Hand Piecing

Two bloggers started a Hand Pieced Quilt Along together--Patty of  Elm Street Quilts, and Kristin of Simple, Homemade, Everyday. Each of them used different colorways and each has posted a different setting. There's a facebook page, too--Hand Pieced Quilt Along.  Every week (on Monday) a different block is posted, beginning with the basics and building on those skills. Each block finishes at 6", so those are some small pieces there.

This is not my first time hand piecing, but it has been fun to get back to it. The first quilting class I ever took was a sampler quilt of 12" blocks, all by hand. I made a throw for my daughter after graduating high school (late 90s) and hand quilted it as well. It's still in use, though very worn and ragged, which is why I am making her the string quilt.

I'm running a little behind, but I did finish up blocks 1 and 2 this week. (Block 5 will be posted on Monday, so I'm trying to catch up!)  There are sponsors with prizes every week, so this will be my first week to link up and be eligible for a prize. I decided to use batik scraps for my blocks, and I think I will set them on point, something I've never done before. Here are my first 2 blocks:

 It has been such a dreary, rainy fall and winter, that I felt the need for something more cheerful, now that the lights and colors of Christmas are just a memory. I'm thinking this little quiltlet should be called "Confetti".  It reminds me of the birthday cake Dawn made for my granddaughter's 4th birthday last week.

Revving it up again

I'm finally getting back into sewing and quilting again. It's been too long coming, but you know, life....! I've really missed it, and just decided I needed to get my daughter's quilt finished, no matter what. I started this before she finished law school--and she graduated in 2007!. She deserves to have it.

It's a string quilt, and for the longest time, I couldn't figure out how to do the batting. I sewed the strings to muslin strips, then decided to add a border, then another couple of borders, to make it a generously sized sofa quilt. But the borders weren't backed by muslin, so I just couldn't figure out how to make it all a consistent thickness with the batting. I asked at a couple of quilt shops, but no one seemed to know what to do. It was so frustrating, I put the flimsy aside for years.

I pulled it out again the end of last summer, and thought I could just use batting on the borders, to make it more even, but that didn't seem to play out well once I started trying to put it into practice. So the latest plan was to just use a thin batting for all of it, and get this thing finished!

Sandwiching a quilt has been such a challenge, with a bad knee. Getting up off the floor is next to impossible. I had managed to get the quilt sandwiched using spray adhesive, but still came out with lots of wrinkles on the back. So for Christmas, Jack bought me a 6 ft long folding table. Having the table made it so much easier to smooth it all out and repin, and now I have my machine set up on the table and am finally quilting it. It's a domestic machine, and I am so rusty, but it's coming along. The table is really too high for sewing on, and I can only do it for about an hour before my shoulders get fatigued, but my goal is to finish it this month.

I'm quilting it from the back, because the myriad of patterns and sizes of the strings makes me a little cross-eyed when trying to free-motion quilt it from the front. I keep mentally chanting "finished is better than perfect" when I get frustrated.

There's a quilt-along on Facebook that I'm participating in, too. I'll post more about it later. It's hand-piecing, and perfect for winter nights!

Halloween 2017

Well, here they are, the pictures from this year!  I put out a lot more this year, since I was able to get into the shed and go through the boxes and bins. It was almost like Christmas, rediscovering some of the things I had.  The wind tried to play havoc with my tombstones and props, but I figured out how to work with the wind instead of against it, and it wasn't too shabby. Got lots of compliments from kids and adults alike, so that made it worth while.

First, a picture of Hazel. She's 2 1/2, and her mom made her a Witch Hazel costume. She figures it's the last time she'll get to choose Hazel's costume, since next year Hazel will be almost 4, and she's already a very decisive little girl.

She's usually restricted to a pacifier at bedtime only, but the poor tyke had just come down from a 101.8 fever, and wasn't feeling well, but wanted to come see Popsy and Mango, so a little comfort measure was in order.  She did go trick or treating in my neighborhood, and she finally made the connection. "Popsy!" she said when she got back. "I said 'trick or treat' and people gave me CANDY!"  First candy she's ever had.  She said she wanted to go again the next night, but when she encountered 2 dinosaurs, that was it. I don't know what it was about the dinosaurs costumes, but Hazel screamed in absolute terror and had to be taken inside.

Here are some pics of the night:

Started the thankless job of taking it all down and packing it away. But it was fun, and the kids seemed to like it, and I'm already toying with a theme for next year....

