric.
Cut 4 of those strips into 2" squares. You should have 80.
Cut the remaining 20 - 2" strips in half so that you have 40 strips that are approximately 2" x 20" in length.
Randomly sew these together in groups of two.

Cut these segments into 2" strips. You should get 200 of these 2" segments. Since these strips were randomly sewed together, you should have some variety.
For the sides of the block, you need 5 - 2" squares so you would pick up 2 of the 2 block segments and add a 2" square. The square could be added in front, in between, or at the end of the segments -- if you're looking for randomness.
For the top and bottom of the block, you need 7 - 2" squares so you would use 3 of the 2 block segments and add a 2" square somewhere along the way.

A whole lot of words to say something you probably don't need to know but that's how I did mine.

For Hour #5, you should be able to cut your strips, get them sewn together and pressed.

Blogger is Scaring Me

2006-08-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

What is this blog thing doing? I couldn't even sign on with Firefox so I had to switch back to IE. Today was spent quilting . . almost non-stop from 7 a.m. til a bit after 10 p.m. That's a lot of standing at the longarm. One of the quilts I did was a new to me panto from Willow Leaf called Calla Lily. It's a lot of quilting and at first, I was thinking I didn't like it but it surely quilted up pretty. Two more tops to quilt and lots of binding left to do but there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel for me. Judy

Hour #4

2006-08-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

For the Hour #4 assignment, you just need to keep making those blocks. For tomorrow, we'll begin adding the squares around the block. Those can be considered sashing but they're actually a part of the block. I have some tips for making those and I'll share them with you in the morning. Here are some blogs (with photos) to visit if you want to follow the progress of others. If I've missed anyone, let me know and I'll add you: (The ones in red are the ones I've added since this morning.) Carolyn Karen Hanne Joanne Andrea Cynthia Leah Bonnie Suze Susan Nancy Carol Thanks for sharing pictures of the project on your blogs. I'm glad to know it's helping some of you along with your piecing and using of the stash. Judy L.

Hour #3

2006-08-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who has sent me progress reports. For those of you who haven't been able to get your one hour in . . don't worry about it. This is supposed to be fun and if you have too much going on or unexpected things happen, . . well, that happens to all of us. Hour #3: Now it's time to start assembling the blocks. Don't forget to refer to the instructions if you need to know the sizes for your pieces. I was able to assemble 10 of these in one hour. That included pressing. While y'all are having fun piecing .. I'm back to adding sleeves and labels. Judy L.

Torture on Tuesday!

2006-08-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

I tend to do the things I love to do and ignore the things that are not fun. I'm not a good housekeeper . . in fact, I'm really bad at housekeeping. Even with my quilting, I do the parts I like and the things I don't like to do sit for weeks or months (or years) without getting done. So . . what do I like to do? I love designing, pulling the fabrics and deciding on the colors, piecing (I really love to piece!) and quilting. What do I not like to do? Binding, labels and sleeves. The first thing I had to do today was find a place for all the quilts for the book. I don't want to fold them and crease them. I had about 50 quilts already on the extra bed so I took some of those off, folded them and stacked them on a bookcase (the picture). Then I took the quilts for the book that are ready to go and spread them out flat on the bed, layering them on top of each other. The book has 20 quilts. Nancy from South Carolina and her friend each made one complete quilt top - labels, binding and sleeve. Vicky made two and my friend, Becky, made one but I'm quilting, binding and doing the sleeve on those three. So, that means I pieced 15 (although I pieced all of them before the others made theirs) and I have quilted or will quilt 18, along with binding, sleeves and labels. Oh, I really do hate the sleeves and the labels but they have to be done. Today was set aside to do the things I hate to do. Might as well just spend the entire day doing it. Here's what I've done today:

Washed the sheets and quilts off my bed.
Gave Speck a bath. He's not bad during a bath but I get as wet as he does.
Washed the slip cover on the sofa. I hate putting that thing back on but the dog gets on the sofa so we have to have it.
Packed a quilt to send off to my friend for her granddaughter.
Washed all Speck's sheets (from the crate) and the blanket he wraps up in on the sofa.
Did the weed eating in the back yard - it's so small and I have so much "stuff" back there, I just weed eat the whole thing and don't even use the lawn mower in the back.
Sewed the sleeve and label on 13 (that's thirteen) quilts.
Hand sewed the binding on 2 quilts.
Sewed the binding on 3 quilts.

Not a single one of the things on that list was a fun thing but something that had to be done. This picture is the quilts with the labels and sleeves done but I still have to hand stitch the binding. Oh . . and Chad still isn't driving. He has to go to the traffic school before he can get his own insurance so I played taxi driver all day too.

Take Chad to school/come home
Go get Chad at school/come home
Take Chad to work/come home
Go get Chad at work/come home

I did call the driving school people this morning and it will be at least 4 more weeks before his class is scheduled. If I can work this hard tomorrow, I'll feel real good about my deadlines. Judy L.

Hour #2

2006-08-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

How did you do with your first hour of piecing? If you sewed for one hour, good for you! If you didn't, that's not a problem. No one's taking names. Do what's comfortable for you. We have at least one over achiever in the group -- Leah! I love seeing and hearing about your progress. Thanks to those of you who wrote me or commented here. Hour #2: Finish up making your half square triangles. If you're using a 4 x 5 block setting, you need a total of 80 half square triangles. If you're doing the 4 x 6 block setting, you need a total of 96 half square triangles. Judy L.

Then & Now

2006-08-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Time flies and our babies surely do grow up too quickly! All you moms with small children at home, who are wishing for a few minutes to yourself, stop thinking that! Time passes way too quickly. Enjoy every minute you have with your kids and just when you think they're going to drive you totally nuts, think how quickly time passes and how sad you're going to be when they're adults. I'm not sad that Chad is an adult .. I'm proud of the adult he's turning into (most days I'm proud!). But I look at the picture on the left of his first day of pre-school and I miss those days of him being a little boy and wanting me to read to him, climbing up on the kitchen counter to help me cook, the night he rubbed his entire body down with Vicks Vapor Rub (there are some parts of the male body that burn terribly when covered with Vicks!) and we almost never got it all off. Chad was such a handful. When he was 2, we left Lake Charles, Louisiana and moved all the way to Jasper, Texas . . exactly 96 miles away but who was counting. Not only was I moving away from my hometown for the first time but I was moving away from my parents who lived on the same street we did, and I was leaving behind my dream home that we'd built and lived in for only two years. I was so sad about that move and to this day wish it hadn't happened. Jasper wasn't a bad place to live but it wasn't a good time in my life. OK . . enough of that. Chad went to pre-school in Jasper, then we moved back to Lake Charles where he started kindergarten, then we moved to Kentucky when he was in 4th grade and . . here we are . . still in Kentucky! But, back to the first day of school. The picture on the left is Chad ready for his first day of pre-school at Trinity Episcopal Day School in Jasper. The picture on the right is Chad this morning, heading out to his first day of college. He offered to hold a lunch box on top of his head so the pictures would match . . gotta love that kid! He's attending Owensboro Community & Technical College for this first year. When we were in Louisiana, mom offered Chad some of Daniel's shirts. I told her he wouldn't wear a knit shirt but she insisted on giving him the one he has on in the picture. He surely made a liar out of me. He wears that shirt everywhere he goes! He loves it! Saturday was "free dress day" at work (no ugly gray Kroger shirt) and he wanted to be sure I could get this shirt washed and ready by Monday morning if he wore it on Saturday! Oh well . . my baby has grown up and I could sit here and think about the last 18 years all day but .. I'm going to quilt! Judy L.

Hour #1

2006-08-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Are you ready to make a quilt, one hour at a time? Are you committed to sewing 5 hours each week? This quilt top took me 12 hours to complete. Actually, it probably took between 10 and 12 hours but I get up to put clothes in the dryer, let the dog out, check e-mail, etc. when I'm on the clock. Twelve hours doesn't sound bad for a quilt top, does it? For the Sew for an Hour project, I will try to let you know how I figure things (if I can figure out how I figure things!) so that if you're making a different size quilt, you can determine how many of each "thing" you will need. Hour #1 - The quilt shown is set with 4 blocks across and 5 blocks up and down. That means you need 20 blocks. Each block requires 4 half square triangles, so you need 80 of them. When making them, you get two per "set", so you need to start with 40 lights and 40 darks and use your preferred method just so you end up with 96 half square triangles. These need to finish at 3", so they'll be 3-1/2" unfinished. Make them any way you'd like but be sure they are the correct size. According to my calculations, I could make 50 half square triangles in one hour. So . . get busy and show us a picture of 50 half square triangles before this day is history! Judy L.

Sew for an Hour Project

2006-08-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

This quilt will be our first project. You can make it as scrappy or as planned as you like. You can reduce or enlarge the blocks/quilt to suit your needs. You can share this with anyone you wish (it's straight out of EQ/Block Base). We all have our favorite ways to do the Half Square Triangle. I did mine, and based my times, on working with one square at a time, drawing a diagonal line, sewing on both sides, cutting on the line and pressing. I did not account for the time to square the blocks because some of you do not square your blocks, depending on your method of creating the HST's. If I tell you it takes me one hour to make 10 Half Square Triangles and it takes you 2 hours or it may take you 10 minutes, we all sew at different rates so let's not get worked up about trying to get as much done in one hour as the next person. The goal here is to sew at least one hour per day! And, we need to enjoy our time sewing . . not feel like we're racing against the clock. So, please take your time and enjoy the process. I'm not giving specific instructions. Most of us are experienced piecers and these are very basic techniques. I'm also not giving yardage requirements. We're working out of the stash. I'll designate fabrics as light/medium or dark and you can go from there. How light or how dark . . that's up to you. In the quilt shown above, I used lights and darks for the churn dash type block, then mediums for the squares around the churn dash. The quilt shown is 62-1/2" x 74-1/2". When I give instructions as to how many HST's, squares, strips, etc. that you will need, it is based on this particular size. If you're making a different size block or a different size quilt, you will need to calculate how many of each item you need. Click on the picture of the quilt and I think it will allow you to download the EQ file. You will need to have EQ installed on your computer before you can open it. Here's a web page with the particulars about the block/quilt. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open it. Sound ok to everyone? Judy L.

Sneaky Sewing Machine Tricks!

2006-08-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is a Stack & Whack quilt I've shown here before. I was teaching a S&W class once and I had five or six quilts there to show. I had stressed the importance of making a perfect 1/4" seam and making sure everything lined up so all the points would meet. I noticed my dear friend, Becky, who was just a little more than an acquaintance at the time . . standing at the back of the room talking to someone else and they were looking at this quilt and whispering. So, I asked what was wrong. Becky was very quiet back then and she said nothing. I thought she had a question and didn't want to ask so I continued . . finally, she started laughing and very reluctantly said "your points don't match". Well, thanks a lot Becky! But, as with everything I do that may appear to others to be a mistake, there's a reason why those points don't meet! No, I do make mistakes and I'll usually admit to my mistakes but this one was really not my fault. In order to get a perfect 1/4" seam allowance on my trusty Bernina 1230, I use the No. 0 foot and change the needle position one step over to the right. There are probably easier, better ways to get a 1/4" seam but that's what I've used for years and I'm pretty pleased with it .. til the electricity goes off! That's what happened when I was making Vince's S&W quilt . . sewing along, half the blocks done, the electricity goes off. Shortly thereafter, the electricity comes back on. I didn't realize that when the machine came back on, everything was re-set to default which put the needle in the center position. I sewed and sewed and then when I started to put the blocks together, nothing matched. What the heck? I couldn't figure it out. There's not much difference in the width of the seam allowance with the needle in the center position or the needle one step to the right but when you have eight seams across the width of a block, multiply that little difference times 8 and you get a big difference. OK . . do I rip all this out and start over? This is a quilt to be used by my husband so I just went on and did the best I could . . which wasn't all that good. Fast forward about five years to yesterday. Do you think I remembered that when the electricity goes off, the machine re-sets itself? No! I did not remember and had to rip out a few seams. I'm going to remember that from now til my sewing days are over though! I did get all the blocks done for Katlin's quilt and I have enough of the quarter square triangles to make 20 more blocks (that's 80 QST's) with the stars spinning the opposite direction. Marcie at Patchalot More told me that there are several quilts, including one almost just like the one I'm making, in the Nickel Quilts books so I looked at those last night. I won't have any trouble coming up with ideas of what to do with the other blocks. In fact, I'm thinking I might make another quilt just like Katlin's to give to the wrecker company owner's wife (per my dad's request). Dad was supposed to be finding out her favorite color and so far, he has not. I just don't see how anyone could not love this quilt, but I'm kinda partial to these brights so maybe I'll just wait til Dad gives me her favorite color. Judy L.

Back on Track

2006-08-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

I've had an attitude adjustment and am back to smiling and quilting. Bought a fan and a dehumidifier. Good plumber fixed the leak and gave me instructions to turn the water heater back on after an hour. I left and when I got back home and went to turn the water heater on . . it's leaking! Bad plumber had removed it and put it back in so good plumber will come back tomorrow and repair that leak. But . . no tears this time. It's all part of being a home owner, right? Here's some good news: My blog, as well as nine others, including Tonya from the Mavericks Ring are featured in this Month's Quilters Home magazine. I had talked to Mark Lipinski, the editor, about it a while back but wasn't sure til I saw it in the magazine today. Of the other nine blogs mentioned, only a couple am I familiar with so I think I'll be getting acquainted with some new bloggers. I haven't had a chance to sit down and read the August issue yet but I loved the June issue. I'm going to try to save it for bed time reading tonight. Look at this weather! We've been here nine summers now and this is the hottest, longest summer I remember. I think I say that every year though! :) Going to sit under the fan and sew! Judy L.

Some Days!

2006-08-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

Before anyone thinks I'm being a wimp, I understand that in the grand scheme of things, I'm having a good day. Things could be a whole lot worse but if I can just whine for a few minutes, maybe I'll feel better. I just had a good cry and I thought that had solved my problem but maybe not. Vince is on his way home and he'll say "oh, honey, why are you crying?" and that will make it worse. I wish he would just say grow up! and I'd probably . . well, maybe I'd grow up! Vicky's brother's home burned last night and they lost everything so . . that alone is reminding me that my troubles are small. To start this long story . . I'm not a good flyer. I hate flying! I hate the feeling of being herded into an airplane and having no control over my life, my belongings or my schedule. I had not flown since 9/11. Yes, my husband flies all the time; my son flies back and forth to Louisiana and they both get so aggravated with me because I will not fly. When I had to make a choice of driving 14 hours each way to get home after Daniel's accident, it was an easy choice. I hopped right on that airplane and was very happy to do so. Maybe I'd crossed a hurdle. Maybe flying wasn't so bad. Today is Daniel's birthday. He would have been 27 today. I knew this was going to be a difficult time for my parents so I had decided maybe I would try to go home. I checked flights to leave on Monday and I was going to try to come home on Saturday. Vince is leaving Sunday and I kept thinking . . what if something happens and I can't get home on Saturday, Vince leaves on Sunday . . Chad would be home alone. I tried to get a flight for Friday and couldn't get it so I decided not to go home this week. Now . . with all this terrorist crap, if I had gone home, I probably would not have flown back. Hey . . that's an idea! Get stranded in Louisiana and have to stay there! Seriously, I'm sitting here thinking (feeling sorry for myself) that just when I thought it was safe to fly . . it isn't. Why can't people just be nice? Why do they want to hurt us? And the icing on the cake .. remember the plumber from hell that we had last week? The reason he was here was that the bathroom floor was warm . . not WET but warm so I knew we had a hot water leak. That was all . . no dripping pipes, no wet carpet. So we paid this weird guy $700 to fix the pipe. Want to know how weird he was? While Vince was sitting here paying him, trying to carry on a conversation, the guy asked us if we were swingers. Heck, I wouldn't have even known what it meant except my quilt group was talking about it a while back. NO! We are NOT! And, in the unlikely event we were, this dude would not have been invited to my party! This morning I get up. Vince is at work so I call and talk to him and he tells me about the terrorists and the airplanes and that kinda got me . . more angry than anything else. I thought about mom and dad and how bad their day is going to be. OK . . enough of that. Get a shower and get started. I walk into my dressing area (carpet) and there's water . . everywhere! This is the area where the plumber had cut the pipes and put them back together again. Well . . he almost put them back together again. What a mess! There's water everywhere in there. The carpet is wet and guess what else is wet . . fabric! Lots of fabric! I know . . my fault for having some of it stacked on the floor. Another plumber (from the same company) is here but I like this guy. He fixed my leak last year and I almost asked for him when I called about the hot water leak and I didn't. Wish I had! They just arrived with a wet/dry vac and as soon as the leak is fixed, I'll begin washing fabric. How much fun can a girl have in one day?

I Think I Can!

2006-08-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm making another stash/scrap quilt. The good news is that I pulled one of my favorite purples to use for the border and it didn't hurt nearly so badly to think about using it as it did a few days ago. Maybe I'm learning to be a stash quilter after all. This quilt will be for my niece's middle daughter and I think I like it as much (maybe better) than the quilt I made for the oldest daughter. I'm actually making blocks for two quilts at once because when I make these quarter square triangles using the squares method, I end up with half of them having the background fabric on the top half of the smaller triangle and half of them having the background fabric on the bottom half of the smaller triangle. I could cut the squares into quarters and piece them together that way but I don't like to do that and besides, I'm using more fabric and I'll get two quilts by doing it this way. Guess what I have to do tomorrow! Go to the quilt shop! I have to go pick up quilts to be quilted. Can I go and not buy any fabric? Yes, I can and I will do it! Judy L.

Email Addresses & Comments

2006-08-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Patti has a great post today about showing your e-mail address in your comments. I encourage everyone who reads the blogs, and especially those of you whose comments include questions to read her post today. I'm not sure why you aren't using your e-mail address. If it's because you don't want spam or a virus or whatever, maybe you could use a free e-mail address from yahoo or gmail. I welcome your comments. . in fact, I love your comments but . . I do not answer questions if I can't e-mail you the response. Many of you (I'm surprised how many!) comment and ask a question but I can't respond to you because it comes across as a "no reply" address. I've seen some bloggers list the questions and then respond in a separate blog entry. I'm not going to do that! So .. if you want an answer, make sure your e-mail shows up in whatever I receive. The "quilt for an hour" project will begin on Monday and I already know . . someone is going to send me a question in a comment and there's going to be no e-mail address. Therefore, you are not going to get a response and you're going to wonder why. So, keep sending those comments whether or not your e-mail address shows up but don't expect a response if there's no return address. Judy L.

A Total Stash Quilt

2006-08-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the quilt I just made totally from my stash. This is the first quilt for the "quilt for an hour" project. Anyone want to do it? One hour at a time? Making a quilt from the stash gives me a sense of satisfaction. I finished off several pieces of fabric but I also put back several pieces because I didn't want to use them because if I used them, I wouldn't have them any more. Sad? Sick? Normal? I still have a ways to go before I'm 100% comfortable using fabric from the stash but I'm off to a good start. This quilt is about 63" x 75" and it will be a gift for my niece's little girl, Taylor. I thought Taylor's favorite color was purple but that's her sister's favorite color. Taylor's is hot pink so that's why the hot pink borders are on there. Katlin's quilt will have a lot of purple in it and it's the next one I'll make. Last night as I was getting ready to quilt this top, I thought I would use muslin for the backing. Then I decided to use a print. Therein was another problem. I can't buy fabric . . it's August! :) A possible solution was to use fabric from the stash. There was nothing that was in the pink family that was large enough. Whew! I was happy. I didn't want to use that much of my stash anyway. I washed a piece of extra wide muslin and as it was in the dryer, I thought . . you're nuts! Use the stash! So I began pulling pinks. I honestly began to feel kinda sick at my tummy to think of using so much of my stash for one quilt but I talked myself into it. I did it! I used 2 yards of a pink floral and 2 yards of a pink tone on tone. There was a little left on both those fabrics so I decided to make Taylor a pillowcase to match the quilt. Now that you've all seen the quilt, I'll wait to hear if there's still interest on whether you want to proceed to with the "quilt for an hour" project. Judy L.

