Candace the Therapy Dog and A Bit of Good Fortune

My house looked like this December, a year ago in 2017.  This fairly rare snowfall lasted all day long.  Here in Baton Rouge we have snow about every 6 or 8 years.

The Basset Boyz were totally amazed at the white stuff.








Today the beaver was in my next door neighbor's yard munching down on some acorns.  The tree there is a huge oak.  I odd to have a beaver rambling around here.  We are used to opossums and rabbits and armadillos.





At the hospice today, Rodney's son Chad brought Candace Marie, his Certified Therapy Dog.  Chad and Candy work with Autistic kids.  She is able to calm them.


He brought her here to visit his dad, who is struggling to breathe since he is in what they call Transition.  I didn't read the book they gave Diane, but I imagine they mean between life and death.








I did have about an hour or so this morning to work on The Good Fortune Mystery quilt.  I chose the oranges, and then stripped them.

I made about half of the needed pieces.  Since Bonnie requested about 3 times the amount of orange I used, I am thinking that there will be another use for the color.  

I will spend some time tomorrow at Hospice with Diane and Rodney again.  I am hoping for peace and calm.  We spoke today of letting go.  That is the tough part.

Range of color in scrap quilts

OK......so Charlene has been telling me that I should have kept those first red and beige Four Patches in the game.  And I was skeptical.

I am not sure I really wanted these to mix but I did read this today that confirms what Charlene said as a scrap fact.

The backstory is that I needed a book to trade at a guild meeting so I found a great book called, get this,

Use Scraps, Sew Blocks, Make 

100 Quilts!

By Stuart Hillard.  Stuart is pretty cool in his weird sweater......maybe.  But the book got here today.  I needed it last night.  Right.

Anyway, he has this insightful paragraph in his Making Colors Work section:

"One of my favorite color combinations is blue (or red) with cream, but in the best scrap traditions make sure the blues (or reds) go from light to dark and every shade and permutation in between and that the creams range from white to tan."

White to tan.  He ranges his neutrals from white to tan.  

Interesting.  

I would not have put whites with tans. And in this quilt I wanted it to be more modern looking.  So in that vein, I am keeping even my colors to be more of the same color, same shade with little variation.  I want them to read as a solid.  

When I made the red and white Four Patches for Charlene, I realized that I needed to have white instead of beige if I wanted it to be modern looking.

So I thought that was interesting when I read that paragraph and recalled what Charlene talked about, it made me think I needed to share it all with you.

So here it is.  Neutrals range from white to tan and white and tan do go together.

 And according to this quilt in his book, he must know Bonnie Hunter...……..just sayin'

The Good Fortune Mystery Quilt

I have made a million of these four patches.  Augh!  I made my allotment and then I made 88 for Charlene to get her started.  I also made 20 more than I needed because I know I couldn't have made them all correctly.

Ya know?












There is a lot of detritus when you make this many four patches that need trimming to the correct size.

 This was the Floor Supervisor making sure I didn't take too many breaks.  Can't be slacking, can we?  Got deadlines to meet.

Next clue came out on Friday last.  So we are already behind production.











 Every one will tell you there are no Quilt Police.  But there really is.  Here is one lady looking over the stack of four patches. She has a very critical eye and passed on an evaluation to the Production Manager.

The Production Manager stood by for a while and watched me work on some strips.  I got called to the office because it seems my quarter inch is not so perfect.


He had the following video as proof.

That aside, here are my two favorite four patches.  Everyone has favorites, right?  

Alright Already

Happy Thanksgiving.  Hope you and your family are safe and ready to head home soon.

What a day yesterday!  I cleaned the house on Tuesday, top to bottom and even bathed the dogs because I forgot to make the appointment for the vet to bathe them and they were slammed full for the holiday.  The new, larger shower with the long hose and wand set up actually made it quite easy.  The worst part was the bending over.  My back has been killing me for a couple of days and this did not help at all.

But the dogs were cleaned and not too traumatized.  They naively went into the shower, which is large enough to be another room anyway. I probably won't get them to walk into the shower ever again though!

Post from Charlene:  Bonnie Hunter has a new mystery quilt you should do.
Reply:  No

I cooked all day yesterday.  I made carrot cake cupcakes with the requisite cream cheese frosting, candied yams with three Louisiana Yam varieties one of which was purple topped with Louisiana naval oranges, long green beans and long carrots done in the instant pot, cranberry sauce done in the instant pot, banana pudding and whipped cream, fried apples in the instant pot from North Louisiana apples and Brown sugar and Pineapple with Dijon mustard glazed spiral cut smoked ham.

