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UFO’s

Last quilting post for a bit – Rick noted that my blog has veered from its original intent as more of a decorating, food, lifestyles type of blog to a craft blog. More lifestyle in the upcoming week – I promise.

Since I was on such a roll on Saturday I pulled out an old unfinished project that has been languishing in the closet since I lost interest in it last year. My niece gave me a selection of fabrics (I do believe they are from the Seaside Rose collection but I might be wrong) – I wanted to do a shabby chic kind of tabletopper with the fabric but as the quilt evolved it really ended up looking like a baby quilt.

I was halfway through machine quilting it when I just gave up. So this weekend I pulled it back out and decided to finish it. I’m machine quilting using a technique I like to call "quilting in the general vacinity of the ditch." I’ve also heard it referred to as "sweet flipping buddha what kind of hot mess is THAT!?" by others when they see my technique.

Sigh. It really is a testament to my earliest quilting attempts. I’m hoping that once I wash it a million time it will have kind of a vintage shabbiness to it and the miserable sloppiness of it will be forgiven.

My ironing board has been up and down all weekend long. I have a lovely laundry room but there just isn’t the space to leave it up permanently. The laundry room is also the passage between the house and garage and invariably Rick will fling open the garage door and crash into it.

Growing up ours was a permanent fixture in our garage. With a trunk full of my dad’s wrinkled dress shirts nearby. My mother wasn’t overly fond of ironing and found it easier to just go out and buy new shirts for him until he caught on. We always had a teeny stainless teapot (like you get at a diner when you ask for tea – they bring you hot water and a teabag) that we would use to fill up the steam resevoir.

I used to have a friend whose mother kept her freezer stuffed with ironing. She would take damp clothes out of the washer and freeze them until she was ready to do her ironing. I’ve never come across anyone else that has done that. She must not have known about the trunk method.

And we have a winner…

Is the suspense just killing you? I was going to go all high tech and use an online random number generator (and assign numbers to each name based on the order they were left) but it didn’t present quite the picture taking opportunity of using something prettier and doing it the old fashioned way.

Other than drawing names I was quite productive this morning. I actually FINISHED something – can you even stand it? Okay it needs to be quilted and finished but looky here:

The colors are a tad wonky (they are a little lighter than depicted here) but look at that! It actually came together really quickly. The middle part took no time at all. I probably spent the most time cutting out the applique bits. I adore that kind of hand work and I can see more applique in my future.

The hairiest part was sewing the four corner squares onto the border pieces so they would all line up properly with the main part of the topper. My seam ripper and I really bonded this morning.

Oh I just realized I’m not technically done (beside all the finishing work) – I still need to hand stitch around the applique pieces. I’m telling you fusible web applique is the way to go. You get really precision edges that way (like I’ve ever tried any other method of applique – but whatever).

I took some liberties with the layout of the applique because I ran out of usable charm squares. I have this dream of living close to my sister and having a big old studio on the property where we can set up sewing machines and craft tables and have tons of storage area for someone’s (ahem) stash. If that was the case I could have just raided her Celebrate Spring leftovers.

I guess it’s back to embroidery now.

What? Oh you want to know who the winner of the book drawing is?

Congratulations Julie! If you could just shoot me an email with your address I’ll ship it off to you. Thank you to everyone for playing along.

Bloggy giveaway

A few weeks back Turkey Feathers had a giveaway – she finished this book and wanted to pass it along to another reader. I was actually the second name chosen (the first was out of the US). So I was the lucky recipient and now I want to share the love.

Leave a comment and I’ll draw a name on Saturday morning and if your name is chosen then the book is yours. And maybe a little something extra too.

While I won’t put any rules around this drawing I would love to see the book make the Internet rounds. Perhaps, dear winner, when you finish the book you will do the same.

I just love the idea of many hands turning the same pages and wondering what a previous reader may have thought about a particular passage.

Let’s move on to the apology portion of the program, shall we?

I wanted to say thank you for all the lovely comments regarding my work in progress and the margaritas (seriously you must try the recipe – if you don’t like alcohol use a little sparkling water instead) – I’m just SO miserably behind in responding to comments and emails. I hope to catch up this weekend.

Thank you for being so kind and so patient.

WIP

During our foray on Saturday to the local quilt shops I was keeping my eye out for lilac/lavender and medium blue fabrics for my morning glory table topper. I bet 98% of all the fabric I’ve purchased in my lifetime has been 30’s reproduction. I must have been a housewife in the 30’s in a previous life.

There is just something so sweet and friendly about those prints.

I have a hard time collecting random fabrics. I really need a quilt shop to have a line of fabrics displayed together with a few examples before I can envision the fabric in my life. I have NO creativity in that regard.

I had a hard time finding blues that I liked or that matched, rather.

Last night I had a sinking realization that I have to do this same embroidery pattern three more times for the topper. I am going to be so tired of those colors by the end of this project.

The next project (already mentally moving on) is going to be a white on white throw pillow. I found a pattern with a circle of vining flowers with the following sentiment in the center:

He loves me
He love me not
It matters little
I’m all he’s got!

Weekends

We had last minute guests this weekend – Sara and Nicole decided to come up and play. They drove up on Friday afternoon in Sara’s mini – stopping at quilt shops along the way.

We started off the weekend with watermelon margaritas:

2 cups frozen watermelon chunks
Juice of one fresh lime
3 Tbsp. frozen limeade concentrate
1 oz. Watermelon Pucker schnapps
4 oz. white tequila
handful of ice cubes (just add enough to get the right amount of slushiness)

Whir in a blender and serve in chilled glasses.

They were so good we had them again on Saturday evening.

The entire weekend wasn’t spent drinking. On Saturday morning we hit up a few more quilt stores. I bought two charm packs of Moda’s Celebrate Spring to make my Acorn Quilt & Gift Co. Meadow quilted table topper. The example on the pattern cover was made using Moda’s Faded Memories charm packs – I think Celebrate Spring has very similar colors. I am planning on making mine square (so it’s table topper shaped) so I’ll need less charm squares then the pattern calls for.

I’ve never appliqued before so we’ll see how that goes.

We spent the entire afternoon sewing. Rick was a really good sport about all the bits of fabric and loose threads that were floating around the house. We worked on two projects for Sara – a skirt and an apron. Man – the apron was tough. The instructions were incomplete or just plain missing steps and I think if Nicki’s cooler head hadn’t prevailed Sara and I would have just abandoned the entire project.

It was a perfect way to spend the weekend. Just the right amount of shopping, sewing, laughing and productivity. After a week of 30 (!) meetings – it was really needed.

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