Paducah Trip

Didja miss me? (Pardon me - you didn't know I was gone?!!?) Now that I'm over 50 by a year or few I love going on bus trips. Beach Day Diane took us to Paducah Kentucky for the 25th AQS show. My job as Diane's useless assistant was to help out with the goody bags.

This is some of the stuff for 47 bags.






This is 47 bags in progress. Gosh, aren't they pretty!





This is 47 bags ready for the bus.








The weather was sooo warm it was better than summer. The food vendors were well stocked with ice cream - someone must have told them that was our preference for lunch.

QuiltMan gave us a tour of Paducah (which is a really pretty city). He wasn't so bad either.






Here is Eleanor Burns providing lots of fun for anyone who wanted to spend an hour getting a very long commercial. I make that sound like a bad thing, but actually I love Eleanor. I think she's worth every penny she's ever made.

Here is Karen (longarm quilting buddy and seat mate) and I at a shop we accidentally landed at. We had stopped at a lunch buffet and one of our travelers started chatting with a woman who was there to get her lunch. It turned out she owned a quilt shop not far from the restaurant, so we all got on the bus and went shopping. She should probably give the restaurant a commission - who accidentally runs into a bus load of quilters?

Post Easter (Easter Post?)

My hope is that the torture machine will make up for the dessert. We went to my brother's for dinner and I brought dessert.
Everyone ate too much, so I had to bring dessert home. And eat most of it.

I'm sooo glad someone invented frozen pastry for purchase at the grocery store.


Blueberry Strata Pie

• First Layer - Pastry
• Second Layer - cream cheese, sugar, crushed pineapple
• Third Layer - Blueberry pie filling with slightly thickened pineapple juice
• Fourth Layer - Whipped Cream & Sugar
• Garnish - pineapple bits and cinnamon dusting
  

This post should have been posted days ago, but Mom landed in the hospital again. This time it's a gallstone lodged in the pancreas, causing Acute Pancreatitis. She was very sick, the doctors were preparing us for a 'mortality'. The gallstone has since moved and the drugs have cleared up the infection. The plan is they will send a scope down her throat and check out the pancreas, gall bladder and liver. I am leaving on a bus trip to Paducah tomorrow, so my brother and sister will be looking after things with Mom while I'm away. And the (convenient) fluke is, my cellphone does not work in the USA.

Easter, and finally spring!

The class I've been teaching is a Maple Leaf quilt. Judy is this term's overachiever and has her top all done.
So done, in fact, that I've had it long enough to get it quilted already. She is donating this to the Quilts of Valour program, so it is my 'April' QOV job. I've committed to quilting one per month.



This year's first daffy came out today! Yaaay... tons more to come.






Somebody better pass along the fact that there's only ONE old bat allowed around this house, and that's ME.

I really was an old bat today. We were out for a walk and a car pulled over asking directions. Too late I realized that I sent her to the wrong road - totally in the wrong direction. If she actually went down the road I sent her to she may have lost an axle - there's a sign that says 'Impassible When Wet'. Every time a car came back towards us DH figured it was Ms. lost-in-the-country coming to run me over. In the accounting department of the Universe, will this cancel out the good I've done with the charity quilting?

winnings from guild night

I don't know where you are dear bloggers, but what the heck is up with SNOW in April? We actually have a DRIFT in the driveway. My poor crocus' are freezing their little pistils off. I went out this morning to teach my quilting class and refused to put on winter boots, just on principle. Mind you, my shoes were soaked, and my pants were soaked, but I sure showed Mother Nature!

I am spending a lot of my spare time catching up my bookwork for the accountant. Tax deadline is looming. I promise myself, every year, that THIS year I will do my books regularly instead of cramming it all into one hellish week in April. sigh... again, not done. Maybe this year???? Yeah, I know, blonde roots.

There was a major shift in the universe last Monday night. I won the Block of the Month. Applique'd pansies. I just love them, except for the fact that now I have another ufo.

Then, a little whipped cream on the cake - one of the guild ladies gave me a batch of Maple Leaf blocks she had won quite a long time ago (again, Block of the Month winnings). She said I could have them to make a Quilt of Valour. Yaaay - thank you Arlene! Mind you, that is ANOTHER ufo. Back up to 21 ufo's.

Here's my lovely poochie-woochie, keeping an eye on what I'm up to 'cause she loves me so much.







Um, no. This is what she's watching. Her favorite food group.

Boy, was I ever loving her up the other night after watching Marley & Me. A very good, 3 kleenex movie.

Quilt Marking with Blue Washout Marker, Carolina Lily Quilt

Some quilts require a more formal approach to quilting designs. To me, that means the designs are regular and near-identical in size and shape. Striking terror in the hearts of MANY longarm quilters, the design must be marked in some manner.

