outlines

we've finished listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and moved on to 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets...

yeah, you don't have to tell me that this in no way resembles anything to do with Harry Potter...

Honestly, if you were any slower, you'd be going backward.

Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

more parchment

another five hours of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

and this is what i have to show for it...

hey - i turned a corner or three!!!

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

parchment

Melissa is working on the top border and 

i decided to start with Chapter 1... 

we listened to five hours of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and this is what i have to show for it...

this is gonna take a loooong time...

Swish and flick.

Professor Flitwick in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

rabbit holes

one of my mom's favorite phrases when i was a kid was

  look it up

if i asked her how to spell a word 

look it up

or what is the capital of Chile

look it up

 or how many feet are there in a mile

look it up

 whatever i needed to know 
for whatever reason 
she almost always said

look it up

back then the looking up was in Webster's or our set of encyclopedias 

that a door to door salesmen talked a poor working family into buying when it was something they could really not afford ... but i digress 

anywho, she almost never let the answers roll off her tongue

 she said

look it up

 i dunno know if she realized that looking it up meant that for the next hour (or two or three) i would be in my own little world, reading the dictionary or the encyclopedia because, invariably, i would see something that led me to something else

 and then to something else 

and on and on...

anywho...

it's the same thing now ... i will wonder how to make a deliciously gooey lava cake 

or what the color name is for DMC Floss #319 (it's Very Dark Pistachio Green) 

or where to find a paper pieced pattern for a snowflake (not for the faint of heart)

and a couple of hours later i will realize that yes, indeed, there are forty-three gazillion possible ways to make lava cakes 

but now there is no time to bake one, so i dunno if it would be a deliciously gooey lava cake cuz i fell down a rabbit hole...

oh, those rabbit holes...

and that is how i stumbled across  Stitch Your Own Adventure - Letters From Hogwarts

(not a secure site, so if you don't go to not secured sites, don't follow the link)

the Stitch A Long started back in september of 2019, but i didn't discover it till late december
 and then lost the link a few times before i figured out how to bookmark it so i could show it to Melissa...

 i told her that i wanted to start it and asked if she was interested in stitching, too, 
she said yes, she was interested, very much so

and, even though we were hopelessly behind everyone else, we came up with a plan - we would stitch our own adventures and not worry about catching up with everyone else - it would be just Melissa and me competing stitching side by side...

so we set about getting everything ready to start our stitching...

we ordered fabric...

we needed a memory stick to take to kinko's in order to print the introduction and the floss list and the charts...

 we waited till there was a 40% off your entire regular priced purchase coupon for Joann's so we could buy two sets of floss and needles 
and then i typed up the floss labels whilst Melissa punched holes into snack bags, reinforced those holes, and put the snack bags on two big rings...

we found small backpacks shaped like owls...

 and Melissa made zipper pulls...

and scissor fobs...

we needed notebooks to hold our charts...

and journals for notes...

and totes for each of us...

and a big black basket to hold the totes...

and fabric for snippets and microwave-a-bowls...

we used seven of our Audible credits to buy all of the Harry Potter books to listen to whilst we stitch away...
and now that we have everything that we think we're gonna need
 it's time to stitch our adventures...

Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

buffalo wings

sometimes i shop for myself and give whatever it is that i think i can't live without to Melissa

 to give back to me for whatever holiday is next...

a couple of christmases ago

Melissa gave me a buffalo panel

i wanted it cuz of the buffalo

for the White Buffalo quilt that i'm supposed to be making but hasn't seen the light of day for a gazillion three years

but when i got a good look at it 

i fell in lurve with the bluebirds...

do bluebirds actually hang out with buffalo?

i dunno - but i'd like to think that they do

anywho...

my mom lurved bluebirds, too

i was really missing her 

and i thought

why not surround that big old buffalo with a bunch more bluebirds?!?

so i bought the Feathers pattern from The Pattern Basket

and, since it was spring, tested it with robins...

