Oh, Heck!

I seem to have a stomach bug tonight. Did you see the movie Bridesmaids? You know the scene where they all go out to lunch and then go to the bridal shop to pick out bridesmaids' dresses? My stomach sounds like that. Hopefully it won't quite BE that bad. I've got nothing else to talk about tonight though. I'll be back tomorrow--unless it IS that bad!

Gotta go now.

Another Stellar Day

Except for the part where I drove around Sacramento for an hour this morning, all for nothing, the day was another excellent one! And why did I waste time driving around? I wanted to go to the Second Sunday Antique Faire, but when I got down there, traffic was truly horrendous, and I just couldn't imagine (especially after circling around the area a few times) finding a parking spot a couple blocks away and trying to battle through the crowds in the summer heat. Nope, didn't sound fun. So I headed to a favorite thrift store downtown that I don't get to very often--but it wasn't open yet. I gave up. Not wanting to go home empty handed, though, I hit the Starbuck's drive thru for some morning fuel. And guess what? Hubby was still sound asleep!

I unpacked my goodies from the stitchery get together and thought I'd show you the loot. Julie, the hostess, gave us the glass with candy flowers and floral fabric--the fabric is a kit she put together for each of us to make a small quilt. Cute!

We also each received two potholders--the green silicone one was from Irene, and the red chenille one was from Sandy, as was the emery strawberry. Julie also gave each of us crosses from a mission she visited last week. It doesn't show up very well, but it's the prettiest thing made of glass. Last but not least was the card Imelda had made for each of us--it will look excellent framed and hung up in the Sweat Shop.

After I gave up on driving around Sacramento and armed with a Venti iced latte, I headed to the Sweat Shop to continue working on the project I took to Julie's with me--a Christmas pillow. My sewing was interrupted a few times today, but by the end of the 11 p.m. news, here's how far I'd gotten on it--it just needs to be stuffed and the last seam stitched closed:

Cute, isn't it? That's the pattern I bought from The Quilt House. I made my pillow a little larger than the pattern and added ruffle, but here's the pattern in case you're interested:

It's by The Quilt Company--the glare from the flash washes out the name a bit.

If you want the pattern and can't find it, give The Quilt House in Gardnerville, Nevada, a call--she even has extra packets of the buttons, so you can make more than one and give them to friends and relatives.

Besides sewing, Hubby and I took my car to the car wash and went out for a good dinner--I had a birthday coupon for a free entree at one of our favorite Italian restaurants. Yum!

And sometime during the weekend, I cleaned house, did laundry, made up the week's menu plan, and did the grocery shopping. It feels really good to have accomplished all that and still had a marveous time! Sadly, the weekend's over and it's off to bed for me--tomorrow's a work day. I'm glad you stopped in for a visit!

An Evening With the Q-Balls

All six of our stitchery friends were able to get together today at Julie's house for our monthly gathering--it's been some months since all of us could make it, so it was quite a treat! Julie made a yummy pasta salad and we certainly didn't lack for food--between what people brought and what Julie and her daughter made, we ate all day long! Some gifties were exchanged too, but I haven't unpacked mine yet--maybe I'll get a photo or two of a few things tomorrow to share. I'm pretty sure I'll get a photo of the project I worked on because the stitchery part is completed; I just need to make it into a pillow. It's really cute; you'll like it! And the ironic thing? I bought the pattern from the Quilt House when they had a booth at a local quilt show some months back. This, of course, was before Hubby cheated on me and took someone else to the shop (see yesterday's post if you haven't already).

And, by the way . . . no, my birthday, our anniversary, and Mother's Day are recently past, so I'm certain he didn't stop to get me a gift. And I'm about 97 percent certain he didn't think ahead to Christmas. This is a man who has been known to tell me on my birthday that he just didn't have time to get a card. Like he didn't know it was coming for a whole year.

Anyway, beside the point. After a wonderful day of stitchery and friends, three of us continued on to the park to see the Q-Balls perform. This is the band that Ted, one of the attorneys I work with, plays in.

The photo above doesn't really even give you an inkling of the size of the crowd. It extended to left and right of the photo and behind me, and kept growing through the evening.

It was a hot day in Sacramento--probably in the upper 90s and close to 100 would be my guess. But by the time we arrived at the park around 6:30 p.m., it started cooling a bit and we had a nice shady spot.

Want to see the band a little better?

Throughout the evening, I took several photos, but quite a few were blurry, especially after it started to get dark. And no, the photographer hadn't been drinking anything stronger than a Starbuck's iced latte! But I just couldn't find a camera setting that would take an "action" photo in low light.

All of us had a great time, and the day as a whole was pretty near perfect. Wish you could have been here. And the weekend's only half over--yay!

