2nd Not So Top Secret Project

Finished the second Not So Top Secret Top and it is in the box of other tops waiting to get full so I can ship it to Alycia for her Quilts of Valor project. Have you made one yet? You can find the pattern on the left hand side of this webpage under favorite patterns. It is easy and turns out great! I have one more in blues/creams cut out and then I'm going to make one in scrappy colors, maybe greens? I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the look of this quilt and think every Veteran should have one =)

This is the first top I finished. This one looks like the pattern on Alycia's website. As I looked at the second one, there was something different about it and it took me forever to figure out what I did 'wrong'! Here is the first one for you to compare. Look how I turned the 16 patch blocks on the second one (not on purpose of course) and got a totally different effect on it. I love the second one too, but it isn't the same as the pattern. Sorry, Alycia, I can't follow directions.

Look what I found!

See, I told you it was a treasure hunt! I found this quilt wallhanging in the garage today. It was one of the first quilts I made, back in the early 90's. I did a little quilting way back then, when I only had one child and then put everything away for a very long time. I really only got back into quilting out of necessity. People kept giving me fabric and I finally gave in and decided I had to do something with it. I would say I seriously got hooked on quilting about 10 months ago. Of course, when people hear you are a quilter, they give you more fabric, so the amount of fabric has increased by 1,000 fold in the last 10 months and I don't see an end to that, no matter how fast I work. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth trying to keep up or not.

Treasure Hunt

Ok, so I'm looking at the garage cleaning as an adventure, a treasure hunt if you will. How else can I keep going? So far, I have thrown away one huge trash can of junk (why was I keeping some of this stuff?) and have three black garbage bags full. I called for an extra trash pick up on Monday. I have three more black bags almost full so I have to keep going to get my money's worth on the trash pick up. With the cost of gas, it is cheaper to have the city come out than for me to take a trip to the dump. It costs $12 to dump a load (up to 200 pounds or something like that) and only $16 for them to come get it from me. You can't get to the end of the block on $4 worth of gas, so hey, come and get my trash!

The weirdest thing I found that I had been keeping was the nose bulb from when Ariel was born. That was 18 years ago. It wasn't in a special 'oh, these are baby memories' bucket or anything, just mixed in with other junk. You know, when you have a baby, they give you one of those because a baby can't blow their nose. So, when the baby gets a cold, you are supposed to use it to suck the buggers out of their nose. Yeah, every kid loves those things. Of course, my kids thought that was so gross!

I went through about 50 buckets of junk in the last two days and emptied about 30 of them and consolidated the rest. I now have about 40 empty buckets. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those...maybe clean the house?

Today the city is supposed to be sealing the street. I think it makes it look worse, but what do I know. We can't park on the street and it is going to stink, so I don't think I will be working in the garage. Maybe I will get some time for quilting =) Or at least time to look through all the craft books I found. I have to sort them and whatever doesn't fit on the shelf has to go!

Here is my older son helping clean out the empty buckets. I told you they don't stay put in their buckets for long.

Garage progress

Well, here are some 'before' pictures. Actually, some of these are 'during' because I was too embarassed to take them before I actually started the project. I couldn't even walk through the garage to get out, so this is a good start.

Then, there are some 'after the first day' pictures to show the progress. I'm excited to get a ping pong table in the garage. You see, ping pong tables make great fabric cutting tables. Don't tell my husband that.

I have a friend with a pool table. Same story. Her family hasn't played pool in years and her husband has offered to get rid of the table many times because it isn't being used for its intended purpose. Who cares what something was supposed to be used for. I say, quilting is more important! ANY large, horizonal surface around here is fair game for fabric cutting and have you seen the size of a pool table???

I also wanted to show you my other project. It's a dog house. This is day one. Yes, it looks like a bunch of boards. But, give it some time and it will be a dog house. That's my daughter's boyfriend. He wants to be an architect or engineer or something like that. He likes to build things. Really, I'm not taking advantage of him =)

Look at my shed, doesn't it look nice? This is how I would like the rest of the house to be, but alas, the kids won't stay in their plastic tubs for long...

This is my pond. There are about 30 koi and goldfish in there. Last summer I bought them when they were about 1/2 inch long and now some are about 5 inches long. I just love coming out to feed them in the evenings.