Half Square Triangles

2006-08-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

There are so many ways to make the various segments of a quilt. For the "sew for an hour" project coming up and for future projects we may do here, I'm not going to get real specific about how to do the basic piecing. For instance, in this first project, we will need a bunch of 3" finished half square triangles. I will just say, for example, you will need 80 half square triangles that finish at 3". How I Make Mine: I cut my squares 1" larger than the finished size of the squares. For 3" finished, I would cut my squares 4", draw a diagonal line on one square, layer it right sides together with another square, then I sew 1/4" on each side of the drawn line, cut the drawn line, press them and trim them to 3-1/2". I cut and sew mine individually, one square at a time. Many quilters use this same method but but their squares only 7/8" larger than the finished squares. Other Ways: Grid Method - http://www.nmia.com/~mgdesign/qor/technique/hst.htm Triangle Paper is available to print at Block Central. Wondercut Ruler method. There are many ways besides those I've mentioned and for the upcoming project, feel free to use any method that suits you, just so you end up with the correct size square. Judy L.

Quilters and Our Machines

2006-08-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

I'm the luckiest girl I know!! Maybe not always the smartest . . but always the luckiest! :) My Bernina 1230 has been giving me a bit of trouble. I bought it in about 1989 or 1990 and it's never been to the shop. Oh, I clean it and oil it and take real good care of it but lately it's just been kinda fading away in the middle of stitching. After Bonnie had mentioned that her foot pedal had died, I started thinking .. maybe it's the foot pedal. The local dealer is small and I knew she wouldn't have a foot pedal for the 1230 laying around and I just dreaded sending it off to be serviced. Today, the thought occurred to me to check on ebay for a foot pedal. Maybe it wouldn't be too much and I could order it and try it. Trusty old ebay! Got on there and found a foot pedal that supposedly fit the 930, 1230 and several other models. Wait a minute . . I have a 930!! Switched the foot pedal and it works perfectly! Amazing! I've been messing with this 1230 not working correctly for probably 2 years but it's getting worse. Called the Bernina lady (my friend, Betty) and she ordered me a new foot. Solved that problem pronto! If only all my problems were so easily solved! :) Judy L.

Stash Quilt vs. Scrap Quilt

2006-08-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Those of you who are scrap quilters will probably laugh at me but I'll admit this anyway. Today, for the first time, as I really began to look at my stash, I realized that there is a difference in stash quilts and scrap quilts. Almost every quilt I've ever made has been planned - 3 yards of this, 5 yards of that, 2 yards of another. I attended a guild workshop once where we were making a scrap quilt. They told us to put all the squares in 2 bags - background fabric in one bag and all the other squares in another bag. We were to pull out a square without looking and could only put it back if the square was the same as a square it would be next to. Thank goodness I had a kidney stone that day and got to work on mine at home. Not sure if you can tell from the picture but I used the same background through the whole quilt and all my other "scraps" are Moda Marbles! Everyone else's quilt was truly scrappy and even though I quilted quite a few for the guild members, I never showed them mine! This morning I awoke all anxious to get started on the scrap/stash quilt for our little "sew for an hour" project. I was using the scrap and stash words interchangeably. While it's purely a matter of semantics and it really doesn't matter to me what my quilts are called, I've decided (probably something the rest of you already know) that when I am able to pull a square out of a bag and use it regardless of whether it really "goes" there or not, that's a scrap quilt. When I piece like my grandmother pieced, using anything and everything, that's a scrap quilt. When I go to my stash and pull out the perfect pieces and fuss and obsess about color, scale of print, value, that's a stash quilt. When I go to the quilt shop and buy all new fabric, that's a .. not gonna happen quilt! At least it's not gonna happen during the month of August! So, I have that settled in my mind. I pulled fabric from my stash to begin working on the first "sew for an hour" project. My quilt is going to be a stash quilt but it will be a real easy quilt to make into a scrap quilt. Since this isn't a mystery and you'll see what the quilt looks like, you'll be able to pick the fabrics you want to use. It really is an easy quilt! I sorted my fabric into light/medium/dark stacks. My lights are real light and I kept them light because my border isn't very dark. It's all relative, right? I'm really having fun working out of the stash but I'm making a huge mess! For those on the fabric diet during August, has anyone slipped up yet and bought fabric? We're 1/10th through the month of August. Hope you're all doing great! Judy L.

The Plan!

2006-08-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

My family hates it when I come up with a plan because it's usually something I think is just wonderful and Vince and Chad think it's really stupid. I asked yesterday how much time you all have to quilt and got a good range of answers. Mostly the responses, some on blogger comments and some in e-mail, fell into three broad categories.

Mostly on weekends . . rarely during the week
30 minutes a day
1 hour a day

There were more than I expected who are in the same boat as I find myself -- I quilt almost all day every day. Part of my quilting is longarming for customers so that's really a job. Realistically, I can work on my own quilts 3 - 4 hours a day. That includes fondling fabric, designing, piecing, quilting or doing the binding. Since I need to learn to do scrap quilting, here's what I was thinking. How about I come up with some simple designs, one at a time, and do some basic instructions. There will be no yardage amounts given since we are working out of the stash. Five out of seven days . . Monday - Friday, I will post instructions that take about 1 hour to do. By posting the instructions five days and then skipping two days, it would give some time to catch up who don't have a full hour each day to sew. It won't be a mystery quilt because I'll show you the quilt in the beginning. Before you ask . . we all sew at different speeds. The one hour will be based on how long it takes me to do the sewing. Some will be quicker, some will take longer. No guarantees you can get it all done in 60 minutes each night. What do y'all think about that? I know not everyone can do it and if you can't or don't want to, that's fine. If you can't do it, you don't need to tell me you can't or won't but if you can do it, just let me know you're interested and if there's enough interest, I'll get started on a design. I have to make it first, the divide the instructions up into one hour increments so it will be probably August 14 before I can get the first one started. But . . hey, we're working out of our stashes so we don't have to buy fabric!!! Judy L.

Time Spent Quilting

2006-08-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

How much time do you think you spend on an average day piecing, quilting, fondling fabric . . something to do with quilting? If you wanted to do so, could you spend more time each day quilting or are you currently maxed out or spending more time than you should be with your quilting? Do you think if you wanted to set aside a certain amount each day . . say 30 minutes or an hour . . you could commit to do so and do it at least 5 out of 7 days each week? I have an idea is why I'm asking but I'm going to await your responses before I share my idea. This is what made me think of it. When I got my first quilting machine (I won't even exaggerate the truth and call it a longarm!), I was scared to death of the machine. This was before I knew about all the wonderful and supportive longarm groups. I found myself doing anything and everything I could to keep from going near that machine. Someone told me to decide how much time each day I could/would spend with the machine and commit to doing that. I found that once I actually got started, I didn't want to stop. Many of you are producing tons of quilts but for those of you who need a little kick in the rear end to get you going, I might have a plan! Stay tuned! :) Judy L.

August is Here

2006-08-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

For those of us who have committed to buying no fabric in August, here we go! Thanks Vicky for the challenge and thanks Peach for the logo I used over in my sidebar. Not only am I not going to buy fabric but I am going to make an extreme effort to use a lot of fabric in the stash during August. I'm not going to count down the days til September when I can buy more fabric but I am going to celebrate each morsel of fabric that I use this month and hopefully by the time September gets here, I will have learned to control the urge to buy it all! Good luck to all who are participating in this challenge. Judy L.

Happy Anniversary!

2006-07-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

August 1 is our wedding anniversary - 9 years! Vince and I are so much alike in so many ways but so different in so many ways. Together, I think we make a fine pair! No doubt, I'm a better person due to Vince being in my life. Not sure Vince can say the same thing. He's the kind of person who carefully plans out every major decision, will make lists of positives/negatives, and really ponders his decisions. A thought runs through my head and I'm off and running . . never stopping to think. If Vince were a quilter, he would know exactly how much fabric he needed before he started a quilt, he would know exactly how he was going to quilt it before he ever started piecing. I start quilts, having no idea how much fabric I'll need and then run out and have to scurry to find more. Vince is a wonderful, caring, kind husband and he would do anything (within reason) to make me happy. He's so darned honest! I don't think he would even tell a little white lie! And, that brings me to another point. Remember last week I was talking about how he drags me up and down the aisles of every store and my plan was to visit the jewelry counter in hopes that if I started costing him more $, he'd leave me at home. Saturday we decided to go out to lunch. That was fine. Then he decided we should go to the new Best Buy but first, let's go to T. J. Max! Oh, great .. they have a jewelry counter. We walked in and I said "I want to look at the jewelry". Vince said "JEWELRY? What do you need?" What I really need is to never have to enter a retail shop again. I knew if I said I wanted a diamond ring or necklace, he would think I'd lost my mind. I don't even wear my wedding ring because I never wear jewelry (and I've gained too much weight and it's too tight!) My gold hoop ear rings really are bent and I could use more so I said "I need new gold hoops!" I honestly couldn't go to the jewelry counter and keep a straight face so we wandered to the back of the store. Then we went to Best Buy and I mentioned that I need a new speaker setup for the Ipod to keep in the front of the house. Oh . . no problem! He has one at home that he's never used because he's never used the Ipod so he'll bring that to me. Later that night he sent me an e-mail with a link to . . gold ear rings! He had gone home and gone through all kinds of jewelry stores online and found good ear rings for me to look at and pick which ones I wanted. OMG! I don't want new ear rings! I just want to never go shopping again! Today I had to admit to him that I had created a scheme to stay out of the shops, I did not want ear rings and I told him the whole story and read him my earlier blog entry. Certainly not an issue now since I am apparently having plumbing repairs and air conditioner repairs done tomorrow and that is the best anniversary gift I can think of right now! Even though Vince never reads my blog (or he would have known about the jewelry plan!), Happy Anniversary and I hope we have many happy years together! Judy

Sunset

2006-07-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

These photos are too good not to share. When Chad and I left on 7/15 to fly to Louisiana, we understandably were having a rough time. We flew from Evansville, IN to Memphis, changed planes and flew to Lafayette, LA. The Lafayette flight arrived at 10:30 p.m. so it was just a bit before dark when we left Memphis. Chad looked out the plane window and noticed the sun setting, with the clouds below. It was gorgeous and I think the pictures turned out nice, considering the plane window was a bit dirty and scratched.

The RIGHT Fabric!

2006-07-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

As much fabric as I ordered, I had to get the right one sooner or later, right? The one on the left is what I needed. I can see how I got confused and ordered the one in the middle but how I ordered the one on the right, thinking it was the one on the left, I'll never know. I ended up with 5 yards of the correct one, 15 yards of the one in the middle and 5 yards of the one on the right. The one in the middle was actually called two different names by two different shops so I thought I had 4 fabrics but I only have 3. And, the reason I was desperate is because I have a quilt half made using that background. Now I can stop fretting about that quilt! We have a plumbing problem and it's probably not a minor one. Last night I walked into Chad's bathroom with no shoes on and . . uh oh . . the floor is toasty warm. Not good . . means there's a water leak somewhere in the concrete foundation probably. The plumber probably can't get here til tomorrow but I'm betting that is not going to be cheap to fix. Part of being a homeowner I suppose. I tried a new recipe for lunch today - Chicken Saltimbocca. It was good and fairly quick and easy to make. . only messed up one pot and that works for me. I had no idea I could buy frozen purple hull peas at Kroger. They tasted pretty good too! The red stuff is Tomato Relish from my great grandma's recipe files. Here's her recipe. The directions are just as she wrote them and the cooking/processing times are left up to your judgment. You want the tomato sauce to get kinda thick -- like salsa. Then when I add the spices, I just let it cook til I figure everything is blended. I processed using the water bath for probably 40 minutes. I ended up filling 12 jelly jars with a whole recipe. Mama Salter's Chili Sauce

1 gallon peeled, sliced tomatoes 1 cup chopped green pepper 1 cup chopped onion 2 T. salt ½ c. sugar 1 pint vinegar 4 Jalapeno peppers, chopped (Grandma didn’t have this – I added it) 1 tsp. Ground cloves 1 tsp. Ground cinnamon

Simmer all ingredients except cloves and cinnamon, til thick. Add cloves and cinnamon and cook longer. Pour into half pint or jelly jars. Process.

Last (and the best part for sugar addicts like me) is the Buttermilk Pie. Chad would never drink a glass of buttermilk but he loves this pie. This is a recipe I've used for 30 years and everyone loves it so don't let the buttermilk stop you from trying it. Here's the recipe for it:

Buttermilk Pie 1-3/4 c. sugar 1/4 c. flour 1/2 c. buttermilk 1/2 c. butter, melted 3 eggs 2 T. lemon juice 1 tsp. vanilla Pinch of salt 1 - 9" pie shell, unbaked Combine all ingredients in the order given. Mix well and pour into pie shell. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until brown. Filling is set when a light crust forms on top. BTW, I love buttermilk! Judy L.

It's Working!

2006-07-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

I'm kinda surprised how much I like this quilt. I think it's going to be plenty masculine enough to be a gift for a man and I believe the greens are working together just fine. This definitely wouldn't quality as a scrap quilt but it surely is a stash quilt. I'm still a bit apprehensive about using some of my best greens, so they'll no longer be in my stash but maybe with time, I can overcome that kind of thinking. It's going to be 70" x 86" so I have a few more blocks to make! :) Judy L.

Ready for Winter!

2006-07-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

Whew . . it's HOT! I just came in from gathering some herbs for the spaghetti sauce and decided to check the weather. Heat index is 118. Who'd ever have thought it got this hot in Kentucky? I am so ready for winter! We bought 40 pounds of tomatoes yesterday and with what I picked here, I put up over 50 pounds, the last batch is in the canner now. I'm making a buttermilk pie and then I'm going to get out of the kitchen and go work on the green quilt. Maybe I'll have pictures to show of my progress this afternoon. Judy

Learning to Stash Quilt

2006-07-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's easy to talk about using the stash but when it comes time to actually do it, I find that it's difficult. Why do I have such a hard time using my stash? If I were making a totally scrappy quilt, I might not have so much trouble. I want interaction here . . tell me what's wrong with me but be kind please! :) Here are some of the reasons that have run through my hard head this afternoon.

This is probably the main reason - It's so much easier to run to the quilt shop and pick out fabric that matches! They have so much and with Betty's help, I can always come away knowing my quilt is going to be perfect. When I use fabric from the stash, I sometimes have to settle for second best. So, what I'm choosing from my stash may not be totally perfect, but it isn't horrendous either . . is it? And, besides, most of the time, the quilts I make don't actually have to be totally perfect. Who notices??
The old standby reason - I pull a fabric to use it and then decide I like it too much to use. What if I use it and then want it and it's gone? It has happened so maybe the best thing to do is leave all the fabric in the stash and buy more?? Nope, can't do that. I'm going to use it!
Probably the best reason - I make the biggest mess when I'm trying to find fabric. What I need is always on the bottom of the stack and until it gets just so awful that I can't stand it, there's fabric everywhere. I can go to the quilt shop, find the fabric I need, get it cut, come home and never make a mess. But, then I'm going to retire a pauper if I don't stop buying fabric!

So, I've convinced myself to use the stash. After all, I just bought 20 yards of the wrong fabric and I committed to Vicky to buy no fabric in August. I decided on a quilt design and I needed 3 greens, a background (you know I have plenty of that right now!) and a brown. Here are the greens I pulled. I have to choose 3 and I wanted something that kinda goes from light to dark. They're in no particular order here. After taking the picture, I found another green hiding in a corner and I think it works best for the lightest green. I'm going to use one of the wrong backgrounds fabrics and after laying out a few browns, I think I'm going to use red with the greens. I don't want it to be a holiday type quilt but I don't think it's going to look like Christmas with these fabrics. The red is on top, the background on the left and then the three greens, light to dark. They aren't what I would have chosen if I'd been to the quilt shop but I think they will work. In reality, I think the darkest green isn't as bright as it appears in the photo. And, if the quilt turns out ugly, I can always donate it to a worthy cause and make another quilt for Randy, right? The best part is the backing fabric. It's a bit greener than I thought. From the photo online, it looked more tan but it goes perfect with the greens and will be the best backing for this quilt! Maybe I can learn to be a stash quilter! Judy L.

I Knew It!

2006-07-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

As soon as I set up a new blog ring, webrings would be back up. Supposedly they've solved their problems so everyone please remove the ringsurf info from your blogs and tomorrow I'll delete that ring. And, if you haven't done so already, be sure to join Bloglines and get all your buddies added. I had not done that yet but I will do it before going to bed tonight. And, remember that fabric I ordered . . the one that I ordered five yards twice? It isn't right either! So, I now have 20 . . yes, that's TWENTY yards of wrong fabric, 5 yards of one, 5 yards of another and 10 yards of another. But, I'm still a trooper. I ordered 5 yards of another one today. And, if that one isn't right, I will come up with a new plan for this quilt. Thank goodness it isn't August yet because I committed to Vicky that I would join her in August and buy NO fabric in August. I shouldn't need any backgrounds for a while but everything I make will have the same Benartex background . . just in different colors. Judy L.

StashQuilts Blog Ring

2006-07-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

I'm just a bit worried that our webring folks have disappeared or something. They have not responded to my e-mail and I miss all of you whose blogs I didn't have marked. Therefore, I've created a ring using a different service. See the new box over there -----> I'm thinking maybe we can all join the new one and then we can decide which service we want to stay with if the other one ever comes back up. So, if you see this and you are in the old ring or if you want to join the new ring, please jump through the hoops and fill out whatever they require and we'll be back in business. Thanks! Judy L.

