A Stitch In Time: May Finishes Giveaway Winner

A stitch in time saves nine. –English Proverb

So, I looked up the phrase "a stitch in time saves nine." I wanted to know its origins. Also, finding the perfect quote for my posts is a part of my process. Sometimes a quote is exactly what I need to tie everything into a nice, tidy prose package. Sometimes it takes me in a different direction. And sometimes, it just distracts me. There's a lot of information out there, if you know what I mean.

I always thought that "a stitch in time saves nine" meant that if you hurry and do a sloppy job, you'll have to redo. Or in the in the case of sewing unpick and redo. I don't know about you, but I hate unpicking. But from what I read, the saying is meant as a warning against procrastination. A small tear mended now will require only one stitch, but if you leave it and it gets bigger, you'll need 10 stitches to fix it. And if you rearrange the letters of this little advisory, they spell out, "this is meant as incentive." I'm a world class procrastinator. Perhaps I should take the incentive.

Words of caution with subliminal messages aside, I thought it was a clever play on the words to name a linky party for finished stitched projects each month "A Stitch In Time."

The irony of all of this is that I am just now posting the winner of the May Finishes Linky Party. I've been putting it off until I have a chance to click and comment on all of the links. I like to do a thing properly. After all, a linky party is all about showing off your stuff in a socially acceptable forum. And seeing all of your beautiful finishes is something that I really enjoy. But too much time has passed and I need to announce the winner.

Before I do that, I have an item of housekeeping. I cancelled the June Linky and mentioned that I may take the whole summer off. Obviously, the linky is on hold as I haven't opened a July post. At the moment, I haven't decided whether I'll be starting up again after the summer or not. But I absolutely reserve the rights to the name "A Stitch In Time" when I do start back up.

Thank you to everyone who has participated over the last 2½ years and thank you to the many who linked up in May. Without further ado, the winning number, drawn by LadyBug, is 10.

Congratulations to

Beth

at From Chaos Comes Creations

Beth will receive a 30' Playtime Charm Pack by Chloe's Closet for Moda from The Fat Quarter Shop, provided I haven't procrastinated too long and they are still in stock. Make sure you check out the adorable place mats she made for her mom. There were lots of other great finishes in May, too. Since I haven't been able to check them all out, how about if you tell me which, of those you visited, were your favorites?


Today's post brought to you by:

P.'s String Ring Dresden: Finished at Last

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find that you have crossed the mountain. –Unknown

First, welcome to all my new followers! I've had about 25 new people jump aboard my crazy train in the last 24 hours. I'm glad you're all here! If you don't mind me asking, what or who sent you my way? I can tell something is going on over at The Facebook and that it has something to do with my Folded Fabric Star, but I haven't been able to trace the source. I'd love to be let in on the secret. I hope no one is promising you big things, because it is slow going over here right now. Case in point, the quilt I'm about to show.

P. mailed this quilt to me on December 12^th. I mailed it back to her all quilted on December 20^th. Now, that sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? Fastest quilting job ever, right? Not so much. She mailed it on December 12, 2012 and I mailed it back on December 20, 2013. And I actually could have mailed it earlier this week. Procrastination at its finest. {Hangs head in shame.} P. has been more than patient with me, which I truly appreciate. I hope her patience is rewarded.

I put the quilt on LadyBug's bed for a little photo shoot. My camera didn't like the light quality, so it is a little blurry. But here it is. Finished! Aside from the unbound edges, it kind of looks like it belongs there. {Sidebar: Isn't LadyBug's bed pretty? I bought assemble-it-yourself bedroom sets for Grasshopper and LadyBug seven or eight years ago. Grasshopper's had blue labels on the boxes and the set is a pretty [TARDIS] blue. I put his together first. LadyBug's set had pink labels on it and when I pulled out her white furniture pieces, she asked why hers wasn't pink. It's funny now because I'm pretty sure she'd refuse to sleep in a pink bed.}

Here is a close up of the quilting in the String Ring Dresdens {from which the quilt gets its name}. I'm really happy with how they turned out. I was so worried about getting the quilting right in the Dresdens because they are the focus of the quilt.

And here's a gratuitous PictTapGo_App and Instagrammed shot. They totally need to make PC versions of these apps . It is fun to play around with the filters.

