Inchies -- Nothing Like a Challenge

I signed up for an Inchies Ornament swap at Quilter's Gallery. I thought it would be fun and challenging. Except now I am behind! Yikes, it was suppose to be mailed today. So tomorrow it'll be in the mail.

Here are the little inchies, some beads (from my mom's stash), and some bigger beads I went out and got on Sunday. I used an older thread -- cotton but with a great sheen.

And, how about a close up of the inchie - -

You start by layering backing fabric, pentex and then a top fabric -- fuse it all together. Next you quilt it. Cut it up in one inch squares. Do a tight zigzag over the edges. Bead. Put together and voila -- an inchie. Or so it sounded in the tutorial. Check it out here at the Inchies Tutorial. I got all the little inchies done -- all six of them. All that is left is glue them on a little ribbon. I was all gung-ho to finish this off and chose a nice gold ribbon.

Like many of us I have everything I would ever need to start and finish a million projects. So when the directions said use a craft glue I went hunting. And, amazingly I found a brand new bottle. Whee! Check out that bottle. Evidently I've owned it for quite a while even if it wasn't opened!

OK, so that didn't work. Off to Wal Mart, the closest store that might have a decent craft glue. I'm still thinking I'd get them done and in the mail. Um, Wal Mart is a good 35 minutes away or so. Pat and I decided we'd check a little hardware store that was only about 15 minutes from home. I got a bottle of elmers glue to try. Which didn't work great on the gold braid. But I persevered. Tomorrow I'll have a photo up of the finished inchie ornament soon. I've actually got it almost completely finished! Yeah. And, then it will fly off to some other state to live in.

Happy Quilting All!

Can I Use More Fabric Than I Acquire in 2009?

It is looking good that I can actually USE more fabric than I acquire. Here is November's fabric report.

Fabric used: 7.5 yards

Fabric purchased: .75 yards

Net fabric USED from stash: 6.75 yards whoop, whoop!

YEAR

Year to date fabric used: 83.25 yards

Year to date fabric purchased: 85.125 (85 1/8ths) yards

Net Year to date USED from stash :(1.875 or 1 and 7/8th) yards

I am getting SO close to using more fabric than I brought into the studio this year. If I can just finish one quilt during December I will be way ahead ... well, maybe 5 yards ahead! But, I will be focusing on quilting Jenny's king size quilt in December. I'm sure if I weren't so new to this I could get this quilted in a week. But, I've got to learn a new technique and then quilt this monster. Today I have loaded a practice quilt and I will be trying a ruler. I'll keep you posted. If what I try works I will then load the monster quilt -- 117.5 x 117". That is about the max that Ruthie can take. You will be hearing more about this over the next week or so. (And, Jenny, I'll post a few pictures as I get going on it.)

HAPPY QUILTING ALL!

Um, Where Is Winter?

Saturday when we got home we were shocked to see this:

And, surprise again, this:

Those are some of the 75 daffodil bulbs we planted in October or so. It is one of the few flowers we can have because the deer don't like them. So we went wild with them. The weather is getting colder over this week. I hope it doesn't hurt the bulb... hum will we get flowers from this bulb this year or will it wait for next year?

No quilting/sewing was done Sunday. Church, then Ragg's obedience class and a little shopping.

Here's Pat before he went to sing with the Choraliers a community chorus. He performed Sunday, and will have 3 more concerts over the next week.

Happy Quilting All!

Great Weekend!

Friday with Kevin and Aimee in Maryland

Two Dogs On A Couch

Posing Most Kindly For Me

And Soon Off They Go

Raggs on the left and Homer on the right. Attempted Haiku by Bonnie.

People posed fine but Homer, on the left, didn't want to pose with Cassie on the right. Aimee and Kevin did well.

Aimee did some really early shopping. Pat and I came over for breakfast that Kevin made after Aimee came home. (Sorry, I just couldn't get up early enough to do early morning shopping.) We were lucky to be able to stay at Jen and Brian's townhouse while they were in Ohio.

The boys did some "This Old House" work on the bathroom. They were going to put a new flooring down. But decided to remove the floor and then realized the toilet bolts (you know those little bolts under the funny cap that is a pain to clean around) were completely corroded. So off came the toilet (it's in the bathtub in the picture to the right.) Then the flooring was done, next the toilet was replaced. And, how uncomfortable is that -- no toilet for several hours! It all turned out well though.

