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.

Weekend activity

First- Old Business.  Sort of a public service announcement   ---

If you have a window behind your sewing machine, please be on the lookout for any cats who have come by to watch the birds!

On Friday this week, I packed for retreat- only three more sleeps!!  We were all close to dancing with anticipation at the guild meeting Saturday. Like Christmastime for "old" ladies. 

Yesterday I had both kids, one at a time.  Sort of a tag team Oma day.
Jon likes to play with Play-doh, and the cups it comes in!

When Kiara got here, she thought she'd like to "make a craft".  So I gave her several options and she chose to make a quilt. Not for her stuffed animal, as I had thought, but for herself!  So she picked out fabrics and simple pattern- after I showed her some pictures of beginner quilts.  I did most of the piecing, but she did do some of the sewing!  This is her sewing around the edges for the "envelope" finish we did.

And here she is with the finished product!  It took us about 6 hours start to finish.  

 Needless to say, Oma was pooped at the end of the day. 


Someone showed these on facebook, and I had to try it.  The smaller one was just to see if I could crochet a ball.  The letter doesn't show well, so I'll have to fix it.  These are f-bombs you can throw around when shouting the word might not be appropriate. 

I've seen so many posts about gun control in the last few days.  Sadly, even with the body count going up and up, I doubt much will change anytime soon.  New York enacted new laws 5 years ago (I think), but did not put in place a mechanism for ensuring gun-owners replaced the higher capacity magazines with the smaller ones, or that all AR types are registered. No one is going door-to-door.  There's just too many guns and too many people who think the second amendment means they can have any gun they want and as many as they want.  I don't get it.  Most of these mass shooting victims have been children.  Are their guns really more important than someone's child?

I am grateful for:
My own little ones, may they be kept safe!
A cinnamon roll I just remembered was in the freezer.
Three more sleeps!
Warm feet.
My husband is not a picky eater.

Winter is the time for finishing things!

In winter, I am inside.  I should probably get more done than I do, but I do finish a fair number of things between the holidays and the start of gardening season!

This week, I finished the last of my "Dill weed" projects.   Below is the picture I posted when I started, and here is how they look now.  It was meant to be an exercise in embellishing.  But for me it was also an exercise in interpreting/ abstracting something I have seen.













 This one is sort of a close up of the flowers, with the eyelash yarn representing the foliage.

This one is an interpretation of the oblong shape the blossoms take on when they are seen from the car on the side of the road.  

 And this one is really abstract- more about the fact that a group of these flowers has many sizes of circles and the way they play together.  When I added the beads, I sort of thought of the flowers as being torn apart in a wind storm.

 All of the fabrics I used were hand dyed by friends, or hand painted by myself .  It was fun to USE some of those "special" fabrics at long last.


 I also used one of my hand painted fabrics on the Paisley Feather Zentangle piece from the class with Laura A Cunningham last October. It's finished now! She suggested making it into a bag or pillow, but I don't want to cut it up just yet.  I still need to get a better picture of it.

Did you DO anything to resist this week? I'm not sure I did.  It might be time for another postcard barrage.  It's nothing that will change the world, but every piece of mail that goes into the White House is catalogued.  I like the idea of historians noting the number of letters and cards telling this particular president how much people were against everything he stood for!

I am grateful for:
Quiet winter days.
Cinnamon Oreo cookies which my boss provided at work.
Elastic waist skirts and pants (see last item :-)
Texting, which allowed my son to be there with us for the Superbowl last week.
Accepting limitations.

A "Nonny" fix

I spent most of the weekend with Jonathan. At just over 2 1/2, he has become a very interesting little person.  His mom and dad gave him a haircut last month, so the baby curls are gone (much to my dismay at first!), and a little boy has suddenly appeared. 


When you tell him to smile he says "Cheese!" and you get a happy smiling face.

But since he's a little boy, it quickly becomes this face.









Isn't it odd how children have innate characteristics?  He likes to smash things, no matter what we're playing with.  When it's play-doh, as soon as I show him what I made, he asks if he can squish it.  I get out the blocks and he can barely wait until I declare my construction to be finished before he knocks it down.


He also likes to play with my camera.  He tries to look through the viewfinder for some reason, although I never use it that way.  He tells me to say cheese, but is usually pointing at the floor.  Once in a while, I make my way into the picture.


 Sometimes you can even see my face.

 I finished one of my January UFOs the other day.  This is from a kit of the month I bought years ago (more than ten, I think)  I'll have to find the book they came from.  This one is an anniversary quilt in the book, but I think it will work just fine for a valentine's day decoration. 
 

So, apparently the "president" thinks the ice is not melting, and polar bears are doing just fine.  There are people who believe what he says.  They think anything contrary to his words is fake news.  We can't be complacent.  We cannot say that he isn't hurting me personally and the next guy will just undo it all.  We have to speak up, make our voices heard.  There is one and only one issue that matters if we want our grandchildren to have any kind of life.  So we have to make sure those who put their own interests over that of the health of this planet don't shape the future!

I am grateful for:
Yummy cinnamon rolls!
My grandchildren, who bring joy to my life.
A bit of creative time here and there.
The ability to choose what to watch when I want to watch it (even without the ability to stream stuff on demand)
Sleep, when I can get it.