Here's a close-up of the scrappy border and one of the diamonds. I'm all about coloring inside the lines. I like to quilt to enhance the piecing. I tried to keep it fairly simple — mostly straight lines, with bit of free-motion to accent — as P.'s directive was {paraphrasing} “less is more.”

And I made an embroidered quilt label to go on the back as a thank you to P. for trusting me with her quilt. When she started this quilt, she put out a call for strings. I sent her a few fabrics {as I quilted I noticed that fabrics I sent her were in 11 of the 12 Dresdens}, so I pulled a few favorites from those to use in the label {which is now outdated. I had a serious case of project procrastination on this quilt. Sheesh.}. It is meant to sit in a corner of the quilt, so I hope P. will show us how it looks when she's trimmed and bound the quilt.

I'd like to send a huge thank you to Paulette for her trust, patience and friendship. I really hope you like the quilting!

More about this quilt:
P.'s Post on How the Idea Came About
P.'s Post on the Significance of the Color Scheme
P.'s Post on Design Decisions
P.'s Post on the Finished Flimsy
P.'s String Ring Dresden Tutorial
A Start on the Quilting
A Little Bit of Quilting Progress
Getting Closer
P's Post on the Bound and Finished Quilt

Today's post brought to you by:

It Was Supposed To Be TARDIS Blue

{Image Source}

I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK: we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best: a daft old man, who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always going to take it back. Oh, that box, Amy, you'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time, brand-new and ancient, and the bluest blue, ever. –Doctor Who, season 5, episode 13, The Big Bang, Steve Moffat

I'm finally jumping on the Doctor Who Stitch-Along bandwagon over at Fandom in Stitches, even though I completely missed the boat {talk about your mixed metaphors. If I were really clever, I would have come up with something all time-wimey, TARDIS-y, bow-tie and fez cool. But I'm not.}. I have my patterns all printed out. I'm doing everything at half-size {4" instead of 8"} and am going to make a wall-hanging using the alternate TARDIS layout. {No. P.'s quilt isn't finished yet. This weekend. I promise. I only have a tiny bit to go on it. And I love how it is coming out. But this is what I do when I tell myself I can't work on anything else until the thing I'm currently working on is finished. Because technically speaking, thinking and planning new projects to work on is not actually working on something else.}. I even found the perfect wood-grain print fabric in TARDIS Blue. {It's an actual color. Pantone 2955C - 012C57 HEX - 1,44,87 RGB.}

So I ordered 2½ yards of it. It came in the mail yesterday. Did it not look TARDIS Blue in the swatch from the on-line listing above? Tell me that's not TARDIS Blue. It's totally TARDIS Blue. Below is what was in my package. This is definitely not TARDIS Blue.

Mr. Bug suggested dying it. Can I just say how much I love this man? He is a really great sounding board. I was actually already planning on discharging the dye from a small portion of the fabric to use to stitch the nine different Doctors on in the lower portion of the TARDIS, so that it would look like the panels on the side of the box, but give it a little bit of contrast in color. In my very quick perusal at Paula Burch's site on hand dyeing {thanks for the link, P.}, and with some fiddling around and probably an on-line dye order, it might be possible to pull it off. But sheesh. Why doesn't wood-grain print just come in TARDIS Blue already? I mean, it comes in Gray and Straw and Teal and Violet and whatever color it is that I got and about twelve other unlikely colors. So why not TARDIS blue?

Today's post brought to you by:

A String Ring Dresden Quilt Progress Report

Paralyze resistance with persistence. –Woody Hayes

The ditch quilting is done. The embellishments in the pieced border and black diamonds are finished. I crissed and I crissed and I crissed. Then I procrastinated. Eventually I got around to some crossing. After a little more procrastination I crossed and then crossed some more. And I finally got the straight line quilting finished in P.'s String Ring Dresden. {I PicTapGo_Apped and Instagramed [find me @suchasewandsew] the photo and it's supposed to be all artsy smarsty, but it just looks over-exposed. The original is not much better. It's kind of hard to tell when you've got less than 3" square of photo to go on.}

The red centers in the Dresdens are all crissed and crossed too. All I have left to quilt is something fancy in the Dresden rings. {See, it's a crap shoot with full-size photos that have been PicTapGo_Apped and Instagramed. This one is kind of awesome.}

That fancy pants quilting that remains to be done is at the root of all of the procrastination. It is very intimidating to quilt for another quilter. But as soon as I finish those Dresdens, then I can work on anything I want {read: I have forbidden myself to even think of another project until this one is done}. I have a good idea. Now I just need to put needle to quilt and make it work. And so off I go to my Jolly Holiday Workshop. A little music to quilt by, if you please.


