Azalea City Quilter's Guild

I did a program in Mobile the other day for the Azalea City Guild and had an absolute BLAST! Many, many thanks to Donna B. for hunting me down to invite me to teach and for putting me up in her home while I was there. If I lived in her house, I'd never go anywhere. Beautiful home in a beautiful setting. She's also a really good cook. I thoroughly enjoyed myself with both the visit and the class. I certainly hope it's true what they say about teaching gigs begetting more teaching gigs, because that's what I love to do. I was so busy and having so much fun I totally forgot to take any pictures of the class, although I did get some pictures from the show and tell. Unfortunately, I forgot to get either the women's names or their permission to post the photos of their work so you'll just have to trust me when I say they were beautiful.

Stop me before I piece again!

My friend Dorinda has corrupted me. She got me started on the One-Block-Wonder pieced quilts and I did a few of those, then she showed me the Northwind block and I came home with a copy of those instructions, and now I'm dreaming in pieced blocks! Arrrgggghhhhh......doesn't my brain know I don't piece!??!! And since NOTHING can ever be easy, or simple, or straightforward with me, I'm dreaming Y-SEAMS. Not just sewing stuff together but having to do little fiddly precise stuff! Oh well, once it gets in my head it will either make me crazy by not leaving enough room for anything else, or I have to just suck it up and make the damn thing. This one is sort of an attic window/shadow box thing (whichever one uses the contrast sashing) but of course I had to make the sizes of the boxes varied so I spent about 3 hours graphing the thing off so the blocks all fit together. And then I chose a scrap of fabric from my friend Vicki in Miami without giving any thought to how much I needed. I just cut it in half and over-dyed half of it for the contrast. Top that off with the fact that it frays VERY badly (give thanks to the god of fusible interfacing) and is slippery and was already cut in a weird shape since it was a scrap to begin with. Can you see where this is going yet? I got down to the last three 2.5"x2.5" pieces I needed and guess what? ALL I had left were the little ears I cut off making the mitered corner strips. Vicki almost got the panicked fabric emergency call about 5:00 this morning, but I rummaged around in my own scrap basket and found one last piece of it that had originally been the facing of the blouse she was originally going to use it for. I had to fussy cut the last 3 pieces, but I managed to eke out EXACTLY as much as I needed. This one will most likely have a bunch of embellishing on it to be used as a sample for the program I'm doing in June. Unless I sell it first. Um, yeah. Like that's gonna happen. I may even break down and do some sashiko quilting on it. Fancy threads count as embellishing don't they? OH GOD! Did I just mention hand quilting in the same breath as piecing? Good lord I must be regressing. Don't most people start with patterns and then move on to art quilts?

This is about 1/3 of the total quilt and no two fabrics in the boxes are the same. Still have no clue what I'll do for borders yet but there's time for that later. Probably something plain if I decide to do the sashiko.

And this month's Fast Friday challenge was fun. The theme was monochromatic, based on a color from a song. I used Sonny Landreth's South of I-10, which has the line "...grew up on Clifton and Cleveland and the Red Hot Louisiana Band" in it, so I did a dancer in red. It's all done with thread painting on cotton fabrics and I'm probably going to add a black border on the right side and at the bottom. But I was happy with the movement I got from the stitching and shape of the woman. I think this is only the second mono piece I've ever done, too. The other one was In the Ghetto, which I also liked, but I have to have color 99% of the time.

It's getting there

In between doing a whole bunch of other stuff, I've been working on this one. My machine is being horsey (it KNOWS I'm going out of town and have a ton of stuff to do.....it hates not being the center of attention) so any sewing I've been doing is taking twice as long. Even doing those thick satin stitch edges I'm usually rocking along at rabbit speed, but not this time. My Janome baby starts making this weird clattering noise when I run it wide open but it works perfectly if I slow down. I do NOT want to have to up-grade my machine simply because I sew too fast. I like what I have and it's always done exactly what I wanted it to. No idea why it's protesting so loudly now.

Anyway, I haven't settled on the final layout for the doubloons and there are no strings of beads on it yet. I'll probably add some more doubloons too. But for now, this is what progress I've made on it. I'll be back by Wed so maybe I can get it finished this week some time. I still need to replace the final border on the garden one-block-wonder quilt and get both of those quilted. Binding on the Japanese wall hanging. Some bits and pieces of other stuff to do/finish to make sure I have enough to show at the arts in action thing in April.

Long time, no see

It's been a while since I updated the blog, but I had good reason for my lapse. I've been working like a madwoman to get written material, samples, and supplies ready to go to Mobile next week. Most (some, a little bit) of it is done and I am SO excited about being asked to do the workshop. The woman who contacted me is a very nice woman and I'm looking forward to spending some time with her also. I'll be staying in her home Monday night so I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed for Tuesday morning.

I've also been working on some new Link and Lap (thanks, mom!) quiltlet pieces. None of them are ready for their debut yet, but I do have one to the point I can show what I have. Of course, it will have many more pieces than the 2 shown, but I haven't finished them to the point of adding them yet. Look for a sax (Imagine that! Me using a saxophone in a quilt!) and probably some sequined dubloons. I have an idea for some music across the front too but I'm still wrestling with the mechanics of it. Based solely on the demands of the construction techniques some things that I'd add to a normal quilt with a background fabric can't be done on the Link and Laps because the physical balance (as opposed to the visual balance of the design itself) is so critical. Thank goodness my husband is so understanding of pin and tack holes in all the walls.

Right now the piece is about 30x18. The mask is white bridal satin and everything else is Dupioni silk. The mask itself is 14x18.

The birds for the mobile are on the work table ready for assembly too, so maybe in the next day or so I'll have a mobile to post.

Big In Japan

This one is ready for the quilting now too. The small hexagons in the border will have black silk tassels on them and probably the green for the binding.

Look closely for the faces.

And another one.....

This is from one yard of an Alexander Henry I had. It made 15 hexagons so I'm filling in with those totally cool hollow cube blocks. This one may get some small hexagons in the border with black tassels in the center of them.

And for my next trick.....

About half of the blocks from the black and red kanji fabric. I'll get the hexagon blocks done on this one and then set it aside until I pick up the pattern for the hollow cubes from Dorinda Tuesday and then finish it off after I get those made. Up next: a very bright, very busy wildflower floral. It's interesting the patterns in patterns you can make by assembling each individual hexagon as either a circle (around) or as spokes (out) and I'm wondering how it would change the look of the finished quilt to only use one or the other. I'm guessing you would get a more suble pattern using only spokes since there would be no hard visual "stop" between the blocks. They would tend to blend a little better from block to block.

Peppermint Twist

Are y'all tired of looking at this one yet? So the top is done. I'm out of batt or I'd at least have it sandwiched, if not some of the quilting done. This has been a quick, easy and fun piece to do, and the damn thing just kept GROWING! It's 52x64 finished size. I really like the very wide borders on it, but I would have made them different widths if I had a do-over on it. I'd have also made the inner border seams across instead of up, but habit took over when I put the top and bottom on first without thinking about it. Oh well, it's done now and nobody is going to die because my seams are in the wrong place. It's a beautility quilt anyway, and sort of a practice piece. Doesn't everyone make full-size practice pieces? I'd have also probably made the hexagons a little smaller to avoid the full flowers in the blocks, but my daughter likes them so I'm happy with it. Besides, I have plenty of other fabrics to play with different sizes on.

really REALLY retro

A narrow frame of hot pink chintz and a wide border of the original fabric and I'm done with this one.

really retro

in more ways than one. Retro fabric, and retro technique for me to go back to piecing after all these years of avoiding it, but I couldn't resist this pattern. I was out at my friend Dorinda's house the other day and we were playing with the placement of hers from this same pattern (done in gorgeous fall colors of orange and rust and green) and it just got stuck in my head. Now, the fact that I have no angle rulers, and really no idea what I'm doing, has no bearing on anything, so off I go to Hobby Lobby this morning to buy enough fabric for 4 (yes, I said FOUR) quilt tops using this pattern. Different size hexs of course, since I'm just printing the hex shape off the computer and then cutting it into 6 pieces, and different settings and colors and such. But the same basic pattern. I'm pretty sure she called it "one block wonder" but don't get me to lying since I'm not positive. Anyway, here is the fabric I'm using and the result of cutting it up and making the blocks.

