Balance Doc -- Finally

Met with the Balance Doc finally today.  We talked about the connection between migraines, Meniers, Hydrops and vertigo.  He said one of his big triggers is chocolate, so at least that is not a problem for me!  I couldn't handle that one. 

He was pleased with my progress and discharged me from the Balance Institute with an appointment for a hearing test to look for any changes in 6 months.  I am having to track all my follow ups on a spreadsheet now!

Carrie had asked me to work on a girl quilt for one of her preggy girlfriends.

I sent her this and asked if this might work.

She said it would.....most definitely!

So modern!  So girlie!

These are 4 1/2 inches 

I cut out a lot of pink background squares to pull the patterns together.

I  thought it might be fun to fan them out like bar napkins.

I need to mark the center line on all those pinkie squares so I can sew them.  I just cut without counting so I have no idea how big it will be.  But I have a few more pieces I can add to the  mix and make some HSTs with a cream background to spread around for flavor if it needs to be larger.

We shall see. 

Rayna Gillman Meets Sujata Shah Meets Patty the Quilt Lady

Let me give you a snow update first.  (oh lordy, I forgot to do a bird today......I will do two tomorrow, don't worry Lynne.)  We had snow hanging in until mid afternoon today.  As we drove to buy me some rain (or currently snow) boots, I snapped some of the SneauxMen still hanging around on street  corners.  This is the longest surviving snow I have ever

seen!       






Even Frozen got into the fun!  I thought this was hysterical.  A couple days ago this Frozen guy was on green grass!  LOL







So here is my sewing chronicle. 


I did those green blocks as an exercise from Rayna Gillman's book.


 I started at this point yesterday.  That is actually white at the top, it just blends with the design wall. 

Then I decided it needed large areas of just open space.  That is mostly because the green I needed was only fat eighths.  Really.  I actually got a lot of squares out of those 6 fat eighths.  I had 4 greens plus black and white.  I added the green trellis because it played well color wise and read as a solid.


I decided that the piece needed to be larger.  It was like a baby quilt at this point.

So......





LOL.....Ignore the diamond leftover from Diamond Dogs!

I have Sujata Shah's book on improv piecing and Patty the Quilt Lady's technique for making improv triangles.  Patty makes these long strings of triangles and Sujata pieces them one at a time.  I sort of combined the two.

And made Improv Triangles.  I tossed in some yellow, since I no longer had three greens. Yeah.

I made some.

then some more.

Then I moved them around.

You know, it is too busy now.  The integrity of the two unrelated sides is disturbed.

In the picture above you  look at one side, then the other.  Now it is too jumbled together and you don't know where to look.

Trouble.

So I moved them around a bit.

And filled in some blank spaces.

Remember that space at the top is white.

I really like the triangles on the side of the  green blocks.  Not sure what to call them so green blocks seems to be it.

Those blocks on the right side pull the idea of the left side into view.

I like it.

I can't even imagine how to quilt it!  LOL

More, More, More!

I finished the Triangles quilting Thursday afternoon.  I had to adjust several curvy triangles to be more geometric.  Let's just say it works better for everyone this way.   Click on it to make it larger.

These are two of my favorite triangles. 

Actually, the curvy one I did so poorly on yesterday doesn't really look that bad from the back.

I did my favorite wavy lines in the borders.  I had intended on doing something like Krista Withers does in the borders, but I wanted to finish this and get another one going.

And do more art stuff........yes, that is why. 

I have the air conditioner grill soaking in some tea and vinegar.  I will have a post about that tomorrow. 


Sawyer is going to be here tomorrow and I am sure no art will get done!

Weekend Accomplishments

This weekend I cleaned out the fish  pond.  No fish, I am still mad at them for leaving me when the flood waters topped the sides of their pond.  They were just plain ungrateful fish.

While Frank was at the CAAWS building with Greg finishing up some of the construction work stuff, I found myself a date and went to feed the geese at their lake.

The day was beautiful, I guess Hurricane Irma had  sucked all the weather out to Florida. 

You can see the geese way, way in the background.  Tiny, stupid geese.  Despite the half loaf of bread I tossed into the water, not a single goose came near us.

How can you teach a kid about geese if you can't get one?

This is what your phone cord looks like when the vacuum cleaner eats it.  Oops.  

 I decided the chair needed its quarterly cleaning.  Yeppers it sure did!

 All this came out of my 5 wheels.

Remembering to clean it fairly often makes it easier to clean out when you do.






 When the original cabinets came in originally the doors for the linen cabinet was scratched.   Then they sent the wrong color door to replace the scratched one.  Finally they got the right one to us last week.  I got it installed and the handles on.  Now it is real.

I don't know if you can see it, but the corner of my cutting table kept hitting the wall.  There are several dings in the space there.  So I found a piece of chair rail and a nail gun an zapped it to the wall.  Bingo!

It was already painted even! Double Bingo!


I also got two backings made and the quilt tops trimmed up for the Triangles and the 100 Meter Swim.  I only  took pics of the Triangles though.

You will have to wait till the Swim goes on the frame. 

So Just How Many UFOs Do I Have?

That is the question on the table.

A count this afternoon comes  out to be:

29 tops and 7 in various states of progress.

