The Galloping Horse Method

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. –Abraham Lincoln

I am slightly OCD. Obsessive Creative. Obsessive Compulsive. Potato, potahto, right? I tend to get wrapped up in the details and rather than seeing the big picture, I focus on all the tiny imperfections. I guess you could say I'm an imperfectionist. And I let myself be limited by all the things I can't to. I've been thinking about this on and off for a while now. Yesterday, as I was pondering the complexities of stripey binding, my sister reminded me that shifting your perspective opens up a lot of previously unexplored possibilities. She said, I don't know much about binding, but I think I'd take the longer lasting way even if it doesn't lay perfectly straight. Use the galloping horse method to determine how picky you're going to be.

And what is the galloping horse method, you ask? The story goes like this. I took a beginning machine quilting class in February of 2010. The teacher talked about how to determine if you're going to unpick. She said that if you were to pass by the quilt on a galloping horse and you could see the mistake, then unpick.

Several thoughts sprouted from this reminder.

1. Just do your best and let the stitches fall where they may.
2. Not every quilt has to be a show quilt.
3. Focus on what you can do and not on what you can't.

Do your best and let the stitches fall where they may.
I can do bias binding. I know it. I love it. So that's what I did. And I'm pretty darn excited about those formerly diagonal vertical stripeys. It's not perfect. Some of my seams matched up better than others. It might turn out a tiny bit ripply, as my bindings always do. But then again, it might not. In order to get enough binding out of the piece of fabric I had, I made it 2⅛" wide instead of 2¼". Perhaps being a fraction of an inch narrower will give it more fill once it is turned and might, just might, solve the pucker problem.

Not every quilt has to be a show quilt.
As a matter of personal preference, I like quilts that are "custom." I always have. When I piece a quilt, I pick the design because I like it and I want all that work to be shown off to its best advantage by the quilting. I think edge-to-edge tends to mask the piecing. But with no small amount of internal debate, I took this quilt and the one before it to the quilt fairy to be done edge-to-edge. Having them done in time to give as birthday gifts outweighs spending weeks on quilting the perfect design in them. These quilts are meant to be snuggled under and dragged around and picnicked on at washed and used and loved. Masterpiece quilting doesn't quite fit the bill, here.

Focus on what you can do and not on what you can't.
I kind of like having a quilt fairy. It means there are a lot of things I can do instead of making myself crazy trying to cram 40 hours of quilting into an already packed week. While my quilt is being professionally quilted {with a stitch regulator!}, I can spend time helping the Not-So-Little Bugs with homework and projects. I can catch up on the laundry. And the dusting. And the bathrooms. I can cook actual dinners instead of sentencing the family to cold cereal and ramen for a week straight. I can go to bed at a decent time. And I can be completely wowed by an edge-to-edge quilting design. Here's a peek.

You'll be even more wowed when I show you the whole quilt. With stripey binding. And a completely awesome embroidered quilt label. It's one of my best, if I do say so myself.

The Box It Came In Would Probably Be Tastier

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. –Robert Fulghum

I'm a big fan of hot cereal for breakfast. {Come to think of it, I'm a big fan of cold cereal too.} Cream of Wheat? Yes please. With lumps? Even yesser. I pretty much ate that for breakfast the entire 18 months I had braces. Zoom? Love that stuff. And lately I've been on an oatmeal {for breakfast} kick {see also: Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins}. I love the texture. It's comforting. It's less than 500 calories, even with sugar in it. It tastes good. It carries me through to lunch. I like that in a breakfast food.

{Image Source}

Day before yesterday, I didn't have enough oatmeal left to make my usual heart healthy serving. No problem. I popped into the pantry and pulled a box of it {can it be called a box if it is a cylinder?} off the shelf only to discover that what I bought {old-fashioned oats} was not what I brought home with me {quick cooking oats}. I hate it when that happens. But, no biggie. I mixed some of the quick cooking oats with what I had left of the old-fashioned oats and got on with it. It tasted a little funny, but it wasn't too bad. I thought that maybe it didn't have enough salt in it. Yesterday, it was all quick cooking oats. I added a tiny bit of extra salt. That wasn't the problem. I'm not sure what happens when you make oats quick cooking, but it changes the taste considerably and for the worse. The cardboard box it came in would probably be tastier.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with an entire box/cylinder of quick cooking oats. I had Cream of Wheat today. Specially made with lumps. It was a little bit stale {it might very well be left over from when I had braces, 6 years ago}. But it was still better than those quick cooking oats. Is it grocery shopping day yet?

Goofin' Off An Awful Lot

I'm taking care of my procrastination issues; just you wait and see! –As seen on Pinterest while procrastinating

By my reckoning, in the time that has elapsed since I finished the Sea Glass quilt, I should have had Grasshopper's Halloween costume finished and most of the rest of Paulette's Dresden quilted. But instead of the happy hum of the sewing machine, there's been an awful lot of procrastination going on around here.

My story goes something like this . . . after the big finish weekend before last I decided that I needed something a little mindless to work on, so I pulled out a really old Ph.D and fiddled around with that for a couple of days. When I could no longer reasonably claim that my brain needed rest, I decided to buck up and work on Grasshopper's costume. The problem with this is that I needed to make the pattern based on a set of instructions written using the metric system. {Sidebar: despite what they've been telling us since the 70's, I don't think it is likely that we're going to be switching anytime soon.} I ran all the numbers through a conversion chart, but pattern making/alterations is not one of my favorite things to do. I'm really not good at it. I can see what the lines should look like in my head, but I have a hard time making my pencil put those lines down on paper.