The Garden Granny takes her bow

One more block under the flamingo and then the sashing with the kudzu and the Christmas light border. Those are little watermelons at Granny's feet by the way.

Song of the South

...sweet potato pie and shut my mouth.

I've finally gotten started on the Southern kitsch quilt, and it's turning out to be more Southern kitsch yard art than anything. As everyone who knows me can attest to, I have a long-standing love of pink plastic flamingos (Happy Birthday!) and junk in my yard. I aspire to an old bed frame with a raised flower garden in the middle of it. Get it? A flower bed? Hardeharhar. I searched for 3 years for an old rusty bicycle to stand on end and train my wisteria over, but the wisteria got too big before I found one so it's growing on a cast-off clothing rack from a store that went out of business. Not fancy, but functional. The 6 foot pink wrought iron flamingo and the concrete gargoyles provide the fancy. Fancy is as fancy does? Fancy is in the eye of the beholder? Anyway, I have the pink flamingo and the bottle tree sections done for the quilt. Still to come (I know you're all the edge of your seats wanting to know how else I can tacky this up) is the kudzu, pinwheels and Christmas lights. It will probably have a garden granny on it too. Oh come on, doesn't everyone know what garden grannies are? They are those wooden things that look like the ass end of a fat woman bending over. The panties always seem to be polka dot with lace and she has legs like telephone poles. But she'll fit nicely in that empty space. Kudzu leaf pattern cut out and the appropriate hideous green fabrics picked. The pattern for the strings of Christmas lights are ready too, although the size of those may change before all is said and done. A SEE ROCK CITY birdhouse is another possibility. Too bad I haven't come up with a way to incorporate the 3 crosses you see in the fields yet, but I'm not done either.

One thing I have learned about myself and my design process (mostly from blogging, actually, because it makes me think through what I want to describe) is that I am constitutionally incapable of designing an entire quilt and then just making the damn thing. I do much better and am much happier with the pieces that I start with an overall idea and get one element of it solidly in mind first. Do that part of it and then just sort of intuitively begin adding elements to it. I never realized I designed like that either. The only exceptions are the designs that just come to me full-blown in sleep or something.

Thank goodness this is a quilting blog and not a photography blog.

Random musings

Whew. The Draw Down quilt is finished and delivered and gathering accolades far and wide. Well at least as far as Madison County, where it's hanging in the hall at the school, and as wide as the fat mouth in the front office. Hey, I'll take what I can get and call it a compliment. I've had some terrific feedback on the two collaboration pieces also. I think this is something that both of us are willing to let take its course. If he keeps drawing, I'll keep sewing. (Heeheeee, don't tell him, but I have the easy part of that deal.) No crises with any of the kids this week (so far) so I feel sort of at loose ends. Not that I'm wishing them broken bones or anything, but hey, just how painful can a sprain be?

Speaking of strange conversations with your children (it's my blog, I can abruptly change the subject if I want to) this is one I had last night with my youngest daughter, who is 17.

Her: I'm a virgin.
Me: That's good. What brought that on?
Her: I'd probably be happier if I was having sex.
Me: Um, having sex doesn't make you happy.
Her: No, but if I was having sex it would mean that I was in love and THAT would make me happy. OMG Mother! Do you think I'm a total fool to even think about having sex if I wasn't in love. I'm not some sort of sleazy slut, you know. Give me a little credit.
Me: Do you want some garlic toast with that casserole?

No toast, but she wanted extra cheese. I guess I probably should have sounded a little more....ummmmmm......involved? in that conversation. It's not like we don't have those little heart to heart, mother/daughter stream of consciousness conversations regularly so it's hard for me to work up a lot of angst over that one.

My son called last night, at like 11 pm, to tell me this absolutely incredible story about how his girlfriend had never read The Aeneid (and hell yeah I had to go look up the spelling) and he wasn't accusing her of being stupid or anything, but how did somebody go all the way through school and never read it? Wasn't it on the required reading list for EVERYBODY? Um, no son, that's why we eat casseroles and garlic toast. Because we're broke from all the years of sending you to parochial school so they could make you read The Aeneid. And what are you doing up at 11:00 anyway? And talking on the cell while you're driving? And don't get drunk in New Orleans this weekend either. So, I guess I made up the daily quota of mothering that I missed with the whole virgin conversation earlier.

Interesting assortment of people in my house today. I posted about lebentyhundred things on the FreeCycle list and fielded calls and emails most of the day. But the closet in the boy's room is now clean. Onward ho to the rest of the room. Why does everyone feel it necessary to tell you who they want the stuff for and how they'll use it and why they need it? I honestly don't give a rat's ass as long as they haul it away from MY house and worry about where to store it at THEIR house. Honey, if you want to take ALL the shirts, knock yourself out. You have no need to "leave a few for the next person" to pick over. Take them. Here's a bag. I'll help carry them to your car. I'll hold your baby while you gather stuff up. I'll keep my house horses from sniffing your butt and licking your feet. I'll hunt up a box for you to pack your 'treasures' in. I'll stand in the drive and smile as wave as you haul off my useless crap, even. But DON'T make me listen to stories about why your husband won't wear plaid, or why your mother now has all your Tupperware. I don't care! I want you to come in and act like a burglar, not my best friend. Throw that stuff in a sack willy-nilly and get the hell out of my house. I didn't bother to fold it, why should you?

Anybody need 2 broken laundry baskets and a pair of hockey skates?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the quilt stuff. Little egg shapes drawn off on the WU for what (I hope) is going to be a fish mobile. Wait. Not fish. Birds. I'm getting my ovates mixed up. Birds with wings and beaks and tails and little dangly legs with big ugly beads on the ends. The fish mobile is something completely different. And some rudimentary patterns in mind for the pink flamingo/bottle tree/something/something/something quilt with a Christmas light border. Hey! I said it was rudimentary. I could get all quilt art speak-y and say it was "percolating in my creative subconscious", or that I was "auditioning fabrics" and waiting for them to "tell me what they want to be", but actually, my sewing area looks like the second coming of Katrina and I can't find what I need to actually get started on doing anything. Which brings us back to the the boy's room. WHITE WALLS! Big unbroken expanses of white walls. That I can reach! And no furniture in there now either. Yes, before you ask, both chests were broken beyond repair and the side table was dangerously wobbly, and that other thing in there with the magazines piled on it....well, I make it a habit to never keep a piece of furniture that I don't know what to call it. My big shelf unit with the nice heavy-duty tubs of fabric should fit nicely along that wall. And oh look! The perfect corner for one of my sewing machine cabinets. Exactly enough width next to the closet for the double stack drawer unit too! Isn't it amazing what a coincidence that is?

