I have a few things to catch you up on.

First …….. they finally moved that FEMA trailer that overlooked my back yard and into half my windows in the kitchen and den.











Now the Crazy Lady can't stand out on her back deck thing and wave at the guests in my backyard.

 Or spy on Frank and I enjoying a glass of wine or water on the back patio.  Or watch us and laugh her fool head off like some, well, Crazy Lady.

I have my YARD and my PRIVACY back!  Yay!



 This is what my immediate back yard looks like now!  We are so happy that the neighbors came over with champagne and wine and pizza and we all sat around and partied till dawn!  Well, it was more like 8 pm when they all went home, but you know.

One of my older neighbors used to have about 4 Jack Russell Terriers. Now all her babies are gone and she waits for us to pass by every morning on our walks with the Basset Boyz.  They love to see her.

She brings them dog bones sometimes.

And she brought me this adorable kitchen towel the other day.

One of my Fiber Art ladies let me use her metal door mat to do some rusting.  I can't get that darned mat to rust on to a piece of cloth to save my life.  I am thinking there is that red oxide paint and it just looks like rust.

Tomorrow I will try some other fabrics and see if I can get it to rust something more than just a few spots.











I worked on Frank and the Lighthouse and fused all the pieces down, but have not moved further with it.



 Oh, and I did put the borders on my Concordia quilt center.  I will quilt it with straight lines.  Yep, straight lines.

For Christmas

Frank got me a Gallery Hanging System for the two walls in the front room

.  I want to be able to change out my Fiber Art pieces or my Quilts without making holes in the wall all the time.  It went up easily enough.




There is, however, a learning curve as to how to hang things.  I have to spend some minutes figuring out how to situate the back of the quilt or Fiber piece so it will hang on the hooks.

Anyone have any experience with hanging like this?










And last but not least, I had some solar dyes just hanging around from the last time I went to the Art Store on Government Street with my Fiber Art peeps.  So I tore up 4 pieces of what I thought might be PFD fabric and went to town.  The reason I don't know what is PFD any more is because when the flood happened, the people who came in and took my fabrics off to be washed and stored didn't know what was what and it all came back in one heap.

Hey, I know beggars certainly can't be choosers.  I LOVE my friends for doing that.  And I am more than willing to guess at what might be PFD or not!

All these are fat quarter size.

I want to work on some of them for the North Louisiana Lecture in November.

They are (in order of appearance)
Green  - a branch from someone's Christmas tree by the side of the road
Red - a branch from my Nandina bush and a few leaves from Nancy's nettle weed in her front yard
Swirly Purple - purple drizzled with some green and I swirled the fabric into a rose looking twirl and left it in the sun.
Leaf Purple - a place mat I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond for 99 cents after Christmas.  I wish I had bought 15 of them!

Monday Morning Plans

We had dinner (tamales!) with Carrie and her In-Laws on Saturday night.  I am so glad Carrie has a great relationship with Fayne.  I was so hated by Frank's mother and father, and she barraged Frank with such negative thoughts about me constantly.  It is something that affected my entire life.  It seemed like there was never anyone in my corner.

I ate too much and definitely went off my diet!

So I need to find some veggie recipes for the week.  He insists on eating some sort of meat at lunch so I am working to find less meat/fish/beans in our night meal.  

I am working kitting some things to take with me to Retreat in a few weeks.  Here are the things I need in the next months:

1.  Raffle Quilt for Greater Swiss Mountain Dog Rescue (It will be a bright one)
2.  REME October Challenge (Black and White and a Color)
3.  River City February Challenge (Secondary Patter
4.  A buttload of Quilts that need to be quilted!

The Swissy Raffle quilt has a linen tea towel with a Saint Bernard on it.  It has the Swiss Cross and I was thinking at first to make a quilt with the crosses, like the Locked and Loaded one.  I really don't have a choice of colors in there.  I wonder who was on drugs when they made this tea towel!

Can you see that lower right corner?  That is the "pattern" I will generally follow.  I think it will be a spectacular quilt actually.  And the colors may be fantastic.  Here is another example of working outside your box.  These colors are definitely NOT in my box.

I was choosing some fabrics for the Swissy Raffle Quilt for the Rescue Organization.  Pat Saxon put out call for donations.  Swissy Rescue has rehomed 9 of 13 dogs pulled from homes across the US this year.  Nearly twice as many as they have in past years.  This is where you see the difference between a good breeder and a not so good breeder.  A good breeder will take their puppy from an owner at any stage in that dog's life.  A good breeder will make sure the pups they produce always have a good home and are willing to step up.

If you are not willing to do this, DO NOT BREED!  There are so many dogs out there, find your chosen breed and work to get all dogs into good homes. 

I want organizations like CAAWS to no longer be needed!

