Another Thursday Thing: Sew Thinky

I've been wanting to join in on the Sew Thinky at Mommy's Naptime. This is Week 8 and the question this week is "Who do you like to sew for the most?"

My first thought was ME. The next was my family. But truly, the real answer is I love to quilt for my grandchildren and my husband.

I made a scrappy quilt from Bonnie Hunter's site at Quiltville. It's called Bricks and Stepping Stones. After the blocks were done, I did the layout on the floor and it looked so terrific. The "bricks" had come from my Aunt Marie's stash. I got very revved up!

Then something horribly, black magically went wrong. *gulp* You might want to remove the children from the room! I sewed all the blocks together just like in the picture on the left below. But when I put the finished top on the design board it wasn't the same! It looked awful. It wasn't cohesive. What had I done? What went so terribly wrong???

I see, I just clicked on the file right before this one! This is the Bricks and Stepping Stones laid out on the floor.

Then my hubby/hero walked in the room. He said, "That looks very nice. I really like that quilt." I managed to snarl out of the side of my mouth, "Then you can have it!" I'm nothing if not gracious.

He loved the quilt. He wanted my quilt. He said it was his favorite kind of quilt. It reminded him of his Great-Aunt Kitty's quilts (whom he adores).

So now you can see why I love to make quilts for my hubby.

Then there's the time I made Sweetie a quilt for her newly painted in a new house bedroom. I had made the curtains and later I made the quilt. I had to wait about a year before I gave it to her. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but she was in love with High School Musical and wanted a bedspread of that. A year later she got the quilt. Nancy Drew called me up and said that Sweetie wanted to tell me something. Sweetie shouted, "I LOVE THE QUILT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. I LOVE IT." It melted my heart.

Sweetie on her first day of school that year.

And that is why I like making quilts for my grandchildren.

Really Random Thursday 3/21/13

This time I found something in the realm of randomness and I hope it will entertain you!
For more randomness, hook up with Live A Colorful Life. The badge is on the right bar.

My hubby wubby and I celebrated Thanksgiving with another family. While I puttering around their kitchen I got caught up on the front of their fridge. They had pictures, of course, but they also had cartoons and other funny stuff. I liked one so much that I asked for a copy. Here's what I found that tickled my funny bone.

   How To Write Good

      by Frank L. Visco

1.    Avoid alliteration. Always.

2.   Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3.   Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)

4.   Employ the vernacular.

5.   Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

6.   Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

7.   It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

8.   Contractions aren't necessary.

9.   Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

10.One should never generalize.

11.  Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

14. Profanity sucks. (sorry, phrase is for example only)

15. Be more or less specific.

16. Understatement is always best.

17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

20.       The passive voice is to be avoided.

21. Go around the at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

22.       Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

23.       Who needs rhetorical questions?

What Are You Reading

I'm thinking that I may have gotten my days mixed up, which is truer than I want to admit, and I thought today was Reading Day at Judy's website. Notwithstanding, I am addicted to reading and will go ahead and let you know about my reading this week.


 Iron Bay is the first in a series of novels about Cocoran O'Connor, "Cork" who lives in a small town in Minnesota. He used to be sheriff, but through tragedy lost the job. He is part Irish and part "Anishinaabe Indian". (quotes are there because that is how it is referred to in the book.) The books are mysteries, which is one of the main genres that I read.

I first read a Cork O'Connor a couple of years back. I read the fourth book, Thunder Bay. I liked it enough that I put it on my request look on Paperbackswap.com   It took a little while, but I got it two weeks ago. Within the week, the second book in the series was available for me. I read Iron Lake this past week. I started the second book, Boundary Waters last night.


I'm liking the series. It's definitely up there with Dick Francis and Sue Grafton (my favorite mystery authors) but I like Cork as the main character. There is a lot of description of the landscape of lakes, wildlife and Anishinaabe culture. It's fun to learn about all of this.

I recommend this book to mystery lovers as an engaging read with native american history and good plot lines.

If Judy shows up with What Are You Reading later in the week, I'll link you up with her site.

Happy, Relaxing and Enjoyable Reading Everyone!