My husband will thank me for getting my stuff out of the dining room I'm sure. And the living room. And the kitchen. And the bedroom. The bathroom storage and the linen closet in the hall have long since been overtaken with my stuff so that isn't an issue. And he never truly believed that just this one room would be enough anyway. I call it my middle age spread.

KokoJazzMan DONE!

This is the finished KokoJazzMan piece. The acrylic paint reflects the flash but the man is solid black. I have had more fun working with Stephen (the artist who painted the picture) and stretched myself a bit with techniques. It will get packed up, along with some Textile Medium (hint, hint) and shipped off in the next day or so. This one will be hard to let of go of and I rarely ever feel that way about a quilt. Usually I'm happy when they're out the door and someone else has to worry about finding a place to put them.

Acrylic on muslin, cotton hand-dyes, commercial piping, commercial print. 28x30.

TA DAH!

Forms, photo and check going out tonight for the GSQA show in Baton Rouge, and this is one I'm proud to send.

Ebony and Ivory Blues
Commercial cottons, fiberglass window screen, 'liquid gold' poly fabric, computer printed cotton, beads.
38x32

Each element of the quilt is made and quilted separately then assembled. Satin stitch edging on each piece. Free-motion and detail quilting on felt batting.

and more progress......

This is the hand with the screen cut away to show the fabric. It looks SO totally cool in person too. And that's even before I got it cut from the felt and the edges finished.

The next pic is the elements of the whole thing (with the exception of one more blue triangle) sort of laid out in the final design. Some minor adjustments in placement to maintain the top edge so it can be hung and some structural stuff so it doesn't buckle in the middle. Maybe a little moving them around for the hands too, and the final decision on if I want the wrists to stop in the middle of the brown fabric or trim the whole bottom edge even with the wrists.

Progress!

I'm on the hands (Finally! Considering the forms and photos have to be received by Feb 1) and have made some progress, once I got through changing my mind about how I wanted to do them. It started out as simply printed on fabric, then went to some thread painting and now I've decided to use the fiberglass window screening. I started by re-sizing the drawing to life size, then printing it on the fabric. I then layered it with the screening on top and a piece of felt on the bottom. I have the outline stitched and then I'll stitch some of the details and cut away the screening. The whole little quiltlet will be hand-shaped once I cut it out around the outline, and the edges will be satin stitch finished and the entire thing will be added to the larger quilt.

A note about the hand drawings. My friend Stephen in Illinois drew these for me at my request specifically for this piece. He's also the one who painted the KokoJazzMan picture. Not only is he a great artist, he's also a musician and just an all-around nice guy.

Monday motivations

• Get the binding and sleeve on the KokoJazzMan and get it shipped.
• Finish the hands and add a sleeve to the abstract keyboard piece for submission to the GSQA show.
• Do the bird mobile quilt (quilt mobile?) to get them out of my head and into fabric.
• Off to my friend's house tomorrow for more visiting and critiquing.
• Double-check "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" for loose threads/beads before submitting it to GSQA.
• Two altered books for gifts to finish by Thursday.
• Labels for everything. Labels are my downfall and half the stuff that goes out of here doesn't have one.

Fast Friday January challenge

Justa Cuppa

The challenge this month was to do a "cropped still life" and use the element of form to give the piece dimension. I've been wanting to do a framed piece and when I saw the challenge and instantly had an idea of what to do, it seemed the perfect fit for the two ideas. I wanted to use a piece of batik-y looking stuff for the shadows and the coffee cup and saucer but it would have to be fussy cut to get the shadings like I envisioned them, so I was obviously limited in the overall size of it doing it that way. I was also determined to revisit the fabric collage technique, which I L*O*V*E and haven't done anything with in a while. The fates conspired to make all of that work out so I could do my challenge, use the fabric I wanted, play with a collage AND make a framed piece. I am very happy with the way it turned out. I've posted it to the challenge blog so we'll see what the REAL artists have to say about it soon enough. Or even worse, it might not get any comments.

The quilt itself is 5.5x8 and the green backing (not part of the quilt) and the frame are 8.5x11. Fabric collage using 25+ individual pieces of fabric, a layer of purple tulle, and outline quilting around the cup and saucer. The little quiltlet is stitched directly onto the fabric covered cardboard backing and then inserted into the frame with no glass.

Let's try that again

This time, I'll post the steps as I go on one. I've been wanting to experiment with melted poly sheers for a while, but had neither the sheers nor a heat gun. Thanks to my dear friend Vicki in Miami, and the $1 table at WalMart, I now have both. I began by layering the sheers in a not-planned-ahead design.

I stitched them down with black thread on a cotton background. After the first few rows of stitching, I added the black felt batting for stability with the sheers. I started by stitching down the outline of each piece, then doing some quilting lines, again with black, over the different pieces, keeping in mind that anything without stitching in it had the potential to melt away to nothing. I didn't do any specific patterns with the stitching, just random and relatively close together.

I also layered different colors and fabrics over each other to see how the under layers came through. I also added some fine lace that doesn't melt. I debated doing everything and then melting it, but finally decided to melt this much of it and add more. I knew I needed some dark at the top. I had the best time playing with the melting part! And no "art incidents" from the fumes this time. The last piece I added is 4 layers of the red over a layer of the lace. I wanted more depth of color than I was getting from one layer and I wanted the lace to peek out of the holes. I love the way it looks right now, but it will most likely get some beading and embellishments on it. And I'll definitely have to get some close-up shots of the detail once I'm done. Very cool effect, and worth the wait for playing with it.

So much for that bright idea

I had intended to do a step-by-step with this one, honest I did. But once I got the initial border on and thought through colors, my entire plan changed. Why can't I EVER just do what I originally plan to do? I took the border off and used black piping between each border instead. I am WAY MUCH happier with this than I was the original too, and the owner loves it (his words, not mine!) and he claimed to be speechless. At any rate, I'm happy with it.

All that's left is the quilting and binding and sleeve and label. And then he's going to paint me another picture to keep for myself. Collaborations are more fun than challenges, and you all know I love a good challenge!

KokoJazzMan - step by step

A friend in IL has painted a picture that I'm turning into a quilt. I'm going to try to show each step as I put it together. The first step is the initial border, which is black satin and will ultimately be only a half inch wide. I'm auditioning greens, purples, deep golden yellows and reds for additional borders. I have no definite idea of exactly what I'm going to do, but I have some ideas to try. I'm also going to take the plunge and do an applique border on at least 2 sides. The picture itself is 14.5 x 17.

"Big Eyed Fish"

So here is the finished quilt for the Draw Down. Total size is 62x76. Not a standard size but it works for me anyway. Cotton background fabrics and backing, appliqued fish and raw edge seaweed. The eyes are 2 buttons. A horizontal wavy quilting pattern in the center tie-dyed area and a vertical seaweed-y quilting pattern in the darker border. I pulled out all my cool variegated Mettler and King Tut to use on this one. They are a dream to work with and give more of an effect than you expect them to just looking at it on the spool. All free-motion quilting with some small detail quilting on the rocks and leaves at the bottom. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE free-motion? And my new discovery for getting the sandwich flat and stable makes it that much better since I don't get the pleats and tucks in the back and I can work on a smaller section at the time without worrying about messing it up by leaving it in the machine for a day or two, and it seems to wash better.

