Working class

Working.  Labor.  I'm lucky to be doing something that I enjoy so thoroughly and that lets the right side of my brain take a turn.  For over 55 years of my life, I functioned with the left side very dominant, and that's a good thing.  People want their docs to be left brained/exacting/knowledgeable/pragmatic.  So I happily worked with women in their labors for over 20 years and loved every minute of it.

However, people want their longarm quilters to be just the opposite: artistic/tuned in/appreciative of the appeal in each quilt and able to enhance the quilter's often lengthy labor of piecing it all together.  They want someone who can see beyond the blocks and bring something unique to the quilting.  And that's where "class" comes in.  I get to be the person who brings the quilt to life, complementing the piecer's efforts and color scheme and patterns.  I get to have a go at giving each quilt something special, so that it's in a class by itself -- if not to the world, then to the quilter. 

This quilt was a labor of love.  Every day that I went to my lurkim and worked on it, I felt happy to see it.  Phyllis McK did me the honor of asking me to quilt this beauty for her.  I loved the color scheme!  I never think to use black in my quilts, which is a serious shortcoming on my part, because it makes the palette stunning!

So I did continuous curve in the cream spaces of the blocks and a wonderful orange skin pattern for the solid blocks.  Click on this picture to see it magnified for greater detail.

The borders were just at the top and bottom of the quilt -- a nice touch.  I put in tailored piano keys there, and voila!  The quilt just sang!  And my customer was very happy with the end result.  Me too.

Honey-do

I have a honey-do list a mile long.  That's because for six months out of the year, honey isn't home on weekends -- at least, not so as you'd notice.  He races go carts, an expensive avocation in terms of time.  In terms of money, too, come to think of it.  But that's not the issue.

When we moved here three years ago, alot of junk was "stored" in our garage.  You know what I mean -- all the stuff that I didn't instantly KNOW where it was supposed to go.  Add to that all the stuff that DH believes he needs to accumulate "just in case...", and you have an overwhelming pile of extraneous material that couldn't possibly be necessary for life on Earth.  Everyone said that we would NEVER get it cleaned out, but this fall DH admitted that he was unmotivated unless I was riding herd on him, so I decided to dedicate every single weekend to this task once the races were over.

Silly me!  The blasted races are NEVER over!!!  However, DH's participation in them is -- until the garage is clean.  At the rate we're going, he'll be 70 before he can go racing again...  No, don't feel sorry for him.  It's his choice:  clean it up and go back to racing -- or NOT.

After working all day one weekend, this was the sum total of the clearing out process.  There were eight mounts all told that found their way up on one of the walls in the garage, and I have to say that they look pretty neat up there.

Today I built two cabinets for tools and supplies.  They go under a huge, 16 foot long workbench that DH built a few weekends ago.  We also now have a four foot path from the bench to the door of the house -- a major undertaking!  Meanwhile, DH built some shelves of his own, put up long fluorescent lights above workspaces and attached cords with multiple outlets to the fronts of two more work benches. 

I also found the time this week to finish a quilt for one of my guild friends.  Vanessa G brought me a crispy clean looking springlike quilt made from 30's fabric, and I quilted it with a pantograph of feathers and flowers in the middle and put stippling around the applique in the borders.  To enlarge this picture, just click on it, and you will see the details better.  I can just see this pretty thing in a light filled room with white wicker and pastel hooked rugs.

And now off to the showers.  What a productive day!

Catching up

 Do you remember wearing corduroy when you were little?  How it seemed just the right amount of warmth on those crispy fall days?  Well, I came across some corduroy pants in a catalog the other day, and they were in all sorts of colors!  So I bought my favorite -- teal.  However, I have a problem with my measurements.  Besides being queen size, I am also relatively tall, and the 29" inseam measurements of most "store-bought'n" pants are just a scant bit too short.  So I bought the tall size.  They sat on my dresser for weeks, waiting for the sewing bug to hit, but I was taking a hiatus that lasted almost two months. 

