Things have to look up soon, right?? And random stuff.

 I bought a layer cake.  Well, actually I bought a lot more than a layer cake, but we'll leave it at that shall we?  At least this goes with a border print that's been in my stash for many years, AND I have a pattern that will work with all this stuff.  So it's good!  Well, except for the part where I'm not supposed to be buying fabric.  Ahem.

Even Coco thinks some of DH's t-shirts should go in the trash bag.

The last couple of weeks have been interesting. 

WEDNESDAY Aug. 23rd: I was half way through this quilt.  Then BAM the hydro went out while the quilting machine and the computer were all turned on.  No more work that day because the hydro stayed out until 8:30 pm.

THURSDAY 24th:  Quilting equipment was acting weird and kind of schizophrenic so I reached out to my support team.  They gave me a couple of suggestions which did not help.   Blecch.   Then 9:30 pm BAM the hydro goes out again.  And stayed out until 6:30 am, by which time the basement had flooded.  Because of course the generator decided to act like an asshole.

MONDAY 28th:  We had an outdoor guild meeting.  Just a nice social event to catch up and show off our summer stitching work.

TUESDAY 29th:  DH changes the start/stop switch on the quilting machine, and that seems to be the fix.  Yay!  Broken machines are very stressful.  Apparently the first hydro outage fried that little sucker.

FRIDAY Sept 1st:  I get an email from one of the guild members who was at the Monday get together.  Uh huh, she'd just tested positive for covid.

SATURDAY 2nd:  We had 1-800-LUKE and his wife here for dinner.  I spilled a whole mug of fresh HOT tea in her lap.  Oh, dear God.

SUNDAY 3rd:  The internet is out A.L.L.  D.A.Y.  Puhleeze... people can't live like that!!

Have you been reading news stories about how fast fashion is not sustainable and is really bad for the environment?  You may rest assured that that does not apply to me.

I made a lovely batch of Peach Marmalade.  One of the recipes without added pectin, where you have to watch the temperature and when the jam gets to a certain temperature it's ready to put into jars.  Uh huh...after I gave away two jars I decided to have some myself on toast.  Oy vey...that stuff is hard as a rock.

Beautiful Double Wedding Ring, updated to-do, and blah, blah, blah

As you may or may not know, I have been working on a double wedding ring quilt for several years.  I complete one row per year when I'm on retreat up in Tobermory with the Beach Girls.  Every once in a while the Universe teases me, and has a customer bring one for quilting.

This is so pretty.  I just love these quilts and look forward to someday completing my own.

Nice plain back that shows off the quilting. 💗

When I posted my to-do list last week, one of the items on the list was to "Marie Kondo" my corner of the living room.  OMG, look at the piles of mess on my table and in the bookshelves.

BEFORE

DH and I were heading out for Chinese food and I told him that I'd been working on Marie Kondo-ing my corner.  He had no idea what the hell I was talking about, so I had to tell him all about Marie Kondo.  If you've ever seen HIS corner of the living room (or his garage, or the shed, or his truck, or...) you would know that she is not his kind of girl. 😛

AFTER

I kept a small collection of magazines that I still need to go through before I decide their fate.  And that little pile of remaining junk will be dealt with today.  The Quilts Japan magazines will go upstairs where I have saved every issue I've ever purchased.  I may take them to the crematorium with me when I die. 😄

This is the pile that I'll plow through to see what stays and what goes to the guild for redistribution.  There are lots of Modern Quilting magazines and Machine Quilting magazines and a few random quilt magazines in here.  And my seed catalogue.

Here's the to-do list as it currently stands.

It has been a wonderful long Easter weekend for working on stupid chores.  We had no plans for a fancy Easter dinner, and it has been pouring rain for three days straight.

My quilting machine is broken and I can't do anything about it until I talk to Nolting on either Monday or Tuesday - whenever they are back to work.  Why is it that stuff always decides to break just before a long weekend?

