Field Trips in Fiber

Hour A Day Quilt

One last thing to post today. I got my version of the April Quilt For An Hour project loaded on the longarm. Since it's going to be a male QOV, I decided to quilt it with the Square Spiral panto. I think it's a good design for a masculine quilt. I wasn't going to bother to post a photo but realized that with the new camera I can finally show the accurate colors of this quilt! I will be so happy to have these fabrics out of my house! I've never been so disappointed with a fabric before. I know that these batiks are very popular with lots of quilters but I'm willing to bet they haven't washed them yet. The colors fade horribly after the first wash. My own hand dyes hold up better than this. I think these may actually be painted rather than dyed. Oh well, live and learn!

"Air" Postcard

The Quilting Adventures postcard swap theme for this month is "air". This one was difficult for me. I'm not particularly thrilled with what I ended up with but I ran out of time! I decided on "clouds" as my inspiration and call this one "clouds are jewelry for the sky".

Here's the card and how I made it

Birds and Dogs

I posted  the other day about my baby bluebirds and our visiting dogs. Today the third dog also came.

He's my favorite and we call him "Buddy". We don't know his real name. He's been around the barn a few times and is starting to have trouble walking. We see him less and less often. We first met him when he and Girlie had a Groundhog treed on our property. They stayed after it for hours - until DH finally got them away from the tree. We later discovered that fresh Groundhog is one of his favorite treats. We weren't too happy with him the time he dragged parts onto the front porch to eat. He didn't do that again! When he's lounging in the grass and you walk up to him he rolls over to be ready for his belly rub!

Postcards Received

I have received several postcards in the past few weeks. It's time to catch up on sharing the photos! It's such a pleasure to get art in the mail - so much better than bills.

Baby Bluebird Update

Look how much the baby bluebirds have grown in two days!

QOV Quilts are Done

I finished Barbara's second QOV quilt. These were lots of fun and I'm grateful to Barbara for letting me use these to practice some new techniques. Here are the photos and the quilts will be in the mail tomorrow back to Barbara.

New babies!

My husband has 3 bluebird houses stationed around our property. So far this year we only have 1 family. These babies were born Monday....

WIP - NEW CAMERA!!!

It's here! It's here! I just got the new camera, put the batteries in and quickly snapped two photos. I still need to actually read the manual and learn how it works, but, obviously, it's pretty intuitive. It's also very lightweight and smaller than my previous camera.

So, quickly, here's the QOV that I am working on for Barbara.  I took these with the out-of-the-box settings and the resolution is very high.

Should I take more classes?

I still feel handicapped without a camera! Wednesday can't get here quick enough. Today I got Barbara's second female QOV loaded and started. This is a really pretty quilt and I am doing a couple of different (but speedy) techniques on it. I also got the backing made for my Quilt For An Hour QOV quilt and a birthday postcard made for my 13 year old nephew. I never get quite as much done on Sunday as I want. Those darned chores always get in the way!

This evening I was reading the Joggles newsletter. The new summer classes are posted. Do you think I would be crazy to take 2 classes at the same time? I did that with the silk fusion and tea dyeing and got OBSESSED. But I really like both of these: Mixed Media Surfaces with Sue Bleiweiss and Beginner Photoshop Elements. I NEED the Photoshop class but just take a look at all of the really cool projects in the Mixed media class! Can I do both? Hmmmmm

I'm also flattered that Lisa selected me as one of her inspiring blogs. It's her blog that inspires me! I'm supposed to select 5 blogs that are most inspiring to me. I've decided not to do that - as you can tell, I have a long list of blogs that I read regularly and they all inspire me in some way. I wouldn't want to single out a few and risk offending someone. I can just tell you that if it's on my blog list, it's one that I read regularly!

A week from today I have to go to New Orleans for a business conference. I'm not particularly looking forward to it. I have a feeling that I'm going to have plenty of trouble with my allergies there. But if anyone can recommend any fiber, fabric or bead store that I need to visit please let me know! I will pick up a Saints T-shirt since I selected them as my NFL team last year. It's was a long analysis process but I wanted to have a team so that I could participate in the football season with my Mom and brothers (Vikings, Panthers, Redskins and Cowboys).   In the end I picked the Saints so now I need a shirt and I'll be ready for Autumn!

Weekend Progress

Blogging just isn't fun without pictures! Although yesterday was a tremendously productive day, I'll just recount it here briefly to record the progress and post the photos later in the week.

First, I got this female QOV quilt from Barbara loaded and quilted. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I have loaded and completed a quilt in one day. I did Jamie Wallen's Flurry of Angels as an overall treatment for the quilt. I did my flurry large and, while there are bobbles, it looks pretty good overall. I did this one large because I needed to get it done but the next time I would do it smaller. I used Superior So Fine thread and didn't have any problems at all. If you've been considering Jamie's Cottontracks workshop, go for it, it's excellent!

