If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Applique Day

If you're a regular reader, you know I'm a flitter. I flit from project to project, most of which I finish, except for the applique blocks which always tend to be part of a much larger undertaking that I've not set any goals for. (So wrong)

Like this Fiesta (not KKB's Fiesta, but Fat Cat Pattern's Fiesta) block that I started...a foray into fusible/machine applique that never made it past the first block. I couldn't decide on a machine stitch...the one on the center flower wasn't enough, the one on the motif to the right of it took a week to stitch out and I calculated that it would take me about 15.7 years to finish the quilt if I went with that one--which happened to be more of the look I was going for. I guess I'm just not wired for machine applique, so the box full of fabric sits in a corner, and the sole block hangs in the studio closet, in applique limbo (do I go with the heavy stitch, do I rip out all of those stitches and cut new pieces for the ones I need to restitch, or do I trash the entire block and reconfigure the pattern to include 1/4" all around and do this one needle-turn?).

Ah, but I digress.

I've still got that Karen Kay Buckley applique block that I took a workshop for.

 

 

It's my foray into applique with batiks...you know how there's always one person in your class/workshop who brings in the most beautiful batiks to use for their Baltimore album, and you're swearing about how your traditional-print fabric is fraying as you turn it under while they're ravel-free and sewing at twice your speed?  Yeah, that's what this was about. Of course I then learned that Karen appliques with the freezer paper under the fabric, which is probably the first method I learned (and it was miraculous that I came back for more after that). Not my favorite way to applique. Not to mention that I abhor the unnecessary 'surgery' of cutting my fabric to remove the freezer paper I've sewn inside. In trying to be true to the Buckley-style applique of the piece, and considering the fact that this winds up being an orphan block when done, it's easy to understand why this one is buried in an envelope in the closet.

 

We are one block away from a mini Aunt Millie's Garden. (Piece o' Cake Designs)

 

 

The fabric is so darn bright and cute, that we can't help ourselves from wanting to pull it out of it's little plastic bag and work on it now and again. This is usually our 'plane project', but we don't have any flights scheduled until November, and it would be a shame to let this sit for another 6 months, However, I am sewing it with DMC Broder cotton thread, instead of silk, which is more than enough reason to not want to stitch on this every day and finish it.

 

Last month, there was an opening in another guild's workshop with Barbara Burnham. Barbara is the woman who recreated and patterned the Baltimore Garden Quilt, which she published a book about.

 

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The block we took on in the workshop was Miss Parker's Pompom Dahlias

 

 

I love a good Baltimore-style class, and I've got to say I learned a whole lot more than I had bargained for in this one-day workshop.

 

I learned to use a piece of foamcore to tape your pattern and backing to, and then stick pin your pieces down as you  baste them to the background fabric (yes, I said 'baste').

 

 

And I was also reintroduced to appliquing with freezer paper on top. At first I had my negative 'been there/done that' thought, but once I started stitching that way--because I always follow what the instructor is teaching us, even if they say you can do whatever you're comfortable with--I was glad I did, because for now, it turns out I like to applique this way.

 

This entire quilt only uses 3 colors of fabric, so I swung by Jinny Beyer's studio and picked up a background, a red, a green and a yellow from one of her 'mottled solid' fabric lines to use on this block. I figured that if it turns out well and I like it, I can select a few more patterns from the book and run over to Jinny's for more fabric to make a small wall quilt. But for now, this one requires a bit more prep and sew time than I'm willing to put in at the moment, so it's also bagged and tagged for later. Maybe this will become the November plane project.

 

My newest distraction is a Christmas BOM designed by Erin Russek and posted intermittently on her blog.  It's called 'Jingle', and it's going to include 9 pieced blocks, 9 applique blocks, and a large center medallion. Here's her 'representation' thus far.

