August 1st

Is less than six hours away. I'm happy I challenged myself to the Great Fabric Depression. Relieved actually!

I'm psyched for this! I'm ready for any temptation that may come my way! I'm excited! I am woman, hear me roar! (Oops, I think I just dated myself!)

It was SO cool today, cooled down to about 80. Really beautiful overcast weather. But I was reminded on the way home that we're still in the midst of summertime and all the dangers that come with it. There was a caravan of firetrucks, Dept. of Forestry & Fire Prevention, heading east on the 210. I hope they're heading home and not to a fire. Either way, my prayers and thanks go with them!

And a very special thanks to Melzie for the neat logo! You RULE!!

Last Shopping Day!

Well, I couldn't get the picture downloaded, but ....

The Great Fabric Depression of August 2006 begins tomorrow.

Today is your last day to shop!

Y'all make it a good one! :)

Caught Up on Bindings

I can't prep a binding and then put the quilt aside. I have to get it done, no matter what else is sitting on my sewing table. I like doing bindings, and Daisy does, too, because I sit by her and we have bonding time!

I almost screwed up on this one. I decided to use up what yardage I had left in that line for the backing. When I took it out yesterday to piece the binding, I had a real scare. I realized I didn't save any of the border fabric for the binding. Digging further in the bag I got back from the quilter, I saw that she put the trimmings from my borders and backing in there. Whew! I had to do some creative piecing but ended up with just enough.

For once I'm ready for the show and tell at Alex's retreat in November way ahead of schedule. This was last year's project, and completed quilts are the first order of business this year.

I bought a barbeque grill and all the things I'll need to grill yesterday. I was so pleased with myself for remembering to get everything I'd need. Got home and realized I had forgotten to take the steaks out of the freezer. Figured I'd be all ready for today, though. Guess what? It's misty and drizzly outside, although the much cooler temps are nice. I don't think I'm going to let a little water deter me at this point! I'm a woman on a mission!

Gratitudes:

~ A real feeling of relief over this stash decision thing!

~ Much cooler weather today, sorely needed!

~ Waking up with a smile. That's been a long time coming!

~ My wonderful friends, who are all together again, and only a mouse click away!

~ Special ILYs to JMDSLN&J! :)

Goodbye to The Fabric Patch

I just got home from making my last purchases and saying goodbye. It's so sad looking, almost empty, a lot of customers just kind of wandering around. It's possibly going to be sold, maybe as soon as this week, but the location will be different and it just won't be the same, at least for me.

It's real silly for me to feel sad, but this store has been my escape for five years. I've met every single friend I have in my area of California through The Fabric Patch in one way or another. It's been the first place I went to after surgeries, the place that offered encouragement and inspiration, taught me how to laugh again.

I met Jane there, and I know that friendship endure. The sew-in group invited me to join their ranks recently, so I will maintain contact with that group of nice ladies. And I hope to stay in contact with some of the employees with whom I'ved formed a special bond.

I thought it kind of fitting that I found this pattern there today. It will be a great little wallhanging for the door of my stash room. And serve as a reminder every time I see it that I won't be needing any more fabric for a very long time!!!

Great Fabric Depression of August 2006

My friend, Mar, named our August challenge, and what a great name it is!

I've been feeling foolish, glutenous, and, frankly, disgusted with myself for buying so much fabric over the past month or so, ever since The Fabric Patch announced its closing. I will admit that I tried to limit my purchases to backgrounds, backings and stash color enhancements, but even that doesn't justify the amount of fabric that followed me home.

So I had this idea of a challenge for myself and I announced it to my online quilting buddies. Quite a few of them decided to take the challenge with me. I was delighted because like Mom used to say, "If we hold hands and do it together, it won't hurt quite so badly." :)

The challenge is simple: No fabric purchases in the month of August!

If I can make it through one month, then I'll challenge myself to doing it in other months! Just need to break this I-gotta-have cycle I'm in!