Then, finally, last weekend, I dug them out and hemmed them -- just in time for a visit with my inlaws!  And, of course, if you are wearing teal pants, you must have a coordinating top, so I dug out the catalog and got a light teal top to go with them.  Woo hoo!  I'm beginning to feel like I'm in the fashion throes of adult Garanimals! 

On the other hand, this little bit of sewing finally got me spurred on to finishing some of my longstanding and longsuffering projects.  This quilt is called Americana by me, but is called Betsy Ross Sampler by McCall's Quilting (August, 2003).  It was waiting for its outer border, which is now on! 

Although it's hard to see, the beige border is muted writing of the words to the Declaration of Independence.  I have four customer quilts to finish, and then I can quilt this little beauty.

New and old

Pat Sloan is one of my favorite commercial bloggers.  She has radio interviews with quilt and fabric artists from everywhere;  she runs a great blog;  she has whimsical and adorable patterns, and from time to time, she suggests trying a particular tool or method.  This time around, I am trying The Cutting Edge ruler, made by Sullivan, which I discovered on her blog.  The innovative thing about this ruler is that it has a whetstone surface on its right side that is supposed to help keep our rotary cutters sharp.  So far so good with mine.

But I do have some comments:  the ground glass background of the ruler makes it hard to see the fabric edge in some cases.  Also, left handed people have to use this ruler upside down -- it seems the manufacturer should have considered putting the edge on both sides to make it more equitable and user friendly for lefties.  Other than those two criticisms, I like it.

Once a year my quilt guild gets together with other guilds in the area and has a party.  Sometimes it's a tea, sometimes it's an ice cream social, and sometimes it's a great little smorgasbord.  We dress a little more nicely and wear hats if we're so inclined.  This is my "guild hat", whose pins represent various bits of pleasure in my life.  I love to wear this hat, just for the fun of it.  Unfortunately, the Day of Sharing this year occurred while I was on vacation, but I thought I'd share my hat with you anyway.

The Good Wife

Sometimes I think we're really spoiled.  We've been so lucky to have been able to travel to wonderful places, some of which, like Grand Cayman, have become our second homes when it comes to favorite restaurants and knowing their owners and staff.  This past vacation in the islands found us admiring a new bronze fountain outside a sparkling new shopping arcade.  The graceful forms of southern sting rays struck a chord in us because we're scuba divers and have had many memorable dives with these shy creatures.  So we sat down on the rim of the fountain, talking about all the beautiful things we had seen in these Caribbean waters, and along came a young lady who was kind enough to take our picture for us.

That was the last day of our vacation, and it was hard to come home so soon this time because we hadn't yet had our fill of diving, what with the lousy weather the first three days.  And then the airlines changed our flight times, which was of some concern to DH because he had hoped to participate in a points race Saturday night.  Some other racers  had brought his cart for him just in case he could make it for the race.  The change in schedule put us into Raleigh at 9 instead of 8, and we scrambled to get the luggage and the car and then high tailed it up to the Virginia racetrack as fast as we could go.  We didn't stop at home first; we didn't stop for refreshment;  we didn't even stop for the bathroom!  No indeed.  We went straight there, and lo! and behold!  We made it with ten minutes to spare for the final race!   You never saw a more excited man!

It is unfortunate that this time he had problems with the carburetor.  So he pulled off to the side of the track to adjust it.  During the previous week, while we were away, the track changed its policy about getting back in the race and now, once you pulled out for any reason, you could not reenter.  Imagine his dismay!  So that was the end of that race.  But, being the good wife, I stayed around and took pictures and cheered at the start of the race.  I didn't get to sleep in my very own bed, at last, until well after midnight.  Two more races to go.  I'll go to the last one with him in two weeks, and then I hope to see some chores getting done around here on the weekends!

Tomorrow I'll show you my newest quilting tool.

Sunny Cayman

Let me set the scene.  It's mid-October, the time of year that DH and I had our wedding -- in Lake Tahoe.  Over the years, we have gone to several exotic areas of the world to celebrate that day, but we often return to Grand Cayman, where we have several time shares since we like this island so much.  This year we decided to reprise our wonderful time last year and return to the island, anticipating that although it is hurricane season, we have always lucked out with the weather.

