safe to post now that school is over

I quilted this up last weekend and have been saving it up to post until after school is over.  My friend who does a lot of binding for me made this quilt for another teacher at my school who didn't get rehired for next year.  I quilt things for her about once a month and she does a beautiful job on all of her piecing.  Her seams match perfectly and I'm always a little intimidated to quilt something for her because I always feel like my quilting isn't always so perfect.  I am not so nervous when doing charity quilting because most of the people who receive the quilts wouldn't know a mistake if you pointed it out to them, but I feel like a quilter could see a mistake a mile away.  Often I realize I'm too hard on myself, but don't like feeling nervous like that so that's the main reason I don't quilt for hire.  I figure if I don't charge anything, nobody can ask for their money back. :)

This is a very simple pattern, but very pleasant to look at and would look great scrappy too.  I'm not sure what the pattern is called, but I bet you could figure it out if you thought about it a little.

The text a mother never wants to get

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-shooting-20160601-snap-story.html

I got a text from my daughter who attends UCLA this morning around 10am saying there was an active shooter on campus and she didn't want me to worry.  Oh, yeah, that's going to work kid!

She said she was 'on the hill' which is where the dorms are, which is about 1/2 mile from where the shooting was so I thought she was in her dorm.  Turns out she was locked in a computer lab.  She had just been let out of her class a few minutes early.  Her class was right next to the building where the shooting took place.  If she had gotten out on time, she would have been locked in the building right next to where the shooting took place.

My first thought was, will they let you out in time for lunch?  She assured me she had breakfast and had some snacks on her.  I love that kid, always prepared for an emergency!

As more information becomes available, it looks like a student shot and killed a professor and then killed himself.

After my student brought a gun to school last week, it just sends chills down my spine.

I'm glad my daughter is ok and so are all of her friends.

Last real day of school--Hooray!

Three days of finals and another year is in the books.  I'm happy to say that I survived another year.  This one was a rough one for sure.  I learned a lot about myself and made it through some difficult situations.  I look forward to resting and rejuvenating this summer and know that next year will be much better.  Surely it cannot be as stressful as this year has been.  At least I have my quilting to keep me sane.

Here we go

Final week of school for the 2015/2016 year.  At times I thought I'd never make it and at times the year sped by.  Weird how that can happen.  Here's hoping for an uneventful day.

productive weekend

11 hours of grading this weekend and I still managed to get 5 quilts done.  I counted and there are 74 quilts hanging in the closet in my son's room.  He came home for a little bit this weekend and 'gently' reminded me that he would like his room back when he returns in 2 weeks.  There is no way I will have all 74 quilts quilted by the time he returns, but at least I know how many there are and have an idea of where I need to go to get them all done.  Once summer is here, I will have lots more time for quilting.

My daughter gave me her old iPhone 5 last week and I'm loving having so many things that I can do on my phone now.  I downloaded an app called Productive that lets me keep track of all of the things I want to do in a day.  Things like drink more water and take the dogs for a walk and read my Bible and do more quilting.  Some days I just want to sit on the couch and be lazy, like today, but getting a little reminder that there are things to be done helps get me off the couch and get some things done around the house.

I've decided it is really time to tackle the mess that is in the garage so I started in one corner and have actually thrown things away.  Today I threw away the banner I made for my oldest daughter's soccer team when she was about 7.  She is now 26.  If you could tell me why I still had it after all of these years, that would be great.  It had stars on it with all the names of the players painted on.  I have no idea who these girls ar.  It was covered with spider webs and falling apart, yet there it sat for the past 19 years, waiting for today.

I also threw away some things that had been ruined by moths and rats.  I once had visions of spinning my own yarn and came across some wool that was full of moths and bobbing that had been chewed by rats.  Into the trash they went.  I can actually see the floor in one corner of the garage and the garbage can is full.  Good thing we have two cans, so there is one for the house garbage.  Pick up day is Thursday.  Now, to keep motivated throughout the summer and hopefully get rid of half the stuff that is out there that hasn't been touched in the 11 years we've lived in this house.

time warp?

Why is it time goes by so much faster on the weekend than during the week days?  Surely there is a time warp phenomenon going on.

being productive

I did manage to get a couple of quilts done this week.  This is made with 3 1/2 inch strips.  Having the Accuquilt Strip dies is so handy for cutting up bits and pieces of leftover scraps.  I get a TON of scraps donated and sometimes they are such odd shapes and sizes and throwing them on the strip dies just makes the most sense.  Then, you just sew them end to end until you have a very long strip.  Decide on the width of the quilt and cut all of your strips that length.  Grab random strips and sew, sew, sew.  In a couple of hours, you have a top put together.

I love the randomness of quilts like this, but I'm sure you could pick a color scheme or cut the 3 1/2 inch strips into different lengths as well for a more planned look.

These quilts will be donated to the people of Fort McMurray once we get a bunch.  I'm hoping to have enough collected by July 15 to get a shipment sent up, but the date isn't set in stone.

Today I found time to start the great garage clean out.  I actually threw some things away rather than just moved things around.  One of my students is collecting kids books for her aunt who teaches in a low income school in Southern California.  I went through a couple of my buckets of kids books from when I taught first grade and picked out a box full.  I had probably 50 boxes of books at one time and now I'm down to about 4.  I'm saving all of the Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears because those are MY favorites.  I think I have every one in each series and maybe one day I will have grandkids to read the to.

