life, quilts and a cat too

For any of my new readers, the last four years the quilt group has done a challenge quilt and the resultant quilts have been donated to Wrap Them In Love. The goal is to have a top or a completed quilt for "show and tell" at the Christmas party. This year was no different and I'll share those pics with you in a minute---as many as blogger will let me upload in one post and overflow if I have in another post, okay?

In 2005 I found a primary colored paint spill print at Hancock Fabrics. If you are really bored and want to troop through the later pages of the "Belles 05 album" you can spot them in the later numbers of my webshot album HERE. On page 10 for example 1389-05 uses some of that fabric choice.

In 2006 Cher and her Portland Piecers shared a lovely butterfly print. You can see our quilts on the link I just gave you. Her group was to make quilts from the same fabric and I suppose you can spot them on the WTIL gallery pages for that year.

When I mentioned on the WTIL group list that I was looking for about 5-6 yards of something our pal Kitty in KY came to the rescue and sent me enough yardage to use for several years to come. In 2007 we used the Michael Miller Merkitty fabric. Those quilts can be see in two posts HERE and HERE.

So here we are in 08 and working with a stylized Habitat fabric in green. Kitty had sent two fabrics from the same line so a couple of the girls had a slightly different piece. I don't think that they were quite as thrilled with this one but they rose to the occasion, I have to say. Maybe that was the real challenge this time since the colors were a little hard to match? I DO believe that we have some fun doing this project as they are already asking when I will be giving out the fabric for the next one. 2009 will be red lunch pails so they have a hint anyway. I'll pull that one out when I look for backing fabric for the 4 tops that were just turned in.

A couple tops will be delayed as fabric was misplaced or life just plain intervened. That happens--no pressure from me. The first quilt I will be showing was one of those delayed quilts. Pat M has been building a new home for the last 18 months or so---how she got any sewing done with all that going on, I'll never know! Liz in SC offered to quilt a top for us on her Handiquilter set up and it was just turned in after binding completion. I wish I had taken the picture when Pat had it draped over her! Thanks again, Liz. Pat was thrilled with how it came out.


The next two tops are from Linda S. She got a "bonus" top out of the deal. She made this log cabin top 2nd with the Habitat fabric used in the narrow border. The print she used was from a piece of clothing she found at a local thrift store. Recycling! The other one, below, she did a log cabin variation with the beginning square the challenge fabric.





Next up is Lois' Puss in the Corner quilt. She has some lovely machine embroidered squares alternating with the Puss blocks. The plaid in the quilt I believe she said was an old Dan River print that at one time had belonged to her MIL? I showed the top earlier this summer but here it is with some lovely curved quilting.

This one belongs to Linda C--the rust fabric seemed to be a good choice with this fabric plus she picked up the other greens and gold colors. I quilted it for her a month or so back.


Here is Beverly with her version. I think she used one of the Wicked Easy patterns or something similar?? I had sent them an online link for them to check out and she tried it out here. Again the golds and oranges seemed to contrast nicely with the Habitat fabric.


Marilyn said her version was "hot off the press" and she had leftovers so I see some of this fabric turning up in another quilt since she gave it back to me. She framed the cut squares with 3 inch strips all around in two colors and then used about a 10 inch to cut them at an angle in a wonky manner.


These last two are mine---I had posted my version of the Jungle Nine patch on here before. If I had not cut out a bonus quilt I would have worked in one more square at the bottom of the quilt. I added one more nine patch row to mine and skipped the borders. I used the leftover peach fabrics as well as the light green pin dot from the J9P for the Puss in the Corner below --the peach toile is the background and the pin dot, the binding which still needs to be stitched down. I think Nancy volunteered for that detail and one of the others we held up. Oh, the plaid in the J9P is also the backing on the PIC. Stash busting or working in series??





I have more pictures to share as there were others that were completed. I'll save those for another post. Once I started yakking, you can't get me to shut up, LOL. Stay tuned!

There is just not a lot going on around here---in retrospect, I have to wonder just what the heck I did with my time last week. A little knitting, some extra kitchen work. A bit of hand quilting at the meeting. Too many hands of Superior Canfield, for sure. Blog reading but little commenting.

IE is not good about letting me sign in and the next thing I know I have 20 some windows open-----grrrrr. By the time I get those closed and switch over to Mozilla I forget what I wanted to say, LOL. Or get frustrated and go do something else instead.