I have my Jane Dunnewold Class I need to work on as well.  It is frustrating because my computer does not like to show videos and it gets stuck on one photo while she describes the topic of the week on 15 others.  I have pretty much forsaken the class because I am tired of fighting it for an hour or two.

This computer has failed miserably in what it was supposed to do for me.  I wanted one that be for editing photos and creating slideshows and showcasing the quilt work.   But I fight this one.

And then there is the keypad that is finicky and randomly chooses a letter to not work every day or two.

And I spent so much money on it I have to keep it till it dies.........can you say accidental death?

Yeah.  Accidental.

Here are my thoughts on the tea towel

 This is so old school!  Graph  paper!  I had to dig and dig and dig to find any. 

Oh, the colored in squares would be the yellow and the rest would be the grey and yellow squiggles from back in the last post with the blue tossed in, i guess.

It is a rough estimate in size.  At the present measurement, I figured I could fit 3 trails on the long sides and two and just under a half on the top and bottom.  So here is the mach up of what it wold look like.  I think there is like a 1/4 inch on the sides unaccounted for but I am comfortable with just making the seams a bit smaller in some strategic places. 

The top and bottom however, are a different story.  i got 2.44 when i divided.  So I need to fill in that .4 with something substantial.  It could be blank.  It could be like a crown.  Or it could be a partial continuation of the block flow.   I have shown the possibilities on the first page on the left.

I like the bottom idea best.  so I made the continuation of the trails to match each other.  I am assuming the trails are going to finish at 14 inches.  And I can add the corner pieces to connect the trails on top and bottom.

Can you imagine it?  What do you think? 

At that point it would be about lap size.  Depending on if I am able to find the fabric again, I would be amenable to several more borders. 

Simple borders.  This math is killing me. If you notice I drew one too many blocks into that last border block. 

I guess there is no London block per se.  Oh, I guess now I have to go look................

Testing out a block for the tea towel

I found out that if you type fast you get teat owl.  Not what I want to work on.

Ohhhhhh!  I just got a package.  I think it is the book I ordered about Photoshop Elements!  Yeah!

I have this block idea from the Block  Lotto's pick for this month.  I love the block lotto, even though I have not participated lately.  Sophie does a lotto every month and chooses the most amazing blocks.  This month is the Star Trail.  It is a large 14 inch block.  I thought it had possibilities for my border but it needed tweaking.  (not twerking, which Frank had never heard of.  Is his head in the sand?)

But I digress.....

Just to let you know there will be another of the green grey borders on the other side of the yellow block border. 

I wanted some pieces that would flow around the quilt and create some movement but keep the focus on the center.  And I wanted to bring in some of that blue, I was not happy with the blue anywhere else.  It may not make it in the quilt but at least I would like to try to help that poor Bobby.

I redesigned the star block into this.  I am thinking it will work.  What do you think of the blue in the corners.  try to imagine this.  It will form a secondary pattern.  I am thinking it will be dark enough to hid in that space by the yellow.

I am thinking it goes with the HSTs formation so I am not  introducing an unknown feeling into the quilt.   I like it, but I am still unsure about those blue blocks.  

Now I  have to do math.  I think I am going to have to get that EQ again. It makes this part so easy.

glen

See Sophie, I Wasn't Lying This Time!

Here is the progress on the tea towel so far.

Yesterday I put a French Fuse on the back of the towel itself.  I was concerned about the looser weave and stretching.   Making sure it caused no  problem was just being proactive.

I already had the HSTs from when I started the first round at the retreat last month. Last night, with pre tea towel Jitters, I laid out the pieces I had collected and liked it.  Put a check in the approval box!

I was conscious about the busy aspect of the borders as I work with them.  So I feel compelled to include a stop border. 

I am wishing i had more of that grey green piece.  I got it in Lafayette and I am not sure I want to drive all the way down there and find it gone.  I need to call Charlene and see if there is more.  She is doing a long term sub at her school taming some young minds so I am not sure how much time she is spending at the store. 

Wow, I am liking the addition of each border.  It took a bit of time to work out the figures for for the blocks in the current last border.

I just had to see how it would look with the next borders getting dark.   LIKE!

I am thinking of those Star Trip blocks from the Block Lotto.  I am thinking that a dark background with the two yellows, or maybe some of the blue in there.  that might be a way to get that blue into the quilt.  I need to make one and maybe do a montage in the computer. 

I am so used to doing this on my Electric Quilt program.  But I am learning to adjust.  I rafted the border blocks on a scrap of typing paper, just like the old days!


I  liking it so far.  I think the star blocks in a dark colorway will be a great addition.  See. I have talked mmyself into them already.

Tea Towel Fabrics - Anew!

I feel better about the fabrics now and maybe I can take Sophie's joie de vivre and actually get some rounds on it. 

