The Garage Floor Quilt--Yay, Frances!

Frances sent me the photo of the quilt with quilting patterns inspired by an airport parking garage floor. (She actually stopped listening to the podcast episode in the middle to hop on her computer to email me the photo so I'd stop nagging her, LOL!)

Here 'tis. She offers it with the caveat that she's new to hand-quilting--this is her first attempt. Looks great, Frances!

See--you can get inspiration from anywhere!

Frances and I did commiserate over a problem we both have: marking with chalk is great if you can keep the chalk outlines on there long enough to still see them when you get to quilting that section. But sometimes the chalk then doesn't come OUT when you need it to, even with a damp cloth. It tends to really sink into the fabric and thread fibers. If anyone has any great hints about this, lay 'em on us!

Fitting tributes on Mother's Day

A little known fact about Mother's Day: it was NOT invented by Hallmark. Mother's Day stemmed from ancient traditions to begin with, then was really given its modern form by women who saw other women, mothers, as the key to peace in our world (cf http://www.theholidayspot.com/mothersday/history.htm, as well as other sources).

In any case, having lost my own mother shortly before Mother's Day last year, and also due to my own ever-growing quilt habit (learned from my mother), it seemed fitting to spend part of today in quilty activities, especially those geared towards others.

After church this morning, we held the official drawing for the winner of a quilt that had been made by my mom and her group of quilty friends before her death; her friends finished the quilt and gave it to me to be used in fundraising for my church's work with refugees being resettled in our area. I don't have the total in yet, but from my estimates we raised a significant amount of money to help fund our outreach efforts. Mom would be proud.

Now, as my family is finishing some cleaning downstairs in preparation for my in-laws to come over for a Mother's Day dinner (also cooked by my family)--I was told to enjoy myself in my sewing room for awhile. So I worked on getting backings together for some charity quilts that another member of our church had pieced tops to from some fabric donated by yet other folks. These 5 quilts will have passed through a whole lot of hands by the time they make it to whomever receives them. Definitely women working together for peace.

So, happy Mother's Day, all. May peace rule in our world.

Creativity Challenge from Episode 9

In episode 9 I issue a "creativity challenge"--you're invited to join in whether you're a listener or not!

Creativity Challenge: Use the photo below for inspiration for a project, and send me photos of the results by June 7, 2010 (at midnight Eastern Time). It doesn’t matter what the project is, and it doesn’t matter how you use the photo for inspiration. You might print the photo on fabric and then do something funky with it; you might be inspired by the colors, the subject matter, the feel/mood…it doesn’t matter. You can combine this project with other projects–allow this photo to inspire how you approach some other project that you’re doing. Doesn’t matter! Just be inspired. Post a comment below if you think you want to join the challenge. Then send me a photo (or a link to your blog where you’ve posted the photo) by midnight on June 7. Anyone who completes the challenge will have their name put in a drawing for a fun gift! Here’s the photo:

(Remember, if you want to print this on fabric, you’ll need to email me and I’ll provide a high res version without my name on it. Just please give photographer’s credit if you post pictures of your finished project anywhere. Thanks!)

Hope you'll join in the fun!

Meanwhile, back to quilty blogging. I made another run to Joann's today (may as well sign over my first-born child) and picked up supplies to play with printing photos on fabric. I'm hoping to start doing a little experimenting this weekend with some funky techniques, plus I'd like to get the backing together for my Square-in-a-Square quilt so I can drop it off at the machine quilter's next weekend when I'll be sorta-kinda in the area for my quilt retreat. The weather is supposed to be pretty cruddy all weekend so it's a good weekend to stay inside and play!

Project Finish--with Mixed Results

I finished my scrapbusting project. Here's the big reveal...

Yep, it's a sewing mat! The mixed results are because (1) parts of the pattern weren't written particularly well and (2) admittedly, I got a little lazy in parts because it's just a sewing mat that I'll only use a couple of times a year on quilt retreats anyway. Nothing I felt like making a masterpiece. As I've said before, "Done is better than perfect," at least in projects such as this. (The nice thing about taking a smallish picture and making it even lower resolution to post on a blog? You can't see the problems!)

Maybe the pattern was written just fine, if you had all the bits of knowledge it assumed you had. One or two bits, I was able to quickly pull out a reference and figure it out. Other bits, I just muddled along as best I could. And I did the binding all by machine again, with the same results as last time. So I still haven't gotten that little technique down. Oh well.

It's functional, and it used up 2 1/4 yards of fabric from my stash, and a bit of scrap batting to boot. And it's done. So it's all good.

So much for 15 minutes a day!

Pioneer Quilter is running a "May Mayhem" challenge this month, encouraging participants to do something quilty 15 minutes a day. I'm trying to participate, but I've never done particularly well at that. I have had times in my life when I've committed to doing 10 or 15 minutes a day...I make it for about 10 or 15 days...and then life happens. So I did my 15 minutes (actually, more than 15 minutes) on Saturday and Sunday. Monday and today? Nada. Unless reading quilty blogs during lunch counts.

