Infrequent blogger

I do love to read blogs and follow along several, but never seem to be able to consistently keep mine updated. Oh well, such is life. We had a quick getaway to Colorado to visit Jackie. Had wonderful weather, lots of thrift shopping, and just long enough of a visit.

She has a great view of Pike's Peak from her apartment. And yes, that was snow on the top. It was mostly melted by the time we left last Monday. We took the scenic route going east from Colorado Springs and then heading south through the San Luis Valley. It had been a long time since we'd driven through that area.

So much catching up to do. I'm getting ready for fall--aired out the down comforter and washed the duvet cover. Our days are still warm, but there is a crispness in the air. I'm going to try to keep up with this better, but no guarantees.

charity quilts

charity quilts
Originally uploaded by neonquilter

It's been over a month since I posted, where does the time go? As if anyone keeps better track of their days. Though there are so many people who manage to chronicle their days by blogging. I delivered these quilts yesterday, and Lindsay had her likely last appointment with Dr. Kaufman, her pediatric endocrinologist. I'll still continue making quilts for newly diagnosed kids. It gives me an outlet for trying all manner of techniques.

Testing using flickr for posting this. I couldn't seem to get this photo on via the ordinary entry.

June already?

The skies have been beautiful when the wind isn't blowing nonstop. This was part of twin thunderheads a few nights ago.
I don't know where the month of May went, but it was productive. We got the living room flooring done, and slowly I'm returning all the "stuff" that we took out in order to lay the floor. I was really productive with quilts, and together with Pat over Memorial weekend, we were able to get quite a stack of quilts to donate.


I also tried a small whole cloth quilt to practice the techniques I learned at the class in Paducah. It's a lot of work, and not something I'll likely do with a bed size quilt.

I finished blocks for a swap on About.com, but still have a row robin row to create. I'm also going to try to get a bed quilt made while Dale is taking a much needed camping/hiking vacation. I would have gone with except my knee is making even walking a pain, so I'm better off at home.

Commisioned Work!

My dad is here visiting from Brazil. He was thrilled with a gift bag that I put his birthday present in, which had sunflowers. He makes trays and framed pictures using glass tiles, and adapts designs from cross-stitch patterns. I had a cross-stitch design of sunflowers which I then gave him. Just before he left to go visit my half brothers, he asked if I would make him a quilted wall hanging with sunflowers. He wasn't able to adapt the cross-stitch design and get what he wanted for doing something with the glass tiles.

I gave it some thought and decided to use some sunflowers fabric I had in my stash for sometime, waiting for an appropriate application. Having made one "convergence" at the retreat in AZ, I thought I'd try again. I played with "pebbles" for quilting the center and did minimal beading, after trying to embelish with buttons, larger beads, etc.

Learned a very important lesson. One must fuse raw edge applique before attempting to thread paint and thinking that longarm machine quilting will hold it down! NOT! Thankfully for zippered leaders, I took the whole thing off the longarm, and tried to do that work on a sit down machine, until I realized I should just fuse it first. I don't know why I was resisting that, because once I gave up trying to find alternatives, the fusing was easy, and everything else fell into place.

He hasn't seen it yet, and I hope he likes it and pays me handsomely for the project!! ;-) It's going to be a present for my aunt's 80th birthday. I need spending money for Paducah next week!

Lesson learned

I always prewash my fabrics, usually after I bring them home. Having heard that batiks are "ready to go," since they are boiled to get the wax out, I somehow didn't wash my batiks. Enter some batik fabric that I friend gave me, harvested from a garment. I thought it had been washed, and really liked the fabric. Used it to make the first block for the row robin I'm working on. At the end of the block making, I noticed that there is some blue color migrating to the light batik. Oh dear! So I wash the block and sure enough the water is running indigo. I used some Synthrapol, wash the remainder of the dress fabric, and think it's okay.


I finished the row, but am looking at the block and, to me, there is still some blue in the white areas, so I decide to make another. I pull another (Bali) batik from my stash, and this time I'm wiser and iron some white sheeting over it after wetting it. Sure enough it's also transferring color to the sheet. I rinse and rinse, and get the dye out of it before constructing my block. I'd hate to have a quilt spoiled due to my row! Here's the finished row, paper pieced, which I can do now, but a process I'm certainly not enamored with, unless I figure out something to do with all the little waste slivers. Paper piecing while very good for exacting patterns, is a bit wasteful for this fabric penny pincher! ;-)

Row Robins

I don't know what possessed me, it must have been a weak moment, when I agreed to participate in a row robin with some of the people that attend the AZ retreat. It must have been something about pushing myself a little in my quilting, but I feel totally out of my league.


This first picture is top to bottom, mine and Pat's rows. I had the silk screened squares and Pat added to them while I bound a quilt for her. She also wanted to keep me participating and I was uninspired and threatening to drop out.




These next rows belong, top to bottom, to Ami, Chris, and Kim. When we were discussing these rows everyone was talking about keeping it simple--as their lives were very busy. Simple?? I don't think so!




