Quilter's Helper

When I moved here a year ago, it was just three months after my shoulder replacement surgery. Needless to say, boxes of stash and quilty goodies were stacked to the ceiling in the garage. Every night when I got home from work, I'd haul armloads of fabric upstairs to the stash room. I couldn't lift boxes, so I made many, many trips upstairs!

One night I lost Daisy dog. I couldn't find her anywhere. I totally panicked! I looked for over an hour for her. I went outside calling her name. I searched everywhere in the house. I was totally devastated.

Then reason and logic set in - what little bit I had left at that point! I remembered that I hadn't opened the garage door or the front door since her walk when I first got home, so she had to be inside somewhere. "Trace your steps, Vicky. Go back over every single step you took tonight." (Talking to yourself really helps at times like this!) I went to the garage, and looked through the boxes I had emptied that night. No Daisy hiding in any of them.

I remembered that I had carted up two wire baskets of fabric to the then empty stash room closet. So upstairs I go again. When I slid the door open, there she was sound asleep! I knew immediately at that point what my mother used to say about not knowing whether she wanted to kill me or kiss me!

I know now she was just real nervous about being in a new place. Heck, we both were. It didn't take us long to adjust, but even to this day she won't let me out of her sight.

She's my doggy guardian angel. She helps me with color selections, bugs me when she thinks I need a break from sewing, and listens so attentively when I tell her about my day.

I think everyone should have a quilter's helper. Especially one so doggone cute!

Stash

Today I spent almost $2900 on my car. I decided to revisit my stash and get real cozy with it since that’s where I’m going to be doing my shopping for the foreseeable future. It fills two large closets, the bookshelves I had made for the stash room, and the hallway linen closet. And that’s not even counting the purple Fabric Patch bags sitting everywhere in my sewing room full of fabric that hasn’t been ‘filed’ away yet.

This weekend I was actually thinking about ordering more of these bookshelves, and then thought stupid stupid stupid! That’s like buying new slacks rather than losing 10 lbs to fit more comfortably into the ones you already own. Well, actually I was thinking about that, too, but that’s another discussion for another day.

I am committed to using up half (or more realistically a third) of this stuff this year. My goal is for everything to fit on the shelves. I have a closet of bolts for backings so I’m all set there. Perhaps some border fabrics or very small cuts of colors I might need for applique is all I will be purchasing.

I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution this year – so this is my March 16th resolution! Better late than never!

Charm Quilts

I seem to have collected a ton of those Moda charm packs lately, and I was digging through old photos trying to come up with a quick way to use some of them up.

This was from a patriotic charm swap with my online group, and this quilt was donated to a Veteran's hospital in the Atlanta area. One of our members spearheaded donations for that hospital for about three years.

I think this took about four hours to put together and another three or four hours to quilt and bind. I'm thinking this sort of quickie might be make nice TV-cozy quilts for some young family members for Christmas. And bust some stash for borders and binding in the process! LOL. Or maybe find a neutral from the stash and make half square triangles .... uh oh, I think I feel a new project coming on!

Oh, oh, oh, I'm SO excited. I spent all weekend looking for a background fabric. I had in my mind what I wanted for a class in April. Three quilt shops and found nothing that would work. So I went upstairs and dug around in my stash and found the perfect fabric! But it was only a yard and I needed 1.25. So I dug some more and found another yard! I'm all set!! What fun to do shopping at home! LOL!

The QuiltMobile

Can't post pictures tonight for some reason. Figures!

The QuiltMobile is in the shop. I dropped her off on Friday and picked up a rental. Today they called me with the bad news. It's going to cost a small fortune to get everything fixed, but I don't have any choice. The whole dashboard lit up - every light that could possibly come on did. I probably could have ignored most of them :), but the airbag light was on and some other ones that "looked important." I had just decided to keep her another year. I just hope I didn't make a mistake with that decision. The only thing I hate more than cleaning toilets or getting a root canal is car shopping! It's a good thing I'm dedicated to using my stash ..........

I planned on getting so much work done this week at the office, but things keep happening to sidetrack me. Not a productive week at all.

I was unable to get online here at home for a couple of days. I need to have a "serious" talk with the cable folks. Every time it rains, the connection dies. There must be a bad cable outside somewhere. I don't know. It's just as frustrating to me as car stuff. And with working, it's hard to set up appointments to get things fixed. It's always something!

I'm still on a high from my little bit of stash enhancement last weekend. It feels good to now have all the fabrics ready for a couple of applique projects. I think I'm going to spend most of this coming weekend just getting everything lined up and organized on those. For some reason I'm not wanting to sew much lately. Sometimes just stepping back for a couple of weeks is good. And the way everything seems to be going wonky recently, maybe it's best I don't turn on the sewing machine! LOL

Winter

I guess it's officially winter here in So Cal! I drove around a good bit today and the mountains are almost all white. I'm sure they'll be totally covered tomorrow. I was in a quilt shop when it started hailing, and it happened again briefly when I got home. First hail I've seen since I've been out here. It's cold outside!!

I had fun today picking out fabrics for applique projects. I now have all the fabric for a couple and am ready to start them. I was real excited about finding one elusive piece I needed badly. I got one book, Quilts from the Henry Ford. It's a beautiful book. The only piece purchased today for a new quilt was a piece of Mardi Gras focus fabric, but the rest of the quilt will be from stash. So all in all I didn't do too badly. Just go-withs, and only small pieces of those since they're for applique.

Gumbo tonight ...... c'est bon!

And tomorrow I sew!!

A Painting and a Quilt

Sweet little Gracie painted a picture to hang in my office. She was four at the time. Then she told me her baby doll was cold. What's Aunt Vicky to do but make her baby doll a quilt using the painting as inspiration? It doesn't matter that she's my boss' granddaughter. She's real special to me - she was born on my birthday! I just hope her next picture isn't quite so 'abstract'! LOL

But this is totally a stash quilt! Not that it busted much stash!

Made gumbo tonight but it needs to cook more. It'll finish cooking tomorrow. They're predicting some snow on our mountaintops this weekend. We might have a winter after all!

An Early Attempt

I'm trying to organize quilt photos, and found this one made when I was a real squeaky clean newbie. It was made for my boss' little granddaughter, and is the first quilt I made from beginning to end all by myself. I quilted it with straight stitching and one of those Borders Made Easy patterns for the borders, and it was the first time I did a binding. Boy, what I wouldn't give to get a look at that quilt now!

It was a flannel kit from The Fabric Patch. I just substituted some of the fabric to remove boyish ones. I don't know the pattern, but the squares are all sewn together and then cut twice on the diagonal and resewn to get on point blocks. I was so careful not to get any two colors touching, but after the quilt was cut and restitched, I ended up with two greens right slap dab in the middle.

I'm standing on a chair to hold the quilt up. This was less than a year after I shattered my shoulder and that's as high as I could raise my right arm. I remember how heavy that quilt was to manipulate through the sewing machine. At times I had to get others to help me hold the weight of it. I think that's probably why I don't care to work with flannel now.

I shampooed carpets last night. My carpet cleaner was damaged in the move, so I decided just to rent a Rug Doctor from the grocery store. It worked great, and at $19 a day I think I'll just do this from now on! Spring cleaning is almost over. Just some 'straightening up' in my sewing room and another dusting and I'm done! And it feels good!!

CEO is out of town the rest of the week, so it's catch-up time at work. I was thinking that I might make gumbo tonight. The weather is still crisp enough and this will take care of major cooking for the weekend.