To make the process a little . . . easier {for lack of a better word} I thought I'd use the reference drawings in the instructions as a base and adjust them in my antiquated photo editing software {Microsoft Paint}. I sat down at my computer, full of pluck, and started looking at Halloween face paint. I wasted pretty much the whole afternoon filling up a pin board mostly with different sugar skulls {but in the non-Dia de los Muertos category, isn't this the coolest thing you've ever seen?}. I also found a really cute idea for nails and which resulted in a Halloween-y manicure.

And then I went back to puttering around with my Ph.D for a few more days. On Monday, with only 10 days until Halloween and an all-nighter lurking in my future, I buckled down and started work on the digital patterns, after I first made sure it wasn't going to cost and arm and a leg to print them out on oversize paper. It was a long and laborious process involving all kinds of funky math to convert between pixels and inches and centimeters, and reducing and enlarging by percentages as I adjusted and sized and re-sized the graphics. I worked on it from the time I got home from work until the time I went to bed on Monday night and then all afternoon yesterday. As a final test, I reduced the pattern pieces to the same scale so that they would fit on regular paper and made sure that everything fit together as it should. When they did {miracle of miracles!} I uploaded them to a copy shop and discovered that in my investigation into pricing I must have had the very smallest of the oversize papers selected because it was not the $1.79 per sheet that I'd thought, but a whopping $6.59 per sheet. At five sheets I about died when I saw the total. Trick or treat, indeed.

Mr. Bug commiserated with me and helped with alternate options; an opaque projector, transparencies, a digital projector, pencil and paper. All the time I'd already spent tweaking the patterns to perfection not withstanding, I was most concerned with distortion in the projections and absolutely dreading drawing out the patterns by hand. And that's where I left it when I went to bed last night.

This morning I still felt the same sense of dread {appropriate for Halloween, don't you think?}; none of the options was going to be pleasant. It came down to spending time or money to make this work out. I went with money since I'd already spent plenty of time. I stopped at the copy shop on the way in to work {hoping that the price for an in-person order might be slightly lower than an on-line order. It wasn't.} and left with a roll of patterns and a considerably lighter wallet.

When I got home from work, I was feeling less than excited about the prospect of cutting out the freshly minted patterns and wrangling 5 metres {5.46807 yards} of Princess Neon Blue Crushed Panne Velvet. Instead, I popped in at Pinterest, just to see if anything tickled my fancy. And it did. Pretty much all afternoon. What a waste.

On the upside, I've found my next manicure.

We Now Return You To the Regularly Scheduled Program

The property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun. –William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2

I've been working on and off for about 4 months on the quilting for a flimsy that P. made. When it's "on" I make a lot of progress. But it's mostly been "off." When last I left off, I had the ditch work and border finished and almost half of the background quilting {diagonal lines through most of the quilt} finished.

I've been working on it again the last couple of weeks and had really hoped to have it finished by now. But I seem to overestimate my abilities to bend time to my will and underestimate the number of distractions in the way of Parent Teacher Conferences with really long lines, play dates, loads of laundry, meals to prepare, sick days {I had my first cold in more than two years}, the need to sleep for ⅓ of the day and just plain life. And I have about a zillion other projects in progress that sometimes just call to me and I have to stop and work on those. Nevertheless, I am roughly ⅞ of the way finished with the diagonal quilting.

I like being on the far side of the half-way point. It means I have less left to do than I have already done. And it's when things all start to take shape and that pesky voice of self-doubt is quieted, either because it was a good plan and it's coming together or because it is too late to do anything about it anyway.

I've been using blue painter's tape to mark the lines for quilting. The tape is really only good for one use; it picks up too much lint on its special clean-release adhesive and so I started a tape ball. I didn't think about it until I was about ⅔ of the way through and had already used a full roll of tape and was a good way into my second roll, but it's still a good size — bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a baseball. I ran out of daylight today, what with all those things that keep cropping up, like people needing clean underwear and homework checked, so I'll show you a photo another day. In the meantime, you can see my marking system and if you look closely, you can see the pattern starting to fill in in the bottom right corner of the photo.

If I hurry, I can make the tape ball a little bigger before the requisite hour begins to get my full 8 hours of sleep.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program ...

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense. –Pablo Picaso

You might recall, a couple of days ago, me banging on about procrastinating on the quilting for P.'s String Ring Dresden and then finding my creative quilting mojo again. I promised to show pictures of the progress soon — I'm one small smidge past the half-way mark on the background quilting and then I'll have to come up with something perfectly perfect to quilt in the 12 Dresdens. I've been tossing around a few ideas, feathers among them, but haven't landed on anything for certain. But I digress, as this is not the post with all the progress in it. Sometimes, you gotta stitch where your bliss takes you, and after several days of wrangling a big quilt {one of the biggest I've done} under the machine, I needed a little break. So I broke out the needle and thread and yet another work-in-progress.

Why, you might ask, did I pull out another embroidery project instead of just working on the embroidered labels for the Patriotic Sampler, which I have sitting on my sewing table for the specific purpose of using as a "get out of quilting free" card? Because Halloween is closer than the 4^th of July, silly. And there is the outside chance that I can finish this before then if I work on it as my sit-and-wait project.

I started this cute little hat almost three years ago. I pull it out every year as Halloween approaches. And sometimes work on it after Halloween has passed in the hopes that it will bring me that much closer to a finish the next year when I remember Halloween is coming and pull it out again. A year and a bit later, I had most of the pointy cone part of the hat finished. A bit after that, I'd finished the final piece of the hat. Last year, I finished one of the pieces for the brim and started on a second {no post}. Yesterday I pulled it out again, finished the last two pieces of the brim and assembled it.