The other big accomplishment was getting my Hour A Day quilt top done. I put on the borders as I watched Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday for about the 40th time! I picked out some fabric from the stash for the backing and will get that pieced today. I've decided to quilt it with the Square Spiral panto so that I can get this done. It will be donated to QOV as well. This was a fun project and if Judy continues to do the HAD projects, I will do them as community service quilts. I also accomplished a little stash busting - I got rid of 5 yards of the batiks that I hated and 5 yards for the backing plus a lot of scraps for the 9-patch blocks.

Today is house chore day but I should get Barbara's second female QOV loaded and the quilting started. I also need to get back to my nephew's music snail's trail. The blocks are all done, I just need to put them together and add borders. I'm so proud of him - he was accepted into the Peabody Conservatory! They told him that his trombone audition was graduate student quality! Now we are working like mad on scholarship applications  - no one in this family has the $42k annual tuition - but I told him if it was that important to him then he could make it work.

Weekend Plans

Being without a camera is a real bummer! I don't like posting without photographs. I have ordered the new camera, a Canon A710 and it will be here Wednesday. I'll sure have lots of photos to catch up on by then! I selected the A710 for several reasons. First, I only buy cameras that use AA batteries. I always have a huge supply at home and they are very easy to find anywhere else. I didn't want a camera that was too heavy or too fancy. Some day I want to take up more serious photography but I don't have time for that right now. So I narrowed my choices to the A630 and A710 and frankly it was a toss up at that point. Honestly, I would have preferred to keep my Olympus Camedia - I loved that camera!

The last 2 nights I have been working on my version of the April Quilt For an Hour quilt. I only have 5 more blocks to make before I start sewing together the middle of the quilt. I may get the top done this weekend. I wish I could show it, it's looking pretty good on the design wall!

This weekend I must get this quilt from Barbara loaded and quilted. It's a female QOV. Ideally I could also get this one (also from Barbara) loaded a started. I also have a birthday postcard to make for my nephew for his 13th birthday and cards for a local swap with "air" as the theme.

Carla asked in a comment about the TENS machine that I bought on day 3 of MQX. Yes, yes, yes - I love it and would recommend it to anyone with chronic muscle tension issues. I get deep tissue massages at least once every 3 weeks but one day of sewing or heavy computer work totally knots up the muscles in my back and neck. 20 minutes on the TENS machine loosens everything up! I wish I had bought one of these years ago! The one I got came from here but the price was much better at the show. I'm sure you could shop around and find similar models at a better price. Although, I have to say that I would probably have paid twice as much to have this relief.

Wednesday - not much WIP

First the good news – my luggage arrived yesterday with everything intact! Thank you United and FedEx. Apparently if you live far enough away from the airport (2 hours in my case) they FedEx your luggage instead of having it delivered. Since it had been a few days since packing it was like getting lots and lots of presents as I unpacked all of my purchases! Wow – I bought a lot of thread!

The bad news is that my camera is apparently dead. My photo quality has been going downhill for a month or so and it was really bad last week. I thought it was the lighting at the show but I tried lots of different photos last night and they were all bad. My geek co-worker looked at it and thinks that a lens is messed up. It’s been a great camera and I have used it a lot (and dropped it a few times) but it is 4 years old so I suppose it’s time for a new one. There will be no pictures on the blog until I get a new one though.

Since I’ve been home I haven’t done a lot of sewing. Real work has been very hectic to catch up but I am making a little progress on the Hour A Day Quilt. I’ve also been watching way too much news and I have to stop. I graduated from Virginia Tech 25 years ago and an a bit surprised at how this event has shaken me. It’s very upsetting to see such horror at a place that I loved. On the up side, I have been so impressed with the students that have spoken on TV and I think their love for the school, their intelligence and maturity really shows through. I also think the Governor has also been great. All of the other Virginia universities have shown a great deal of support as well, especially our friendly rival, UVA. The media, on the other hand, is horrible – as usual.

An interesting side not to this. I am the Risk Manager for my company and therefore in charge of Emergency Response Planning, Business Continuity and Disaster Recover. One of the things we have in place for employees is an emergency contact system. It’s a service that we pay for. Our vendor sources say they are being inundated with calls from schools and universities to inquire about such services. That tells me that most universities do rely on email as a contact method.  Even with a more robust contact method I think that the university situation will always be difficult to manage. We have a very difficult time here getting employees to keep their contact information up to date. I can’t imagine how difficult that will be in a university situation with thousands of young people. They are more mobile and have less structured schedules than employees and I think it would be like trying to herd snakes to get them to take the initiative to notify the university when their cell number or campus address changes. It’s an interesting dilemma and I do not envy the universities' challenge in resolving it.