Here's a couple of my fruit, apple, pear. Small trees, but one day, they will actually feed us...maybe if the birds don't get them first.

And finally, this is the rusty nail/staple that got me. Why is it still around? Good question!!!

cleaning out the garage

Today, I got the weird idea to clean out the garage. I have no idea where that came from, but I'm out there actually having a good time. I'm finding lots of treasures! I found some fabulous patriotic fabrics in a bucket way down buried under some junk. I just wish I had more room in the trash cans. It is good that trash day is tomorrow. So far I've only found one dead mouse. We live right next to a huge field and when we first moved into the house, I caught about 50 mice in the kitchen. I used to have a couple of those live catch traps. I would catch two or three mice a day and then take them 2 miles away and release them. The next night I would catch two or three more. Maybe they were the same two or three. After a couple months of this, I got tired of the catch and release and it started to gross me out. So, I invested in about 100 of the snap traps. I know you can re-use them, but that was just gross. I went through about half of those before figuring out how the mice got into the house. There was a small hole behind the stove where they were coming into the kitchen. Once I plugged up that hole, I haven't had a mouse in the house again! I'm a slow learner sometimes!

Hubby wants to put a ping pong table in the garage. It is a 3 car garage, but we have never had a car in there. Well, maybe the first day when we bought the house, before we moved anything in. There are about 500 buckets of junk in the garage. I'm in a dumping mood and have been throwing stuff away like crazy today. I have a horrible tendency to save everything for 'just in case' I need it. It's a genetic disease I inherited from my dad's side of the family. His sister saved every newspaper for years and you couldn't walk through her house. I hope I never get that bad, but I can see bits of that showing up in myself. I have to fight it some days more than others. Today is a good day to get stuff out, so I had better get back before I lose the energy and willpower to pitch things.

more piecing

Yesterday was some piecing of tops. I justify it, saying that I'm just trying to clean up a little bit. You see, I had cut these out about 3 weeks ago and they were sitting on the kitchen table so they needed to be sewn together instead of just put into a plastic baggie and forgotten about. This pattern is called Barney's Blocks. It's from the book Even More Baby Quilts by Ursula Reikes and I checked it out from the library. It is going on my Christmas list because there are about 7 or 8 really easy nice patterns in there that are nice looking. I wrote them out and am going to try them all. I made two the same because I had just cut and cut fabric without really measuring or counting how much and then just made blocks until I had enough for two quilts. I have one block left over. People call those orpahan blocks. I'll start an orphan block pile and when I get enough, I'll make an orphan block quilt. Those are pretty cute too.

I am also working on the Not so Top Secret Project and am almost done. Today I just have to sew the 7 strips together and put the border around it. That one takes a long time to do, but looks so great. I have one more cut out. I like having one of those going to work on while I work on other projects because it takes so long to do in one sitting. The first one took me about 5 hours of sewing time.

There was one more winner in the fair, that I didn't mention yesterday. That was Ariel. She entered 4 poems in the adult poetry contest since she is 18 now. Turns out, she could have entered as a youth one more time, since she was still 17 in January, but we didn't know that. She won 3rd place for her poem about a dead oak tree. She wrote it on the way back from visiting Redlands College this last summer, right before she found out she won the Buck Scholarship. I'll have to ask her if I can publish it here for you to read. It is really good.

As I was picking up her poems, the lady who had won best of show for the poems was there picking up her poems. She asked me if I was a poet. When I told her that my daughter was the writer, she had many kind words for her and said to keep encouraging her to write when the mood strikes and eventhough she might want to be a novelist, to keep writing poetry. I thought that was very sweet.

Solano County Fair winnings

Yesterday was pick up day for the Solano County Fair. I didn't do as well as in years past. Seems some years I win everything and some years I win nothing. this year, I entered 7 things and only won 2 prizes. That's ok, they give you a free ticket for entering, so we got to get in and see the fair for free.

Emily on the other hand did very well. She won the sweepstakes awards for sewing and industrial arts (woodshop). I liked the contrast of that one!