This has been really fun to work on. It's hard to photograph black fabric, so some of the photos are washed out. But I think my favorite design of all is the one with the pretty purple cone flowers, and the photo turned out nicely, so it gets its own little spotlight.

I'll work on the decorative stitching between the pieces that ties it all together crazy patchwork style, when I have a few minutes of sit-and-wait time {mostly when I go to pick up the Not-So-Little Bugs from school, who, incidentally, don't believe me at all when I tell them that I walked to and from school every day. Uphill. Both ways. In 10 feet of snow. Yeah. That joke never gets old.}. I have my stitches selected for each seam, all mapped out on a sketch with the colors of floss I want to use. I've learned to write these things down so I don't forget. I'll probably need a refresher next year.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some quilting to do.

What I've Been Doing While I Should Have Been Doing Something Else

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. –William James

Have you ever asked a child to do something they don't want to do? They fuss and whine and complain and drag their feet and try everything they can think of to get out of it. And after all that time and energy they put into not doing the thing, they could have done whatever it is three times over. I do that sometimes, too. I think that is why it is so frustrating for me when the Not-So-Little Bugs do it .

I've been dragging my feet on the quilting on P.'s beautiful String Ring Dresden for a while. Now don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't want to do this project. I volunteered for it, after all. It's more that I'm scared that I'll mess P.'s quilt up. It is intimidating to quilt for another quilter. I'm a bad, bad friend and she has been very patient with me. The quilt has been at my house for nine months. For the first five months, I ignored it. When I couldn't ignore it any longer, I broke down and started quilting. I got almost to the half-way point and then I lost my mojo. In trying to get it back, I pulled something else out that I thought I'd just work on for a bit. But it turns out that this project was bright and shiny and oh-so-distracting, so I worked on it for just a bit more. After six weeks, I decided it was time to put it away. But I didn't quite. I was the perfect covert dragging-my-feet opportunity and I took advantage.

I kept the little embroidered labels out to work on when I have a few minutes of sitting and waiting. I knew that Grandma Week was coming up and they'd be perfect for when the adults all sat around and talked after the kids had gone to bed. And because I knew Grandma Week was coming up, I decided I didn't want to get in the middle of quilting and have to stop. I embroidered all of the block names and the quilt name in their reds and blues.

After I finished the block titles, I knew that I couldn't work on filling in the details, because that would look too much like avoidance. I decided to keep that "get out of quilting free" card for another time. But except for that really dry spell for the last three weeks of June, I sew almost every day. I needed something else that would get me out of quilting, but not be too obvious. I puttered around with some half-square triangles. And then, just to break up the monotony, I started a completely new quilt. I think that might have been an outright tantrum against finishing the quilting.

Fabric Auditions

Call Backs

Final Casting

Rehearsals

Dress Rehearsal

The performance has been put on hold, though. I stashed the project away to be finished after I finish P's quilt. I finally got up the gumption, put on my big girl Machingers and am quilting again. With any luck, I'll be finished in a week. Photos coming soon. Unless I decided to procrastinate again.

Also, I am officially out of places to stash projects, which {hopefully} means a few more finishes. Soon. Ish.

You Don't Know Beans

Baked beans were always the only fashionable meal for Sabbath noon in Massachusetts. A minister who is a very correct mathematician, and a bit of a wag withal, has computed that he preached regularly every Sabbath afternoon to fifty-five bushels and three pecks of baked beans, while their owners were asleep. –From a nineteenth century magazine as quoted at The Old Foodie

During the last few days before school began, I went to two different barbecues. I've now eaten my quota of hot dogs for 2013 and got to make my two favorite pot luck dishes. I took potato salad to one barbecue and my favorite baked beans to the other. These are the best baked beans you'll ever have. My aunt brought them to family gatherings and I loved them so much that when my mom planned out a little family lunch after I got home from my mission in Brasil, she asked her sister {the aforementioned aunt} to bring her baked beans. But after eating beans and rice every. single. day. for 16 months, I couldn't look another bean in the eye. Not even the best baked beans ever. It actually took a full year for me to like beans again.

While I was cooking up a big dish of beans for the barbecue {a double recipe}, I snapped a picture of some in a dainty little china dish I inherited from a neighbor to entice you to try this tasty dish. Trust me. You don't know beans until you try these beans.

Linda's Most Excellent Baked Beans

8 strips bacon
3 cans {15 oz. each} pork 'n beans — about 5 cups
½ cup ketchup
¼ cup molasses
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon mustard
½ cup onion, finely chopped
½ of a green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
½ teaspoon hickory flavored liquid smoke
¼ teaspoon pepper

• Cook and crumble bacon.
• Combine pork 'n beans, ketchup, molasses, brown sugar, mustard, onion, bell pepper, liquid smoke and pepper in a 2-quart casserole dish.
• For quick beans, cover and bake for 30 minutes; remove cover, stir and bake for an additional 30 minutes at 350˚.
• For slow cooked beans, cover and bake for 2 to 3 hours at 225˚, stirring every 30 to 45 minutes. Raise oven temperature to 350˚, uncover and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

More Pretty Modern Fabrics. And Too Many Projects. I Need A Sewcation.

I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. –Charles C. Finn

While I was busy visiting Yellowstone and other outdoorsy places last week, a cute little package arrived on my doorstep and was promptly whisked away by the mail collectors. My first priority when I got home was to get said package. Seriously. We'd been home for less than an hour when I was calling my neighbors to find out when I could come and collect it.

Courtesy of Pat Bravo, a half-yard bundle of Carnaby Street in the Cool Peace colorway was waiting for me when I got home. It's even more groovy in person.

