One Monthly Goal Finish - Zig Zag

Wow, I finished my OMG for January.  Are you shocked?

Not as much as me!  LOL

In all seriousness, I did finish it about 2 weeks ago, and it was a good thing I did because all hell broke lose in the last two weeks.  I have been sick with "Not The Flu".


 Now Frank has it.  He was out of town for my illness so I had the three dogs wanting in and out and to eat for two days before he felt so bad he drove home from Houston to be sick here at home.



I started Zig Zag in a retreat.  It is a pattern from Cultural Fusion by Sujata Shah.  Lots of scraps in there!

I quilted it with a HUGE Baptist Fan pattern on my domestic head rather than the long arm.  You can go here to my Fun with Barb post to see why.........it wasn't pretty

It is bound in a red orangy fabric......just because.  there are so many colors in there I felt it needed to be contained by a strong color!

Not sure what I will do with it yet.

But it is declared finished!

And I am linking up with the Elm Street people at OMG - Finish for January Linky! 

And with Judy at Patchwork Times for the January UFO.......hey, it is NOT cheating.......

Birthday Eve

Birthday Eve!  And it is appropriately cold and freezing for a January birthday.  Today he brought me a card and a bunch of bright colored flowers.  Yesterday he brought me an ugly bracelet.  The many cannot pick out jewelry.  Although he did OK with the silver bracelet I directed him to look for the day before.  And Sunday he gave me a coat hanger thingy with circles on which to hang scarves and belts. Tomorrow is the culmination of the Birthday Week Festivities.  So sad to see it end!

So this is Tuesday, the holiday yesterday really messed me up.  I need to get my driver's license renewed and all the state offices were shut down.  And today they THINK it MIGHT snow again, so the city and state are shut down as well.  I wonder if they will give me two extra days to get my renewal?  Probably not.

I also needed a CAAWS document notarized and there was not an attorney in the city working.  I ended up at the accountant's office and he had one of their lawyers notarize my document for free, so I made money on the deal anyway.  I used to be a notary years ago, it probably would be a good idea to re-certify, although I have no desire to take the classes again, or the test.

I was early to the meeting so I walked around his building twice for a total of just over a mile. 



So what's a girl to do?  SEW!  And I did.

I was able to get the last two sections of  birds together and the whole thing somewhat squared.

I  declared it finished just about the time I decided it needed to have four white border strips added for when I quilted it.  I can trim down to whatever size I want, but I  will have the extra fabric as much as I want showing. 

Of course there were a number of plaes where the abutting fabrics were not square.  In other words MOST of the places required figuring out how to sew the darned things. And it was not always easy to get the fabric to sit flat.

In fact, I am somewhat of a genius in getting it flat at all.  Lynne must be a super genius ......  or maybe she is a better quilter in the block stage, making sure they are of equal or compatible sizes when she makes them.

But I got it worked out.

Took me a whole day.

Better Idea:  Next time I will just send the birds to Lynne to put together.

 
 It has been so very cold in Southern Louisiana.  Here is my fish pond with icicles!  LOL.......lordy, lordy!

Dd you see me and my brother in the last post?  Do we look alike?  He looks like my dad and I look like my Aunt Edie, dad's sister.

I will have to ask cousin Karen for a picture of the three of them.  They are the children of my father's brother, who we never thought looked like the other two.  As he got older he did, though.

But boy did Uncle Angelo's kids look like the Graci side!   The Graci Men in two generations have one face between them!


I am finished quilting the Zig Zag quilt and I added the binding.  It still needs to be hand sewn down.  I am very optimistic that this OMG finish will be a success!


So I need to look to the future projects.  I have so many of them.  And they all shifted places in the last few weeks since I found Kathy Doughty and Material Obsession's books Mixing Quilt Elements and Adding Layers.  I have two quilts I want to work on first.

What do you think of these colors together?  The background is a golden, although it is not solid.  I thought it was solid but when I got it down it had a swirl pattern.  I can use it on the back side but and you will see a faint pattern up close.  It won't really matter either side.

