It's a Wrap

Was your St. Patrick's Day a blast? Ours was! Three of us traveled a hop, skip, and a jump north to the Valley Quilt Guild's annual quilt show in Yuba City. And all of us got our green on!

There were tons of vendors, hundreds of beautiful quilts, and a quilt shop or three to visit on the way home, punctuated by lunch at a Chinese restaurant. The day was gray and overcast, but the rain held off until we were nearly home again. And I think all of us had crockpots filled with corned beef to return home to--yum!

After a little nap and a little corned beef, I was a bit more productive in the Sweat Shop this evening, although I'll admit that about half my time was spent putting away the goodies I'd purchased today. I'll tell you more about the show and our excursion tomorrow--and I have some photos to share.

In the meantime, I wanted to announce the winner of the Easter wrap kit--

Shirley said, "The pail wrap is so cute--I would love to win. Happy Spring (almost)!!" Shirley, congratulations! Please email me your mailing address and I'll get this out to you on Monday.

Well, it Seemed Like a Good Idea . . .

Put your jammies on, get something to drink and snack on, and settle in for a fun-filled Friday night of sewing. Sound good? That's what the monthly Friday Night Sew Ins are all about.

I drove home from work tonight, through the pouring rain, stopping only at the McDonald's drive thru to pick up a quick dinner. I've never had a Shamrock Shake, but I read a review of them yesterday that made them sound like the best thing on Earth--better, even, than the suddenly-viral restaurant critic's review of Olive Garden.

I got home and parcelled out our meals while Hubby and I caught up on American Pickers. The Shamrock Shake was okay. The fries were better. Mike and Frank found some good deals on rusty guy stuff. It was a blast.

True to the Friday Night Sew In credo, I took a bath and put my jammies on. I gathered up my dirty laundry and put it in the hamper. I checked emails. And then I drug my feet a little more for good measure before gathering up Stitch, the cat, and heading into the Sweat Shop.

What to do?

Heidi says preparation is key to having a successful FNSI, and she's right. I hadn't prepared anything. I thought maybe tidying away the few things that were left from other projects would get the creative juices flowing.

I put together the little wool kit for the winner of the bunny wrap, but once I finished that, I ran out of steam. Or maybe I ran out of steam when I sat down on the couch with Frank, Mike, and Ronald McDonald--after that, all I had left was a little sputter and hiss.

I give up. It's still raining outside, and that makes me think the evening's better spent curled up in bed with a Janet Evanovich book and maybe a cup of tea. Tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day and I have another quilt show excursion to go on with my friends. This FNSI is a bust, but maybe I'll work up another head of steam by tomorrow.

How Cute!

Or maybe I should say Plumcute!

At the quilt show in Manteca, we visited Tracy Souza's booth--she's the designer of Plumcute Designs; I mentioned her after the show. Most of us bought one of her Hippity Hop Easter pail kits, and I made mine tonight. Well, I didn't make the PAIL but I made the wool cuff that goes around it. It has two bunnies, an Easter egg, and two button flowers. Cute, isn't it?

I substituted blue wool for the white wool provided in the kit and then I used the white wool for the rabbits. I also added little pom-pom tails. You can see in the photo below what the cuff looks like when it's not wrapped around a metal pail:

Now that I've made mine, I'm ready to pass the pattern on. I think I could probably come up with a little wool kit to make the cuff too, but I don't have any extra pails, so you'd need to provide your own. If you're interested in winning the pattern and some supplies to make a reasonable facsimile of the wool cuff, and if you have a United States mailing address, please comment that you want to be entered, and I'll pick a winner Saturday night to be posted on Sunday's blog post.

What are you waiting for? Hop to it!

Where Are My Pants?!!!

I came home from Thimbleberries Club tonight earlier than normal, so I was looking forward to spending a little quality time in the Sweat Shop. I'd stopped at the grocery store for a couple things on the way home, and after putting away the groceries, I went into the bedroom to change out of my work clothes and into my play clothes.