Betrayed!

Gosh, I feel cheated on! By Hubby! But I'll let you be the judge.

Remember I mentioned yesterday that Hubby was in Reno with his friend Gene? Remember they went to Reno for Hot August Nights to look at CARS? And, no doubt, to do other manly stuff?

Okay, well here's the thing. On the drive back from Reno, Hubby took Gene on the same scenic detour WE traveled coming back from our little Reno trip to see Dana Carvey. But that's not the worst part--after all, ANYONE can travel the same roads, and many people do. But THEY STOPPED AT THE QUILT HOUSE!

How could Hubby take someone else to "my" quilt shop? And not even tell me they were going so I could ask him to pick up stuff for me?

The story they're trying to sell me is that they stopped so Hubby could show Gene this old wooden sled:

Are you buying it? Me neither! And did Hubby even get me a GIFT while he was there? Heck no! So what do you think? Betrayed?

I'll be spending the day with my stitchery gals--I'll have to see what they think. It seems to me that payback might include a retaliatory shopping trip. After all, isn't there a saying that goes something like "Hell hath no fury like a woman left at home when there's a quilt shop involved?" Sheesh!

And They're Off!

Oddly enough, two people have asked me within the last day whether my boss liked the quilt I made for her and her new husband. I thought I had posted about it, but I guess I didn't! (If you missed it, the most recent of my 11 in '11 projects was made for her.)

Did I tell you she was taking a three-month leave of absence to spend time with her new husband in China? His contract there is up in October and then he'll probably come back to the States, but in the meantime, they'll have some time together.

Anyway, she liked the quilt so much, she thought it was one of the things she would take to China with her. She flew out yesterday--finally! And I don't know if she ended up taking it or not, but I could tell she genuinely loved it. Isn't it nice to make quilts for people who understand the amount of time and work that goes into them?

As a thank you for the long hours I've been putting in over the last few weeks, getting things ready so she could leave, she gave me a Visa gift card with a note instructing me to treat myself to something special from my favorite quilt shop. Nice, eh?! She's really a good person to work for, and I don't at all mind working hard for her. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think I told you that when Soccer Son was having surgery, she put together a "care package" for me to take, filled with things she thought I might need, like chocolate and a Starbucks card. She's very thoughtful.

Anyway, right now it seems that everyone is off somewhere--not just my boss. The Wild Child is in New York until next week, and Hubby went off to Reno with his friend Gene for Hot August Nights--an annual event that revolves around restored old cars and hot rods. I know they're having a wonderful time.

And me? Well, I took the day off today to spend quietly at home. It's pretty rare that I end up with the house all to myself for a day, and I wanted to make the most of it. I didn't do much--at least I didn't get much accomplished--but that was more or less the plan. I slept in, I read, I did some stuff to my hair so I could continue to look 29 years old, I made a new recipe for a dip to take to Saturday's get together of my stitchery friends, and I messed around in the Sweat Shop doing this and that. It was nice.

Tomorrow it's back to work for me--one more work day and then the weekend arrives. Hubby will be back sometime tomorrow. After work, I'll have a few more things to do to get ready to spend Saturday with my friends. Life will be normal and busy as usual. For the next couple hours, though, I still have the house to myself, so I think I'll take a nice, relaxing bath and go to bed and read a good book. See you tomorrow!

Neat and Tidy

I'm not compulsively tidy. Really. But remember the other day when I said that being precise matters when it comes to quilting? Well, being careful and orderly in quilting does too.

There are pattern designers--and I can't tell you who they are off hand, although I CAN tell you I'm not one of them--who will show us on their patterns which way to press our seams. And I suspect many quilters either don't notice the arrows indicating which way to press the seams, don't know what they mean, or simply don't care. But if you've ever tried to get two seams to intersect nicely and just can't do it no matter how hard you try, the chances are both seam allowances are pressed in the same direction.

I took a few photos when I was making the friendship star blocks the other night so I could illustrate what I'm talking about. In this first photo, I've sewn the three separate strips together and I've pressed the seams away from the half square triangle squares and toward the plain squares. They tend to lay nicer this way.

But even if that middle piece of the middle strip was a half square triangle square, I'd STILL press the seams toward it because that way, the two side strips attach nicer.

In the next photo, I'm holding one of the side strips to the middle strip and showing you how the seam of one goes one way and the seam of the other one goes the other way. Now when I sew them together, they will nestle up and form a nice, flat intersection.

After sewing the three strips together, here's what the star block looks like:

And the back of the block looks nice and tidy, doesn't it?

Because the seams are well organized, I can do the same thing even with small pieces.