I immediately knew what I wanted to do with these fabrics. Jess at The Elven Garden showed her Retro Flowers Quilt during the Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival and I loved it. I knew these fabrics would be perfect in that quilt. So I tracked down the pattern. Then I rummaged through my stash and found that several of the Pure Elements Solids I'd got when I ordered Pat's Indie fabric line work with Carnaby Street too! {Well, I'm not sold on the dark purple [Cabernet], so we'll see on that one.} I also threw in the Squared Elements in Watermelon that I recently ordered and thought that worked pretty well too.

Now I need a sewcation so I can work on any or all of the sixty-eleven projects I have going on.

Addicted to Color. And Fabric. A Foray Into Modern Quilting.

Everyone wants happiness;
Nobody wants pain.
But you can't have a rainbow
Without a little rain.
–Unknown

I ♥ rainbows. They are just so happy. And I love every color of the rainbow. There's not a single color I don't like, not even puce, although I think it is very unfortunately named.

I've always loved all things rainbow. I kind of held back, though, on making a rainbow quilt because I thought it might seem childish. But it seems like ROY G BIV {red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet; I suppose the acronym makes it sound more grown-up} quilts are kind of the thing these days. I have two different quilts in progress that are going to be rainbow-y {I'm going with "rainbow," rather than the acronym because I'm not a grown-up yet} and I'm dreaming up another one in my head.

I seems that modern fabrics are kind of the thing these days as well. I'm a little behind the times, but I thought I'd venture out into some new territory. Just look at these lovelies.

Living Lattice in Red
Chevron Small in Tone on Tone Red
Maze in Orange
Tile in Persimmon
Metro Living Circles in Marigold
Leaf in Sun
Tarika in Moss
Reunion Daisy's Dates in Key Lime
Metro Living Circles in Chartreuse
Pearl Bracelet in Basil
Geometric Frames in Aquatic Blue
Mod Boxes in Blue
Just Color in Chambray
Citadel in Indigo
Metro Living Circles in Navy
Tiny Diamonds in Navy
Just Color in Grape
Geometric Ogee in Eggplant
Pearl Bracelet in Frosting
Geometric Eyelet in Honesysuckle Pink
Squared Elements in Watermelon

These fabrics are partly for the quilt idea I have in my head {which I may or may not get to sometime this decade; I have no less than 14 quilts in various states of finished-ness, or rather unfinished-ness} but they are mostly just to have in my stash. Stash buying isn't something I usually do. I try to buy with a project in mind {which is probably why I have 14 PhD quilts}. But you see, despite my better judgement, I keep going to visit Amy Smart over at Diary of a Quilter. And after I do that, I have to spend money {see also, Indie and Sparkle All the Way Christmas Quilt}. She introduced me to Pink Castle Fabrics and their Stash Stack Club, which I promptly joined. It seemed like a good idea. I also ordered 13 of the 21 prints shown above {the other 8 came from my favorite LQS, but I found links for you on-line. You're welcome}. That also seemed like a good idea. Their prices are kind of awesome.

What, exactly is the Stash Stack Club {and no, I'm not getting compensation of any kind to tell you, but if the folks at Pink Castle want to send me the July Stash Stack Fat Quarter Bundle, because I missed it, I wouldn't say no}? Brenda at Pink Castle has teamed up with Jeni at In Color Order and each month, they put together 12 modern fabrics from a single color family that are either tone on tone or that color plus white. Then they put them in a package and ship them off to you so you can admire them and pet them and put them in your stash. Read more by clicking the button below.

While I'm waiting for my first Stash Stack to arrive, I've been thinking a lot about color. Jeni has put together a really great series on choosing, folding and storing fabric, fabric types, color basics, color schemes and color combinations. I especially love her posts on color. I mean, I learned about the color wheel, primary, secondary and tertiary colors and complementary colors when I took art class in Jr. High. But Jeni takes it to a whole new level. Check it out.

I also went through my stash and pulled out all the modern{ish} fabrics I had that fall into the "stash builder" category. Not too shabby, eh? I think I'm on the way to a modern stash.

Seven Days Without Sewing Makes One Weak

Doldrums: \ˈdōl-drəmz\
Noun
1. a spell of listlessness or despondency
2. a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds
3. a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump

Once upon a time, about 2½ weeks ago, I kind of fell into a funk. About six weeks ago, I made a major adjustment to my schedule so that I could be around more for the Not-So-Little Bugs during summer. Overall, it has been a really positive change. I like being the first one in at work. I get a lot more done while it's quiet. And I also get to go home before everybody else; before lunch even. I think, too, that going to bed earlier {it's usually still a little bit light out} and getting more sleep has had a positive effect on how many migraines I get and how long they last {i.e., I'm having fewer and they don't hang on for days}.

I'm trying to keep this as non-whiney as possible, but what this little back-story is leading up to is that somewhere in there, I kind of lost my "me" time. And maybe a little bit of me, too. I know that making sacrifices for your kids is part of being a parent. But I kind of felt like there was a whole lot of resistance in the ranks to where I wanted to go {which, in the literal sense, was anywhere but sitting around at home staring at the screens all day}, getting up early to go to work, going to bed early so I could get up early to go to work, and trying to out-stubborn {in a happy, positive, encouraging kind of way} the reticent {or alternately defiant} Not-So-Little Bugs all combined to make me feel like I was kind of failing a little bit at life. Subsequently, not even sewing sounded fun. So for a few days, I didn't.

