33 is a good number

No, not my age (unfortunately)
No, not the number of ufo's lying around (I think the total is way more than 33)
No, not the number of days until Symposium (that number would be 10)

33 is the number of unread blog posts I have at the moment. This is a very good thing because for months it has been hovering around the two thousand mark. No, I haven't posted a comment to every one of the formerly unread posts, but I have read them (well, okay, skimmed them)

Speaking of Symposium I decided it was high time to get some fabric sorted for my 2 classes. This first lot is for Layered Landscapes with Gloria Loughman:
The second is for Darned Quilts with Dena Crain:
I don't think it is a very good idea to select fabrics for 2 quilts on the same day. My colour palettes are very similar. It will be interesting to see how they turn out. I'm not even sure I've go the fabric selection right for Dena's class. She says to have a "gradation from value to colour and from dark to light". Oh well, maybe this piece of fabric will do:

Final Arrangement - Leftover Tabasco Sauce

I finally got all the blocks sewn together. Now I have to decide if it needs a border or whether a dark brown binding will do. I took down from the design wall today because Jo, Frances and I were selecting fabrics for Symposium classes. I thought it was about time I got my 'a' into 'g' and got ready for these classes which are in less than 2 weeks. Next week is really busy with parent interviews, marking, haircut, appointment for the flu jab, church AGM, a 16 inch block to be made for a round robin I am doing and quilt club next Saturday (the marking really should happen before the parent interviews.) The week after that is only 4 working days and then we're off. Yikes!

Do you like the title for this quilt?

What I'm doing

Well, it feels like not a lot over the last week. I did finish quilting the green strippy community quilt and sewed the binding on. I just need to hand stitch it down. I'm saving it for club next week.

I need to get fabric and sewing supplies for my Symposium classes organised, not to mention some clothing. I'm hoping I can shop from my stash for both classes. But I can't seem to get started on pulling a few fabrics out. No doubt that deadline I am good at working to will come around soon enough.

I went to Wellington last weekend to see the Monet paintings at Te Papa, ab fab! If I could make my quilts glow like the haystack at sunset I would be a happy chickadee. This is as close as I can get:


These blocks are the left-over blocks from the Cotton On Quilters new banner we made last year. There were exactly 126 blocks (14 by 9) and I made this temporary arrangement on my design wall last year. There they have sat for months while I worked on my Symposium quilt. I have rearranged them endless times since I took this photo. I have now stitched some of them together but I can't seem to get into a rhythm to get it finished. Maybe I should get off the web and get onto the sewing machine!

A Visual Corridor?

I know I am now in what is politely called 'middle age' and I know that language is a living, breathing, changing thing but what ever happened to Plain English??

I was at our town library yesterday looking for some books to read. One I wanted, by English author Mark Billingham, was apparently 'on the shelf' according to the computer catalogue. I looked and looked but couldn't find it anywhere. Finally I asked the lovely Colm who was on the desk. Colm is married to a lady who teaches at the same school as me and he works part time at school and part time at the library (the students tell me he is the only one who knows anything at the town library, but that is another story).

Colm checked the staff computer and told me the book should be in the 'visual corridor'. The what? What the heck is a visual corridor?Now, Colm has a lovely Irish brogue so it did take me a few goes to understand the words he was saying, but even when I did understand that he was saying the words 'visual' and 'corridor' I was stumped. Okay, 'visual' is something you look at and 'corridor' is something you walk down. Hmmm, the only corridor in the town library is the one that goes to the toilets, and I'm sure he doesn't mean there! After giving it a few seconds of slow thought (well, it was at the end of the working day) I translated his words into 'display shelf'. When did a display shelf become a 'visual corridor'?

It turned out the book was not in the visual corridor but out the back, waiting to be shelved. Colm very kindly went and got it for me. After I got it home I realised I had already read it - b*****!

On a quilty note, I am in the middle of quilting this thing (which is destined to be a community quilt) It has been basted up ready for quilting for nearly 12 months - other quilts (or quilt, to be specific, have intervened):
Nice and easy meandering, no pressure, and I am NOT ripping out any stitches, even if they do go wonky.

