The Neverending story

This summer seems to be the never ending cycle of bad work weeks. Whew, today marked the end of my covering for two vacations at once. Not an easy thing, not at all, hope I never have to do it again! The other transcriptionist I share the hospital physiology Job #1 with has been out for 10 days, driving her daughter across the country to grad school in Rhode Island. Her vacation is supposed to be over tomorrow. At Job #3, the doc has been out on vacation for the same period but I have had to go three places instead of one to do that job: post office, regular office to check for faxes and mail, and to his house to use the computer and make phone calls. He's back on Monday. It has been uber hectic especially with the ongoing saga of employees being out for different reasons at Job #2 as well. Today was the longest day, starting out with waking up an HOUR late, which put me that much behind all day. I did round two of hospital work tonight to catch up and it is almost 11 p.m. I'm still not finished but just had to stop.

Tomorrow Grant and I will be helping our chicken move into her new roost, so I expect we'll be gone a lot of the day. Elaine's quilt is not finished although I did get about 1/4 of the machine quilting done late the other night. It may not get finished until I get my new sewing room all set up. Grant joked that I will need to get that done on Sunday because he wants his new music room ready for Monday. Um, not very funny! I have pics to share but not tonight---I am taking my Advil and going to bed!

Getting closer!

DD Elaine's moving day is getting closer...and tomorrow is her 22nd bday. Her birthday request was for household items and boy, she's been getting them! At our family dinner outing for her birthday I presented her with a gift basket with a special surprise I have been building up for several weeks. Thankfully she wasn't disappointed that it was only a Tupperware item---but very necessary for a girl who only uses Ranch dressing on her salads! This is the special item, and I gave it to her along with a jar of Best Foods mayonnaise (the only kind to use!), a box of dressing mix packets, a salad bowl and two sets of tongs, and a box of croutons!! Very entertaining for me and she really liked all the stuff I got her in addition to that combo gift.


Today we painted the legs of a donated table and then had a trip to Costco (warehouse mega-store) where Elaine was excited to buy multipacks of toilet paper, paper towels, laundry soap, and mac n'cheese. Oh, its a rare day indeed when megapacks can make one happy! We will have a very busy weekend helping the young folks move in. I'm trying to get her quilt done before then too. It is all pinned together and I bought thread for it today. My hope is that the next two nights will be relatively quiet and I can get to my machine for some intensive free motion quilting time!

The Hook

Last July at the Long Beach International Quilt Festival, I laid my first hook and snagged my SIL Laura to look at the kit for this quilt. She thought it would be perfect for her daughter Emma. We didn't do anything with it at that time, but I had her bring it when they came out for Christmas and after she washed the fabrics, I took the kit home to cut all the pieces. Then we had an all day sew-in when my sister was also out for Christmas. Laura now refers to that day as "Amish Day", since I kept them at this one task all day long! This was a complex quilt to lay out, but once that was accomplished and I started sewing the rows together, Laura got really excited and she took over the sewing. We got the center done and she took it back home to AZ with her, where it languished for a few months until she got a friend to help her with the borders.

The fabric was called Paris Cats and I think it was a Moda line. They now have London Cats, Italian Cats, and some other kind of cats. Very cute designs and fun modern color combos.

Laura found the perfect backing fabric at a quilt shop in AZ; while on her way to the bathroom she passed a sale rack with a bolt end of the very same line of fabrics---just enough for the backing and binding!

Laura took it to a professional longarmer who helped her pick the perfect scroll for the quilting! The longarmer actually did the binding as well. I didn't know they did that. It turned out so cute and Laura had the satisfaction of seeing an entire project come together in less than six months. Her daughter Emma loves it! Laura said her other daughter "did everything she could" to get it away from Emma, but that inspired Laura to make the brown and pink toile star quilt we put together this summer. I am happy she went home with two quilt tops all sewn, and one backing ready to assemble.

What UFO list?

As a "reward" for having a July finish, on Sunday I played with a few brights I bought several years ago outside of Lafayette, Indiana. Wish I could remember the shop's name, sorry! This is the first snail's trail block I have ever made. Man, it was easy to get off square! I should have read these hints before I tried it!

Below are my pieces and the free mystery quilt download from Quiltzine, an unfortunately now defunct website. Can you tell where this is taking me?

Clever patternmaker!

I can't decide which kitty is my favorite of the Twisted Tails Mystery. The purple fabric I had in my stash, but the others were from that Indiana quilt shop. I had a lot of fun with this project though it took me nearly half the day to plan, cut, and piece it. Have I mentioned I am not a really fast sewer? I like to take my time! I plan to finish this with some simple sashing and use it as a wallhanging, maybe in my cubicle at work (my sister says they do not have cubicles at her work, they only have two walls so they are HALF-icles, LOL)

Next I really NEED this pattern to try out my snail's trail skills again. It's not in my local bookstore yet so I'll have to check back soon.