Available for purchase from The Piano Guys or on iTunes.

This Quilt Needs A Name

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. –Mark Twain

I've been puttering around off and on with an old Ph.D Quilt for the last several weeks whenever I wanted to avoid what I should really be doing. I cut the fabric almost exactly three years ago, not long after I won my Go! Fabric Cutter, using the large Drunkard's Path die. Recently, I sewed the curved pieces to their corners, squared them all up, laid them out and then stacked them row by row to be put away until I don't have so many other projects going on all at once. They've been sitting in my sewing area for over a week.

Before I can put my little stacks away, I need some help with a name for the quilt. How about a little back-story to go with that request? Yes? Great. Early in 2010, I bought half-yard cuts of six of the prints from a line of fabric called Metro Blue to make a wedding gift for a neighbor using her wedding colors and left over fabric from her wedding dress.

The framed Double Wedding Ring only took a little bit of the fabric, and the rest just seemed perfect for a Drunkard's Path quilt. And the fabrics and colors seemed perfect for a particular friend and neighbor. Her birthday is coming up in mid-November and I want to try and finish this quilt in time for that. I'll be calling on Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting to help with the machine quilting again. If I get on the ball and finish Grasshopper's Halloween costume, I can get it to Melissa early enough to avoid a rush fee and still leave myself plenty of time to bind it. {And we're all rolling our eyes and shaking our head here, me most of all, because I'm imposing another crazy deadline on myself.}. Anway, I saved the stripey print for the binding {because stripey and binding go together like peanut butter and jelly} and cut the rest into enough pieces to make a nice throw-size quilt.

But, let's face it. That layout is a bit of a snooze-fest. It's not every very pretty. And it does not inspire a name. At all. I've been thinking about it every now and again for the past three years and I've got nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not even the name of the fabric line, Metro Blue, works. So I tried something different.

The name of this Drunkard's Path design is Love Rings. But Love Rings isn't a name for a friendship quilt. I want the name to reflect the kind of person this friend is. She is kind to everyone, thoughtful, considerate and one of those people who quietly serves and never asks for thanks or recognition. Her husband's job takes him on frequent business trips. In addition, he has quite a busy volunteer job at church. While the work he does is of huge benefit to many, many people, I know it is hard for her to not have him there sometimes. I wanted to do a little something special for her to let her know that I appreciate everything she does and am grateful to have her as a friend. When I think of her, I think of this little poem by Edwin Markham:

There is a destiny which makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.

But I'm having a hard time fitting all that into a single word or phrase that will fit nicely on a little embroidered label for the back of the quilt. I've thought of a few names, like Reciprocity, but the sentiment "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" really isn't right. Calling the quilt What Goes Around Comes Around isn't really much better, and I don't believe in Karma, per se, although I do believe that every action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction. I thought about Ripples, which seems to work a bit better than the others. The quilt kind of looks like water rippling out. But I'm not sure about that either. I'm just about ready to call it Quilt With No Name, but I've been humming that song by America and a quilt name that inspires incessant humming of a melancholy tune from the 1972 just doesn't cut it, in my book.

If you've got a suggestion for what to call this quilt, I'd love to hear it! And while you're at it, I'd love to hear opinions on what panto to have Melissa quilt in it. I've got my eye on Belly Bop, Loops and Swirls, Van Gogh, Swirls, Rose Leaves and Retro Leaves.

Decisions, decisions.

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.

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.

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 .

Random Bits: Vol 7

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony. –Thomas Merton

Absentia
I think about blogging a lot. I write posts in my head all the time. But getting them down “on paper” is another matter. This post is a patchwork of the things that have been on my mind the last week or so. I've often wished for a USB port behind my ear, so that I could plug in and download my thoughts. Then I could blog things one at a time. It's been so long, I don't know if anyone is left out there to read this. I hope you all haven't given up on me. There is still a ton of traffic here and I check at least once a day to see if there are new comments. I stopped getting excited a couple of weeks ago, though, because all there is is spam, spam and more spam. I know some of you are also getting spammed into oblivion. Do you think if we asked nicely, that Google/Blogger would put anonymous commenting in its own category to be turned on and off at will and independent of any other commenting options?