Long week

It's been a very long week. A man I've known for almost 30 years died suddenly of a heart attack at 51. I've gotten calls from people I haven't heard from in ages, and I think they were just touching base with others who were close to him. It's hard to reconcile his energy and humor and drive with his death. My mind continues to wander back through all the memories of him over the years and it's a good sign that I find myself laughing at some of the memories. J.D. would like that. Laughter was very important to him.
The brother of another friend was killed in a plane crash last week too. I knew him slightly, but I've known his sister for 15 years at least and worked closely with her at the church for many of those years. Again, memories intrude to the point of distraction. I'd like to be able to say it's a function of my age to be losing people. That it's just a natural progression and to be expected, but that brings me to the third death of the week.
My son's fraternity big brother committed suicide this past Sunday. He hanged himself in his room at the frat house. Both the college and the national office of the fraternity seem to be doing an outstanding job of providing support and counseling for the fraternity members, and my son has been relying on his church a good bit too. I can't imagine what Austin's parents are going through, losing a child so young to suicide. It's hard enough dealing with my own. I'm so scared I won't have the right words for him when he calls, and the best I can hope for is to not make things worse.
Some weeks are worse than others for trying to be a mother.

More boys than girls commit suicide.
Suicide is the second most common cause of death for college students. (Car wrecks are first.)
Cluster suicides are common at schools.

None of this is reassuring to the mother of a 20 year old boy off at college.

Monday motivation update

The fish are quilted. I still have to quilt the background and border and get it bound. A new basting method I tried and I LIKE it. I pin basted around each fish and then ironed the stuffing out of it. It stays perfectly flat as I'm quilting and the stitches seem to be a bit flatter too. I've always ironed the binding to within an inch of its life at each step, but never the body of the quilt. The batting doesn't stay flat. It eventually puffs back up in a couple of days but it's a dream to quilt on while it's still flat. And no pleats on the back!
Joyce, you asked how I was quilting it. Fairly close quilting in the fish, going with the shapes of the applique with invisible thread. For the batik in the center it will be a King Tut blue/green variegated in a loose horizontal wave, and tighter quilting (McTavishing? Stipple?) with matching thread in the bright blue border. Maybe something vertical for the seaweed.

The package from my friend arrived yesterday and the picture and hand sketches are even better than I expected. I'm forcing myself to hold off on those until I get the fish quilt out of the way though. Another day or so. Of course, I fell asleep with designs swirling through my head for the Kokojazzman too. My original ideas from seeing in-progress pictures of him painting it are pretty much out the window now. Once I got the real deal hanging on my wall the ideas started flowing. The first idea just won't go away now so I think I'll have to start with that as a base and build on it from there. Maybe I can get some pics up of it as soon as I talk to him. I don't know if he wants to follow along as I work on it or if he just wants to see the finished quilt.

I managed to find a backing for the rudbeckia quilt I did ages ago. I started quilting around the blooms using a brown backing but I was never happy with it so I set it aside. I have one now that I'm happy with (who could NOT be happy with 6 yards of batik?) so I'm going to trim away the brown backing and use this one. And in the meantime, I also decided to add borders on 2 sides. I think it needs the definition. No progress other than that on getting stuff together for the quilt show. This may not be my year to have any shown.

No laundry or dishes done, but I did vacuum up the dog hair on the living room rug so I could baste the fish.

Monday motivations

It seems like a good idea to write down stuff I want to tackle (fiber-related stuff anyway...nobody wants to hear about me doing laundry or loading the dishwasher) during the week. Maybe if I see it written down it will make me do more of it in a more organized way. Or not. Time will tell. I did manage to do the entire month of NaBloPoMo though so there's hope for me yet.

• Get the fish quilt finished and delivered to the school for the Draw Down
• The kokojazzman collaboration piece and the hands my friend drew for the abstract music piece were shipped yesterday so I'll get on those as soon as they arrive.
• Go through finished and half-finished pieces and decide which ones (if any) to submit to the GSQA quilt show by Feb 1.

I gotta get some sleep.

Or not. This is the result of waking up at 3:00 am and being bored.

I know! I'll just make a king size bed quilt! I'm sure I'll be able to think of something to do with it once it's finished.

Speaking of finished, just the quilting and button eyes left to do on it.

I'm on a roll today

I finally got a picture of the quilt I gave my son for Christmas. I made a matching stocking for him and he really seemed to like both. The quilt hangs above his bed in the apartment because the living and dining room walls are covered with stolen beer banners.

The photo sucks but I was pleased with the quilt.

This is a test, this is only a test

I'm posting these pics of a WIP to get a better idea of the next thing to do to it. The first pic is the actual quilt as it stands right now. The second pic has another musical note added, but I'm not sure I like it. If I do use it, I think it needs something more in the "hole" created between the staff and the note. Any ideas? It will ultimately have 2 hands on the keyboard that will be done in thread painting and, like all the other pieces parts, will be separate little quiltlets. As it is right now, the quilt will hang flat and balance with a ring at the top of the staff and a sleeve across the blue piece above the trumpet. I can't believe I got that to work out right!

I just don't get it

//rant mode ON
On the Today show this morning they showed the winner of the $100,000 quilting challenge http://www.quiltingchallenge.com/ and now the quilt art list is full of posts by women who are aghast (AGHAST, I tell you!) at the fact that Al Roker had the absolute balls to TOUCH the quilt! How dare he! What was he thinking! And they shot the segment OUTSIDE! IN THE ACTUAL SUNLIGHT!!!! The fact that it was a white-on-white whole cloth quilt and was exposed for a short period of time apparently escaped them. And the fact that quilts were originally MADE to be touched. And the fact that it's a cotton quilt with no doodads. And the fact that Al probably washed his hands at some point this morning. And the fact that it's a quilt, people! We wash them. We sleep under them. We fold them up. We toss them in the trunk. We even (GASP) throw them down on the ground and eat on them! I have a ratty ass quilt on my bed that's at least 50 years old and has had NO special handling. I don't doubt that the eventual owner of the winning quilt will display it lovingly and take care with it, but why in the world are these women sending emails berating the Today show for handling a quilt exactly the same way they were originally intended to be handled? If it isn't meant to be tactile, paint it on wood. If you make it out of fabric and then add texture to it with the quilting and put the batting in to make it soft why in the HELL would you NOT want people to touch it? Comparing it to a "work of art" and Picassos at the MoMA and telling them what idiots they are for displaying it to the public does nothing but make quilters come off looking like a bunch of elitist old ladies who probably use antimacassars on their sofas/couches/davenports/divans and use plastic runners on their carpets too. If it's so delicate it can't withstand being shown on national television she needs to use a better quality fabric. Besides that, comparing handling a quilt to handling a painting makes no more sense than comparing handling a painting to handling a sculpture. Different media require different handling.

Get off your high horses and admit that this may be a beautiful, breathtaking quilt, but I simply don't see it as a work of art on the same level as a Monet.

And don't even get me started on the women who obsess over the 100-year archival quality of fabrics and materials. I want ALL the love and softness and use in my quilts used up by the time their 100 year birthday rolls around.
//rant mode OFF

We're defeating one of the defining elements of quilting if we take away the comforting, tactile aspect of it. If we lose (or drive people away from) the warmandfuzzies of quilts, we're creating something different and just calling it a quilt. I, for one, would hate to see that happen.

IFA group homework

Our fiber group meets every 3 months in Hattiesburg and we usually have "homework" to do. This meeting, we're supposed to bring a piece we did using a photo. I'm sure they're thinking along the lines of landscapes or something, but I have been wanting to do one of these for ages and this seemed like a good excuse. I played around with it a lot in my graphics program but never did get exactly what I wanted, so I took the easy way out and ran it through the Warholizer at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/warholizer.php

What looks like blue is actually a very deep purple, and the lightest color is a bright lime yellow green. I have GOT to get a black background so my colors come out looking more true than they do against the red wall.