Don't Panic!

After getting my quilt down to the courier's on Monday in time to be delivered I have been spending the ensuing time relaxing going through my collection of Quilters Newsletter Magazine. Issue 189 with Judy Mathieson's Nautical Stars is still a stand-out cover. When compared with other cover quilts in those years (late '80s) this quilt is still as fresh looking as the latest prizewinning quilts.

But, I digress. I had an unexpected phone call today from the exhibition convenor asking if I had sent my quilt because it had not been check off their list. Is my quilt jinxed?? I raced home at lunchtime to get the courier receipt so I could go and check with them. Yes, they said, their records said it had been delivered at 4.05pm on Monday. Back to the convenor I phone. Apparently the lady whose home the quilts had to be delivered to was away on Monday and other people were at her place to receive deliveries. It appears that they left before my quilt was delivered. The husband of the house had got the package but somehow it had got tucked behind something and was temporarily lost. Whew! That was a tad stressful!

Slack ex-President

I have been so consumed with getting my quilt ready for Symposium that I have been sadly neglecting my club duties as chronicler of Show & Tell. I promised at the last meeting that now I am no longer president I would be much more diligent in keeping the club blog up to date. Now that it is 3 days before the next club meeting I have finally got February's offerings posted but, alas, I cannot remember some of the quilt's makers. If anyone from club is reading this can they please click on Cotton On Quilters blog and let me know who made what so I can give credit where it is due.

Here is a wee taster of Amy's bag:

Down to the wire !!

It was a close run thing but today I did get my quilt down to the courier to be delivered to Wellington in time for the closing day of getting the quilts in, which is today. Let's hope 'Same day Service' lives up to its name.

It is just as well I inspected each block individually 'cos I found this little mistake:
My mind must have wandered off into a dream while I was stitching this poor, unfortunate deformed star. (Yes I did fix the star.) And now I look at the pink star in the corner I see the seams are not quite matched. (No I didn't fix the seam.) Alas, likely to be no prizes for me :-(
(but one lives in hope)

It is 6 weeks to Symposium. I have been so focused on getting Poetry in Motion finished that I have done nothing to get my class materials together. Oh well, 6 weeks is heaps of time. After all, I am the Queen of Deadlines!

PS
Google chat is a great thing. As I was writing this post my son sent me these links (blog post and photos) to this great garage makeover. My son knows me well.

http://atwater-village.blogspot.com/2009/02/our-submission-to-lifehackers-workspace.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atwatervillage/sets/72157606409446022/

Speaking of aforementioned son, he must have absorbed some of my (bad?) habits. He cheerfully texted me at the weekend to say he had bought some new clothes. He saved $110 because it was a 40% off sale. I couldn't help myself. I had to ask if he had managed to wash any of his old clothes or did he just throw them away :-)

Farewell Juki

Sob . . . I had to take Juki home to Janice today . . . sob!

Juki, you have been a perfectly wonderful house guest. You stayed where you were put, stitched a fine line, had a wonderful flat bed and gave me plenty of room to move. Your foot control was very comfortable to use and I love the needle up/down button you have. The only thing I don't like is that you are no longer here! You are very welcome to come and have another holiday at my house anytime you like (hint, Janice, hint, hint).

Honey Bunch Leaves Home

Such a strange thing to drive my son to the Halls of Residence and leave him there. I mean, I have driven him to his father's plenty of times but somehow this feels different. That's 'cos it is different. Now, I've got him all "growed up" and he is off on the next step of his life. He is technically no longer living at home. I don't know what to feel. I didn't cry, but I was very proud of him as he said hello to every one he met. I still have 2 homestay students at home so I am not totally alone. But ...

... and, darn it, I completely forgot to take the camera with me. He dyed his hair in the weekend using some 'wash out in a few weeks' dye. He is naturally blonde but now is red. Kinda suits him but he didn't like it ha, ha. Le's hope the dye is true to label, otherwise he is going to have a 'roots' problem :-)

I forgot to say he is only 1 hour away and will be home in the coming weekend so I guess that is why I don't feel tearful. He has been away for longer than a week during holidays in the past. This is nothing!!!