Accidental Stash Enhancement

2006-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

See that little almost white strip in the middle? I had a few yards of it. It's Benartex Style 933 by Susan Winget. I had a block that I needed to test for a magazine submission. I made one block, then decided to make four blocks to see how the block looked in a setting. Hey . . I like it a lot! I'll just keep making blocks! Working without a pattern, I had no idea how much fabric I would need and since I also had no instructions, I cut a few pieces wrong and first thing I knew, I didn't have enough fabric to finish. This all happened before I went to Louisiana. I got on quiltshops.com and found what I thought was the same fabric. Those little sample pictures just aren't very good sometimes. I ordered the one on the bottom (5 yards) which is obviously too gold but in the picture I saw, it looked like it matched. Then, as I kept looking at quiltshops.com, I found the one on top. I thought to myself . . I think I just ordered the wrong color so I ordered 5 yards of the lighter one. Different shop of course! They both arrived while I was gone .. both are wrong! I'll use them for something else. Got back on quiltshops.com and found what I hope is the right color (I think it's vanilla!) Ordered 5 yards from Big Horn. My credit card wasn't charged for a few days so I figured they didn't have it. Ordered 5 more yards last night from an online shop. Today, my credit card was charged by Big Horn so I guess I'll have 10 yards coming of the right fabric, and 10 yards of the wrong fabric. The brown on the right is a Michael Miller Krystal that is also in the quilt and I was afraid I'd run short on it so I ordered more of it and thankfully, it's the right fabric. I mentioned here that my dad had asked me to make a quilt for the wrecker guy's wife and I will but I figured I'd also make a quilt for the guy too. I know him and I don't know his wife and he was really the one who helped dad so much through all this. I found this fabric for the backing. Isn't it perfect? And, it was on sale for about $3.50 yard . . Michael Miller fabric . . what a deal! If you've read my blog for any amount of time, you know that I hate shopping. I don't mind shopping for groceries and fabric but otherwise, I detest shopping. There was a time in my previous life when I lived to shop. It used to aggravate me that the mall didn't open til 10 a.m. I wanted to be there at 8! I don't know if my husband likes to shop or likes to torture me but he loves to walk through stores . . just looking for nothing! He's just a bit of a penny pincher too so I figured the best thing I could do to break him of dragging me through stores was to find something I want in every store and when he had to pay for all this stuff I didn't need, he'd stop taking me shopping. So far, my plan is not working so well. Today he offered to take me to lunch at Olive Garden. Sounded good. But he forgot to mention that we were going to Home Depot. I needed a light fixture because the one in my laundry room wasn't working. Got that but we had to look at everything else in the store. Went to eat. Then he needed to go to Sam's. I couldn't think of a single thing in there that I needed that wouldn't be in my way if I bought it so I followed him around like a puppy. Then he needed to go to Target. I was tempted to pick up a new speaker system for my Ipod. I have the Bose system but it's in my quilting room. I need something in the front part of the house but the cheapest one I saw was $150 and after all the money I just spent on the trip to Louisiana (flights, rental car, clothes), I figured I really wasn't going to spend another $150 just to aggravate him. I did buy some plastic clothes hangers and a clip on lamp for the longarm. Ahhhhh .. then he decided to go to the shoe store. A girl can't have enough shoes, right? I found these two pair .. aren't they cute? The black ones are so comfortable and the brown ones are leather and will be great to wear with jeans or a jumper this fall. I've even told him what I'm doing and he still takes me shopping. Maybe next time, I'll go straight to the jewelry store and try on huge diamond rings. I'll bet that works!!! Judy L.

Ipods, Music & Books

2006-07-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

First, I don't know what's wrong with the blog ring. Seems to be a problem with the webring group and it isn't just the stashquilts group. If you click on "next" or "list" or whatever, it just isn't working. I guess we'll wait and see what happens. Many have asked questions about the Ipod and books on tape that I mentioned the other day so I'll try to answer a bunch of the questions here. When I bought the Ipod a year or maybe 2 years ago, I had planned to buy a small Ipod for myself. This was before the Shuffle and Nano. I called Apple and because they were changing something cosmetic with the 60 GB Ipod Photo, they had a special. I think I was able to get it for less than I was going to get the 20 GB for and I think they had an extra discount if you bought a second one so I bought Chad and Vince one too. Can't remember all the details but I bought three of them and they were a great price. Chad and I love ours. Vince has never taken his out of the box. I download music for .99 each from I-tunes or I download books on tape. Our local library is affiliated with some national organization and I can download books in MP3 format there but they have very few books. I pay something like $22/month from Audible.com and get 2 credits per month there. Most books are 1 credit so I get 2 books a month and can buy more if I want. If you sign up for Audible, tell them I sent you. I might get a free book or something! Since I spend so much time at the longarm and can't really hear anything with the machine running, I have cordless headphones that are hooked into my computer. Here are the options I have via the computer:

We have XM Radio so I can listen to radio online. That includes news, lots of talk shows, investment info, religious programming and more music channels than I'd ever need.
I can put a CD in my computer and listen to that.
Before we had XM, I listened to Live 365 online. You can find all kinds of radio stations on there.

If you have more questions, just ask. Judy

Back in the Swing of Things

2006-07-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to bed before 10 which was very early for me. I truly slept like a rock and couldn't believe how well I had slept when the alarm went off this morning. Most days when I first wake up, I lay in bed for a few minutes thinking about what my day holds. This morning I decided to do whatever I felt like doing. Vince and Chad were both working so I had the whole day to myself. I decided that instead of quilting or working in the yard (both of those really need attention) I would spend the day in the kitchen. I made a batch of kibbie, which isn't fantastic. If anyone has a great kibbie recipe you'd like to share, I'd be real happy to try it. I canned 7 pints of tomatoes and have enough tomatoes remaining to make 7 pints of tomato relish tomorrow. I have beef stroganoff in the crock pot for tomorrow and I made Oatmeal Toasting Bread. Maybe in the morning I'll run down to the farmer's market early and see if there are any good tomatoes there. I'd love to put up a couple dozen quarts of spaghetti sauce but I don't have enough of my own tomatoes for that. Not just for my little 7 pints of tomatoes but I bought myself a new 23 quart canner today. For nine years I've heard that you can't can on a smooth top stove. Thankfully, I did a little research this morning. I found that I could buy a "5th burner" which is just an electric coil type thing -- like having an extra burner on the regular electric stove. I went to our local Rural King and found one of those for $10. OK, that fits the budget. Then I went to the canners and big as Texas, on the outside of the box, it says:

Canners are constructed of extra-strong, warp-resistant aluminum and are suitable for use on regular and smooth-top ranges.

So, I was able to get the canner, put the 5th burner thing back and now I'm all set. All I need is a bigger garden . . maybe next year. For those who have asked about the log house. We are not getting it. After Daniel's accident, there's no way I want Chad driving on these roads . . even though Daniel's wreck happened on a major highway. I'll hopefully go back and forth to Louisiana every couple of months til I feel mom and dad are ok and it's so much easier for us to work out of the house in town. It's less than 2 miles from community college, 5 miles from Chad's job and 6 miles to Vince's job. I think there will be some major changes in our house before Christmas and a big house with lots of land is not what we need right now. Judy L.

Home Sweet Home

2006-07-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

I'm back home and while it feels good to be here, my heart is in Louisiana. I left mom and dad standing in the garage sobbing. When I left was the first time they've been alone since the accident and I know it's tough on them. I wish I could've stayed longer but Chad has to report to Kroger tomorrow and I have deadlines to meet. My life seems to be ruled by deadlines these days. I had told Vince when I finished the book, I wanted to get away for a whole week and that's what I did but it surely wasn't the kind of trip I had planned. The flights home were fairly uneventful or I should say they were as uneventful as flights on prop planes can be on cloudy days. I should learn that Corky's BBQ and carbonated drinks are not what I should consume before getting on those little planes. We had to walk halfway across the airport to get on the plane in Lafayette and it was pouring so we were all totally drenched when we got on the plane. I was in the first seat by the door and despite the flight attendant's best efforts at wiping the door, every time the plane turned one direction, water poured onto my leg so I was doubly drenched by the time I got off that plane. Not complaining though. It was still way better than driving. My dad is so funny. He thinks it is so quick for me to make quilts. The guy who owns the wrecker service that picked up Daniel's car has been a friend of dad's for years. In fact, his son has now taken over the business and Randy was so kind and helpful to dad during this time. Dad said "I want you to make a quilt for Randy's wife. She's so nice!" Yes, sir. I will get right on that! Dad will find out her favorite color and a quilt for Randy's wife has been added to my "to do list". Judy

Good Timing!

2006-07-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

This was a pleasant surprise! Vince told me this morning I had received a letter from the Governor and I couldn't figure out why the KY Governor would be writing me. I have no idea how he knew about the QOV project but his letter couldn't have come at a better time. Vince scanned it and sent it to me in e-mail. I'm kinda proud of myself! :) Making quilts for our injured soldiers is such a great project. If anyone has time to make a quilt or two, please check out the QOV web page. Judy L.

Thanks Everyone!

2006-07-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much to all of you for your kind words, prayers and compassion. Having never lost anyone close other than grandparents who were very, very old when they all died, this has been more difficult than I could have imagined. For those who have suffered loss, you know the pain that until now, I never felt. Daniel had lived with my parents off and on in his very early years but came to live with them permanently when he was about 9. They had teased him quite a bit lately about going out on his own . . getting his own place or getting married and his response was always "why would I want to leave here?" One of the boys who spoke at his funeral said Daniel loved the ladies and the ladies loved Daniel. He was the typical guy about whom you hear "they loved fast cars and women!" Mom joked that at the funeral, they were going to say "would everyone who ever dated Daniel, please stand up!". Saturday evening two girls came by the house and they were both crying. One said, "I'm Kathy (not the real name!) and I dated Daniel." The other girl said "I'm Suzie (not the real name!), I'm her sister (pointing to the other girl) and I dated Daniel too!" We almost laughed! Then my friend from Westlake's son is a policeman and I was talking to Sarah and asked her if Jared had heard any more about the accident. She said "Jared knew Daniel and Jaimie (Jared's wife) dated Daniel." It was really getting to be funny how many girls had dated him. The picture is one of Chad and Daniel that was taken in 1999. The quilt on the bed is one mom had made for Daniel and he loved it. Mom said he would never go to bed without his quilt so they buried it with him. Chad and I are going to fly home Sunday. He's going back to work Tuesday for Kroger at one of the other stores. I'll try to come back home in a month or so. Daniel's birthday would be August 10 so that will be another hard day for mom and dad. Small hurdles . . one at a time. Thanks again for your support! Judy L.

Gone to Louisiana

2006-07-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

The call you hope you never receive just happened. My 27 year old nephew, Daniel Zito, was killed in a car accident last night. He had always lived with my parents so mom and dad are going to have such a tough time with this. Mom just called .. I'm trying to finish up a few loose ends with the book so I can get it in ready for Vince to mail and then I'll be on the road for a 14 hour trip. I don't know any details . . only that the car crashed and burned. Not taking the computer, not sure when I'll be home. Thanks for your prayers for my family. Update: I have a little more information. I'm flying home and in order to get a bit of a discount, I had to have more info. Called the state police to get the details I needed and it happened that the only friend I have who is a state trooper answered the phone. He was in tears too telling me the details. It was a one car accident on Highway 90 going from Westlake to Sulphur. Chad is going with me. We're scheduled to come home a week from tomorrow, July 23. Judy L.

Quilt Backings

2006-07-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

How do you choose the backings for your quilt? I met a lady online . . can't even remember if it was through the blog or one of the many quilt groups I'm on. Her name is Jackie and she lives in north Louisiana but the funny thing is she grew up in Sulphur . . same place my buddy, Vicky, grew up. Sulphur is maybe 2 miles down I-10 from Westlake where I grew up. Back then (way back then), the world was a smaller place and I didn't know either of them. Westlake was such a small little place (still is), right in the middle of chemical plants and oil refineries .. the kind of place people drive through and say "Ughhh . . wouldn't you hate to live here?" But for those of us who call it home, it's a wonderful place. When I was home for spring break and attended the quilt show in Lake Charles, Jackie was there and we met in person and Jackie and I and both our moms were able to talk for a few minutes. Anyway, Jackie and I were corresponding via e-mail last week and got to talking about quilt backings and Jackie thought it would be a good topic and I think so too. Thanks Jackie!! So . . back to quilt backings. How do you decide what to use? My main method of deciding is: Which piece in the stash is big enough? I don't get real picky about backings. I don't mind using muslin when I'm doing an overall or a panto. I prefer to use a print when there are a bunch of stops and starts because no matter how careful you are on the longarm, stops and starts almost always show. Oh, yes, I could knot and bury all the thread tails but I'm not going to do that. I've had plenty of quilts in quilt shows with print backings to camouflage the stops and starts and have yet to receive a negative comment. In fact, the Glistening Rose Garden quilt has an ecru almost solid backing and it was in quite a few shows in 2004 and 2005 and won several ribbons and I didn't get any negative comments on the stops and starts. Here are a couple of my fairly recent poor backing choices. I was ready to quilt this one and had nothing in my stash. Didn't want to run to the quilt shop which is all the way across the Ohio River in Indiana so I went to Hancock's. Not what I would have chosen if I had been at the quilt shop but it worked for me. This is one of the quilts that was in American Quilter magazine a while back. The backing is pink. I had a whole bolt of this pink and heck, I kinda thought it matched. A friend was over and she was in love with the quilt and she looked at the back and said "Why did you use THIS?" I said "because I had it!" As a longarm quilter, I see all kinds of backings. It doesn't matter to me what people send so long as it's nice and square. Here are a few different type backings that come to mind.

Sheets - Some longarmers refuse to use them. I've used them and some are woven so tightly that the thread just stays on top and doesn't sink in to make a quality stitch. Most are not straight . . no way you can tear them and get them straight. I honestly don't think sheets make a great backing for a quilt but I suppose if I came across the perfect sheet, I'd use it. To get a good quality sheet, you can probably buy an extra wide 100% cotton backing for the same price.
Pieced - Some quilters piece a million little pieces together to make backings. I won't name names here but one is in the StashQuilts blog ring and likes cats and just went to Australia on her honeymoon! (Love your backings, Amy!) I'm not patient enough to do that but I've seen some very interesting and fun backings made from a bunch of pieces.
Extra wide backing fabric - ahhhh, a longarmer's dream! No seams. Rip it and it's nice and straight. Good quality cotton so the stitches sink in and look like good stitches should. And, while we're talking about wide backings, Wilma at Christian Lane Quilters has a wonderful selection of extra wide backings. She and her husband are both longarmers and Wilma has been on one longarm list or another with me for a few years. A wonderful lady, wonderful service . . if ever you need a wide backing, check out Wilma's selection.

So, I guess you can really use anything you want to use. But, once you decide what you're going to use, how do you decide what color to use? Does it have to be some of the same fabric you used in the front? Does it have to match? Can the backing be something totally different? Here's a quilt I made for Chad's chemistry teacher. I found the backing fabric first and then made a quilt that somewhat matched the backing fabric. Isn't that a neat backing for a chemistry teacher? When I make Stack & Whack quilts, I always try to use some of the focus fabric in the backing because no one ever believes that all the kaleidoscope type designs came from that one fabric. I love making Stack & Whack quilts! So, I guess it all boils down to: It's your quilt and you can use whatever backing you choose! What initially started this was that Jackie had used a backing on a quilt and someone liked the quilt because they liked the backing and it matched their decor! They kinda ignored the front of the quilt. Judy L.

The House & Ipods

2006-07-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

Several have asked questions about the house and about the Ipod and downloading books. Here's a bit of info on all of it. I stole these pix off the realtor's web page. Hope I don't go to jail! :( The first one is a picture of the outside, a bit closer than the last picture I put here. It isn't actually a real log home but it's some kind of log siding. They're like quarter logs (real wood) and each are screwed on individually. The guy has a bunch of extra ones in the shop so if we ever have damage, we can fix it. (I sound like we already own the house, huh?) Vince prefers this because you don't have to worry so much about it all settling and the beetles that had done so much damage to the other log home we looked at. The deck is so nice! It's probably 7 feet wide and goes all the way around the house. I can't really remember downstairs but I think those doors to the left are off a second family room and I think that "V" downstairs is in a bedroom. I'd probably put the longarm in that bedroom and put the sewing machine/cutting table in the downstairs family room. Downstairs are three bedrooms, the second family room, a bathroom and a really big laundry room. The mechanical room is there too and it's plenty big enough to have my backup pantry. These pictures are probably going to get all jumbled up and I may end up talking about the Ipod next to a picture but you'll figure it all out. Next is the kitchen. Pretty nice kitchen, huh? I wish it had a 6 burner gas stove and a double oven but it doesn't. The house also doesn't have a garage and since we'd build one, I want to have an outdoor kitchen with a gas stove and I can have a second oven there, as well as some kind of bread/stone lined oven. I love how the kitchen has two windows and lots of light, not to mention that what you don't see here is that the family room and dining room are all open to the kitchen and there are windows everywhere! Next is the family room. It doesn't look big here but it's huge. I'm guessing it's probably 30 x 25 or maybe bigger. The door opens to the front deck and the lake is out front so looking out the window, you see what's in the next picture. Last of the pictures is the shop. This is in part of the barn with a built in dust collection system for the woodworker in the family (Vince)! See how many windows this shop has! All this on 13 acres!! About the Ipod . . when I got it, I wasn't sure how much I would use it but I wanted something I could listen to while quilting. Something I could just stick in my pocket, use the head phones and longarm all day. When I called, they had a special and I could get two of the 60 GB Ipods for not much more than I had planned to pay for one that was maybe 20 GB. So I figured Chad would like one so I got him one, then I figured if I got one for me and one for Chad, Vince would feel left out so I ordered three. Want to guess which one has never been taken out of the box? I consider that my backup. Every now and then you buy a gadget and you wonder how you lived without it. That's how I feel about my Ipod. We've had them at least a year and a half and there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't use it and Chad uses his way more than I use mine and we've never had a moment's trouble with them. They're so easy to use . . I figured it out by myself. You can copy from all your own CD's to your Ipod or you can buy songs from Itunes for .99 each. They have a bunch of old songs, all the new songs. I really love the whole setup. For the books on tape, I get those through audible.com. I think I pay about $22.95 per month and I get 2 credits each month. Most books are 1 credit each. I can buy others for about $10 to $20 each. On the plan I'm on, if I don't order any books in one month, the credits carry over. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to think about books and I had 6 credits sitting in my account. Yesterday I downloaded Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It's been years since I read that and I wanted to hear it all again. I also downloaded Cold Mountain on Tracey's suggestion and Love Rules just because it sounded good. I still have 3 credits left and will get 2 more for July soon. My taste in books is as diverse as my taste in music! Any questions .. just let me know. Tonight, I'm sewing on binding! I will sew it on at least 2 quilts tonight (just the machine part . . not the hand work.) Judy L.

Remind Me Again Please!

2006-07-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

Can someone remind me again why anyone has children? I know .. most are not like mine and I suppose that's because everyone else is a better parent than I am. Chad decided that working at Kroger didn't fit his style. They treated him horribly! They expected him to be there some mornings at 8:00 (not even half the time!), they wanted him to be productive which he never quite comprehended. There was a 45 day "trial" period and that was up yesterday. They extended it for another 15 days and he was totally disgusted. I think he truly expected them to bump him up to store manager or something. Anyway, not quite sure what transpired last night but he came home thinking his time was extended. He was off today and the manager called and said they decided they didn't need him. Who needs a job anyway? I quilted 4 quilts over the weekend. They were all pantos which go quickly but it made me feel good to get them done. I think I have 5 or 6 more to quilt, then get the handwork finished on all 20. Guess we know what I'll be doing for the next 2 months! Manuscript is almost ready. Goodness . . is there ever a time when I can read the darned thing without finding more things to change/correct? I think I've used more ink and paper than the law allows! I do believe it's ready to go except I still need photos of 5 quilts and of course, there's rain predicted for the next month! Like everything else in my life, my Ipod is all jumbled up. Somehow, some of my audio books got mixed in with my music and about mid-day Saturday while quilting and listening to my music, I came across the book, Cover the Butter. Not even sure when I downloaded it but I was too lazy to stop quilting and skip over it so I started listening to it and couldn't stop. I loved that book! There was some language that was kinda bad in a few parts (not real bad but I wouldn't recommend it for a high school girl). I had been thinking I should write a book about my life and dang it . . I think someone already has! Whew! I want to go back and listen to it again. One night I fell asleep with the ear buds in and the Ipod under my pillow!! We're looking at the log cabin again Saturday. We just can't let go of it. I keep thinking of all the negatives (trying to talk myself out of wanting it) but Vince really wants it too. The big problem is that he thinks we're going to sell the house in town, move into the new house and then try to sell his house. Well, that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking we'd sell his house first, then move in, then sell the house in town. I suppose that can be worked out but I do NOT want to show the house I'm living in. I think we already have a buyer for it anyway so that's not a big deal. And just to see how many subjects I can cover in one post, I smoked salmon today using a method C. J. told me about. Oh, it was so good! I had to get up at 5 to get the salmon on the smoker and the bread going so I should get to bed now! Judy

Thank you, Mr. Weatherman!