As promised.

I'm through piecing the top and ready to quilt it. I'm going to pillow case the backing with a 1" strip of the purple (raw edge) around the outside. Then wash it about 10 times. This one is about 48"x60", which I think is a good size for a throw. The top is flat because it's one of my pet peeves to have 'dangly bits' on the top edge to tickle my face, be they fringe, irregular edge, whatever. I have yards of a gorgeous black batik with spots of color that will work well for the backing and it's wide enough I won't have to piece it. The purple will look good with it too. I have to wait for the rain to stop to do any more work on it though since spray basting inside guarantees an asthma attack, even with the doors and windows open. By the way, the terra cotta color is my dining room wall. The edges of the quilt actually stop of the points.

I finally decided on the deep purple for the lattice too.

I'm on a roll!

I woke up this morning with this "design" already full-blown in my head. I say "design" because there's nothing original about squares on squares on squares, set on point, even if they are wonky. The one thing I'm going to do that I've never seen before is sew a 1/2" strip in each seam as I piece the blocks together so that a 1/4" free edge shows sort of like lattice work across the top. I don't want to make the edges of the blocks with the seams facing out but I do want the raw edge. The batik quilt I made for my mother with the raw edges came out great after a couple of washings and I liked the effect, so I wanted more raw edge on this one, but not on the rust dyed fabric. The solution to me seemed easy enough by adding my own raw edges and a little color at the same time. This thing is going so fast I may have another picture to post by tomorrow since I know my explanation of what I'm doing is pretty dismal.

And yes, you recognize the fabrics from the one I'm making for myself. Scraps of scraps. Pretty cool way to use fabrics that I absolutely LOVE.

Wishes for the coming year

I could say "Happy New Year" but that's just been done to death. My wish for each of you is creativity, contentment and satisfaction this year. I think if you have those three things, everything else just falls into place for you. Create! It keeps you young and curious and interested. Explore all of those techniques and materials and ideas that you have in the back of your mind for "some day." See where your talents and abilities can take you this year that you've not been before. Never close off that part of yourself.

Contentment with what you have doesn't mean you don't strive for more. It just means that if you don't achieve more you are still happy with what you have. I would love to be a better housekeeper, and I'm working on that, but if I never improve I'll still be content knowing I can find things when I need them and that it's just messy, not dirty. And I'll be content knowing my family and friends don't judge me by my house. (Damn good thing, too!)

Satisfaction is the tricky one for me. It's just the ability to not second guess yourself or push yourself to the point of unhappiness. If you drive yourself to the point of perfection in everything, you will never be satisfied with anything. Perfection is never achieved and if you are not satisfied with anything less, you will never be satisfied. I'm NOT saying to lower your standards, I'm simply saying make them reasonable and find that point where you are satisfied with your efforts. If you are never satisfied with anything, you can never be truly happy.

We had a wonderful anniversary dinner last night. My one night a year for lobster and it was worth it. My brother and his new wife dropped off a gift of champagne glasses, a mini bottle of champagne and a HUGE fireworks thing. We drank the champagne out of the glasses and made rude jokes about the fireworks looking (and sounding...it's called a "Lavender Ring") like a sex toy. Two friends of my oldest daughter drove down from Starkville and they did the 20-something stuff downtown. My son was in New Orleans with his girlfriend and a bunch of others for the gumbo pot drop in the Quarter and my youngest was at a party at someone's home. No late night calls from the cops or hospitals and no requests for bail money or auto insurance information, so I'm happy.

"She was nothing of the kind."

That's the first line of The World According to Garp and it's for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group I'm a member of. Once a month, we're issued a challenge with a theme and an element of art to use to complete a piece within one week. This month, it was to take the first or last line of a favorite book to use as inspiration and incorporate the element of contrast. I had a lot of fun with this one and needed the stark colors and graphic look of it to clear my head from working on the batik piece. Well, a lot of fun other than the fact that for some unknown reason I decided it needed microscopic stipple quilting on it. I wouldn't have minded it so much except for the fact that white on white is terribly hard to see. The final effect is what I was looking for though so it's all good. It also felt good to actually finish something for a change. And again, I completely forgot to put the sleeve on it, but my corners look good! Fortunately, I've left the sleeves off often enough that I've devised an invisible way to add them after the fact.

My friend in Illinois gave me an update on his painted piece we're collaborating on too, and he has the fabric gessoed and was shooting for laying in the background colors last night. The design is incredibly cool looking and I can't wait to get my hands on it to begin work. If the timing works out right, I may have it available to display at the artist invitational thing this spring. He's also done some beautiful hand drawings that I'm going to use for the next piece (or second next if I do the draw-down quilt first) in line to be worked on. And in the midst of doing my own stuff, I have one more OPS quilt to finish.

Today is our 23 wedding anniversary. Time flies.

Cory and her strangeness

My oldest daughter turns 22 on January 2, and she's having a pirates and ninjas costume party at a local restaurant. Her friends are apparently just as strange since they're going along with this wild plan. We've been cobbling together a pirate costume for her and I've gotten several calls from her friends about how to put together their own pirate and ninja costumes. When I asked about the theme her perfectly reasonable response was "Everyone is either a pirate or a ninja." I couldn't help but think of the novels by Lawrence Block, in which the protagonist Matthew Scudder explains about everyone being either a pig or a fox, although he's referring to their looks. I think the whole pirate/ninja thing is more a comment on personality.
She's also announced that what she is getting herself for her birthday is "Mom" and "Dad" tattoos. But not just any old flower and skull tattoos since that would be tres gauche, but "Mom" written in sign language (I speak ASL) and "Dad" written in Klingon. I think they will go nicely with the copyright symbol she already has on her back. Maybe she'll get quotation marks on her shoulders next year.
Our 23 wedding anniversary is on New Year's Eve (my parents and sister have the same anniversary) and our big plans are to go out to eat and then come home and drink champagne and eat sour cream and onion potato chips. One more year and I will have been married for half my life. Two kids already in college and the third graduates this Spring and wants to take a couple of courses this summer to get a jump on freshman year. Within 6 months, ALL my kids will be in college. Am I really that old already?

A quilt!

I was beginning to feel guilty about the name of my blog since I haven't put anything quilt related up in a while. I've mostly just been trying to get through the holidays and haven't hit a lick at a snake much beyond that. But this one is just little scrappy pieces that I can work on a few minutes (or hours) at the time. Slow but getting there with it. No sort of plan either. I just pick up and sew on whichever next strip is the right length with no thought to colors or anything unless it's 2 of the same side by side. Other than that, it's very organic.

I'm maybe 2/3 of way finished with this part of it, then some fairly wide pieced borders and I'm done with the top. I'm really liking this one too.

Home for the holidays

We had our family thing last night at my parent's house. All the sibs and spouses except my youngest sister and her husband in Memphis made it, including my uncle from the coast and my mother's cousin and her husband. These things go MUCH more smoothly when my mother starts on the wine/martinis/whatever before we get there. Nobody had assigned seats and we didn't have to raise our hands this year to talk. The traditional Christmas gumbo was wonderful, as usual, and my brother and his wife brought red beans and rice. Unfortunately, they don't have kids and lived alone for many years until they married this past April, so they're sort of unclear on the concept of cooking for more than 2. Doubling the recipe doesn't quite cover feeding 15 or so adults. On the other hand, I've always had a houseful of people to feed so I'm sort of unclear on the concept of cooking for 2 now that my DH and I are alone so much.