I don't have a lot of pairs of pants. About 20 years ago, I realized that just about everything goes with black pants, so that's what I have--three pairs for work, and three pairs for play, along with one pair of jeans. My "play" pants look decent and are comfortable for sitting around sewing. I have tons of tops for work and play and they all look fine with black pants or jeans. Simple really.

The only problem is that Hubby does the laundry. Back at the dawn of time, when he and I divided up the household duties, he took laundry. And yes, the Wild Child and I often wash our own things because he doesn't really "get" that girl stuff can't necessarily be washed, dried, left in the dryer for two days, and then stuffed into a laundry basket for four more days like guy clothes can.

Sometimes I think it would be a lot less aggravating to just take over doing the laundry altogether, but I just can't get past that niggling little thought that men purposely do things poorly so they can get out of doing them. Besides, why should I work all day and come home and do all the household chores?

On the down side, sometimes I find I have no clean pants for work, and I have to scramble to get my pants washed and dried in the morning. So I try to be conscious of what the clean versus dirty pant inventory is, because I really hate when that happens.

Anyway, you probably don't need the whole back story, but I thought I'd set the stage--or maybe it's just that I need to vent a little.

This morning, as I do every day or two, I sorted through some clothes that had accumulated on the chair next to my side of the bed, and took a few things out to the laundry hamper; I left on the chair a top and a pair of pants that I'd only worn an hour or two a few evenings ago; I figured they were good for another couple hours after work tonight. And when I went to change out of my work clothes tonight, I changed into the top I'd set aside, but I couldn't find the pants. Had I accidentally grabbed them and threw them in the laundry hamper?

I checked my closet, and as I expected, I found no pants. Pants-less now, I went out to the livingroom to ask Hubby if he had any idea where my pants were, and as it turned out, he did. They were in the dryer with all my other pants. Because he was going to do a load of laundry anyway and he knew how I get a little riled up when I don't have any clean pants to wear, he thought he'd gather up all the pants and wash them.

I'd like to tell you that I killed him then and there, but the thought of what the press would make of a half naked, pants-less murdering wife was hard to overcome, even in a fit of rage.

Tomorrow morning while I'm at work, the Dish TV guy is supposed to come fix the TV receiver. Wouldn't it be funny if I locked all of Hubby's pants in his car while he's still sleeping, just before I leave for work? You know what they say about payback, right?

Well, I suspect the dryer's done now, so if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go put on my pants. My legs are getting a little cold.

So What Else is New?

I'm glad I had a little show and tell for you in reserve, because if I hadn't, I'm not sure I'd be writing a post at all. Work is really crazy busy this week, and I stayed until 9:30 tonight, trying to get the more urgent matters attended to. I don't mind working hard, but it sure cuts into my play time!

Really, the only project I finished this past weekend that I hadn't shown you yet was the third block of the Autumn House block of the month. This is the pattern by Bunny Hill that four of us in my stitchery group are working on together.

Most of the time when I show applique blocks, someone leaves a comment asking about my method of applique--and much of the time, the commenter is "no-reply," so I haven't been able to answer. Yes, I do hand applique. I use the freezer paper and starch method. I'll check to see if I've done a tutorial on the method; I think I have but if not, I'll do one soon. Plenty of opportunity, I'm sure.

This block completes the top row of the quilt, and I was curious about how it looks so far, so I got the other two blocks out and lined them up:

Really, if you've seen the original Autumn House quilt, you'll realize mine looks much the same. I made a little design change on the first block, but the other two are the same as the patterns and we're even using most of the same fabrics. I know--I told you just yesterday about how I don't like my quilts to look like everyone else's but I don't mind so much with this one. And who knows? Maybe I'll make a few changes here and there. I wouldn't be too surprised if I found myself adding a squirrel flattened by a falling acorn at some point, you know?