I see many hours of sewing therapy in my immediate future and I don’t plan to blog anymore about the Virginia Tech incident – so if it upset you, don’t worry, I’m done. Meanwhile, I'm off to Costco for camera shopping!

Home Sweet Home

Vacation is over and it's great to be home! I was a little worried about the weather but my flight did get out pretty much on time. The highlight of the trip was running into quilters in the airport. Several of us, including Robbi Joy Eklow, Jodi Beamish and Lisa Thiessen laughed and told stories from the week. It was a fun way to pass the morning as we all hoped we would be flying out today. I read and love Robbi's articles but had never met her - she's a walking entertainment package!

The only bad part of the trip was that the plane was overweight and they unloaded some luggage. I knew mine would go because it was big and heavy. By the line at the claims office, I think they unloaded about half of it! I'm told it will be delivered Tuesday - I'm not holding my breath. But there will be no photo posts until that bag arrives. It has my Blackberry and cell phone chargers, my laptop charger and the cable for the digital camera along with all of my MQX purchases. I sure hope I see that bag again! I also hope that they did not remove Lisa's bag, her cherub quilt is in her checked luggage.

I was exhausted when I got home. The dinner last night was great but there must have been some dairy in some part of the BBQ I had for dinner because I had a bad allergic reaction to it so I didn't get much sleep.  I had a long nap when I got home and now I'm trying to get in the groove to go back to work tomorrow.

I'm already looking forward to MQX next year. If you have been thinking about going to something like this but don't want to go by yourself - let me assure you, you are not alone at MQX. There are friends everywhere!

MQX - The End

I'm happy to be going home - home is always the best - but a little sad to see the end of MQX. It was a great week. I remember going to American Sewing Guild expos in the early '90s. You didn't really want to go to one alone because it was difficult to meet people. People were very aloof, unfriendly and seemed to be competitive for some reason. It's totally different with the longarm shows. At lunch today I was standing in line and the 3 ladies in front of me invited me to eat with them. They were from the area and had driven in just for the day. It was loads of fun.

MQX - Day 3

The snow from yesterday was almost all melted by the time I left for the Radisson today. It was a beautiful day here in New Hampshire. I started my day with a walk around the main convention hall just looking at the quilts. My plan had been to not buy anything today - ha!

MQX - Day 2

Another great day at MQX! Yesterday in the design class I started a quilt design based on my bluebird photos - the ones I used in the bluebird postcards.  I like the idea so far but this morning I woke with another idea. I have some silk chiffon that I purchased for a landscape beading project a few months ago. That's the project that gelled in my mind this morning. So I spent today drafting a miniature quilt using the beaded tree concept combined with traditional pine tree blocks. I found a booth selling gradient fabrics in fat 1/16Th's so I bought several colorways to use in the quilt. I suppose I'll add this to the project in process list soon!

MQX - Day 1

It's been a long day but a fun one! Today was the first day of the quilt design class with Janet Fogg. If you don't recognize her name, you would probably recognize her quilts. She has at least 3 in the show here and I think all but one are sporting ribbons! Her specialty is combining traditional quilt blocks with inovative techniques. You may have seen her Chocolat quilt or Kitty Cornered with a very large cat in the upper right corner walking over traditional puss in the curner blocks. I took a couple of photos tonight but they did not turn out well at all. I'll try again tomorrow.

Made it to Manchester!

Actually it was all quite uneventful. I arrived in Manchester this afternoon around 2:00, got to the hotel, unpacked and made a trip to the grocery store for supplies before returning to the airport to meet Suzanne. It was the first time we've met face-to-face and she's as nice and funny in person as she is in cyberspace! We had a nice dinner and now I'm back at the hotel in my jammies ready to watch some Idol.

I promise to post photos soon! Meanwhile, it's a milestone day for me - my blog registered it's 5000th visitor today! I never imagined that would happen in less than 6 months!

Bird Postcard Swap

This is my last post before leaving for MQX tomorrow. I'm taking my camera and PC along so hope to post on the fun as the week goes by! This is the postcard that I made for the Stitcher Guild "bird" swap.

Here's how I made it...

Quilting the Baby Snails Trail

This afternoon I loaded and quilted the Baby Snails Trail quit. Once the binding is done I will post color photos of the front and back. For now, here's a black and white of the back to show the quilting. It's one of the designs from Suzanne Earley's More Meandering Magic. It's a perfect design for a kid quilt and it quilts up very fast! There are ladybugs, flowers, spirals, butterflies and dragonflies. It's quilted on Minkee so the fabric texture smudges the photo some.