The kids were entertaining as always and I should know by now not to sit close enough to Nick and Bryndan to hear them talking. I usually wind up embarrassing myself by bursting out laughing at inappropriate times from their muttered comments. The upside to that is I was far enough away from Cory to miss most of her pithy observations. She was sitting next to her dad though so he was the one doing the inappropriate laughing, which sort of spread the embarrassment around evenly. Nick and Bryndan had some sort of betting thing going on where they were calling out colors, or making responses to the gifts being opened BEFORE they were open too. The really funny part was how often the comments were dead on for whatever the gift happened to be.

I think my brother summed things up pretty well about our family during a conversation with my mom and oldest daughter too. My mother had asked her about the Marriage and Family class she took at State and my brother's response was "How do you think she did, coming from a family where the girls get guns and the boys get tea sets?" My B-I-L gave me a Daisy air pellet pistol (which I think is a totally cool gift) and DH gave my brother a beautiful Japanese tea set and tea ceremony book. Nobody had even thought anything about the strangeness of either until my brother made the comment about guns and tea sets. Maybe that says volumes about the family all by itself.

All in all it was a pleasant evening with good food, good company, good wine and a noticeable lack of any discord. That alone made it a nice, relaxing night.

The canvas floor cloth made a huge hit too, and I'd show it off and brag about it if I hadn't had my head up my butt and forgotten, yet AGAIN, to get a picture of the finished product. You'll just have to take my word for it that it looks pretty cool under the table it was made for and the colors work as well as I hoped they would.

As requested....

I completely forgot that Jen had asked to see a picture of the well-dressed flamingos! Here they are in their Santa hats and cheery holiday scarves. They get straw hats and flowers at Easter, masks and tons of beads at Mardi Gras, and sunglasses the rest of the year.

Incoherent rambling

Does "sorry, we're out of beta" strike anyone else as hysterically funny? That's like saying "this hammer quit working" isn't it?

Ziplock double zipper bags...no, I'm not adding them to my list of can't-do-without supplies, I'm making fun of them. Their ads start out with a jab at store brand bags with one zipper that doesn't work, then brings in their selling point of TWO zippers. So I'm thinking if you're too stupid to get ONE to work, why would you suddenly become smart enough to work double that?

One of the most annoying tv commercials in the history of mankind is for one of those local pager/cell phone companies here. Not only is it about twice as loud as everything else, but it has this high-pitched ringtone in the background. And to further compound the felony, they have "flexable" plans. Makes me want to scream (or whimper in the corner) every time it comes on.

Another pet peeve of mine, besides illiterate advertising, is the misuse of the word unique. There is no degree to unique! Things, by definition, cannot be more unique or very unique or the most unique. It's either unique or it's not. Which brings us to the use and misuse of phrases. A few that I've heard recently are case and point (case in point), I'd just assume (I'd just as soon), and for all intensive purposes (for all intents and purposes) among others. Do people who say that stuff even think about what they're saying or are they just mimicking the sound of something they heard? Reminds me of that new commercial for the cell phone that plays music where the guys are singing along with Rock the Casbah but they sing lock the cash box, argue about it for a second and then change it to lock the cat box. Southerners are notorious for using some truly weird sayings, but at least they make sense when you think about them. At least they do to us.

And to keep from sounding like a complete Grinch I leave you with a picture of the Tabasco cookies and the "cookies with hats" I made the other day. The recipe for the cookies with hats came from Vicci over at http://moonstarsandpaper.blogspot.com/ Hers are MUCH prettier than mine, but nobody will ever know since all 7 dozen were gone in a little over 24 hours. I hid the Tabasco cookies so I still have a couple dozen of those.

Santa Claus is coming to town...

...but much too early this year it seems. I'm going to blame it on the weather rather than my lack of organization. It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 75 degrees outside. Don those red tank tops and green shorts for holiday attire! I have a nice pair of lime green flip-flops that will work nicely I think.

Why is it that artists/crafters seem to have so much trouble sticking to one thing? I've spent the last 2 days on my knees making a painted canvas floorcloth for my mom (to be included with a 'gift certificate' for DH and I to hang wallpaper if she ever gets around to actually choosing some) instead of doing something at the sewing machine. Same thing with my S-I-L. We draw names each year among the adults so we only have to do one big present for each other instead of one for each of the fortylebben siblings and spouses. This is her first year as real family with us and I could have done a quilt for her, had I not done one for their wedding in April. Bad planning on my part I guess. So she's getting a pashmina with some needlefelting on it. And maybe a pair of gloves and a hat to match if I can find the right ones. But that would involve actually getting out to shop and that's WAAAAAY down on my list. I tend to go to one specific place looking for one specific thing, and if I have to hit a bunch of places just "looking" I usually change my mind about what to get so I can bypass the whole shopping experience as much as possible. That's the Scrooge in me coming out I guess, since shopping to me feels like rooting around in someone's closet. Maybe my expectations are too high also. If I see something I like, I expect the store to have it in the color/size/style I need. All too often, I find exactly what I'm looking for only to discover the only one in the right size only comes in Tangerine Sunrise, (I tried to work the word 'only' into that sentence one more time but just couldn't do it) or it doesn't come in any size but 2X-petite. Too much crap piled up too high on the displays, and it looks like my slob child has folded and stacked the stuff too. There is just some sort of switch in my brain that makes it impossible for me to justify spending 45 minutes rooting through a pile of stuff to spend $15 on it in the hope that the recipient will enjoy it.

And more Scrooginess on my part involves the incessant ads for "One Day Only" sales, and "Lowest Prices of the Season" sales. If they're one day only, why do they have them every Saturday? If J.C.Penney keeps lowering their prices every week to the lowest of the season, I can just wait until January and they'll GIVE me the stuff. Sort of makes me wonder just exactly what their mark-up is to begin with too if they can keep lowering the prices like that. And my favorite is the "Everything in the Store ON SALE" sales. Well, everything in the store with the exception of the list of departments in the fine print at the end of the ad, which they very neatly cover with lots of movement and color so even if you're looking for the exemptions you can't read them.

Thank God I live in the Deep South where Christmas lights hanging year-round don't get too many weird looks from the neighbors (reference Redneck Woman) so my decorations so far involve plugging in the lights on the front of the house. Yeah, I have pink flamingoes in scarves too, although with this heat they should be in bathing suits. We finally broke down last year and bought a plastic tree too, already lighted (long story about the Christmas tree that stayed up until April that was the last straw for a live one) and I'm leaning towards hanging tons of candy canes on it and being done with it. I found candy cane stripe wrapping paper (wrapping you say? Sure, I wrap everything as we're walking out the door to deliver it) at Dollar Tree yesterday and may be back to buy enough to do ALL the presents with this year. Keep everything simple, but it will involve actually attaching name tags to the presents. When the kids were little each one had their own paper so nothing needed tags. Another lazy way to do things. It will probably keep me out of the running for Mother-of-the-Year, but I'll get over it.

