Monday, January 26, 2009

Last Week

I had a busy week. Seems like I went somewhere just about every day. Tuesday evening I had a guild meeting. Our guest speaker was from the Good Neighbor Homeless shelter. We are making quilts for them this year as our community service project. I know I will be doing at least two quilts. One is quilted and needs the binding stitched down by hand and the other is on my frame, waiting to be quilted.


Wednesday, I got my Bernina fixed, sort of. He said it would be OK as long as I didn't run it wide open. The casing that holds the hook and hook drive is warped. He replace the hook and hook drive and said when they ware out I need to get a new machine. Hope it won't be too soon. When I do replace it, I'll probably get a Janome. I have my Bernina set up and am looking forward to finally being able to sew on it again. Wednesday afternoon a lady brought over a T-shirt quilt to make. She had started it, cut out the shirts, and decided she didn't have time to finish it. Her son is wanting the quilt finished. It is his wife's college T-shirts. I may try quilting it myself, just depends on what kind of mood I'm in. I'm a little leery of messing with the tension on my long arm. It is making nice stitches right now. If I go loosening up the tension for the clear (invisible) thread, I may never get it set back right again.


Thursday I went to a bee meeting and did my usual Thursday go to town stuff. I went to WalMart before the meeting and ended up being around 15 minutes late. Not a good example for the queen be to be setting.


Friday I went to Hobby Lobby armed with my 40% off coupon and bought batting. I also got a spool of the clear polyester thread and 5 yards of fabric from the clearance table.


Saturday evening I came down with a stomach virus. I'm still not over it. I'm going to try eating some soup in a little bit. Dora got it first and I caught it from her. Hope DH doesn't catch it.


I finally took a picture of my scrappy star quilt. Now to get it mailed off to NY to Paul's brother and his wife.


A friend of mine quilted it on her computerized long arm last year. It just took me forever to get the binding sewn down. That was probably because I didn't want to part with it. I had originally made it for my bed. Paul wanted me to make a quilt for his brother and this top was done, waiting to be quilted. I wasn't wanting to have to hurry and make a queen sized quilt from scratch. Maybe one of these days I will get a queen size quilt made that I can keep.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The First Half of January

I've managed to stay busy so far this month. I'm back to making lists to help me stay focused. It really helps. I've quilted 5 quilts so far on my new to me quilting system, and #6 is loaded and waiting for me to start on it.
The 20" throat sure makes the quilting go a lot faster. I'm very happy with my set up. The 10' table fits nicely in my quilting studio and is a good excuse for not doing king size bed quilts. The biggest quilt I've done so far was 80" square, but I don't think it will be a problem to do queen size bed quilts. I'll find out, I have one to quilt.





The 8th was the first meeting of 2009 for the Paradise Piecers Bee. I'm Queen Bee this year, so I conducted my first business meeting with four out of seven members present. We made several decisions, like continuing to meet at the church, keeping the dues the same and using the left over money from last year to buy batting for us to use in our community service quilts. We also decided on 1yd. fabric cuts for birthdays. Last year we did 2 fat quarters and before that we had a $10.00 limit.





The 13th was the AQG meeting. Sandra and I rode down together. I took tuna, noodle casserole this time instead of my usual deviled eggs. We had a nice crowd. Our guest speaker brought a trunk show that included her quilts, crocheting, and embroidery projects over the years. She does beautiful work. Unfortunately, I've forgotten her name.


This is some of the beautiful embroidery that she has done. It is her own design.
This is her "Giant Dahlia" quilt. Seeing hers, reminds me that I haven't finished mine yet.

This is her Jacobean applique. She designed the borders. She is the lady on the far left.



The 16th, the Needle Turners Bee met. Three out of five of us attended. We had a nice visit. I got a start on hand stitching the binding down on a baby quilt.



When I got home from bee, Dora and I went to Applebee's for lunch. and then to Office Depot"s going out of business sale. I bought some photo paper for 20% off, only to find out next week Staples has it for buy 1 get 1 free. I may run over there next week, I have the EVQG quilt show pictures to print. Besides, I need to turn in some empty ink cartridges.


I turned in my first community service quilt to AQG on Tuesday.


Sandra and I quilted it on her long arm in Dec, that was before I got mine.





This is the first quilt I quilted with my long arm.



This was also my first attempt at following a pantograph pattern. Can't say that I did too well. The pattern is "Wicked Easy" it was a free pattern available on the web a few years ago. I can't remember the name of the web-site and have no earthly idea what I did with the pattern. I made enough blocks for three quilts. This is the crib size. Dora wants this one. The lap size one went to a friend and the twin size is on my frame now. It will be a community service quilt for EVQG.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I'm so far behind, I'll never get caught up

Being behind seems to be the story of my life. There are so many things I need to do, like organize my quilting studio, and taking everything out of the linen closet and putting it back in neatly so I can shut the door. Now my dryer decides to get done right when I'm involved with something else.



EVQG had their Christmas dinner about a month ago. It was good, mainly because it was catered. So, all we had to do was show up and eat. Ahhh, that is good. I don't enjoy all the cooking that the Holidays involve. I do enough of that all through the year.

I think we had a smaller gathering than usual. I noticed quite a few missing faces. Our exchange this year was food fabric and either food or an ingredient and a recipe to go with the fabric. I took grape fabric, grapes and a recipe for Waldorf Salad. I received cherry fabric and a recipe for cherry, choc. chip cookies and the cookies. They were delicious! This was one of my favorite exchanges, along with the sock exchange we did a few years ago.

We finally got around to putting up a little tree, only about two foot tall. It gave the sun room a Christmassy feel. Of course it has been down a long time now.

Our Christmas day did not go as planned. Our 3:00 dinner turned out to be 8:00 p.m. The power went out at 2:00, right when I was planning to start on the last minute things too cook, like potatoes, gravy, dinner rolls. It never came back on til 7:00 p.m. ! It had gotten so late that we'd gotten out the oil lamps and the propane camp stove and I was cooking the potatoes on it when the power came back on.


Dora's boyfriend had a birthday in December. She baked him a cake. Actually two cakes, a chocolate cake and a red velvet cake. She then cut the two cakes in half and put half of each together for a half and half cake. Joe likes red velvet and Dora likes chocolate.

We forgot to take a picture until she was boxing it up to take to his party. Some of their friends got together at Side Lines. At least this time the camera didn't get stolen. Or I guess it didn't. She hasn't said anything about it, so I assume the camera is still in her possession. She used jell icing to draw bats and took an over the hill candle and scraped off the writing and wrote "Joey Von Zombie King of the Undead" on it. She didn't know where to put the candle, I suggested the "butt crack". Well that is what it looks like where the two halves of the cake are put together. There is a little gap there and the frosting dips down.


Then right before Christmas this arrived!

Seven large, heavy boxes. It seems I got myself into a little trouble on e-bay. Well I just couldn't help myself. There it was, just 3 hrs. to go and this 1995 APQS Ultimate II quilting system starting at $1500. So I put in a bid, thinking their were others waiting to the last minute to bid on it. There was another system that was being bid on. I figured some of those bidders would bid on mine when they go out bid on the other one. Well, that didn't happen, no one else bid on it and I got it for the minimum bid. I was in sock! Of course I've recovered from my sock and am currently in the process of quilting my 5th quilt on it.