In my forced down time I decided to join up with  #The100DayProject.  I have chosen a combination of two things, which doesn't seem to be against any rules.  I will either do some personal stitching OR I will do yoga.  The commitment is 5 - 10 minutes every day for 100 days.  The official start date for 2019 was April 1, but again, starting when I did is not against any rules.  If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook I'm planning to post my activity there most days.  But don't expect to see any pics of my arse up in the air as I'm doing a Downward Facing Dog.

This is the stitching project I've been working on.  It's a Bonnie Hunter design Nine In The Middle from one of her books.  Today when I go and stitch for 10 minutes I will actually be PRESSING for 10 minutes.  If you check out that link to her site, scroll down to the quilt with the light blue background fabric and the red border...that's what I'm making.  Mine is in reds/greens/yellow-browns.  It will be for guests when I make up the sofa-bed in our upstairs tv room.  It should look nice with the room decor.

Is Your Longarm Quilter A Drinker? Maybe This Is Why...

If you are a longarm quilter yourself, you'll look at these photos and (probably) laugh.  Or at least snort a little.  If you have ever heard me refer to someone as "a sweet little old lady", this is the kind of customer I'm referring to.  And there is no need to "tsk tsk" me - this particular woman is in her 80's and does not have a computer, so she'll never see this.  Considering her failing vision I'm happy that she is still quilting at all.  But getting her tops quilted is still a bit of a challenge for me.

#1 is a very common problem.  Ruffly borders.  Easy to accomplish by taking a big hunk of fabric and just keep sewing until the pieced top runs out, then whack off the remaining length.  Sigh.  NO.  Measure the top through the middle and cut that border to that length (and remember that you have TWO of them that ARE supposed to be the same, one on each side).  Then quarter mark the top and border, match them up, and pin.  Then do the same for the other border.

#2 - the frequency of this is not as common.  Leave as many threads as possible sticking out the top side of the seams.  Aaargh.  Honest - you can clip these off yourself!  You won't wear out your scissors!  If I left these the way the quiltmaker did, this quilt would look pretty awful.  So I remove them while practicing DH's Garage Language.  Yeah - use your imagination.

#3 can be dangerous for your quilt.  Longarm machines have a presser foot that hops.  Your quilter is often NOT watching the foot.  She's probably watching the pattern that she is quilting from because she's following the design using a laser light. When the foot 'hops' into that hole in your seams, the machine is going to stitch itself right into your quilt.  The poor quilter may have to cut your quilt to extricate the machine - that is not a comforting thought.

This happened to be in a "good" spot.  I was able to flip the border up and stitch the seam closed with the longarm, but that is a rare bit of serendipity.  Yes, it was stitched right through the batting and backing, but the thread was a perfect match for the backing and that little seam does not show.

#4 on this particular quilt, as if there wasn't already enough going on, the backing was not long enough.  I had to cut some length off the end, then piece it, and attach it to the perpendicular end.  I changed it from a measurement of 40 x 70 to 45 x 60.  Or something like that.  My usual system is that customers bring their quilt here.  I measure everything, check the batting & backing sizes, price out the work with an estimate, and we're good to go.  For this "sweet little old lady" I pick up and deliver when I have a dinner date with my friends in her neck of the woods.  She's either throwing a bag of work at me and trying to get rid of me because she's going to be late for her 4:30 dining room booking, OR she's trying to pawn off a bunch more quilting stuff that she found in her spare room/storage locker/under the kitchen sink.  In any event, I don't check sizes of anything, and that occasionally bites me in the arse.

After finishing THREE of her quilts on Wednesday, I drank myself out of house and home that night.  It was a happy accident that I went to a quilting event the next evening, AT A WINERY.  HAH!  SCORE!

How to deal with Prairie Points on the INSIDE of a Quilt, and the crossover between PERSONAL and PROFESSIONAL

This little quilt has a row of prairie points on the INSIDE of the quilt, separating the body from the border. (Sorry, the row of flying geese is visually distracting here - but I'm sure you can see which are the prairie points.)