My neighbor sent








 her famous fudge and Frank's cousin Patsy brought the Louisiana Pecan Pie.

I used about 5 lbs of Louisiana cane sugar, 10 lbs of brown sugar and a few vegetables.

Post from Charlene:  All you have to do is to make a couple of 4 patches.
Reply:  No - she will want 5,736 of them.  

We drank wine, beer, fancy root beer, Dr. Pepper, cokes, Sweet Southern Iced Tea and chocolate milk.   And ate ourselves silly.

Sawyer loved his Aunt Patsy and Aunt Stacey.  He had such a big grin when he saw them!  And he played them for all he was worth!












We discussed contrails vs chemtrails and how the government is trying to knock us off.  And ancestry.  Frank's side of the family goes back to Daniel Boone's uncle Jeremiah Boone.  But when Frank got his DNA results back there was no Native American in there.  And his genes were mostly English and the Boones were Dutch.  Who knows that far back though.  He did have that coonskin hat when he was a kid in the 50's.

Post from Charlene:  All you have to do is make 12.  You can make 12 just like that. 15 minutes tops.
Reply:  No, she will never stop wanting more.

Frank went out last night to get a jump on the Black Friday Sales.  He bought some things, he said, although I didn't see them come inside.  I am hazarding a guess here that he has bought my Christmas present.  In a heated argument last week I told him that he always ends up going out at the last minute and trying to find a present for me.  And I am tired of old lady jewelry from J C Penneys and Sears.

My neighbor two doors down just returned home from a massive hospital stay.  She  was stabbed by her brother in law trying to help her sister.  He was stabbing her sister and ended up killing her.  My neighbor was critically injured and has a lot of stab wounds.  She is healing physically, I imagine it will be a while for the mental healing to come.  I can't even imagine.  So far, the police have not found him.  I guess he is long gone from here by now.

Post from Charlene:  If you don't like them, you can just send them to me.  come on, you can do it, can't you?
Reply:  What size?  You know I am going to hate this, right?

I talked to my other cousin, who has her son home from the Naval Academy.  She is playing proud Momma this weekend.  I know I would!

Post from Charlene:  Come on...….you may end up loving it!
Reply:  I won't, I refuse to like it.  But I will see what I can do.

My fiber group met and we shared some really interesting work.  I am going to direct you to Our Fiber Exploration Blog for this month's sharing pieces.

Fiber Explorations Post click here
Fiber Explorations post click here


Post from Charlene:  That's the spirit!  You go girlfriend!
    Reply:  I refuse to reply...…

I am too busy making 4 patches...……..

Grand Illusions - Bonnie Hunter Mystery Work

280.  That's right, 280 is the operative number for today.

I have always said, I look at a pattern and if I see anything that says 200 of something, I put that pattern down!  So here I am, doing 280 of something!

And in all my  quilting glory, you know I have to mess something up.  And the 280 is no exception!

Although I have to say it was written in such a way that one could easily misread it.  And that is what I did.  Bonnie makes an assumption that you are using the EasyAngle Ruler and just casually mentions -- oh, yeah, if you are not using the Easy Angle, do it some other way.

I had a lot of strips that were 2 1/2 inches and that is what I used...in a way I thought the Easy Angle worked.  Obviously not. 

So now I have 280 of the 2 inch blocks......so my  quilt will be a bit smaller.  Not a problem, I like them a bit smaller than 89 x 89 anyway.

 This is what 200 HSTs look like.  And I am going to work on the other 80 to get them done.  We also have to make a Broken Dishes block .... actually we need to make 100 Broken Dishes Blocks.


So let me get to work.

glen

Stash Report 10-12-14

I really need to figure out how to balance the color in my camera.  These really are off.  Aughhh!  Aggravating, really.


I decided that I would do the Bonnie Hunter Winter Mystery this Year.   I wanted to last year and farted around and never did.  And I loved it!  So this year I am doing it.

She gave out the fabric amounts and colors this week so I went to Lowe's this afternoon and got the paint chips she is using.  I really like the colors.  Very bright and potentially modern.

Saturday night I gathered what I had in hopes it would be a "no buying" quilt.  And I think it mostly will be so.  I may need a few more pieces of turquoise but I think I have the other colors covered.
They are based upon her visit to the Grand Hotel in the Carolinas.
The yellow, which looks like orange here, is a single fabric that is the one that ties things together.  