What a week this has been

On Tuesday, my youngest had his band concert.  He plays the trumpet and was excited to be playing for the parents.  It was standing room only which is a good sign that music is alive and well in the elementary school.  He plans to continue playing next year in the middle school so may be following in his brother's footsteps.  All of my kids played an instrument in elementary school.

My oldest daughter played the clarinet, daughter #2 played clarinet, then switched to flute when she found out there were too many clarinet players.  My oldest son played trombone and then the youngest plays the trumpet.  Of course they couldn't all play the same instrument, that would just make too much sense.  When the girls got to the middle school, they gave up their instruments for other interests, but my son continued and still plays trombone in college.  He loves jazz music best and I've come to appreciate it after having to listen to it for so many years.  At first I thought it was just noise, but once it was explained to me year after year, I began to hear what others were hearing and now I actually enjoy most of it.  Sometimes when a soloist gets in their own zone and just goes off, I go back to those first days of thinking, what are they doing? But at least I understand what they are trying to do.

Then on Wednesday, this happened.
http://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/fairfield/police-arrest-student-with-gun-ammo-at-vanden-high/

He was one of my students.  I have him in my 5th period class and they got him during 4th.  I found out later he was planning on jumping another student because of a belt.  Really?  You ruin your life over a belt?  He's a student I had concerns about at the very beginning of the year.  I asked for a parent meeting, the parent showed up and met with the other teachers but because I have a 7th period class, she couldn't wait the extra few minutes for me to finish class and just left.  I was the one who asked for the meeting and she told the counselor she had heard enough and knew what she needed to do to help her son.

We had another meeting a couple of months ago because he still wasn't doing well or passing any classes.  I left that meeting sad that things were not going to change.

The next morning I got an email from a different parent saying there was another student in a different class with a 'kill list'.  He's an odd student, very reserved who refuses to talk to anyone.  That parent thought it might have been this student who was finally acting out on his list.  I informed the administration who searched the student and didn't find anything.  There wasn't really anything they could do.

That same day I had to file a CPS report on a student who got in a fight with her stepfather and spent the previous day in juvenile hall.

Sheep dissection lab

Yesterday a student in another class fainted during a lab and the paramedics had to be called because she hit her head hard on the way down.  We have some co-teaching classes with the special ed department and the co-teacher decided she did not want to participate in the dissection so just didn't show up to class.  That was the class where the student fainted and left the teacher with a class full of students and no extra help.  He had to deal with a student passed out, no one to call for help and of course the kids all freaking out.

heart, lungs, trachea, liver, gall bladder

We've been fighting all year with the administration and special ed department about these co-teaching classes because of things like this where the co-teacher isn't doing what they are supposed to do.  Imagine if I just decided not to show up to my class one day!  I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble.  But nothing ever happens when they don't show up, or come late or leave early and they get paid the same as the regular classroom teacher.

You have to get your hands dirty in this job.  The kids just love it!  Some of them decided a heart surgeon was not their calling.

We are getting some training this summer after I've complained almost daily this year and hopefully will have a meeting before school starts next year to lay some ground rules so this doesn't happen again.

 We have 4 days of school left this year, three of which are finals.  To say I'm excited is an understatement.  I have tons of grading to do this weekend and lots of cleaning up to do.  I feel like renting a big dumpster and just throwing everything away and starting over, but that would be too easy!  But, I'm in the mood to just start purging, which is a good thing.  I also need some serious quilting time to de-stress from this crazy week.  There are days when I wonder what on earth I got myself into by becoming a teacher and then there are moments like yesterday when my students realized it was the end of the year and started asking if they could be in my class again next year.

"Can you request me?"

I told them I have no pull with the counseling office.  If I did, I would hand pick my classes for only students with no drama.  But, what fun would that be?

no idea

I have no idea where this quilt top came from.  Some of the seams were hand sewn and some were done by machine.  The hand sewn ones were very tiny stitches.  I would guess it was made a long time ago so has aged nicely and is now ready to be finished and gifted to a baby.  It will make a perfect car seat quilt.

Tiny Tumblers

My friend Nancy is the expert at the tumbler quilts.  She takes the smallest scraps that most people would just throw away and lays them out into eye pleasing designs.  She calls them A-B patterns.  She taught Kindergarten for a very long time and now teaches special ed.  These quilts are made with 17x17 blocks or 289 little scraps of fabric.  It's the ultimate recycling project.  These little quilts take a long time to sew together and yet she has the patience to make dozens of them.  She's also really good at the bigger ones, but I think these little ones give her a special kind of pleasure.

All quilters are a little on the crazy size-taking perfectly good fabric, cutting it up and sewing it back together again, but when you can take fabric that is destined for the landfill and turn it into something useful, it brings you back to the roots of quilting.  After all, isn't that the original purpose of a quilt?  To take something like old clothes that were worn out and cut out the parts that were still useable.  A piece from Dad's old jacket and mom's old dress and then sew those small pieces together to make a warm cover for the bed.  Now we just throw those useless things away and run to WalMart to get whatever new things we need.