A Little Wedding Planning....Drunkard's Path Is On the Wall

The Design Wall is a very patient tool.

The invitations arrived at 7:30 p.m. Monday (a new record for UPS). The hubs, DD, a couple bridesmaids and I  assembled, stamped, and stuffed. Tuesday, I stood in the lobby of the Post Office and affixed numerous stamps to each and turned them over for mailing. Guests started receiving them today. One tick off the Wedding Checklist. Next up...mini pies/cake/caramel apple favors.

The dining room looks like a hurricane passed through..it's currently the staging area for Wedding Centerpieces. I'm working on a lit 'Wish Tree' at the moment. Figuring out the best way to adhere Batik fabric to card stock that will be run through the Accquilt GO! and die cut into leaf shapes to hang on the tree after a guest writes a little wedding wish on it. Great excuse to go to the fabric store yesterday ... needed fall colored Batiks. Any glue recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Been piecing curved Drunkard's pieces for a couple of days now.

I'm really liking the decorative stitching and couching I did on each pie.

And as of last night...the last block was pieced. Tonight they all got a quick press and I woke up the Design Wall.

This is the initial layout. It'll stay there for a bit while I decide if it's what I'm going to actually use. Probably tomorrow I'll start moving things around to try something different.

Not sure I'm seeing enough flow with the connecting stitched pies.

And already I'm wondering just how the heck they're going to stay aligned like that once I start sewing them together (shudder!)

Have a perfect Thursday. Think about joining the Friday Night Sew-In (see the link on my sidebar). I'm tussling with the demons on that...on the one hand, I would really like to be sewing this together so I can move on to a cute little pumpkin quilt (or the  Halloween quilt, whose fabric is arriving tomorrow)...

On the other hand, my neighbor has called Ladies Friday Happy Night....and I did miss the last one because I had Strep......

Decisions, decisions...

I did say I had a most patient Design Wall, didn't I?

Progress On Drunkard's Path

Alrighty then! Today we made some progress on our next project..."Drunkard's Path with a Twist" or as I like to refer to it "The Twisted Drives Me To Drink" project. 

I got all my pies and crusts cut (and I did not use the Accuquilt, as neither of the dies made were the right size). I thought it would take forever and be a pain, but it was really pretty easy, fast, and with the small rotary cutter, painless and accurate.

A couple of distractions. Late afternoon my neighbor came over to show me her fabulous t-shirt quilt, and the bottle of blood orange juice she found. Of course she also brought over a bottle of tonic that she just happened to have open, so we spent an hour or so sipping blood orange vodka tonics.

After she left I went back to snipping the tear-away (ha ha ha) stabilizer from the back of the stitched blocks until it was time to leave for dinner at my daughter's. I was able to continue snipping on the ride over and while waiting for dinner.

Once I had counted to make sure I had the right  number of everything (I had to count 3 times....must have been those vodka tonics), I started sewing. Two down, 62 to go. Woo hoo!

Tomorrow night is the first night back for the season for the quilt guild. The hubs has been reminded that he needs to bring a handtruck home and take the ride over to haul in 8 boxes of books that I'd estimate weigh about 100 lbs apiece. I hope to get a few more blocks pieced together tomorrow.

Got some wedding issues to attend to this week, and it is going to be a busy week at work. Sewing goal is to finish piecing these blocks. Overall goal is to survive the week and actually accomplish anything. :)

Leaving you with a couple more photos from Quilt Odyssey. Enjoy!

Back to Fabric Land - A Bit of Catching Up

Only one more day until I head off to the AQS show at Lancaster. I am really looking forward to the show this year, as it's their second year in this venue and I'm sure things will be well organized now that they've got the lay of the land nailed down.

If you remember, one of my favorite exhibits in this show last year was the display of domestic machine quilting by some of the well-known quilt celebs. I was both awed and inspired by what you could accomplish on your home sewing machine, and now, here I am, going through those very same motions on my own machine a year later. Had I not been on a mission to scrutinize the stitching on every quilt in that show, I might still be doing giant meandering with my BSR attached.

Attending the large national/international shows is something that I hope everyone  gets a chance to do, at least once. Not just for the beauty and the inspiration, but the vendors are something to behold as well. (And Lancaster has about 135 on site....not Houston mind you, but certainly not too shabby).