Going without sewing for a few days is no big deal. Sometimes you just need a little break. Going a whole week without sewing was kind of a red flag for me. I decided that I'd better get back to the machine and I started to write this post. Well, sort of. I had a clever post title {I ♥ puns}. A few more days went by and still no sewing. At around the 11^th no-sew day, it became a bit of a game and I decided to see if I could go a full two weeks without sewing. I think that was the turning point and by day 13, I was itching to do something creative. It was the 4^th of July and it is kind of my tradition to work on my Patriotic Sampler for a few days every year around this time. {I know. It would make more sense to start working on it in April so it would be finished and ready to display on the 4^th.}

I've been working on this sampler for about twelve years now. I started it when I was pregnant with LadyBug. She's eleven. It is my second oldest Ph.D, and I don't know why I don't just finish it already . I'm so close. Anyway, I decided I'd work on some of the itty, bitty paper pieced stars that go at the corners of the blocks in the sashing. It was then that I found out that my post title was more true than I knew. After the first star {which took an hour because I fussed and fiddled and unpicked a lot to try and get the stripes to line up} I was ready to quit. My sewing muscles {the mental ones that help you push through a boring/difficult/unpleasant part of a project} were seriously out of shape. I persisted, even though I didn't really want to. The non-stripey ones only took thirty minutes each. Seven down. Only twenty more to go.

Cute, no? They finish at 1". Who designed this quilt anyway?
Oh. Right. It was me.

After I'd had my fill of that, I put together one of two remaining blocks for the quilt top. It has been cut out and ready to go for, oh, I don't know. Four years now? This one is called Land of Liberty as was designed by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache. I kind of love it. Pinwheels and flying geese in the same block? It doesn't get better than that.

For the final block, I had three contenders, only two of which I can remember at the moment, so I won't even bother to tell you about the losers. I showed them to Mr. Bug and he said, hands down, this should be the final block. It is called Spiderweb Star, and it is pretty awesome. {Note: if you make this block, reverse the cutting directions for template piece C/CR.}

I also fiddled around at the old doodle pad {Microsoft Picture Manager & Microsoft Paint} and changed my sashing from tan {the same tan used for most of the block backgrounds. Yeah, not sure what I was thinking there.} to white, moved the blocks around a bit and added the flying geese border. It's kinda wild and crazy. I think it will be a little more mellow with a scrappy collection of reds and blues in the flying geese section. I'm debating about whether or not to add a border between the sashing and the geese and another on the outside of the geese. What do you think?

Block Credits:
Row 1 - left to right
The Old Red and Blue by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Zig-Zag Flag inspired by Karen at The Recipe Bunny
Our Eagle pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS

Row 2 - left & right
Glory Flag pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Crossroads traditional block

Center Section - left to right, top to bottom
Uncle Sam pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Patriot's Star {modified} at eQuiltPatterns.com
Banner Flag by Elizabeth
US Ribbon at Compuquilt
Pledge of Allegiance Embroidery by Elizabeth

Row 3 - left & right
July Fourth traditional block
54-40 or Fight {modified} or Star Shield traditional block

Row 4 - left to right
Land of Liberty by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Courthouse Steps traditional block
Spiderweb Star at McCall's Quilting

Can I Please Have Some Crackers With My Alphabet Soup?

Once Mother said, "My little pet
You ought to learn your alphabet."
So in my soup I used to get,
All the letters of the alphabet.
I learned them all from A to Z,
And now my Mother's giving me
Animal crackers in my soup.
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop.
Gosh oh gee but I have fun
Swallowing animals one by one.
–Irving Caesar and Ted Koehler

I work in the accounting department at a small software company. Actually, I'm pretty much the accounting department at a small software company. On the first of every month, rain, shine, Saturday or holiday, I am given a spreadsheet containing upwards of 5000 names which I have to sort through to determine which users are billable and which are not. I filter and sort and number and it takes about 8 or 9 hours. It is tedious and a little mind numbing. After the spreadsheet is ready, I print it out and then transfer the information, company by company, to our very out-dated old school accounting software so that I can print and send out invoices. Of course, I don't start from scratch every month. I carry the information over from the previous month, but if a company adds or drops a user, then I have to add or remove said user from their invoice, manually re-ordering and numbering the users. Even if there are no obvious changes, I still have to compare what's in the accounting software to the spreadsheet because sometimes, rather than dropping a user and adding a new one, they will just change the user name. I usually end up going over most of the list twice as I check and print. This takes at least another four days with the help of the Executive Assistant, who helps me print and also checks the printed invoices against the spreadsheet for typos or errors in pricing.

And it happens every month. All of those names start swirling around in my brain like alphabet soup.

*There are the normal, everyday names like John Smith and Mary Brown. Then there are the attempts to dress up every day names, like Adamantium Williams and Steele Jones. There are names that appear to be back to front, like Harrison Bert and Taylor Grace. {Sidebar: I've actually wondered if they entered their names backwards when setting up their accounts, but then they call and their first name really does sound like a last name and vice-versa}. There are names that don't go together, like Jose O'Malley. There are names that remind me of characters in books, Henry Potter, and movies, Clark Kenton, names that remind me of actors, Merlyn Streep, names that remind me of political figures, Rudolfus Hillter, and names that remind me of pop culture icons, Bella-Bev Devoe. And because we have customers all over the world, there are names that look completely foreign to me.

Now, I don't take issue with the names, per se. It is a parent's prerogavtive to name their child any fool thing they want {see also, Nymphadora Tonks}. It is simply the sheer number of names and the intensity and duration that I must deal with them that makes me a little crackers sometimes.

*All names are completely fictional, and any resemblance to names of actual people is purely coincidental.