Sweepstakes is when you win the most first place awards for a category, so you have to enter a lot of things and do well in that category. She had a special ceremony on Sunday evening and got two trophies.

Here are my latest two QOV quilt tops. These are the Ultimate Scrap Quilt pattern--you can find it on the favorites link on the left hand side. I love it because it goes together so quickly and looks so great. I think I have another 9 cut out and ready to go. They finish out about 55 x 65.

These two stacks of fabric were given to me by a lady from San Francisco. She found me through the Binky Patrol website. Since I'm the Binky Patrol coordinator and there isn't a closer local chapter, we finally were able to get together yesterday and she dropped off this wonderful quilting fabric that her mother had collected over the years. Her mother has alzheimers and isn't able to quilt anymore so the lady wanted the fabrics to be put to good use. I can promise they will be!

And finally, just had to show you this one of Michael's eyes. For some reason, he wanted me to take a picture of his eyes. At first, the camera didn't want to focus, but then it came into focus and took this picture.

Good news

I don't have to get a tetanus shot. My last one was August 2006, so I can step on as many rusty nails as I want. Let's see, that would be ZERO! But, at least I don't have to drive to the doctor =)

I'm trying to find the best place online to order thread for my new quilting machine. I'm getting advice from anyone and everyone and ordering small amounts from different people to see who is the best. When all the different threads get here, I will try them all out and then pick out the one I like the best and order a bunch.

I've ordered from these so far and one other I can't remember. I am trying to be better about writing these things down, but have troubles doing that.

www.kmquiltingsupply.com/Thread/default.asp
www.sewthankful.com
www.superiorthreads.com

I'm ordering

King Tut
Perma-Core
LYI
Signature, solid and variegated
and something else I can't remember.

I'm trying everything that everyone is suggesting to see what is the cheapest that I can get by with.

King Tut is by far the most expensive. It costs $17.95 for 2,000 yards. Perma-Core is the least expensive at $8 for 6,000 yards and is a polyester.

The local quilt shop only carries LYI and I know that works so I will at least have something to play with if the others don't work for me.

OUCH!

Last night I was helping hubby in the backyard and stepped on a rusty staple/nail. This board has been there, in the exact same spot for over a year and I have managed to step over it about 1,000 times, but last night it finally got me. Why did I never move it? I thought about moving it probably 100 times, but it's just one of those things. I see you rusty staples. You will never get me! Well, last night they did. If you really want to get a good look, click on the picture for a close up. How gross is that? I made the picture small for everyone who thinks puncture wounds are gross.

I was wearing shoes, so this went through the shoe and then through my toe. I didn't feel it hit bone, but I did feel it tear flesh. It also hung off my toe for a while as I stood there calling for help. My 4 year old ran for daddy who ran very quickly to help me. He jumped on a nail as a child so could feel my pain.

I have to call the doctor this morning to find out when my last tetanus shot was. The advice nurse said last night if it has been more than 5 years I need one. I thought 10 years, but she said if the nail was rusty, it's only 5. I have 72 hours to get the shot. I wonder if I waited 73 hours if I would instantly die. I wonder if anyone has tried to wait 72 hours and 1 minute. How do they know you only have 72 hours? I think doctors make these things up so that if you step on a nail on a Friday, they can wait until Monday to see you. I bet you really have 75 hours...

On a happier note...here are pictures of the two quilts my mom made. These are going to Kazakhstan. My mom is just the best quilt maker ever!

And here is the elephant blocks quilt that made me decide I had fixed the thread breaking problem. The thread didn't break once on this one =)

Cutting party

Today was the North Hills Quilter's Cutting Party. We met at Cory's house and there were 6 of us sorting fabrics. I brought 6 boxes of fabric. Each box had about 50 yards in it. We pulled fabrics that went together and sorted them into threes. Each baggie contained 3 yards of fabrics that went together. The ladies are going to take the fabrics home to sew into the quilt tops and then bring them back to me to quilt them. I think we put together about 25 or so quilt tops.

But, what I want to know is, why did I bring back 5 boxes of fabric? Where did the fabric go? How is it that the remaining fabric expanded so much to fill the space left by the missing fabric?

I forgot to take my camera to the party, but next time I will and take some pictures of all the sorting and matching going on.