 

 

If you'd like to get in on this, here's a link to the Jingle info on Erin's blog:

http://erinrussek.typepad.com/one-piece-at-a-time/jingle-bom/ 

 

I've finished two of the applique blocks so far, I'm working on the third

 

(Note that I'm using the freezer paper on top technique)

(Yes, I need a manicure--badly)

The center medallion has been 'kitted', and I've got a box set aside with some appropriate fabrics and the pieced patterns. This one is high priority. Once I finish that small applique block above, I need to crank out the 3 pieced blocks before Erin uploads the next applique block and I'll be caught up. Then I can focus on the center medallion. I WILL have a 2013 Christmas quilt finished in time to display the day after Thanksgiving. (We are exercising the power of positive thinking here).

I'm also working on some non-applique projects -- I told you I was flitting about. But those are for another post, as my head is spinning from being reacquainted with all of these WIP appliques I've got looming perilously close to being sucked into the block hole of unfinished projects.

What are you working on now, and are you struggling to keep your head above water or lounging on a pool noodle raft with a pina colada?

 

I Am SnOw Over This Already (and it's just begun)

Oh jeez! It's our first  major snow. And what an opportune time it chose to drop 10 inches of wet white stuff in my driveway and up the street....the night before the new stove is supposed to be delivered. Just great!

 You wouldn't know that there's a step down from the doorway. Heck, I was lucky to get the door opened.

That is not a bush, it's a birch tree...one that is was 2-stories tall. We went out after dinner with brooms and soaked ourselves beating and brushing the wet, heavy snow off the trees before they all broke. We weren't so lucky with the Redbud in the back yard, a large branch of that is cracked and will need to be removed. While we were cleaning off the trees and bushes, we could hear the trees snapping up and down the street. So sad.

It took the hubs an hour and a half to get home from work...usually a 15-20 minute commute, and then it took him another 20 minutes to get up the driveway. I got the dreaded call to come down to the car and steer while he pushed. My blood pressure skyrocketed to about 176, and I lasted about 2 minutes, hyperventilating and getting the car nowhere until we finally changed places and were able to get the car into the garage with him driving and me pushing (a little).

Once inside, regardless of the fact that it's a weeknight, I flew into action with the juicer and a bag of blood oranges (aren't they pretty?)

Yep, it became Blood Orange Martini night. They were delish! Wanna make your own?
1 cup citrus flavored vodka (I use Skyy)
1/2 cup fresh squeezed blood orange juice
4 tbsp simple syrup
Fill a large shaker with ice and shake it like a Polaroid
I saved one of the oranges and sliced it to use the slices as garnish on the glasses. I would have dipped the rims in sugar, but the drink was sweet enough without needing any extra.
Yum!! (And potent)
The measures above will make about 4 drinks (depending on the size of your martini glasses)

Since I wasn't sure the new stove truck would actually make it into the neighborhood tomorrow, earlier today I picked up what I needed for two more stoveless meals....Foreman fajitas and a tolerable chicken casserole made in the Crockpot. The Foreman worked well for grilling peppers/onions/mushrooms and then the thin steaks. We had a bag of microwave Steamfresh rice and veggies. I was feeling really good about my creativity, had just wet the paper towels to put the burritos in between and was opening the microwave door when the power went off. Can you say 'Oh Shit!'.

After a minute it clicked back on and we made a mad dash tossing the burritos in and setting the table and finding the condiments in the fridge while we still had electric. Fortunately, it stayed on and has only flickered on and off about 3 times (I'm glad the new electronic stove didn't come today)

Our electric company, Pepco (Pirate Electric Power Co.) is one of the worst in the country. It's like living in a Third World country in the D.C. suburbs. Any little storm can knock your power out for days. We pay an exorbitant amount of money for service, yet no one (including the Public Service Commission) has been able to figure out what the heck they're doing with the money they're getting. They sure aren't using it to bury lines or update equipment, which is why it's likely we'll lose power sometime tonight for God knows how long. All that heavy snow brings the trees down on those above ground lines. (And you ask why I hate snow so much.)

Okay, I'll concede...there is one redeeming factor about this much snow, and that is that we'll likely have a snow day tomorrow. I telecommute anyway, so I wasn't going out in it, but it would be nice to have a free day to play in the studio. Must remember to turn  these jammies inside out before I go to bed.