Over the first hurdle

The selection letters arrived today. It was a bit stressful as I had entered 3 pieces and there were my 3 self-addressed envelopes. I gathered them up together from the letter box and could tell they contained CD's. Oh well, I thought, at least the pressure is off to finish the quilting since it has been more like quilting undone. I was not at all pleased with the quilting I had done and decided to do it again. This is what half a quilt's worth of ripped out threads look like:

There has been a hiatus in replacing all that stitching. The new school year has started and I needed to do some serious prep which took a week out of my quilting time. But I started back on it in the weekend. Which is just as well because only the first 2 envelopes had rejection letters along with the CDs. The third envelope had an acceptance letter and no CD's. Poetry in Motion has been selected for the judging process. I have 3 weeks to get the quilting finished and send the quilt off. Let's hope it passes the 'decision to hang' test so I can get to look at it from a decent distance.

I am not at all hopeful of any prize. The jurors' comments were 'most interesting', to say the least, and I think there will be some very disappointed quilters in New Zealand today. The emphasis was definitely on 'original design'. I have a lot I could say about it but it is way past zzzz time.

ZZZzzz z z z z z z z z . . .

This is called "cutting it fine"

I know I work well to deadlines, but this is a bit ridiculous. See the last box on this timetable? It says 'Drive to Wellington and deliver" and that is what we did today.
I didn't get my quilt photos onto a cd for the entry in time to post it yesterday. (I don't know what it is with computers and me. Apparently I was doing the right thing but my computer was not playing nicely at all. My son rescued me last night and did them on his computer. He says it has something to do with the fact that I had bought cheap and cr***y cds.) I was also up until 4 in the morning the previous night sewing on the binding and washing the quilt to get out all the quilt markins so I could photograph it. Remind me to start the next Symposium quilt at least 2 years before it is needed. What? The next Symposium is in 2 years already? That means I have to start now? Sheesh, I've only just finished this one!

So my good friend Jo (she of the time table design fame) drove me so I could hand in the envelope to the mail centre and ask them kindly if they could make sure it got into the box today, since today was the final day for entries. The very kind lady at the post shop attached to the mail centre said "anything for a fellow sewer". She deserves a medal for great customer service. It was just as well Jo was driving because on the way back home I had a bit of a zzzz in the car. That would have been a bit dangerous if I had been driving :-) I have great friends (and a great son) and I appreciate every one of them - thanks, all of you, for your support and encouragement.

One cannot go to Wellington without visiting a few quilt shops on the way and, once again, I am poorer than I was. The weather today was perfect. The sea at Pukerua Bay was like glass and there were no waves at all. Magic. there was also a fantastic Italian restaurant cum Italian grocery supply place next to the mail centre and we had a very yummy brunch and coffee to fortify ourselves for further quilt shopping :-) Did I mention the very melt-in-the mouth almond croissant I had for afternoon tea at a french cafe in Cuba St, in the next block down from Minerva (the NZ Quilter magazine's bookshop.) Who said the 'd' word?

Quilting with Juki

I want one of these:
This wonderful machine belongs to my very good quilting buddy, Janice. Usually it sits on a Swiftquilter frame in Janice's studio but she has very nobly allowed Juki to have a holiday at my olace - a working holiday of course! There is so much more room under the arm than my Elna. It is a great workhorse and having needle up/needle down makes it so much more useful than my old Singer which 'runs on' after taking your foot of the pedal. It is so much easier to control what I am stitching. Thank you Janice.

The basting method I used has proved to be very successful. I have NO puckers from the quilting. I have had some trouble with the basting thread catching in the needle threader as I move the quilt around, but that is probably due to a lack of willingness on my part to clip the basting threads in the area I am working on rather than a deficiency in the basting method itself :-) After I had quilted around each block centre I removed all the basting thread and that solved that problem.

I am so rusty with my quilting. I haven't done any for ages and I am not happy with some of the work I have done. I will be getting out the quick-un-pick to fix up some of the "oops" parts. I think the reason those commercial quilters are so good is that they are quilting regularly. The rest of us have to wait until we actually get a top finished before we can polish our quilting skills. That's maybe 3 or 4 times a year??

