Muddling along

I don't seem to have as much sewing time as I used to for some reason.  I know part of it is my own fault.  I over-schedule myself and try to fit too much into the days off.  I also spend too much time staring at the devices- as we all seem to do these days.


And, of course, there's this guy! (with his new superhero toy)  I have to see him with some regularity or I just feel off.  Must be a kind of Oma withdrawal. :-)










I decided I need a new quilt to stick on the wall near my desk.  I don't technically have an office; I occupy a corner of the common reception area in a suite that houses three different departments.  The cement block wall is painted a terracotta color, which is relatively inoffensive.  But it needed the Martha touch.  With the addition of some heavy duty mounting tape, some metal mending plates and heavy duty magnets, I am able to hang small quilts on the wall.  (The removal of the mounting tape will be someone else's problem should I ever get a real office!)


Anyway, I found this sweet little piece in Nancy Halvorsen's Garden Song

I love Nancy's designs; they're fanciful and she uses interesting colors.  This piece was meant to be a garden stake- one of those tiny ones you can put in a pot.  I added to the borders to make it a bit bigger.  It still needs to be quilted.  There was supposed to be buttonhole stitch around the appliqué, but I'm combining that with the quilting for the sake of expediency.







I did some layering last weekend in the hope that I can make time (and my machine will play nice) to get some quilting accomplished.

This is the second piece Kiara and I worked on the day we made her first quilt. While I was doing the quilting, I gave her my Scrap Therapy bin and told her to pick out 41 darks and 40 lights so I could make another quilt using the same design she had chosen.  I didn't really agree with some of her choices, but when I placed them on the design wall, it looked ok.  The only substitution I made was to make the colors flow correctly in the pattern. (I needed one more of a certain color)
I'll probably do the same diagonal line quilting I did on Kiara's. 





I also layered this quilt I pieced at retreat a couple of years back.  It uses the same basic design as the raffle quilt I created for the guild a few years back.  I had been stuck on what to use as borders for it so it had been waiting and waiting. 



Then one day at a crafts market, I saw these wonderful throws, or whatever they're called, made in India.  I thought it would make a wonderful backing for that quilt if it would fit. 

As you can see, it is almost perfect!  So no borders are needed.  Now I just have to decide how to quilt it.  I may do simple wavy lines just to get it done.  Or I may do feathers.  Depends on how I feel that days.  (The raffle quilt had beautiful feathers on it!)

I've also been doodling.  Kathi shared a book she had read at one of our ArtCGirlz meetings, and challenged us all to try doodling, and then make a composition of our "art".  One of my regular tasks at work is to cut out study aids my boss creates for her students.  I end up with small scraps of card stock, and decided to use them for doodling.  I laid them out and drew a long swirly line across all of them, then mixed them up.  When I have a minute, I grab one and use the line as my starting point.  One day I saw a horse's butt, as you can see.

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of true spring.  I already have the urge to go start weeding, but it's way too wet now.  One thing I'm going to have to do early is create edgings on some of the beds.  The weeds creep in over time and don't stop over the winter!  It's very tempting to grab a jug of Roundup and go to town.  But please read as much as you can about the chemicals in this overused pesticide and think about the effects they are having on our health and our planet.  Your one jug may not seem like much compared to the millions of gallons used in our food.  But you can decide to make what small difference you can and spend a little bit more time pulling the weeds.  It's worth it!

I am grateful for:
My boss doesn't take small things too seriously.
My foster kitty is quite recovered from her illness and ready for her forever home.
Jonathan
Birds singing in the mornings, and having the windows open for short periods of time.
Interesting conversations with random people.

What I did at retreat

 The annual Museum Quilt Guild retreat was held at Asbury Camp and retreat center on Silver Lake last weekend.  As always, it was a wonderful time away from the world where I could sew to my heart's content!

I always bring more than I can possibly do in 4 days, but I did get a few things done!

This is another of the kit of the month projects.  I did the appliqué more than 10 years ago- by hand!  The word Welcome was supposed to be paper pieced, but I traced the letters from the pattern onto wonder under, fused it down and moved on!  I don't think I'll keep this, in spite of the fact that some of the quilting isn't very well done.  I bet someone would still buy it from the silent auction at the show in October.

These two blocks are from a class I took with Sue Nickels quite some time ago.  They have been in the orphan block stash ever since.  I saw an ad in a quilting magazine- I'm not sure what they were selling- where they had used single quilt blocks as wall art.  I had an "aha" moment and decided to do that with these two!  I did straight line quilting with invisible thread, bound them and stuck them to the wall at the retreat center.  I'll probably hang them on the wall at work for spring. 

The blocks for this quilt came from what we called the block bank in my online guild.  We were making comfort quilts for members and decided to keep blocks on hand to make the process a bit faster when a need arose.  The stash became unwieldy, and he decision was made to use up what we have and go back to doing it the old way (call for blocks when we need to.  Waiting longer doesn't make the quilt less special when it arrives.)  So I laid out as many quilts as I could using the signed blocks. When I got to the bottom of the piles, I had only a few signed blocks and these bright blocks (we used the bright ones for happy occasions like milestone birthdays or retirement)  So I laid them out together.  This one will probably be donated to a charity we support for breast cancer patients. Hopefully she won't mind having signatures from ladies she's never met. 

My friend Tracy took the classes with Paula Nadelstern a couple of years ago when she visited our guild. (there's even a picture of Tracy's blocks in the linked post!) When she was cleaning her sewing room, she realized she would never do anything with what she did in class, so she gave them to me.  Using one of the block layouts in Paula's "puzzle Quilts" book, I made this little wall quilt.  I call it T for Tracy.  She thinks it will look nice on her office wall. 

Our Community Service chair brought fabric and instructions for these surgery hats for the Golisano children's hospital.  I mad the hello kitty one.  Quick and easy!

I cut strips and got some of the strip sets made for another project, but it may not see daylight again until next year's retreat.  Back to the UFOs for me. 

I just read this article about the damage the fashion industry causes to our environment.  They do this because there are so many people who run to the store every chance they get to buy the latest fashion.  Then they throw out half of what they HAD to have the year before!  Appalling.  If the people don't change, neither will the industry.  Think before you buy!

I am grateful for:
The annual retreat, which has made February more bearable.
Being there for a friend who really needs someone in her corner.
It's just a cold.
I had snowdrops and crocuses blossoming before the storm on Friday. They're waiting for the snow to melt!
My husband takes pretty good care of me.