And last but definitely not least are, top to bottom, Judy's and Ellen's row. I got the honor of being first to work on Ellen's row. I've already started, and yeah, I'm keeping it simple!

Treasures unearthed!

The back entry and existing bathroom are finally finished and DH didn't take long to start on the living room. It featured a gawdawful shag carpet in reds, brown, and orange. When we lived in Colorado, our house came with a similar shag with green, brown, dark yellow. I called it my dead lawn carpet. This one looked like a lawn on fire. I'm sure things lived in there and when I vacuumed clouds of dust would emanate! Vacuuming always created more dust in our already dusty house. Pulling up the carpet revealed a layer of dirt, actual dirt, beneath the pad resting on several layers of old linoleum in an array of patterns. There are holes in the floor boards cleverly patched with flatened tin, but below the floorboards there were some treasures to be found.
He discovered four marbles, which I'll add to my marble collection, a knife, a glass chip in a green turquoise color, and a horse, which I'm thinking of incorporating in landscape "quilt" (I use the term loosely) which will cover our bedroom window blocker. I have a beautiful Ball jar full of marbles that came from a long ago auction, and I periodically add new finds to it. Also under the floorboards there was a mouse nest, though this house has been the least mouse infested place we've lived in. Field mice are a fact of life in the country, and I think they are rather cute until the take up residence in my cupboards! I also spied an intact, perfectly clean mouse skull. It's truly remarkable, but I'm having trouble getting a picture of it.

After my birds mobile, I must have still been in the mood to make three dimensional things because instead of working on my convergence quilt, I made a couple of sock creatures. They will await final adoption when just the right foster parent comes along!

It's a gloomy day, and now the wind has started again. There are signs of spring, and I'm ready for relief from the wind, but it's not going to happen today.

Where does the time go?

Boy my days just get away from me, one after the other until it's been weeks since I posted anything to my blog.

I made this little "mobile" (I don't know what else to call it and my husband dubbed it as such) for a long skinny wall in my bathroom, but it was too big. It fit perfectly on this little strip of wall beside the back bathroom door, near the back entry door that we use almost exclusively. It was fun, and a good use of beads and fabric scraps.

The wind continues to blow fiercely here. Today they claimed it was just going to be "breezy" instead of windy, but now I think it's progressed to "windy" once again. There are signs of spring though, a few tulip leaves up and the irises are getting taller and greener.

Whoa,I just remembered I had muffins in the oven! Good thing they didn't burn! Of course they weren't done when the timer went off and I checked them, and I thought...just five more minutes... It's a dangerous thing to sit down in front of the computer for "just" five minutes. Guess it's back to the sewing room for National Quilting Day. I'm getting ready to load my convergence piece on the longarm. Have some ideas of what to do with it after re-discovering the work of Jane Burch Cochran.

Getting ready...

I always procrastinate. Probably not something that's likely to change at this point. I figure once you're past 50 most character traits are set in stone. And without exception I tend to do a lot of stuff I've put off doing right before going somewhere. Go figure. So of course while moving furniture yesterday and cleaning and reorganizing my sewing room today, I decided to make the pincushion for the swap I'm participating in on About.com. I don't have to mail it out until March 10, but since I received my pincushion yesterday, I was feeling a bit guilty that I hadn't yet started it. I did have an idea that I wanted to do.
Once I started on it, it was hard to stop. I borrowed the idea from Bella Dia. Her pincushions are amazing. Mine are a mere imitation, and I hope she'll consider it flattery that I tried! Of course I'm doing all of this because I'm leaving Wednesday for a quilting retreat. Am I ready with all I have to do before I leave?? Of course not. That would be totally uncharacteristic.

Lefse anyone?

Well, I was supposed to do my Week 3 check-in, but I think I'm going to drop out at this point. I'm so far behind, and I just am not into it. I was doing well with the morning pages, then my thumb started giving me grief. I moved on to morning pages on the computer, but it just wasn't the same, and I gave them up, and found more reasons for not doing the reading and exercises. With very intermittent internet connection, I've also been doing other things to fill my time.
When I married my husband I became exposed to a different food heritage, Norwegian, which included krumkake and lefse. Since I love to cook, I quickly adopted these things in my repertoire. Lefse is a very much like a potato dough tortilla.
I adapted my recipe this year, and substituted the half and half in the recipe with soy milk for my lactose intolerant husband, and I'm happy to report it was a success. It's a time consuming process which starts the day before with cooking the potatoes, ricing them, and mixing with the liquid ingredients. This sits overnight in the refrigerator, and the next day you can start rolling out the dough, and cooking on the griddle. The rolling pin is ridged and covered with a stockinette. There is also a lefse stick which you run under the rolled out circle of dough, and transfer it to the griddle. Since I make them thin and the dough is rather fragile, at this point the lefse can break and fall apart on the griddle.
I make it a point of eating many of these imperfect ones (sparing my family) warm off the griddle with a little butter.

I've never tried lefse's companion, lutefisk, but I think it's an acquired taste, and since my husband's family didn't eat it, it's not likely to make an appearance at our table. Occasionally the lefse comes out just perfect like this one.