My kids and their mouths

Not smart mouths, mind you, my kids know better than that. Medical mouth stuff. My son has been at the doctor twice trying to get his healed or at least get some relief from the pain. He went with the GF to a sorority party and they shipped them up to Laurel on a bus. On the way back, there was some sort of argument over music (he takes his music very seriously) and he wound up in the middle of a fight. He may or may not have been actually INVOLVED in the fight, the stories differ, but at some point he got pinned between 2 bus seats and took a punch in the cheek. It chopped up the inside of his cheek and the side of his tongue and gave him a split lip. After a couple of days, the cuts turned into a HUGE ulcer in his mouth and my poor baby could barely even eat. Not eating is a critical situation for him. So off he goes to the doctor to get antibiotics, some kind of topical stuff and a mouth rinse. He seems all better now but it took a few days. He also did really well on his Philosophy of Politics paper and exam yesterday :)

My youngest daughter had all 4 wisdom teeth out several months ago and things haven't been completely right since. She's been on several rounds of antibiotics and been back and forth to three different dentists. First, she had a dry socket, then one of the 'dissolving stitches' didn't dissolve and had to be removed , then she had swelling and bruising come up for no known reason, then muscle cramps in her jaw, then a big knot came up in her neck. One dentist told her to chew gum for the muscle cramps, then the next one a week later said one of her molars was out of alignment and the gum chewing was making it worse so he re-aligned her tooth. Another of the dentists thinks the surgery may have resulted in some nerve damage that would account for the fact that she's been in constant pain to some degree since the wisdom teeth were removed. She's BACK on antibiotics with another appointment next week.

It just kills me when the kids are in pain and I can't fix it.

Bryndan and the GF (pretend that's Sprite they're holding) and a picture of Aidan I'm playing with for a quilt.

Decorating for Christmas

At least I think that's what they're doing. A few minutes after letting the dogs back in about 5:00 I heard a bunch of rolling around and barking and grunting. They have a habit of getting too wound up and knocking things over when they roughhouse inside so I went to check on them. They've dragged the stuffed animals out of the bag my daughter had packed up to get rid of and looked soooooooo cute when I walked in and "caught" them. Is there any breed in the world that has more human facial expression than Labs? Jake is the brown one (referred to as "Brown dog" when he's where he can hear us talking about him) and dOg is the black one.

The Nutcracker

Last night, my youngest daughter took my father to a performance of The Nutcracker for his Christmas present. She is carrying on a long tradition of mine and perhaps building one of her own. My dad told her it was the best Christmas present he'd ever received, and I don't think he was just being polite.

The first time I ever saw a live performance of The Nutcracker, I was 11 years old. For some unknown reason I got it in my head that I HAD to see it that year. The music was familiar to me but I'd never seen a live performance of it. I went by myself that first year, and for many years after that. I still have vivid memories of my dad dropping me off and picking me up before I could drive myself. Once my daughters were born and old enough to sit still through it and enjoy it, my dad started going with us every year. I didn't miss a single year going until I was about 40, and they stopped having the big professional production here for a couple of years. We even suffered through a show at the Madison Arts Center the last year we all went together but our old bodies and arthritis couldn't stand the wooden bleachers and bad sound and barely-heated gym. Over the years we have seen some incredible ballet troupes, and some really amateur ones, heard full orchestras and screeching recorded noise, seen the absolute best and worst of productions, costumes, sets, lighting and choreography. One year they changed everything up and we left simply shaking our heads and wondering where the mice and pas de deaux were. No Chinese or Russian dancers, and dancing candy canes (we think that's what they were anyway) instead of the army of mice. It's like an old friend to see the same sets and costumes year after year, and there's no real reason to do more than tweak the staging on a classic.

I was floored when she told me a month or so ago that she wanted to take him. She worked for the money to buy the tickets and took care of all the arrangements herself. She spent an hour yesterday trying on everything in her closet looking for the "right" Nutcracker attire. We've worn everything from black velvet to blue jeans so I left it up to her. She looked beautiful and elegant in her black pants and pretty shirt and her paternal grandmother's white fur coat. I can't believe how grown-up she looked and acted last night, but I was so proud of her and so happy that the years of taking (sometimes dragging) them to get some culture has seemingly paid off. The Nutcracker was something that has been a part of my holidays for so many years that I can't help but be sentimental when it takes on importance to one of my kids too. Maybe our traditions were not all for naught.

7:30 on a Saturday morning....

...and the phone rings. It's my son. Of course, I have visions of bail money or a crushed fender or another broken bone since he is NEVER up that early for ANY reason. Thankfully, not this time though. He's just calling to tell us they have the day off so they're coming home for a quick visit if that's ok with us. When is a visit from the one of the kids NOT ok? Ten minutes later, the phone rings again. Yep. It's him. This time, he needs directions to a local high school. A girl in Jackson called him in Hattiesburg on his cell phone to get directions to the place in Jackson so he calls me from Hattiesburg (I'm in Jackson) so he can call her back and she can call her brother, who is probably in Memphis or something. Oh the joys of a cell phone. Meanwhile, each time the phone rings I have to wipe the glue and paint off my hands to answer it because it MIGHT be something important.

My oldest daughter asked yesterday if she can invite a friend home for Christmas too. Something about a feud with a sibling and an unwillingness (or maybe a request) to be in the same house at the same time, so she apparently has the choice of hanging around an empty college town in an empty apartment over the holidays or coming visit us. My daughter is the Pied Piper of people with bad home situations so naturally her solution is to just "adopt" her for Christmas this year. It did make me feel good to know she'd already invited her before she asked me because she knew it would be ok though. That's the same way my "spare" son came to live with us. He followed my son home one day 3 years ago and he's still here with us, even though my son hasn't lived at home for 2 years.

I finally finished the pieces of art for the blog swap thing too. I got Sombra's mailed off Tuesday and the rest will go out either today or Monday. And in my usual fashion, I was 90% finished with the original pieces when I changed horses totally and started new projects. I can never do the simple thing either and choose something that was time- but not labor- intensive. Many layers of stuff that has to dry well between layers so I'd do a bit, let it sit a day and do a bit more. At least I had the forethought to do a bunch at one time. There are definitely some tweaks necessary, but this is something I'll do more of, maybe a lot more. I have some ideas already for a few Christmas gifts with them and my fingers are crossed that the strangers from my blog like them.

Flashback to 9/11

I'm a long-time poster on a Chicago message board and have many friends up there. On 9/11 we were all frantic to touch base with everyone who worked downtown after they started evacuating people. Not knowing any details, and hearing that Chicago was a target was nerve-wracking until everyone was accounted for. Today, I was merrily chatting away on IM with my friend in Chicago when he says they have to evacuate, sirens are going off, alarms are sounding and everyone is being told to get the hell out of the building. His only information was a shooting and possible hostages a few floors above him. After the news this morning about the 'lone terrorist' and his bomb planting plans of course my mind jumped immediately to that. Fortunately, he was one of the friends posting on 9/11 with us so he knew I'd be worried. As soon as he got outside he called to let me know he was OK and give me what little additional info he had. I didn't realize just HOW panicked I was until I actually heard his voice either. It meant a lot to me that he called from the middle of the confusion in single-digit weather while he was wondering how the hell he was going to get home, just because he knew I'd be worried if I didn't hear from him.

I'm thankful he's OK but you people up there have GOT to stop scaring me like this!

What a surprise!

I almost said "unexpected surprise" but that's pretty redundant. Aren't all surprises unexpected? Anyway, I did a google search on "fruitcake brick" and my blog came up on the very first page! 'Brick fruitcake' brings it up close to the top of the second page. Of course neither of those search terms has a damn thing to do with quilts, art, or art quilting so I guess I shouldn't get too excited. Well, maybe a little bit excited.