Lastly, I am logging my first 2011 OPAM finish. I have completed prepping the 52 applique pieces for the next block in Aunt Millie's Garden...the hand applique project I take with me when I travel.  It takes a lot of time to trace, cut, starch, and iron for each block, so I think it can count as a project.

Tomorrow I hope to add another finish to the January list, and that would be the machine applique on the Fiesta block.

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Check back tomorrow (assuming we have electricity) to see the prize for the January Follower Appreciation Giveaway. Stay warm, stay safe, stay sane...oh, and say a little prayer for an early Spring :)

Today I Faced My Procrastination Demons.....and Beat The Crap Out Of Them

Either the Wonder Under Fairies dropped in on their way to West Palm or yours truly was busy last night. All the fusible needed for the first block of Fiesta was cut and waiting this morning.

Having learned my lesson while trying to quilt the woven mess created earlier this month, I cut the centers out of most of my pieces...the less plastic, fusible, stiffy mess, the better This quilt is going on my bed when it's done, and I don't really want to feel like we're sleeping under newspapers and cardboard.

So, the big excitement of the morning came when I looked outside and realized that even though it was a telework day, there was also a 2-hour delay tacked onto that (we don't do ice very well outside the Nation's Capital), so I now had two carefree hours to spend in the studio (gee....not too long ago I'd have been excited to have those two hours to catch up some laundry, or scrub some floors....my, how our priorities change as we get older.)

Let's press those little Wonder Under buggers to fabric...oh wait...aren't those supposed to be ironed to the WRONG side of the fabric?  Rewind!

Learning from our mistakes (considering that it might be a little tough to cut the pieces out of the fabric without any good dark pencil lines to cut along), I cut these a little larger, rather than cutting them on the lines.

 And once that was done, I again cut out the centers.

And pressed them to the right (wrong) side of the fabric this time.

And then, a few pieces later, I got carried away and AGAIN ironed to the wrong (in this case, right) side of the fabric. Oopsies!! So much for learning from our mistakes.

But eventually, everything was fused and cut and waiting to come together...all 55 pieces.

 

So now, we need to cut and tape together our 18.5" block template.

And I didn't take an applique class for nothing (though if I recall, it was one that was the morning after a particularly raucous Happy Night with the neighborhood ladies, so it's a wonder I remembered anything at all from that class. The art quilt from that class...a poppy wallhanging...is pretty much taking up shelf space in the closet, and likely will continue to do so.)

Now, here's the acid test. We all know that Wonder Under and I are like oil and water, so I'm totally expecting that this paper isn't going to just peel off. I'm going to have to use some combination of pin pricks, tweezers, re-ironing, swearing, scraping.

Miraculously, the paper peels away and we can start to adhere the fused pieces to the non-stick pressing sheet.

I figured that all this fusing was a job for the cheapie little Rowenta travel iron. No sense gumming up the Oliso, because we just know that at some point I'm going to iron one to the iron instead of the non-stick sheet. It's a given.

The gods must be crazy, or I have been a very, very good girl lately, because the Wonder Under was being it's submissive little self for me today, and was nothing but cooperative.

 One piece down, so we now lay on the next piece that overlaps the red heart ever so slightly.

And we cross our fingers and press--only the parts we want to adhere to each other--makes it easier to peel up if it's not all pressed to the sheet.

After it's cooled, we can carefully peel it away from the pressing sheet.

A quick check to be sure it's all stuck together like it should be.

 Wah La! Perfecto! Moving on.

Save the sections with LOTS of pieces for last. It's good to practice creating the larger motifs with fewer pieces before you tackle the more difficult ones.

 But they do all come together in the end.

If you take your backing fabric and fold it every which way and iron in some creases, if you've got a great pattern (and Sindy Rodenmayer does great patterns), it will have those fold lines on it so it makes an easy guide for laying your motifs out on the block. A little measuring, a little eyeballing, a little backing up and viewing from 5 feet away, and you'll eventually wind up with this:

After which, you should seriously consider telling the hubs he's taking you out to Rio Grande for dinner and a celebratory margarita (rocks/salt).