Aimee was productive -- she cut out two Take Five quilts. I kept her company and read a book. We brought Chinese in after the bathroom was restored.

Pat and I came home Saturday as Pat had a concert on Sunday. I put in a couple of hours in the studio on Saturday afternoon. It felt good to be back quilting. I decided to make Carolina Christmas mystery quilt at Quiltville.com. I've got more photos to share but will wait 'til the next post.

Happy Quilting All!

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

My big contribution to today's Thanksgiving Dinner is an apple pie. I made it Wednesday afternoon. It was cooling on the stove top when we were making dinner last night. We had thrown a couple of potatoes in the oven to cook at the same time. But, I didn't think the 'tators were cooked through. So, we popped them in the microwave oven for 9 seconds. Pat was shocked when he saw potatoes exploding in there. And, they kept exploding when he opened the door. Check out that lovely pie picture again. Do you notice some little white pieces? Um, ur, a little potato with the apple pie there. I was laughing my head off trying to talk to Jenny on the phone. Another grand cooking adventure in the household!

Hope your travel is safe and day is joyful.

Happy Quilting and Thanksgiving All!

The Day Before - - Big Eats

I am blessed with not being responsible for cooking. It was going to be just Pat and I home for Thanksgiving when, surprise, surprise -- Kevin invited us over to his place for dinner. Cool. We'll be driving down to Maryland tomorrow and coming home Saturday. We'll be staying at Jenny's townhouse cause she's in Ohio with Brian's family. We're official cat-sitters and bringers-in-of-the-garbage-can people. Sweet!

I finally finished the binding on the quilt from Stash_Quilters on Yahoo groups. It went in the mail today winging its way to someone at Everett Naval Station. How appropriate for me as my Dad was in the Navy for 30+ years. I believe this was a quilts of valor quilt but I didn't get the address so I'm not sure.

I had promised pictures of a quilt I finished a week or so ago but never took the photos. So here is Bricks and Stepping Stones from Quiltville. This will take you directly to the directions for the quilt. I need

to decide whether I'll be starting another quilt from here as a leader and ender. I'm inclined to say no as I have several quilts in various stages that I should use as enders... (I really don't do a leader usually. ) I started with some basic, rather dull fabric. Then as I was doing things with brighter fabrics so I added them. The overall quilt looks bright but you don't have to wear sunglasses with it. I used the same blue fabric in the four patches although the whites were anywhere from beige to bright white. The border was a different blue fabric that was about the same color. Everything on this quilt was from my stash. You can barely see it in this photo but the corners of the borders are 4 patches because I didn't have enough fabric for the borders. And two of the 2" squares are pieced. I think I had a 3 1/2" by 1" piece of that blue fabric left when done.

And check out the backing. I don't usually buy big pieces fabrics for my stash so there wasn't nothing there for a backing. So I decided to use some left over blocks and add 10.5" squares to make up the backing. I thought 10.5" squares would be easy re: math. Evidently I was wrong about that. Oh well.

I have to get my stuff ready to go south tomorrow morning. I am working on my A Tisket, A Tasket baskets from Bunny Hill Designs. I have 4 blocks nearly all completed. Although I think I need to do some embroidery on them. I have 2 in progress. And that leaves 5 not really started! Hopefully, I'll take one or two blocks ready to stitch on while I'm gone. Of course, we might do something completely different. Who knows?

Happy Quilting All!

Yum!

Pat and I had a shopping day today. Most of what we got was for me. New turtleneck, sweater and vest. Will be good for Christmas and then the rest of winter. And, did a little, tiny bit of Christmas shopping for the family and others....

On the way back we stopped here for dessert:

It is the Pocono Cheesecake Factory, a bakery. Pat had a piece of cheesecake and I had a chocolate eclaire. Mine had the very best filling! Nowhere to sit and eat in this store -- so we sat in the car and enjoyed the goodies.

Before we left I got these two blocks ready to send to Kathy Tracy. Her most recent book is Remembering Adelia: Quilts Inspired by Her Diary. She is currently writing a new book and has asked members of Small Quilts Talk, a yahoo group, to make friendship blocks for her. So I got to searching through my fabric stash and found these 19th century reproductions to use. It will be fun to see what Kathy does with the blocks.

I have finally finished the binding on the charity red, white and blue quilt. We'll take pictures tomorrow before we package it up. I've got a few other things ready to mail various places so I might get them ready too.

Happy Quilting All!