Sewing party

Our post-Long-Beach sewing party included a special gift from my sister to me---a new chair! Reaction below staged for all posterity:

Speaking of posteriors, mine felt the cush of this chair!

Seriously, how pathetic does my old chair look now? I bought it used over 15 years ago and have been using a seat cushion and a pillow behind me for the last 3-4 years.

Note guitars and piano behind Kathy and me. Our poor little ex-family room holds two hobbies now--but not for long!

This Hoosier cabinet does actually have a table that slides out. Too bad I can't use it for cutting because of all the fabric and batting and magazines and mending and tools on top of it...

Can you believe I work in this mess? It's not usually this bad, really, but it IS pretty cramped in my little corner. Having the garage door open also adds to the visual clutter in this pic, but it was hot that day and we needed the breeze!

Kathy worked on a version of her Clematis/Hosta Leaf quilt, this time for Mom. Note the ginormous box of Splenda on the counter that my foodservice husband bought for me--2000 packets ought to last through a year's worth of morning tea :)

Kathy set up a worktable across the sliding glass door of the family room. She's about to make her vine from this yarn. The purple clematis quilt is hung over the chair.

Here's Kathy's finished project. She used oil paint sticks for the shading.

She put the yarn center and the beads on in the car on the way to the airport. Mom said there was a lot of "ouching" and swearing when she stabbed herself a hundred times on the drive!

The small petal's shadow looks perfect! The backing is a very soft and fuzzy Minkee-type.

I worked on Mom's pillow cover and also the binding for Nick's Monster, and helped Laura with her backing for the pink and brown star quilt. It was so nice to have some peeps to sew with instead of being all by my lonesome. Wish they could be here all the time!

A finish for July!

Nick's Monster has been quilted, bound, and delivered!

Grant and Erica holding the quilt from the stair landing as it was too big otherwise.

Quilt back.

Label--I should add my city and state, I suppose!

Closeup of the channel quilting and the binding.

On the queen sized bed. It hangs down to the bottom of the side rails! Nick painted his room blue, gray and black to match his quilt.

Monster Love. Night-night, Nick!

Long Beach Quilt Festival

I haven't posted because besides having to return to the working world, I've been down with a cold since our trek to the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach last Sunday. It was a quick illness tho and am feeling 95% improved.

Our group of four, me, my sister Kathy, Mom, and my SIL Laura had a fantastic few hours at the festival and vowed to go for more than one day next year. We took Laura's Hummer and had an easy trip of 1 1/2 hrs, though we started later than we planned. Sunday festival hours are only 10-3 so we lost about 45 mins of that. The vendor booths called us right away and it was mad how fast time flew! I kept pulling Laura or Kathy or Mom to another booth that caught my eye--Kathy swooned over threads and batiks, Laura and Mom over antique jewelry and fine fabrics, and I was all over the place. I watched a needlepunch demo and drooled over wools, coveted a new Huskquvarna (unfortunately no, the hard sell lady didn't get me), and pawed through piles of patterns and fat quarters. We spent so much time in the vendor booths, taking a short lunch, that we had only an hour at the end to see the quilt exhibitions! See this site for pics; I didn't manage to get my camera out once!


Not shown are a Sandy Gervais Christmas themed wallhanging I ordered along, with all the goodies that Kathy and Laura bought. The bamboo fabric Mom bought for me to make a pillow for her. Dear SIL Laura bought me a kit I picked out (below), for helping her this summer with her quilting. Can't wait to dig in! I in turn bought her a set of templates for a Storm at Sea quilt.



Walking around the festival, I recognized four designers and talked to two of them: Eleanor Burns smiled and waved and I spotted Patrick Lose . My sister was looking for templates and was picking the brain of someone in one booth when I walked up. It was the Marti Mitchell! We later came back to the booth and I had Marti crawling on the floor looking for the Storm at Sea templates under the table. How embarrassing! She was very friendly and joked with us. While my SIL was paying for the kit at the American Jane booth, I babbled to Sandy Klop about seeing her studio and designs in the AP&Q mag a few months back and how I had just used one of her fabrics on the back of DH's quilt, babble babble (while she smiled and my sister kept saying asides of "suckup" to Sandy's husband, manning the register). Little sisters, jeez!

In another booth, in my excitement over the apron kit with the large rickrack above, I turned to my sister behind me and thrust my bag towards her saying "look what I got!" Then I looked to my left as my actual sister came around the display. I had thrust my bag toward a complete stranger, who had obligingly said, "Oh, that's nice" before I realized she wasn't Kathy. Too funny!

Too soon the festival closed and we were sorry. Next year we'll probably will stay in a hotel for one night and have a grand time. I want to take a class of some kind too. I'll have another post about our quilt-in at my house the day after the festival. Mom took pics and I'm waiting for her to get them to me.