What was funny with my online buddies is that there were immediate questions and what-if scenarios. What if I get to go to the quilt show in August? What about BOMs? What if I pass a quilt shop while on vacation? So a few rules were decided upon. Quilt shows don't count because they don't come along very often. Souvenirs while on vacation are all right. BOMs were technically commited to in a previous month so they're okay, too. Also if you're trying to finish up a quilt in August and you run short of something you desparately need, then that's an emergency and doesn't count either! God, we're so easy!!

I think there's about a dozen or so of us who are going to do it. If any blogging buddies want to join in, then the more the merrier! Jane and I were talking last weekend, and we discovered that we're both excited about truly digging in our stashes and getting creative with what we already have!

Anyway, I thought I'd admit to the world here my challenge. I decided that the more people that know about it, the more likely I am to stick to my resolution. I'd hate to admit defeat in front of everyone! LOL!

Gratitudes:

~ A great stash to tide me over for a month! :)

~ 4.5 drops of rain that hit my windshield just as I arrived home!

~ Cooler temps today - only 98 at the office!

~ Daisy's unconditional love, even when I fuss at her! :(

Old Ladies East Dessert First!

I was so hot when I got home. I just wanted something cold. I opted for a bottle of water instead of a Dr. Pepper thinking that was better for me. But then I needed something sweet...it's a viscious circle! But for all the young puppies out in Blogger Land, old ladies like me can get away with this! LOL!

Today was SO boring. I read contracts and legal writings all day. About 4:00 I honestly think I fell asleep for a moment. So I stood up real fast, and the CEO saw me and motioned me into his office. The first words out of his mouth, "I'm SO sleepy!" We had a good laugh about that one!

Gratitudes:

~ LB's DH is home from the hospital and doing great! PTL!

~ Leora made me smile today -- just cuz!

~ Mar made me LOL today -- froggies for my loggies!

~ Two more tax returns out today. Payroll returns tomorrow and I'm done!! Hooray!

~ Thank you, Mr. Haagen-Dazs, wherever you are!

I'm A Slug

It's just hot. It was 104 when I left the office at 5:30 and 102 when I got home 45 minutes later. We had about a half hour of rain on Sunday. It cooled things down for about 10 minutes, and then steam was rising off the sidewalks. I knew it was hot when Daisy didn't even want to walk on the sidewalk!

Got the binding on the Polka Dot Quilt on Sunday afternoon. That's the only quilty thing I've done in over a week. I'm just bone tired. I know it's from the heat.

Gratitudes:

~ Finding frozen spaghetti sauce in the freezer

~ Clean sheets on the bed

~ Connie got the box today. Second attempt - hooray!

It's a sickness!

It truly is. Last night, and actually into the wee hours of the morning, I was cleaning carpets. Just didn't want to deal with it this weekend. Anyway, when I pulled out the dining room chair from the far side of the table, these two scraps fell off of the seat. Man, you should have seen me. I dove for them, got tangled up in the cord to the cleaner, landed half sitting in one of the chairs, arms and legs in every direction! From the way I was acting, you'd have sworn these were the last two pieces of fabric on the face of the earth! And how silly is it that I actually took a picture and wanted to blog about them! Yep, these last scraps are surely destined for greatness! :)

It's SO hot here, but I guess everyone is experiencing similar weather. But it's really really really hot here. So much for the new and very short hairdo. It was plastered to my head all week from just plumb sweating. Now, I know Southern ladies are supposed to perspire - but you've gotta trust me on this one! So I called my hairdresser and changed my appointment from tomorrow morning to tonight. I don't know why it was important for me to do that! She snipped it even shorter on the neckline and really thinned it a lot. I think I've finally gotten rid of the dreaded summer curls that always seem to pop up helter-skelter.

It's days like today that makes me want to apply for a job at the local nursery. I told my CEO today that I wanted to just water plants all day long. I didn't want to supervise anyone. I didn't want to have meetings about employees. I just wanted to water plants! He was cracking up laughing! One of my employees threw a temper tantrum today. I mean, she threw a good old-fashioned hissy fit right in the middle of the office. You know the kind I'm talking about, full of tears and righteous indignation. Then she went into the VP's office to discuss the whole matter ad nauseum. It's ironic that the CEO and I discussed this very thing about her just last week. He was totally supportive, but this just zapped what little energy I had left at the end of a long, hot week. I hope she gets some pondering time in this weekend because I'm a real three-strikes-and-you're-out kind of person, and this was number two for her.