and after tweaking it a bit, drafted it for paper-piecing

then did a mirror image so the birds could be facing each other

and went shopping for blues and oranges and creams

and started piecing birds

boy birds and girl birds with prairie point beaks

that surrounded that big old buffalo...

it was getting a bit larger than planned and i was running outta background fabric

and even though there were more birds in the flock 

a decision was made to STOP with the front

 and add the other birds to the back...

along with another buffalo panel 

that was also purchased for the White Buffalo quilt  - twice - so there was a spare

cuz i can't ever remember what i have and what i think i have in the Great Pile of Stuff

and then sent off to Liz the World's Most Awesome Longarm Quilter in Michigan 

to be quilted with buffalo...

stomp

after Liz worked her magick 

it was trimmed and bound...

the girl birds are facing right 

and the boy birds are facing not right for a reason, y'all

too bad i used all that leftover fabric from the front cuz i was gonna need more of those blues a couple of months later when i started the piecing for Serenity!!!

 and named Buffalo Wings!!!

cuz, seriously, with buffalo and wings 

what else could it be named?!?

Left wing, chicken wing, it don't make no difference to me.

Woody Guthrie

ta done

the last time that i wrote about Mother Earth Father Sky was march 16, 2017

sheesh - that's almost three years ago!!!

i'd managed to piece two rays

with four to go...

fast forward to whenever this fabric:

Hoffman Digital Out Of This World Earth Panel 

arrived on the scene 

and i knew without even seeing it in Real Life that 

even if i had no idea where else to go with the front

i'd found the backing for Mother Earth Father Sky

so i ordered the panel and some coordinating space fabric...

appliqued (shudder) a moon for the name...

and put the backing together...

and i gave myself a deadline 

by embroidering an end date on the moon...

which, of course, meant that it was past time to work on those rays...

so i finished the final four and added some black fabric around them...

and found myself stuck again...

it looked more like a Black Hole swallowing up Mother Earth

than like Father Sky...

so i paper-pieced a full moon...

which was a bit better...

but not enough...

maybe the Solar System? 

but how was i gonna manage to show Mercury and Venus in that little space between the Sun and Mother Earth without using the dreaded A word?!? 

(that's Applique, not the other dreaded A word)

what to do?!? what to do?!? what to do?!?

BUTTONS!!!

so Melissa helped me find buttons for the other eight planets 

cuz in THIS home, Pluto is still a planet

using USPS stamps as a reference...

we laid them out where they oughta go and 

i marked the different places with the names for each planet

 and embroidered those names

so that i would know where to sew on the buttons after it came back from Liz (the most wonderful of all longarm quilters EVER) ...

and then decided that it was still gonna need more of sumpin'...

what to do?!? what to do?!? what to do?!?

CONSTELLATIONS!!! COMETS!!!

which meant RESEARCH!!!

and more embroidery...

and lots and lots of shopping at all the local Joann stores to find enough tiny white star buttons to add after quilting 

the white stars were in packages with red stars and blue stars 

and now i have a whole lotta red and blue star buttons taking up space in the Great Pile of Stuff

till i had this...

there is no up in Space

and i spread it out so everyone could see how wonderful it was

only to hear

What ARE those?!?

and 

Are those SUPPOSED to be TEEPEES?!?

sigh

what to do?!? what to do?!? what to do?!?

hearths? yeah, hearths would leave no doubt that those are teepees...

so i searched and searched and searched for affordable campfire buttons

and came up empty-handed... 

back to the embroidery hoop...

hearth fires - that's gotta be teepees, right?!?

and then i decided that enough is enough
and sent it off to Liz to be quilted...

which she did, awesomely!!!

when Mother Earth Father Sky came back from its journey to Michigan 

it was time to trim and bind...

and sew on a gazillion buttons...

and become...

Ta Da!!!

Ta Done!!!

a quilt with so many sharp little star buttons that no one will ever be able to snuggle under it without looking like they've been chased through the briar patch...

and maybe it's okay for some quilts to be just for lookin' at
and not for sleepin' under...

Good design is like a refrigerator—when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks. 
Irene Au