Challenge, Inventory, health n stuff

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It's been a nutty week - with Reg's basketball team season winding down, my challenge and getting sick.

Reg's team won their quarter final game on Wednesday by 15 I think .. it was a game that the ref's were absolutely HORRID and Herman led by at least 5 the whole game. It was good to see it! I had a splitting headache, was sicker n a dog, but enjoyed it. The semi's are tonite and I'll be going to this game as well. If they lose, they are out, so I want to be there to support the team.

I spent 2 days being sick and almost missed getting my candle mat in for the challenge. As it was i sent it up just before midnite and the email at midnite :\. This is the candle mat that I entered. I did the birthing method for quilting this. Made it quick to put together - I'm likely going to do this method for all the smaller items that I can; while I wish it had that pretty defining binding as a frame, i can always add an extra ¹/4" to the outside for the appearance of a border. I used green thread for the quilting and did flowers and ditch stitching.

This is the candle mat that I wished was ready. While the colours are striking in the other one, this one just speaks more to me. I used a variegated thread for the quilting and did different flowers, butterflies and ditch stitching on it.

I used mum's machine on for the decorative / applque stitches for these mats. It only jammed on me one other time and that was right at the beginning just after I did the bobbin. This machine has such a tetchy petal!! It only has one speed - SONIC - so speed control was a huge issue for me .. but all in all, no serious problems while doing it - it was just nerve wracking is all .. thank you all for the prayers, naked moonlight dancing and burning feathers ;)

This is a finished basket; I say finished like that as I still have to tack down the flaps on the inside. This was very easy to make, altho I did have to man-handle this while I was sewing down the flaps to make the basket .. I'm just so glad that my machine was able to do this :D. For this I just did ditch stitching for the sides and meandered along the bottom for stability.

I'm still not feeling 100%, maybe 55% right now .. have another headache, and am still suffering from this cold - but i'm better today than I was yesterday and specifically the day before - Thank God!

Catching up; baskets, candle mats

It's been in interesting few days. I've been going a wee bit nuts trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do for the show coming up. I had a whack of ideas; but felt like a one-eyed cat watching 10 mouseholes. ;) I think it was just a case of nerves and just needing to settle on what items I was going to start on first.

I did find some really neat patterns and ideas on Freepatterns.com - it was just a matter of settling on what to do first. I found a really neat quilted basket there called Mexican Star Basket. It's the neatest thing - it's basically a 9 patch style 12" block that is folded and tucked at the sides to create a basket. I found a neat pattern called fancy flowers that is a traditional block so i am free to use it according to her terms and conditions. I cut out enough pieces for 5 blocks and rather outsmarted myself as I was going to cut them all out at once .. I made notes in the margin and ended up cutting wayyy more than I needed .. ah well .. I gots lots of pieces now :S I put the first one together and it looked really great.. so I started on the second one ... I realized that this was a 5 patch block - bloody hell! Well I had them cut, I was going to piece them .. i had all the sections of one block ready to put together and then I took a look and wondered how would this look without the sashings??? - welp i put it together and it looked great .. and what do you know .. i got my 9 patch block back :D :D :D I have 4 others like this but in different colourways waiting to be basted and quilted.

I decided to get going on my candle mats and pot holders to meet a challenge that one of my lists is holding. I need to have my mats done by Thursday at midnite. Well since my machine is still sick, I needed to use mum's. I've asked my friends to pray for me with this. I didn't care of they prayed, danced naked in the moonlight, or waved burning feathers .. I needed all the help I could get .. well I cleaned and oiled it this AM. heh .. only jammed once and broke a needle. I'm off to a GREAT start!!! I let it sit for the rest of the day so I could finish piecing the blocks for the baskets. I pulled it out and needed to make a bobbin .. heh .. you got it .. jammed on me again .. *Hellasigh Well I redid the bobbin again, double-checked to be sure that it was all in good working order and tried again .. so far so good .. i managed to piece 6 fans and it didn't jam again. I need to use this machine for the applique part of these fans. It's going to be a pain to have to swap machines around, but I don't have a walking foot for this machine and the speed is a wee bit tetchy for me to be wanting to quilt on it.

