All I Will Say, the Monster Dog Is Still Alive.......

By the skin of his teeth.......his father came home and fed him and talked to him and protected him from the horrible thunderstorms that passed through.  I was doing none of that for him.

MY good dog slept in the corner of my quilt room while I sorted out what needed to be done to  save the Rosette.  I actually cried about mid afternoon.

I need to at least figure out how to get the outside ring of paper templates back into the last round.   He ripped out a group of stitching but I  am going to try to see about hand sewing without the template papers. It seems insurmountable, but I will at least try.

Last resort, I order another rosette #1 and start over.

After my cry, I put it away and pulled out two quilts on which I needed to finish sewing the binding. They are both now in the finish column.

Cascading stars is pretty traditional.  My  excuse for that is it was started in like 2007.  I remember picking out the fabrics and being fascinated with the fact that you had to keep up with the  diagonals.

The Neighborhood came from an old book but is way more modern.  Lots of solids, and some traditionals in the mix.  the  houses are all solid.  the windows are just cut out and stitched around after all the quilting was done.  The edges I left to fray look like eyelashes!

I worked on this at a retreat and one lady kept saying I was making swatstikas.  I really wasn't and worked really hard to make the changes necessary to the garden blocks so she wouldn't freak out.

You know me, Swastika Girl........

QR Codes is Quilted

......and the Neighborhood quilt is getting bound.  After my Fiber Group, I came home and watched some nature photograph show about catching anteaters in Brazil.  It took about two hours to get The Neighborhood just over half done.  You have seen this guy before.

 What?

Aught!  I have no idea where the rest of the post went to..... I was titillating and  brilliant and amazing.

OK, let's try this again.

The Neighborhood binding is about 1/2 way complete.   I forgot how cute this quilt is.  I wanted to take a traditional pattern and modern it up a bit.

The houses are all solids and the black windows are just stitched on with the edges that will fray.  It was a fun quilt.  I had a picture in a book about quilting so I had to "design" the houses myself.  The various houses were created by drawing (mentally) a grid over the block.  I then decided where the half square triangles would go and what could be rectangles or squares. 

It was fun putting it together!

QR Codes was quilted yesterday using a small, close, fanciful meander.  I used a shiny peachy poly blend to quilt it.  The advantage of that thread is that it gives if a sheen but is not overpowering to the pattern of the quilt. 


I can't remember what else I put in the post.  It was good though, I remember that.....

The Neighborhood Quilting

FINALLY!  I got the new cord for my computer and can turn it on for the first time in two weeks.  The cord actually came from CHINA!  I guess on that proverbial Slow Boat.

The Neighborhood

I cannot put any weight on my arm.  If I do it results in a sharp pain that brings me to my knees!  It is definitely something you want to avoid!

That includes rotary cutting.  So nothing new until the break heals.

But I can quilt.......that is if Frank loads the quilt for me.  You should have seen that scenario.  Trying to explain just how to put that quilt on the frame was nearly like trying to herd cats!  He doesn't take direction well, let's just say.

But that is not anywhere near the deal with my hair.  I can't bend my elbow to reach my hair. And i need to put it into a ponytail to take a bath.

You would have thought that I invented a complicated elastic circle puzzle.  He just cannot master the concept.

Friday Work

I had a good morning over to Paula's Quilt Haus, as they say in New Orleans.  I got the White Baby Scraps (it really needs a better name than that!) trimmed up and ready for binding to be put on.  It will be even more spectacular when I wash it and the lines come out (as in disappear)!

And I got my Swissy Raffle Quilt squared up and ready for a back to be made.

And I had the Neighborhood Quilt out to add windows but realized it needed to add fusible to the black fabric before I sew on the windows. I bet you don't remember that one.  I will have a photo of it to show you in a minute.......maybe.

I put it together 2 years ago maybe, at River City Retreat. My how time flies, it was 2010. 

I know, I know.   In some of the Garden blocks you might interpret a swastika.  Believe me, I did not create any insidious coded messages in my quilts.  One person at the retreat was aghast that those symbols were in there and I was not willing to take the entire quilt apart and remake the blocks.  I figure that if you are that upset about a quilt block, then you just need to get over it. 