October 2017

I had the great fortune to be a live actor in a haunted mill this season. It started with one of those 'suggested pages' by FB, with a request for volunteers to work at Madame Redrum's Nine Gates of Doom. I responded, met up with Madame, toured the building and would have paid to be a part of this. The building is an old mill that burned down in 1863 and was rebuilt on the same foundation, so who knows exactly how old it is? It's 4 stories high with all the old machinery, and is absolutely fascinating even when not gussied up for Halloween.

I had a blast working with a bunch of other volunteers, and soon found my niche in the scaring. I really loved making the macho guys jump! These were some of my early looks, but my greatest success was a totally black grim reaper's outfit, with a black faceless mask, emerging from a dark corner.

We did this every Fri. and Sat. night for 5 weeks, and I made every one of the 10 nights. Although it was tiring, it was also exhilarating, and this coming weekend will be my first free weekend in a while. I think it'll feel strange. Already looking forward to next year and wondering just who I'll be.

So, Who Am I Kidding?

Has anyone else practically given up blog-reading for Facebook?  It's so quick and easy to look at who's posting what and get a snapshot of friends' lives on my phone. Seems I rarely sit down at the computer any more unless I'm A: shopping on Amazon,  B: searching Craigslist, or C: paying bills.  Most of the time I even read my emails on my phone.

But then I miss out on some of those wonderful photos of quilts, and grandchildren, and food.
I really have to start setting aside some time each day to get caught up.

So, what's new in our household?  Well, I went Whole Food, Plant Based in January. Met my new doc, who recommended Dr. Fuhrman's book The End of Diabetes,  and from there, Eat to Live.  Made a convert out of me. When I started reading some of the info out there, such as The China Study, Engine 2, My Beef with Meat, and started (but never finished) How Not to Die, I was shocked and dismayed at what meat and dairy do to the human body.  I watched Forks Over Knives, What the Health, Food Matters, and some other documentaries and they changed how I live now.

(That's me on the right in November.)

Since January, I've lost 35 lbs., started going to the YMCA for water aerobics and weight training 3 days/week, with Silver Sneakers yoga 2 days/week, and am trying to learn to cook differently. It's hard to undo 60+ years of poor eating habits, and unlearn poor cooking preps. Jack is not on board--yet--but I did get him to promise to watch 2 documentaries with me.  He thinks we are too old to start eating differently, but I told him we are never too old to begin eating healthy.

(This is me in July.)

Jack was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, too, which is an even bigger reason to get him off meats, dairy, and processed foods.  Fortunately prostate cancer has an 85% cure rate, so with the hormone therapy, and the radiation therapy, we're hoping he's part of the 85%. We met with the dietitian today to discuss his current meals. Unfortunately, he has to be on a low-fiber diet for a while, but she said after his radiation therapy is over, she will discuss what his diet needs to be to maximize his health, and what will need to be added back into his diet.

He has always been an optimistic person, and that's half the battle, so I know he'll do well.

Hazel is 2 1/2 now, going on 20. She is so sweet, and so stubborn, and her mom deserves this strong-willed child!  I have to laugh sometimes, because she reminds me so much of Dawn--only more precocious!  She loves coming to see us and we love having her AND sending her back.  We have to nap afterwards.  lol

Her daycare class planted pumpkin seeds in cups and after they grew a bit, sent them home. Dawn doesn't really have time to tend a garden, so she planted one in their inherited raised bed garden, and I planted the other 2 in mine.  This picture was a couple of months ago, and now one of the plants has a nice, fat little pumpkin growing. I have learned how to pollinate the flowers, so I'm hoping to catch them on a morning when both a male and a female flower are open, so we can have more than one pumpkin. Hazel has her own little tools, and watering can, and has learned how to deadhead petunias. It's so much fun to get to teach her things I never got to teach her mom when she was little.

Quilting has been on the back burner again (still), but I did make a little progress on the room.  It's simply too small for all that needs to be in there, so for now bins of fabric are stacked in the living room.  We never use that room, and it's not bright enough to sew in there, and we really don't have living room furniture anyway. Why not use it for what I need--storage?
In separating fabrics into colors or batiks, etc. for the bins, I found probably a dozen small projects in various stages, so I've been able to pull 3 small Halloween wall hangings out and am hand quilting them. Once I get the room pulled together and the tables cleared off, it's only a matter of time til I am piecing and quilting by machine again. Yay!  This was supposed to be a benefit of retiring LAST year!

Well, enough for this entry. Hopefully I'll get back here again before too long. I have some fun Halloween news to share, but maybe that'll spur me on to start reading and blogging regularly again.

Happy August, everyone!