My house isn't as odorous, but Reg is sick and managed to get me sick as well .. oh well .. I started to hack and cough this am. I've got the itchy inside of the ear and the raw-ish throat. I'm hoping he and I start to feel better soon .. it's hard to concentrate and my temper gets frazzled more quickly right now.

But starting was the key - i'm not feeling so overwhelmed right now - matter of fact I can't wait to get a few things to the point where I can quilt them so I can see actually how they will work out. I'll be quilting stuff tomorrow .. it'll be busy for me tomorrow .. I have to go pay for my table at the show, reg's quarter finals for his bball team are tomorrow nite so I'm going - not been all year - would be nice if the coaches wife showed up .. I went to a lot of games last winter. Then that will leave me tomorrow nite and Thursday to get the candle mats done :D .. I can't wait to see how they'll turn out

Battle of the Meeces & Fish

Meeces .. bloody meeces .. well as you know I had quite the issue with these bloody things (!) They'd not been approved by my family or even recognized. BUT i did get a brain flash yesterday regarding them .. What I did was make them like i was making a stuffed toy - right sides together, turned inside out and fused into place .. I fused taped them for the time being along with the opening i made when i surgically removed the offending ears. I think that I'm going to leave the ears loose and just quilt them at the base - 3D tails was suggested, but with the use that this quilt is going to get, I don't want to have to be attaching tails over and over again .. I think that I will just embroider them in place with floss.

Kyle just came home and I aked him if he wanted to see my meeces .. he likes them and says NOW they look like mice (@@). He asked me what I was going to do with the meeces - meaning new squares - nope so I should him the surgery I would be performing ;). He thought it was pretty cool and is playing with some fuse tape and some scraps at my ironing board .. but this kid doesn't want to make a quilt.. he's made a quilt block for a school assignment, but not on my machine .. I had a BOM from joanne that included the fabric and let him hand sew it .. he did a pretty good job and got A .. he not only had to do the quilt block, but had to explain the process to his class - he was in grade 4 at the time.

The fish gave me other issues as well - or I gave it to them .. I think that I was number reading challenged yesterday .. i thought I read 2 ¹/2" x 3 ¹/2" for the body .. It’s 2" x 3 ¹/2" and I didn't notice until the fish were almost done .. I got the itty bitty pieces for the body and background put together and then the tails done .. so I wanted to make one up to see how it looks, as I was getting ready to put the background strip across the top i noticed that it was wayyy to short .. i'm like .. !?!?!?!? .. so i looked at the pattern 3 more times before i realized i had miscut it .. i was horrified - just sick with it all - I had not been having a good nite at all and was more than a wee bit tense - BUT it was savable .. I just sewed an extra seam down the middle, so they look like HSTs instead .. i don't care - they are done and the right bloody size!! That's saying a lot.

I got 4 more meeces to do .. well 3 ¹/2 as I showed kyle the steps I was taking on the one - then to decide putting it together ..

Kitty Top Done - AGAIN; appliqued Meeces - update on meeces

Regarding my meeces
Kyle walked in and asked me why I was putting hippos in my kitty quilt :\ .. I'm like .. are you kidding me!?!?!? First Reg says they look like igloos with bumps and now this .. Pix batted them around he's so disgusted with them - Okay I get the hint!! I pulled out my pp pattern and was going to just do up the meeces from that - then I look at the picture and see that they have ears on them .. I'm like ?!?!? There's no ears on the pattern .. so i dig out the instructions and saw that they have you premake them and put them in when you sew between 2 sections .. so here I am thinking, I can just add ears like that to these meeces .. frog out the area around the ears, snip them off, tuck the seam under and then make the ears (sew them right sides together, flip right side out), then attach them into the seam .. I would leave them 'loose' for now, but would quilt them down when I do the quilting :D :D :D - Any other suggestions on this????

After doing battle with squaring persnickety blocks, I am pleased with the result. Again the kitties relocated on me, but rather like this much better!