2006-07-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful few days we've had and look at the forecast for next week! Not a single day over 90. Is it really mid-July? Have I said lately that I really, really, really hate summer? Last night after dark I was out with shorts on and it was just a bit cool. I think our low was about 54 or 58. In fact, I got up during the night and turned the ceiling fan off. Please let it stay this way til October! Oh, my! I just looked at the 10 day forecast for Lake Charles and it's going to be cooler there than here. Amazing! Today I went to my friend Becky's house and we picked green beans, corn, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers and potatoes. Becky actually did more picking than Judy did! :) I had fresh corn and potatoes for dinner tonight. Boiled them with the crawfish boil . . too bad I was lacking the crawfish! I smoked 4 chickens today. My little smoker was stuffed to the gills with chicken! Also made two loaves of bread and took Becky 2 chickens and a loaf of bread. I'll trade chicken and bread any day for fresh veggies. She didn't expect anything in return . . she's such a sweet lady! The manuscript is almost ready to send off, quilts remain to be quilted but I'm feeling really good about my deadlines. No weekend plans. We're still talking about that log house. I wish someone else would hurry up and buy it so we can stop saying . . if only it wasn't so far out .. if only we could get DSL there . . if only we were happy with the house we have! :( Judy

Happy 4th of July

2006-07-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

I hope you all have a happy and safe 4th of July. It's a quiet one around here. Vince and Chad were both off just for today so we stayed home and will enjoy the peace and quiet. We'll grill burgers this afternoon, a cheesecake is in the oven. There's also a cold watermelon in the fridge. We surely won't be hungry! :) Thought I'd share a couple of patriotic quilts that were handy to photograph. The first is from a Fons & Porter Love of Quilting magazine from probably five years ago. It's obviously a quick quilt to make and great for using some blue and background scraps. As simple as it is, I like this quilt a lot. The guild here taught this as a workshop and I've taught this class at least once so there are a bunch of these quilts around town. This second one was my entry for the Moda Challenge a few years ago when they had the packet of neutrals that had to be used. The center is paper pieced and the rest of the blocks are my standard nine patch variation type blocks. I'd be lost without the nine patch! Judy L.

This & That

2006-07-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

We have more new ring members: Bonnie Shelina Esteemarlu Mama Koch Tazzie Melanie Welcome to you all! About the house, thanks for all your good thoughts on it but the reasons why we will not get it will not change. They are:

The log house is maybe a couple of miles from our country house, but farther out. The reason we have the house in town and the house in the country is because I didn't want to drive on the back roads so much while Chad was in high school. Now that he's driving (well, not til he gets his own car and insurance but that will happen soon), I don't want him driving on those roads. He's obviously not going to be a very good driver and even though I can't shield him from everything, I really don't want to cause him to be on the really bad, windy, narrow roads any more than he has to be. If it were just Vince and me, the roads would not be an issue because Vince can get to work by staying on a state highway, although it isn't great either. I wouldn't leave home enough to worry about it but it's not just us for a few more years so the roads are a major consideration.
Second, we can't get DSL at that house. Our home must be about the last house going out that way that has it. Vince really has to have fast internet access because he does research and work from home. We could get satellite but it's way expensive and just not worth it.

Neither of those can be overcome right now so the house isn't going to work for us. Otherwise, I think we would have made a deal yesterday. Judy

The Perfect House

2006-07-02T18:15:00.002-07:00

I know there's never really a perfect house but this one is so darned close and I want it! We won't get it for several reasons and I knew we wouldn't get it but they had open house today so we went out and looked at it. It has 13 acres, a pretty good size lake, a barn with part of it fixed up for a woodworking shop with concrete floors and an elaborate vac system for removing the sawdust. The house sits way back from the road and from nowhere near the house can you see another house or see a road. There are hickory, walnut, dogwood, magnolia, oak . . all kinds of trees everywhere on the property. This is probably the most well built house we have ever looked at. There's not a spot in the floor that creaked! Nothing was left undone in this house. The ceilings are all slick (as opposed to textured) and you can't see a sheetrock nail anywhere. The master bedroom closet is bigger than some of the bedrooms in my studio house and in the closet are several sets of chests of drawers built of red cedar. The guy who built the house and still lives there is a woodworker and there is some gorgeous woodworking in this house. Those big windows in the front are in the family room and there's no window coverings on them at all. No need for it . . there's no one around to see in. I could surely live there and never want to leave for any reason. The people who live there are funny. The guy also does insulation (I think it's the kind that goes in liquid and then hardens in the walls . . not sure . . wasn't listening to that part) and there was a little dock out on the lake. Vince and I were out there looking at it and Vince noticed there was a trolling motor attached to the dock. Just at that same moment, the people came down and said "want to go for a cruise around the lake?" so they hopped on the dock, unhooked it from a stationary part of the dock and off we went around the lake. He had built it and then used his foam insulation underneath it to make it float. Just a neat, neat place in the woods. Judy L.

More Changes to the Quilt

2006-07-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Ughhh! A costly change since it's going to take time and since I'm short on the background fabric but after making a few of the border blocks (12 to be exact), I decided they're too big for the quilt. The border blocks on the right are 6" x 8". The border blocks on top are 4-1/2" x 6" and they're much better. Don't you think? I'll take the bigger blocks apart and cut them down so as not to have to waste any fabric. I am not sure I've ever done that but with no background fabric to spare, I have no choice. And, the inner borders have to come off because instead of a 1-1/2" side border, I now need 3-1/2" side borders. And, the top and bottom borders were 2-1/2" and they now need to be 1-1/2". I'll use the current side borders for the top and bottom borders . . what a waste of time but I think the end result is better. But first, I think I'll take a nap. I stayed up too late last night and knew I had to get up at 6:30 but . . little did I know the neighbors are getting a new roof and the roofers began removing the old shingles at 5:20 a.m. Oh well, if they were working on my roof, I'd want it done as quickly as possible and if I were the roofers, I'd surely want to start before it got too hot so I can't complain. Judy L.

Eleanor Burns

2006-06-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

I think if I had to name one person who's had the most influence on me as a quilter, I would say Eleanor Burns. The funny thing is though, that I have made her Delectable Mountain quilt a couple of times and the one other quilt that mom took home with her. I have quite a few of her books though. Why would she be my quilting hero? It doesn't matter what I'm doing, or how I'm feeling, if I think of Eleanor, I smile. In fact, I almost laugh out loud! Have you ever heard or read her bio? If not, you really owe it to yourself to read it. For most of my quilting years I had heard about Eleanor Burns. But know what I had mostly heard? I hate her whiney voice! So, even though I could not even remember ever having heard her, I hated her whiney voice too! Probably 8 or 9 years ago, while I was at the Paducah Quilt Show with a friend, someone told us we should go by the Quilt in a Day house. It was a tiny little house down the street from the show and Eleanor had all her stuff there for sale and she did some kind of little show. Being the agreeable girl that I am, I didn't really want to go but went. I was so impressed. I laughed til I cried! She now has grown to where she has a huge production with several huge tents set up in a park. It's really a big deal! My friend, Becky, and I go to the Paducah show every year and Becky really loves Eleanor Burns so we spend lots of time in her tent. Eleanor is just so friendly and approachable and, she's a genious! I know she has help but how does she think of this stuff? When I'm teaching a class or writing a pattern, I try to write the instructions so no one has to buy a special ruler but some of the Quilt in a Day rulers are just worth buying! This one is the fussy cut ruler. How many times have you drawn out a design on paper and taped it to the bottom of your square so you can center whatever you're trying to fussy cut. No longer do you have to worry about it quite so much. These fussy cut rulers are a life saver! The package comes with three sizes. And, what about these flying geese rulers? The flying geese come out perfect every time when using her flying geese rulers. I've been testing patterns so I haven't been using this method but since I was just playing with the batik quilt (no pattern to write!), I used this ruler and oh, what a difference it makes! Nice, straight, square corners . . perfect flying geese. I guess the moral of this story is that we should never let others influence what we think of something/some one. Had I never wandered into Eleanor Burns' little house during the Paducah quilt show, I'd still be saying "I don't like her whiney voice" but now, she's my quilting hero. I think her whole story is a true American success story and everything I know about Eleanor Burns and Quilt in a Day just makes me happy! Judy L.

Welcome Gail!

2006-06-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

Not only can I not figure what size I need for my strips and blocks, but I can't remember to list all the new members. In the post yesterday, I forgot Gail at Going to Pieces is also a new member. Please drop by and welcome Gail too. Thanks Linda for pointing this out to me. Judy L.

Mistakes!

2006-06-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

First, the Stash Quilt Blog Ring has two new members: KC Quilter and Patchalot. Please take the time to visit these new members and welcome them to the Stash Quilts ring. Jan Mac asked to be put on inactive status while she travels and we look forward to having her back as an active ring member. For those of you waiting to join the ring, for now we're keeping the group to 30 active members and as someone leaves, the person who's been on the waiting list the longest and whose site is ready to be activated is the next one who joins the ring. That's the only fair way I know to do it. Hope that's ok with everyone. Actually, the saying goes: Measure Twice, Cut Once .. but I never seem to remember that! Ever notice how many things go wrong when you're short on fabric? Seems like things go just fine when I have way more fabric than I need but when I'm worried about running short, I make so many stupid errors. Here's the quilt I've been working on. No pattern and I never took the time to figure out yardage. The main blocks are made from various batiks and I knew I had plenty of that. The green . . I knew I had plenty of that. The purple - when I started out, I had no idea what I was going to do for the border and I had plenty of that. But, when I decided to go with the pieced border and then a 4" purple border for the outside, I was short. I went digging through the stash and found two more purples. The first one is a bit blue but the second one is perfect. It very well may be the same fabric because it's a Hoffman 1895 batik and I order a bunch of those from Web Fabrics. So, I have plenty of purple. But, it's the background fabric I'm worried about. It's the latte batik, also one in the 1895 line, and I had started out a while back with a whole bolt of that one. Guess I used more than I had thought. I needed 2" strips for the side borders and 3" strips for the top and bottom borders. Error #1: I attached the 3" strips to the sides so the quilt was then too wide. I noticed when I went to attach the top and bottom borders so I could either have taken the side borders off or trim them down. I trimmed them down so that was a bit of wasted fabric. Then I went to make the flying geese and figured I'd use Eleanor Burns' method because I would get less waste. Error #2: I cut the background squares the size I should have cut the green squares . . another few inches of wasted fabric. I decided to go with the Quilters Cache border. It's definitely the easiest one to piece of the options I came up with and it was about a toss up on which one you all suggested I use so I made it easy on myself. I'm really liking it too but I'll like it all a whole lot better when I know for sure that I have enough background fabric to finish this project. Judy L.

The Things We Accept

2006-06-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

They say we don't know what we don't know and I wonder how much I don't know, guess I'll never know! :) Back in my younger days I used to make cheesecake using the Jello Brand Cheesecake Mix. I had never had a real cheesecake and the first time I had one, I thought it was awful! I now love real cheesecake but I just didn't know any better. My favorite flour is King Arthur and I have always ordered it. I had no idea our local Kroger now carries it. I was complaining last week about not having King Arthur and having to make bread using a regular flour. Chad said "I can bring you some home from Kroger." WHAT? They have King Arthur? On the bottom shelf and I never noticed it. I know there are other brands just as good as King Arthur but look at the difference in the size of these two loaves of bread. Same exact recipe, everything was done exactly the same. The larger loaf is made with King Arthur and the smaller loaf was made with probably Pillsbury or something straight off the shelf. Pretty big difference, huh? Even Vince and Chad can taste the difference in the bread. Chad was probably 10 and he had gone to his dad's one summer. He called and he was kinda whispering and he asked me if I could send him some soap. He said "Mom, they use storebought soap!" He was appalled. I haven't been making soap and we're all using storebought soap now and accepting it but if I made soap again, no one would want to use the storebought soap if given the option of homemade or storebought. Vince and I were talking at lunch and I wonder how many people accept that storebought tomatoes are how a tomato is supposed to taste. No doubt some people get good tomatoes at the grocery store. We most often do not. I can hardly wait til my tomatoes are ripe and I can pick one and eat it fresh off the vine. What about the difference in having a fresh egg, just gathered from the hen, or a storebought egg with an expiration date stamped on it? What about the difference in fresh squeezed orange juice or some of the OJ from the cartons? Some if it is downright good and with the price or oranges, I'm thankful for the cartons. But, if a glass of fresh squeezed OJ was put in front of me, I'd surely choose it over the OJ from the carton. What about herbs picked fresh from the garden or the dried herbs in the tins? I sometimes use the ones in the tins because I don't grow everything but the ones I do grow are amazingly better than the ones that are dried. What about fresh shrimp bought directly from the shrimper . . they were caught during the night and he's out peddling them during the day? Nothing like the frozen ones we get at the grocery store. There are many things I know that I am missing out on because either I don't know any better or the better products are not available in my area. This brings me to an idea that I've mentioned here before. I hate going out to eat. Yes, we sometimes do it but rarely do I enjoy it. We seem to lack really good restaurants in our town. We do have one that I love, American Bounty. The picture on their web page is salmon wrapped in crispy fried potatoes and it is so yummy! If given the choice, I'll take homemade most any day over eating out. Today's lunch consisted of Grilled Pork Backbone, Grilled Corn, Baked Beans, Strawberry Walnut Salad, homemade bread and cake. I didn't spend all day in the kitchen. In fact, getting the food on the table probably took less time than it would have taken me to get dressed, get to the restaurant, get seated, order, get the food, come home and . . mine was all homemade and I pretty much know what went into it all. Last night I put the pork on to marinate, took about 5 minutes. This morning I cleaned the corn and soaked it. Took another 5 minutes. The bread . . that took a while but I did it last night. The beans took about 5 minutes to stir up and get in the oven. The salad took a few minutes to wash the lettuce, make the dressing, wash and slice the strawberries and toast the Ramen noodles and walnuts. But it was all so worth it and so good! I love reading Patty's Morning Ramble blog. She is such an interesting lady and such an inspiration to me. It's a rare day that I read her blog that I don't learn something or think about something differently. My challenge to myself is to examine the things I do .. whether it be cooking, cleaning, gardening, quilting. How much of what I do is purely out of habit? How much is because 'that's the way I've always done it' and I just don't look beyond my own self? There is so much in the world for us to experience. It doesn't have to be bigger or more expensive or more showy . . there may just be a better method or a better tool or a better ingredient. I'd like to challenge all of you to think about the things you do day in and day out and surprise yourself with some very small changes that may make a world of difference. Look at the difference in the two loaves of bread . . just from changing the flour! Judy

Creativity

2006-06-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

These pink calla lilies are so beautiful! Yesterday morning, they had droplets of water left from the early showers and I couldn't resist snapping a picture. As luck would have it, I was working with Karen Gass, the editor of the new Cotton Spice magazine on an article that very basically gets the creative juices flowing. In the article, Karen encourages readers to draw something very simple. I've had Corel Draw for ages, for so long that I think I've paid for two upgrades and have never learned to use it. I could probably do better with Paint but I am determined to learn Corel .. just not today. I could draw a circle and that's honestly all I could do. Not one to give up, I drew my circle and tried to make it into a flower. I told Karen it looked like a splattered egg and I gave up and went back to editing patterns. Ughh! How long can you do that . . especially while thinking about drawing flowers. About 7:00 p.m. I thought . . I can do this! Opened Corel back up and played around til I drew what looked like a calla lily to me. Ok . . no comments because I know that no one would have a clue what kind of flower this is if I didn't tell you. The only yarn or thick thread I had was this pink fuzzy yarn and it reminds me of the pink lupines so I used it. By 10:00, I had this little rascal on the longarm and by midnight (had to stop in the middle of the process and go get Chad from work . . remember he isn't driving!) I had it bound. After I crawled in bed, I realized I worked so hard on the flowers, the leaves don't even remotely resemble the leaves on the callas but it's my wall hanging and I can have any kind of leaves I want, right? If someone had told me to draw a flower and make a little wall hanging, I would have said "I can't do that!" and while it isn't going to win any ribbons, I had so much fun doing it and now I really have confidence that I can draw something. As I was stitching down these very basic flowers, you wouldn't believe all the ideas running through my head. What's that saying? If I can dream it, I can do it! One day I am going to draw a dachshund just like Speck and surprise Vince with a little wall hanging. I was thinking this morning about all the quilt magazines I get. Most have projects, most have informative articles, but it's been a long time since I was challenged . . truly challenged to put aside what I was working on and try something that I was almost sure I couldn't do. Wouldn't that be what it's all about? So, my hat's off to Karen Gass and again, I wish her the best at Cotton Spice. If you're wanting to see a magazine that's just a little bit different from what you've been seeing, one that might really get you excited and cause you to try something new . . check it out! Judy L.

I do not understand!

