Thimbleberries Club

Tonight was the first meeting of the 2010 Thimbleberries Club. Looking at the pile of stuff I brought home, I think I might have tried to make up for not joining and buying Thimbleberries last year! Seriously, I didn't do too bad--I was kind of proud of the fact that everyone ahead of me in the check out line spent more! The kit on the left is the fabric for the first few months--and I can't remember if it's split into three or four month sections, but in any event, I have what I need for now. Plus a Twice the Charm roll. And a magazine.

At club, we have show and tell, and one of the ladies showed us a smallish quilt she made from a pattern in the magazine (the quilt is called Kyoto Star) so a few of us thought we NEEDED the magazine too.

One of the things I enjoy most about club is coming home and being pumped up and enthusiastic about quilting and all things Thimbleberries, and tonight was no exception--as you can see, I already made my two blocks for the month!

During the 2008 Club year, I heard several complaints about the quality of the fabric from RJR, but from what I saw of the fabric so far this year, it's fine! I don't know if they've changed manufacturers again or not, but I don't have any complaints.

As has been the case in the last few years, this year Thimbleberries is offering three colorways, and our club group is large enough to make it possible for the shop to order all three. I've selected the "Dawn" colorway, which is made up of lighter shades--think 30s pastels that have been grayed down just a touch. "Dusk" is more the typical Thimbleberries tones that we've come to know over the years, and most of our club members have picked that one. Finally, there's this colorway, which I think is called "Midnight," although I like to refer to it as "Night Stalker"--can't you just imagine some pervert out roaming the streets, peeking into windows at midnight?

No? Okay, maybe it's just me--I'm the weird one! But we all knew that, didn't we?! The quilt in that photo above is an alternate layout--the "regular" quilt has the blocks scattered more randomly rather than laid out in rows; I think I like these rows a whole lot, so I'll likely lay mine out like this one.

By the way, if you had the slightest interest in the Thimbleberries Hometown Christmas quilt that I talked about a couple years ago but couldn't find the series of four pattern books--well, the pattern has been reprinted in a new Thimbleberries book called Block by Block to Beautiful Quilts. Somewhat sheepishly I'll admit I haven't finished mine yet, so it's not too late to join me!

Do you realize the Friday Night Sew-In is almost here? I'm thinking about cleaning my house on Thursday night so I can start sewing after work on Friday and keep going all weekend! How about you? Will you be joining in on Friday?

New From the Sweat Shop--

My students at my wool class in February will have a choice of kits to make--yep, that's what it says in the newsletter, I think, so I guess it must be true! Besides a kit, they'll also get the PATTERNS for ALL the kits. So I figured I'd better design a second one--the bunny was the first. I planned to make three, and I think the third will be something other than a pillow, but I don't want to design a penny rug or candle mat--there are quite a few patterns on the market for those already. For myself, I've been working (slowly) on a wool eyeglass case, so maybe I'll make that for the third project. Or a stuffed something or other--I really love the little bunny I bought as a kit and made last spring. Or both! But at least I now have the second project done!

And, for something totally unrelated to the wool class--Boy Boss called today to let me know they'd picked a name for their brand new daughter--Nora Marjorie. Different but really nice, I think! He sent a photo from his cell phone and of course she's adorable--but then, what baby isn't?

Oh, and Stitch is home from the vet, seemingly none the worse for wear. He seems slightly less energetic but that may just be my imagination because he's still running around and wrestling with Spike--who seems happy to have him back home!

Tomorrow night (Wednesday) is Thimbleberries Club--the first meeting of the new year--and after not being a member last year, I'm really looking forward to rejoining my friends for the new block of the month project! Time to get to bed so I don't fall asleep during club! Thanks for stopping in to visit!

Palindromes and Reproduction

What do palindromes and reproduction have to do with one another? Well, Monday's date was a palindrome of sorts--01/11/10. (A palindrome is something--word, number, etc.--that reads the same forward as backward.) Kind of cool, huh? And 01/11/10 is the date of birth of Boy Boss's third child, a baby girl! Woo-hoo! His poor wife was in labor forever--so much for the idea that by the third baby, labor proceeds quickly! But everything turned out nicely in the end. They haven't picked out a name for her yet--when they had their son a year and a half ago, it took them a couple days to pick out his name too, so it's not unexpected.