I was working on the meeces today - I was giong to try the fuse tape applique method for the meeces, but the sections are just to small to get any sort of purchase on .. the first one I tried looked like it was suffering from some form of mutantism .. soooo- needless to say, I had to toss that idea out the window. What I had to do, was hand applique. I am not a big fan it and doing 8 meeces didn't change my mind .. maybe for larger pieces, but not for the small piece I was working with .. I'm really tempted to feed these to the kitties at this point .. Not sure if doing paper piecing would be better .. I have a whack of paper piecing patterns for meeces .. I'll just have to see after I do the fish how I feel about them.

My Sunny Stars made it out the bag, separated into roughly 5 piles and ended back up in the bag again :S .. I do know what I'm going to do, just really didn't feel like doing all that measuring of blocks after I had finished squaring the blocks and evening up the rows. Plus these meeces :\ I'll get working on that soon .. might get as many as I can together and make that up into a family couch quilt. We'll just have to see. Reg told me that his quilt is to small for him (!) I measured it against him and made sure it was okay before I put the borders on .. oh well, I've been wanting to try a string quilt ;) Like I needed an excuse LOL

Extremes / Seascape Quilt / Kitty borders

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Today was a day of extremes for me. The right side of the bed did NOT exist for me today. Might have been due to the fact that Kyle managed to wake me up after 2 hours sleep - and he wasn't watching the dog when he let her out this am. She managed to get the gate open and escaped (didn't go far, but not the point - she was after cats down the block) she's about to go into heat and he wasn't quiet about opening the doors, slamming them, yelling for the dog .. woke Reg and I both up .. Okay .. so Reg wakes up to a pin dropping on carpeting .. i DON'T!

I knew I needed to center myself, I was frustrated beyond all belief by not being able to find a rotary cutting pattern for a mouse (!) (and i started last nite). Even getting my DSL back today didn't make me feel better for long. I was ready to cheap out on my kitty quilt and just do fish. BUT .. I stepped away from it and worked on my Seascapes (Sea LIfe???) quilt that Joy gave me. I could't start it until after supper tho as my table can't come away from the wall to accomodate the boards I use. I did Sharon Schamber's basting method again and this time it worked VERy well for me. I took shorter stitches, longer thread, had the quilt on my cutting mat and really really really paid attention to the tension i was putting on my stitches .. I believe that might have also been a larger part of the problem for me the last time I tried this method.

After basting this quilttop, I felt soooo much better - Like I had actually accomplished something .. and while I was basting my mind was working away on my kitty border issue. They resolved themselves in the back of my mind. I printed out my quilting motifs, grabbed the sullivan's and started to plot. I realized that i couldn't try the appliquilt on this quilt after I had laid all the templates out as it would make it to busy i think. I have the whole quilt covered with a sea scene and I just think that that would be overkill. If you look, you can see the seaweed and fish in the bottom left corner, 2 bigger fish swimming around, shells in the corners and waves and shells for the borders. I really don't think that I want to add anything else to this .. that does disappoint me tho as I would have liked to tried that method, but there'll be other opportunities - if not, I'll create them :D

Now for the borders on my kitty quilt; I was at the point where I was just going to do all fish and be done with it. I did NOT want to do paper piecing, nor particularly applique at this point. I am so bloody close, that I want the top DONE NOW. well I almost short changed myself, but something kept me from doing so .. I have come up with what I think is going to be the perfect finish to this quilt .. All i'm going to say right now is it involves fish, meeces (appliqued) and kitties. Oh and it will involve math LOLOLOL But i'm feeling better about everything right now - borders are under control, Seascape is just about done .. I think that I'm going to see about using up the scraps that Joy sent me along with some other fabrics I have here and doing a scrappy binding.. I think that just might be the perfect finish to it

Border Dilemma / sea critters

Now the fun part .. i have decided that i want my border to be 3" wide for the fish and mice .. not going to do the other things (milk jug, yarn) as i really do NOT want to do more paper piecing. So, I have a rotary cut pattern and I can speed piece for the fish .. just need to find one for the mice .. the fish are 3x3 which is VERY good - spot on!! heh .. here's where the torture comes in .. do I want to do these with kitty fabric or other fabric .. i know i wanted JUST the kitties to be made with kittie fabric and the highlight of the quilt - The more I think of it, the more I am not inclined to use my kitty fabric for the border critters. They aren't kitties!! okay .. i'm off the rack .. sort of .. what colours :S .. heh .. just kidding, i'll likely go traditional colours for them .. but we'll just have to see what speaks to me - I guess I've resolved this now .. I love my blog .. LOL