Mrs. Potato Head

A skin have I, more eyes than one. I can be very nice when I am done. –A Potato

It's been a really long time since I posted any kind of recipe. It's not that I haven't been cooking. But I posted most of my favorite recipes. Also, I just found that getting good {i.e. appetizing} photos of food to be difficult. And photos to accompany a recipe are kind of a requisite. I mean, isn't it the photo that draws you in and makes you want to try the recipe? Nevertheless, I am posting a couple of recipes today with somewhat non-spectacular photos.

Since I went dairy-free in January of this year, I've been limited in what I can eat. There are milk products in everything from chocolate to taco seasoning to bouillon cubes. It is kind of ridiculous. Over the past several months, I have been relying heavily on Mel's Kitchen Cafe to replace my dairy-laden casseroles. Mel does not use many canned/prepared items {i.e. cream-of-whichever soup} in her recipes, so it is easy to use dairy substitutes. I particularly enjoyed her post on food allergies, during Food Allergy Awareness Week earlier this month.

Today I want to share a couple of potato recipes. Potatoes are a tricky business for dairy-free folks. While they do not contain dairy themselves, they aren't particularly appetizing with out it. Mashed potatoes with almond milk and butter substitute are not bad. As a matter of fact, the Not-So-Little Bugs didn't even notice. But I'm not too fond of the sour cream substitute I've been able to find and wouldn't really like to try it on a baked potato. Whipping up a batch of flavored instant potatoes is out of the question. So, I've been looking for different ways to dress up a potato. Here's what I've come up with.

Garlic & Herb Potatoes

Garlic & Herb Potatoes (with Lamb Shanks)
Photo courtesy of Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas

8 medium to large red potatoes
1 teaspoon fresh minced rosemary or ¼ teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon fresh minced thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon fresh minced oregano or ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon fresh minced parsley or 1 teaspoon dried parsley
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon paprika
⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
¼ cup olive oil, butter or butter substitute

• Scrub potatoes and dice into ½" - 1" cubes. Fill a 4-quart pot about half-way with water and bring to a boil. When the water reaches a boil, add 1 teaspoon salt and the diced potatoes all at once. Return to a boil and boil potatoes for 5 minutes. Drain potatoes.
• Meanwhile, in a small mixing bowl add rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper and garlic to melted butter or olive oil. Toss together with potatoes to coat.
• Place potatoes in a greased 9" x 13" baking dish and place in a 350˚ oven. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

Notes:
• For crispy wedges, cut potatoes into wedges rather than dicing them. Combine seasonings as directed and toss with potatoes to coat. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake as directed.
• I've tried this recipe with dried and fresh herbs, as well as russet and red potatoes and it is delicious no matter which way you make it.

Gram's Best Potato Salad

1 dozen eggs
5 lbs. red potatoes

Dressing
2 cups mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard

Additional Ingredients
½ cup pickle juice
1½ cups chopped celery
¼ cup finely diced onion
½ of a dill pickle, finely diced
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
¼ cup + 2 tablespoons fresh minced parsley or 2 tablespoons dried parsley
Paprika

• Place eggs in the bottom of a 4-quart pot and add cold water to 1" above eggs. Bring to a boil over high heat; cover pot, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow eggs to stand in hot water for 10 minutes. Drain water from eggs; fill pot with cold water and ice and allow eggs to cool.
• Peel and slice the boiled eggs; reserve the slices with pretty yellow centers for garnish on top of the potato salad and grate the remaining eggs to be added to the potato salad.
• Scrub and dice potatoes. Fill an 8-quart or 10-quart pot about half-way with water and bring to a boil. When the water reaches a boil, add 1 tablespoon salt and the diced potatoes all at once. Return to a boil and boil potatoes for 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, to prepare dressing, mix mayonnaise, sugar, red wine vinegar and spicy brown mustard together in a small mixing bowl.
• After the potatoes have boiled for 10 minutes, drain them and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Pour the pickle juice directly on top of the hot potatoes. Add grated eggs, celery, onion, dill pickle, salt, pepper and parsley and stir to combine. Toss together with dressing. Top with sliced eggs and sprinkle with paprika. Refrigerate 6 to 8 hours.

Notes:
• There are no notes, except to say that no picnic is complete without a good potato salad and this is a good potato salad .

The String Ring Dresden and the Bogart

Bogart: /ˈboʊ gɑrt/ — Slang, Verb:
1. to take an unfair share of something; keep for oneself instead of sharing. Derived, presumably, from actor Humphrey Bogart's tendency to frequently hold a cigarette between his lips or in his hand, but never to actually smoke it.
Noun:
1. a person who hogs or monopolizes something.
2. a magical creature that takes the form of whatever you fear the most.

Once upon a time, P. made a fabulous String Ring Dresden quilt top {String Dresden Tutorial here}. P. does amazing things with fabric. I loved the colors she picked. I even sent her a few fabrics when she put out a call for more strings in those colors, and it was really fun to see them incorporated into her quilt top. So when she said she wasn't going to quilt it herself, but send it off on a fabulous quilting vacation—destination to be determined, I opened my big mouth and told her I had an idea for those fabulous Dresdens.

A few months later, a box arrived at my doorstep, which I resolutely ignored for a good three months. I was absolutely terrified that I would mess up her beautiful quilt top with my poor quilting skills. Eventually, I took a peek at her flimsy {she had it folded right sides together} and was completely amazed by it all over again. Photographs don't quite do quilts justice. From there, I started fleshing out the quilting plan details in the back of my mind, while still ignoring the quilt in its box for a few more months. Sometime around the five month mark, I knew it was time to get going or send the quilt back. I took a deep breath and started quilting. I stitched in the ditch to stabilize the quilt and then did ¼" echo quilting around all the Dresdens, diamonds and border.