The ones I do not show are the very little white on black and the neutrals.  I have tons of both of those.

Greens without a yellow cast and the turquoise is also without a yellow cast. It was genius to give us the paint chip numbers.  I found it very useful to pull fabrics that were the right tones.

For the Stash Report, still using but not much this week.

I was finishing up the Dr. Seuss quilts and not working on anything more this week. 

Used this week	-3		Used this month	-4.83	used this year	-113.33
bought this week	0		bought this month	0	bought this year	180.75
plus or minus	-3		plus or minus	-4.83	plus or minus	67.42

L&Es

I had a few questions about L&Es and what they were and why those bow ties would be a good L&E Project.  So let me explain what they are.

Bonnie Hunter, scrap queen extraordinaire, introduced a concept to us quilters a couple of years ago that was one of those "duh" moments.  Many quilters will use a strip of scrap fabric at the end of a chain of patches.  This is the Ender.  It saves you from pulling out the last piece, having 3 or 4 inches of blank thread hanging out there.  Then when you start the next chain of patches you have that 3 or 4 inches hanging out the beginning of the chain.  It needs to be cut off eventually and tossed.  Just more work and a waste of thread. 

ENDER

LEADER

When you sew on to that scrap of fabric it also keeps the thread ends from tangling and becoming a rat's nest under your first piece.  I would have two, one for the beginning of one chain and one for the beginning of the next (so I wouldn't have to cut that first Or, if only using one, I would cut the beginning off and use it to start the next chain.  A "leader" and an "ender".

Somewhere in there Bonnie Hunter began to use scrap pieces from her scrap bucket as her leaders and enders.  Duh!  We all said:  How come we didn't think of that?

If you keep a stack of small pieces by the side of your sewing machine to use as Ls and Es you will be amazed at how quickly you can sew them together.  And in no time you will have a "free" quilt!

Bonnie has a book called Leaders and Enders to help you get ideas about putting the pieces together and how to set up your workspace to make it easy to just pick up a set of blocks and use either as a leader or an ender.  You can see her book and the discussion of this technique at:

http://www.quiltville.com/leadersenders.shtml

glen

Bonnie Hunter would be proud of me!

Didn't get much sewing done last week at all.

But this week promises to be better.  Well, the last half of this week anyway, considering this is Wednesday.  I had to bring some old skinny clothes to the Purple Cow, which is like Goodwill but with better prices).  And I ended up with some bargains.  When I got home I realized I still had the old clothes in my back seat.  Duh!

I scored 4 pairs of shorts of various colors for $2.99 each.  White Stag brand so I know they were not cheap stuff in their previous life.  And two pairs of stretch knit pants for my mom at $2.50 each.  The nursing home is always losing her stuff so it is hard to keep things in her closet.  So I just find things like this and know they will lose them anyway somewhere along the line.

The biggest and bestest thing I got was the men's shirts from the 99 cent rack.  I got 10 shirts, all great plaids and 100% cotton for $10! 

Maybe even better and bigger than that was the Spanx I found for $2.99!  Yeah, buddy, shorts and Spanx, I am hot and rolling this summer!

Then I had a card that got me 20% off the entire order so I walked out with 10 shirts, 2 pants and 4 pairs of shorts AND Spanx for $24.  Can't beat that with a stick.

Now I am going to buy a lottery ticket!

glen

Bonnie Hunter classes, Whoo Hoo!

That is what she says, Whoo Hoo when she likes your blocks.  Of course she likes EVERYONE'S blocks, but that is beside the point. 

She said Whoo Hoo! when she saw MY blocks!

I will admit that you will have a prejudiced view because I recharged my battery last night from her class yesterday and the lecture with her wonderful quilt show and I failed to put the battery back in the camera.  I did, however, bring the camera to the class today, sans battery.

This is Bonnie's quilt:

So here are my wonderful blocks.  I see now that with the scrap fabrics I have that I need to use more corners of the light ilk than the darker beige or creams.  I can scatter these throughout the quilt and they will blend nicely.  But, the further you get away from it, the more you see the lights.  Just like Bonnie's quilt.  That little blur is Grand Dog Hugeaux's butt.

It needs cornerstones.  If you look at Bonnie's quilt you will see her cornerstones.  They are two inch strips of the scraps used in the quilt with a two inch square where the block corners meet.  That makes the little churn dash pattern and separates the blocks a bit more.

This is the Pineapple Blossom quilt on her website.  It goes really fast, so I would definitely recommend this quilt pattern.  And best of all it uses a good amount of scrap strips.

glen