I'm not sweating it. The premise of a goal like that is similar to the way I set goals for getting to the gym. If I have a goal of going to the gym 5 days a week, I will most likely make it 3. If I'd set a goal of 3 days, I'd be lucky if I made it one or two days. So if I have a goal of 15 minutes a day, I might actually get in 15 minutes on 4 days out of the week--which might be better than I'd have done otherwise. So it's all good.

Yesterday, the gym, then a meeting. Today, gym again--second day in a row. (Making up for a couple of weeks off!) Then I had a bit of a kitchen-appliance emergency I had to care for before it reached crisis levels, and you'll have to tune into the next podcast episode to hear more about that story! So in both cases, I figure that a good trade-off for 15 minutes at my sewing machine.

Tomorrow, back to attending to the 15 minute goal--the project I wrote about in the last post only needs another couple of 15 minute-ers to be done, I think. So here's hoping I can knock it off before the end of the week!

I Love My Husband

This morning I set myself up an Excel spreadsheet to start tracking fabric in/fabric out to help me meet my stashbusting goals (see last entry). The first column: Date. Second column: Yardage In. Third column: Yardage Out. Fourth Column: Net +/-.

I then set up some formulas so that the last column would automatically calculate the difference between the first two columns--IOW, if one day, I buy 5 yards total of fabric, but a few days later use 3 yards, then the last column would automatically show that I still had two yards more in the "purchase" category than the "use" category. The end goal is that my "use" category should be higher--at least until I knock my stash down a bit.

My formulas all worked beautifully, but the last column kept showing numbers in the positive rather than the negative. I had in my head that if I used more fabric than I'd bought, I'd rather be seeing a negative number--a "fabric deficit," so to speak. So how could I write the formulas as such?

I asked my husband, who uses Excel all the time. He just looked at me drily and said, "the last column is how much fabric you can buy now, right?"

Be still, my beating heart.

So now the last column has been renamed: "Can Buy More". If the number in that column is a positive number, that means I've been successful at using more fabric than I've bought and have therefore made enough room in my stash for that amount of new fabric!

After 10 years of me quilting, my husband seems to have learned the Rules of the Game.

I didn't get as much sewing done today as I'd originally planned, but what's new about that? I had a terrible night's sleep last night--only got about 2 hours' worth. So I'm a bit bleery. We granted ourselves a slow, lazy morning and then went to a ballgame (minor league) this afternoon. We won, in an 11-inning overtime game. Phew! I spent an hour or so tidying up my sewing room and getting myself organized earlier today; when we got home from the game, I decided to begin one of my little stashbusting projects. I didn't get as far as I'd hoped--here's where it's at right now.

You can't really see well in this picture, but so far I cut two pieces of fabric and one piece of batting, grid-quilted it all together, cut it to size, and started the process of binding one side of it. This is one of those projects that I suspect would take others only about an hour to whip together. I'm already at 90 minutes and have a ways to go. Oh well--I'll pretend that's due to sleep issues.

I'm not going to tell you what it is. (Try to guess!) It's something that I hope will be terribly useful on certain occasions--that's as much of a hint as I'm going to give you. If nothing else, is finally a good use of the novelty quilt fabric that I've had in my stash for probably 8 or 9 years and never knew what to do with! Between that, the coordinating fabric, and binding, I can put 2 1/4 yards in the "used" column on my spreadsheet! And May is off to a good start!

Oops--missed it again

I'd really thought I'd do a give-away for 2000 subscribers but if I can believe the stats, we'll be at that before Mother's Day. So much for that. We'll all just have to celebrate together in spirit, with no presents!

Anyway, I have been brewing some great ideas for future give-aways and an upcoming challenge that I'll announce in my next show after this one posts. Episode 008 "goes live" tomorrow (Sunday)--I recorded it immediately after episode 007 since I didn't want to lose track of what I'd already said and repeat myself. The downside is, I won't be doing anything with listener comments on #8--sorry. But the upside is I have plenty of time to collect new comments before recording episode #9 sometime next week! (Don't forget to add your comments to "You Know You're a Quilter When...."--I've enjoyed those!)

It's Saturday--yay! I'm leaving shortly to get groceries--we're scraping the bottom of the barrel around here. I also have a commitment in the early afternoon, but am thinking about treating myself to a stop at a nice quilt shop I'd be driving by on the way home. Can't decide--I really have to start downsizing my stash after some recent adds to it. Other than that and some general housework/yardwork, I have plans to get some quality time in my sewing room this weekend, for the first time in awhile. Hope to have some pics to share by Sunday night.

I'm going to start some stash-busting goals--share yours if you've got them!

• Month of May: Use at least 4 more yards of fabric than I buy. IOW, I have a quilt retreat this month and those often include a run to a nearby quilt shop, so I'm not punishing myself with a "no buy" regimen. But I want to end up ahead of the game. So if I buy fabric, I have to use at LEAST that much fabric plus another four yards. Not actually as hard as it might sound--I have some quilt backings to do to knock off some UFOs, LOL.

And here's a small project I'm going to try to do this weekend to help go towards those goals. (I've made these before--they're fast and very cute!)