And here's the back:

At our monthly Thimbleberries Club meeting tonight, I passed around the Saturday Night Leftovers mini I just made. I wish I had taken a photo of the back of the quilt top before putting it together to show you, because even with such small pieces, the back looked pretty orderly. Taking care to make sure the seams are all pressed straight and not caught going every which way helps to make each part of the quilt look better--especially when working with tiny pieces. Some of the quilters tonight were surprised at how small some of those pieces were, but they really weren't much harder to make than the larger versions--just as long as I paid attention to the details, like getting the seams to lay right.

Yes, there are many times when no matter how hard we try, our seams will not fit together nicely, but there are various tricks for getting them to work. I remember seeing one of them--where you clip the seam allowance almost up to the seam to press part one way and part another--in a Schnibbles pattern recently, and I think it was probably the George pattern. Keep an eye out for these kinds of tips and tricks because they really DO help make for a nicer quilt and a quilter who is a lot less frustrated by trying and trying to make blocks come together correctly.

Sure this attention to detail takes a little more time, but before long, it kind of becomes second nature. And, of course, I know I'll spend a little less time ripping out and re-sewing seams because they were too far off. Give it a try next time you piece something and see what you think.

Saturday Night Leftovers

The ladies who run our local Thimbleberries Club challenged us to make mini quilts this year--we can bring one a month for show and tell and each mini qualifies us for one entry in the end-of-the-year prize raffle. This will be my second mini for the year.

One of the prerequisites to qualify for a ticket is that the mini must have a label, which--at least to me--means coming up with a name for the quilt. Maybe I was stuck for a name because the quilt was made up of a hodgepodge of mixed blocks. Maybe it was the Chef Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares marathon I watched last weekend. In any event, "the dog's dinner" popped into my mind. THEN--and thank goodness because who wants a quilt called The Dog's Dinner?--that led me to think of leftovers. And since the leftover mini Midnight Sky blocks were what started the whole thing, and I worked on both the large and small blocks most of Saturday, it seemed like Saturday Night Leftovers worked for a title.

While I was writing this post, Stitch jumped up on the desk and started whacking the mini, trying to make sure it was dead, I suppose.

Maybe I need to make a new label: "Tuesday Night Kill"

Some Basics

A friend of mine who made blocks for the Midnight Sky quilt I worked on asked whether any of her blocks were poorly made--you may remember I told you that a couple were too small, and a few were too large and had to be remade; in remaking them, I couldn't figure out how the person had cut and stitched the pieces for one of the blocks because they were not at all straight or precise. As I told my friend, I had no idea who made which blocks and it didn't really matter anyway; I just thought the subject would be a good learning topic for some of the less experienced quilters who read this blog.

The funny thing is that my friend also told me that since reading that post, she's been paying closer attention to her sewing and trying to be more precise, and that's exactly the purpose of that post--because we can all get better with experience and practice, particularly when we pay attention to what we're doing.

I think at least one person said they had a hard time figuring out where to line up for the quarter inch seam allowance. Most sewing machine manufacturers sell a quarter inch foot for their machine, and there are also generic feet that will fit most machines. Still, it's an expense that not everyone wants to invest in, so there are other ways to get a fairly precise seam allowance.

Below is a close up of my machine--it's a Bernina and it has a quarter inch foot on it.

Besides using the edge of the foot, the plate has markings showing where to line up for a quarter inch seam. See that little line in the metal just to the right of the fabric? But if I had neither of those references, I would use a piece of masking tape or painter's tape to tape off a line I could use as a guide. I would do that by placing an acrylic ruler under the foot with the quarter inch mark lined up with the needle and the edge of the ruler extending a quarter inch to the right. I'd then stick the tape to the plate along the edge of the ruler.

Someone also commented about having trouble cutting width-of-fabric strips so they're straight. Here's the method I was taught. First, press all the wrinkles from your piece of fabric and hold the fabric up with selvage edges lined up as they are in the next photo. (Normally I would hold the fabric, not pin it to a design wall, but I couldn't take photos that way!)

Slide the selvages back and forth until the fabric hangs straight. In the photo above, it's hard to see but the fabric didn't hang straight until I slid the front edge a bit to the left in the photo below.

Most of the time, you can skip this first step if the fabric is properly creased on the bolt. You can usually tell by looking along the selvage edges to see if the are evenly aligned down the length of the fabric. If they are, then chances are the center crease in the fabric is fine.

Often times for cutting, it's easier to double the fabric over once more as in the next photo.