Stitch-in-the-ditch along the prairie points to make everything stay flat.  Try to stay on the LOW side of that seam.  Why did this photo decide to load sideways?  I have no idea.  Ask the computer gods.  Grrr.

S.I.D. done.

Now, pin all those little puppies out of your way so you can quilt the border.

Rocket science here.  Quilt the border.  Um, yes.  I am being sarcastic.  As you are choosing the border design, keep in mind that part of it will be buried under those P.P.s.

Release the dragons.  I mean the P.P.s   If you want to get artsy fartsy, these p.p.s make GREAT dragon backbones.

Moving on... quilt the body of the quilt.  This quilt also had a repeat of the prairie point border at the other end, so I did the same process at the bottom of the quilt. 

• S.I.D.
• pin the points out of the way
• quilt the border.

Here we go.  All done and ready for pickup.

Now, I'm going to give you a little peek into my married life.

Floyd is my quilting machine.  He works very, very hard.  But because he's a machine, sometimes things break or wear out.  I am married to a man who can usually fix anything.  However, he is afraid of Floyd.  Don't ask me why.  He's got about 200 lbs. over Floyd. 
Floyd has needed some wiring work for AGES.  DH keeps putting me off.  I had already replaced one of those little telephone jack things, but that didn't fix the problem.  So yesterday was the day that DH had to buckle down and do his thing, because we needed to replace the same plug on the OTHER end of that cable. 

He pulled the back cover off Floyd so he could trace down the cable, which is very challenging, since wires go into a track then up through the machine housing and around several corners where you CANNOT SEE, and of course there are three identical cables.  After every electronics tool and gadget in the civilized world came out, he finally (maybe) decided which cable had the other end.  So I replaced the plug.  But first we had to have a fight over the plug replacement, AFTER I had already cut the plug off.  sigh. So, I got the new plug on eventually after much hairy eyeballing and cursing at each other, then DH put everything back together.  Ha ha ha ha ha... (hysterical laughter).  That did not fix the problem.  Everything had to come apart again. 

More hairy eyeballing and cursing at each other over pins and copper wires and clampy-thingy-tools.  Put ANOTHER new plug on.  Now the wire has no extra play in it - if this doesn't fix it what do we do???  (insert hand wringing, aargh!!)  DH reassembles everything and I give Floyd a whirl.  Can you guess?  Yes.  Not fixed.  (insert curse words).  Well, at least at this point we know (or we THINK we know) that it's not the plug.  It's the wire.  With the constant movement of the machine back & forth and up & down, one of the wee copper wires inside the cable has finally bit the dust and broken.  So, DH takes the machine apart AGAIN and runs a jumper wire from one port to the other port, bypassing the bad wire, and that seems to have the problem on the run.  By now we are speaking to each other, but just barely. 

Somewhere in this timeline, friends had stopped in with coffees and green teas so we had a nice hour long break where we were pretending to get along for the sake of company.  Yeah?  Have you done that?  I'm sure you have.  Later, we went into town for 'senior citizen supper' (anything before 5 pm, in my books) because the food trucks were at the museum.  We both simmered down after some yummy food.  I stopped muttering about him being a stupid asshat.

Anyhow.  Now I will work on one of my own quilts to make sure the jumper cord is indeed fixing the problem.  If that's the case DH will fish a new wire through, that will be identified on both ends with pink nail polish.  I will put the new plug ends on. (for some reason, DH cannot do these.  Unbelievable.  He can do anything else.) 

In all honesty, I have no idea why we can both work with a million other people and get along.  But we cannot work with each other and get along.  Weird.  Is it because he's a middle child?  Is it because I am the baby of the family?  Dunno.  Kiss kiss.  Love you, honey.

Apparently, I'm NOT perfect

This is Sue's gorgeous wall hanging.

I used a double layer of batting to give it extra pouf.

The quilting is almost identical to what was on the cover of the pattern.

The back is soo pretty!

