mental pause

was the Hot Flashes BOM for april ... the Shades fabric is soooo thin (kinda like a cheap sheet) that the camera's flash was reflected off the floor behind it when i tried to take a picture, so i put last month's block under Mental Pause...mine with brown

and of course you can see the other blocks a bit around the edges...Auntia's with black
there is a quilter in the meeting after ours who is making her blocks with a black background - i didn't get a good picture of it cuz they were actually behaving in their meeting - but you can kinda see it draped over the back of the chair...Sheri is demonstrating construction of the Hot Flashes blocks in another fabric line for the 2nd BOM group
most of us thought we needed to use cream or white backgrounds with the Shades fabric, but it actually looks pretty doggone awesome with black ... not awesome enough for me to start over, but Edna (the mother part of the other mother/daughter team ... you know, the ones who are almost as much fun as Auntia and i are) has decided to redo hers in black ... maybe i will get a better picture at the meeting on saturday morning...

two sweet

my baby girl and my grandbaby girl...
Auntia (the aunt) and LuLu (the niece) smooching
both of them were having a good hair day - bwah ha ha!!!

size doesn't matter

Auntia took pity on me and helped take out all of those tiny little pieces of paper from the paper-piecing of Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler BOM while she watched (and i complained about) American Idol ... Annemiek was right - it DID look like it had snowed indoors - little bits of paper everydamnwhere ... and snippets of thread, too ... all over me, all over Auntia, all over my bedroom ... sheesh ... i went through an entire lint roller, lemmetellya ... and then it was time to trim it for the borders ... i squared the outer edge and left the extra fabric on the setting triangles so Auntia could decide whether or not she wanted them to float inside the inner border or force me to meet a gazillion more points ... but she decided that she doesn't want any borders at all...

what?!? no borders?!?

no ... no borders ... it doesn't need borders.

whaddya mean it doesn't need borders?!? of course it needs borders ... it's only 51" x 74"!!! that's not big enough!!!

big enough for what?

to wrap around you! to keep you warm! to sleep...

i'm not gonna sleep under this one ... i'm gonna hang it on a wall and look at it ... the size doesn't matter.

no, no, no ... that's a myth perpetuated by men who...

i am not gonna use this quilt ... i am gonna look at it ... it is just the right size and it doesn't need borders.

and so ... Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler BOM is ready for quilting ... but it needs a name cuz PPSSBOM is awkward and not waaaay cool...

Seven of 9

is as done as it's gonna be till i save enough pennies to have it quilted cuz i am not even gonna try to quilt it myself...

pressing matters

to press

or not to press?!?
when i am working with bias edges, i usually don't press ... and i usually regret it ... but when i DO press ... well, i always regret it ... so i didn't press this time till i was finished with all of the sashing for the setting triangles ... the top was spread out on the floor and Auntia said...
i'm really, really glad that i don't have to press that...

who said you don't have to press it?!? if it's gonna be yours, i think that's the least you can do...

i am NOT pressing that mess - you should have pressed as you sewed.

yeah ... well ... maybe so
and maybe no...

it was an intense hour with Ensign Ro*, lemmetellya ... i tried using steam - till i realized that i was making a mess of things - and then i took three steps back and ran into the baker's rack that holds the tv ... counted to ten ... took a few deep breaths ... thought some more bad words ... and tried again...Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler with setting triangles and sashing
and without too many more bad words Ensign Ro and i smoothed the beast ... and now i get to pick out all of those little pieces of paper-piecing paper cuz i have no more excuses...


*Ensign Ro is our Rowenta iron - i know that she is a Bajoran cuz of all the wrinkles

smarter than a fifth grader?!?

i decided that i have too many BOMs and not enough quilts, so i got out these...

Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler Blocks of the Month
and the embroidered teapots and teacups that i've whined about for the past year ... and i redid the math ... i have no idea why i thought i needed 24 embroidered blocks ... i knew i wanted to set the blocks on point and that i would have 24 paper-pieced blocks of four across and six down, with embroidered blocks for the alternate rows ... i wrote about the setting in my quilt journal but i did not make a diagram which would have shown me in graphite and graph paper that i needed fifteen embroidered blocks, not twenty-four ... sheesh ... i could have stopped whining nine teapots ago ... anywho ... i put all the blocks on the floor and asked Auntia to arrange them the way she wanted cuz this one is for her, too and brought the sashing strips that i've been putting together for the past two weeks cuz i messed up the math on them, too downstairs...four and twenty paper-pieced blocks with five and ten embroidered teapots and a gazillion nine-patch corner stones
and made this much progress before i'd had enough for one night...whose bright idea was this?!?
i don't know why i always underestimate how much time it's gonna take to put blocks together ... this was not a one day project ... i really need to get better at doing the math

no, i am NOT smarter than a fifth grader

shot of sumpin sumpin

do these blocks look familiar?!?Auntia and tequila sunrise

remember these?!? after i finished mellow yellow and dream maker and daisy duke i still had 36 blocks left from the pink and orange BOMs - tequila sunrise (for Auntia - cuz she's an Eagles fan and cuz the middle block in the top row looks like an umbrella drink to me) used up 12 of them ... Auntia wanted a spring-weight quilt, so i used Hobbs Thermore ultra-thin batting and quilted loops all over it with variegated pink thread ... just 24 blocks to go

do or do not

there is no try...Auntia's Yoda quilt ... too many Yodas there can never be

a few years ago i made lots and lots of kaleidoscope quilts ... people in my family actually started to hide from me so they wouldn't be saddled with one ... but Auntia actually wanted hers cuz her favorite Star Wars character is Yoda and i bought lots of Yoda fabric...Yoda flannel - whodathunk?!?
and when it was time for the actual quilting i was kinda weary of the little green guy - so i decided to quilt it with one of my favorites...R2D2 getting whacked by Yoda's light saber
i wouldn't want to have to choose between R2D2 and Chewbaca in real life - but in the quilting world R2 was probably easier to continuous line quilt...what is THAT supposed to be?!?
i simplified a drawing from a Star Wars coloring book okay, i confess, it was actually from MY coloring book and i still don't share it with anyone and quilted row after row ... it was one of my better machine quilting efforts which just goes to show you how low my standards are and a lot more intense than the loops and swirls i have been quilting lately ... anywho ... that was august of 2008 and i named it Do or Do Not
cuz there is no try