FNSI January 2012

So much to do, so little time.  This is the story of my life.

I did take a little time last night to work on my youngest son’s Christmas present (ahem).  You see, when I realized that his quilt wasn’t going to get done for Christmas, I boxed and wrapped it and presented it to him with the promise that I would get it done soon.  All that was left was the binding.  My sewing machine pretty much keeled over from exhaustion while I was making his (and his older brother’s) Christmas present and I barely finished quilting it.  Getting the binding on one side was a real challenge.  I could bore you with the details but hopefully I’ll soon be able to show you a new sewing machine instead.  Anyway…

Today I present my progress from last night’s Friday Night Sew In.  This is all I have left of the binding:

Can you see the white in the upper right corner?  That’s actually a mistake that I can’t quite figure out to fix (the backing slipped down from the end when I was quilting it), but you can see where the red binding ends on the right and the left.  Once that’s sewn down I’m done!

So, just a sneak peek for now.  I can’t wait to show the whole thing wrapped around his little body once it’s done.

Note to self:  change the header already!!

An oldie but a goodie

The folks over at craftbuds.com are offering a contest with all kinds of neat goodies.  For my entry I present one of my all-time favorite quilts:

It’s the Kitchen Window quilt from The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman.  It showcases various Anna Maria Horner prints.  I still love how beautifully (and quickly!) the pattern came together.  The directions are simple and her organization techniques are really helpful.

UPDATE:  I had a heck of a time getting this entered at the craftbuds website last night but I’m glad I persevered!

Checking in after checking out

Catching up after 4 months is not even an option.  Suffice it to say that I had a great summer.  I sewed very little, but I sure did keep busy.

But I’m not going to try to get caught up.  At least not all at once.  I always have too much to say and it gets overwhelming trying to capture my thoughts.

So today I finished proofreading the most recent issue of Fat Quarterly.  Another nice little issue is coming out soon and I have the pleasure of seeing it in advance.  Lucky me.

Over the weekend at quilt retreat I finished this for September do. Good Stitches, Faith Circle:

The pattern is Swoon from Camille Roskelley.  It’s not as difficult as it looks.  It’s nice to look at, no?

April do. Good Stitches

I made two blocks for April’s do. Good Stitches bee (Faith Circle).  I was able to squeeze in a few hours of sewing at my guild’s sewing day yesterday.  I had about 3 hours between my boys’ soccer and baseball games and made just a little progress on these blocks.  I finished up late last night.

Rachel asked us to make 2 blocks of any size using saturated rainbow colors.  Check out the Flickr pool for do. Good Stitches.  The other members’ blocks are just incredible.

I’m sure this block has a name; I had a few choice names for it yesterday as I spent quality time with my seam ripper, though not because the seams were a mess (they weren’t), it’s because I suck at putting together colors and my first combination, um, sucked.  And that white square in the middle?  Why, oh why, was that so hard for me to figure out?  But once I did, it was an “aha!” moment.

Block 1

The second one went together like a dream, but I struggled figuring out how long to make each piece.  And math should, technically, be my strong suit.  It just doesn’t come to me when I’m trying to figure out what the seam allowance means to the overall size of the thing.

I bet there’s an app for that.

Block 2

I think they turned out just fine, though I wish I wouldn’t have procrastinated getting them done.  So what else is new?

I learned that I wish I had a lot more of all the fabrics.  I think these bright colors are happy.

I also learned that my machine is BADLY in need of a tune up; in fact, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish the blocks, and I was pre-emptively super annoyed with myself because not finishing meant explaining why they weren’t finished and why I left them to the last minute (there is no good reason).  This bee is big on deadlines!

Anyway, I’ll get them in the mail on Monday and they’ll be there in time.  It will be fine.

When close enough just doesn’t cut it

M has been wanting to try recipes from “Star Wars Cookbook II:  Darth Malt and more Galactic Recipes”.  Padme Pad Thai was a smashing success.  Appropriately spicy.  Next up:  Darth Maul Dip.  M and Jim had done all the prep work for the dip, and it was chilling in the fridge when I got home from work.  All that was left was sprinkling the poppy seeds over the Darth Maul template to make the scary face.  And for some reason it was up to me to do the sprinkling.  I should have smelled a setup.

First of all, some background information is in order (I mean, let me make excuses for myself):  this cookbook is a school library book.  I didn’t think it was a good idea to press the template into the dip. Because it’s a school library book.

Have you ever made anything with a template?  Then I’m sure you know the template has to be flush with the surface under it in order to transfer the shape, right?  Well, I know that too, but it’s a school library book.  I didn’t think it was a good idea to mess up the template.

How do you think that turned out for me?

Darth Mess

Yeah.

M took one look at it and walked out of the kitchen.  Not a word was spoken though some tears were shed.  Clearly he was crushed that I had wrecked his creation.  My name was mud, akin to the Tooth Fairy forgetting to pick up the tooth or leave the cash.  That one FOR SURE wasn’t my fault.

Anyway, some quick thinking and scraping off the poppy seeds and starting over.

Viola!  Darth Maul Dip.

Appropriately accessorized with action figures and a dash of redemption.