Basting with Sharon Schamber

Just because I have plenty of time to get my quilt finished before the deadline (Yeah, right!) I thought I would try Sharon Schamber's method of basting a quilt sandwich using boards and the table. Sharon has a free video on her website that explains the method much better than I can, so go here to see her excellent demonstration.

The advantages I see are that:

1. I don't need to get down on the floor - this is a biggie reason if you are me :-)

2. I can check for stray threads as I roll up the quilt top and backing.

3 It doesn't add weight to the quilt, unlike safety pins.

4. I can baste a quilt on my own, on my table, without needing a large surface (although because this quilt is 2.3 metres square I did put 2 tables end to end.)

The disadvantage is that it takes a lot longer than pin basting would, although I could easily have used pins with Sharon's roll method.



Really, I guess, it is a bit like having a machine quilting frame, without the frame, if you see what I mean.

I haven't started the quilting yet so I am not sure how the thread will go but Sharon says to clip the area you are working on. I will let you know how it goes.

The opposite of sewing is . . .

. . . rip it, rip it, rip it! I seem to have spent most of the day undoing sewing and re-sewing. I had the 4 corner blocks to make which, as you can see, are fairly simple. The first one behaved perfectly well and then the next three were very naughtly and didn't play together at all nicely. I had to unpick them, twice! I had also decided to change some of the fabric choices, not many - only about 4, so that some of the lighter star points were more defined. But it seemed to take me forever. All day, in fact.

The centre and border blocks are now all pieced, ready to join together:


I have to keep telling myself that when they are joined it will all look so much smaller. I'm planning on finishing the piecing tonight and it will be basting tomorrow and some quilting.

My very good friend Janice has agreed to loan me her Juki 98 which has more room under the arm. I am hoping that this will make the quilt easier to turn than it would be under the arm of my Elna. Really, why don't the manufacturers make all machines have a longer arm. Every body would be happy. Surely it can't be that expensive. I don't want a lot of embroidery stitches. I want a machine that sews basic stitches and has room under the arm to do sit-down table quilting. Not much to ask, it it?

I've done enough for a mallowpuff

It's one o'clock in the morning and, while I haven't got quite as far as I wanted today, I have done heaps and it is time to go to bed!

Here is how it is looking. Most of the border blocks are pieced. I need to finish the corners and sew everything together but it is quitting time for today.

There are a couple of fabric choices I am not happy with so I am going to sleep on it and see what it looks like in the day light.

PS. I'm being spammed (of the "cool blog, leave to me yur phone nmbr" type) so I have enabled comment moderation. Darn! It is such a pain but at least the word verifications are now easier to type, as in they are more like real words rather than a random jumble of letters.

The Plan Develops

It is now half past eleven in the morning and I have been up since 6. I've done 2 loads of washing, drunk two coffees and eaten 1 piece of Christmas cake. I've also done heaps of sewing. This is what the quilt is looking like now:
Yegads! It's a bit of a mess, is it not? Is it working as a design? I'm in the "what on earth do I think I am doing' stage. I'm telling myself it will look much better from 10 metres away. Maybe the borders will help pull it together.

I still have all the borders to piece - and all the quilting to do (and the basting, and the binding, forgot about those bits) Am I mad? Well, maybe the jury's still out on that one but the chances are I am. I have to be to put myself on such a tight deadline. But I'm not giving up now (and I treasure every moment of my long summer holidays, thank you for asking.)

Back to the machine for me.

Moving Right Along

I've had a really quiet, quilty New Year (Thank goodness there were no loud stereos in the street. The noisy neighbours across the road seem to have quietened right down.) I have made good progress on my quilt. I sewed all yesterday and most of today. I can tick off the right number of days on the timetable. Yipee! I'm up to date and on track. So far, so good - and I've even tidied my piles of fabric - haven't vacummed the floor though :-)

Here is the plan of what I am doing:
The blocks are all different fabrics and I'm working out how the secondary star pattern works. Some will be dark and some will be medium and some light. (Thanks to Janice for that suggestion. My original fabric choices for sashing were way too overpowering.) I'm actually further on than this. I'll post another picture again tomorrow. I just have 3 more sashing strips to make and then I can piece the sashings to the blocks. Then I need to work out a new border. I might actually get this done!

