Not So Modern Stars?

We had a great meeting last night at our Modern Guild.  Daisy, our VP/Program Chair gave us a great program about how to use the internet in quilting.

We learned about getting inspiration from blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, podcasts, webinars and Flickr. She navigated to each type of site and gave us tips on the various types of social media.  It is a rich and exciting place to find information, inspiration and friends.  It makes the world a very small place, indeed!

I am working on a project that will hopefully get some space in one of the quilt magazines. We shall see. They say they are open to  people not in their inner circle, so here I am!

Meanwhile, something NOT modern.

Did I show you the Stars Quilt I finished last week?  I can't remember, I am thinking not.








I did a photo shoot and just downloaded the photos.  Check them out.

I really love it!

From "UFO" to "In Line At The Long Arm"

On Saturday, I was working hard at cooking and quilting all the live long day!

I decided that we needed tamales, having eaten the last package many months ago.  I got meats, corn husks and masa.  You might think that here in Louisiana we know nothing of tamales.  Au contraire, mon ami!  There are a lot of Cajun families who celebrate holidays and the High Holy Days with tamales!  You might find a bit of crawfish in there, but they are tamales nonetheless!

Every time I make tamales, I have to go to YouTube and refresh myself with the way to roll them.  This time I started off and I forgot to soak the husks.  Last time I used the papers, and I have to admit it was a lot easier than the husks.

And they stayed together better than the husks.  I lost about 3 in each for the pots I steamed.  But I saved the juice for tortilla soup, one of Carrie's favorite things!

While I finished up the last batch I noticed some bugs on my stove.  The Formosan termites are swarming in the neighborhood right now and there they were in the hood vent.  We spent the next two hours vacuuming them up.  My kitchen is a mess with stuff moved out of its place everywhere.

They are attracted to light and as soon as we turned the light off they stopped coming in.  We have Terminex treat our house every year, so there is not too much concern for an infestation, but it was uncomfortable thinking of it.   Will call on Monday and get them to come and look.

Then he decided that he needed to fix the bottom of the cabinet under the sink, more stuff came out.  I notice I have 4 red bottles of some such thing.  Maybe I need to go through and toss stuff.........

Quilts.......

I spent some time in and out of the quilt room over the course of the day.  While I was working I finished up listening to Sue Monk Kidd's The Invention Of Wings.  I have no idea how she came to that title.  It is about two abolitionist sisters pre-Civil War Charleston.  I started in listening to Amanda Berry's new book Hope about the Cleveland kidnapping of her, Gina Dejesus and Michelle Knight.  Castro was a real monster.  In the beginning chapter she expresses regret that he killed himself rather than remain in captivity like he forced them to for 11 years.

 My friend Joni made herself some note cards with the name of each UFO she had.  And in several weeks she cleared up a whole stack of cards!  I thought it might be a good way to focus on my unbelievable group of UFOs.  There are not enough cards in the city for the ones I have!  But I filled up all the cards I could find.

So the Lily Stack and whack was the first one I pulled.  That top and back is done.




The second card was the Star quilt.  That needed quilting so I made a back for it and it is ready.







 The third, yes, I am on THREE!  The third one was the Lotto Spools. I won those at a River City Guild meeting maybe 4 years ago.  They were in rows and needed to be out together.  And a back made.  DONE!

Next week I have a guy coming to put film on my windows, but after that I am ready to quilt these three babies!  That should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Finally, The Star and Some Feathers

 I finally have the Star Quilt out of the washing and drying machines.  It wrinkled up nicely!

Check out the back, it looks like a star!

And these are some feathers I made for Mr. Pat's Louisiana Traveling Quilt.  His does not have the theme of Louisiana like the other two I was working on.  It had the feel of modern masculine and angles.  One night I was dreaming that I had feathers from the Anna Marie Horton Feather Bed Quilt.

And it was so!

They will fit nicely on one side or the other.  I plan on leaving them off for the moment and sendin a note to the next person in line asking them to include them in their piece down one side or the other as it all fits together.

I really love this quilt.

glen

52 Photos - Gallery 21 - Star

This is Chloe the Smelly Basset.  She came to the family in the usual way.  Well, not really.  My daughter was angry at the world and she had moved out of our house after graduating from high shcool.  We bought a condo apartment near LSU so I always knew she had a roof over her head.  We also paid for a lot of things for her, but she was in her Angry Phase.

She was dating the Boyfriend From Hell.  And she tried breaking up with him a couple of times and always ended up going back.  She said she was through for good and he brought her this pup.

Chloe was cute.  And she held them together for just a short time longer.  And the BFH was angry when they were no longer together.  She ended up placing Chloe with us for safekeeping for a while until things passed over.

She fell in love with Frank!  And Frank fell in love with her!  for 10 years now, they have not been parted! And Carrie now has Hugeaux the Cavalier King Charles, which she implicily states is HERS AND WILL BE GOING HOME WITH HER when he stays here with his grandma for a few days!

