Home again

Don't you just hate it when you spend a lot of time on a quilt then discover an error after it's finished and delivered? I just discovered a goof on my Shakespeare in the Park. I was all ready to post how happy I was that it's finished and delivered – and my parents like it – when I pulled up the picture I took and discovered a goof.

I put a dark star on a light background in the place where a light star on a purple background should have been. This is what happens when you are trying to lay out a queen-size quilt on a table that's not big enough.

Aggravating, but I didn't notice it until I looked at the picture. I wonder if I should tell my parents or just see if they notice it?

Oh, well, we had a nice visit and I am glad to be home now. I spent the afternoon yesterday puttering around my studio, putting new toys away, trying things out, and figuring out what I want to do to reorganize (can you reorganize if some of it was never organized to start with?) my studio, and playing with some fabric.

Now that Christmas is over I can also show the wall hanging I made for my sister. It was pieced with scraps left from SITP, echo quilted using several different threads, painted a bit with gold ink and then finished with rhinestones. I tried out Mistyfuse for the first time to apply the gold mesh over the letters, and was really impressed. I couldn't have applied that with any other fusible I have.

 It looks like today will be a catch up with work day, then back to the studio I hope. More later.

Happy Holidays

I had thought I'd make a fabric Christmas card to share with all my friends online, but time has run away with me. So here is a Christmas card I created from a photo I took on Tybee Island yesterday.

Wishing the best of holidays to all my friends.

Mmm... cookies

I just finished making about a bazillion cookies and since this is my favorite chocolate chip cookie in the world, I thought I'd share the recipe. I found this in a newspaper many, many years ago.

$250 Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups all purpose flour
5 cups oatmeal, ground (see note)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
24 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1 8-ounce chocolate bar, grated
3 cups chopped nuts

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, vanilla and mix with flour, oatmeal, sale, baking powder and baking soda. Add chips, grated chocolate and nuts. Roll into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 6 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 10 to 12 dozen cookies.
Note: To grind oatmeal, place in blender or food processor. Measure before grinding.

A couple of notes. Make sure you have a really big bowl for this! I put the dry ingredients into my monster bowl, and use my food processor to cream the butter, sugars and eggs, then add the sugar mix to the big bowl. Also, be sure to make the dough balls one-inch. That way you end up with the perfect crisp bottom and chewy center. I usually divide out about one-third of the dough before putting the nuts in, for the people in my family who don't eat nuts.

Now that the cookies are finished, it's back to the studio. More later.

Where does your fabric come from?

I had a good weekend sewing, but it was mostly Christmas related stuff, and someone might peek, so I'll post on that later. My other effort over the past few days has been to create a new work station in my studio for sketching/painting/glueing and other non-sewing activities. There's some progress there, and more to come, I hope.

One of the hot topics of conversation on most of my quilting lists has been the expected increase in price for cotton, for fabric, for batting and everything made with cotton. Some people plan to restock before the price goes up, some work from their stash. And on the QuiltArt list, the discussion turned to repurposing fabric.

It was nice to see that so many talented quilters and artists see the value in repurposing, as I've been a fabric scavenger for a long time.

I love fabric stores, don't get me wrong. Let me loose in Mary Jo's, or a quilt shop with a good sale, and watch out! But I'm not a fabric snob, I'll buy fabric anywhere if I like the fabric and it fits my purpose. WalMart, JoAnn's, Hobby Lobby, quilt shops, you name it.

And thinking about my stash, a lot of it comes from non-traditional sources. There's quite a bit I've found at thrift stores and estate sales, there's fabric I've bought from quilting friends, there's clothing that's been cut apart for fabric, there's fabric I've gotten from people on FreeCycle,  and there's even fabric scavenged from the side of the road!

One of my favorite estate sale finds came years ago. The lady had made the most amazing jackets and blouses, using Seminole patchwork style piecing and mostly polished cottons. She had almost every color imaginable. The woman had moved into assisted living of some sort and her daughter was handling the sale. The daughter sewed too, and we had a great conversation as I picked out stacks of fabric to bring home. The next day I went back for even more. My only regret was that I didn't buy one of the Pfaff sewing machines she had for sale. I was new at sewing machine collecting then and didn't know what a treasure they were.

Points in this star came from fabric in a wreath.

Thrift stores are great, of course, and when you work in the same building with a thrift store you get plenty of chances to find treasures. Once the ladies who ran our store knew that I sewed, they often let me know when fabric or supplies came in.

One of the best finds was a fabric wreath. It was a cutesy country wreath on a foam form, but the fabric was a really nice turquoise and pink print. They were going to toss the wreath, but gave it to me. I took it apart and got over a yard of fabric from it. A little bit of that fabric went into the Shakespeare in the Park quilt I'm working on.

Fabric from clothes is another great source. I don't remember if I had been reading Bonnie Hunter's discussions of using men's shirts as fabric (I don't think so) when I first noticed that there were some really pretty men's shirts coming in to the thrift store. I started by picking up one or two with really nice fabrics that I revamped as shirts for myself.

Then I started buying shirts just for fabric. The thrift store does an end of season sale each summer and winter and clears out the old season's clothing. I started cotton shirts, skirts, sundresses, anything that had nice fabric. And I started picking up some silks and blends that I could use for other sewing. By the time I left the job in that building, I had stacks of shirts, and spent most of last winter cutting them up as I watched television.