I think this weekend is a sew-in with my friendship group. I'm so out of the loop lately. I need to call someone tonight and find out.

Gratitudes:

~ An hour or so of pampering at the hairdresser

~ An almost clean house

~ Take-out -- the pantry is bare!

~ Listening to Daisy munching down on her dog food :)

~ The otherwise absolute silence in my quiet little home!

Some Progress on UFOs

Just picked these two up from the quilter. They're both small so the binding should go on quickly, but it's just too hot to think about sitting under a quilt right now.

It was so hot yesterday. How hot was it? I know there's a joke in there somewhere, but my brain is fried and I can't think of it. I came home to a nice cool house, and immediately got the chills. So I went to bed at 8:00 and shivered for an hour until I fell asleep. Then woke up at 10:30 sweating. I hope this allergy/infection thing isn't getting worse.

I had a huge snaffu trying to get flowers to Louisiana. I ordered from the FTD online service early Monday morning. Yesterday morning right before I left for work, I received an email that my order was not able to be delivered. No explanations. Period. Some frantic phone calls and I was able to finally get to a florist next door to the funeral home, and they walked something over just before the service. I called my credit card company and put a "stop pay" on the FTD charge just in case it came through. Real irritating. Friends told me to use flowers.com next time, but I think I'll go back to my old way of doing things - by telephone directly to the florist in whatever town.

Sally gave me a lot of food for thought this week. One thing she mentioned was this that she read: "Reduce your GPH and increase your TPH. GPH is 'Gripes Per Hour'… TPH is 'Thanks Per Hour'." I'm going to practice that this week and see if I can't get back within the speed limit of life!

Update from Judy

Judy is on borrowed computers this week. I don't know if she'll be able to update her blog. I got an email from her this morning. She made it to Louisiana last night late, but because of confusing directions from the rental car place, she and Chad decided to spend the night in Lafayette and drive home this morning.

Sadly, there were two other young men in the car with her nephew and they were also killed. Such a tragedy. Judy believes Daniel's funeral will be Tuesday, and she expects to be home as planned next Sunday.

LAQuilter

It's taken more than two weeks to finish up these 18 blocks, but they're done! I almost didn't work on them yesterday because I was totally worn out, but decided to load up a couple of movies on the portable DVD and just get them done. There are three different reds here. I'm hoping it looks like I envision it once I get the quilt together. :) I'll start the second block this week.

Today my goal is to reorganize the stash room, or at least get up there and start thinking about it. I'm totally disgusted with myself for buying more fabric since The Fabric Patch announced its closing, a lot of it, but all of it was either specific backgrounds to use with stash fabric, or a couple of color enhancements my stash was lacking. The only other color I want to pick up some more of is turquoise. I started collecting that color when Jane and I were down at Rosie's in San Diego a few months back, and I've got visions twirling in my head of possibilities for it. Thank goodness I'm just wanting small cuts of that! I'm pretty much set for life with fabric now! LOL

Major brownie points scored at work this week. The balance sheet and P&L were completed thirteen days following quarter-end, the soonest the CEO has ever gotten them in the 32 year history of the company and a fact he mentioned several times. Oh, sheesh, I may have created a monster here!

A matter that was weighing heavily on my heart since late last summer has been been resolved. I had been internalizing an issue and quietly pondering a decision that I ended up not having to make after all. It was taken care of by others without my knowledge, and I learned about it after the fact. So it's over now, and although I feel saddened by the events, there is also a peacefulness I haven't felt in a very long time.

I thought about Judy and her family all day yesterday, and woke up this morning wondering if she made it safely to Louisiana last night. My high school friend from Sulphur is going to find out the funeral arrangements and let me know today. I pray for comfort for the family.