So.  As I'm looking at the photos and preparing to load them to the blog, I see THIS.  Missing background stippling.  Oh, fer cryin' out loud!

DAMMIT.

Sampler Love and Bad Thread Day

I'm just going to BORE you and tell you again about how much I love sampler quilts.

With every block being different, the neurons are FORCED into firing.

It's important to use similar elements in the blocks to create continuity & rhythm.

My Janet Lee's Favorite ruler gets a very good workout on all the stitch-in-the-ditch and straight line quilting.

Ooh - love the border!!

WARNING.  POTTY-MOUTH ALERT.

Who was the fucking rocket scientist who decided we have to step outside our box and try something new?  Jesuschristgoddammit.  Look at this shit.  Every damned row of the panto the thread shredded AT LEAST once.  Often more.  Fucking polyester.  This is being BANNED and sent to the drawer of bobbin-thread-only.  Once again, I am swearing off of poly and promising to stick with my tried-and-true cotton threads.  But just like ya go back to the 'bad' boyfriend because he's changed his ways (don'tcha know?) I will probably try this again in a few years.

Antique Pinwheels, Halloween, Stash Report

I love antique quilts. Except for a wee bit of wibbly-ness this one quilted up really nicely.

The Binbrook guild meeting was Halloween. A few of us showed TEAM SPIRIT. Or something.? I'm the doper, in case you can't tell.  I had to laugh at how creative I got with stuff I already had in my closet.  And I mean stuff that I normally wear.  I save the black wig for very special occasions.

I can't seem to find a stash report in quite a while, although I am SURE I posted one.  Anyways, here is a several-months update.  Notice how much I added in October?  OMG - at $2.50 per yard I could not say no.  This is all earmarked for quilt backings.

Floyd is out of commission this week.  It seems I burned a flat spot in his motor.  I just happened to have a new motor hanging around (from 2004, if you can believe that!!!).  The new motor is installed, but I need Ricardo to set the timing.  I have a blurry spot in my vision and just cannot do it.  So I will leave that to the expert who is coming after his dentist appointment tomorrow.  That gives me more time to vacuum the house.  Oh, yay.

I've also updated my UFO page.  You can check it out, but there was no progress, outside of pawning off one of my UFOs on someone else.  Heh, heh, heh.

Stash report and UFO report and Longarm Tale of Woe

May's ufo is complete, except for hand stitching the binding.  Check the UFO page for June's project.

Floyd (my quilting machine, for those of you who haven't met him) decided to take a vacation of sorts.  He was stitching just FINE on Saturday.  Sunday seemed to be a day of rest - the needle would go up and down but there was nooo stitch.  I tried changing threads & bobbins & needles several times and finally gave up.  I went out to the garden and then I went to visit Mom (who was having a really good day - so I'm kinda glad Floyd was acting like an ass).  Anyhow - I called Ricardo, Floyd's doctor, but he didn't bring his little bag of tools until Wednesday.  Ricardo said he would be here between 8 and 8:30.  A.M.  My first thought was for gawds sake - sleep in a little - come at 10, but I just said "ok, I'll see you then".  On Tuesday evening I had a dinner date with some friends.  When I got home DH was in bed and had not taken out the garbage for morning pickup.  So I brought up the two recycle boxes, packed up two bags of garbage, and left it all where he would have to TRIP over it in the morning.  I didn't want him to miss the hint, you know?  Well, I get up at 6 am on Wednesday (mornings are not my forte) and all the garbage is still in the kitchen.  Pfftt!!!  Bastard!!! is what I'm thinking.  At 7:20 I pull on my filthy gardening clothes from the day before so I can lug the garbage out to the road, then I'm going to take a shower before Ricardo shows up.  Surprise, surprise - Ricardo pulls in the driveway as I'm taking out the last load.  Seriously???  7:20 a.m. for a service call???  I'm in muddy shorts and I haven't so much as brushed my teeth.  At this point, men are not my favorite people.  By the time Ricardo left, 7 hours later, Floyd was purring and my two Pfaffs were both clean & shiny - ready to rock & roll.