When I finished the third Country Cottages block, like Autumn House, I wanted to line the first three blocks up and see how they look--I took a photo so you could see:

My roof seems to be getting higher with each house, doesn't it? I'll have to pay closer attention to that in the future--I hadn't really thought about it until now. I think I might have made the first roof a little lower than the pattern because I liked the balance better, and then I completely forgot about it by the time the second and third blocks came along!

It's time now for bath and bed--I can't believe I have to be back at the office again so soon, especially when morning seems to arrive so unnaturally early since Daylight Savings Time kicked in. "See" you tomorrow!

A Little Detour

I know I told you I'd show you what other projects I worked on this past weekend, but that will have to wait until another day because I wanted to talk a little bit about Thimbleberries Club and the project for the first quarter of the year.

I've always enjoyed Thimbleberries--the patterns and the fabrics. While I'm not quite as much drawn to the darker, trademark Thimbleberries colors as I used to be, over the years Lynette Jensen has broadened the Thimbleberries color palate by bringing lighter shades into her spring and summer fabric lines, and the fabrics for the first quarter (spring) projects this year are no exception--pink, purple, green, and a yellowish cream.

We quilters in Thimbleberries Club also joke that Thimbleberries quilts are so large because they often consist of border upon border upon border, but Lynette Jensen's block designs are often quite fun--like the floral block in this quarter's pattern. Here's a look at this quarter's quilt, called Love Me Tender--

The quilt is a nice size for a table topper, small lap quilt, or a wallhanging, so it's quite useful. Last year in club, we made a BOM-type of quilt--and I didn't make the quilt. So it's been a little while since I worked on a Thimbleberries project, and I'm already behind this year--our March meeting is this week and not only do I not have the second section done, but I hadn't even started the first section that everyone showed at the last meeting. So on Sunday, I got busy making the center blocks--

A funny thing happened tonight, though. As I was adding the border/sashing around the four blocks, I remembered what I don't like about Thimbleberries Club quilts. As much as I like this quilt pattern and fabric, I suddenly remembered that hundreds of women--if not thousands--were making the same quilt as I was, using the same fabrics and the same pattern.

Yeah, that's something I've never really liked about Thimbleberries Club--and I'd totally forgotten about that!

So now I don't know. I didn't want to sew the four blocks together and move onto the next section until I thought about it a bit more, because of course I want to do something different--something so I'll be able to tell my quilt apart from the hundreds of other Love Me Tender quilts being made right now. I moved the blocks around on the design wall.

I do enjoy diagonal sets and I thought I might run something like flying geese blocks between the four floral blocks. But what will I do in the corners? I have no idea. And will my shop have more of the fabric if I need it? I guess I'm going to have to stop sewing at this point and start doing a little more thinking. And maybe looking at quilt books or magazines for ideas and inspiration.

Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I just went along with the program. Then again, sometimes I DO go along with the program and later I wonder why--what happened to my creativity? In the long run, though, I find I'm usually happier if I step out of that "hurry up and get it done as fast as possible" mind set and invite my creative side to come out and play a little instead. I'll keep you posted about what I come up with on this project.

It Was the Best of Times, it Was the Worst of Times . . .

My weekend away from Blogland was a little mixed. Saturday was my stitchery group's monthly get together, and that's ALWAYS a nice time for us, with little gifts and treats, good food, and talk and sharing with friends while working on hand work projects. And the gathering was just as much fun as I anticipated.

This month, we met at Julie's house, and a couple hours after I arrived, a neighbor came knocking on Julie's door to let me know there was a nail in one of my tires. I went outside to look, and sure enough, there was a nail in the tire--but not quite ALL the way in. I decided that driving home would force it in further, so I'd pull it out and see what happened. If the tire went flat, I had plenty of time to call AAA to come out and change my tire.

I borrowed a pair of pliers and pulled out the nail, which was tiny--about a half inch long, and nearly half of that had been sticking out of the tire, so I had high hopes that all would be fine.