A Pocket Dial and Other Telephone Related Chatter
At work yesterday afternoon I answered the phone, but couldn't understand what the person on the other end said in reply to my “how may I help you?” spiel. This isn't uncommon; lots of our customers speak English as a second language, so I took a deep breath and prepared to do my best. However, the unintelligible reply was followed by a long silence, to which I answered “hello?” Then there was a snippet of a conversation, in perfect English, about bone spurs on someone's heels. I tried another “hello?” but it was obvious that I was not included in the conversation.

I'm still scratching my head over it. You have to be a very persistent pocket dialer in order to get to me. First you have to dial the main number, which could be on anyone's speed dial. But then you have to select option 4 or dial my direct extension. And bone spurs, even ones on heels, have absolutely nothing to do with how many people we billed them for last month.

There seems to be a funny phenomenon going on at my desk. Aside from the occasional pocket dial, no one ever calls me at work unless I'm in the bathroom. It's getting so I'm afraid to even go, because I know I'll have voice mail when I get back, which is ten times more work to handle than a straight up phone call. Three times this week, I've come back from a quick potty break to find I had a message. How is that even possible?

My New Best Friend
I'd like to introduce you to Mel. She's my new best friend, which I'm sure she'd be interested to know since we've never met. Mel has a food blog. And not just any food blog. It's a good food blog, which is just what I've been missing in my life.

A couple of months ago, I gave up dairy due to intolerance. Thanks to some great advice from Regan and P., who are both dairy free, I survived my first few weeks of wondering what I actually can eat. {Sidebar: there are milk or milk products in everything, from chocolate to bread to taco seasoning packets. Strangely, there is not milk found in Oreos.} Regan hooked me up with a good dairy-free “butter” and gave me lots of advice on how to live dairy free. P. commiserated over the loss of most chocolate products in our diets. And I muddled through, hunting down every last allergen ingredient list that could be found on the internet for fast-food restaurants. When nothing was available on-line, I called ahead to places I was contemplating eating at and harassed the poor employees into giving me the low-down on what was dairy free. I mourned the loss of pizza and ice cream and my favorite casseroles, which all have cream-of-some-kind-or-other soup in them. And I kind of quit cooking on a regular basis.

Eventually, I found a new-age hippie herb shop that sells lots organic and whole foods, as well as lots of dairy free food items like vegan “cheese” and “sour cream.” I was able to make some of my favorite dishes with the diary free substitutes, but there were still some serious holes in my menu.

Then I met Mel and her fabulous food blog. She has menu plans and a month's worth of meals that take 30 minutes or less. She's not dairy free, but her recipes are fresh, without a lot of processed foods. And she doesn't cook with cream-of-anything soup {at least not that I've seen}. Everything we've tried so far has been delicious. The wraps {with dairy free cheese and sour cream substitutes} we had on Monday were so good, I ate the left-overs for breakfast on Tuesday morning. And the Sweet & Sour Chicken we had for dinner on Wednesday night was also lunch on Thursday and dinner tonight. I've never been so excited to have left-overs. {Sidebar: whoever invented sweet & sour sauce is a genius. Seriously. On the one hand it is so innocently sweet that you want to take it home to meet your mother and on the other, so sour that your eyes roll back a little in your head.} {Sidebar: P., the sweet & sour chicken is gluten-free if you use the right soy sauce. And I'm wondering if you could use honey instead of sugar. This recipe seems to be saying “use honey in me.”} I've pinned about a dozen other things to try from Mel's, and I'm looking forward to it!

I've bookmarked a few other food blogs that look promising, and as soon as I stop drooling over Mel's Kitchen Cafe, I'm going to take a serious look and see what other food adventures I can take.

Quilter's Favorites
You meet the most amazing people in blogland that you might not otherwise ever encounter in real life. Have you met Geta yet? She is a seriously amazing quilter. In a little under two months, she is hosting the Quilter's Favorites linky party.

It looks to be quite the blog event. Anyone and everyone can participate. Geta's put together a list of questions that you can print out and answer as you quilt over the next few weeks. Then during the week of May 10^th, you can post your answers, link up and then go learn something new from the other quilters who link up. I'm looking forward to clicking around the blogosphere to see what new project I just have to start.