I know what you're thinking....shopping show and tell on Saturday's post!!!..you all know me far too well. I'll also be picking up a little somethin' somethin' for this month's Follower Appreciation Giveaway, and in honor of National Quilting  Day on Saturday, we're going to have an extra giveaway....details on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm off to start a new project. Actually, two new projects. Here's the direction I'm headed in:

I've been trying to make some time to work on a GO! project with a couple of my Christmas gift dies, so I'm going to throw caution to the wind and just run with it.

Let's see what we can come up with using the Dresden Plate die. And my new smaller (thank you Accuquilt for listening to our suggestions!!!) Drunkard's Path die.

 We'll use the In The Beginning Adelaide fabric with the Drunkard's Path. This could be interesting.

And we'll pull some mirror image black/white white/black prints from the FQ cubby. Though I have a feeling I'll be suggesting Accuquilt make a smaller one of these dies as well. We shall see. In fact, I can't wait, let's dive right into this one.

First and foremost.....IRON YOUR FABRIC. Otherwise you'll be cutting shapes with creases in them that will become new shapes when you do iron them  :)

I've layered 4 layers of fabric over the cuts on the die that I want to use. They've all been cut and placed on the lengthwise grain so there is no stretch across the width of my wedges.

 Feeding the die through the GO! is super easy. I'm turning the crank with my left hand for the picture.

And this is what you wind up with. I've got 16 perfectly cut slices of a plate in minutes.

And they were cut with tiny little guide notches to help me align them when I stitch them together. Seriously, how great that we can take that from garment piecing and apply it to quilting.

Unfortunately, this plate is quite a bit larger (brand new pencil added for scale)  than what I planned to use it for  (the Quilt in a Mousepad kit), so we'll have to find another decorative use for it after it's stitched. And we do need to stitch it because I purchased this die for my 1930s repro fabrics, and I need to be very sure I want plates this large on this quilt....if not, I'll be waiting to see if Accuquilt scales down this die (as they did the Drunkard's Path). While I did buy two other Dresden rulers/templates, having just cut this one on the GO! I have no intention of manually cutting a quilts' worth of these pieces, with, no less, no notches. Sheesh!

In the meantime, the die also included the wedges for pointed petals, and you can lay these out in a winding path kind of pattern.......I think I may have found a project for Suz Zwizzle, Fledgling Art Quilter. Looks like we might have a mission for Friday's show viewing.

More on these projects tomorrow.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Winner

My daughter chose the 'Circle of Gulls' design, as did Morgan, Ellen, Michele and Gill. Now, if I were currently speaking to the hubs (that's another story...let's just say it involves golf and forgetting to call home until 9:15 p.m. and asking me to phone in a carry out order for him (I didn't).) I'd have him pick a number, so let me text my daughter and ask her.....

While we're waiting for her to check in, let's talk about the table top quilt. It's created using the Drunkard's Path die on the Accuquilt GO!. Took  less than 10 minutes to cut enough shapes to make 32 squares (which in turn make 8 large blocks). The remaining blocks will likely be used to make pillow covers, but if she doesn't want those, we'll use them on the back in the beachball formation.

The borders are a mishmash of leftover fabric. Some were cut using the GO! strip cutter die. The layout of them was dictated totally by necessity. When they weren't long enough as I originally sewed them together, I cut them apart and added more vertical strips to, and then had to scramble for more fabric to do it again. Fortunately, they came out fitting exactly, not an inch to spare. Phew!

My daughter has just sent a text to me selecting 2. So, the second comment that chose the layout she did is Ellen from FSQ. Congratulations, Ellen!  I don't have your email address, so please contact me and let me know if you'd like die cuts or scissor bling. If I don't hear from you by the end of the day Thursday, we'll draw another name Friday morning.

We'll have another giveaway coming up early July, so please check back often.

Tomorrow I'll be backing this quilt and hoping to finish it up before I see my daughter on Friday.

That  trainwreck known as Danielle (from Real Housewives of New Jersey) is on Watch What Happens Live, so I've got to devote my full attention to the carnage.

Happy Tuesday!