This treasure trove of decorator fabrics came from
someone on FreeCycle

Another treasure trove came through FreeCycle. A lady who has an upholstery and home decor shop listed that she had scraps. I ended up visiting her and bringing back several huge bags of scraps and yardage. Not quilting cotton, but I've used it for tote bags, table covers, re-covering cushions and all types of things.

Okay, I'll admit now to picking up fabric on the side of the road. In the town where I live there used to be a small plant that made uniforms. About 10 years ago the plant had closed down and they were clearing out the building and literally dumped stuff on the side of the road. Fabric, tables, chairs, all kinds of stuff. It had been sitting out a while by the time I discovered it, so who knows what treasures I missed. But I brought home several metal chairs and a couple of work tables (that I'm still using). And I dug through the piles of fabric – it had rained by then – and brought home piles of fabric. Most of it was synthetics or blends that had been used for pants, and some lighter blends for shirts. But I did find a big pile of prints, mostly in bold prints. I spent the next couple of days washing all the damp fabric and folding it up.

I've used that fabric for everything from shorts to laundry bags to pet beds and there's still plenty left. The prints are still waiting for an inspiration to use them in a quilt.

So, am I worried about cotton prices going up? Not really. I don't like it, because I always enjoy getting new fabric. But it won't keep me from my quilting. With the exception of batting, I could probably sew/quilt/create for the next five years without buying any materials. I hope I don't have to, though.

Time to change gears and run to the store to pick up baking supplies. This afternoon I'm baking cookies  for a Christmas party. Yum.

More later.

Sending warm thoughts

Think warm!

Beach towels and flip-flops. A finished batch of cards.

It's miserably cold here (another night in the 'teens) but I know many of my friends have it much worse, with all the snow and ice. At least we can get outside to get our firewood!

So I'm sending warm thoughts! Here's a picture of Tybee Island beach July 4th weekend, and the beach theme postcards I've been working on. Think warm!



I started quilting Shakespeare in the Park Monday evening and am making pretty good progress. The quilt has 41 large blocks, plus the border blocks, so I've set a goal of seven to eight large blocks quilted each evening. That should get me though the body of the quilt by this weekend and I'll have all weekend to finish up. I've found that I can quilt for hours on small pieces without getting tired, but wrestling the large quilt does get to me after a while. When I start getting tired, my stitches get very irregular, so I have to pace myself.

Stay warm! More later.

A grove of palm cards in progress.

Quilitng in progress

A little of this, a little of that

I'm going to have to find some occasion to wear these!

You know you have too much stuff when you go into a closet you seldom use and find, not one, not two, but three pairs of gorgeous sequined pumps. One is multi-colored, one black and one pearl. Gorgeous! From the masking tape price tags on the boxes, it's clear that I bought them from the thrift store in the building where I used to work. I used to find the best treasures there, and when I was working away from home practically my entire wardrobe came from the store.

As a bonus, at the end of the season, they cleared everything out. That's when I collected dozens of men's cotton shirts, and other cotton items, for future quilts. I think I spent most of last winter disassembling about two year's worth.

Test block

Back to sewing. I finished pinning the SITP yesterday and quilted one of the leftovers as a test block. I like the spirals, but think maybe they should be larger, maybe with a large spiral ending up in the center four-patch. Any thoughts? suggestions? I do like the variegated blue I used for the test and will stick with it.

I didn't want to start the quilting last night, so got back to my fabric postcards for a while. Since my free-motion machine is set up for the quilt, I just used my Singer 500, and tried out some new ideas. I'd been having problems getting it to do some of the decorative stitches, but I discovered that it works fine with the cams, so I used some of them. The water in all three of these cards was done using cams. I also tried sewing with a double needle. One of the nice things about the 500 is that you can actually use two needles, you don't have to have a special twin needle. The sand in the foreground of the right postcard was done with a double needle, one with variegated thread, the other a tan color.  I'll have to do some more experimenting with that.

Finally, last night I was reading through some blogs and ran across a mention of Zentangling, or Zendoodling. I'd heard the term and seen a couple of examples, but didn't really know what it was, so I looked it up. I've been a doodler forever, so I had to try it out. This one doesn't exactly follow the rules, as it is all pencil and fills the box, but it's a kind of cool first try. I have the feeling it won't be the last.

Lots to do today, so more later.

Pinning away

I made good progress pinning SITP yesterday, got the top and backing pressed ( a huge job in itself) and about two-thirds pinned. It turned out my queen-sized batting wasn't quite large enough, so today's first task will be whip-stitching some extra batting at the end to give me enough for the quilt. Then I can finish pinning and start quilting.

I like this picture of the pinned section. The pins sparkle from reflecting the flash.

While I was pressing, my Pepper cat came to help. He's indoor only now because he doesn't like other cats, except his "sister" Phantom (Squirrel). My two outside cats, Shadow and Pixel, have been staying in the spare bathroom at night, because of this weather, which annoys him totally. He's even more annoyed when he can see them outside. His grumblings when Shadow climbed up the window screen were great, too bad I didn't shoot video.


Back to pinning, more later.