The Tale of the Tortoise and the Snail or, What I'm Working on For Friday Night Sew-In
I haven't officially participated in Friday Night Sew-In for a year now. But with Mr. Bug on 3^rd shift {midnight to 10:00 am}, pretty much every Friday night is Friday Night Sew-In at Bug Cottage. {Sidebar: I am so happy to announce that Mr. Bug is working days again! Do a little happy dance with me!} Even though Mr. Bug is home tonight, I'm doing Friday Night Sew-In, because he's still transitioning from being a nocturnal animal. We'll catch up on our TV and I'm going to see if I can get a little quilting done on Miss Butterfly's Zig-Zag quilt. I was hoping to be a little farther along on it by now.

Since I last posted {11 days ago}, I still had to put the back together before I could baste the quilt. Then I had to make the binding and I decided that I needed to pre-wash and dry the batting {for shrinkage purposes, and not at all because I was procrastinating; see also, persnickety}. After that I was distracted by some chain piecing on a really, really, really old Ph.D quilt that I hope to finish sometime this decade. I was certain that the Zig-Zag quilt need to rest for a little bit, kind of like bread dough. And I knew that basting it was going to be pretty hairy. I was right. It took 2½ hours. I procrastinated that until last weekend and have been working on the straight-line quilting a little bit at a time this week. I had a couple of no-sew days {I must have been really tired or busy to have a day go by without sewing at least a little bit; see also, Mel's Kitchen Cafe}. I have just shy of half of the white zig-zags finished. My goal for FNSI is to finish the rest of those and then wind bobbins for the threads for the FMQ in the colored zig-zags. I will probably bind the quilt before I do the FMQ {the quilt should be pretty stabilized by then and it is just that much less bulk to work with. Plus, it keeps lint from building up on the quilt as it rubs off the extra batting around the edges} , but it is always good to be prepared.

Why, yes. That is a twin size quilt, all 72” x 96” of it, balanced on my little sewing table. When I quilt, I hold as much of it as I can in my lap and then fold or roll the rest of it to fit on the table. This is the biggest quilt I've done, but so far, it is working out nicely.


Extreme Shepherding
Confession time: I started this post in December. I knew that in my next hodge-podge post, I wanted to show you this funny video. So I threw the HTML code in to a draft and have been moving the scheduled post date up by a few weeks every time the draft got old enough to drop down into the list of already posted stuff and get lost. There wasn't anything else in this post until today. And I'm hoping this is still as funny as I remember!

Random Bits: Vol. 3

Dream in a pragmatic way. –Aldous Huxley

The Quilt is in the Wash
It is finished. The pinwheel sampler is done. I put the last stitches in it yesterday. Finally.

I finished the binding ages ago. I was really on a roll with the quilting before Grandma Week and only had a little bit left {relatively speaking} to do in the sashing {16 sections out of 40} when Grandma Week started. I knew that lugging Grace along to my mom's to finish the quilting wasn't really an option, so I put the binding on before we left and during our sit-around-and-visit adult time after the kids had gone to bed, I did the hand stitching on it. But when we got back, I kind of procrastinated finishing the quilting because I wasn't really sure where to go once it was done.

This quilt was originally intended for snuggling under to read, or watch TV, or whatever. I'd still like it to be a snuggle quilt, but it seems like it isn't quite suited for that anymore. When the plan for the quilting became more elaborate than straight-lines ¼" on either side of every seam, I wanted to put the quilt into a quilt show or two. But I didn't get it finished in time last year. Or this year. And now I'm hoping I'll have something else even better to put in next year, and this quilt won't even be a contender.

Whether the quilt is going to be displayed or used, I knew it definitely needed a good washing. The sticking spot was whether to block it {for quilt shows} after it was washed or throw it in the dryer and make it all soft and crinkly {for cuddling}.

I finished it last night with enough time to wash it before bedtime and then throw it in the dryer and let it do its thing while I slept, but I wasn't certain what I wanted to do. After much thought, I decided this afternoon that I really want this quilt to be soft and snuggly, so I threw it in the washer in clear water {the instructions for the Blue Line Eraser that I used to remove my markings recommends that you run it through clear water before using any kind of detergent on it to avoid any discoloration} and when I pulled it out to spot treat it {it got some schmutz on it from my machine} before the actual wash, I noticed that the quilt was really not square anymore. It finished up so nice and square {gold star for me}, and wet, it was sort of curly and wrinkly. I decided that square {and a little bit stiff} was more important than soft and cuddly.