Back to Chloe. she wouldn't look at me.  (She was kinda grouchy I made her get out of bed to take this picture of her.)  She has an attitude in her old age.

Here is Frank's little girl, Chloe the Smelly Basset AKA Star!

A Finish to Report and the Week Ahead on the Design Wall Monday

KerBloom! is now finished.   I spent the last 2 hours and 40 minutes sewing the binding on.  I watched the Amazing Race and the Good Wife.  I love the Good Wife.  And nearly 3/4 the way through the Mentalist.

My standard Sunday Night Fare.

The great thing about finishing KerBloomm! is that I get to claim the quilt and the backing on both my next week's Stash Report AND my OPAM for April.  Which means I am at 14 completions for the year, and I am right on track for One Project A Month for the first quarter of 2014.  Yes!

My week's work will be to complete the quilting on the Star quilt, which needs a really dynamite   name.  I am doing ruler work which is slowing me down.  I should have done Meandering Stars and it would be done by now.  but I wanted to practice with my channel locks on the wheels.  If I would have realiz
ed that that only works on the four small corners and that all the stars require angled lines, I could have rethought the process and made a different choice.

See where I forgot to lock the rollers?  It made the quilt skew and the sewing line was skewed as well.

The other thing I wanted to get accomplished this week is to finish up Sunshine on the Water for the Fiber Group.  And I need to put the borders on the Machine Quilt and get that ready for the frame.  I already have the backing!

That will be a nice finish to report on my Stash Report as well!

Tuesday Quilting

I got the back of the Halloween Quilt completed.  When Frank comes home I have three quilts that he can help me sandwich on the carport.  How do you do your big stuff?

And I was puttzing around with the extras from the Taking Names Quilt that I pattern tested.  These are the ones one of the participants did incorrectly and they turned out too small.  There are 12 of them and I figured they would make a pretty cool modern baby quilt.

Look what I found in there!

That would be a cool medallion for a grey and orange quilt.  That is my grey and white checkerboard.  I am not sure I want to use it for that, but it looks great.  I have other greys I can put there.  Maybe a more solid reading background would be better anyway.

I am waffling about what to work on next.  I have so much stuff to work on and I want to do so many things, I get overwhelmed and don't know what to do next!  So I decided to talk to you for a while!

OK.  I know what I am doing now.  I found this great quilt on the internet and fell in love.  But I could not find anything about who owned it, where it came from or if there was a pattern.  And I am usually pretty good about FBI work like that.  So I set out to make my own.  I decided I could make the airplanes two ways.  One was paperpiecing, which I love to do.  The other was to make a paper airplane out of material and stitch it on.  I decided on the paperpiecing after making several tries that didn't work with way #2.

Here is my first airplane.

Cool, huh?  This is some old fabric I bought to make Carrie a dress with when she was a babe, and never got around to it.  I may save it for her if she ever has a boy.  It is the kind of quilt she would like.  Maybe.

I have two other airplanes to make.  They soar across the sky.  I am thinking about putting some words in there too.  SOAR seems too trite.  Can you think of anything that would be really unique?

I may work all night on the other two!

Stars and leaves rustling in the trees!

You would think recovering from shingles would necessitate a quiet peaceful calm period, but not so. I did manage to grab some time yesterday to sew up a storm though. I completed a star BOM block. Absolutely wonderful! I found the seams were a bit thick but that is just a learning experience to show that I needed to be aware of where the seams were and make cuts accordingly.
The background is a grey swirly cloudy piece that will allow the made fabric to stand out and still give some texture to the quilt.

I got lost in making the star block and didn't realize what time it was. I had to feed the dogs and head out to the guild meeting. Oh, and make supper too! So I just had the time to make the templates for the pinwheel block. I think I am going to paperpiece them rather than cut individual pieces out.


Here is a pile of freezer paper templates. I guess I could just cut them out and sew them together. You know, it all comes out the same in the end! (Duh! after I posted this I went to look at my pile, there is not going to be paperpiecing going on here, I already cut it all up! LOL)

I was feeling pretty tired and my arm and neck were hurting so I left the meeting early. I was tired of that ice pick stabbing my shoulder and making everything itch. But my night instantly brightened when Frank met me at the door with a package from Seattle from my Virtual Bee Partner! I knew just what it was. LEAVES!

So here are the blocks I have so far.

The leaves are fabulous. I must admit, when I thought neutral, it never occurred to me that prints could be involved. Why, I don't know. But I do love the prints.

Now I am going to have to make some of my own. I think I will try to find a wonky bird and add a few in this tree!

OH, maybe a nest too! Oh I do so love this tree!

After I cropped this photo, I looked at the original and thought, hmmmm, I like the color in the edge there.

I have too many things on my design wall, I must resolve to finish a few now.

Don't show me any more of your fabulous stuff until I get some of this finished, OK?


glen