I also saw a post the other day on Quilted Fabric Art where Carol talked about Seminole Piecing.  It flashed through my mind as exactly what my LAST Tea Towel Quilt needs to get it back on track.

But that will happen later.......maybe........now I want to work on it!  Geez.

Anyway.  Here is what I added.  I figured that if I  am down 50 yards of usage,, I can afford to get a couple of that back for tea towel perfection.  The London Fog towel is really difficult to color match.  But here is what the color experts at the Red Stick came up with.

 I don't know if you can actually see the color of the Bobby's  blue,
but it, like the green grey of the towel, is an odd one.  I previously had selected this a the only thing in my stash that matched.  I felt the yellow dots would also fit in.  It did not.  The dots, which are actually apples, drew your eye directly to them, away from the focus of the  quilt, the tea towel.



So we found this to replace it.  I feel much better about the solid-ness.  This photo is way off the color, adding too much yellow to it.

I also needed another fabric to add into the mix.  I just needed more possibilities to make the rows easier to build.  We came up with this.  It has the same background grey green that the solid grey green has. 

I am happier.  Much happier.  Sophie, head's up!




 

Sophie Junction's Tea Towel Challenge

If you are keeping up with Sophie's Tea Towel Challenge over at her wonderful blog Sophie's Junction then you will know I should be further ahead than I am right now.

What else is new?

So I plan on working on it this weekend.  Stop in and see if I have anything done on it.

Maybe I will start tomorrow after I
get some work for CAAWS done.  We were the lucky recipient of a large donation of $25,000.  A huge donation, in fact.  And the donor has said that if we match the donation, he will add additional money.  So CAAWS has constructed the CAAWS Big Money Match Campaign.  We will launch it in 17 days at the CAAWS Mystic Krewe of Mutts Parade on Feb 16, Sunday.

I need to get some signage and sandwich boards made and work on some direct mail.

In a week or so when it all comes together on the website, I am hoping that each of you will visit our website at www.caaws.org and make a donation of even a single dollar toward that program.  100% of the money CAAAWS takes in goes to the animals in some way.  No one takes a salary, we all work for love!

Kelly should have a specific donation button up next week.  For those in Baton Rouge, look for us on the morning TV
programs talking about the parade and the CAAWS Big Money Match!  If you want to help with the parade or the Big Money Match Campaign please email me and let me know.  We need bodies too!



This is the first big project since I became President.  Whew!  Hard work making money for Spay and Neuter!

Excitement - Just Wait Till You See THIS!!!

I went to Pilates class and then headed over to the Red Stick Quilt Shop.  (In between the two I stopped at Arby's for lunch.....)

The shop was filled with a ton of people!  And they all were getting fabric cut an buying stuff.  I was looking at yellows when someone said, this is pretty good for not even being open.

Then I remembered they are closed on Mondays!  LOL.  Rachel had a great day for not being open!  And so did I!!!!

Take a look at the most perfect piece of yellow for the London Fog piece.  The pattern mimics the face of Big Ben.  It will be a nice inner border.  i looked o  if there was a grey green but no luck.  So I think I will stay with my green and blue choices in the pile from yesterday.

I am kinda excited to start this one now!

Tea Towel Challenge wiith Sophie's Junction

I have narrowed down the choices of fabrics that will go with my tea towel.  I loved Sophie's chickens from last year.  The details in her towel lent themselves perfectly for chickens, baby chicks and eggs in the surrounding layers.  I didn't seem to pick that up when I chose the London Fog.  I do love the London Fog, I think it will stretch my abilities and create a wonderful quilt in the end.  I may have some pains getting there though!

I think I need one more fabric, a yellow zinger.  I don't have the right yellow in my stash  so I will have to find a piece in a quilt shop.  I was glad to find that greenish grey at Charlene's beautiful shop in Lafayette, J & B Quilting.

Here is where I am right now.  I may end up making some changes or additions later on.  I will have to eventually cut up some of the fabrics and add them to the towel.  This is the scariest part of quilting for me.  Well, one of them.  Starting a design on my own.

It scares a lot of people, I know.  I feel my heart beat increase and my stomach clenches.  Really.  I know that is what you feel too.  But if you resolve to just take the next step, you can over come that.

And once the quilt is going and you love it, and other people love it too, you will be filled with an excitement that feels like an increased heart beat and a stomach clench........with a little elation tossed in!

Cold Noses

The weather people on all the stations last night were warning of a freeze and making sure people protected their pipes and their pets. Frank put up all the plants that get affected by the cold and covered the rubber tree sufficiently to protect it. (I bought it in 1979.)

So Frank announces last night that the weathermen are wrong and it won't get as cold as they have said.

