1/30/2009

There's a Vintage Reproduction in my Tattered Quilt

So I was standing still next to my tattered old Log Cabin quilt, asking myself if I had the energy to clean house (I didn't), and I suddenly realized that there was a Bonnie Blue Basics fabric in the quilt. Just exactly like it!


The next Stickle block:


If you have time, click on over to my friend Betty's blog, won't you, and leave a comment? Betty is a new blogger and has posts about her rescued kitties, Zoom being the most recent and Zoom is so adorable, and football (I understand that's a game of some sort), and some neat photos from family slides. Oh, also an interesting description of the current state of Galveston. Oh! and posts about her 50s Ginny dolls, too!

1/28/2009

In Haste

Latest Stickle block:

the central portion begun on Jo's Little Women Holiday Inn project:

I want to make the stencilling darker and maybe change the tone of the red a bit.

1/25/2009

Bunnies, Posies, Stickles, and an Old Photo

Oh please, you've got to go see Lola's blog; she has made a table runner from my Feedsack Bunnies pattern and it is so precious, vintage pink wool for the bunnies and vintage fabric for the bunny bloomers:

Plus I'm also thrilled that my Pollys in the Posies sample and patterns are on display in the LQS on the child's ironing board :-) :


Showed this Stickle block in earlier post; have since learned that the That Quilt tutorials live on, which is good news.


and the next block:


Now click on this old photo of an open air classroom in California in the 1880s, from a book called Pioneer Children; does that shape on the blackboard look like a quilt square to you? Maybe they made a block a week!

1/20/2009

Diamond Quilt

I have so so many UFOs and so so many pattern ideas. So naturally (having no discipline whatsoever), I began another quilt. It all began with one of the Grand Teint fabrics from Windham that (I'm telling you the God's honest truth) flung itself off the shelf at me at the LQS. I cleverly realized that its diamond-shaped floral motif could be cut as a diamond:

And after only a day and a half of work (I always think these projects will take about an hour tops), made this diamond quilt:

Also obediently kept up with the Stickle blocks (used that neat Tazzie fabric again):



1/18/2009

Jane Stickles and question

I hope you are all having a wonderful week-end and that it is a three-day week-end for most of you jobbers; it is for me. Today has been mostly spent catching up on Stickles:




I have so many projects I want to work on. It's fun to work on quilting after last week.

Now here's a question for you. How did they construct this Ocean Waves (I guess it's reasonable to call this an Ocean Waves) quilt? Going either one way or another, you would assemble the little squares. But the "connecting" squares are full squares, they aren't triangles. At least they look full to me. So they must have done set-in seams to connect the long sections??

Oh wait I think I see it. They assembled square sections of small squares, then it works without (horrors) set-in seams.




1/16/2009

A Week

**Rembrandt read a book if you would care to comment**

Well, it's been quite a week. Finally finishing the second week back at work, which continues to be the most miserable co-worker situation surely known to man. I now have a simply wonderful assistant principal as supervisor; she is so top quality and upbeat that she really makes the overall job .... do I really hear myself saying this? ... acceptable, but the co-worker situation is a nightmare. There should be something I could do about this, but I do not really see what. Maybe I could go be the Assistant Principal's secretary :-).

Tuesday, DS almost ruined the chance of any more Emails from College by making a short phone call to say that he was going to quit school. He then did not return phone calls. So Dear Old Mom left work early (not a sacrifice shall we say) and drove 2 hours to Milledgeville (this is a new transfer from Georgia Tech, never mind the fact that he made the Honor Roll last semester at Tech, that is such boring old news) to try to talk him out of it. On the way down, on the phone with Admissions, on the phone with Housing (did not know which dorm he was in), collecting information, trying to think. Housing had RA get DS to call me back, met up with him on the main street, went into the Pig in a Poke to talk, DS would not budge, just sat smirking at me because he knows everything and I know nothing, and said he was coming home to live.