2006-06-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

More to the Story: About 2 weeks ago, the state police really began working the bypass here. I'm the kind of person you hate to get stuck behind.I sent them an e-mail thanking them because the speeders had really gotten bad on there. They wrote me back and said they rarely get thanked for their efforts. Kinda funny now that my son was one who got a ticket today. But, here's the best part. Things kinda calmed down tonight and I asked Chad what the officer said to him. Poor Chad . . he never knows when to be quiet! He told me the officer said "I'm giving you a break. You were going 76 but I'm going to put it down as 70." OMG!!! Are all kids so darned hard headed or is it just mine? Chad is 18-1/2 and never thinks past his nose . . never has! In KY, they can get their driver's license at 16-1/2. We told him if he made A's & B's, he could get a car for his senior year. Didn't happen. When he got 18, he did get his driver's license but he only drove with us in the car. We told him when he got a job, we would help him get a car. He got a job about a month ago and after a week or so, Vince let Chad start driving his car. Vince explained to him that if he got one ticket or had one wreck that was his fault, he was off our insurance and the car went back to Vince. So, he drives pretty much to work and back for 2 weeks. He went a few other places but very few. This morning he was off work. He wakes up wanting to go to Target. Here's the conversation: Chad: I'm going to Target Me: No, you're not. I've ridden with you enough to know that you do not go to the speed limit and until I can trust that you will drive the speed limit, you're driving to work and back and that's it. Chad: Then you go with me to Target Me: I don't need anything from Target. About an hour later: Chad: I'm going to the bank and to get a pizza. That's all about 2 blocks from here . . unless you choose to get on the bypass and go half way around town. Me: Ok but go straight there and straight back. He comes home and hands me this: 1. He's on the bypass which was NOT on the way to get pizza or to go to the bank. 2. He's going 70 mph in a 55 mph zone. Give the car back . . find out how much insurance is going to be to get your own policy and find a vehicle you can afford. He checked on insurance and he's going to have to pay about $450/month. He brings home about $800 now working 40 hours. But, when school starts, he will not get 40 hours so every dime will basically pay for gas and insurance. Makes no sense at all to me but . . we gave him the rules, he chose not to follow them so he now pays the price. I hate to be mean and it breaks my heart that all his money will go towards something he could have had for free but he made the wrong choices and I have to stick by what I said. For now though . . I get my garage back and all this batting that is in my living room can go back into the garage! But, I'm disappointed for him, I'm mad that he doesn't listen to me and overall, I'm just totally frustrated at the immaturity and lack of decision making skills I see in him. Judy

Color Choices

2006-06-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Whew! Now I know how to get comments .. ask for your opinion. Thanks. I did hear from Marcia at Quilters Cache and she is fine with me using her border for a quilt to be entered in a show. Not sure what I'll do. Her border is definitely the easiest to put together. The one on the left is next and the one on the right is the hardest. Thanks again for all your input. Now . . to color! No longer am I going to say I have bad taste in color. Gail and I were discussing color and I came to the conclusion that my color choices may not suit everyone but they suit me. I quilt because I love to piece and quilt, not because I'm making a quilt for a purpose. Thinking back, the few times that I've had to make quilts to match someone's bedroom or to match something, I have struggled with the color choices. But most of the time, I'm just making a quilt so I can have something to piece and something to quilt and therefore, there's no stress in choosing the colors, I just pick what I like and therefore, I like what I've picked! :) My husband is an engineer (need I say more?) and his favorite color is probably any shade of beige. I make him crazy with my colors. I'd love to have lime green walls in my bedroom, with purple carpet! Not glow in the dark, hideous lime . . but just a hint of lime, a very happy shade of lime! One day we're going to have a house that we plan to keep forever and that's exactly what color my bedroom will be and . . I'll already have lots of quilts to match. I want happy colors. I want colors that make me smile. I am so surprised Vince and I ever got married. Remember, his favorite color is beige. We met on the internet . . oh, my gosh. Can you believe it? But it was 13 years ago when things were safer (and I was braver). After months of e-mail and talking on the phone, we decided the safest thing to do was meet halfway so we'd each have our own cars and if we didn't like each other, we could just leave. He lived near Atlanta, I lived in Lake Charles, LA. So, we met at Navarre Beach, FL. Well, I had on black pants and a shocking hot pink jacket with some kind of jewels. He must've wondered right then about me. The second time we met, I had on a very bright (almost neon) lime green outfit and we were waiting outside in line at a restaurant. This little green lizard hopped out of the bushes and almost landed on my shoulder. He kept hanging around and Vince said "he thinks you're his mother because of that outfit." I still have both those outfits but they're about 20 sizes too small! Back to the quilts, I do want to be effective with the colors I choose. Here's an example of colors that didn't work and with just a simple change, they did work. This was a stash quilt and like so many of my quilts, I start out without a clue what fabrics will be used. This is from Judy Martin's book, Shining Star Quilts. The center of the quilt on the left just did nothing for the quilt. Most of the time, I would have said, heck with it and left it but because this quilt has purple and green and orange, (my favorites!), I wanted it to be right. So, I auditioned a few fabrics for the center, decided the orange worked better and then removed the center and replaced it with the orange. That quilt still isn't quilted. I was recently working with an editor of a magazine and we were going over a couple of designs and she told me that my colors were just too bright. She said she couldn't imagine those quilts being used in most bedrooms. So, I tried to tone things down a bit. I was working on a pattern and I made the colors a bit more "normal". When I was talking with the buyer for Brewer Sewing, she told me that she had just returned from quilt market and the only thing people were buying were brights and she thought I'd be better off to make the cover quilt using bright colors! Go figure . . you can't please everyone so I think I'll just try to please ME! I say . . have fun! If you're happy with the colors you're working with, you'll be happy with your finished quilt. Judy

Opinions Please!

2006-06-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

First, several have left comments with questions. Your comments come to my e-mail, as well as being posted in the comments section here. I love receiving comments but some of you have your settings so that all I see is "no reply" or "anonymous" when I try to reply. When you ask questions and your settings are set to where I can't hit "reply" and send you an e-mail, then I have to go back into the comments section, find your questions and post the answers here. So, if you want an answer to any of your questions, you need to change your settings so that I can hit "reply" to your e-mails and it will work. Second, I did a podcast with Catherine at QOV and it is now posted. For those of you who read what I write, you can now hear what I say! Not like there's anything really earth shaking but I talk about . . quilting! :) You can get there by going to QOV Foundation and clicking on "podcasts". The audio is kinda bad in the beginning, gets better towards the middle and then gets bad again towards the end. OK . . here's where I need your opinions. On the quilt I am working on, the border is from Quilters Cache and I don't want to run into any copyright problems so I decided I should change it. I don't feel comfortable if I ever decide to enter this quilt in a show having used her pattern, even though I wasn't going to piece my border like she has hers . . it's still her design. Here are two options that I came up with. Don't forget you can click on the picture and make it bigger. Here's what I would like for you to tell me. (1) You like the one on the left best. (2) You like the one on the right best. (3) Neither of these are as good as the one from Quilters Cache. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I'm loving this quilt and I want it to be right and, if I didn't want to know what you really think, I wouldn't ask. If the majority thinks neither border does the quilt justice, I'll just keep playing til I get it right. And, if you don't want to post your opinion publicly, you can e-mail it to me: Laquidara@gmail.com And, don't worry about my green and purple blending. It kinda looks like it does in these pictures but the green is so bright! I don't think there's a color on earth with which it will blend. I would probably not have chosen this green at the quilt shop but it was in my stash and it's going to get used! :) Thanks! Judy

Friday!!

2006-06-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to get more blocks done today but I did get 6 more made so I now have 12. If I get 6 more done tomorrow, I'll have all 18 of these blocks done. There's actually two blocks done in each color although they look very similar in the picture. I'll add some more variety of pink and orange tomorrow and then re-arrange them and there's always the alternating block between the so they won't look so blendy .. I hope. I always pay attention to the comments you all leave and I think a lot about what you all say. Evelyn, a couple of days a week, when I feel really sleepy, I will take a 30 minute nap in the afternoons. I set the alarm (cell phone) or I'd sleep all afternoon. In fact, today I hit the snooze button twice! Laurie, Laurie, Laurie . . How can you lose your quilting motivation? Come see me, I have enough to share with you. I never get tired of quilting. Laurie Ann, I play games and little challenges with myself. I feel like if I get up early, I've beat the day but if I sleep late, the day has beat me. I love getting up early. I always feel like I'm racing to get things done in the mornings. The whole day is a head of me and I don't want to waste a minute. By evening, I'm trying to finish the things I had planned to do and didn't get done and I hate going to bed before I finish the things I planned to do. To those of you who posted about color, I really thought about that today too. I probably have the worst taste in color of all quilters! I really don't stress about the colors but I don't stress about a whole lot of anything. I think I enjoy the process of choosing the fabric, the design, cutting the fabric, sewing the fabric way more than actually having a finished quilt. So, I guess the real pleasure for me is the actual "doing" and once the quilt is finished, well, for the most part -- it's just another quilt and the fun part is over for me. I made bread this morning. I'm always trying new recipes but this is the one I love best. It's kind of a packy, heavy bread (not terribly light and fluffy) and it is a tad sweet. It reminds me of the bread the cafeteria ladies made when I was in elementary school. Here's the recipe if anyone wants to try it: Old Fashioned White Bread 2-1/2 cups milk, scalded 3 T. shortening 1 T. salt 4 T. sugar 1 package dry yeast 1/4 c. warm water 7 cups all purpose flour, divided Melted butter or margarine Combine scalded milk, sugar, salt and shortening. Stir until shortening melts. Cool to 105 - 115 degrees. Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large mixing bowl. Stir in milk mixture and four cups flour. Beat two minutes at medium speed of electric mixer or until smooth. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts, 45 minutes. Punch dough down, gradually stir in approximately two cups of flour. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead in remaining one cup flour. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 to 10 minutes. Place dough in a well greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts for about 20 minutes. Knead dough in bowl two minutes. Turn dough over and let rise 20 minutes. Repeat kneading and rising procedure. Punch dough down, turn onto a lightly floured surface. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Divide dough in half, and shape each half into a loaf. Place in two greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pans. Cover and let rise, free from drafts, for approximately 45 minutes. Bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes or until golden brown. Remove loaves from pans. Brush with melted butter and cool on wire racks. Last but not least . . Chad and I got a hankering for lobster for dinner so we ran to Wal-Mart (the only place around here to get live lobster). We cooked everything on the side burner in the grill so that's why it's all sitting on the grill. Yummmmm . . .

Make it 38

2006-06-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Guess which two quilts I forgot! The one on the left was already done but the two on the right were almost the last two I finished. These were for the "Do You EQ? Contest". To answer some of your questions, yes, I do have a longarm and I love it! I have a husband who travels a lot and an 18 year old son who only needs mom for food and clean clothes so I have lots of time on my hands. Think how much I could get done if someone would take away my computer! :) Judy L.

Do you hate to sleep?

2006-06-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

I think sleeping is such a waste of time . . when it's time to go to bed but when it's time to get up, I love to sleep. If I had my way, I'd stay up most of the night and sleep til about 11 a.m. but I don't think I've had my way since I was about 3 years old. The alarm will go off at 6:30 and I will wish I'd gone to bed earlier and will promise myself to do better . . but I never do. Anyway, how can I be expected to sleep when there are quilt blocks on the design wall and I don't have a clue what I'm going to make. This is what I've come up with so far. The border design is from Quilters Cache and I've been wanting to use it for something. Thoughts?

A Play Day

2006-06-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

First . . I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings about my post on kits. I really am not opposed to kits and probably wouldn't have a clue if something was made from a kit or not, unless it's one of the ones that you see everywhere! I'd probably not buy a kit because I never get things right the first time and I'd be up a creek if I messed up and ran out of fabric. My point from yesterday is probably that I have so much fun playing with EQ and then digging through the stash, that in my opinion, those who only make quilts exactly like those they see in books/magazines are missing half the fun but . . that's the part I think is fun. Thankfully, not everyone is like me! :) OK . . enough of that. Make any quilts you want to make . . just have fun! I have been so busy making quilts but for the most part, the fabric choices were not necessarily ME. It was about this time last year that I signed the contract for the book and just off the top of my head, these are the quilts I've made in the past 12 months:

22 quilts for the book - I like all the colors I used but I was trying so hard to get a nice variety, and most of my favorite colors aren't really what would appeal to anyone else. Ten of these are quilted, twelve remain to be quilted.
4 quilts for two patterns - These are always done in colors that will hopefully attract buyers, again not necessarily what I would choose.
Two heart quilts for the American Quilter magazine - I was able to choose the colors.
Two quilts - one of which is scheduled to be in the American Quilter project issue. The second one was to test the pattern before I cut the fabric that was to be used for the magazine quilt.
Two quilts for the November Evansville tornado victims.
A baby quilt for a lady who had a personal crisis during Hurricane Rita. I also sent her a quilt but it was one I already had made.
The quilt for my uncle - I had it started and it matched the backing fabric I wanted to use.
One for the Mission of Hope Project.
One for the Quilt of Valor mystery.

That's 36 quilts and only a couple of them were quilts that allowed me to get in the stash and play! Chad was off today and he went fishing again, Vince is in Louisville at a woodturning convention so I figured if everyone else was going to play, so was I. After spending some quality time with the stash, I decided to do something with batiks, then I narrowed it down to using pinks, oranges, purple and lime green. Those are my favorite colors and I figured what would be better than combining them all together. This was a block that is in one of the quilts in the book and I've totally changed the directions for making it so I wanted to be sure I had it right so I made this block. Still not exactly sure what other blocks will go with it but I want it to be a two block quilt. The plan now is to make 18 of these blocks, all in shades of oranges and pinks. The center is purple. I have a couple of ideas about the alternating block but I need to get all these made first so I don't confuse myself. Definitely a fun day for me! Judy

Quilting . . Then and Now

2006-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I'm alone and quilting, my mind wanders. Today was one of those days. I was thinking about all the quilting gadgets that we have now that our grandmothers didn't dream of having. I suppose it was these new Fons & Porter pins that triggered my thoughts today. I had heard a lot about these new directional pins although I didn't have a clue what they were. Last week I headed to Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon intending to buy these much talked about pins. I think you are supposed to use the pins labeled "D" when sewing seams that will be pressed/sewn down; the ones labeled "R", when sewing seams that will be sewn/pressed to the right. Maybe because you really can't teach an old dog new tricks but I stood there and looked at them, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed the pins would confuse me and I didn't get them. I did get the new Fons & Porter glass head pins that also come in the nice tin. I was thinking about how my grandma quilted. Life and circumstances were hard in her times. They grew their own food and she worked hard in the fields alongside my grandpa, they had no air conditioning and that's almost unbearable in Louisiana. Yet, she found time to sew and quilt. Her patterns were either from the newspaper or patterns friends had given her that they had traced onto newspaper. There were no cutting instructions, no pressing instructions, no fabric requirements and yet there were some gorgeous and much coveted quilts made in those days. Now, the patterns tell us everything! Quilt shop owners tell me that unless the samples are made of fabrics currently available in the shop, they don't sell. People want exactly what they see. No imagination! Quilt patterns have yardage requirements, cutting directions, sewing directions, pressing directions, quilting directions, binding directions .. I am hearing complaining now that some patterns do not include the quilting directions. No imagination! Kits are very popular and I'm surely not knocking kits but I'm just thinking . . I don't want my quilts to look exactly like 500 other quilts made from the same pattern, same fabric, same quilting design. What do you think the next generation of quilters will have that we don't have? I can't even imagine! I guess if I could imagine it, I could create it and sell it and get rich! But I think of the things we have that our grandmothers didn't have:

Electric sewing machines with perfect 1/4" feet, some have built in even feed (yes, I want a Janome 6600). The machines have needle threads, and thread cutters.
Rotary cutters with all the perfect rulers
Templates - there are templates in all sizes. Templates for cutting pieces, templates for quilting designs
Fabric calculator - this is a new tool and I love it!
Longarm, shortarm and mid-range machines for doing the quilting on the machine
Electric Quilt software. I suppose just the computer itself was so foreign to my grandmother that software to design quilts would have blown her mind.

There's probably no real point to this post but if anyone wants my advice (yes, I know -- no one wants my advice!) I would say be creative. Don't limit yourself to what someone else has written. Magazines and quilting books are a great source of inspiration but if you only follow the instructions, you will never know what you might accomplish. When I get a quilting magazine (and I get plenty!), I'll often take a design in the magazine and draw it out in EQ and play around with it and change a few things. I rarely make anything exactly by the pattern. You may be 100% thrilled making things exactly by the pattern but my challenge is to try just a little deviation, you may surprise yourself at what you can do. Judy L.

Monday, Monday!

2006-06-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

What do you think about this quilt? I started this probably 7 or 8 years ago and ran out of the yellow. I had a plan but I've now forgotten what the plan was. I like it and I want to finish it but really have no idea what to do next. I think I want it not to be square but I don't know. As it is now, it's 50" x 50". Suggestions are welcome. I doubt I have any of the fabrics left but since they're all kinda tone on tone, I think I can come up with fabrics that will work. This will probably be one of the first quilts I work on when I finish my other commitments. So . . tell me what you think I should do with this. Chad has a friend who has joined the Army and is leaving 6/28 for Ft. Benning, GA. Chad was off today so they planned a fishing trip. They left here at 6:30 this morning. It's amazing that getting up early for a fishing trip is perfect acceptable but getting up early for work or to travel on a family trip just ruins his whole day! Chad had told me they would be home around 1 p.m. but then he called and said they were catching tons of fish and would be staying til about 4. Then he called to say they were staying til dark. They got home about 8:30 and I know they were both so tired! Chad loves to fish like I love to sew and I was happy he and Matt were able to spend some time together before he leaves. I quilted the quilt with the purple/ecru nine patches using the "Fancy This" panto by Jodi Beamish. That is one of the new pantos I just received and I love it! Jodi has the best pantos! Sewed the binding on another quilt so I had a pretty productive day. Tonight was our Monday night quilt group. I worked on binding . . which is what I seem to work on every time we meet. We had been meeting at Kentucky Wesleyan College but we've recently changed to Settle Memorial Methodist Church. The churh has a quilting room set up. They have a big cutting table, all the mats, rulers, two Janome machines, a big board type ironing board and even a hand quilting frame set up. What a place! Judy L.

Happy Father's Day

2006-06-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

I don't really have any pictures of my dad, unless you want the one with his bloody head from cleaning up after Hurricane Rita so this is one of mom and dad together. . . ok .. that picture is gross so don't look at it if you don't like blood. After the fact, it was funny. Dad was trimming limbs that were on the roof, one popped back and hit him in the head, cut his head and broke a tooth. He tried to send the dentist bill in to FEMA and they wouldn't pay it! He didn't expect them to pay it and was kinda joking about even sending it in but he figured . . what the heck . . it's worth a try. He was showing this picture to everyone and telling them that FEMA wouldn't pay for his damages! Anyway, I called dad to wish him a happy father's day and he had gotten up at 4 a.m. to go to DeQuincy (about 25 or 30 miles from home) to pick four bushels of purple hull peas. Thankfully they have a pea sheller so mom already had them all in the freezer. I think I have the best dad in the world! He honestly knows everything about stuff that matters. When we were growing up, he could solve every problem we ever had. I now know that some of the things I remember about my childhood probably aren't exactly as I remember them. I guess it's that way with most kids. When Chad was probably 7 or 8 and I was a single mom barely surviving, I managed to save enough money to buy season passes to Astroworld in Houston. We could easily drive to Houston, spend the day and then drive back home in one day but I would watch for weekend specials and if I could find a reasonably priced room and if we had leftover cash, I'd get a room and we could go to the theme park for Saturday and Sunday. That summer, we may have gone to Astroworld 5 or 6 times. The other day Chad and I were talking and he said "mom, remember the summer we had season passes to Astrowold and we went EVERY weekend?" So, some of the funny things I remember about my dad may not be as mom and dad remember them but, from my memory, they are:

We would always go out in the woods for our Christmas tree. Dad would sometimes cut down 2 or 3 small pine trees (that's about all there is in southwest Louisiana that will work for a Christmas tree) and then he'd saw limbs of one and either nail them or tie them to the one tree we were going to use to fill in the uneven spots so we always had a perfect Christmas tree.
Dad could fix everything. Back when a normal person could work on cars, I came home one day and told him there was something wrong with my Mustang. I couldn't tell him what was wrong but it was definitely something. Going up the I-10 bridge, it just didn't want to go. I told him the best thing I could describe was that the back wheels were trying to catch up with the front ones! He thought about it a minute and decided it needed a tune up . . and that solved it.
Once we had gone to town, back when Sears was in downtown Lake Charles and dad lost the car keys. I just knew we were going to spend the night on the sidewalk but he opened the hood, hot wired the car and home we went!

Dad is the type dad that never had to tell us twice to do something. He said what he wanted/expected and we knew exactly what he meant. No waivering, no need to whine and beg, no need to sulk .. what he said was how it was going to be. In high school, when skirts were a bit too short and I was one to push the limits, I'd start to leave the house and dad would say "you forgot your skirt!" No use pretending I didn't hear him or didn't know what he meant . . I knew my only options were to change clothes or stay home. I have never seen my dad lose his temper at anyone and I've never heard him say anything mean about anyone. Dad can get along with everyone and he would help anyone in need at any time. I'm pretty lucky to have him for my dad! Judy

No News!

2006-06-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

There's absolutely nothing of interest to report from my little spot in Kentucky. So no one fears that I have fallen off the face of the earth, here's what not so newsworthy events have taken place here:

After the post about not being from here and the wheat berries, I got the urge to buy a mill and grind my own wheat and make my own flour. Tracey helped me out a whole bunch -- she mills her own flour. Just today I found a local co-op where I can order wheat and all kinds of other good stuff but they just ordered so it will be a month before I can order. It doesn't matter because I just yesterday ordered 25 pounds of flour from King Arthur.
The new dishwasher and microwave arrived today. Even though we hadn't paid extra for installation, the delivery guy felt pity on us and installed the microwave. Vince installed the dishwasher tonight so now I can have clean dishes and melt butter! :)
On the quilt front, I'm hoping to finish the quilt with the purple/white nine patches tonight so I can maybe quilt it this weekend. Chad is off tomorrow and Vince is always off on weekends so I may not get much sewing/quilting done.
Made Ciabatta Bread and Patty's Cinnamon Rolls today. Yum! I do love bread (and it shows!) I can't find her recipe on her blog now but they are so good!
My friend, Becky, has a real garden and she gave me onions, potatoes, zucchini and some HUGE cabbages so I spend a day making cabbage rolls for the freezer.