TUTORIAL: QUILT MARKING WITH A BLUE WASHOUT MARKER
tools required:

• doctor paper, or some other strong paper for design work
  
• blue washout marker
• stiletto (for sewing - NOT a pair of sexy shoes)
• soft surface, ie. foam, styrofoam, ironing board
• old toothbrush & plain (plain) water
  

I start by making a design on 'doctor paper' - the stuff on the bed in the doctor's office that you lay on when you go for your bi-annual you-know-what. It is thin, translucent and strong. After all, it can support MY butt without tearing.

I lay the pattern on a hunk of foam (or styrofoam, or an ironing board). Using a stiletto I poke holes approximately every half inch.



I lightly pin the holey pattern on to the quilt top and use a blue washout marker to put little blue dots on the top.



I use Clover markers.




Quilt, using the dots as a guideline.





Remove the dots with a bit of water on a toothbrush. You can also purchase a pen filled with water, from Clover.




Ta Da!!

As a caution, ALWAYS TEST THAT THE MARKER WILL DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY. I use an inside seam allowance to make a few marks on EVERY different fabric which will be marked. I leave the marks overnight and remove them the next day. If they come out I feel confident to mark a quilt.

Fleetwood Mac and Beach Day Diane

Here is this week's project. I am in the middle of quilting lots of beautiful feathers, along with cross-hatching. Stay tuned!

In case you're wondering, yes I DO still have the plague. But I think it's on it's way out. Unfortunately it's taking the long way and travelling via poor DH. I was kinda busy this week, considering I was feeling so pucky. Tuesday I had dinner with my favorite bunch of gals - Jean, Jane & Teresa.
Wednesday was an extra sewing day for the Caledonia guild. See what I made? This is for one of my UFO's. I had cut all the pieces during the retreat two weeks ago. When I started to put them together I (apparently) had not followed the directions properly so the diamonds needed to be cut down a bit. So they looked like diamonds and not parallelograms.

The 'home' called to let me know that Mom fell out of bed on Sunday night. By Thursday her PSW was so worried I ended up taking her to the hospital for xrays. OK, I didn't exactly take her - I made the home call 911 and send her in an ambulance. She was in sooo much pain I just could not see how I'd get her there, in and out of the car, walking, waiting in emergency, and on and on. Once they determined she only had deep tissue damage (which is apparently very painful) and NOT a fractured pelvis, she had to make the laborious trip home in my car. Poor dear. The only good part about spending my day at the hospital was that I managed to get another 20 yo yo's stitched.

Thursday night I went to the Fleetwood Mac concert in Toronto. Yes, it was GREAT, although also VERY LOUD.

On Saturday I got a surprise call from 'beach day' Diane. She was in St. Catharines for the weekend, so I called up friend Debbie and we all had lunch together. It was a beautiful warm sunny spring day - perfect for playing hookey. Yes, I should have been working. (See quilt at top of post. Bad Helen, bad!)


As you can see, what with all the excitement in my life this week, AND having to work too, there was no time left for surfing the web and finding really weird stuff to entertain you. Maybe next week. :-)

My 100th blog post

Some days it just sucks to be me. I still have the plague, and now I have a sinus headache to go with it. DH and I seem to be having a 'domestic'. The home phoned to let me know Mom fell out of bed last night. I can't get in touch with the customer I need to talk to.
And I have 50 of these bottles that are supposed to go in the Paducah Bus Trip Goody Bags. Um, Mel?..., these are expired. By a lot.

It seemed like an excellent day to give up a few hours of paid work. I quilted up a donated top for the Quilts Of Valour program. We recently had four more Canadian soldiers killed and it just breaks my heart. Now, I'm not exactly in line to put on Mother Teresa's wimple. But it makes me feel better to think I can do SOMETHING to thank the selfless men and women who are putting themselves in mortal danger on our behalf.

Bernadette generously donated the top and backing (and a very nice top it is!). I had a leftover piece of batting that was... 3" too short. grrr...**#@!!!
I stuffed in an extra piece and finished up the 'hourglass' quilting (done with the Circle Lord Zig Zag template).




Then it's reward time! Brandy Beans - yum yum.





Today's tutorial: HOW I PIECE POLYESTER BATTING (I use Hobbs Polydown).

Take the new extra piece. Along the whole length, peel it into two layers, about 4" deep.
Open your pivot access and gently (!) rip up the edge of the too-short batting, so it looks like the dog has chewed it.





Lay the new piece and stuff the ragged edge in between the two layers, kinda smoothing out any lumps. With the batting layered in like that, it helps to keep the pieces from pulling apart and leaving a gap. The chewed up edge helps to disguise the hard edge - it's less noticeable when the quilt is finished.