My quilt group met on Tuesday---shown is a quilt that Jane turned in. I didn't ask her but I think it might be some of the blocks sections that her mom had worked on as Sarah was the "queen of strings". Isn't it cool the way she used those for the centers of the Puss in the Corner? It smelled good too! Jane said that it had been blessed by three cats so she thought it best be washed before she donated it for the kids. Crinkled up nicely so it already looks loved.

My first challenge quilt was among those we pinned. Again I came home with more pinned tops than I went with. There is a picture of what awaits me down the line further down in the post---sigh. We had a bit of an impromptu potluck lunch. Nancy came in with a huge pot of chili to share and Linda M a pan of delish brownies topped with white and chocolate chips. I should have paid more attention to how she said she made those but then again, that would not help the weight loss attempts, LOL. Still, an excellent stop to the chocolate cravings that day!

Nancy and I were the last ones left at the meeting. I had an errand to run at the Oxford Exchange (where all the big box stores are out on 1-20). She met me out there. One of the Belles is a cashier at the store we went to so we got to chat with Rosa for a few minutes. There was a Starbucks inside the store so we stopped for a latte though I wish I had seen that they had pumpkin lattes before I ordered. Good chat though I didn't get home till almost 4. DJ was about to send out a search party for me.

I just finished up this top last night--the blocks had been done for days and the sashing strips all cut out but there it sat on the machine table till Saturday. Just not in the mood to sew. This top uses what I had left of the green challenge fabric. I also used up the last of the peach toile fabric for the block backgrounds begging a strip from my mom to finish up. The speckled peachy orange piece is also in the Jungle Nine Patch (J9P) as is the green pin dot that I used cornerstones and binding for this PIC. Still got a bit of that pin dot left but definitely made a dent in it. The plaid was used as one of the colors in the J9P too but I had quite a bit of yardage--my guess it is some that Mom had shared with me in the past but there is probably a little over a fat quarter left of it now since I am using it for this quilt's back. It had to be pieced to get the width and a section joined to length as I had halved the fabric at one point thinking I would use it for something else. I think that there were 5 seams in that thing once I was down with it, LOL. The binding for the last two are seamed but still need to be pressed and rolled.

This is what awaits me---12 quilts that taunt me as I wake up in the morning and the last thing I see at night. Pat took one of them off my hands to play with her "new to her" pantos or there would be a 13th buried in there----bless you! The top I sent her was one of only two that I pieced in this whole pile. I had hoped to work on my own projects a bit this year as the quilt group and I are not having to collect 60 some quilts for any local spot this year. No big push though some will go to Wrap The in Love and some already DID go to Pam's Quilts for Mexico. If I added the 5 personal tops that are pinned and waiting to the pile, I know it would reach the ceiling of the room. So as much as I WANT to work on my own things, this pile needs to go away and the only way that will happen is to start quilting. That, and declare a moratorium on bringing anymore home once that bonus PIC challenge quilt is pinned at the next meeting. Got another top? Please hold it till I get caught up a bit. Now practice saying that and sound convincing! Nancy is coming over sometime today so I can show her how to machine quilt. Linda C wants to come too but there is hardly enough room in here for ME once I set up to quilt, LOL so I will invite her up later. Looks like she will have ample opportunity, right?

Here is Skyler watching the birds and bugs and whatever it is that cats look at outside. He DOES love his window seats. He left this spot for a sunny area on the carpet in DJ's room but that has disappeared as the sun gets up higher in the sky. Actually I think he likes that spot so he can jump out at you in the hall way too---lay in wait and then attack the pants legs. Fun to watch. I wish I had even a 10th of his energy!

We had a fellow come in to the meeting carrying several large garbage bags of "scraps"' from someone in his family. He did not attend church there but he knew when and where we met so someone tipped him off. Most of it was definitely scraps and not usable but Nancy, Fleeta and I went through it all. Some wools and a bunch of stuff someone might want if they do crazy quilts. I don't want it but there have been some classes on making CQ's in recent years so someone in the JOY group might want it. There were some cottons and decorator type samples that I brought home to wash up that we could use. I no sooner got that all cleared up when I got a call from one of the Belles who can no longer attend. She just doesn't have time to quilt but she had fabric to donate from her SIL & MIL estates as well as some of her own. I picked that up on Friday. She had had to leave and left the stuff out on the porch so there was no one there to help me carry it or put it in the car. Unfortunately one large container I should have emptied some of it out first ---my lower back has been squawking at me since then. It has made walking a bit of a challenge the past few days as pounding the hard ground makes my back a little sore even without the strain I put on lifting.