And somewhat coincidentally, perhaps, 01/11/10 is the day on which Stitch's chances at reproduction came to an end, poor baby! Hubby took him to the vet for his second series of shots and talked to the vet about scheduling a little surgery, and the vet said, "Hey, why not now?!" So Stitch stayed for an overnight visit--and I didn't even get a chance to tell him what was going to happen and prepare him ahead of time. He'll be home on Tuesday, but I suspect it might take him a day or so to get back to normal, what with whatever soreness he has and working the anesthesia out of his system. Spike, who seems to be his best buddy now, has been wandering around the house much of the day, looking for him. Their favorite form of play is to roll around on the floor, wrestling; I have a feeling he might not be up to much rough play for a couple days!

And what have I been doing? Something that has absolutely nothing to do with palindromes or reproduction!

I stopped by Carol's Crafty Creations Sunday evening and saw she'd been cutting some fabric to get ready for the Friday Night Sew-In. I was a little envious, so I hunted down a pattern I thought I'd work on, pulled fabric from my stash, and did a little cutting too! The HARD part, though, is going to be NOT SEWING ANY OF IT UNTIL FRIDAY! I want to use the heart fabric (Sweethearts/Benartex) in the border, and I only have a half yard, so I ordered a little bit more. And I'm thinking about possibly making the quilt a little larger than the pattern calls for. Hummmmm. Maybe I'll just keep cutting more and more fabric pieces between now until Friday! This is going to be so much fun! Have you signed up yet?

Little Miss Muffet Ate Cherries!

Another little Schnibbles project--tuffets! I've used a charm pack of Oh Cherry Oh! fabric for these, and I think they look quite cheerful. Tuffets can be used as pincushions, or they can be made just for decorative purposes to fill a bowl or basket. Tuffets were the December project of the Year of Schnibbles group. I'm planning to make a few more when I have a little time between other projects.

I wanted to tell you a couple things about making the Madeline quilt, but it was just too late last night this morning. I was having so much fun, I guess, I never even felt tired, so I was up until after 4 a.m. finishing the quilt! And thank you for the compliments, but I have a secret or two to divulge.

First, when I was making the blocks, I decided to do something different from the pattern. The pattern instructs us to add the setting triangles to the four sides of the star blocks--instead, I decided to treat those as separate blocks, similar to the broken dishes or quarter square triangle blocks. You can kind of see in the photo in the upper right quadrant where I've pulled a couple of the blocks away from one another on the design wall.

Some people have a hard time putting together rows of blocks on point, but that's never bothered me, so I thought it would be a good method. I think this way of doing it makes all the corners intersect better. I ran into a problem though. I pulled two star blocks off the design wall to measure them so I could figure out how large to make the quarter square triangle blocks. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the two blocks I randomly picked ended up being just a tad larger than the rest--a little more than 1/8" larger. And because the decision to make quarter square triangle blocks came after the pieces were cut and I was using charm squares, the outside edges of the quarter square triangle blocks were bias edges. The result of all this was that when I sewed the blocks together, I was doing a lot of easing and stretching--and in the end, the quilt top didn't lay as flat as I would have liked!

Now, here's why I'm telling you all this. I'm pretty sure just about all of us make a mistake or two in quilting, right? Before I'd had as much experience, I think I would have been so frustrated with a quilt top that didn't lay flat that I would have just put it away at that point and forgotten about it. The thing is, though, that there are usually ways to fix mistakes--as there was with this one.

When I layed out the quilt for pinning, I tried to make the lines that draw the eye as straight as possible and I pinned at the intersections of seams. If that meant the top puckered a little here and there and didn't quite lay flat, I didn't let that worry me too much. Then, when I started quilting, I stitched along the lines I KNEW would look square--right outside the star blocks. And where the fabric bubbled a little in the quarter square triangle blocks, I used swirly free motion quilting--it tends to take up the loose bits of fabric and helps fool the eye into seeing straight seams.

By the time I finished, the quilt was laying nicely. DON'T, however, take a really wonky quilt to your long-arm quilter and figure she can save it for you--I've heard lots of horror stories about that and she's more likely to baste and stitch YOU! But if it's something small like this and you're quilting it yourself--try it and see! It turned out so nicely that even I was surprised!

Sadly, the weekend has some to an end, but I've had a nice time in the Sweat Shop and I've gotten a few things done. I hope you've had a great couple of days too!

L'Amour Madeline!

Ladies, Start Your Machines! Let the Weekend BEGIN!

Woo-Hooooo! The weekend is HERE!

Work at the office has been WAAAAAAY stressful for the past few weeks--one rush project after the next. And just when I think it can't get any busier, it does. It's hard to complain when I work at such a great place; and hey--these days, just HAVING a decent job is a blessing! But still, by the time Friday comes, I'm much more than happy to get home, put on my comfy clothes, and head into the Sweat Shop.