That's about it . . told you it was nothing exciting going on around here. Judy

Recipe - Crockpot Beef Stroganoff

2006-06-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

It seems I go in spurts - sometimes I love my crockpot and sometimes I don't use it for months. Here's a recipe I made for lunch tomorrow and it smells so good. I did have a little taste and this is a recipe worth sharing. I buy chuck roasts when they're on sale and I chop them up to make stew meat. That way I can cut away the fat I don't want and I feel like I'm getting better stew meat. Crockpot Beef Stroganoff 1-1/2 pounds beef stew meat (I used a cut up chuck roast) 1 T. oil 2 cups sliced mushrooms 1 medium onion, sliced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 tsp. oregano 1/4 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. thyme 1/4 tsp. black pepper 1 bay leaf 1 can beef broth 1/3 c. dry sherry 1 - 8 oz. carton sour cream 1/3 c. all purpose flour 1/4 c. cold water fresh parsley 1. Brown the stew meat in the oil. Drain on paper towels. 2. Combine mushrooms, onion, garlic, oregano, salt, thyme, pepper and bay leaf in crock pot. Add stew meat. Pour broth and sherry over all. 3. Cover and cook on low heat for 8 - 10 hours. 4. Remove bay leaf. Turn to high heat. In a medium bowl, whisk sour cream, flour and water til smooth. Stir about 1 cup of the hot liquid into the sour cream mixture. Return all to the slow cooker. Stir. Cover and cook an dditional 30 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley. 5. Serve over cooked noodles.

Cleaning the Cutting Mat

2006-06-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite tips. Do you know that you can use these little bath scrunchies to clean your cutting mats? I could never get all those threads and fuzzies off the mat - they just want to roll up and stick to the mat but these little scrunches just brush them right off. Last time I was working on a black quilt, the black fabric trimmings just turned to what looked like coal dust and made the biggest mess on my mat. My yellow scrunchie was almost totally black by the time I was finished so I threw it in the washer and it's good as new now. If you have a dollar type store near you, they usually have bags of the little scrunchies for $1 or so. Judy L.

Wasted Days/Wasted Nights

2006-06-12T18:06:00.001-07:00

Maybe not really wasted but not much sewing around here the last couple of days. I did get a bunch of nine patches made last night. I do love nine patch blocks. There's more that goes with each block so that these 3" nine patches are in the middle of a 9" block, and there's sashing too, and then more 3" nine patches in the border. Saturday our heat index was in the upper 90's and my poor little house stayed so hot. The A/C kicked in about 10 a.m. and at 11:30 p.m., it had not shut off once and it wasn't nearly cool in the house. I opened the windows and it cooled down and thankfully yesterday was a fairly cool day. This morning I called the A/C repairman and figured he wouldn't get here for a few days but when I looked at Accuweather Saturday, it showed our heat index for June 20 to be 101. Thank goodness it has changed and it is now saying it will be only 97. I know some people like summer but I hate it! Anyway, I was just hoping the A/C man could get here before June 20 so when I called first thing this morning, the answering lady got in touch with a repairman and said there was one in my neighborhood and he would be here when he finished the stop he was on. I still had my pj's on so I took the world's quickest shower, washed the dishes leftover from last night, mopped and vacuumed in about 10 minutes. Guess what! He didn't even come in the house but the front part of my house sure looks nice. So, he gets here and I knew the filters were dirty because you have to about take the whole unit apart to get to them and there are screws in there that scrape your hands and I can't change the filters and Vince hadn't been around enough to do it. We don't actually change them but take them out and wash them. Yes, they were dirty. They need to be washed every couple of weeks during the summer. But, it was the outside unit. The guy asked me when it had been serviced last. Serviced? We put it in four years ago so it hasn't needed servicing. WRONG! How was I supposed to know you're supposed to wash that outside unit at least once a year? The bad part was that the dryer vent blows about 2" from the outside unit, and all that fuzz and lint goes right into the unit and attaches itself to the coils so they were all clogged up. Oops . . won't happen again. Now I know! He told me to clean the outside unit every 6 months because of where the dryer vent is located. So, if you have a central unit and you haven't cleaned the outside unit in a while, go do it! Cool air again! I'm ready for whatever heat index Mother Nature has in store for me but I'm definitely ready for Fall! It was mostly a day of running errands. Chad was off today and we spent most of the afternoon running around . . bank, library, Lowe's, insurance agent, photographer (got my new pix . . anyone notice the new bio picture?) Got a bunch of new pantos from Jodi at Willow Leaf Studio. I'm anxious to quilt them. I always love her pantos. Maybe I'll load a quilt tonight and do one of them tomorrow. Yesterday I downloaded Thunderbird and Firefox and am so happy to be using both of those again. I had never switched from IE and Outlook since getting the new computer. Tomorrow is another whole day by myself. Chad is working all day, Vince is still gone so I'll get a whole lot done . . I hope! Judy

Perspective!

2006-06-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Owensboro! What a funny little town. I'm not saying I don't like it here . . it's just the strangest place. I guess what causes it to be this way is that most everyone who lives here would be a descendant of those first settlers who arrived in Daviess County in 1780. Why they stopped here, I will never know. But, they did and if you can't trace your roots back to there, you might as well stamp "I'm not from here!" on your forehead. You may not believe this but there is rarely a time that I go out that someone doesn't say "you're not from here, are ya?" I used to say "No, I'm not. I have all my teeth!" But I soon learned that was offending to the natives! Anyway, I went to Hancock's today to get something to cover my tomatoes. The bread store is right close so I stopped by there. They have the most wonderful bread and my friend, Becky (who is from here and will not like this entry!) gave me a gift certificate from there for my birthday. Thanks Becky! They had this little flower pot of "seeds" sitting on the counter with ink pens in it. I should learn to keep my mouth shut (not gonna happen) and no one would know "I'm not from here!" but I said "are those some of the seeds you use in your bread?" I could tell from the look I got that they were not seeds used in the bread and I should have known better. The nice lady proceeded to explain to me that they were wheat berries. Now, how many of you know what wheat berries are? She explained that every morning they mill the wheat berries for the bread and she told me the difference about how you get white flour by shelling (I don't think that's the word) the outer part of the berry off. It was very interesting and then she said "haven't you seen wheat growing?" Yes, but just from the road. Then came the dreaded "You aren't from here, are you?" No, damn it. I am NOT. She was so sweet and she wasn't being mean at all . . it's just something *everyone* around here says! I guess I looked at her like I was offended and she said "That's ok . .you're just not a country girl!" On the way home, I'm thinking . . what am I? I'm surely not a city girl! I have a rabbit living in my back yard who has decided he's part of the family. I have tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, flowers and herbs growing in my back yard. I have a generator because we're so far out in the county and the power goes off in the winter for days. My home address is a highway number . . not even a cute street name. I have to pay extra for UPS deliveries because I'm rural! Goodness. City folks would think I am a country bumkin! This is why I should move back to Louisiana where I'm just ME! It doesn't matter where you're from, where your grandparents live, and I doubt anyone there knows about wheat berries! I did get netting and covered the tomatoes. I probably should go out there and weight down the bottom of the netting with bricks. Probably won't get me on the cover of Progressive Farmer magazine but I think this will keep the Japanese bettles and the birds away. Judy L.

Almost Missed the Weekend!

2006-06-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

I am definitely turning into my grandmother. I never know what day it is anymore. Vince is out of town, Chad works almost every day so . . how was I to know it was the weekend? Guess it doesn't really matter if it's a weekday or a weekend but after having worked for so many years, I will always love weekends! Anyway, Chad left to go to work and he told me he was going by the bank on the way home. I told him I needed to go so we could go when he gets home since he gets off at 2 today. But, the bank closes at noon on Saturday. Vince is in NY and I knew he was going to his brother's for the weekend. He called this morning to tell me he was at Louis' and I said . . wait a minute . . is today Saturday? Yep, sure is. Oh, well, doesn't really matter I suppose. My garden is so happy. I honestly think if I sit out there long enough, I can see the plants grow. My favorite tomato is Juliet, a mini-Roma. These babies are just the right size . . they just need to get ripe. Trying to judge by where I had the different plants planted last year and the plants that came up volunteer, I hope I might have 4 or 5 of these plans. One plant will produce more than Vince and and I can eat (and I eat a LOT of them!). Chad would die before he'd eat a tomato. I'm afraid I'll have more Mr. Stripey than anything else though and that was a good eating tomato but not so good for canning. There are so many birds out there and I know they're watching the same things I'm watching -- tomatoes! I think I will run to Hancock's today and get some cheesecloth. My little patch is so small, it will be fairly easy to cover it enough to keep the birds out. Once the Japanese Beetles get here, there will be no cheesecloth to be found in this town. My first callas are blooming too. I have pink and white ones. The yellow ones didn't make through the winter year before last and now there's no room to put more so I'll have to live with pink and white ones. My neighbors dig theirs up every fall and then start them inside in pots. Way too much trouble . . so far mine have come back every year, with the exception of the yellow ones. Zucchini is blooming. I think I now have enough basil that I can make pesto this weekend which will make Chad very happy. Hollyhocks are blooming. I'm trying to watch them and cut the spent blooms and remove any seed pods. Those rascals come up everywhere. I think they're harder to control than mint! On the quilting front, I plan to do the final writing on three patterns today and then spend the evening sewing. Here's the fabric I'm going to use today. Notice it has lime green and purple . . it will be a fun quilt for me to make. Hope everyone has a fun weekend! Judy L.

The Cost of Homemade

2006-06-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

This morning was spent cooking instead of quilting. If you do not like to cook or if you truly do not have time to cook, and I know some of you do not, then this whole entry will probably not interest you. I'm really not cheap but I hate wasting money. Before you ask, buying fabric - even fabric I'll never use is not wasting money. I've already settled that in my own head. We rarely go out to eat and it's simply because we don't really enjoy eating out. I'm not knocking going out for dinner and when we travel, we eat out and enjoy it. I think it has something to do with fact that I usually have to get dressed because a T-shirt with holes in it from the pins on the longarm, no bra, ragged jeans and lime green Crocs aren't appropriate for leaving home. So, by the time I shower, put on makeup, get dressed . . it would take less time and hassle to cook in my own kitchen with my holey T-shirt, ragged jeans and lime green Crocs, right? It is dang expensive to eat out. We ate at O'Charley's for my birthday Monday and for two of us with one appetizer, two entrees, two soft drinks and the tip was over $40. This translates to about 5 yards of fabric in my brain. One morning last weekend, we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel. With drinks and tip, it was over $30. That would buy a little over 3 yards of fabric. Think about it . . would you rather eat out twice or buy 8 yards of fabric? I know exactly what I'd rather do. Then I began to think about how much it costs to cook at home. My goodness! Almost nothing!! Have you ever figured it out? I'm amazed. If I'm careful and watch the sales, I can cook really good meals for less than $10 for 3 of us. If I do just a little planning, I can cut my kitchen time in half too. When I was living at home (as opposed to living at the house in town . . I am not homeless), for many years I would do all my cooking on Monday for the entire week and I would make extras so that on the 4th week, I didn't have to cook at all. I'll go back to doing that when I get back to my larger kitchen and freezer space. Here are some examples of my cheap meals at home. Kroger has green peppers on sale this week for 3/$1.00. This morning I made stuffed peppers. I made 14 but I ate one for lunch so you only see 13 in the picture. Here's what it cost: 14 peppers - $4.63 2 pounds ground meat - $7.20 2 cans tomatoes - $1.40 1 cup raw rice - .10 seasoning - .10 onion & garlic - .25 cheese - $1.00 Tomato soup - $2.00 (Wal-Mart brand is .48) Total cost - $16.68. That comes to $1.19 per pepper! I'll freeze them on the cookie sheet and then put them in individual ziplock bags, then put them in a big freezer bag and just take them out one at a time as I need them, let them thaw, put the cheese on top, pour tomato soup around them and bake them. One dish to wash and no hassle to have dinner on the table . . and a very good dinner! I love stuffed peppers. Figure I add a salad which could easily cost upwards of $4 if I'm buying tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, black olives, radishes, etc., a can of green beans and two of us could eat for less than $8. Tonight we're having smoked chicken. I'm smoking two chickens and the total cost was $7.10. Chad will eat one breast and I'll eat two wings and maybe part of a breast so we'll have one whole chicken and 2/3 of another one left over. The cost for tonight's chicken is probably less than $2. We'll have some kind of frozen veggie (they're on sale for $1/bag at Kroger this week), eggplant/tomato salad which probably costs about $3 to make but it will be enough for at least two meals. Maybe I'll fix beanie weenie for Chad and that might cost .75. We have a Cookshack smoker and we love it! I smoked a brisket when mom and dad were here and they loved it so much, they went home and ordered themselves one. I think they smoked chickens yesterday. It's so easy to use. I used a rub on the chickens yesterday, let them sit in a Ziplock bag in the fridge overnight. Stuck them in the smoker this morning about 8 with 2 oz. of apple wood and they were done at 1:00 p.m. The skin doesn't get crispy in the smoker so I'll stick one of them in the convection oven for a few minutes before dinner. The smoked chicken is great for other recipes. I'll take the leftover chicken off the bone and divide it into about 1-1/2 cup sizes and freeze it for chicken enchiladas, chicken salad or King Ranch casserole. I have rolls rising that probably cost less than .50 to make so tonight's whole meal will probably cost less than $6. These rolls are great. They're called Jailhouse Rolls and the dough keeps in the fridge for at least 10 days so once it's made up, all I have to do is roll them out and let them rise. I've made these rolls for years. They were something we always had at family night dinners at church. Here's another one . . a bit more expensive but still a great meal. Tomorrow night we are having flank steak. The marinade (fresh ginger, honey, soy sauce, olive oil, cider vinegar) probably cost about $1.50. I paid $13 for the steak, $1.25 for the potatoes for baking. Add another $1.50 for potato toppings. Chad doesn't eat salad so I'll slice a tomato for me so that's another $1 and we'll have rolls again, which adds another .50 to make so there's a great meal for $17.75 and because the potatoes are huge and the steak is more than we can eat at one meal, I'll have leftovers for my lunch the next day so the meal really is less than $17.75. Yes, yes .. it does cost some amount to prepare the food at home, whether I'm using the smoker outside, the gas grill, or the stove inside. But, I'm betting it costs less in energy costs to cook the food, and clean up the kitchen than it does in gas to get to the restaurant and back! Looks I like just earned myself a trip to the quilt shop! :) Judy L.

The Quilting Journey

2006-06-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

I love sharing pictures of my quilts and talking about my quilting but I sometimes think it can be a little intimidating to new quilters or to those who have less free time for quilting. So, here's the "rest of the story" to help put it all in perspective. The quilt shown above is my very first quilt. I obviously started quilting in the early 80's. It is all pieced and quilted by hand. How else would a good quilter make a quilt? I started a few others but can't remember another one that was totally hand pieced and hand quiltd. At some time during the late 80's and early 90's, quilting took a back seat to smocking and French handsewing (by machine) but as you can see, I went back to quilting. The discovery of machine piecing changed everything and that's when my *real* quilting began. I was working part-time and Chad was young (and wild!) so my quilting time was pretty limited. I hand quilted a few tops, mom hand quilted one or two and I had some of them quilted by a longarmer. In 1997 we moved to Kentucky and I no longer worked outside the home. We bought a house that had several acres, with woods and a shallow pond nearby, and no neighbors. Chad was in 4th grade and when he wasn't at school, he was outside playing hard! I suddenly had lots and lots of time for quilting and the tops began piling up. I wasn't able to find a longarmer here who would do the type quilting I wanted and that's how I ended up buying my own longarm. As I mentioned in a previous post, mom counted 90 quilts here. I have gone back and tried to list the quilts I've made. I know I'm not remembering all of them and wish I had kept better records but in addition to the 90 that are here, I have listed 55 that I have given away so that means I've made at least 145 quilts, with most of those having been made in the last 8 - 10 years. You may be wondering how I have time to make so many quilts. It's all I do! Today is a good example. Chad left at 7:30 for work and will be home at 5:00. Vince is out of town. Other than doing a few household chores, I will quilt all day. I won't leave home, I won't see anyone else . . I will spend the entire day quilting. Chad probably has plans for the evening so I will quilt all evening and half the night. I won't leave home, I won't see anyone else . . I will spend most of the night quilting. That's how most of my days/nights go. I am very thankful for my quilting obsession. One day things may be different. We may live where we have family closer, or where we've made friends and I'll have less time for quilting but for now . . quilting keeps me sane. Judy L.

Someone Loves My Quilts!

2006-06-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

The good news is that we were able to get enough stuff out of the garage that we can now get two vehicles in there. It has been years since I could get two cars in a two car garage but, thanks to the kid across the street who would slit my tires in a heart beat, the garage now houses what it was meant to house . . cars! The bad news is all the stuff that was in the garage is now inside the house. This is a tiny little house and if you imagine nine rolls of batting and at least 90 quilts (my mom counted!), along with all the other stuff a packrat type quilter has in a tiny little house, I probably need not describe our current state of crowdedness. Anyway, until I can find a safe place to put all the rolls of batting (not enough corners in this place), I have a couple of them laying in the middle of living room floor. I didn't want them standing because I was afraid they would fall on Speck. I had been working on the binding on this yellow/purple quilt and laid it across the rolls of batting and look who decided it was a comfy place to sleep! The solution to this overcrowding as I see it: Each roll of batting should be enough for 10 quilts so, as soon as I've quilted 20 quilts, the two rolls of batting will be out of my living room. Only way to get that done is get up an hour earlier . . . who needs sleep? Judy L.

A Quilter's Garden

2006-06-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

If you've read my blog any time at all, you know that all I do is quilt! I clean house just enough to get by, I do enjoy cooking but seem to be doing less and less of that lately. I do love fresh tomatoes and I always try to have some kind of a little garden. At the house in town, the back yard isn't much bigger than a peanut. We had a mild winter and that means volunteer tomatoes are everywhere! It's so hard to pull those rascals up and toss them and they have just about taken over. I wasn't sure what was coming up since I had several kinds last year and I definitely wanted some Romas so I bought four plants. At last count, I have 35 tomato plants growing in this tiny little spot. There's also a couple of parsley, cilantro, pepper and eggplants in there somewhere amongst all the tomatoes. And, what do you think I'd use to tie them up? Leftovers from the strips of fabric and that makes the plants so pretty! They all have bright colored cotton ties. There's a hole that I've been trying to fill in and I throw all my weeds and rocks and dirt clumps in there and what do you think I have growing down there now . . tomatoes! Here's a little corner where I have basil, parsley, ginger lilies in the green pots, callas and some lavender. Pretend you don't see any weeds! :) It's all a little weedy but I can't do everything, right? Judy L.

A Very Neglected Friend

2006-06-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

I love longarm quilting and never ever get tired of working with that machine but I have not touched it in about three weeks. There's normally rarely a day I don't use the machine so this has to be a record. I was busy getting ready for mom and dad to get here (translates into I'm a slob and it took at least a week to get the house halfway decent), then we had graduation and I've just been plain old busy. See what happens though when the machine isn't getting used daily --things are beginning to pile up on it. Yep, I am a quilter and I do not take time to clean house and put things away! Tonight I will finish piecing the bright star quilt with the dyed fabrics and maybe get it loaded. I think I'm going to do a panto . . it just needs to be finished quickly! I'm thinking I might do Jody Beamish's Starflower using gold thread but I have time to change my mind. Judy L.