The same process of aligning edges and shifting until the fabric hangs straight is used. I then line up the edge of my ruler along the center fold and make the first cut along the bottom of my ruler to trim the edges. Then, after I've cut the first strip, I unfold it to see if the cut is straight and true before continuing on. I will then usually cut about three more strips before lining up the ruler with the center fold again to reestablish a straight edge because after a few cuts, chances are the fabric and ruler have shifted slightly and the strips are no longer as straight as they should be.

That's all I have for you tonight, and I hope it's helpful to some! Thanks for visiting.

An Excellent Weekend!

My weekend was very productive--and I had fun too.

Remember the quilt blocks I was working on the other night--the ones that my quilting group contributed? I made a few extra blocks and put all the blocks together and added simple borders. It turned out larger than I expected, but everyone was generous about making blocks.

The quilt is a Thimbleberries pattern called Midnight Sky, and we've decided to make ours mostly in Christmas colors. It's a relatively forgiving block because there are very few seams to line up. This quilt will be a gift for someone, and I'll be passing it on this week to the woman who volunteered to do the quilting.

I've been stuck on the idea of making spaghetti and meatballs since last week when a couple of the women I work with made spaghetti sauce from some leftovers and dished it up for us on Friday. You'd think my craving would have been satisfied by their pasta, but for some reason, it just made me want to make a batch myself--something I rarely do mid-summer! But I went to the grocery store this morning and bought everything I needed and Hubby and I had some great penne pasta with spaghetti sauce and meatballs for dinner. I swear it turned out better than I can remember making it before. Yum!

I also bought what I need to make lasagna. That's the great thing about spaghetti sauce--it can be used for so many different meals. I hope that investing time this weekend in spaghetti sauce will pay off in quick weeknight meals so I can get into the Sweat Shop earlier after work each evening!

I ended with three extra blocks I had made for the Midnight Sky quilt, so I think I'll make them into a tablerunner. I also ended up making four teeny tiny Midnight Sky blocks with leftovers. Today I turned those into a mini quilt--

It's just 19" square. To give you an idea about the size of the blocks, the red and green pinwheels are 1" square and each of the nine blocks (including the four Midnight Sky blocks) is 3-3/4". Crazy, huh? I'm planning to quilt it tomorrow night and get it bound the next night. I think I'll bind it in a cream colored fabric to pull that color to the outside, but I'm not certain. What do you think?

Time for bed. The weekend's over and it's back to work tomorrow. I'm glad you could visit!

Oh My Stars!

Are you ready to make some Ghastlie stars? (Of course, you don't have to use the Ghastlies fabric for this quilt--you can use any focus fabric in place of the Ghastlies, but I think the Irish chain with star center block as an alternate block is a nice way to tie any focus blocks together.)

First, you'll need to do a little cutting. The number in parenthesis is the number of pieces to cut to make the full 12 star blocks I used in the Ghastlies quilt, but if you're making a smaller version, use the first number and multiply by however many blocks you need.

1 (12) 3-1/2" pink square for star center
8 (96) 2" pink squares for star points
12 (144) 2" white squares for chain
4 (48) 2" by 3-1/2" green strips
4 (48) 2" by 6-1/2" green strips
4 (48) 2" by 9-1/2" green strips

For each block, you'll need to make four flying geese blocks using the 2" pink squares and the 2" x 3-1/2" green strips. For instructions on making flying geese, click HERE.

I'll give you the piecing directions for one block--please feel free to chain piece for as many blocks as you're making, of course! Refer to the photo of the block for placement of colors and pieces.

Starting with the 3-1/2" pink center square, add flying geese pieces to two opposite sides. Press seams toward the center pink square. To the two remaining flying geese, sew a 2" white square on each end and press seams toward the white square. Sew the second set of geese to the star center. Press seams toward the center. This completes the star part of the block. Do a visual doublecheck to make sure the geese are sewn on correctly to form star points--every now and then I find myself starting to sew geese upside down!

To two opposite sides of the resulting star block, sew a 2" by 6-1/2" strip. Press seams toward the center. To the two remaining 6-1/2" strips, add a 2" white square to each end. Press seams to the white squares. Sew the second set of strips to the star center. Press seams toward the center.

Repeat as above with the last set of strips and white squares.

There you go! The alternating star blocks are done!

Alternate Ghastlies blocks with star/chain blocks and sew the center together. For the large quilt like the one I made, start with Ghastlies on each end of the top row and in the center (that makes three Ghastlies) and use two star/chain blocks between them. Reverse that order for the next row using three star/chain blocks. Keep reversing back and forth until all the blocks are used. I found it very helpful to use a design wall so I could decide where to place each different Ghastlie block. As you sew the blocks together, press the seam allowances toward the Ghastlie blocks.

Once you get the center together, all that remains is the borders and corner blocks. I'll give those directions soon. Nice job!