Then I started adding some details. I'm not finished yet, but so far, not bad.

What P. doesn't know, is that when I'm finished with this quilt I'm keeping it. I even got her to send me the binding for it. I told her that I like to put the binding on part-way through the quilting process to keep lint from building up on the quilt top from the excess border of batting. It is true, but I told P. that as part of my evil plot to get possession of this super fabulous quilt. And now that it's here, there's pretty much nothing she can do to get it back .

Gilbert's Grape Ultra-Mini Star Quilt, Amish Style

Becky: I love the sky. It's so limitless.
Gilbert: It is big. It's very big.
Becky: Big doesn't even sum it up, right? That word big is so small.
–What's Eating Gilbert Grape, 1993

This is my adorable LadyBug. As part of their U.S. studies, the 5^th graders at LadyBug's elementary school are assigned a project on one of the states. The project is done in partners and includes a poster with details about the state and a float that represents that state. LadyBug was assigned to a team of three. She and the other girl in their group put the float together and the third man on their team did the poster. When Grasshopper was in the 5^th grade, he also had to do a float {he had Tennessee, if you were wondering}, so we recycled the base for LadyBug's project {there's no sense in wasting good fringe, right?} and they stripped it down to the basic elements. Then LadyBug and her partner reinvented the float. I'm not sure how they got anything done, because I didn't hear a peep out of either one of the girls while they were here, but somehow, it came together really well. They painted the base green {like grass} and added the state seal and state quarter for Pennsylvania. LadyBug's partner supplied the Amish LEGO barn, and together they put together the little LEGO Hershey's factory workers and the state abbreviation {PA, seen in reverse behind the state seal because it is facing backwards} in LEGOs.

And then I butted right in and made a tiny quilt to go on the float. I had exactly eight - 1” HST's left from the label on Miss Butterfly's Zig-Zag quilt, and from that a star was born. The finished quilt is 4¾-ish”, and is hand quilted because that's how the Amish would do it. I'm not showing you the back though. A few stitches in, I realized that I could make teeny, tiny, ultra-mini stitches, or I could quilt it the right way. I picked the ultra-mini stitches.

After LadyBug's assignment was finished, she gave the quilt to her {stuffed} pet lizard, Gilbert.

Gilbert has a spot on LadyBug's bed and every night, she tucks him in before she gets tucked in herself. Until Gilbert got his new quilt, he was sleeping under an eyeglass lens cleaning cloth. Doesn't he look cozy?

Today's post brought to you by:

I Demand A Re-Count

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
–Benjamin Franklin

Grace, my ever faithful sewing sidekick, is away on holiday. It will be three weeks tomorrow since I dropped her off for a nice spa retreat. I'm hoping she'll be ready for pick-up tomorrow. In her absence, I've been doing a lot of prep work on quilts I hope to someday finish. One of those prep projects is the result of a half-square triangle swap I did almost a year ago. I got my triangles-in-the-rough back about 5 months ago, and I've been pressing. A lot. Approximately 600 freshly pressed HSTs showing here:

When I put together my triangles for the swap, I formed a plan for what to do with them based on the instructions of putting together a light and a dark fabric for each set of HSTs. I actually heard “neutral and print” and was pretty meticulous with how I put them together. I did roughly the same number of HSTs of every color and split my white and off-white neutrals evenly between the two. As is always the case with swaps, there is room for interpretation and some of what I got back didn't fit in my plans. No matter. The fabrics were still really great, so I unpicked about 300 HSTs {yes, I know }, which left me with 600 orphan triangles who needed neutral buddies to become HSTs again. Enter the Go! Fabric cutter, and in a few hours, I was all set to go {yeah, I know. Bad pun, but I couldn't resist. I ♥ puns}.

I also put together a few fabrics to fill in on some of the colors I didn't get much back on and will sew those up using the triangle papers we used originally to put our HSTs together. But I'm not showing those because that passes up “particular,” “picky” and “persnickety” and crosses over into “obsessive,” “complusive” and “just plain nutty.”

As I've pressed and cut and sorted, I've been turning over ideas for how to use up 1400± 2½” HSTs. While I was getting my swap triangles done last year I saw a quilt called Triangle Confusion and decided that I wanted to do that. Now that I have the raw materials to work with I've tried a couple of Triangle Confusion layouts. I liked the explosion of triangles with all its patterns and sub-patterns. Then, just for fun, I arranged the HSTs into a more obvious pattern and put it up for an unofficial vote.

I was kind of surprised at the results. Everyone who expressed an opinion chose Diamond Illusion. Although I didn't really know which layout I favored until people started offering opinions {which is why I ask for opinions; it helps me to know what I really want}, I realized that I was leaning more towards Triangle Confusion. It was so bright and cheerful, if not somewhat frenetic. Diamond Illusion was very drab to me even though you could see a definite pattern. Perhaps here was too much brown and orange and green and not enough yellow and pink and turquoise. So I laid it out another way. What do you think?

Green was the color I'd gotten the most back from the swap, so in my first layout I used that for all the small diamonds. It just wasn't working for me. In this new version, I used a different color for each diamond and I think I like it a lot better with more color.

Triangle Confusion is still on my mind, though. I mean, there has to be some way to make it work. So I tried organizing the colors a bit more. I am totally in love with those partial diamonds. The shape is incomplete but the eye finishes it. There's still a lot going on there, though, even with an attempt to make it play nicely by using color to force the sub-patterns. Do you see the large pinwheel in the center?

Still, there is something I really like about Triangle Confusion.