Quilt Industry and New Quilt Magazines

2006-06-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, or was it the week before that .. sometime fairly recently, Quilt Market happened. I'm on the Quilt Designers group and there was a big discussion about whether quilting is becoming less popular. Seems as though market was kinda slow for some, while others reported that it was great. Probably pretty typical I suppose. It further seems as though there are many quilt shops closing but from what I hear, there are quilt shops opening. After having been to the Paducah show, if there's any slacking in the industry, I surely didn't see it! While I don't have any answers, I just don't see the quilt industry suffering too much. Yes, the price of fabric is getting sky high, the cost of getting quilts done by a longarmer is pretty expensive so some of us may be cutting back a bit on what we spend. The online shops sometimes have better prices than the real storefronts and I do order some online but there's nothing like the experience of feeling and fondling the fabric. I cherish the advice of my local quilt shop owner, Betty. What I got from the discussion on the designers' group is that the quilt industry just needs to continue to move forward. New ideas and techniques sell. And, speaking of new ideas, there are two new quilt magazines available. The first one is Quilter's Home. I knew it was coming out and had been looking for it. This morning Vince offered to take me to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I wasn't about to pass up that offer. He wanted to stop at Wal-Mart after we ate. NO!! I have nothing against Wal-Mart but when I need something from there, I go early in the morning during the week, NEVER on Saturday. He promised to be quick and he was but while I was tagging along, I thought maybe they had Quilter's Home. I had gone to Books-A-Million yesterday looking for it but it wasn't there. Yep, Wal-Mart had it so my trip there was worth the while. Mark Lipinski is the editor. I think this magazine is going to be a big hit! There are the normal type projects in this issue but there's so much more. And, they're on pages that are meant to be torn out, whole punched and saved! There are recipes! I've often wondered why quilt magazines didn't have a few recipes in there. We all have to figure out how to get something on the table every now and then. This is the kind of magazine you really read . . cover to cover. There are funny stories! I was laughing out loud. I even read a couple of stories to Vince and he thought they were funny. Quilter's Home is new and it's different - and I like it a lot! There's a lot of good stuff in there! There's an article on copyright, which has been a hot topic lately. There's an article on podcasts which I need to try. I recommend that you all buy this first issue and see if you are not impressed. The second new magazine is Cotton Spice. The first issue isn't out yet but the online issue is available at the web site. This one is published by Karen Murphy Gass. She is doing it all on her own and I can't imagine what a challenge this must be. I've read the online issue and am looking forward to receiving the printed issue . . maybe next week! Karen has been a quilter for years and if you read the online issue, you will see her story about starting Cotton Spice and her thoughts on the need for a magazine with "contemporary fresh" ideas. I believe this will be another great magazine and have already subscribed. Congratulations to Mark and Karen on having a dream and taking the steps to make it happen. I wish you both much success! Judy L.

It should be Illegal!

2006-06-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

Do you ever think we have too much fun with our quilting? You know why I'm thinking that? You all know about my goofy neighbor. Really, it's just one. The rest of them are great but you know what they say about one bad apple. Last night the mom was absent. In fact, I think she had been gone for a day or so. The kid is 14 and he's really a problem child. Beginning about midnight, they decided to have a party but they weren't using the door. They were going in and out the house through his bedroom window. And, they were loud! It was after 3 this morning when I finally fell asleep and I think it was from pure exhaustion . . not because they finally calmed down. Anyway, I was looking forward to going to bed early tonight but what do you think happened? This pile of fabric began calling to me. Remember when I bought dotted fabric back in April, I had three quilts to make and I saved this one til last because I knew it was going to be so much fun. I got the other two done, plus those two for EQ and I couldn't wait any longer. I've made all the sashing strips and am just now starting on the blocks. The brights were a gift from dear Vicky from Starr Design Fabrics (hand dyed) and they feel so good. They are fun, fun, fun to work with. I love dots too so I knew this was going to a delight for me to do. The picture above is part of one block, part of the sashing, doesn't look like much now but it will be really neat when it's done. I have everything started but not enough done to really look like anything. I can only hope to get some sewing time this weekend but . . it might not happen. Oh well . . there's always Monday, right? Judy L.

Entries are Submitted

2006-06-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

The entries for the Do You EQ? Contest are due June 16 but my goal was to get them in the mail by June 1. I just now handed them to the mail man. Here are all three of them, Stars in the Meadow, Memories of Navarre and Licorice Delight. I finished the binding on the black one (Licorice Delight) late last night and hopped out of bed not long after daylight to get pictures of that one and the log cabin star (Memories of Navarre) before the rains got here. Have you ever really thought of what goes into making a quilt, especially if it's a quilt you want to enter in a contest? Not that the contest quilts always get more attention during the making process but there are all the extra steps.

Decide on a design. It could be something we've seen in a magazine or a purchased pattern. Or, we could draw it all out using our favorite software. Mine happens to be Electric Quilt. If we're designing it ourselves, we have to figure out the instructions and how much yardage we need.
Choose the fabric. Do you make the quilt just like the one in the pattern? Do you use your favorite colors? Do you use the colors that match your decor? Do you buy the newest and greatest fabrics at the local quilt shop? Do you just use whatever's in your stash?
Make the top. Now we spend days or weeks or months making the tops. I always have fun at first til I see how it's going to turn out and then I get a bit bored with doing the same blocks over and over.
Quilt it. Do you quilt it yourself? By hand or by machine? Do you send it to a longarmer? If you quilt it yourself by hand, that takes a long time. If you quilt it by machine and you do it on a sewing machine, that's not an easy task if it's a big machine. If you send it to a longarmer, that gets expensive and you may have to wait for months if your longarmer is really busy.
Bind it. I try to make the binding when I finish piecing and I try to put the binding on as soon as I take the top off the longarm. Then I have the hand work to do and I always think I'll save that til some time when I have nothing else to do . . which never happens.
Label it. Don't forget the label. That is so important and I am guilty of not always adding the label but I'm almost always sorry when I don't.
Block it. Do you block your quilts. Every now and then I can get by without blocking one. Licorice Delight was not blocked and it hangs very straight. Not sure why they are sometimes straight and sometimes not and I seem to always do them the same way. To block mine, I lay them out in the family room floor with a sheet between the quilt and the floor. I use the flower head pins and pin about every inch or so, spritz with water and let it dry.
Photograph it. When I first began entering contests, I paid a photographer $100 per quilt to photograph my quilts. Most shows required slides and there was nowhere around here to have slides made so I'd deliver my quilts to him, he'd take the pictures and in a week or so, I'd get my slides. The $100 per quilt was beginning to get expensive so I found a place online where I could e-mail digital pictures and they would make slides for me. This meant I needed a 5 MP digital camera so I bought a new one. It was about $500 back then but the 5 MP cameras are cheap now. I still love it though and have no desire to get a new one . . yet. Most of the shows now allow us to send in photos on CD's that we make at home.
Forms to fill out. Every show/contest has different forms. I'm really not very organized and getting everything filled out, all the requirements as to pictures needed, fees, etc. is the hardest part for me.

It all makes me very tired just thinking about it! :)

Judy L.

Rhonda's Winning Quilt

2006-05-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

Edit: Thanks to Folk-Artist, the pattern used in this quilt is by City Stitcher. The pattern is Patchwork Diamonds. This is a whole picture of a quilt I shared here back in April. It is one I quilted for Rhonda Adams from Virginia. I've quilted for Rhonda for several years and she does excellent work. I knew it was a quilt to be entered in a show and I received an e-mail from Rhonda last night that it won 2nd place this past weekend at the 16th Annual Southern Maryland Quilt & Needlework Show at Sotterly Plantation. This photo showing a closeup of the quilting was posted back in April but I'm posting it again for any new readers to see (and, I love it so I might just post it again one day!) I love doing this kind of quilting with all the feathers! Rhonda always gives me freedom to do whatever I think fits and that makes it even more fun. Congratulations and thanks, Rhonda! Judy L.

Quilting on the Sewing Machine

2006-05-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Deputy's Wife mentioned the other day that she was going to do some quilting on her sewing machine and asked me if I had any quilting tips to share. When I share pictures here, it's usually of quilts that turned out nice, quilts that I'm really pleased with. What I don't show here are the quilts that start and the blocks just don't work because of poor color or design choices. I don't show the quilting that is just about to get ripped out because the tension was off or because the design I chose didn't work. My best advice is the same advice I give for most every situation: never give up! Have you ever seen Diane Gaudynski's work? I'm not sure what kind of machine she's using now but most of her earlier works were done on a regular Bernina . . 930, 1230, something like that. Every time I look at her work, for a brief moment, I think I want to go back to quilting on the sewing machine. Her quilting is just phenomenal! And I am just crazy enough to know that if she can do it, I can too. And, so can you! She has an excellent book, Guide to Machine Quilting. If you need a book on machine quilting, that one is an excellent choice. I pulled out some of the first pieces that I machine quilted. These two were done on the sewing machine. While they're not going to win any awards, they don't look too terrible from the front, if you don't look too closely. The first one is one that I drew out in Quilt Pro and I haven't used that software in probably 8 or 9 years so this is a fairly old quilt. It has a label but .. no date! Another reason to put all the necessary info you might ever need on the label. I was very unsure about my machine quilting ability (for good reason!) and I drew out even the meandering with a pencil. The quilt hasn't been washed yet so you can see my lines still there. While it surely isn't necessary for most of you to draw out meandering lines, it did give me some good practice with following lines. My next best advice is to use a print backing! I used muslin on both of the quilts I will share here and every stop/start showed, the stitches are not uniform and it is very obvious. I was so brave (or maybe dumb) but I used ecru thread in the bobbin and purple thread on top and didn't bother to work with the tension so there are purple pokies showing everywhere on the back. Those may be less noticeable after the quilt is washed but they would not have shown at all if I had chosen a printed background. I love using muslin on a backing because all the quilting shows but there are so many drawbacks to using a solid.

All the stops/starts show.
Stains will show and I think it's so ugly to see stains on the back of a quilt.
If you ever need to make a repair, it's much easier to camouflage a patch when there's a printed backing.

Next quilt is a baby quilt that I'm saving for my own grandchild (not even a twinkle in anyone's eye yet!). As is usual for those of us with pets, Speck seems to like it. This is another one that the front looks ok from a distance. I must have been feeling pretty uncreative when I was coming up with quilting ideas because there are some ugly half circles quilted in the border. Every boo-boo shows on the solid backing. Keeping these quilts and looking at them from time to time reminds me how far I've come. I still have a long ways to go but as long as I continue to see improvement with my quilting, I'm happy. And, if anything I say here helps another quilter along the way, I'm doubly happy. So, I guess my machine quilting tips are:

Never give up. No matter how bad it looks, the next one will look better.
Use a printed backing to keep stops/starts and uneven stitches from showing.
If you do something that is so awful that you can't stand it, take it out and start over. But, if it's just something you wish looked a little better, you might consider leaving it, counting it as practice and moving forward. Ripping takes forever and for me, it's easy to give up and feel like a failure when I spend more time ripping than sewing.
Use a thinner rather than thicker thread. This will make it easier to adjust the tension and I've found it is easier to get a good stitch (without having either the top or bottom thread appear to be laying on top of the fabric). My favorite right now is Superior Masterpiece. Bob has some good tips on the website about tension too.
Using a matching thread in the top and bottom with reduce the chance of the pokies showing through. Also, if you use a thread that matches your top fabric, you'll be more pleased with the results. Using a highly contrasting thread will result in every little imperfection (uneven stitches or curves that aren't quite smooth) showing.
A thinner, cotton batting is great! Not too thick, not slippery. Quilters Dream Cotton is my favorite. I like the Select but the Request is great too. It's a bit thinner and works better for sewing machine or hand quilting than it does on the longarm.
When you have been away from the machine for a day or so, always practice with a swatch before starting on the actual quilt. You'll be surprised how much difference it makes if you just practice on a scrap and get the movements down again.
And, don't forget - never give up!

Judy L.

Quilts for Hurricane Victims

2006-05-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

A fellow longarmer, Faye, from the LongarmChat group has been working tirelessly to get quilts to Katrina victims in Pass Christian, MS. Faye's church in TN has adopted a church in Pass Christian so she asked for quilts we might could send. I found two in my stash of quilts that were totally finished and two more that have the binding almost finished so I'll get at least four off to her Tuesday. Here are the two that are finished. The first one will be for a little girl. The fabric doesn't show up very well but there are fussy cut ballerinas in the squares. I think most little girls love pink and purple so hopefully this will make someone feel very special. The second one is a pretty basic quilt pattern and I did feathers using variegated thread. It's purple and pink too. Maybe this one will be good for a teen girl. I think I'm going to make a couple more quilts using this pattern. I like it and it leaves room for fun quilting. It's been a busy weekend around here. Chad got a job!! He started working this morning at Kroger as a stocker. He'll work there full time through the summer and be able to work part-time after school starts in the fall. Vince has been looking for several years for a new lawn mower. Vince is one of those kinds of people who researches and researches and then thinks and then does more research. If I needed a lawn mower, I'd go out and buy a lawn mower! In 1997 when we moved here, he bought a Yard Man riding mower. I'm not saying Yard Man is a bad mower but I'll bet I can count on one hand the number of times the grass has been cut . . start to finish . . without that lawn mower breaking down at least once. Last summer Vince decided it was time to get a new mower. Surely not yet! :) The Yard Man now had no fenders, had been on fire several times and in general, looked worse than most mowers you find in a junk yard. Anyway, someone told Vince about a used mower a local mower shop and Mr. Bargain Hunter rushed right over and bought it. I was with him and the whole time I was saying "I wouldn't buy it!" He paid $700 for it and I don't think he ever managed to make it work. It now has a thrown rod (whatever that means) so we had no choice but to buy a new mower. Yesterday, we spent an hour or more at Home Depot. I refused to go to Lowes for another hour and look at the exact same mower and ask the exact same questions to a different sales person. So, he didn't buy one but came home and did more research. We left Home Depot thinking he was going to get the Cub mower but he went back this morning and bought a Toro. Haven't seen it, don't want to see it but I hope it lasts at least 20 years and we never have to buy another mower! I did get a good bit of sewing done yesterday and today. These are all the "A" blocks for the new quilt. The "B" blocks will be finished tonight and tomorrow I will set all the rows together and add the borders and have it in the "to be quilted" pile. Off to finish the "B" blocks! Judy L.

Quilts of Valor

2006-05-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

Please don't forget all of our injured military men and women returning from the War on Terror. As quilters,I think most of us tend to express our gratitude in the form of the art we love - quilting. If you haven't been involved and would like to, there's plenty of info on the Quilts of Valor website. Also, there's a mystery group. We aren't really that mysterious! :) Nancy Miller and I try to alternate doing mystery quilts for the Quilts of Valor project, although Nancy has done most of the work since I've been kinda snowed under. I'm hoping to help out more. Anyway, we just finished up one mystery and Nancy has another one starting in mid-June. That will be #6. I have #7 already drafted so we're pretty productive over there. If you'd like to join that group, you'd send an e-mail to: quiltmystery-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Here's the drawing of the Mystery #5 with borders added. The mystery didn't have the pieced borders but I love pieced borders and I like for the quilts I send to be a little larger than the minimum 50 x 60. This one is 66" x 86". I think that's a better size for a big man to snuggle under anyway. You are welcome to download the pattern and use it for whatever purpose you'd like. It's a pdf file and you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader which you may also download for free. For the real quilt, I used the Moda 76 Trombones line and the quilt turned out really pretty. Can't find the picture of the real quilt right now but I'll find it eventually. This Memorial Day weekend, my very special thanks to all who have given so much that we may remain free! Judy Laquidara

Where are the Parents?

2006-05-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

No, we do not have snow in May but this is the only picture I have of the neighborhood . . showing how close the houses are. I've learned so much living in this neighborhood for the last 4 years. I've mostly learned that if I never have another neighbor, I will be very happy! We were up very early yesterday for mom and dad to leave. They ended up driving all the way home, which I had not wanted them to do so I stayed up til they called to tell me they were home. I went to bed about 11:30 and noticed that the boy across the street was out in his driveway working on someone's car. This kid is about 14 and we've had so much trouble with him. Mom works nights and kid stays by himself. At 2 a.m., they cranked the stereo up so that the stuff sitting by my bed was vibrating. That's not going to work! At 2:30, I finally called the police. Our police are so good! They were there (3 cars -- must've been a slow night around town) within about 5 minutes and the noise stopped but in the process of shutting down the stereo installation, they bashed in their garage door somehow so at 3 a.m., they were hammering and banging and cursing. Oh well . . at least they bashed in their own garage door and not mine, right? I had planned to spend almost the whole day sewing but instead, I took a 4 hour nap so I guess I'll spend the whole night sewing! :) Judy

Dependable Appliances - NOT!

2006-05-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

Does anyone have appliances that actually work and last as long as you think they should? Wouldn't an ice maker seem like a simple enough part of the fridge? This fridge isn't a fancy smancy one but goodness . . it's just an ice maker. We needed a basic fridge when we bought this house 4 years ago. We bought a Roper. The ice maker has been worked on once, replaced once and is barely cranking out ice now. It says to allow 48 hours for the ice bin to fill. I don't think it would fill in 48 days. I refuse to dump ice trays because (1) I am the only one who would do the dumping and filling and (2) This is the onlyl freezer I have in this house and I need every square inch of it for other stuff. I just want the ice maker to work but apparently that is never going to happen. The dryer - I had told Vince a few weeks ago that I didn't think it was drying. Oh, how I wish I could just have a clothes line at this house. He made sure the outside filter thing wasn't clogged. OK, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm impatient. But, while mom was here, the one day I was sick and went to bed, she decided to do laundry and she told me "I'd get rid of this dryer today if it was mine!" So, dad and Vince took it all apart, checked the heating element and whatever else they could find and there's nothing wrong with it. So, is a Whirlpool top of the line dryer supposed to take 3 cycles to dry an average size load of towels? NO!! And, the dryer is 4 years old and it has been repaired twice! Vince changed the thermostat in it yesterday and we'll see if that fixes the problem. The dishwasher - We finally gave up and washed dishes by hand because we would start to unpack it and half the dishes were still dirty. It's almost 2 years old, a G.E. and hasn't been worked on yet but the dishes sometimes seem worse after the dishwasher is finished than before. The microwave - The kitchen is so tiny and there's no place to put a microwave so for a while, we had one out in the garage. Then about 2 years ago, Vince took out the stove vent and put in one of the microwaves with the vent above the stove. It didn't work long. The door is cracked and you have to hold your mouth just right to get it to work. Sometimes it just comes on by itself . . for no reason. It isn't actually microwaving when it does that but it sounds like it is. This morning we had enough. Went back to Home Depot and bought a new dishwasher and a new microwave. Vince is going to be gone for most of the next few weeks so they won't be delivered til June 16 but at least I know something better is coming soon! Maytag dishwasher, which the Home Depot lady said was one of their best ones and a GE Spacesaver microwave. Not a big Maytag or GE fan but hopefully they'll be better than what I currently lhave. Thank goodness for my Bernina sewing machine and the APQS longarm because they work! Judy L.

