reporting in

I gave the demonstration on needle-turn appliqué at quilt guild this past Monday night.  Even though I thought I was fully prepared, I was nervous ... and more so when I saw that the woman who could probably be considered our guild's resident expert on hand appliqué in the audience.  I prepared a handout which made it to the guild's website along with a few pictures (I have no future as a hand model!).  I felt like I had a lot to cover in a very short time.  To me, the big challenge in hand appliqué is preparation of the work.  How do you put the pieces where they belong?  How do you mark the lines on which you sew?  I tried to cover a few ways to answer each of these questions as well as demonstrate the actual stitch technique (including points), but I'm not quite sure if it was too much information in too short a time to be helpful.  I am glad that I did it, though, because in researching the presentation I learned about back-basting, which can best be explained in this link from All About Applique.  It may permanently replace the freezer paper technique that I've been using.  Considering I first learned needle-turn appliqué in a half-day seminar taught by Piece O'Cake's Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins in Lancaster, Pennsylvania years ago, I won't feel too bad if I couldn't sum it up in 20 minutes.

My Honey left on a trip yesterday morning and won't return until Thursday.  Yesterday I worked out after work (I am up to twice a week and my mile run is now around 14 minutes) and then went to the grocery store before returning home to remember his words yesterday morning that we had no hot water in the shower (I often shower or bathe at night and wanted to last night!).  Sure enough, the best I could get out of the tap was lukewarm, which made for a very quick and uncomfortable shower this morning.  Luckily we have a shower in the ladies' room at the office, which I will take advantage of tomorrow morning before the plumber comes tomorrow afternoon.  However, we have no electrical outlets in our ladies' room, which means no hair washing (and drying).  Ugh.  If only I had had the foresight to bring a towel to work today.

On the bright side, his being gone means I can do some sewing tonight.  I would like to rearrange those Ready Set Star! blocks in a few other ways, sew a block for my son's quilt, and maybe piddle a bit on some other projects.  Stay tuned for photos

If you aren't already aware, Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, volume 4 is being released and the quilting blog world is talking about it.  Go to Quiltmaker's blog and get in on the fun to win an issue or other prizes!  I was fortunate enough to have won volumes 2 and 3 this past spring and one of my UFOs is from those issues using blocks designed by Quiltmaker's own Denise Starck.  She has now created an adorable paper-pieced hat:

to go with her earlier blocks already planned for my quilt - the purse and shoes!

Of course, I only have one pair of shoes done so far but seeing her hat has gotten me itching to get back to it.

New handwork project

It's been a week since I last blogged, or really sat down to work on the baby quilts.  I'd better get a move on, since they were born yesterday!  Yes, they're very early, and weigh less than three pounds each, but they're here, and they have names (for labels), and they will need quilts when they leave the NICU.  So it's back to the machine I go tonight.

In the meantime, I've been doing more handwork when I've been sewing at all (the weekend was a projects-around-the-house kind of weekend, although the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee have been drenching us for days, so Monday became a movie marathon day with hand sewing).  I pulled out this very old project last Thursday night for sewing at Kitty's and have continued working on it during my TV time:  a reproduction 1930's Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top.

This is what I have had put together so far, and below is another flower in progress.  I use the Quilt Patis to piece.  I believe I'm using the 1" per side hexagons.  Interesting story - a few years ago, I was in Columbus and near Pati Shambaugh's Picking up the Pieces.  I stopped in to meet her and buy some more Quilt Patis, and she signed my package for me.  :-P

 The fabrics are the result of an internet swap from YEARS ago.  I spread out the baggies of the pieces on the coffee table and see one of my own there with my address in Delaware, which we moved from in 2002.  This was probably done well before that since most of my quilt swaps were before my son was born in 2000 and I got busy with sewing for him.

It should be a fun project to continue sewing as it grows and grows.

My Honey is away for the next few days and while I worked last night until almost 8 PM, tonight I plan to leave right at 5 to devote myself to finishing the quilting on the baby quilts and making some binding.  I would love to finish them over the weekend on the drive up to Maryland to see the kids and then get them in the mail early next week before Tuesday's surgery.

Kaleidoscope!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Kaleidoscope quilt I'm making for my dad is going together so beautifully. 