Soap Making - Part 2

Some people posted that soap making seems complex. It really isn't! There is some science involved but tools like the Lye Calculator make it really easy. I did everything in step 1 in about 1.5 hours and that includes taking the photos, set up, clean up and re-ordering supplies while the fats and lye cooled! It's also very economical. I ordered enough supplies for 8 - 10 more batches of soap and the total cost was about $45. A batch of soap makes up to 10 bars. That's about 50 cents per bar!

Quilt For An Hour progress

I'm caught up! I finished Hour 5 of Judy's current project. I will not keep up the rest of the week because I'll be at MQX, but I like this enought that I'll get it done when I return. Have I said already that I'm really happy to be getting rid of this fabric that I hate? The funny thing is that, now that I am using it, I'm starting to like it! Here's a photo of a stack of the 9-patch blocks. The blue fabric wil be the "white" in her quilt.

This photo is just awful. I'm switching from Micrisoft Digital Image Editor to Photoshop Elements and am trying to learn it. I also need to spend somemore time on getting the photo lighting correct. This particular quilt seems to be one of the more difficult to photograph so the next time I photo the progress I will use that opportunity to futz with the photo more.

Soap making - part 1

Today is a holiday at work and the first day of my 10 straight days off work! While the guys were hear finishing up the tile installation (prev post), I made a batch of soap. I'm not going to give you every detail, just the basic steps. Soap making is much more involved than lotion making - there's some science involved - but once you understand it, it's quite easy. If you decide that you want to make soap, I recommend reading The Soapmaker's Companion before jumping in.

A little house work

This post has NOTHING to do with sewing, quilting or crafting. I'm so thrilled with the results that I wanted to share. W bought our home 10 years ago and did some major remodeling (half the house gutted) before we ever moved in. This was one of the ugliest houses ever but we loved the property. We've done all the work to fit the way we live, not how anyone else would want it. We chip away at some of the finer tasks each year. This year I decided that I wanted to do the kitchen back splash and the powder room. I love glass of any kind and I like it everywhere so I decided on glass tile. The tile for both projects came from Hakatai. I can't say enough good things about Hakatai - great product and even better service!

Postcards Received

I recently purchased a new laptop. I wanted a very light weight PC that I could travel with for surfing the web, connecting to work and doing some photo editing and blogging. I've been working for a few nights to get over Vista and to get various software installed. Tonight I got Photoshop Elements installed and decided to go ahead and edit and post my recent postcard photos. It is the first time I've used Elements and I like it so far. I'll play with it some more next week while I'm lounging in my hotel at MQX.  I still can't get Firefox to load and run properly. Anyone have any suggestions on running Firefox on Vista??

Here are the postcards:

WIP Wednesday

Not much actual activity in this WIP Wednesday and no photos. Today is all about getting ready for some sewing days off!

 I have actually completed all but 8 of the 9-patch blocks for Judy’s Quilt for an Hour project. You can see my fabric selections in the previous post. I only need about 30 minutes tonight to have them all complete so I’ll be ready for the next installment of instructions.

 I’ll have Friday – Monday off work before I head to New Hampshire Tuesday for  MQX . I am very excited about the trip. I am particularly looking forward to Janet Fogg’s 2-day design class!

 For the 4-day weekend I must get the following project done!

• Bird postcards for the Artisan Square swap - they are about 50% done now
• Make a batch or two of soap – since it takes 3 weeks for a batch to cure, this is becoming a time critical issue! LOL! If you’ve ever been interested in soap making, check in here over the weekend for the step-by-step process.
• Quilt and bind the baby Snail’s Trail and deliver both Snails Trail quilts to Quilting Adventures.
• Load the 1^st Female QOV from Barbara and get the quilting started. I will do this one first with an all-over feather pattern.

There’s a lot more that I WANT to do but these 4 things must get done. We are going to visit my Mom and Aunt Saturday. I think my Mom is also doing the Quilt For An Hour project so I can’t wait to see her color palette. 

I should have some real activity and photos to start posting Friday! Tomorrow I will post some postcards that I’ve received in the mail recently.

Yet another new project.."Quilt For An Hour"

Someone needs to just shoot me! Last night I started yet another project. I've been wanting to make another QOV quilt and I do have a couple on progress. Unfortunately they are all class samples so I can't finish them up any time soon. Meanwhile, I found Judy Laquidara's blog, Sunshine Quilts. She started publishing "Quilt For An Hour" projects. I didn't participate in February but when she posted the April project I was drawn in!

Something accomplished

I haven't posted in a few days because I didn't have any photos to post! Yesterday, some friends and I went to do the Virginia Quilt Museum to volunteer and to see the Jamestown Challenge Quilts display. Of course, we made a stop at Patchwork Plus in Dayton, VA. A couple of red and black fabrics begged to come home with me and I didn't disappoint them! I always take a hand sewing project along to do while manning the museum desk so I was able to complete the binding of the Blue and White Snails Trail.