Bookends of the Week: Design Wall Monday and Whoop Friday

It's a great Monday, the first of my Spring Break. It's a real burden this vacation time...all I have to spend my time on is quilting. Poor me!

This past week I've mostly been hand quilting a string quilt I made. It was the first string quilt I've made. I did it as a L/E and it took 2 years to make the top. It has some beautiful plain fabric squares among the string blocks. I wanted to do hand quilting there.. I took it first to a LAQ to quilt all the string blocks and borders, leaving me the plain squares. I figured it would take me about two years to get it hand quilted...sure, yup, I was certain another two years would do it.

Someone want to help me get this egg off my face?

By the way, did I mention to you that it's a king-size quilt?

Uh-huh, I thought that would garner sympathy.

It's been more like four years. That's what? Double the time I estimated? The first excuse reason I found was I can't quilt it in the summers. Too hot with that humongous quilt on my lap. Even more sympathy!

I'm closing on the finish line--yippee! I only have 10 more setting triangles to finish, then it's on to binding. I'm doing about 3 setting triangles every 3 days.

One of the precious parts for me is that the plain fabric is from my Aunt Marie's stash. It's a lovely shade of lavender. It was a very difficult time finding border fabric. If you put blue next to it, the plain fabric looks purple. Then if you put purple next to it, the fabric looks blue. Silly me, I actually like that kind of fabric. Looking at the picture you can see I finally found green worked great.

Close up of handquilting in square

Close up of hand quilting on setting triangle

The other thing I'm working on for a quick change is three blue-and-white blocks for my everlasting blue-and-white quilt. I first started it when I was in charge of BOM for our guild. Every block I chose I would make a sample for the guild and then a copy in blue and white. The blocks are 12 inch. did that for a year and since then I've been on my own. I've made 29 blocks and have 7 left to do. After these three, I'll only have four. It's big. It's beautiful. I've really enjoyed working on it. I'm really trying to stop using really as an adjective! It's difficult!

Here's the block I worked on today, after 3 hours trying to make a collage for my Family Blog. It's our Anniversary and I am trying to make a collage of my hubby and I. It's not done yet. Really. The program kept crashing. I found out that saving the collage didn't save the layout, it just saved the collage as a picture. Each time it crashed I would also have to go back and upload my pictures again. It's really been a devil in the making. Really.

This explains how in one day I didn't even finish one block. Here's the one laid out and ready to sew together. It is called Bridal's path.

Bridal Path

Progress in 2012

You can check out other cool quilter's share their design wall over at Patchwork Times. I'm also hooking up with Can I Get A Whoop Whoop Friday.  Click on badge in right column.  Really

Stash Count Week 11 of 2013

I have one word to say....

Arrrrgggghhhhh!

or maybe:

oopsie doopsie

 

My most bitter regret: I only have one life to give for my fabric! If fabric were the fountain of youth, I could buy more and live long enough to make all the quilts I have bought fabric for...

So without further ado...


Here's My Report

Stash Count Week 11

Used This Week:  3 yds
Used 2013: 12.5

Added This Week: 7 yards
Added 2013: 31.5

Net 2013: -19 yards


... I got a lot of scraps from our guild give-away table. I took some before the meeting, not wanting to be greedy. After the meeting, as everyone was leaving, I went back and TOOK THEM ALL! My justification was I am teaching a class on string quilting, using the Spiderweb pattern, and I needed them for my class. That was what was intended, but looking at them yesterday...well...I...ummm...you know...*gulp* I decided to keep them all.

Besides, I have two kitchen garbage bags (without the kitchen garbage in them) full of scraps I'm bringing.

Then there's someone else to blame. My sisty ugler! She came last weekend and asked if I wanted her stash? What's a girl to do?? I mean, what would you have done in my position? Or if I was to offer them to you today? Uh-huh. Caught ya!

You can find more about the sisty ugler story here

I'll be checking out how other quilters have been doing at Patchwork Times.

And here's to blogger frustration: I don't know why the font changed in the middle of the blog...but I'm too frazzulated to try and fix it.