I'm still here

Obviously I was wrong when I said in my last post that I was adapting.  Maybe I was, but then the holidays came along and threw everything out of whack for weeks.  I had good intentions of getting an end of year post made- my usual reconciling of my accomplishments for the year.    My production was down last year, but I did finish  7 items off my UFO list!  Here is the whole list:
Quilted items: 18. This includes two sets of place mats*, a couple of pillows made from small sample quilts, and the purse I made from that challenge quilt I detested.
Knitted items: 14 This includes the 7 little birdies I made.
Garments: 6
Opulent ornaments: 5
Misc: 9 (I can't think of what these are off the top of my head!)
And, if I counted right, I fostered 20 kittens - also down from the average year.  I don't know why, other than getting the last litter when they were 3 days old meant I wasn't available for another batch until kitten season was over.

After the holidays, it was time to get my entries ready for the Guild's challenge. So that's where I'll start 2018.  This year's theme is "Naughty or Nice".  Anyone who knows me knew right away which way I would go!

First, I had been wanting to make this pattern, called Bad Hare Day, by Java House Quilts, for a very long time. (when I went to get the link, I see they have updated the pattern) It was meant to be a baby quilt, so I had to leave off a couple of borders.  I also cheated by using striped fabric. I made it extra naughty by making my log cabin blocks intuitively. 



The block Bunny has in his mouth was part of the quilt until after the quilting was done.  So there is chewed up batting where that block was.  (bunny was appliquéd afterward)
 I called my quilt "Wascally Wabbit"





















 My second entry uses a picture I took in my garden last spring.  I had it printed on Cotton sateen at Red Dog Enterprises.  Then I thread painted it to enhance the colors and add some texture.  This is the actual color of the flower.  Fans of Monty Python may remember the term  "naughty bits" .  I call this "The Naughty Bits of a Tulip".
 

 Other than those, I have been working on my embellishment projects from the ArtCGirlz.  One didn't get much more after the last time I showed it   my progress a while back.   I decided it didn't need more than a few beads. 

 
 The second one  got more beads and some couched eyelash yarn. 

 

 And I finished the socks it felt like I had worked on all year!  The tiny bit of yarn is all that was left of three different sock leftovers when I finished!
 

 The first UFO I am working on this year is the "Paisley Zentangle" project I started in class with Laura Cunningham last fall.  Mine is bigger than she recommended because I didn't want to cut the piece of fabric I painted. I spent hours and hours on this, stopping often to ponder what to do next.  For now, it will get a binding (possibly purple?) and hang on the wall.  If I get sick of it, I may cut it up later and make a bag or something.  Zentangles aren't supposed to have a right side up, but I like it this way.

So that's some of what I'm working on.
I'll try to stop in more often.  I don't know how many people stop in here anymore, but I still want to try and do this an incentive for myself to finish things!

We are facing a huge opportunity this year to make changes to the balance of power in our government.  Pay attention, learn about the candidates in your area. Vote!  Resist!

I am grateful for:
My winter sewing time.
When Jonathan comes over to play.
My husband, for so many reasons.
Friends who laugh with me.
Letting go of things I never really needed.

*Is place mat one word or two???

I might finally be adapting!

After just over 4 months in the new job, with the new schedule, I might just be getting into a groove of sorts.  I still forget that my first day of work for the week is Monday, and my weekends are still evaporating (However, that might have nothing to do with the schedule change.) So I might be able to squeeze blogging back into my day here and there again.  (my vast audience will no doubt be thrilled)

This past weekend, I spent a great deal of time on the holiday decorations.  I don't know why I still do it; no one comes over for dinner or parties.  But I have boxes of stuff I like looking at for a  while every year, so I do it.


I put a tree up mostly so it would decorate the door.  It made adding ornaments easy, since I only had to fill one side of the tree!  This year it is decorated with a collection of ornaments that look like children's toys.  My brother gave them to me when I was first married.  They make the inner 6 year old smile.

















 The mantle always has the "opulent ornaments" on it, but this time of year, I add the ones that looks more Christmasy.  (Spell check doesn't like that word!)








The newest ones are two I had every intention of finishing last year, then ran out of time. 

 

   The medallions are a subtle silver metallic and soft gold design on cream fabric.  I used mostly silver beads and sequins on the, with gold accents. 
It's very  hard to get a picture that does them justice since you need to see them sparkle

I have had some issues with my sewing machine over the past few months, so I finally took it in for service last week (and that is another story, sadly.  I'll share it when I know how it ends).  The problems I've had had kind of taken the joy out of sewing.  So, even when I have a bit of time, I procrastinate.  

Yesterday I needed to quiet my mind for a bit, so I got out the random scraps bin and did some "therapy sewing" (Rayna Gillman's term)                                                                                              After a session, I end up with bits of patchwork like this. The fact that these almost coordinate is because I had a pile of strips and small pieces that apparently went together on top of the bin!                                

I have a few piles of these bits from other  therapy sewing sessions.  Someday there might be a quilt or two.

My other grand accomplishment for the weekend is making a no sew gift bag from the book below. (the blog isn't letting me move things today and I don't feel like fiddling with it)  It's not a hard process, although it can be time consuming if you're only doing one at a time.  Now that I've done one, maybe I'll get a few started.  It uses rather a lot of fabric, since the inside of the bag folds down to be the cuff.  I decided last year I'd try to make some fabric bags to avoid having to buy new ones or wrapping paper every year.

 

  

So we're back to needing to call write and protest over things like drilling in the ANWR and giving all of my money to the wealthiest Americans.  I feel a little sick and pretty hopeless again.  Keep shouting, making noise, contributing to the causes you support, sending letters and postcards.  Our voices MUST be heard!!

I am grateful for:
Little bits of creative time
As always, play time with the grands.
A really good night's sleep.
A boss who understands that some days I'll be reading the news (or shopping) at work.
Leftovers