Tonight I stopped at Bearpaws & Hollyhocks to visit for a few minutes with Gran and several other ladies who were there for the monthly meeting of the book club--this month's book was Happiness Key by Emilie Richards; have you read it? Good book! Anyway, just stopping to look at, smell, and touch fabric for ten or fifteen minutes is an excellent way to decompress after work--I highly recommend it! And seeing friends, even if only for a little bit? Icing on the cake!

Once I got home, Hubby ordered pizza, and while he went to pick it up, I changed my clothes and made a cup of tea. A little later, tummy full of combination, thick-crust pizza-licious wonderfulness, I made good on my escape to the Sweat Shop. Within an hour, I finished appliqueing the 4th of 13 basket blocks, slapped it up on the design wall, stuffed the freezer paper template pieces into a plastic bag, shoved thread and needles aside, and reached for the L'Amour charm packs. Ahhhhhhhhh! THIS was what I was waiting for!

Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO feel a compulsion to make something that will match my new blog background. Or maybe I picked the new blog background to match the L'Amour fabric? Well, one way or the other, pink is happening here at Kim's Big Quilting Adventure.

So here's the plan: Saturday morning, I'm going to sleep until I wake up. And when I do? I'll stumble out to the kitchen and get myself a red and white polka dotted cup of fresh brewed Starbuck's Christmas Blend. Next, I'll sit down right here and visit with you for a little bit. Before long, though, the pull of L'Amour will be too strong to resist any longer and, still in jammies, perhaps with a refill of my red and white polka dotted coffee cup, I'll head to the Sweat Shop. Ah, YES! HEAVEN!

I love weekends!

What Do You Think?

Feel like you're stuck in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol? I kind of like it! (The background, that is!) It seems happy to me. But is it hard to read?

Temporary Fix

A couple of you--including ME!--came to my blog and saw some type of boxed notice about exceeding bandwidth. Turns out that had to do with the site that hosted my blog background, so I've changed the background. I'll have to look at the background options later when I have more time, but isn't it funny I was JUST talking about computer issues and had something pop up? Literally?!

One Thing Leads to Another . . .

Sometimes Blogland reminds me of dropping a pebble in a pond and watching the ripples spread out. You know what I mean, I think--you visit one blog and that leads to another blog and that leads to another blog and before you know it, you've traveled quite a way and gotten interested in all sorts of other things--it's kind of weird, in a GOOD way!

So I was doing that--blog hopping, which kind of started with the Schnibbles thing--when I hopped onto Heidi's blog and found her Friday Night Sew In on January 15th. Basically, those of us who want to play along commit to settling down that Friday night in front of our sewing machines and doing some sewing. On Saturday, we show a couple photos on our blog of what we did. On Sunday, there's a chance we might win a prize. Cool, huh?!

Seriously, I sew nearly every night anyway, so why not join the Sew In? You can check out Heidi's blog post about the Sew In HERE. Sign up and join us! This will certainly be a good excuse for me to plan a "special" project--like maybe one of the Schnibbles quilts? (And, of course, a really excellent excuse to drink some "special" hot chocolate in a red and white polka dot cup with a few marshmallows and a candy cane because--you know--it IS a "special" night!)

By the way, this month's Year of Schnibbles quilt is Madeline--

I'm quite anxious to start it. And I have the Rouenneries charms. But do I want to make it with those, or do I want to get a little crazy and use Valentine's fabric? And do I want to work on it for the Sew In or do I want to get out another Schnibbles pattern the group's already done and work on IT? Decisions, decisions!

A a couple of you asked about joining A Year of Schnibbles this late--like me, you thought it was closed. Well, you can email Sinta (Pink Pincushion) or Sherri (A Quilting Life) and ask. I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to have you join, even this far into the year. I remember when I figured out what was going on back in September--late to the party as usual!--I thought the group was closed, too, so I didn't ask; besides that, I remember having too many other things going on at that time. Now, though, I'm really excited to start!

Finally, I wanted to touch again on some computer/blogging problems. Sinta is having problems with her blog--she has an issue with not being able to see her photos as she's composing her posts; also something in her layout has thrown everything from her sidebar down to the bottom of the page. If any of you think you might be able to suggest a solution, please go over to her blog and leave a comment. I have a feeling it has something to do with the photos in her post from a few days ago, but I'm not sure what. Can they be too large, pixel-wise, maybe? (EDITOR'S NOTE: SINCE WRITING AND POSTING THIS, SINTA SEEMS TO HAVE FIXED THE SIDEBAR ISSUE.)