Do I need to mix it up more?  Do I needa different fabric in place on one?  This is the scary part for me. 

The rust color palate will be fan blades radiating out from the center (which will be a melon shaped center).  The two blacks will be cornerstones.

These will be large.  So there will be 4 of them on the quilt which will be 88 x 88.  Like I said, large.

You know, I wanted to make some sofa pillows.  I might as well make those first.  they should be quick (she says as it takes 10 days to make two pillows.....) LOL. You know that is going to happen.

I also have the pieces that Judy gave me at the last Fiber meeting.  I really want to play with that one!   Not Judy's thing, but definitely MY thing.

And I have another one with trees and dancing ladies and wild things hanging in the trees.   Also from Kathy Doughty/Material Obsession.

Of course, there are about 257 UFOs I can pick from as well............but that wouldn't be any fun, would it?

Fun with Barb

Boy am I stuffed!  We went to Bonefish Grill with some friends and I ate a whole regular sized meal for the first time in three months.  It was good through.  One of my sides was spinach so I sacrificed it for calories sake.....well, you didn't expect me so give up the Moscow Mule, do you.

And it is pre-Birthday Week after all.

I started quilting the Zig Zag.




First I needed to mark it since I wanted to quilt a large Baptist Fan pattern.

This is from Fun with Barb!  We shall see how much fun Barb really is, huh?

Carrie gave me some Tailor's Chalk for Christmas so I figured I  would mark it with that.  I decided to mark it AFTER I spent and hour  loading it on the long arm.

So far, Barb is not all that fun.

It come in white, blue and yellow for all the different colors you might use in a quilt.  That worked well because there was always something that would work on any fabric in the quilt.

And I found out the chalk doesn't bounce when you throw it on the floor.

I got it all re-loaded up on the long arm.

And after doing one swing pass I started getting better at the curves.  If you remember, curves are not necessarily my friend.

 I realized I had re-loaded it from the wrong side.  It is  square, and all the fans were ending in thin air.---------Geez, Barb, you call that fun.

So I took it off the long arm and decided to quilt it with my Husqvarna.  And with all the moving around and taking on and off and on and off, the chalk was rubbing off.

Barb is NOT  any fun.......not at all.  Barb is a bummer.  Go home Barb.

So I ended up stitching one fan, then chalking up the next one.



I have a couple more to do to finish up, tomorrow.

An Accident in the Quilt Room

 So there was a near fatal accident in the quilt room today.




I  was vacuuming so I could mop up after the love  birds made such a mess on the floor. 




The vacuum blew a couple of birds off the design wall, and before I could do anything.....gobbled up the batik bird.  Surgery was required.  I had to replace a corner of the  HSTs.




For a while I worked on putting  my birds together, but I took a bit of a detour.  I remembered that Judy was going to choose a number from a list of 12 we prepared in December.  I must have missed that totally. 

She chose number 10 -  my Zig Zag quilt.  It needs to have a back  made and get quilted. 

The blocks were made at a retreat a couple of years ago.  From Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusion Quilts.  One of my favorite books. 





 I pulled  some short lengths  of fabric to make a pieced back.  Even though the fabrics are more  traditional, it looks  like  a modern backing.





This is  where I am with the birds right now.  I have put together three sections.  Of course, not making the birds all the same equal sizes, I am having to create piecing maps and get very creative about getting them together.

I am adding white spacers where I need them.  I hope this will make it large enough just to need a small white border around the whole thing.


Frank watched the new X-Files while i watched the Aurora Borealis in Iceland.

That is where we  will be on this year's vacation!

Zig Zags, Pat and Neo-Impressionists

I just finished listening to the book by Alice Hoffman about the famous neo-impressionist painter Camille Pissaro born in St. Thomas Virgin Islands called The Marriage of Opposites.  It really is about his mother rather than him, but I love those historical fiction books.  I  liked her writing enough to get another of her CD books called The Red Garden.  Love that one too.  Not sure why she called it The Red Garden as it really does not figure prominently in the book.  I looked for The Art Forger by BA Shapiro but our library doesn't have it.  