As you can see, I'm still undecided on what to do with all these half-square triangles. Unless I make a king size quilt {which would require another 1700 HSTs and I've almost entirely ruled that out}, I have enough HSTs to make two nice lap-sized quilts; one Diamond Illusion and one Triangle Confusion. The only problem is that I don't have enough of some of the colors to use an even amount in both quilts. Only one of the quilts could be rainbow bright. The other one would have to be mostly green and brown and blue. I could break up the left over browns, blues and greens a bit with solid {meaning unpieced} blocks between pinwheel blocks made of the HSTs and come out with two baby quilts to donate, plus one lap-sized rainbow-y HST quilt for me {design yet to be determined}.

Or, if I decide that I absolutely have to make both a Diamond Illusion and a Triangle Confusion quilt and they both have to have a balanced amount of color, I could make more HSTs, in which case, Jeanette, a swap would definitely be in order .

And there would probably be enough left-over HSTs for a donation quilt.

Diamond Illusion or Triangle Confusion?

He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. -Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Once upon a time, I made 936 - 2½” half-square triangles for a swap. Our group used a semi-paper pieceing speed method to put together groups of twelve HSTs at a time. For each set of twelve, I used a different main print fabric and I only repeated my neutral white or off-white fabrics in two sets of twelve at most. In the end, I had 78 different sets of 12 HSTs. I kept four HSTs from each set and sent the rest off to the swap hostess. Six months later, I got a box back full of half-square triangle treasure. They sat in that same box for about 3 months, and then in a drawer in my little sewing area, just waiting to be discovered. Last Wednesday, I dropped Grace off for a three-week spa vacation, and when I got home I started pulling the papers off and pressing them open on my spiffy new ironing board cover.

As I've worked, I've been puzzling about exactly what to do with these 936 HSTs when they're all pressed. Actually, I'll have more like 1250 HST's when I'm done. I think there was some room for interpretation in the instructions, which were to pair a light and a dark for each set of HSTs. I heard “print and neutral,” and kind of formed a plan around that. Some of the HSTs I got back don't work for what I had in mind as they are, so I'm unpicking a few more than 300 of them {yes, I know } and am going cut a bunch of neutral {white or off-white} HSTs with my Go! fabric cutter {the die that came with it has the perfect triangles} and put them with the prints that I've unpicked from each other. I only have about a hundred more to unpick.

When we were in the planning stages of the swap, Candace at The Double Nickel Quilt Challenge linked a really cool quilt called Triangle Confusion to my monthly finishes linky party, and I decided that's what I wanted to do with my half-square triangles. But as I have been pressing, I've been turning over options for what to really do with these HSTs now that I'm in the process of pressing and sorting. So I laid them out in a diamond pattern to see what it would look like. I really liked it, except it lacks a bit of variety. I chose green for the small diamonds because far and away, green is the color I got back the most of. I'll probably mix it up a little if I go with this layout, but isn't this a cool design?

It is fun to look at each block close up.

As I opened each HST, I tried to guess who made it. Some were easy to guess. Others, not so much.

I love how from far away it gives the illusion that it is a series of interlocking diamonds, but close up you can see each triangle and each print.

I ♥ orange. It is a highly underrated color.

I'd really almost made up my mind to go with the Diamond Illusion layout. But just for fun, I laid out a little Triangle Confusion. You can still see the diamond pattern, which I love, but it is an explosion of color.

But you can also see, among other patterns, pinwheels intermingled with the diamonds. Pinwheels are awesome.

Time for some more close-ups. I haven't posted much lately, so it is picture overload today.

It is an interesting block design.

I'm not sure why, but I only took close-ups of three of the four blocks, so this is the last one.

In the first layout, I kept the diamonds each a single color, but I mixed the other colors in everywhere else. I wanted to know how it would effect the overall design if I paired colors in the non-diamond areas {corners} of each individual block.

It is still an interesting pattern, but not quite so much of an explosion, which I think I maybe like. I didn't notice until I was editing photos, that with the colors paired as they are it makes a secondary diamond pattern; or rather, a large pinwheel on point between the diamonds.

That has me wondering what it would look like if I paired it so that the large pinwheels were all one color. I think I might like that best of all {control freak here}, but I'll have to lay it out to see because that might suck all the joy out of Triangle Confusion. I'll probably wait until I get all those other HST's unpicked and the neutral triangles cut, though. I only have about a hundred left.

Even though my puzzler is a little sore, I'm also puzzling over what size to make this quilt. My original plan was a 6 x 8 block layout with a 1" stop border and a sawtooth border beyond that, which finishes at 54” x 70”. That's a really cozy lap-size quilt. But that will leave me with 375± extra HSTs, which I will have to use up in something else. I've pondered other sizes, right on up to a 9 x 11 layout {with no borders} which finishes at a nice 72” x 88” twin size quilt. That will require an additional 300 HSTs beyond what I'm already working with. I kind of like the idea. This quilt is scrappy and patchy and full of calicos, which makes me think of quilting at its roots — quilting out of necessity and using whatever was on hand. Of course, I'm not trying to kid anyone here. I have bins and bins of fabrics and I don't need to quilt, except for the sake of my sanity. I really want this to be a useful quilt, though, because I'm excited about it. A lap size would be used for snuggling under to watch TV or read. I don't know whose twin-size bed this quilt would go on. Maybe I should open an Etsy shop . Do you think anyone would pay $2300 for a twin-size quilt?

My next thought was to make it square. I really like square quilts. 8 x 8 finishes at 64” square. I even have enough HSTs for a 9 x 9. But then, we're almost back into the bed size quilts, at 72”. So why not go super-size and make it a king? I happen to sleep in a king size bed that needs a pretty quilt on it. But for that, I'd need another 1900 HSTs .

Anyone want to swap?