Because I couldn't quilt on Monday or Tuesday I stitched up Poochie Bags for my Tuesday dinner dates, worked on the commission quilt, and got most of the veggie garden planted.

It turned out that DH had set his morning alarm for pm instead of am and was seriously late for work, which is why the garbage was still in the kitchen.  So I forgave him.  And Ricardo made Floyd happy at a price I could afford, so I forgave him too.

STASH REPORT

Fabric used in May            5.85 m
Fabric used YTD              36.95 m
Fabric purchased May         2.9 m
Fabric purchased YTD       19 m.
Net YTD                           - 17.95 m. Yaay me!!

Sunbonnet Sue & Machine Repair

Poor Floyd. I was working on Sue's Sunbonnet Sue, getting more and more skipped stitches. DH would retime Floyd and he'd work fine for a while. Then more skipped stitches. More timing, more skipped stitches. I finally called in the 'professional' - Ricardo. It looks like they were teaching Floyd yoga - Downward Facing Dog. After the bushings were tightened up he seems to be running pretty well. Time will tell. Cost: $85 cash and one beer.

SBS turned out (eventually) really pretty. But with the Floyd problem, and the huge hole I tore in my shirt while working on her, I've named the quilt Dominatrix Sue.








This is a President's Quilt - all the blocks were made for Sue by members of the Binbrook Guild. I just love this one with the beating stick... I mean the gavel.

Broken Stuff

Where, oh where have I been all week?

Here is how I marked the wavy border on my Paducah Challenge quilt. Mark it first, then quilt it, then trim it to the wave shape.

More digging in the garden. The chives are finally all out. But never fear!! I still have lots and lots around the yard and in the farmer's field. Timmy Toad was helping.


We had the yummy 5 can soup with a loaf of bread. Unfortunately the bread maker quit part way through it's job. I had to knead this stuff the old fashioned way... by hand. Imagine!


What else has broken this week? Hmmm...

1. my car
2. two weed whackers
3. the effluent pump in the basement
4. Floyd had to be retimed because he would not pick up any stitches
5. my garden fork which I use to dig everything. DH has now welded it three times.
   

Thread-tales of Woe & my Birthday

Did you know that when you spill your morning bowl of oatmeal it looks just like throw-up? But it saves a few calories, so you can have a piece of... Birthday Cake! happy birthday to meee... We usually have a winter storm around my birthday, but today it's raining (raining in February???). The cold front will move in this afternoon, so we will miss all the snow. It will turn to ICE instead.

My birthday plans are:

1. sleep in (nope- dh was making way too much noise for that)
   
2. take a nice girly bath this morning instead of my usual hurry-up shower
   
3. call Mom and tell her it's my birthday so she can sing to me
   
4. call a nice restaurant so dh can take me out for supper
   
5. Maybe take an afternoon nap, since #1 was a bust

I was doing a brain puzzle on the internet last night. You have to match the animal sound to the correct picture of the animal. Apparently I have NO idea what a deer sounds like - I kept picking a bird picture. What were these people thinking? Who talks to deer? Couldn't they stick to cats & dogs? If I keep at the game, maybe I will learn - ya think?

Have I mentioned that I love bright quilts? This is a beauty - the small version. There was a matching large version.



I also love scrappy quilts.







Floyd is habitually a GREAT quilting machine. But about once a year he has a case of PMS (pick my stitches). What takes 10 minutes to stitch takes about an hour to pick out. I had one earplug in because I'd been working with my ear next to the motor (can you say Industrial Deafness?). I thought I heard a funny noise, but I just wrote it off to the earplug. Well, Hellooo dummy - you've had the plug in for an hour and the funny noise just started. Warning Warning: Machine problem. But do I pay any attention??? Nah! So much for making any money on that job. I think the top thread popped out of the tension discs. Or there was too much lint in the bobbin area. Or he needed oiling. Maybe a combination of all three things.

But here we go - all done and looking lovely.