All we need to do now is figure out stitch and thread to be used to further secure the motifs to the backing and we can file this one away until 2012, when the rest of the project is complete.

It's not too late to jump on this project yourself. You can get all the info you need if you click the Fiesta icon at the top of my left sidebar. I'd love for you to join me.

Shop 'til You Drop Day

It's the first big grocery shop of the new year, so that required 4 separate stores (I did Costco yesterday). Having been impressed this week by the TLC 'Extreme Couponing' special, I made a list for each store, checked it twice, cleaned out my coupon box and the hubs and I headed out after breakfast.

Of course, the first stop was off the list...it was the fabric store (Sistos). I had gone to Capital Quilts Wednesday after work to pick up the fabric for Fiesta and struck out...coming home with the French General Petite Ecole instead...oh, and fabric.com had it on sale for substantially less than I paid for it locally, so I ordered a bunch more ... of course. But, I digress.

We got to the fabric shop and the hubs decides he'll wait in the car. I gave him the 'what, are you crazy? do you have any idea how long this is going to take' look, and went inside. This time I had a new approach. First I laid out the bolts of fabric that I thought were a darn close match to the color chart on Sindy's website. And with only giving them a quick glance, I next set about finding my own version of these fabrics,,more modern prints, less traditional small prints, less solids.

How'd I do? (If you look at the sidebar on the left, you'll see Sindy's rendition of Fiesta)

It's going to have to do. You're looking at just about 14 yards of fabric there, added to the 10 yards of black. I don't know, 24 yards of fabric sure does seem like a lot of fabric for a queen-size quilt top. We shall see.

I'd probably been in the store almost an hour and they were cutting the last length of fabric, when my cellphone rings. It's the hubs. He just wants to know one thing..."would you leave your dog in the car this long?". I didn't even have to think before I replied...."it's 30 degrees outside...let me think....yeah, I guess I would". The ladies in the shop had a good laugh, and agreed with my reply. I guess he won't be accompanying me to the Grand Reopening the weekend after next. :)

After that we went on a whirlwind minor couponing tour of Walmart (where I used $2.50 in manufacturer's coupons), Bed Bath and Beyond ($15 manufacturer coupons + $12.49 BBB coupons which was a savings of more than 60% off my total), Safeway ($7 mfg coupons) and Giant ($16.49 mfg coupons).  Clearly I didn't get $1500 of groceries for $8.49, but I didn't do bad by normal standards.

I did score one 'Extreme Couponing' worthy deal....

I got 4 of these for 2 cents each. Walmart sells them for 52 cents and I had  coupons for $1 off 2. Score!!! Even better....when we checked the price in another store, they were selling them for $1.57 each. Almost makes one want to dumpster dive for last Sunday's circulars with those coupons in them. (grin)



Since this is the first grocery shop of the year I think I'll squirrel away the coupon money and see how it adds up by the end of the year. (And having now seen the new 2011 prices for cereal  I think we're going to need every bit of it if we expect to be eating Lucky Charms in 2012...crazy! Right after Christmas our gas prices shot up a good 10 cents a gallon, and cereal went up a buck a box. What's up with that? Is our grain coming from the Middle East now too?

(I'm watching Saturday Night Live with Jim Carey...it's hilarious.)

Got our one and only Valentine decoration up. This was one of the first things I blogged about...it's a tutorial, check here:

http://quixoticcrafter.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-sew-valentines-heart-garland.html

Sadly, there's an elephant in the room:

What day is it? Okay, okay,  I'll work on that it tomorrow.

Aaarrggh!!! Another Day Wasted

Well, wasted by my standards.

Today I printed out the instructions and pattern for the first block of Fiesta (http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/). Of course, I printed it out twice, because fortunately, it dawned on me that I needed to go in and change my printer settings to not 'scale to page'. I've done this before and wondered why my pieces didn't line up on the layout. So today, I'm patting myself on the back for remembering to put on my thinking cap.