And on the quilting front, my piece "Orphans of the Motherland" will be shown to another group of people in Minnesota. It's going to an IAPP dinner/presentation to be used to illustrate a talk on visions and living your dreams. I think that is a very cool use for it. The other very cool use for it is the pleasure my friend (and the owner of the quilt) Mary gets from seeing it hanging in her office. As the saying goes, my quilt travels more than I do.

If it was raining soup...

...I'd be out there with a fork. After all the work I did on the Christmas stockings, and racing madly to get my son's quilt finished for his Christmas present, I didn't get a single picture of any of it. The GF is supposedly getting pics for me and emailing them but we had a mini-crisis with the son yesterday so the pictures from her are running a bit behind schedule. I'm guessing her attention was on nursing him back to health rather than doing a favor for me. I was really proud of his quilt too, and made his stocking to match. I had to post Ben's and say it was Bryndan's so he wouldn't know he was getting the quilt too, but he seemed to be pleasantly surprised. I know the GF was surprised she got the "Dreidel" quilt. Hopefully, she'll send a pic of Ben's Chinese mixed media piece too since that's another one I never got a pic of.

All in all, I think he did a beautiful job of entertaining the 2 sets of parents and we all had a wonderful time. I was particularly impressed that he made the eggnog from scratch including whipping the egg whites to form soft peaks. It made such a big hit that he had to whip up a second batch before we left. I am so proud of him and it's almost scary watching him mature SO much, SO quickly. He seems so settled in his apartment and, well, so mature.

More Christmas stuff

Thinking back through the years and the stuff we did for gifts when the kids were small and needed teacher presents and such has brought back good memories. The Chex mix was always a hit as a gift, and the kids had such fun picking out the "right" packaging for it every year. We've used painted and "stained glass" (colored tissue and white glue) jars, painted tins, decorated lunch bags, small cookie jars, baskets, pretty much anything that either had a lid or would hold a plastic bag. And of course they always decorated it, whatever it was.

We've baked banana nut bread in terra cotta flower pots (decorated, of course) and stuck suckers in the top like flowers. That was a really big hit with the teachers. And at 20 cents each for the pots and the bread mix that I could get 4 loaves out of for a dollar, it was a big hit with me too. Just remember to bake in one set of pots and decorate the other, then transfer the loaves to the decorated ones. Oil the inside of the baking pots and line with wax paper or something to cover the hole in the bottom.

And the "fruitcakes." We can't forget the "fruitcakes." I had a request for one the other day and it's been at least 10 years since I made the first one. It's a truly easy recipe too.

Grandma's Heirloom "Fruitcake"
1 brick (the tan one if possible) with no holes
craft acrylics - red, green, yellow, etc
plastic wrap or cellophane
label

Sponge paint the brick to look like a fruitcake, or just sponge paint it to kindasorta look like one.
Print an adhesive label on the computer with whatever sort of weird gibberish you want. Seems to me like we put something about the Ice Age on the original one, but it's morphed over the years and I'm not sure I even still have a copy of it. Wrap it with the plastic or cellophane and stick the label on it. The closer you can get the label to look like the real thing (ingredients: marble, iron ore, dinosaur dung, etc) the better it is, regardless of how much or little the thing actually LOOKS like a fruitcake.

People have used these for doorstops, bookends, whatever you would normally use a brick for, and I have a couple of friends who bring theirs out each year with the Christmas decorations. For whatever reason, adults really seem to get a kick out of them and they're great for those stupid parties where you have to bring something cheap. I had one woman who wanted 10 of them for bunko prizes too.

And of course we did innumerable theme baskets from the Dollar Tree too. Cooking stuff, with a few hand-written recipes included. Bath salts the kids made that were wrapped in loofah mitts. One year they did a whole raft of different types of spice mixes and then got stuck when it came time to pack them. We wound up with those old fashioned salt and pepper shakers, which by good fortune happened to fit 4 perfectly in a wire mesh napkin holder. We made 5 different mixes and it was interesting to watch the kids try to decide which 4 flavors each recipient got. The ensuing conversations as they justified their choice about why the math teacher got the Cajun instead of the poultry was hilarious.

And for our own friends and 'special' teachers, we've made Kahlua and Bailey's on occasion too.
DH's dad swears we tried to poison him one year with it. My bright idea was to pack it in Grolsch beer bottles with those locking caps. DH drank the beer and I made the Kahlua then we labeled it and packed it up and shipped it off to him. Apparently, when it got there it no longer had the label attached and for some reason he assumed we had sent him a single bottle of beer for Christmas. So off it goes to the fridge to chill for a week or so. He settles into his recliner one night to watch tv with a bottle of beer, opens it and takes a big slug of ice cold Kahlua. He swears he spewed it 20 feet. We still giggle uncontrollably at that mental image.

Magic Reindeer Food

1 bag dried split-peas
1 (pkg, cup, handful, whatever) of something else (oatmeal, rice, vermicelli, whatever)
red food coloring
glitter

Put the oatmeal, rice, whatever you're using in a ziplock with a few drops of red food color. Squish it up until it's all red. Let it dry and mix the split-peas and a tiny amount of glitter with it and you have Magic Reindeer Food. You can leave the glitter out if you're worried about the animals getting it, but if you craft like I do it's already in the yard (and in the carpet and on the deck and in your hair) and the glitter they make now is so tiny I don't see a real problem with it, but that's my disclaimer.

Put a little bit of the mix in one of those small ziplock bags and add this tag to it:

Magic Reindeer Food
On Christmas Eve, right before bed, take the food out in the yard. Turn around three times with your eyes tightly shut and scatter the Reindeer Food. Then run as fast as you can and hop in bed and go to sleep. The glitter will sparkle to show the way and the reindeer will have a snack while Santa is at your house.

There are endless variations on not only the recipe (I haven't found any others that use the split-peas, most use colored sugar and/or hay) but also on the instructions on the tag. We made and gave these out by the dozens every year when my kids were little and they were always well received. And now the kids are beginning to pass it along to another generation. My oldest teaches a class of 8 year olds in an after-school program and she's making this for her kids, along with candy cane reindeer, if we can ever find the little tiny google eyes. We have the pipe cleaners and pompoms waiting.

YUM!

My son's response when I asked if we could bring anything when we go down later today was "Chex mix" so that's what he's getting. All of the kids have, independently of each other, not so subtly hinted that we needed to make some, so we got enough supplies for 2 batches. I can smell it baking all the way back here in the work room. The silly people at Chex only call for 1 cup of pretzels and 1 cup of nuts. It makes us laugh as we dump the entire bag of pretzels and 2 cans of nuts in it too. My oldest daughter is taking one batch back with her to put in treat bags for her co-workers and her students. She's also giving them little bags of reindeer food if we can ever remember to buy the dried split peas. That is NOT something on my normal grocery list.

Oh well....

So much for my daily posting! I skipped yesterday and didn't even realize it. I did manage to get a LOT of stuff done yesterday and today though. It turned off cold here for a day or two and I was expecting to hurt but I've been relatively pain-free this weekend so I've been knocking out some work while I can. Of course, everything that I've accomplished this weekend has to wait to be posted since it's all gifts but I'll get some of it up tomorrow night after they're delivered. I might even remember to get pictures of the stuff this time. It occurred to me as Julie pulled out of the driveway yesterday that I hadn't gotten any pictures of the finished carousel horse quilt. She was thrilled with it so that's good enough. The one picture of it I do have is not a good one, and the colors are way off. She thought it was navy from the picture and it's actually a bright purple.

My oldest daughter is home again this weekend for another funeral of a friend's parent. It's nice having her home but, damn, I hate the reason for it.