Man cave revisited

We're at it again, making a molehill out of a mountain.

This is the archery side of this particular work bench area in our garage.  The grey wall cabinet has many parts and pieces of arrows, sights, strings, quivers and the like.  Outside, under the wall cabinet sit two small desk top sets of drawers with various sizes and colors of fletches and nocks.  A fletch is a feather, and a nock is the very short plastic tube that holds the end of the arrow on the bow string.   It was my job to gather up all four of these little cabinets, two of which were going on ebay and two of which were being kept.  However, since I had moved the larger of the two that were to be kept first, when I came upon the two that were being sold, they looked like they were just one, larger cabinet.  The last thing DH said was not to tilt the cabinets forwards or all the drawers would fall out.  I knew this.  I had just picked up one successfully, hadn't I?  However, the second "one" was actually two, and, you guessed it, I dropped the lower cabinet.  The drawers obligingly slid open and poured out hundreds of colored nocks.  Rats.  Nocks come in many different sizes.  The only thing that keeps me from finding a bridge to jump off of today is that each size is a different color.  When I can actually get to the area where all the nocks spilled, I will have a fighting chance of getting them back into their proper drawers at least.  Meanwhile, I think I'll stick to rearranging the light bulbs in my hall cabinets.

The center of the bench is occupied by a wood lathe that has been refashioned into a tire lathe for go carts.  Don't ask me why this is important, but it has to do with contact area of the tire suface and ability to grip the track.  TMI for me. The left side of the bench has a wall cabinet that holds all DH's bullet making equipment.  Except gunpowder. 

Actually, DH doesn't make his own bullets anymore, but his gear is very like my fabric.  I have a hard time letting go of a piece that I liked alot when I bought it.  Even if I never use it, at least I still have it.  Some people are like that with scraps from their various projects, holding onto them for the memories.  My friend, Mary, actually uses her scraps effectively, as you can see on her blog, and so does guild buddy Jean, who has made 13 quilts for her "kids" (fosters) this Christmas from huge balls of scraps sewn into 2 1/2" ribbons that must be miles long!  Ya gotta admire that kind of dedication.

Me, I throw mine away.  I know, it's sacrilege.  I get it.  I really do.  But once I complete a project, I'm eager for new "faces" on my fabric.  Come to think of it, I wish DH could get rid of his unused tools (I know it's broken , but I can use it to stir paint with), equipment (one of these days when I retire, I'm gonna fix this), supplies (17 different car waxes is NOT too many!), odd pieces of metal (I can use that for welding!) and the like as easily as I can give up my fabric.

That brings us to this last mechanical wonder that hubby just assembled.  It looks like a short metal baby bathinette.  You know, similar to the softer kind our mothers bathed our baby brothers in that had a sling for the baby to rest on in the water.  When the bath was over, she would take him out and wrap him up in a towel, and the top of the bathinette was then folded down so she could dry the baby and powder him and dress him on it.  So I asked DH -- what are you going to wash in that? -- thinking I was being very clever and cryptic.  His reply?  Parts.

Ask a stupid question...

Braids and curls

Phyllis McK brought me this sweet little quilt the other day.  It's prairie braids in pastels, and even DH said "That looks like a little girl!"  Phyllis is giving this to someone special as a thank you. 

I love prairie braids.  There's just something about them that reminds me of the French braids that my mother painstakingly put into my hair every day while I was growing up.  Oh, how I wanted to have the darling dancing curls of the other little girls, but my straight hair would not cooperate, so braids, or plaits as we called them, were in order to keep my hair out of my face.  Just as they were in my hair, the braids on this quilt are clean and smooth and bright.  Best of all, this is a scrappy quilt -- my favorite.

They gave me the opportunity of using a function on my IQ called Path Pattern.  You create the block, draw a line that becomes the path your pattern will follow, choose a pattern (in this case, I chose the petals of feathers), choose the number of repeats, and voila!  One side of the new path pattern is finished.  Use the copy function to repeat the pattern, flip the Y axis, and again -- there it is!  You have both halves.  Now combine the line and the two halves of the feathers, and the pattern is complete.    I chose feathers because of the upward direction of the braids. 

Phyllis wanted a soft vine-y design in the white strips.  And if you'll look closely at the border fabric, you'll see that it has curliques in it, so I used that as inspiration for the curls along the border.  All in all, it's a dear little quilt, and the recipient is going to love it, I'll bet.

Today I took the day off from quilting and just cleaned the house, paying particular attention to our study.  DH hasn't seen the top of his desk since we moved in three years ago, except for the annual spurt of exasperation that overcomes me and sets me to sorting out the two foot high mounds of paper, tools, glasses and what-have-you's that accumulate almost as if they procreate during the night.

So here it is, sorted, cleaned, polished, arranged logically, and ready for the next year of good intentions left by the wayside.  What?  You think I'm cynical?  Nah.  Just been there.  Done that.  Way too often.

Holly Jolly Blog Bingo!

Check it out!  There's a virtual bingo game going on, starting tomorrow, sponsored by The Quilt Shoppe, and it's really easy to sign up for it.  Just click on the blue highlighted shop name and the link will take you to their "In Stitches" blog, where they give the procedure for joining in on the bingo game.  But you have to hurry -- you have to sign up by midnight tonight!

Joy to the world! These quilts are done!