The quilt is in the wash now. When it finishes, I'm going to block it. Tomorrow, after it has had time to dry, I will photograph it and post it for your viewing pleasure {"oohhhhs" and "aahhhs" requested but not required }.

In other related news, I got my Connecting Threads catalog in the mail yesterday. It was very timely as they've just released some cute little tags that say, This took FOREVER. I thought seriously about ordering some for this quilt.

The iOSes vs. The Kitchen Appliances: Revisited
I'm still at loose ends about whether to get an iPhone, an iPad or a new oven. I thought I had it all sorted out, but the iPhone 5 was announced {effectively making even the iPhone 4S users obsolete }, our shopping trip for a new oven was a bust, and instead we found a wide-by-side-fridge-with-a-pull-out-freezer-drawer that not only has all the whistles and bells, but is so palatial you could climb right up inside it and live in there. I'm honestly not sure why we didn't bring it home with us. Oh, wait. The fridge seems to be working for now and it's an oven that we need. That's right.

In the interest of being well-informed, I did a little research on the iPhone. My current carrier now offers service for the iPhone 4S. They do not require contracts but the trade-off for that is no discounts on a new phone or phone upgrade. You have to pay for the phone up front. Their least expensive service plan is $35.00, which includes 300 talk minutes, unlimited texting and unlimited data. It is as simple and straightforward as that. The cost of the iPhone {$650}, plus monthly service for a two-year period {no contract required} comes in at a hair under $1500, before tax. They are currently offering a $5 per month discount if you sign up for auto-pay, which shaves another $120 off the total cost.

I was only able to find plan pricing for iPhones on one of the two major carriers, which leads me to assume that at least one of them has prices so astronomical that they lock you into a two-year contract before they show you the bill. The other carrier had iPhones starting at $199 {with a two-year contract} and talk, text and data plans starting at $80 a month. This includes 450 talk minutes, unlimited texting and 300MB of data {which is small potatoes, people}. Over the course of two years, the cost is just over $2100. For their largest data plan {5GB}, we're talking $2800 for two years.

OK, so my happiness does not depend on having the newest toy. If it did, the day they announced the iPhone 5 would have been a dark day, indeed. But I'm saying, buying the iPhone outright is money ahead. As a matter of fact, you could buy two phones, if say, they release a new iPhone after a year, and still come out ahead.

While it would be seriously awesome to download all of the heavy, heavy books I lug to church every Sunday into a nifty new iOS {and as Pink suggested, store the heavy books in the empty, broken oven}, looking at the bigger picture, Mr. Bug and I are going shopping for ovens again. Perhaps we'll be able to find P.'s idea of the most practical multi-tasking hybrid oven, with wireless capabilities and a flat screen. Our favorite outlet center is offering an additional 10% off clearance prices this weekend, which means that we could get a $700 oven for $375. I like the sound of that, even if it doesn't surf the net. And maybe the fridge will come home with us too.

Firebolt
These people obviously have too much time on their hands.

*Note: click on the "CC" button to turn the captions on/off. It is funnier if you play it with the captions on.

Also, the taxidermied animal in the glass case at 2:24 is a liger. Her name is Shasta, and she was born in 1948 at Utah's own Hogle Zoo. At her death in 1972, the beloved animal was displayed in the cat house until they deemed that she would be more appropriately kept at the Bean Museum on BYU Campus.

Various & Sundry Monday: Vol. 27

Little drops of water,

Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean

And the pleasant land:

So the little minutes,

Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages

Of eternity.

Little deeds of kindness,

Little words of love,

Help to make earth happy

Like the heaven above.

–Julia Carney

More from the Home Machine Quilting Show
I've been picking up the HMQS catalogs every spring for probably the last 4 or 5 years, always admiring the quilts they show off and browsing the class lists. As I flipped through those pages I thought I'd never, ever, in a million years be quilting my own quilts. But last year when I was looking at the catalog, I was particularly interested in the quilt show because I'd started quilting my own quilts. I'd missed the entry deadline, which was OK because I didn't really have anything good enough to go in a show anyway. But I decided then that I would enter this year. I entered my Snowball Quilt. I knew it would be a daisy among the roses and didn't expect to win. I thought it would be fun to enter, though, because at the time I'd finished it {which was about 11 months after I started doing FMQ}, it was the best quilt I'd done. The show was last weekend in Salt Lake and here's my quilt hanging in the show.