I Might Get There

It is just as well that I don't have anyone in the house at the moment. I have spent the last 2 days doing nothing but quilting! The house is a complete mess. I am making progress and have almost half the blocks completed.

The rest should/could/will get done today. I still have the borders of course. The design of these is proving somewhat troublesome since my original plan made the quilt way too big for entry into the competition. But, I have a another plan!!

Here is one of the completed blocks:

Why I was getting stuck.

One of the reasons that I had almost given up on getting my quilt finished is that it is a BIG quilt. I am making it, primarily, for my bed and I want it to be 2.4m by 2.4m. So the sheer size of the project become somewhat daunting. The other problem was that I don't (didn't) have a design wall big enough to work vertically. I actually don't have a wall big enough to put that size design wall onto. However, I have found a solution. It just took a while to get there.

I bought 2 pieces of soft board.* They measure 1.2m by 2.7 m. I had to cut them down a bit. Most modern houses have a 2.4m stud. My house in from 1937 and has a 2.7m stud. So 2.7 m long soft board would have been a bit of a squeeze. I cut them down to 2.5m. I thought I would lean the 2 sheets vertically against the cupboard opening where I store my fabric. The problem was that the stuff bends very easily and one sheet was bending more than the other. After a few days of struggling to work on it I finally went to Mitre 10 yesterday and bought 6 pieces of aluminium edging which just slides onto the edges. One goes on each long side of the 2 boards and takes care of the curvature problem (I wish my curvature problem was so easy to fix!) The other 2 go on the short sides at the top and bottom and temporarily join the 2 boards together. Wahoo, a flat surface I can work with.

Of course I can't easily get into my fabric cupboard while it is up, but it is possible to slide the whole thing far enough out of the way to get to that elusive piece of fabric I absolutely must have for the quilt I'm working on :-) I now have a wall that measures 2.4m wide by 2.5m high. I can take it down and store it when I am not working on a large quilt. Now I can give you an idea of the scale I am working on:
Lots to do, huh? I'm not going to make the sashing pieces all the same colour, it would overwhelm the blocks. Another reason for needing a big design wall. It is much easier to choose colour and value when I am looking at it in a vertical plane. Back to the sewing . . .


* This is a whole 'nother story! We used to be able to get a product called flameguard - which we used to call pinex many years ago. At the beginning of this year it was priced at about $25 per sheet of 1.2m by 2.4m, a very reasonable cost. I encouraged my quilting friends to buy some, which they did. When I decided to get some more guess what? They don't make it any more, grrr..., and the replacement softboard is over $55 per sheet, grrr..., grrr... ! I wasn't going to pay that much when I needed 2 of them. so I went to Bunnings. They had some older softboard that was painted black on one side. It was $26 per sheet. But since they were wanting to get rid of it they gave me 2 sheets for $30. Must have been my lucky day. Just as well, really. It cost me $42 for flannel to cover the boards (no fluffy sheets in the shops in summer, ask me how I know!) and the aluminium edging was $15 per two metre length, and I got 6 of them. Sheesh!

I'll Get By With A Little Help . . .

. . . from my friends. When I told them I had given up on getting my quilt finished before the deadline my good friend Jo protested and suggested I needed a timetable. So she typed one up on the computer for me (the picture should be click-able):
So far, I have managed to tick off the first day! Yippee, all the hand applique is done. But I have done some work towards getting the sashings done. I'm just not sure I have done enough to cross off the second day :-)

Now I look closely at the time table, Jo has put Saturday at the start of the week and it is now Sunday, so I am already 2 days behind. Yikes!

Thanks to those who have left encouraging comments. I try to reply to all comments by email but Nola and Karen have their settings as 'non-reply'. But thanks any way for taking the time to leave a comment.