Do as I say, not as I do

Well, now, that's an old saw but still true, unfortunately. Youngest nephew is having his first baby, which I hear will be a boy. So time to get busy with that (I know, I know, I've talked about for some time already). I found a simple but attractive pattern which called for 11 fat quarters. Fine, I had enough f.q.'s and yardage to do that all in blues. Cut them out, stacked them up, shuffled them as directed and started sewing - stitch and flip. Got it all done, but somehow it didn't look quite as interesting as on the pattern photo. Hmmmm.


Well, let's see what's wrong here? Cut? shuffle? stitch? OOOOPPPPSSS - I was supposed to cut the first block in half so that not only was it shuffled, it was supposed to be staggered as well. Makes it much more interesting. Well, bummer! Oh well, I'm not going to do it again - I'd have to start all over - too much unsewing required and anyway I don't have enough of those fun fabrics left. I can in all humility say that my corners are all almost perfect.












I bet that a newborn won't know that Great Auntie messed up too badly. But my word to the wise, for today - READ THE DIRECTIONS and then check to see that you are following them correctly!

Works in Progress

Well, the new-to-me car finally arrived on Thursday afternoon. It was quite a treat to have my own car and I managed to find a couple of errands to run with it - just to try it out! :-) Among other things I went to pick up my sewing machine which was BACK to the shop. After over a month in Jan-Feb, it went back after the quilt guild retreat as it quit working. The service notes said that they had to reset the bobbin case tension, reset the default pivot height and adjust the hook needle clearance. I guess these were enough to cause the general shut-down. Hmmmm. I really like many of the features on that machine, but this is way too often to head in for service.

As for projects:

I started to assemble this at the retreat. I have finished putting the squares together on point and adding the setting triangles. I'm happy with the white fabric I used for those - it seems to go well with the background white used in the squares within a square. Next will be adding the triangles for the corners and then start on borders. I did go out and purchase a couple of different blues to try out.

The other project is the bag pattern I bought at the Sewing and Stitchery Expo in February - along with the requisite 6 fat quarters. Pretty nice.

The bag is completed in pieces. The pockets are sewn to the lining before it is all assembled. The handles are complete, so now it's time to put it all together. I have several other things to start next (including that baby quilt I mentioned and finishing up the quilting on DD's birthday quilt -last month)
Can you believe that it's May already? Yikes!

end of April

>
No Quilty pictures - just so you know.

I have been trying to buy a car new-to-me (i.e. used). It was supposed to be delivered on Monday, but as they were driving it here a light on the dash went on. Yes, I realize that it is better that it happened before I took ownership, but it has meant that I still don't have the car. The dealer had to find the part in Portland, Or and have it shipped over-night and then install it. Something to do with an airbag light - which I'm told are notorious for malfunctioning. At the latest report, it is supposed to be arriving tomorrow about noon. I realize that this is partly my doing - I simply loathe dealing with car dealers and the shenanigans of 'I'm willing to pay X' - 'well, I'll run that past my finance manager', etc, etc. So this car is coming through a buying service. Even with their cost included I'm paying $2200 less than asking price. So I figure that is just fine. Here it is:
Pretty cute, huh? It's a Honda Fit, 2007. What made this one particularly good was that it can be towed behind the motorhome 4 down (with all 4 wheels on the ground - not on a trailer) and it is an automatic. In a city that is full of hills, that's the only way to go.





While I have been waiting for its arrival, I have had some time on my hands, so to speak. I have made 3 stars to send to my quilty girls from the Netherlands. We decided while they were here that we would make stars for each other, over the next several months. So I thought to get them done, but really shouldn't show you until they see them first. Also this morning, it seemed a good time to vacuum and attend to the dusting. It seems that the maid hasn't been coming regularly, so I needed to follow up and do those things. ;-> So my house is pretty tidy, stars are made - hmmmm, what's next?

Retreat photos

Photos from the retreat (some repeats from the blog post)

Back from Retreat

As a child, I always looked forward to summer camp. Away from all the usual and ordinary into a time 'set apart'. Last Wednesday noon we left Seattle to drive about 1 1/2 hrs. to an Episcopal church camp where my LQG holds their twice a year (is that bi-annual?) retreat. The Guild has 500 members and the retreats usually have about 90 for the autumn and 80 for the spring retreats. It happens that my 'satellite' group was the group responsible for the planning (and carrying out) of the event. We named it, Spring Chicken. All the dining tables in the dining hall had chicken decorations - potholders we had made [I showed you photos before] that were eventually door prizes. The name tags all had chicken fabric on them. Each meal we had a 'chicken' joke. All in all - quite fun. We worked hard to have lots and lots of door prizes throughout the week-end. It hardly mattered how small the prize, folks just enjoyed being winners of something. We also had a packet of needles for every attendee and a fat quarter of fabric.

There were 18 of us in my sewing space. So here are some of the things we were working on:










I will do my best to make a Picasa album with the collection of photos. We sewed from before breakfast (approx. 7am start time), several of us headed to bed around 10-11 and a few stalwart folks stayed up waaaaaaaay past midnight. I only knew because I could see the lights were still on in the Longhouse, for sewers.

Among the most fun parts of the week-end is the Saturday 'walk about'. Each person is asked to bring one of their quilts and these were put on peoples' beds. And folks walked around to see the 'decorated' bedrooms/dorms. Additionally, each of the sewing rooms was hung with projects complete or in process, so you could see what others were working on. An amazing de facto quilt show. And everyone was so generous with their time and talents and shared information and knowledge with anyone who asked. Need I say fabulous?

Sunday lunch people bring their finished or nearly finished projects to the dining hall for all to see,











Pretty incredible, huh? Really the only sad part of the whole event is that I managed to find a major cold bug and am sneezing and coughing like crazy. But it was great fun and I will sure try to attend again. I know I can't do the fall event, but will put next April on my calendar. Wanna come along?

Busy, busy

More details later, but in brief: helping at the church rummage sale this afternoon and evening. Sale starts on Thursday. Lasts through Saturday.

Meanwhile, I'm leaving tomorrow, after Q.A. guild, for the spring quilting retreat. Back on Sunday. Photos to follow. Hope you are having as much fun as I will be. :-)

Seattle Spring

The weather man reported last night that we were dryer and warmer in February than mid March to mid April. Go figure! I am ready for something that approaches a FULL day of at least partial sunshine. It was better yesterday (re sunshine) but with wind gusts of 45-55 mph, driving the RV to the service center was challenging - it kept pushing me out of my lane. Not fun at 60mph and big trucks on the highway! Yikes!

I am not having great success, so far, with trying to do some free-motion quilting on the Stars quilt for DD. My thread keeps shredding. This is a new needle, 90-14 but perhaps it isn't big enough. I've changed thread a couple of times. Now to try an even larger needle.

I can say, despite laughs to the contrary, I enjoy ironing and should probably do more of that this afternoon.

Somehow the site of a piece of fabric all crisp and smooth is very satisfying to me. I like my heavy iron. And a friend made me a 'big board' so it's perfect for quilt-type projects. I have a couple of friends who always are happy for me to be around, so I can do some ironing for them. It's lucky that I don't mind. One gal even said that she could hear me (in her head) saying - You really should iron those!

I came upon this the other day. It's from a course I took (when I was still working) that talked about leadership and "power". An interesting thought to ponder, me thinks.

Hope you're having a great week.