The body is letting me down. I am still having a situation from early August checked out with another test scheduled for Thursday morning. So far I know what it isn't which relieves the mind but not what it is and treated. No point in whining about it though. It is what it is...........

Looks like DJ is done with the washer so time to hit the shower----

What fun to sew again! For the last few days I have been working on my Bama Belles challenge quilt with the stack of fabrics that I showed you in my last post. I am using the Jungle Nine Patch pattern from QuiltWoman--now there is a website that could be a whole bunch of trouble!

At first I was a little confused as they refer to the strip pieced section as "Triple Rails" I guess that is technically what they are but terminology was throwing me a bit. I suppose that I was seeing triple rail blocks as you would use in a quilt layout. If you were to try the pattern, I would not skip the part about doing the swatches to keep the numbering part straight in your mind. It is vital that you have the visual for the 12 subcuts you make from the strip sets as that leads you into the sequence you need to make the nine patches. I was referring to it constantly!!

I had also wondered how vital it was to have strips measure 22.5 inches as they recommend using fat quarters. I had yardage, rather than fats for this so could I just use half the width of the goods? Well, you know how variable THAT prospect can be with stuff measuring 40, 41, 42 inches of usable fabric. My conclusion was that some strips it would not have mattered if they were a tad short but if six cuts were needed, I only had about an inch waste, if that. I cut them to size even if it meant setting the leftovers aside. Those are the perfect size for bow tie blocks, true triple rail blocks and whatever scrappy thing I want to do down the line.

The color is off a bit in the picture but this is where I left off last night. The bottom 4 rows are joined but I still need to sew the top two together to finish it up. BUT I don't want to border this as 1) it is big enough for a donation quilt as is and 2) I don't honestly know what I would use to do the job and/or if I would have enough of any of it. Though it is not shown in this picture, I made another row to add just a little bit more length since I tossed the borders in the design. I drew it up in EQ 6 to get the sequencing right. I would have added another framed challenge fabric block to the deal but I already cut the leftovers up into 5 inch squares to do a Puss in the Corner AKA Uneven Nine Patch, Billie Lauder style. I had cut extra sub sections from the strip sets so those came in handy. Some. I just had to re-arrange slightly--remove one color and add another in the proper sequencing while others were just fine the way they were. Very little extra cutting was needed.

I could piece the back from the leftover fabrics but I have a feeling I might need those for the bonus challenge quilt. I have a nice piece of a rust colored print that the church secretary donated to us so I may use that instead, if there is enough yardage. Chris will get a big kick out of that when I show her at our next meeting. I am pretty sure that piece of white/green calico came from her too. I'll finish this up today and then get ready to start the 2nd top from the green habitat stuff.

Other than that there is not a lot going on around here. We finally have some cooler mornings so I don't have to get out of the house quite so early to go walk. I have found that my pace is a lot quicker the last two mornings and less arduous without with mid 70's and high humidity factor. We have had a fair amount of cloud cover lately but no rain to speak of so that as kept the heat down. The city spread some new pea gravel where there had been some washout so that helps too. Less worries about turning an ankle. Also I had re-loaded my mp3 player with some new tunes. Walking to the pace of the music has made me feel like I was almost flying around the track instead of trudging and begging to be done as I was on Monday.

I am going to try to keep better track of my mileage and worked up a spreadsheet the other day. I used to record this stuff but it fell by the wayside when I had walked about as far as from here to Clarksville, TN. After all I have been faithfully walking since March of 07 so mileage would add up especially since I go around 3- 3.3 miles most of the time ( the least I ever go 2.2 miles) 6 days a week most weeks. If I had kept it up I would probably been through Kentucky (Paducah!) on the way to IL, in my mind anyway. I am not sure whose blog it was (Paula at Coffee Time Studio I was thinking?) that mentioned that she was walking and keeping track of the mileage and when she had walked the distance to a favorite quilt shop, she was going to get a special treat from that shop. Good plan!! Now if there were some kind of reward to make me keep a food diary other than knowing that a weight loss plan is easier when you have to account for everything you pop in your mouth--weigh, measure till you get the eye re-trained for portion size? I have unfortunately put a couple of hard fought to lose pounds back on doing things "my way". I know what I have to do. Even if it a royal pain.............