Quilt shows are subjective and each person gets a unique experience when they attend, which is why, I think, it is hard to share them properly in a blog post. I mostly took close-up photos of quilting techniques that I liked and want to have as a reference. But there were a couple of quilts that I really liked and want to share them with you. I started yesterday with one of my favorites and I'll share another today. Maybe I'll show a couple of others in the next few days, or maybe not. I haven't decided yet. The lighting wasn't the best for taking photos. I alternated between using the flash and not using it. I used the flash on this quilt and should have gone with my gut and taken some without the flash. I did the best I could in editing.

These little embroidered dresses are so amazing! I love the bead details the quilter added. It is hard to pick a favorite!

Can You Tell Me How to Get {Back} to Sesame Street?
I've had to put my Sesame Street Quilt on the back burner for a little bit, because I had some prior sewing commitments that are a little time consuming, but not very interesting to post. Mostly, I'm participating in a half-square triangle swap that I signed up for in February, but that isn't due until the end of this month. I figured there was plenty of time, right? Right. Anyway, there's no set number of HST's you have to make. You just make however many you want, keep a few of each of your color combinations for yourself and send the rest to the coordinator. You get back the same number of HST's you sent in and then you can make something fabulous with them when they come back. I decided that I didn't want to be on top of the deadline for this one, so I've put the Sesame Street quilt on hold and have been working on getting them together. The HST's are 2" finished and I'll need 888 of them to make a nice lap-sized quilt. Picking and prepping the fabrics was fun, but sewing them together, even using a speed-piecing method, is killing me. Can you say snooze-fest?

My point is, 888 half-square triangles in the prep and sewing stages does not make for interesting blog fodder. I'm still looking for the balance between work, home, kids and me, so when I have a few free minutes and the choice is between sewing or blogging, sewing has been winning, even though it's not interesting enough to post about. When I get my swap triangles back and start sewing them together, then that will be interesting. And as soon as I get them wrapped up and in the mail, I'll be back to the Sesame Street quilt, racing for the deadline. The first quilt show is June 8^th and 9^th. If I miss that one, I have a few days before the entry period for the next quilt show. If I miss the second show, then I have three more weeks until the show here in town at the Art Museum, which is the show I really want to make it to. Hopefully, I'll be done with these HST's in the next few days and back to Sesame Street before mid-week {yeah, yeah. I know. Wishful thinking.}.

I was really inspired by Michelle's patterns and that's where this quilt started. As I've worked on blocks, I've also been working out all the details of the quilt, including how to quilt it. I wanted to do something other than my favorite swirls in the sashing and feathers in the border. Those didn't seem to really fit this quilt. I was inspired by a couple of things Lane is doing on his red silk quilt. I loved the pumpkin seed border and figured it would fit really nicely in the sashing of the Sesame Street quilt. Not so much.

The outer corners don't match up, and the intersections are kind of weird. So I asked Lane what he thought. He made some really great suggestions for making a motif work in your space. I revised. Lane {and everybody else}, what do you think? Do the little spacers work, or do I need to go back to the drawing board?

Monday Music Spot: A Thousand Years
The Piano Guys' latest release is an amazing! I don't think there is one thing they've done that I haven't like. But this one is extra cool because it also has a really great Twilight connection. They've put together an arrangement of Christina Perri's A Thousand Years from the Breaking Dawn soundtrack and it is beautiful.


Available for purchase from The Piano Guys or on iTunes

Story behind the song:
Our kids give us great inspiration for our music. When Jon's 17 year-old daughter said how much she loved this song, Jon decided to try it. He experienced a flood of inspiration. "Never has a piano part come together this fast" Jon says. Steve experienced similar inspiration while composing the cello parts. Since the lyrics suggest a bride walking towards the groom in a ceremony we thought we would include a quote from the Bridal Chorus by Wagner in the climax of the song (it is carefully disguised).