Last night at the river city guild meeting Pat Van Berkleo presented his trunk show of modern quilts.  He does the most amazing work. Self-taught, he designs, makes mad quilts his own quilts. He also designs his own fabric on Spoonflower!   A true Renaissance man. He works on an old Bernina that his mother used when she taught home economics back in Texas when he was a child. I will post the link to the quilt show when the pictures from River city  are posted.

 He has a collection of over 50 quilts and he's only been quilting for three years now.  He says he hates to give up any of his quilts and yet they don't use them at their house.  I can empathize.  I hate to give up any of my quilts.......BUT........I use them all the time!

See these beautiful yellow flowers? They're all over the place and they really are pretty.   They are tall tall and sitting around the fence posts they are very picturesque. But there's lots of pollen involved in them and my head has been stopped up; my ears are ringing louder than they normally do.

 Zigzags!!! I finished up three more zigzags this afternoon. I got the blocks squared up at about 16 inches. Got them sewn together and it now is a top as well.  Turns out to be about 62 x 62 inches, and you know, I hate square quilts!  But that is the size it will be.

So tomorrow I will begin once again to work on the old house quilt I have on the frame. And then I'll add a couple more quilts and get those finished too.

The cute guy who came to check out my Air Conditioning System for the fall was totally in love with my quilts.   He was so sweet.  He worked with the Intelligence Dept for the Army when he was in the service, so he may have been spying on me.  I have to admit, he could have gotten a lot of information out of me by being interested in my quilts!  I would have ratted out my best friend!

Local Woman Does Housework, Then Quilting

Debbie Nelson from Spanish Town

Ladies Auxillary

Note:  To see the photos larger, click on them to make them enlarge.


 The housework is a given, the quilting not so much.  I have errands to do but it is still difficult for me to drive.  I can neither grab the steering wheel nor spin it to make a turn.

So Monday yesterday  (on Sunday I had to meet a donor at the Little Village Restaurant, this is such a tough job!) when I had to go meet with a CAAWS donor, Frank was able to rearrange his schedule and be in town.  We had lunch at Copeland's New Orleans (I had the Eggplant Pirogue.  A "pee'-roge " is a little, flat bottomed skiff like boat that is used to pull in your crawfish or crab traps. One man can handle it since it is like the size of a canoe.) ( that way you don't have to share your crabs if you only get a couple dozen!) I guess the flatness of the pecan crusted eggplant rounds filled with crabmeat and French bread stuffing and topped with some marinated crab claws look like a little boat!  You know Popeye's Fried Chicken?  Al Copeland and my father were good friends.  Mr. Al loved to run his cigarette racing boats in Lake Pontchartrain, and my father would get sick every time!  But that was nothing that some good stiff bourbons couldn't cure!

Cats

I set the Roomba up for the front room.  And I have intentions of clearing off the counter in the kitchen. I'm have no idea how it gets so cluttered with junk.

Zig Zags

There are so many things I need to do that requires two hands,  two GOOD arms.  While my arm is getting better, I still can put no pressure on it.  Sometimes when I make a twisting movement like when opening a door knob, the pain can bring me to my knees.  And pulling on my tennis shoes did just that last night.

Oriental

Thanks to Patty the Quilt Lady's awesome suggestions I ordered some fabric that has a novel printed on it that reads in the style of Hemmingway.  awesome, indeed!

OK.  here are the three tops I completed at the retreat.  And the zig zags from Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusion.


There is also  the Saint's quilt top but I cannot find it anywhere at the moment.  And no photos of it.  Geez.

I am pretty sure it happened!

Zig Zags Rule!

I love me a good bright Zig Zag Quilt.  This is for Ann from the Newcastle Fabrics.  I am not sure what the name of the line is, maybe Charlene can tell you as it came from her shop on our trip to visit her.

Today it went from just the center to completed with the border of bricks.

As I sat in the den and sewed, I could see the chair that Cali loved to sleep in.  Way way out back is where she is resting with the other two kitties.  Frank has already found her a nice statue to go with the Whitney and Chips statues already there.