Upon hitting the tarmac, we were greeted with a warm, very brisk wind.  The sun was shining.  We had been told that it was raining in Grand Cayman, and we had resigned ourselves to hanging out with the computer and catching great dinners for entertainment rather than the scuba diving that is our favorite pasttime.  Each day brings with it dark clouds and some rain.

Two more days go by, and a horrendous storm hits, bending the palms low and ticking noisily against the sliding glass doors of our condo.  Apparently it was the parting shot of some southerly winds as a result of Paula, just north of us.  We're starting to get cabin fever but accept this with equanimity and start surfing ebay, wondering what we can find for excitement.

Finally, after only a few hours of pounding the island with all its might, thunder and lightning included, the clouds drift away, apologetically, and the sun breaks through!  We are elated!

We pile into the car and take the north road to the Antique Car Museum, which is just a few feet north of the Turtle Farm.  Here, in the lobby, is the first automobile ever made!  It's a wonder to behold. We enter the museum, gasping at the gorgeous old cars, and the recent ones that bring tears to a grown man's eyes.  Not that DH did that....  I'm just saying...

 

Below is DH in front of my own dream car.  I LOVE Bentleys, the older the better.  We weren't allowed to touch anything, or else I would have crawled into this little beauty and stayed there all afternoon.   I love Bentleys so much that I bought my pontoon boat by that manufacturer!

This Cadillac below is the first car brought to the island -- woo hoo!  The locals thought the devil had come and  jumped out of its way and ran to the churches in droves.  Can you imagine?  Not to even know such a thing existed in the world and then to suddenly have one chugging and backfiring along the dirt paths that passed for roads here in those days.   I'm sure they thought it was the end of the world!

The next day was even lovelier, but we didn't know that the storms were over because on the local weather report, scattered thunderstorms had been predicted.  All this weather was the result of Paula getting hung up off the coast of Cancun and then over the western tip of Cuba.  We were holding our breath for fear that she would circle back over us again.

That wasn't to be, but we missed out on the diving today as a result of faulty weather reports.  We're signed up for tomorrow for a two tank dive.  It seems a sin to be in Cayman and not be 100 feet under the water...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, take a look at the iguanas that roam the golf course here, next to the resort.  BIG ole thangs!

We'll be back homeSaturday, alas.  Now that the sun is out, we wish we could stay an extra week, but work and duty call.  See you all then!

I'm having a ball...or two, three, four...

At some point in the cuttings and sewings and designings during the Melrose Inn retreat, I had some scraps to deal with.  So I made little balls, about an inch across.  It turned out that later on I had other scraps, so I sewed those together to create little three dimensional flowers and gave one to each class participant.  I still had some scraps left over, so I made some for myself as well.

The pattern is from the split fingers design.  They are so cute!  I might find a place to put one or two of them in my quilt.

I guess it's time to give you a little peek at what I'm doing with my quilt.  This is the right lower corner, where I have made leaves and grasses.  These leaves will eventually be part of a stem system that goes to some interesting drooping flowers in the right upper corner.  But that's all the peek you get this time around.

These wonderful hot air balloons were created by Phyllis.  She used the spiral, the split fingers, the blaze, the chevron and the flip flop patterns to create these colorful floaters above a background that included the NYC skyline, prior to 9-11-01, and graduated shadings of skies, mimicking a sunrise coming over the city.

Lest you think that all I do is play all day, I did finally finish doing the quilting for the second QOV quilt that showed up on my doorstep some weeks ago, and I even mailed them off to their patiently waiting owner, Karen.  Sometimes these quilts are done with simple pantographs, as this one was.  Others are quite complex and take alot of custom quilting to do them justice.  But each one is made with a spirit of gratitude for our armed forces personnel. 

Take a moment to remember that freedom isn't free, and thank the men and women who have heeded the call and sometimes paid the ultimate price for our country. 

And while I'm at it, remember not to take things for granted.  Our country won't go on being the land of the free and the home of the brave unless we start boning up on what's going on in Washington.  Start paying attention now so you can vote wisely in November -- this year, next year, and especially in 2012.