I'm making 9" blocks, and I'm using two fabrics that I purchased at Patchwork Plus in Dayton, Virginia.  The white is really a white with very pale blue fern batik pattern in it.  The dark has a lovely pattern that makes me think of stones at the bottom of a river, with grays and blues and browns.  Here is an image I found on the web which gives an idea of what it should look like when all put together - I love the image of the curves:

Because the pieces are large and I stacked them when rotary cutting them, they go together SO fast.  There was preseason football on last night (Go Ravens!) and it's my habit to let it record on the DVR for at least a half hour so that I don't have to watch commercials when I finally sit down.  I think I zipped together about eight of these blocks in that half hour.  Wow!  I wasn't anticipating have this done as a Christmas gift, but at this rate, I just might!
I did finish hand piecing those Drunkards Path blocks last night - remember them?:

... so now I will need a new hand sewing project for Thursday nights with Kitty and to take to the beach next month.  Assuming, of course, that the house that's been rented for our beach vacation is still standing after Hurricane Irene blows through.

See where that black dot on the red background on the North Carolina coast is?  That's where the beach house is currently standing.  At least my family no longer owns a beach house ... hurricane season was always stressful.  On the other hand, my dad told me last night he's thinking about spending the night on his 43' yacht so that it doesn't break its moorings when Irene blows through his area.  I hope he lives to get this quilt!  Just kidding, he should be fine, especially if his girlfriend is with him - she's writing an autobiography about some of her most harrowing experiences in a lifetime of sailing around the world.

Anyway, I digress.  I wanted to share one of my favorite places on the internet with all the fabric shopping I've been doing lately ... great deals at Green Fairy Quilts (right now, everything is 30% off their already way low prices, including new precuts!) and Burgundy Buttons (a Bigger Big Giant Clearance Sale has me supplementing an earlier order) have me anticipating what beautiful Moda fabrics will be hitting my eager little hands soon.  So I go to Moda's website to download swatches and sample patterns to drool over while I wait.  If you weren't aware, Moda offers all kinds of goodies for their fabric lines, including images to import into your quilting software and swatch cards to view and print.  Many have free patterns to download featuring a new fabric line, and it's laid out so that you can tell at a glance which line has what, as well as sort by name of line, release date, or designer.  There are 405 fabric lines in this chart right now so it's not just the most current releases either!  How awesome!

The weekend is nearly upon us and I hope to spend a lot of it in my sewing room.  If you're in the path of Irene, take cover and take some hand-sewing project to work on by candlelight like generations of quilters before us.  Stay dry!

Happy Holiday weekend!

It's Canada day to the north, and Fourth of July weekend here in the States.  Lots of people are gearing up for a long holiday weekend, and I'm no exception.  I'll flip 10,000 miles on my new car this weekend (I got it at the end of January) and we are setting the over/under on weekend mileage at, I think, 1,036.  It will be close.  On the bright side, I will get to see a dear friend for the first time in almost two years - I attended her wedding and she has since had a baby who is now standing and possibly even walking.  I will also visit an aunt in the hospital who has just learned yesterday she has metastasized melanoma and it's terminal.  At the end of the weekend I'll get my son and bring him home with me for the next six weeks (excepting one weekend).

So I'm not taking any sewing projects at all, not even handwork.  Most of the time I'll be seated, I'll be operating a motor vehicle or fully engaged with other people, so the handwork is staying at home.  And this is what currently qualifies as handwork:  my first attempt at hand piecing (which is actually proving to be pretty fun):

At Christmas, my Honey gave me a lot of fabric - three or four different charm packs, and a Moda candy bar pack.  I've been challenging myself to work with them without buying a lot more to go with it.  I loved the colors of the Pure line shown above and couldn't decide what to do.  I did find a collection of four Pure fat quarters on our local shop hop in May, so I pulled out the charm packs and decided to use some templates to cut them and hand piece them.  I was able to cut one of each shape from each 5" square so there was VERY little waste, which I was pleased with.  Now I just have to decide how to put them together.  These Drunkard's Path blocks can go together in SO many variations, and having four predominant colors (white, tan, blue and dark brown) makes it slightly more complicated.  Any thoughts?

I'll enjoy the time off from sewing, because it will make me all the more hungry to jump back into my sewing room next week.  Of course, we'll have three children in the house so I don't know how easy that will be, but my Honey is taking the week off from work so maybe it will be slightly easier than if we were both working full time during the day.

Happy weekend, everyone!  Do you have any sewing plans?