I've also got another project brewing :D. The quilttop that Joy made for me has spoken to me. That's going to be a sea floor scene :D .. I have some really cute sea motifs that I am going to quilt on it; seaweed with a fish poking out, shells, and a larger fish, as well as appliquéing (appliquilt maybe?? see i told you i was inspired!) with various sea critters on it .. I have to decide on exactly what critters I want before I do the motif. I'm thinking of an octopus, a crab and a seahorse. I can' put them on with embroidery floss over the quilting motifs. I can't wait to get started on this, but I have to baste the quilt first. I'll be doing that tomorrow - this should do up SUPER quick! I can't wait to get going on this one

Applique Adventures

Today was my adventure-and-a-half in applique templates :|. I couldn't (and still can't) find my freezer paper, so was rather timid to try other venues. Remembered that I had fusible web :D .. did that .. and it worked .. no jams not a problem .. (that I could see at that time .. heh) .. I get the Lions logo printed then start printing all the others. The Pistons logo drove me crazy, (that one's in 4 pieces), I realized that it didn't look right b/c it was backwards .. with all the reversing and whatnot for the fusible web, I managed to totally turn myself around .. holybiblebatman! Needless to say, I was a wee bit ticked at myself .. it's an honest mistake, but man .. why couldn't i had done it with something that I had TONS of. heck no .. gotta be that. **grumbling**

Ah well .. I thrive on challenges (@@). Then I wondered if I could reuse it? YIIPPPPPEEEE that worked .. I had the 'strange' idea that I would be able to tear it away like the paper when you paper piece .. ya right .. you know how well that worked .. so there's goes a 9 x 9 piece of hunter green fabric (another one I don't have a lot of) that Reg said would be perfect. So then I think .. okay I have the Tiger's one, why don't I outline it and then just pull the web off later? Well that sort of worked, but the logo is so tight in some places, that it ended up under the threads and I was pulling them and stretching the fabric.

**nova goes off in head** Why don't I use paper. Someone (sorry I misremember right now), told me that you could use the basting spray on fabric mounted on cardstock to run fabric through the printer. Well that didn't work for me, my printer kept telling me that the paper wasn't the right size **sigh** Then I got another idea .. use paper, just like in paper piecing. That will give me the stability I need while zigzagging the outlines of the logos, and I KNOW I can pull that off later. If there's any stuck under the threads, they will come out in the wash. That worked! So I have the MSU logo done, and the Pistons one from earlier and am quite pleased with the MSU one .. that one will be easy to stick onto the quilttop. So all I have to do is the Tiger's old english D and the Lions logo. So that one's on the way. Still fussing with border ideas for this quilt - nothing seems to be speaking to me on this one .. oh i have figured out a name for this quilt - "Back it up, Sparky" Reg calls me Sparky and I did so much reverse stitching on his blocks, that it seems to fit just right ;)
OH NO I just realized that the Lion's logo is so much smaller .. esh .. that was supposed to be printed landscaped :S .. if I have enough fabric, I'll have to redo it .. hellasigh Actually I checked it again, and that's the size it is. It's because of it's size .. it's still 9 1/2" long instead of high like the lettes are ..

I actually did my draft of my kitty quilt earlier today. Trying to find out how to calculate yardage for a sampler quilt. My version of QP doesn't allow you to use different block sizes like that. Full yardage with no blocks is 2 1/8 yds, but these kitties are going to float on the background so all the kitties are going to have this as the background colour. I have 2 purples that I really like, but only a yard of each .. if I had a 1 1/2 yd, I might attempt it. I have a reproduction that is medium purple on a mauvy-cream that I can use .. it was supposed to be for my bed (when I had a double) but am hesitant to use it for this .. I really wanted to do a medium purple for this quilt. I'll know more when I get my kittie fabrics tossed on it how it will look. Probably okay, but not quite what I wanted to do with this one.