A local quilt shop, Wish Upon A Quilt, donated fabrics to our guild for our annual February month of quilting for charity.  As the chairperson of the Outreach Committee, I decided to audition some patterns to be used during that month's marathon quilting endeavor.  This fabric line is called Jungle Fever, by Free Spirit, and it is truly wild!  I had a hard time figuring out what I could do with it that might appeal to a child or teen, but I found the right venue from Hoffman, which put out a free pattern called Trade Winds using one constant color ( I used a bright batik in yellow) in the basic block, seen below.  It's a great pattern to use up your 2 1/2" strips!

The basic block is NOT the windmill.  It's the square around the windmill.  The quilting is a Baptist Fan pattern.  There wasn't any sense in doing anything fancy -- too much motion in the fabrics to make any but the simplest quilting choice.  Nonetheless, the curves of the fan smooth out all the topsy turvy angles of the Trade Winds pattern and make it not so jarring, don't you think?

And then, after piecing it all together, I needed a coordinating backing.  Well, the donated fabric was just in sample swatches -- not enough for even one piece borders, much less backing.  So I happened to have this swirly, bright fabric in my stash and decided to use it -- just right!

This quilt will join others in being donated to Hannah's Place in Roanoke Rapids, NC, a shelter for women and children.

Then, on the opposite pole of color saturation and design, there was this sedate, muted log cabin quilt that had been sitting in my unfinished basket for a year or so.

Since I wanted this one to go to the VA Hospital in Durham, NC, I thought I would quilt it in an Americana motif, with symbols of our country in a pantograph.

If you click on the picture, you will see the White House, the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, Statue of Liberty, George Washington, the American Eagle, the Declaration of Independence and other reminders of our great country's heritage.  Hopefully the veteran that gets this quilt will enjoy having this tribute to his or her service.

And now, off to my lurkim.  Phyllis McK handed me another of her darling quilts at the guild meeting yesterday, and I am eager to get it done quickly for her.

We wish you a Merry Quiltmas

One of the nice things about having the IntelliQuilter on my Nolting 24 Pro is that it can be working while I am sewing something else.  This adorable winter wallhanging designed by Pat Sloan was my project this week.  I wanted to finish it before the Christmas guild meeting, so I had something for show and tell.

So, I cut out, pieced, appliqued and assembled this little beauty over the four days of quilting I needed to do to finish my customer quilts.  Above is a close up of snowflakes in the background of the holly applique center.  In the triangles around the center, I put a sweet feathered triangle in the white areas and holly in the red ones.

The only way you can really see the holly is to click on this picture and magnify it.

The outer setting blocks consist of several rectangle bricks sewn together.  I quilted a luscious large feathered triangle over this.  You can barely see it -- too much variation in the colors of the bricks, I guess.  But now I have my Christmas wallhanging quilted, bound, and after tomorrow, hung!

As long as I needed more time to finish assembling the Pat Sloan wallhanging, I quilted one of my works that has been sitting around for years.  It is also bound, and ready to be displayed come July 4th.  The quilting can't be seen, even up close. I used an Independence Day pantograph on these interlocking loops.

And this is another small quilt that had been packed away and pretty much unloved until I quilted it yesterday and put the binding on it today.  It is nondescript, as quilts go, because of the autumn coloring and blah pattern, but I quilted it with a pantograph depicting Noah's Ark, and now it has its own little personality.  The back of the quilt is fabric with Noah's Ark on it, and that's what gave me the idea to use that motif for the quilting.

So this past week I quilted three customer quilts, four of my own (one doesn't have binding on it yet -- I'll show you that one when I finish it), and put together a charity quilt that is now ready to be quilted.  It's from a Hoffman pattern called Trade Winds.  But more about that another day.

Hi ho, hi ho! It's off to work we go!

Margaret A made two pretty little quilts and asked me to quilt them for her.  This one she is giving away as a Christmas gift.  Won't the recipient love it?

This one is for her personal use. She asked me to fancy it up with feathers.  That was like asking me to eat chocolate ice cream!  I love feathers!  And doing them with my IntelliQuilter is a breeze.

This is a close up of the borders, body and corner.  I used the same square feathered wreath in the blocks of the quilt and the corners.  The inner border was a squiggly zigzag, and the outer borders were this luscious undulating feather garland.

The back was as pretty as the front with its quilting more visible.  Don't forget that you can click directly on a picture to see it magnified.

Today I'm going to finish a Pat Sloan Christmas wall hanging and hopefully get another of my UFO's quilted.  More pictures tomorrow.  For now, fa la la la la, la la la la!

Deck the garage with lots of shelving...

To continue the saga of the weekend garage cleaning, today I made another storage cabinet.  Now there are three very professional looking cabinets (from Lowe's) residing under the largest of the four work benches DH has constructed in the garage.  This number of workspaces would be untenable in the average garage, but we built a four stall structure with the intent of having a generous area for DH's welding and airbrush painting and body work, etc.  Little did I know that he would take over the whole thing.  As we reorganize the mess from moving, I am ekeing out my own area to use to actually park my car -- at last.  But for now, it's still baby steps.

Here's another small victory.  This cabinet was moved from the very center of the most congested part of the garage storage  mass to the only wall left that had space for it.  It took over an hour and a half to get to it and to create a path from its former location to the new one!  The shelving above was reorganized to allow for convenient access to cleaning (hand, floor, car) chemicals and solutions and safe storage for bug sprays and weed killers.

And last, the piece de resistance, this marvelous rolling 4 1/2 foot high shelving unit carrying the myriads of screws, bolts, nuts, and manly must-haves, carefully sorted and arranged by DH in a fit of uncharacteristic anality.  Don't you just love when that happens?!