Another thing--my mention yesterday about the comment concerning my blog jumping? "Anonymous" commented again today and apologized for any implied criticism of my blog. Seriously, I didn't take her comment as criticism at all and that's not why I posted the question--I truly want to find out if anyone has some insight that could help. You see, I knew in talking with Pink Flamingo Dianne that she had some problems with my blog before, when I had the countdown to Christmas posted, but she was able to get it to work okay by logging out of Mozilla and into IE--so if anyone has that kind of tip that would help, I'd be happy to share it. I COMPLETELY understand wanting to read a blog but not being able to because of computer issues--for some reason, I can't read Gran's blog and she's one of my best friends! She's on a Mac forum, and I think my computer doesn't have enough memory or just doesn't like it for some reason, because it takes about 10 minutes to load and I only have a one-minute attention span! (EDITOR'S NOTE: Someone commented the problem with my blog may be the falling snowflakes--do you think that's it? I could take those off easily!)

I'm sorry Anonymous thought her comment upset me in any way--it sure didn't. In fact, I appreciate it! I know you all take time out of your day to stop in and visit, and I want my blog to be worth the effort you take--and making it easy for most people to read is one of my goals. So if you have a problem, please let me know and if it seems reasonable and if there's a way to fix it, I'll try. I enjoy it when you visit me and leave comments--after all, it's why I blog!

ADDENDUM: Carol and Amanda are having a virtual quilt retreat on Saturday, March 13th, with games and prizes. I signed up for that one too! I hope you'll join us--you can check it out at their blogs!

Random Stuff

So I was wrong about the number of comments yesterday. I think you all did that on purpose! Ha! You made me laugh, though--especially Lady of the Cloth with her John Wayne toilet paper!

I wanted to follow up on a couple comments before I forget. First, Ruth S. left a comment on an old post about Kaye England's Progressive Patchwork, but she's no reply--Ruth, if you're reading this, please get in touch with Lindy at Bearpaws & Hollyhocks and she can help you find what you need for that program. Lindy will be away from the shop until around the middle of next week, but she said you can contact her then--just click HERE to get to the website with contact info.

An anonymous commenter mentioned my blog "jumping" around and hurting her eyes. I'm not sure what that's about except that some operating systems aren't very compatible so maybe that's where the problem is? All I know is that it doesn't do that for me at any of the computers I use. That reminds me, too, that I had another anonymous commenter who complained a couple times back in the fall about my "green" background color--at that time, my background color was actually a light brown/tan. The color I was using for the text (which I think was black) didn't show up well on the "green." I don't know if this might be a similar type of problem or whether it might be as simple as adjusting the color on the monitor, but I thought I'd mention these issues. Do any of you know what might cause them or have a solution to suggest?

For whatever reason, Gran has gone off on a Schnibbles tangent and dragged me along with her. You've probably seen the Year of Schnibbles group here and there across Blogland, haven't you? Well, Gran and I are getting in on a little Schnibbles action too--Sinta has said we can start with January or, if we're really industrious, we can go back to September and catch up with the rest of the group. I've put the logo thingamabob in my sidebar; now I just have to get busy making some little quilts!

If you've read my blog for a bit, you probably know that I'm fascinated by Schnibbles quilts and I usually make one every now and then. I've been thinking it would be fun to "teach" a Schnibbles club at the quilt shop and have the group meet every month or two. I think it could be a little like the Jo's Little Women Club, which also makes small quilts, but I think it would bring in quilters interested in more than just the 1800 reproduction fabrics. What do you think? Do you think quilters would be interested on a local quilt shop level?

And speaking of quilt shops, I've hinted that I've done a little fabric binge buying lately, right? When I came home tonight, Hubby mentioned I'd gotten a few packages in the mail. Want to see what I got?

First, a little Sherri Berry Holiday goodness!

I thought this fabric was cute before Christmas but I couldn't figure out what I'd make with it. Then I saw a quilt someone else made and I KNEW I NEEDED SOME. So, after Christmas, I found a bunch on sale and placed an order, but they didn't have any of these focus fabrics; I ended up buying these pieces "full price" to go with the other fabric I ordered.

Then there was this from the Fat Quarter Shop:

I can't remember the name of the line, but it was with the Christmas sale stuff. I just think it's a terrific fabric for a Valentine quilt with all that red and pink and green! It doesn't look at all Christmassy to me!

Finally, the L'Amour fabric I've mentioned recently as well as another piece of Valentine fabric there on the bottom. I think I need to get some serious sewing on!

BUT--tonight, I'm trying to get to bed a little early. Because you know what? Besides the fabric packages, I had a couple BOOK packages too! Yep, it's reading time! Thanks for stopping in to visit.