Not as bad as I thought!  Whew, I feel better.  I was thinking it was more like 40!  There are several I can think of that I can no longer find since the flood last year.  Like my teal sewing machine quilt.  I made a million and a half of these 3 inch half square triangles and sewed them together to look like a sewing machine.  Nowhere in sight now.  And I still don't my photos recovered from LiveDrive.  I can't  get Andrew to work on it for me.  He  avoids anything I  do.  I just don't know why he won't help me with this. 

I guess I am going to have to call my friend Caroline and see if her hubby Greg can work on it for me.  It should be easy enough to do, if you know what you are doing.

I need to be part of two years of those UFO numbers Challenges to get this list done done.

So after Swooze and I had a text discussion about how many UFOs we had, I was all motivated to go in and get the backing together for three of them and get one on the frame.  I pulled them out of the pile.

100 Meter Swim - I knew what the backing was to be; those great swimming ladies.  So I put it aside.



 I need to find a strip of orange to make a pop in that backing and it can go on the frame.  Of course, I have plenty of orangey fabric somewhere in my stash, but I still put it aside.

I know how I want to quilt the pool water.  And the cement surround wll be pebbles.  So maybe I need to pull this one back out and get  it done.

 Triangles - I really love this one.  I pulled a fat quarter pack and used a
newly purchased ruler and made these great huge triangle blocks.  Once together I thought I needed more, so I put them aside.  I can make more, or make a smaller quilt.  Or add negative space.  So I pulled several pieces of fabric that would make some nice negative space.  Nothing thrilled me.  So I put it aside.

I thought I liked the weird light green better but  seeing this, I actually like the blue better, It makes the colors look richer.

 Funny, how that works.  I like looking at thing like this in a photograph, it gives a different perspective.



Improv Stripes -  I pulled 5 possible backings.  Nothing made me happy.  I thought I needed to have some sort of pattern on the backing.  But what I had enough of, wouldn't work.



And I really have nothing short of a solid black, grey or white that will work.  So I put that aside.

Two thoughts came to me.  I was crippled by indecision, or as Ann of Fret Not Yourself said " I am trying to marry conflicting guidelines: 1) give quilts enough time to evolve and 2) quit tucking projects away for years."

The second thought was:  Thank god I don't hand quilt my stuff, I would NEVER get anything done!

Triangles and Leaves

Cindy needs to go back and take Hurricane Lessons!  She turned out to be a dud, which is a good thing.  We didn't have anything like the weather people were prophesying.  (Is that a word?) In fact, we had just under an inch of rain so far......like .8

As I said, this is all good.

My fiber group was cancelled, but we decided to meet anyway.  gosh these people are so creative.

I showed my 100 Meter Swim Meet quilt top today, even though the theme was "scent".  I pretended it was the chlorine in the pool, LOL.  BeBe had a fantastic perfume bottle she took a photo of, manipulated and printed on fabric.  she also had a piece that she printed at Spoonflower.  Tracy made some scented bracelets, Yvonne tested out some ways of finishing her piece and Judy found a UFO from a technique class 10 years ago that she finished up.


I have been working on the Leaves quilt on the long arm.  I had made the decision pre-flood to do the millions of tiny circles in the background.  Now, post-flood, I still have a million tiny circles to do.  I am thinking my decision was probably not the best decision.  But.....It is looking fabulous and I am getting really good at tiny circles!                                                                  



I pulled this from just before the flood.  I took one picture with the grey at the Quilt Haus and the one with beige is on my design wall.   Same quilt looks totally different.  Not sure which one I like better.

But I have a couple other things I need to work on before I have to make that decision.

Cool Triangles

My work at the Quilt Haus today included the putting together of these cuties.


I am debating if it needs another row.  I think it does.  But I can also put on a border of of that grey, or a beige.

I am leaning toward a border and no more rows.  But then I like the additional row and no borers

Sigh.........

Oh, happy, I need to look in my list of quilt names and come up wth a great one!

And......Jason tonight!

Boy, Did I Do That Bass-Ackwards

Let me tell you something.  I thought this block would be easy, but......

Technically it is easy.  But it has taken all my improvisational know-how to create this block.  the book is good, but I think it really expects you to be way more comfortable with the whole of improv quilting.

And........


Add to that my harebrained idea of mine.  I thought I would use a second set of squares and sew off them so I wouldn't have all the strings to cut of.  I forget what they call it.  Some people make a whole SECOND quilt.  Or at least have  a group of blocks already sewn together

But........

I couldn't find my box of 2 1/2 inch squares.  I couldn't find my box of 2 inch strips.  I couldn't find my box of triangles or my box of laser cut wedges.  So I grabbed a stack of HUGE ten inch 60 degree triangles I cut out at the Quilt Haus last time i was there.

I had a set of solids in 10 inch squres.  That is what I used.

So here i was, figuring out how to make these tiny 3 1/2 inch tree squares AND precision piecing huge 60 Degree triangles!  I  kept having to change back and forth  in my mind, what am I doing on this one now?  Oh, wrong one!  Rip Rip Rip!

SO..........

The first tree block was a tosser.  But the rest of them turned out way cool!

And the triangle blocks are way cool!

And I think it needs to be called Earth Girls Are Easy!

I have 64 more tree blocks to do.

I think THAT should be called Earth Girls Are CRAZY!





And this guy was visiting my nandina flowers.  you might need to click on it to make it larger.

Think Bumble Bee.


It is a fabulous photo