Coming home? It took me eleven hours to clean up after the month-long Christmas visit:

He must stay in school. Well, he also said he was going to run off and enlist in the Marines. Made one of only about three phone calls to his father since the divorce 18 years ago to say that he should fulfill the divorce agreement part where he says he will pay for college, which he has not been doing, and to get down there and help DS. He probably didn't go or call or do what he is legally contracted to do, but the next night, DS called to say he was all enrolled.

He got so frustrated trying to register for classes because the Advisor hold was not removed even though he had seen the Advisor, so he just threw up his hands and said to heck with it. I had emailed him after the Milledgeville drive to say that it sounded to me like one more effort to register would succeed. He tried again and found out that the advisor got word the moment he left before that her dog had gotten struck and killed by a car, so naturally she left immediately without lifting the hold, and was gone the next day when I was trying to call, etc.

The advisor started showing him pictures of her poor dog and burst into tears while she was trying to lift the hold, and Timmy really wanted to go enlist in the Marines then.

On the upbeat side, I began the Dear Jane support group via Little Quilts last night. We are six members including me. We all hope that the group will be fun, successful, and ongoing. This morning I began a blog for the group that is private for the time being. Homework assignment is to make 8 blocks by next class time and we are going to work on a block during the next class. If you take classes at Little Quilts and are interested in Dear Jane, you may want to consider joining us. We are a simply Lovely Group :-) . My laptop met the Black Screen of Death, however, so I could not do some work in the Dear Jane software; luckily, Chris had DJ on her laptop and demonstrated it. Laptop still does not feel well, which makes me feel not well.

Couldn't figure out where Rembrandt was meowing from. Had a horrible thought that she might be in the heating vent. Rembrandt is the one to accomplish that. But she was in the rafters:

It only took her a few minutes to start walking up and down the rescue ladder:

and to long to be stuck up in the rafters again:


I leave you with some lichen photos and a devout prayer of thanks for Friday at 4:00pm:


1/07/2009

Feedsack Bunnies



A new pattern:

Tazzie, do you recognize the outer border fabric :-) ? It just looks too cool in this design, especially with the tiny ribbed texture as if a farmwife used part of an old challis dress for her baby quilt border.

1/02/2009

Well, it's a gloomy wet day in Atlanta, so we are catching up on sleep. Only got 20 hours yesterday. Some of us are sleeping in classic Adorable Cat style:

Some of us are sleeping just plain weird:


The wall hanging became large enough to sweep the Bonnie Mystery quilt pieces off into disarray; the obvious solution was a tray to hold the pieces, which could easily be kept together and moved about as necessary. Oh! Must go see what the thrift store has to offer. Wait, just check the basement, after all, I have one of everything down there except a personal fortune, and sure enough, there were two nice wooden trays and a wooden container, gotten during earlier trips to the thrift store:

Decided that it wouldn't kill me to organize the cutting table miscellany on to the smaller tray. What a mess.


I've been looking everywhere and longing for my Quilter's Disk. Had a replacement in the online Cart a few times. I love you, cute little brass disk:

Have been trying to find the Marti Michell Perfect Patchwork Corner Trimmer, too; thank goodness it's back again. Now that tiny 2-1/2" ruler is one that has never worked very well. Too tiny. Slips around. Put some of the little sandpaper disks on it to give it one more chance. Anybody else use that tiny thing? Oh, and I've never seen that Muriel Yard Threader in my life. One of Rembrandt's friends must have given that to her.

Two pencil stands cleverly made out of empty Pringles cans. Surely I can do better than this.


Back to the basement for more inventory. China mugs. That looks better.


How clean and neat is that.

Oh, and the piecing tray works very well, too:

1/01/2009

Anew

Happy New Year! Got it in with a few hours to spare.


Have spent the day working on Bonnie's Mystery Quilt:


and have begun a new little wall quilt:


What a perfect way to spend the first day of the year.