As it seems to always go, Paul and Tel didn't find the spot until they spent 9 hours driving around southern Utah the day before the shoot looking. After getting a little discouraged by not finding anything that great, they just happened to check out a little hidden spot right near Baker Dam and thought it was perfect for the song. The next morning we all loaded up the piano and headed out there to film, but after getting the Truck and Trailer stuck and waiting for the sun to move, we didn't get started filming until that evening having about 3 hours of light. It was so fun to film and play in the middle of the trees!

Credits
A Thousand Years written by CHRISTINA PERRI, DAVID HODGES
Published by SUMMIT BASE CAMP FILM MUSIC, EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC, CHRISTINA PERRI D/B/A MISS PERRI LANE PUBLISHING
Arrangement produced by Jon Schmidt
Arrangement written by Al van der Beek, Jon Schmidt, & Steven Sharp Nelson
Performed by
Jon Schmidt: piano
Steven Sharp Nelson: acoustic cello, & cello-percussion
Music recorded, mixed & mastered by Al van der Beek at TPG Studio
Video produced by Paul Anderson & Tel Stewart

2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge: January Motif

If I stitch fast enough does it count as aerobic exercise?
–Unknown

I've misplaced a month. Does anyone know what happened to January? I had big plans for lots of finished projects this month, but as it turns out I have nary a one. However, I am slipping in by the skin of my teeth with the January FMQ challenge. To tell the truth, FMQ is still really scary to me. So I saved it to the very last day of the month so that I would just have to do it anyway. Procrastination at its best. Here are the results of my January practice.

First, I sketched out a couple of sheets of leaves in my “warm-up notebook.” When I felt pretty comfortable with it, I doodled out a page in my quilt journal so I'll have it for future reference.

Then I filled up about half of a practice quilt sandwich. I got some white muslin which is about 36" wide. I cut it at half-yard intervals and made 18” x 18” practice sandwiches. I used a bright green {polyester} Sulky embroidery thread so that the quilting would show.

The top two leaves here are the teacher's pets on my practice. And in the bottom right corner is the class clown, who doesn't have a stem down the middle and has something weird sticking out of the top of it.

Then I moved on to my Sampler Quilt. I picked two neutral Kona Cottons and did the 42” x 42” size. Since this is a sampler, I used AURIfil Makò 50-weight thread in an olive green color, so that the quilting would show. And show it does, for better or for worse.

This is my favorite leaf. It was the very last leaf I stitched today. I guess you could say it is the grand finale.

There is a bonus to waiting to the last day of the month to do January's exercise. I'm all warmed up now and tomorrow the February motif will be revealed, so I can get it done early.

Today's post brought to you by:

Various and Sundry Monday: Vol 18

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs. –Joan Didion

Meet Stanley
I'm not sure if this spider, with its head-of-French-knots and button-bottom is whimsical or creepy. I mean, look at those legs and the bead-y orange eyes. This is the last piece of the hat portion of Zelda's Fancy Hat. I still have three brim pieces to do, but after I finished Stanley the Spider, it was time to put this project away for a bit.

Kimono Garden
The Christmas crafting has officially begun. I've got this table runner just about ready to baste and quilt. I'm going to make several different runners for various parties, and based on how quickly this one went together and barring any flare-ups of my chronic case of procrastination, I hope to be done with all handmade gifts with time to spare. Wish me luck.

100 Years and Still the Heartbeat of America
On November 3, Chevrolet celebrated its 100^th birthday! Here's a look back at the last century.


Thank You for Your Votes

Last weekend, I entered the weekly themed quilt contest over at Quilting Bloggers. The theme was Remembering Veterans and I submitted the t-shirt quilt I made for Mr. Bug, using his old t-shirts, sweatshirts and work shirts from the Navy. My mom informs me that my dad voted from every single IP address he could, and called all my siblings and told them to vote from their computers and smart phones. I know many of you voted, and left me really nice comments of encouragement. I finished in 4^th place, with 113 votes which is so amazing considering that the vote was split between 27 quilts. Thank you SO much to everyone who voted for me. I really appreciate it! It really made my weekend!

I Can't Help Myself
Part 1 of Breaking Dawn premiers at midnight on the 18^th. I, somehow, lucked out and have tickets for a pre-screening at 5:15 pm on the 17^th. I'm just a little excited. Here are a couple clips with scenes from the movie to help with the pre-wedding jitters.