In person you really don't see them as clearly as you see them with the flash that highlights any random WWII German symbols. 

Other than that, I really like the quilt.  It was architectural, fun and will be a really nice quilt when I finish with the windows and the quilting. 

Stay tuned, liebchen!

Puppies and Stash Busting

Would you believe those cutie pies names are Cheddar and Goose?  LOL.  I really love to look at a show catalog and see the names on the dogs registered.  It comes from my childhood.

My father taught me to do math by having me bet my allowance on the track horses.  And he would take it too.  We lived just outside of Jefferson Downs Track in Metairie, LA (suburb of New Orleans).  And he would procure the racing form, I would perform the handicaps, evaluate the horses, and place my bets.  We would then sit outside in the yard and keep track of who won and how they ran.

You would think that I would be good at math, right?  I am not.  And I would usually lose my allowance.  Because the thing that interested me most of all were the horses names.

Hey, maybe that is why I love to name my quilts these exotic names!  Wow, a revelation from the childhood files.

I cut out the two borders for the Zig Zags and the black for the Neighborhood Quilt.  So along with the Piet  Mandarin (thanks  Charlene, I love his work) that gives me nearly enough to cancel out the black I had to buy today to finish both those quilt borders!  You can always use black and with the cost of gas these days, I just bought 4 yards.  It will get used!


glen:  see how delicately I am putting off those elephants????

Biking in the Neighborhood with Tiny Tiny Trees

Lake side of weir

River side of weir

The first bike ride of the year with the group of biker friends.  Sounds like we are motorcycle tough guys, huh?  LOL.  We are actually only bicycle tough guys!  The ride took us through White Oak and over one of the lakes outside the area.  There is a weir connecting the lake with the Amite River.  The weir controls the lake level and thus keeps the beautiful houses from flooding.  We have to cross the weir over a neat wooden bridge.  This is the first time in several years that I have seen the water so high.  I am going to try to find an older drier picture to compare.

We biked 11.8 miles in about 2 hours with a really stiff headwind!





Then we treated ourselves to lunch at Magoo's.  Magoo's is the new favorite of the guys particularly because they have Hot Dogs done 5 ways.

This is my dinner


This is Frank's dinner (Hot Dog with bun under a ton of french fries covered with chili and cheese.



I wanted his, but ate only mine!

Then yesterday afternoon I was letting my muscles recover and I cut out another quilt called The Neighborhood from the vast amount of scraps I have stored in various places around the house.  And today I cut out Tiny Tiny Trees to shade the Tiny Tiny Houses!

Sashing blocks notwithstanding, I have several options to lay out the trees.  They can be interspersed amongst the houses and offer them some shady respite from the sunny days.

Or they can be used as a border around the entire quilt or even just blocks of houses within the quilt.   I only have two made so it is difficult to see, you just have to imagine.

Inventing the Tiny Tiny Trees for the Tiny Tiny Houses was a work in frustration.  I tend to design my own stuff, which means I have to invent it from scratch rather than letting someone else work out the bugs.  Some of my bugs were small but some were big.  Like I had the method of cutting 30 degree trees down, got a phone call, and got lost in the methodology!  And I sewed the test tree patch on backwards to the foundation paper.  And when I sewed the sky sides on the tree one time, I sewed both of them in one patch and searched and searched for the other one in frustration.  I made a replacement, and found the original when I went to sew that new one on.  Sigh.........

house block pieces

These are some of the fabrics I used for The Neighborhood quilt.  It is a 20 block quilt, 10 different houses and 10 off blocks that connect the houses like roads and gardens.  Each house is a unique combination of 16 patches that change in color and position.  Well, you will just have to see it when I get the blocks working.  Each block is clipped together with its components since there is no way I could ever get the right piece

garden blocks pieces

 back to the right block.  I had to draw complicated diagrams and use mathematical algorithms to figure out how many of what went where.


You can see my drawings over here. I was quite pleased with the way I worked each block out.  They will be fairly simple to put together, so I will do them at retreat.

I have a number of quilts to get quilted so I am thinking to spend the rest of the week on doing that.

Maybe.  Maybe not.

glen