Quilts for Mom

2006-05-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I had made a Delectable Mountain quilt, entered it in the Nashua, NH show and it won a ribbon. My dad just loved it so I gave it to him for his birthday that year. Later I found the perfect fabric for making a Stack & Whack so I made a quilt using that fabric for dad and for Vince's brother. My mom is a quilter. She hand quilts and makes beautiful quilts so I never made a quilt for her. You know how it's kinda hard to make a quilt for a quilter! While she was here, she had one of Eleanor Burns' books .. the one with the log cabin, bear paw, trees, etc. She showed me a quilt that she wanted to make and I had already made that quilt so I showed it to her. Ohhh, she loved it! She was writing down where I had put all the colors so I asked her if she wanted the quilt. YES! She did. Kinda surprised me that she wanted it but she did and that was fine. On another day, mom was going through all my quilts and she asked if she could take another one. I told her yes .. pick it out. She couldn't decide between this black one and the blue batik quilt I had posted a while back. I told her to take them both so she left with three quilts. She was thrilled! I was so surprised. Dad told me that mom could never figure out why I had given him two and given her none but he had explained to her that she makes her own and she said that didn't matter. You just never know, huh? They left here this morning around 6. It's always so hard to say goodbye . . especially when I don't even know when I'll see them again so I had a kinda sad day. We've had pretty rough storms tonight and my phones are out but the DSL is still working. Can't figure that one out but I guess if I have to give up anything, the phone is the one I'd choose. Judy

Graduation

2006-05-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

We made it through graduation with just a few tears. Isn't my boy cute? I'm so proud of him. These past 13 years haven't always been easy but I'm so pleased with him. The teachers have had wonderful things to say about him, he ended up with a decent GPA, is enrolled in community college for fall and probably has a job lined up. I'm surely not giving advice to parents but I will say . . hang in there. The teen years can be rough but at our home, after Chad turned 18, there was a drastic improvement. Always know who your kids are with and make sure they know how much you love them . . even when you have been disappointed with each other. My parents leave early in the morning so there will be more tears. I wish I wasn't such a cry baby! Mom almost finished her Halloween wall hanging so she'll finish it after she gets home. Dad needs the computer so . . that's it for now. Judy

Word Progress

2006-05-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, we are having so much fun! We've ripped more than we've left in because we're talking and not paying attention and seem to be doing everything backwards. I've learned a lot from the letters we've done so far. Tonya's instructions are on Bonnie's web page and they are so fantastic! Speck is not a friendly little critter and he has tried every way he can to bite mom and dad. After them feeding him several chunks of banana (his favorite!) and sneaking him some brisket, I think he's decided he can catch more flies with honey! Here are mom and dad sitting on the sofa and guess who's sitting between them under the blanket! So far, so good. No sudden moves by anyone and we may make it without anyone being bitten! Tomorrow is graduation. I am never sick and what do you think? I came down with the worst sore throat imaginable. I wince every time I swallow. Now my ear hurts. Can't wait to take Nyquil and go to bed tonight and get to the doctor first thing in the morning. Oops . . I hear barking in the living room . . Judy

Bread & Ghosts!

2006-05-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Here's Vince's salt rising bread. It doesn't have yeast and I'm not sure how it all works (those kinds of details don't really excite me -- just give me some butter for this yummy bread!) so it doesn't rise up a whole lot. This batch should probably have been three loaves instead of four. It's a real packy type bread with a definite sour flavor. I love to cut it into cubes and let it sit out overnight and it turns into crunchy croutons. It takes a couple of days to make it and I think I'm just too impatient. Mom's guild has a challenge and here's how it worked: They took two index cards, drew a crayon out of a box without looking, drew a circle with their crayon on each card and then the rules were announced. They gave one card to the president and they kept one. They have to make a quilt (and it can be very small but can't be very big - I think each side has to be at least 12" but it can't be over 24 x 24) using that color they drew and black and/or white. They can use any shades of the color they drew. Mom drew orange and she was in a panic. I told her I would help her come up with something and I'm thinking Tonya's letters would be great. I drew it in EQ using their letters but I think while mom is here, we'll work with Tonya's letters and see what we come up with. Judy

Strange Sight!

2006-05-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

There's a man in my kitchen! Oh, wait . . that's my husband! This is not a sight I see often! :) He's making salt rising bread. I don't know why it won't work when I try to make it but he can make it work! It's smelling really yummy about now. This house has probably the tiniest kitchen allowed in a house. We were both in the kitchen making bread this morning. I had started making pizza dough to cook on the grill. I didn't know he was bringing his salt rising starter over from the other house so we had flour everywhere! It all worked out. The grilled pizzas for lunch were great. I was thankful I had made the pizza sauce last night. The bread is on it's final rise now. We were so out of room in the kitchen that he has it all in his car rising! Speck loves laying in the sun. Look how he's stretched out in the one spot where the sun is shining through. Notice he has his bone and a sock right close by. Such a funny little dog. And, then there's the bunny! Chad used the finer mesh and built a fence around the grape vines. This morning I caught him nibbling on my zucchini so Chad built a fence around the basil and zucchini. Now he's decided to munch on the day lilies. He was so cute at first but I think it's about time for him to find a new home! He's hardly afraid of us at all. We can get within a few feet of him. He went running right by Speck this morning but he was so fast, Speck hardly even noticed him. No sewing today . . except I did sew the sleeve down on the red star quilt. Maybe tonight I'll have a few minutes to work on some log cabin blocks for mom. Judy

Red Star for Judy! :)

2006-05-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

. This quilt needs a name too . . any suggestions? I feel like I should be getting a gold star! Here's the log cabin star that I just finished quilting. I ended up just doing some little free form feather type designs instead of a stenciled design in the squares and triangles. I'm glad to have this one done. I'll add the binding tonight so while mom and dad are here, I'll sit and work on hand work. Here are a couple of pictures of the quilting in the triangles and border Our poor bunny . . Chad is wanting bunny gumbo! Yesterday I was out buying tomatoes and peppers and herbs. Chad wanted to plant grapes so he got four grapevines. Bunnies must like grapevines because they have all been stripped . . not a grapeleaf left to be found. I have some of that green meshy type material and we put it up but it the holes were big enough that bunny could get right through it so we need to buy the mesh with the smaller holes. Oh well, Chad probably wouldn't like home grown grapes anyway! :) Judy

Log Cabin Report

2006-05-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

It was not good! I took my camera and didn't even take a single picture. On the way home, Vince said he knew when I hadn't taken a single picture after just a few minutes that I was not impressed. They had never finished the inside. The floors just had the subflooring with lots of open spaces. They've had critters in there that have made a pretty big mess. They've had a pretty good attack of wood bees/beetles and what the bugs didn't damage, the woodpeckers going after the bugs damaged. There's a sump pump in the basement and it appears it had overflowed. I can't even remember what else wasn't right but it was very unimpressive. I guess we should have known . . when the price seems too good to be true, there's a reason! The land, the view and the gardens were gorgeous. But there's no way we were interested in a house needing that much work. I really felt bad for the man who owns the house. He's about 80 and pretty frail. He doesn't live out there and apparently doesn't go out there much. He had big plans for the place but just lost interest. Thanks for all the good wishes and encouragement about the log home though. Judy L.

Finishing UFO's

2006-05-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

If you aren't a quilter, a UFO is an unfinished object. Most quilters seem to be starters vs. finishers. I haven't quited figured out why I don't do a better job of finishing my quilts, although I do finish quite a few. I love the planning stage - deciding on a pattern/design, then I love choosing the fabrics, whether I'm buying new fabrics or pulling from the stash. I love making the first few blocks to see how it all goes together, but then I lose interest. It can get pretty boring to keep making the same blocks over and over. When we moved to KY in 1997, I began going to estate sales and auctions. I realized that finished quilts, almost no matter how badly they were constructed or how worn, would sell and quite often, sell for way more than I thought they were worth. Half finished tops or even neat little bags with all the cut pieces organized and waiting to be constructed, wouldn't sell at all. I began to think . . when I'm gone, do I want my half finished tops or my Wal-Mart bags stuffed full of cut pieces and strips to be sold for $1 or $2? I've labored over choosing the correct fabric for the designs, and no one can make my quilts like I can. That's when I began to make a concentrated effort to finish my UFO's. Before beginning this post, I would have considered that I was doing an excellent job of finishing projects. After taking inventory, I think I might be failing miserably at finishing projects. This picture shows 25 tops that are finished and just waiting to be quilted. 25 is a lot of tops to be quilted! Think what that number would be if I didn't have my own longarm! On second thought . . don't think about that number! There are probably just as many that need the binding finished and I refuse to think about how many tops are started and not nearly to the point of waiting to be quilted. I will do better! I will make an effort to finish more tops before starting others. As to the log cabin . . NO! Not the log cabin that we're going to look at in 6 hours (but who's counting?), I'm about halfway finished with the quilting on the red log cabin star. I'm thinking . . the last two quilts I have done have been log cabin related - the black quilt has those little cabins in the border and now this red one has log cabins that make up the center. I so rarely make anything with the log cabin block. Maybe that's a sign??

Quilt Challenges & Dogs

2006-05-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Do you love quilt challenges/contests? I do! The fabric shown above is the challenge fabric for the "2007 TQP Challenge". TQP is a yahoo group - The Quilting Post, and every year we have a challenge. One year, we chose a yellow/blue floral and everyone had to use that fabric somewhere to make a Blooming Nine Patch from the book Tradition with a Twist by Blanche Young. One year the challenge was to make something using the book, Totally Tubular, by Rita Hutchens and you had to use a certain amount of brown fabric. Anyway, this year the challenge is to use the above fabric in at least 25% of your quilt not counting the borders and background. Contests/challenges result in pushing my limits, trying things I wouldn't normally try and I enjoy them immensely. Thanks for all your tips/comments about the log cabin. My mom says a cabin is a one bedroom/one bath camp and this is not a cabin so . . call it what you wish, I'm calling it a log cabin and I have decided that I can be brave and I can learn to stay by myself after dark or at least I can do it and not let anyone else know how scared I am. As far as getting a dog, not gonna happen. After my last chocolate lab, I swore I would never have a dog that is bigger/stronger than I am. Here's my dog story. We got Chip when he was a puppy and you know how darling labs are. Chip was a darling dog but he was enough to make dog lovers dislike dogs. He was an escape artist! We could not keep him in a fence, we could not keep him even inside one of those huge metal kennels. When Vince and I married, Chip was 5 years old so he was no longer a cute puppy but he was a beautiful full grown dog - strong as an ox! Vince did not like dogs . . not even a little bit but Chip was part of the "package" (which included me, Chad, Chip and the van, which was probably the worst part of the deal and we still have the darned van but that's another story for another day!) Anyway, Vince got to drive the U-Haul from Louisiana to Kentucky, with Chip riding right next to him. Chad and I rode in the van. So, we get to Kentucky and Chip had never lived out in the country and he barked all night for days and weeks. Thank goodness we had no neighbors! We finally had to get one of those collars that shocked him when he barked. Otherwise, none of us would ever have gotten any sleep! He was a digger. He had dug up half of my mechanical sewer system in Louisiana. Vince made sure he put him way away from the field lines. That dog would dig holes so huge that when he stretched out in his holes, he was totally below the ground. One winter, it got really cold and I insisted we bring Chip into the garage. He chewed the corner off Vince's work bench! Not good! The next winter, we brought him in but Vince kinda fixed up a corner so he couldn't get to the work bench. He chewed the corners off the steps going from the garage into the house! Not good! The next winter, Vince bought bales of hay and kinda fenced in his dog house with hay to keep the wind off him, then rigged up a light that put off heat because there was no way Chip was coming in the garage again. Chip would escape, we'd put an ad in the paper, find him and he'd stay home for a while. Finally, several years ago, he left and we never found him. So, if I were to mention getting a big dog, I would probably be living in Chip's old dog house. We're looking at the cabin tomorrow at 4:30. Keep your fingers crossed! Judy L.

Ye Rip What Ye Sew!

2006-05-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

My fingers ache, there are threads everywhere . . all over me, all over the floor, all over the quilt, all over the dog. Got the picture? Threads are everywhere. Sometimes I struggle with quilting designs. I marked this quilt Saturday afternoon after debating for hours about the quilting design. After it was marked, I hung it up and looked at it and it just wasn't right. I had used the water soluble marker so I spritzed it, let it dry overnight, came up with another plan and re-marked it all on Sunday. Started quilting this morning and it still wasn't right so what you see are the holes left from having ripped out the stitching. Thankfully, I had only done two squares before deciding it wasn't working. I can tell you these stitches go in a whole lot more quickly than they come out! Needless to say, I accomplished little today. But I have been thinking and thinking and . . well, thinking! Yesterday we went out to the neighboring county to look at a house DH thought might work. It didn't but we were taking the back roads coming home and we passed this log cabin sitting way back off the road and it had a "For Sale" sign on the fence. You could barely see the house from the road but we got enough of a glimpse that we both went "OHHHHHH". Vince stopped, backed up, turned around and we went back. The gate to the driveway was open so we drove in. OMG! You should see this cabin. It's 3 stories with a lake in front, a green metal roof (which I would LOVE to have so I could listen to the rain.) It was just like the log cabins you see in the magazines and it is gorgeous! We haven't seen the inside yet but I've hardly stopped thinking about it today. I'm trying to be reasonable but I'm not sure I'm succeeding. The negatives are:

We figured that we need about 3,000 square feet. That gives us room for a nice quilting room and we'd still have enough room to spread out. This house has more than double that.
Of course, the price is more than we planned to spend. I say it's not that much more. Vince says it's way more.
It is so far back in the woods and I'm such a chicken. You can't see another house anywhere near this place. I think I could stay there at night by myself but if we bought it, I'm not going to have any choice. Really though . . how scared can you get? I max out on the scared scale no matter where I am when it gets dark so does it matter if I'm scared in town or if I'm scared out in the woods?

Hopefully the brochure will arrive tomorrow and it will be just horrible inside and I can stop thinking about it. But .. for now, I can see myself quilting while looking out at the lake, listening to a gentle rain falling on the metal roof! Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Judy L.

The Black Quilt

2006-05-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone want to name this quilt? I have the hardest time coming up with names. Here it is, still covered in lint and threads but I looked outside and realized the lighting was maybe the best I can get in hopes of the stitching showing up. This quilt is 75 x 75 and I used a little over 6,000 yards of black thread with all the microstippling. I had originally wanted to use some variegated thread and had the perfect cone but it just didn't work out that I could use it. All of the feathers were the type where I have to backtrack and that wouldn't work very well with variegated thread. I thought about doing the microstippling with a very dark gray thread, almost black but it would have caused the background to be just a little lighter than the feathers and thus, the feathers would have shown up better. But, I really didn't think that would add to this quilt. I was afraid that by graying the black, the lavender and lime fabrics might look muted. So, I spent a week doing quilting that barely shows up! Oh well, what else would I have been doing? :) The black is the Amish Black from Keepsake but I think I will stick with the Michael Miller Jet Black from now on. The remainder of the fabrics are batiks. Every square inch of this fabric (except the backing) came from the stash. Here are a couple of other photos. Please excuse the fuzz, thread, lint and dog hair that might show up. I will clean it up before submitting any pictures for shows or contests. I still have to do the handwork so there's no use worrying about cleaning it til I'm finished with all that. This is a closeup of one of the center blocks. Four of these blocks make up the center. I did "stones" in the black area of the center, then did the stones in the longer lavender points. This was another area I hadn't planned on quilting but these points wanted to poof. Then the outer part of the points (purple/turquoise part) needed something. I was pretty much out of ideas at this point so I did just some measured straight lines using a purple/turquoise variegated thread. Next picture shows the feather motif that is in the inner border. This is a feather stencil by Pepper Cory (PC1841 from Stensource). This was the first time I've used this stencil and I loved it. I really like the long, slender, curvey feathers. I had not intended to do any stitching in the lime and lavender borders but when all the rest of the quilt is so heavily quilted, even the smallest area left unquilted will seem to poof and look empty. When I see a quilt that has this type area, I find that my eye goes to the poofy, unquilted area first and that takes away from the rest of the quilting. So, I did the stones in the black narrow area, then did half feathers in the lime and lavender strips. This picture shows the very outer border. The stencil used is a Judy Allen feather (GT-JA3 from Golden Threads). I added the "stones" in the center because I also have those several other places in the quilt and figured that helped bring it all together. This stencil was a fun one. So, now you know why my family had sandwiches all week last week! Judy L.

Heart Quilting

2006-05-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

A while back I shared the back side of the heart quilts that are in the American Quilter this month. I had hoped the quilting would show up better in the magazine but it doesn't. The Floral Passion quilt is in the magazine and the Hearts Afire version is on the web page for AQS members. This picture shows the quilting in the hearts of the Hearts Afire version. Notice the little feather that I meandered into the background. Have I said lately that I love quilting? I did finish the black quilt last night, actually very early this morning. I ended up having to wash the quilt to get the chalk marks out. I had hoped not to have to wash it but even where the chalk did come out, there was so much chalk dust everywhere that the whole quilt looked smudgy. So, I washed it last night, dried it for a while, then laid it out in the floor and blocked it. I left the ceiling fan on so it was all dry when I got up this morning. The binding is now on, the sleeve is on. The hand work remains to be done. I was planning to share a picture here but it's raining and the only hope I have of getting the quilting to show up is to take a picture outside. Maybe tomorrow . . Judy L.

Teacher Quilts

2006-05-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

You might think once my son graduates, I'd be finished making teacher quilts but apparently, it's just almost over. Earlier this year I told Chad I probably wouldn't have time to make quilts for his teachers this semester due to the other commitments I have. He was fine with that but this week, he's brought up a couple of times that he wished we had made quilts for two of the teachers he had this semester. The third teacher is a man and Chad didn't think he'd really be interested in a quilt. Then he said . . oh, and there's Mrs. Cook. I've had her three times and she's never gotten a quilt. He has had Mrs. Cook for three different nine week classes and it always happened that it was not a quarter that ended at Christmas or the end of the year and I just never made her a quilt. Today I noticed Chad going through my stack of quilts. He said he was just looking to see if there was anything he thought his teachers might like. I told him I would make them quilts but they wouldn't get them til next year. He was fine with that. So, I sent them all e-mails and explained that they would get a gift but it would be next year and asked about their favorite colors. So, I have a blue quilt, a red quilt and an "any color" quilt to make. Chad's happy so I'm happy. As I was looking through the pictures of the teacher quilts on my webshots page (they're not all there because I either never took pictures or forgot to post them), a couple of my favorites are: This quilt was was made for Mrs. Orgeron. She was Chad's third grade teacher when he was at Hamilton Christian Academy in Lake Charles. I've liked a lot of his teachers but I think Mrs. Orgeron will always be my favorite. She was so special that her quilt was even hand quilted!! It is made from Wendy Etzel's book, The Collectible Quilt. My next favorite was this Sunbonnet Kitty quilt from Janet Kime's book, The Cat's Meow. I even hand appliqued these cats! I've actually made this quilt twice. The first one was a gift to a friend's daughter probably in the mid-90's either when she graduated or got married . . can't remember. Anyway, this particular cat went to Mrs. Wells who was Chad's 7th grade English teacher. Chad always hated English but he loved Mrs. Wells and he did better in her class than he's ever done in English. Of course, Mrs. Wells loves cats! I know the teachers can all say nice things about Chad now that he's out of their classes but here's what they each had to say in their e-mails back to me:

I have enjoyed having Chad in class this semester—it was never dull!! One of the lessons I learned from him is how much kids relate to music. I have actually altered some of my lessons to include analysis of song lyrics, in part because of Chad. He is such a positive force and was always very respectful and kind to me.
I have loved having Chad in class. He is a very special, kind hearted kid!
I will miss Chad. He NEVER passes me without a big hello.

Now that makes a mom feel good! Judy L.