This morning it was 21 degrees when I got out of bed at 7:30 AM. The weathermen had predicted 24.  So I am glad Frank is never wrong!  Don't they look good in their cozy warm coats?  Chloe refuses to wear clothes.  She does not play well with dress up. Putting anything on her causes her to become instantly rooted to the ground.  So at 21 degrees, she is naked.

I have to be in court this afternoon.  Hopefully it will be decided this afternoon and it will be over.  I have so many things going on. And I want to make some soup with lentils and sausage and some of the baby kale I found in the grocery store on Sunday.

I am on the program for the Feb meeting of one of the guilds and I need to set up some programs for the year. I have an agenda to set up for the CAAWS meeting this week and I have the Fundraiser meeting as well.

I have two pieces to finish, my challenge you can't see and the red sunprint.  Maybe tonight.

When it will be 14 degrees...........and I am believing the weatherman!

Lagter:  Tea Towel Fabric possibilities.

Tea Towel Challenge

Sophie at Sophie Junction is bringing us together in a Tea Towel Challenge.  I had two tea towels that Carrie brought me from Europe when I entered the Tea Towel Challenge last year.  I finished up with a UFO like this:

Ok, so I have to finish it.  I will so that.  I have the quilt machine that needs work.

And in that vein of thought,  entered her 2014 Tea Towel Challenge.  If you want to join is and put together a one of a kind quilt that begins with a creative tea towel, you may be able to sweet talk her to let you in right now.  But don't wait!

The timeline is:

Timeline & Check-ins

End of 2013 - Decide to participate and commit
January - Tea towel and fabric selection
February- In-progress report
March - Finished project show & tell

Just so you know, I ordered my tea towel online and have it already.  I have one or to of the fabrics and these are them.

I  bought some grey green to go with it....and I have actually posted it on this blog a proof.  Wouldn't you know it......I can't find it right now.  I can't even find the darned tea towel.  I am pretty sure they are hiding together.

Do you remember the outhouse blocks?  I find them from time to time.....they resurface and then they dive under stuff again.  And become un-findable.

Uh...I have to go.   I need to look around my quilt room for a while......bye for now.

My Tea Towel Arrives

It came on a rainy day when I was near death, huddled inside on the sofa with a couple of bassets.  The bassets' job was to keep momma warm.  It is a scientific fact that Basset temperature is twice the normal amount.  So if you are cold and have access to a Basset and some sort of a cover, you can trap Basset body heat under the cover and survive a below freezing night in Siberia.

The weather was lousy all day, cold and drizzle dissolved into  cold and raining.  My chest tight, burning with infection,  plied with life giving medications designed to keep one from falling into the abyss of lost patients.

I told Tara, my NP, that I could not miss thanksgiving because Number One is introducing his new girlfriend to his parents and brother for the first time.  Theories are she works at a stripper club and maybe has had multiple husbands and definitely has multiple children.  I don't want to miss any of the drama.  I have high hopes for the day, myself.

Oh, yes, my tea towel.  It arrived in the dreary rain afternoon traveling for days from Australia.

It was like an instant surge of miracle drugs to cure my malaise.  It is soft and delicious.  Pink health perfection.  And the perfect design to mirror the dreary day it arrived.

Isn't it incredible?

Design Wall Monday 3-13-13

Before you do anything, you must look at this traditional quilt short.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/quilt/

I was sick in Las Vegas all last week, see my previous post for some fabulous pictures of the Valley of Fire and some of the Vegas Strip.  And my commentary on being sick in Vegas without the benefit of alcohol.

I do have wonderful plans for quilty work this week.  Not a single thing done last week because we were on Vegas Vacation, but plans for this week are evolving nicely.

I am actually cleaning out my closet.  Which is not my quilt room, which desperately needs it more than the closet, but I did find something I just can't throw out or give to the Purple Cow.  But what it means is that I am that much closer to cleaning up my quilt room.  Yes.  Really.  In this lifetime.  Maybe.

Quilty work planned for this week:

Piece Taking Names:  there are two options since I don't like what she suggested.  She wants them in huge hexagons with blanks between them.  First off I don't have any background orange left since I was an idiot and cut way more strips than I needed before anything even started.  And I just am not a hexie girl.  I really like the boxes though.  I can manipulate light and dark and have the most fantastical piece.  There are 110 triangles so that means there are 55 squares.  Since I am not a math major, I will measure it when I finish it.

Piece Tea Towel Moulin Rouge or  Chat Noir:  That should be fairly easy to do.  I have the plan for Chat Noir. It is not brain intensive, no measuring, no nothing.  Perfect for the liberal arts physics courses I took in one of my degrees.  No math.  Just fabric and a sewing machine and a cup of steamy hot Darjeeling or Dragon's Mane tea or even thick dark New Orleans Coffee and Chicory with plenty of evaporated milk.  Gotta have tea when you are making a tea towel quilt.