PS Anakin and Darth Vader are fighting in the upper right hand corner.  What did you think they were doing?

Shameless Thievery From a Sticky-Fingered Typist

UPDATE:  Since I originally posted this entry (and the previous) I did something (I have no idea what) to fix the fonts.  Could have been deleting the fonts from the Typekit thing, clearing the cache, as was one suggestion, or simply closing the browser and opening it up again. It was not, despite my post below, the result of borrowing someone else’s fonts.

The world will never know.  And neither will I.

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I’m a thief; I admit it.

I stole someone else’s font choices since mine became so spectacularly mucked up.  I’d use stronger words but I’m a lady.

I was blog hopping and came across a crafty blogger who had that little Typekit icon in her menu bar so I peeked into her font stash. Then I shamelessly copied her choices.  I guess I didn’t actually steal her fonts since she can still use hers.  And I can use them too.  Wouldn’t that be more like imitating then?  And isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?  I think that’s my story.

What’s the penalty for killing my WordPress?

Hello!  Hello! Can you see me?  I’m down here!

The other day I thought it was a brilliant idea to mess around with my fonts so I added Typekit so I could get me some new fonts.  The free Typekit version, mind you.  Not the fancy-pants pay version.  Uh uh, not me.  Then I decided I didn’t like the fact that no one could actually see my blog any more b/c the font is too flippin’ small.

So I searched the WordPress forums for some help, as in, how do I make my font bigger; i.e., a readable size?  Or how do I go back to the default?  (Ya think I could have checked that out before making the changes?  Ha!)  Turns out, you can’t actually change font size unless you know CSS.  What the hell is CSS?  Turns out CSS is some kind of coding for blogs, or web pages in general or WordPress blogs.  And I’m not sure, but I think you have to pay for the ability to alter the CSS.  I don’t know.  Don’t care either.  All that matters is that I don’t know CSS and apparently it’s tricky for a novice like myself so I am going to heed the warnings not to mess with the CSS.

In the meantime, if you can read this, can you tell me how to go back to my default font?

In Wisconsin, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute, it will change

Late this morning we had about 3 minutes of pea-size hail after night like darkness, thunder and lightning.  Crappy weather, even by Wisconsin standards.  A frosted bowl of suck, as we like to say around here.

This is hail covering the ground, not snow:

My youngest son experienced it first-hand, in his pajamas and soccer sandals.

Kitchen Window Quilt Done!

I’m so happy with the way this turned out.  I really liked every aspect of the creation and I think my friend will love it.  I finished it over a week ago now, but have been too busy (working a lot, getting ready for vacation) to post it.  Here goes:

The backing is an Ikea twin bed sheet that I bought last year for about $7.  The prints are all Anna Maria Horner, primarily from Innocent Crush.  The binding and window borders are Kona Berry and the sashing fabric is Quilter’s Only Solids in Tea Dye.

I was unable to free-motion quilt it, though that’s what I really wanted, because the tension on my machine is all messed up.  I quilted it at our quilt guild sewing day a few weeks ago and was all prepared to dig in without practice or preparation when my friend Amy said, “Um, have you ever free-motion quilted before?” (answer: no) “Don’t you want to make a practice piece first?”  In my mind there was no doubt in my ability to do it (mind over matter, you know, and a rare burst of confidence), I just figured I’d dig in and see what happened.

Thank God I had brought a baby quilt to practice on.  I totally messed it up.

In fact, my hands were able to make the free-motion quilting movements and I was really psyched about that, but every once in a while I’d hear a “clunk” from my machine that sounded suspicious.  Sure enough, when I turned over the baby quilt, there were huge amounts of thread that the machine threw out when it made the clunk noise.  Either that, or it would just make little knots here and there.  My friend Kait suggested turning the tension up to 9 (maximum) and see if that helped.  It actually helped a lot, but then the machine had a death grip on my quilt so I had to dial down the tension just to remove it.  I knew I couldn’t do the whole quilt that way.

I made a quilt sandwich from the remains of the bed sheet and practiced again.

Practice piece front

 

Practice piece back

You can see the front looks fine.  Not great, but fine.  The back looks OK too, but only at the bottom where I turned up the tension to 9.  At the top you can see all the little knots that were created from the loose tension.  I’m afraid that this problem isn’t going to fix itself, so I’m going to have to take the machine to be tuned up, or simply straight line quilt all of my quilts which isn’t a good solution.

In the end, the Kitchen Window quilting is diamond-patterned and really looks just fine.  It’s not what I wanted but it got the job done and overall the quilt turned out really pretty.

By the way, I think I mentioned this before but it’s worth mentioning again, the Kitchen Window pattern is from The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman.

March FNSI

Last night was the March Friday Night Sew-In (FNSI).  I had big hopes for finishing a pair of pjs for me (!) but only succeeded in cutting them out.  Then I crashed on the couch while the kids and my husband watched a movie.  That’s kind of a typical Friday night for me.

While I got very little done last night,  I QUILTED my Kitchen Windows quilt today!  Pics to come tomorrow.  I’m so excited to be (almost) done with it.  It’s turning out really great.