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Happy quilting!

Batik Beauty - Finished Quilt

Yay! I finished the batik quilt, which I decided to name "Batik Beauty." I listed it for sale in my Etsy shop but you can just enjoy the eye candy here too!





Happy quilting!

A Sad Day in the Neighborhood

After 10 or so years of fighting the village, my neighbors gave up the battle and chopped down their weeping willow tree.

The word on the street is that this tree is simply too big for the subdivision. It's almost as tall as the village water tower, arches over 4 backyards, and apparently is a nuisance because of the foliage that falls off in autumn. This tree was only going to continue to get bigger, eventually ruining the underground sewer, gas and power lines... but it surely was a beautiful tree.

I estimate the tree to be about 40 feet tall - judging by the height of the guy using a chainsaw to cut off the branches.

The argument was really about who had to pay for removal of the tree. The neighbor didn't want to pay because she isn't the one who picked the tree or planted it, and she thought if others thought it was a nuisance, they should be the ones to take it down. Meanwhile, the tree just kept getting bigger & bigger.

I'm not sure who had to pay for the removal in the end, but ultimately, down it came.



Happy quilting!

Busy as a Bee

I've been a pretty busy bee over the last several days. I decided that I am not going to enter the new year with more UFOs than I had in 2009. The projects are stacking up on my shelf, and there are several that I just want to finish & be done with. There are also a couple that I am deciding to abandon altogether (or I will eventually decide to abandon - give me a few days!)

I have 1 quilt that only needs a label, 5 quilts that only need the binding stitched to the back & a label applied, a top that is on my table being basted, and two that I am determined to load into my mid-arm machine & quilt on that. I also have several projects that are in baskets... 1 potholder to finish, a couple of 9-patch sets, placemats, and a bunch of others. Not sure I'll get to all of those since I also have 6 mini-quilts to finish for an art show. Geez!

I am also having a great debate on selling my mid-arm frame & just getting a table for the machine. If I sell a quilt bigger than a twin (which is about what I can handle with the mid-arm on a table) - it will get sent out for quilting, and my pricing will reflect that. To be honest, I really don't enjoy as much doing really large quilts, because they get pretty unwieldy, but maybe that's a function of me being scared of my quilting frame. :)

I've also been cutting up a storm with my Accuquilt die cutter. Well, I'm trying to anyway. My problem is that every time I pick up a piece of fabric, I hesitate to cut it because "what if" it would be the perfect piece I need to finish another project? Or, "what if" it would make a great handbag? But - in the end, I want to eliminate all the fat-quarter storage I have. I love cutting charms & tumblers. The only issue with the Accuquilt is that it does have a tendency to generate scraps, and I can't help collecting scraps! I have resisted the urge for the most part; I cut until I no longer have a die small enough to handle the scrap, and then I dump the rest in the garbage. The recycler in me thinks that is very bad... but I'm not sure what else could be done.

What do you do with your scraps?

I think my goal for tonight will be to load up one of those UFO quilts in the frame. It's the one I call a "Silk Throw" but is really just made of scrap "something" that isn't cotton. It's a fairly large piece that I think I can use to practice my stitching on before I get to the real big one. Wish me luck!

Happy quilting!

Batik Sneak Peek!

I wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at a project that I was supposed to finish in September. The Etsy Quiltsy team did a batik charm swap over the summer, and we were supposed to incorporate 2 other fabrics and make a quilt. Well, I had the quilt planned out, and pieced all the blocks, but the layout I had planned was pretty complex, so it required me to lay it out on the table, and then stitch 2 pair at a time so I didn't mix them up. This would mean a marathon sewing session in order to get the table freed up for other projects, and that's a lot of time I didn't have. So the blocks have sat in a basket on my shelf since August.

With the long weekend, I decided to go ahead and tackle this one. Amazingly I got the whole thing stitched & the sashing measurements correct without needing to rip out anything. I was amazed. (Of course, the very next project which was a SIMPLE layout, I stitched 2 rows to the wrong mates, which required some ripping & more than made up for the perfection in the other piece.)

I know there are only so many things you can do with charm squares, and I attempted to find something that would stand out, so that no one would think "charm squares" on first look. This is a design of my own invention; well, someone else probably invented it first, but I didn't go looking and I designed as I went, so I'm pretty confident I have a unique execution.