Yeah, you probably guessed it: all wasn't fine. I went out to check the tire an hour or two later and it was flat as a pancake, so I called AAA. The AAA guy came out and changed my tire, only to find my spare was flat as well. Probably not too surprising since I don't think the spare had been used in the 12 years it had been sitting in the car. Of course, the AAA truck came equipped with a cannister of air . . . except the driver had used all the air on another call and hadn't refilled it. So he had to go off and do that and come back and fill my tire, but we found that for some reason, it wasn't filling the tire all the way and I'd need to go to a gas station to fill it the rest of the way.

Of course, that was pretty much the end of my day at Julie's, but the gathering was breaking up anyway. I drove to the gas station and found I had to put four quarters into the air machine--and I didn't have change. So I pulled a dollar bill out of my purse and went inside the station to get change for the air.

The guy in the gas station was kind enough to turn on the air machine for me free of charge, but when I hurried to get air in my tire before the machine turned off, I accidentally lost hold of that dollar bill and had to run after it--it was a windy day. And I wasn't sure how much air I needed, but since the wind kept whipping my hair into my eyes and I couldn't read the gauge anyway, it didn't really matter. When that dollar bill flew out of my hand again and I had to chase it down a second time, I figured that I probably had enough air in that tire, and if I didn't, I didn't really care anyway.

Driving home, I saw a huge billowing cloud of black, black smoke rising up. You'll understand, I'm sure, that I figured it was probably my house on fire--but it wasn't. As I got closer, I could see the flames shooting up into the sky--it was a scary sight! Fire engines passed me again and again, coming from several directions, during the rest of the drive home. I learned later that one home was destroyed and another had extensive damage because the fire had jumped to the neighboring home. What a sad day for those families. I guess a flat tire wasn't so bad after all.

Today, Sunday, Hubby took my car to get the tire repaired. And here's the really weird thing I just don't understand at all. They didn't find a puncture in the tire, but the valve stem was leaking. How did the tire go flat after I pulled the nail out if it was the valve stem and not the tire? And no, the nail wasn't anywhere near the valve stem. Very strange.

Despite the interruptions during the day, by Saturday evening I finished the March Country Cottages block, Shabby Fabric's free block of the month--

I'll tell you about the rest of my weekend projects tomorrow--now it's time for bed. I suspect it's going to be hard adjusting to Daylight Savings Time again! See you tomorrow.

Intermission

I think I'll take a short little weekend break from Blogland. On Saturday, my stitchery gals are getting together for our monthly day of food, gossip, and fun, and I suspect I'll be feeling a bit tired and lazy Saturday night. Or, if I'm not, I'll be wired and enthusiastically working in the Sweat Shop and won't want to stop to chat. And tonight? Well, it's been a long, busy week at work as well as in the rest of my life and I'd just as soon take a bath and get to bed--no sleeping in on Saturday because I'll be packing up my projects to spend the day with my friends.

I'll be back Sunday night/Monday morning to tell you what I've been up to. In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely weekend ahead of you too!

Playtime

Tonight after dinner, I went into the Sweat Shop to play a little. I'd been looking forward all day to getting out the fabrics for the March Country Cottages block, and it was finally time to "get my hands dirty." Figuratively speaking, of course!

You know, I'm sure, that sometimes finding the right combination of fabrics is the most time consuming part, and this was no exception. It took at least an hour, I think, to decide which fabrics I wanted to use in this third block, because I wanted to stay somewhat consistent in the overall visual "feel" of the blocks while not repeating the same fabrics in the same places. In the photo below,you can see what I finally decided on for the house; the fabrics to the left of the house will be used in the shamrock tree, but I ran out of playtime and didn't get those pieces prepped tonight.