Gratitudes:

~ Projects successfully finished

~ Blessings in my life too numerous to count but which I never take for granted

~ The certainty of true friendships

~ Threads and clippings "magically" disappearing into the vacuum cleaner

~ As always, my Daisy dog

Happiness...

Happiness is finding a box from the Fat Quarter Shop that came a week ago and you had forgotten about! It's like Christmas in July!

Hard work is done. CPA is in tomorrow. Come Friday afternoon at 5:00 I can relax big time!

I really haven't been a very good blogger the past couple of weeks. I need to photo more quilts and document them. I'll forget the details if I don't. Once the work pressure is off, then I'll be able to concentrate more.

I'm approaching my five-year mark in quilting. Next month, in fact. What a ride this has been. My goal is to have Lisa's quilt all done and ready to go to the quilter by then. That will complete the last of the immediate family quilts.

I'm so looking foward to this weekend. I need to figure out if it's this weekend that the sew-in is happening. If it's not, I plan to stay in my jammies all weekend and sew!

Absolutely Nothing to Report

I'm working long hours trying to get my second quarter stuff all ready for the CPA on Thursday. I thought I would be able to finish it today but I didn't get some scrap prices until the very end of the day. So I will finish up that last report tomorrow and plug in all the numbers. I left work at 5:45 today. I had been pounding the calculator all day and my shoulder was tightening up on me. I need to take a couple of Tylenol or something and lay down and rest it.

This picture of Daisy shows what I deal with every time I sit down at the computer. She's got the sit-up-and-beg-and-look-pitiful routine down pat!

Not much sewing going on around here lately. I've got a block laying on my sewing table. Two seams and it'll be sewn together. But as tired as I've been lately when I get home, I'll probably mess it up. Better to leave it until the weekend. I felt guilty, though, last night for wanting to go to bed without having done one single quilty thing. So I stood at my cutting table for five minutes and cut a few 2.5" strips. The strip tubs are filling up nicely. I'm really anxious to get in them and create something.

My thoughts and support and love are with Jace and Sally today.

For Finn

I have so enjoyed reading Finn's blogs about her antique quilt blocks. I have two very large tubs of Civil War blocks and fabric, as well as a nice collection of '30s. While going through those this morning, I came across this set of basket blocks.

These were on eBay by an antique dealer two or three years ago. She posted a set of six blocks. I immediately emailed her and asked if she had more. She did. I haven't counted them, but there are roughly 50-60 blocks. I hated to see the collection sold off piecemeal, so I offered to buy all of the blocks, and she agreed to sell them to me -- for $300.

I don't know if that's a good price or not, but I really don't care. While a good many of these blocks are discolored, they are in remarkably good shape. The fabric is intact. All she knows about the blocks is they are circa 1860-1900 and were made by one quiltmaker. I have authenticated a lot of the fabrics, and her dating is correct. As we know, quiltmakers used fabric they owned pre-war as fabric was hard to come by during the war, especially in the South.

What is fastinating to me is how accurate our Civil War reproduction fabrics are. Judy Rothermel and others have done an amazing job reproducing this fabric, both in color as well as design. We are truly lucky to have access to that repro fabric.

I am torn as to whether I want to set these blocks. I also was able to find a large chunk of muslin from that era, but it is not discolored. It would be hard to set these blocks so they would be "pretty" color-wise, but it's tempting all the same. Of course, I would want to handpiece the blocks.

I chuckle when I think of all the amazing things I have collected, and all the things I want to accomplish quilty-wise before I get to The Home. There's not much space in those retirement communities, so perhaps I'd better get busy! I'm 54 and not getting any younger! LOL!

Worked Today

It was so quiet at the office, and I got about three times more done than I would have gotten through on Monday.

I parked in my boss' spot, the CEO, when I got there because the parking lot was empty. Also, when I'm there alone, I don't like parking in the spot with my name on it. Call it silly, but I don't want strangers to know I'm in the building. Anyway, he bopped in about 10:30, laughing and saying he saw that I got a huge promotion! LOL!

