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Work in Progress

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

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

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.