After that I spent more than a couple hours perusing the fabric.com website looking for suitable fabric. They had a sale that ended Monday night and I always like to take advantage of a sale if I can. That was a huge waste of time because 2 hours into it I realized that I would never be happy with colors picked over the internet from a computer monitor. I need a hands-on fabric shop visit with my bolt of black fabric in tow. You know what I'm talking about, where you start amassing bolts in the corner of the shop and you're sitting on the floor laying them out, and the other customers are tripping over you, until you find exactly what you think is a complimentary selection....that is, until you get it home in front of an actual window and see it in full daylight and realize that you were so off on that shade of red and now you've got to bag it all up and go back for a second round of picking.

Sometimes I wish I had a personal shopper in each fabric store to make these life-altering fabric selection decisions for me. Life would be so much easier!

And speaking of easier, let's chat about that cute little Checkerboard Hearts Valentine quiltlet I was planning on working on.

Let's begin by saying that nowhere on the pattern envelope is a credit for the designer, or a copyright. I've discovered why.

Nowhere on the two pages of instructions do those things appear either. The first page of the instructions is a bunch of irrelevant information about cutting template pieces and applique info. I guess it's in my pattern because it also includes some sketchy directions for making tea dye because the quilt is tea dyed when done. Toss this paper aside, particularly since I have no desire to take a spray bottle full of instant coffee water and squirt it all over a project made with lovely quilt shop fabrics, that took a considerable amount of time to put together for the sole purpose of making it look like it was dragged through some Saloon and run over by a couple of covered wagons.

Here's page two of the instructions:

Are you serious? Where's page 3? Exactly what am I supposed to do with:

A bunch of 2" by WOF strips, a hunk of what must be the outer border, and a hunk of muslin. I'm a Thangles girl, what do I know about HST that measure 1-7/8"? Am I supposed to cut all those strips into little two inch squares and piece them together? Why can't I sew them together long ways into tubes and pick out a random seam to create the rows? And exactly what am I using for that checkerboard border? How many of those strips am I cutting down to an inch and a half? And is that rather large hunk of fabric really for the outer border?

So I'm counting off blocks in the photo, and I'm doing all these calculations (and as we all know....I DON'T DO MATH!)) just trying to figure out the finished size of this thing (also not to be found on the instructions or the envelope), to be sure that hunk of fabric is enough for the outer border, as well as to figure out if those few measurements that pop up on that single sheet of much to be desired instructions are finished sizes or not. (they are)..

What I really can't believe is that I paid $8 for this pattern. (What was I smoking that day?) And the sad part? There's another kit and pattern by the same people in the closet for a little pumpkin quilt.

Excuse me while I run screaming from the studio.

A Big Ol' Bolt of....

10 yards of black Kona cotton. Now what do you suppose I'm gonna do with that? Well, I'll tell ya....glance on over to the left hand sidebar and feast your eyes on that fabulous black and bright applique quilt. Fiesta is designed by Sindy Rodenmayer over at fatcatpatterns.com. This is a BOM that started this month. Hop on over there and take a look, maybe you'd like to take on this project along with me. I'll be blogging The Making of Fiesta throughout the year. This one is going on our bed. Even if that means I have to paint the walls. That's how much I love this one.

Another quick project in the works is this cute little scallop-edge heart quilt. I've got everything I need in that little bundle, so I'll be making a good move on this one tomorrow (still on vacation--woo hoo!)

After a bit of ripping out of excess couching, I'm over the woven wallhanging piece. Here's a closeup of the trapunto heart, which I couched with a glittery cord. For now it was recorded as the 28th quilt I've made and it's been named 'Unyielding Love'. (get it?) Though I'm not sure I'm feeling the love anymore. I'm thinking about asking Suz Zwizzle to sign the label.

Though I may not be feeling the love,  as you can see, Rick and Paco were clearly feeling the love this afternoon.

Have a great first week of the year. If you're off to work this morning, chin up, you can sew after dinner. Whenever you get to it...enjoy!