So here is your sneak peek!



In this picture you can see the first of the new fabrics in addition to the batik - a gold dragonfly print on a mottled green background.

I'll bet you'll be really surprised when you see fabric #2! Also the back is pretty cool... basically I used up the rest of the dragonfly print & all the extra blocks I made, plus the scraps that were left from when I first cut the charm squares to send to the exchange. I have a few slivers left of the original batiks, so I may do a pillow or maybe a small table square with the leftovers.

This puppy has been quilted & is awaiting the binding. I stitched a bunch of it last night while watching a marathon of Law & Order.

Happy quilting!

I'm A Favorite Place on Google!

I had a very happy surprise in the mailbox today!

Well, other than my latest dies from Accuquilt...

I've been selected as a "Favorite Place" on Google! They sent me a nice little letter to tell me how many times my business has been searched in Google, how popular I am, and how many times people have requested driving directions.

Oops. Driving directions?

I would love to have an actual store, but hopefully people read the part about the address being my mailing address only. I mean, I'm sure Larry & Tim would love to say hi to all the people, but I only pay them to take in my mail & packages, not to greet customers of mine.

Aside from the nice letter, I got this really cool window cling, that has a bar code on it that can be read by cell phones to tell people where I am. Well, that part is useless, but it will look cool along side the new car magnets I just got to advertise my business.

I can drive traffic, from traffic! I'll post a photo when I can get the car cleaned off enough of snow & salt deposits to do everything justice.


Happy quilting!

Tropical Teardrops - Finished Quilt

I finished this quilt back in October, but I'm only now getting around to posting pictures.

I did a show called the Ravenswood Art Walk over the weekend of October 3-4. Not knowing how busy I was going to be (as with all shows) I decided to bring a project along to finish up.

Technically, I've been working on Tropical Teardrops for a while (2-3 years); it was originally a commissioned project that I hand sketched & colored. The client liked it but for whatever reason decided not to buy it. I was still intrigued by the idea so I decided to work up the project anyway. On the left is the original sketch, on the right is the pieced quilt top.

I mounted this top to a batting & backing and then stitched it vertically in several sections, following the black piping. I then attached a binding & just needed to hand stitch it to the back of the quilt. That was my task on October 3rd, and I was very happy to have finished. I really had no intentions of selling it; during construction I had a number of issues and if I had it to do over again, I'd do it a different way. But once I finished the binding, I decided to hang it in my display space anyway as an example of my work.

On October 4th, the piece sold. I told the purchaser that it was an imperfect piece, and I didn't really want to sell it, but she asked, "Well, how much for an imperfect piece?" How charming is that?

Here's where the unusual part happened... she asked me to turn it into a pillow. I know some of you art quilters are gasping in shock at such an idea (and maybe some of the traditional quilters too) - but once somebody buys something, it's up to them how they want to use it. If this person would enjoy my creation much more fully as a pillow than as a wall hanging, so be it.

I basically turned it into a pillow cover, with a separate insert that I created & stuffed. I had a heck of a time getting the right level of "stuffing" in the pillow so the snaps would close properly. Converting a finished quilt into a pillow isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, but once I figured it out, it wasn't that bad!

So here is the finished quilt... er, pillow:







Happy quilting!

A Short, Welcome Back Post

I am back. Sort of.

Some of you may wonder what exactly happened to me. Others may not have noticed that I was even missing for nearly 3 months.

I can't remember back that far, but I can tell you that my day job has been running me ragged, and at some point I contracted H1N1 (yes, I know for sure which strain) and then developed pneumonia a couple of days later. Either one of those is enough to take you down for a while, but both at the same time is something like near death. It scared my mother so badly that she drove 18 hours straight to see about me. This was fairly recent, and I'm not fully recovered from the pneumonia, but apparently I am no longer contagious or confined to the house, so I'm looking forward to getting out and shoveling the driveway. It does mean though that I have to skip my show this weekend... because when you have pneumonia and the flu, it doesn't take much to tire you out. Needless to say, I haven't done very much sewing in the past month.

In any event... a lot has happened in a 3 month period, other than being sick, and there's no way I can even pretend to catch up. So how about I not even try, and just pick up from here? :)

Happy quilting!