I stopped by the Fabric Patch on the way home for a quick run through of the owner's personal book collection that she has out for sale. I picked up a bunch of state quilt books, plus an old Jan Patek that I had not seen before, all for $35. I can't wait to relax and read through the books!

Slowly But Surely

Progress is being made on Lisa's quilt. I've got almost all of these blocks made, but I won't have time this week to sew much on them. Closing out the quarter at work is a major undertaking. I might even have to work this weekend if we can't get the majority of the work done this week. I'm going to work late Thurs. and Friday nights, so maybe I won't have to. :(

The blues are really not quite as bright as they're showing up in the pictures. Lisa has always loved strawberries. When she graduated from high school, she chose her china and asked for pieces of it for graduation. It was a strawberry pattern, Lenox, I think. Anyway, when I was a new quilter about five years ago, I ran across this fabric and bought it. It's been sitting in the stash just waiting for me to make her quilt. Judy inspired me, so it'll finally get under the Christmas tree this year. I'm using four different reds, but all real close, just to give it a little variety, 9" blocks.

It didn't seen quite so hot today. I don't think quite reach 100. A regular cold snap! LOL!

The long four-day weekend was nice but I didn't get through the list of all I wanted to accomplish. I did get a lot of rest, though, and that was the most important thing. Still fighting the allergies, too. It felt so good just to be home. Daisy and I have "bonded"!

Happy July 4th

My friend, Mar, made this for me. It's 21" x 30", a nice wallhanging. Thought I would share it on this beautiful day!

May we always be blessed with freedom and independence.

Messy LA Quilter

I couldn't stand the scrap basket overflowing and Daisy scattering stuff everywhere. She discovered that I pay attention to her when she's in my scraps making mischief! So yesterday afternoon I started cutting, and I cut and cut -- cut until 11:00 last night. I read through Bonnie's scrap management tips, and now have scraps that are usable. I still have a bunch of bricks and squares to cut, but the strips are done and that took care of about two-thirds of the scraps. Can't wait to get in them and start making quilts!

I've been working on my niece's quilt. Still making the first set of blocks, but I'm having more fun just piecing a bit and running to the TV when something Paula Deen is cooking sounds good. In between I've been doing some household chores, but not many! :) I slept until almost 6:30 this morning - so that wasted a couple of hours out of my usual day!

I fixed a big breakfast for myself this morning: bacon, eggs, grits, toast, fruit. I'm still stuffed two hours later. I found myself smiling while I was cooking the bacon. My Mom was real impatient when she was cooking bacon. She'd lay all the strips out real nice and neat, and about two minutes into the cooking she'd get impatient and stir them all up. So growing up our bacon was never pretty, but sure tasted good. This morning I did the same thing just because I was thinking about her. And it also made me realized where my impatience came from! LOL

Off to clean up the mess by my cutting table. Looks like I missed the trash can more than I hit it!!

Quilt Storage

I went to a sew-in today at the home of my first quilting teacher, Pat. Her home is beautifully decorated with her blue and yellow quilts. I found this cabinet particular intriguing - a curio cabinet with stacked quilts from top to bottom. Pat has probably made hundreds of quilts, often making several for each class she has taught through the years. This is only a small sampling of some of her quilts.

It was hot today - very very hot - 102 degrees. I came home from the sew-in and hopped in a cool shower. It took my body a long time to cool off. Jane and I went out to eat soup and salad, and then talked the quilty talk for a couple of hours. She's such a sweet lady. She's tired from the long hours working at The Fabric Patch during its going out of business sale.

We had fun talking about all the projects we're going to do when she is no longer working on the weekend. Jane suggested we have one cutting weekend, one sewing weekend, and one shopping weekend every month. Sounds good to me! She'll keep me motivated, that's for sure!

Gratitudes:

~ Inspiring the ladies with my red and white Shooting Stars quilt. They are now planning their own.

~ Tall glasses of ice tea.

~ Exploring Pat's beautiful gardens and koi pond

~ Quilty friends

~ Cool showers and fragrant soap to wash away the heat and grime