I suspect a few of you might wonder how I DID pick my fabrics for this block, so I'll tell you a little about my thought process. I had decided with the second block that I was going to have black roofs throughout, so that was kind of easy although there was another fabric I preferred. The problem was that I couldn't find a fabric for the body of the house that "worked." And I didn't want to use a fabric with too much white in it for the body because February's block had a white background and I wanted contrast. I finally found the stripe in my stash and thought it went just fine with the other fabrics I'd been using so far.

All of the house windows are that golden yellow, so there were no decisions to be made there, and I knew I wanted something that would contrast and show up well for the door--hence the red and white check. After that, the rest of the fabrics, including those for the shamrock tree, were pretty simple to select. When I get this block finished, I'll show you all three blocks side by side, and you can see whether you think they look well together so far.

I was so busy with the cottage block that I nearly forgot to pick a Thimbleberries project for the month, even though the jar was sitting right in front of me! In the end, though, I set aside the cottage block and drew a slip of paper out of the jar: Thimbleberries Raspberry Cobbler blocks.

Some years ago, my online Thimbleberries group decided to swap blocks, but we were divided over whether to swap blue and gold blocks or red and gold blocks. In the end, we decided to swap both: the blue and gold block swap was called blueberry cobbler and the red and gold block swap was called raspberry preserves, and I participated in both. So really these blocks were misnamed in my project list--they're really Raspberry Preserve blocks. No matter though; the only thing that really matters now is what to do with them!

Some years ago, I set the blue and gold blocks into a quilt and gave it to my parents as a gift. That was just a few months before I began my blog, and so I don't have any photos available to share. In the coming days, I'll probably set these blocks out on the design wall to try out different possible settings and, of course, I'll share those ideas with you--and maybe ask for your opinion if I'm stumped.

Originally, I had it in mind that these blocks might make a good border for the birthday block quilt I worked on last month, but the golds in the blocks are too dark for the birthday block quilt. I think I might want to bring in a third color for sashings or something similar to set off the red and gold blocks. I'm leaning toward a blue, which would give it a bit of a patriotic feel, I think. What do you think? If not blue, what then?

It's Block Time Again!

For 2012, I made a commitment to myself to work on more applique projects--because I really DO love applique best of all the quilt making techniques. I believe that what I like best about applique is the idea that a quilt can look like a "picture" and not just a "pattern," if you know what I mean.

And, as you probably know, I've gotten myself involved in several applique block of the month projects, right? Well, it's the beginning of a new month, and that means it's time to start thinking about this month's blocks.

Tuesday night, our little Autumn House group met to talk about block three and pick out the fabrics we'll need. Tonight, Wednesday, I spent the evening preparing my applique pieces (starch and freezer paper method) so that when I get together with my stitchery friends on Saturday for our monthly gathering, I can work on appliqueing the block.

I don't think I showed you, but at the Manteca quilt show, someone had made and was showing their Autumn House quilt--we were all SO excited to see it! Here's a photo I took--we'll be working on the house in the upper right corner this month.

Shabby Fabrics is posting their free block of the month patterns around the 7th of each month--guess what I found when I checked their site just a few minutes ago?

Isn't the March block darling? I can hardly wait to pick out the Lakehouse fabrics for this one! I don't think I have any of the greens from the line I'm using, though, so I'll have to either order a couple fat quarters or see what else I have in my stash that will work.

I feel like I'm getting a little bit of a late start on the month, though, since I spent the first week of March quilting Rabbit Transit. Thank you all for the compliments! A couple of you have asked questions about the quilt, including questions about the scalloped border. The border I used is from the original pattern--it's such a cute design element that Anne Sutton came up with! I think half the reason I loved the quilt in the first place was that scalloped border. And yes, the scallop is appliqued to the background fabric--each of the four borders are appliqued separately before being added to the center of the quilt, as are the corner blocks.

As I've been writing this post and thinking about the fact that March is here, I remembered that I still need to draw a project for the month from my Thimbleberries jar. I'll do that and tell you what this month's "challenge" for me is on tomorrow's post. See you then!