Inspiration from the great outdoors...

It's good to be home again!  While camping in the Canadian 1000 Islands, I managed to do a little hand-applique by lantern light on two little samples for the shop.  Once home, I added the borders and now they are ready to quilt.  This tablerunner is 45-1/2 x 13-1/2.  Here's a closer view of the first one:

They are both from "Juniper and Mistletoe: A Forest of Applique" by Karla Menaugh and Barbara Brackman.

The second one is one of the blocks from the cute folk art quilt in the book (the block pictured on the cover).  This one is 18-1/2 x 16-1/2.

As I unpack and do all the camping laundry, I look forward to catching up with your blogs. 

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Leaving Hogwarts...

Greetings from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!  We are briefly back from Infinitus 2010, a Harry Potter Convention in Orlando, FL.  Don't let that snow on the roofs of Hogsmeade fool you...it was in the high 90's with opressive humidity.

I did manage to get some more baskets hand-appliqued while sitting in Harry Potter seminars and discussions (at least until I broke my needle!  I forgot to pack a spare!).  Other attendees kept asking me if these were cauldrons, or some other sort of witch or wizarding thing.  No, just baskets.  Although, boy do I ever have some ideas for Harry Potter related quilting...

I guess the black print ones do look a little like cauldrons...

Here is my daughter, standing near the back of Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, behind her in the Universal Studios theme park, "Islands of Adventure."  The structures were amazing and did not disappoint!  It was VERY crowded in the park, but since it did only open a month ago and there are SO many Harry Potter fans, that was to be expected.  We did the rides, shopped at Honeyduke's Candy Shop and Zonko's Joke Shop, dined and had Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks, Riley got a wand at Olivander's Wand Shop, sent "owl post" from Hogsmeade, and talked with the Hogwart's Express train conductor.  There are rumors, even though only a month old, of adding to this corner of the park...maybe a Diagon Alley and Gringotts.  We'll see...

Here is my daughter, sporting the appropriate Butterbeer moustache in the Three Broomsticks Pub.  Our 4-day conference was in a hotel/convention center at the universal complex and we were allowed in the park one night after hours...just 1500 crazed Potter fans, most in costume...that was awesome!  In fact, most of the fans at the conference were in costumes all days and nights of the affair.  We had book seminars/discussions/panels, live quidditch and human wizard chess matches, an opening feast, Wizard Rock, a "Night of Frivolity Ball," and live performances of Harry Potter musicals, etc.  Just imagine a Star Trek Convention and substitute Harry Potter. 

Although I doubt Star Trek had all the literary seminar programming that we had and all the university scholars giving talks...

There were Harry Potter fans at this convention from ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!  (I thought WE had traveled a long way to get there.)  I met people from the Netherlands, South America, England, France, Asia, and 3 from Australia and New Zealand!!

LOTS of great costumes...(Flitwick, Snape, Lupin, Tonks, Dumbledore, Lavender Brown, and of course, Hermione,  Ron and Harry).

Hagrid and Norberta, the dragon (which was HUGE!).

Two people dressed as Luna Lovegood...

The sorting hat...

Tonks and Bellatrix (people were posing and hexing all over the place...).

Riley posing with Lily and James Potter (Harry's parents)...

The evil Lucious and Narcissa Malfoy...

(If you aren't an HP fan, thanks for enduring all the photos!)

In stitches (and in the laundry room!),

Teresa  :o)

Checking in before checking out...

Here are some little green cherry tomatoes and some basil from my back stoop garden.  I am off to spend some quality family time for 3 weeks.  (Maybe, just maybe, I will get a little stitching done in the mean time...maybe very little, LOL!)  We'll definitely be eating ripe, home grown tomatoes soon!

I will certainly be doing some summer reading (Stephanie Plum book #16 by Janet Evanovich and a small pile of "Bubbles" books - thanks Mary J!!), some original applique scheming and dreaming, and visiting the new "World of Harry Potter" section of an Orlando, FL theme park with my husband and this excited young lady (freshly back from New York City and her first Broadway show)...

I can't believe she talked us into a Harry Potter "nerd convention" (Infinitus 2010, in conjunction with the opening of the park).  What were we thinking?!?

We'll let you know how it turns out...

In stitches (and in a wizard robe...),

Teresa  :o)

Going around in circles...

Oh my.  Is anyone else doing this fabulous Joseph's Coat Quilt-Along from Kellie at  Don't Look Now???  I have been at this for a while as a baby quilt for my new nephew (now 6 months old...oh my...).

I have to admit it has not been an easy project for me.  First of all, I broke my rule and let my sister see it in progress in February.  Sometimes it takes all the wind out of my sails when I do a partial reveal.  Then the cat turned over my tea cup and I ended up having to re-make a few circles (since I glue my edges under, I couldn't plunge the pieces under the water to get the tea stain out of the bright white background).  Then I bled on one and didn't realize it until it was too late for my spit to remove the stain...had to re-do that one too.

Somehow I managed to finish all the little whole and half circle blocks...now to put them together so that the pattern is continuous.  I don't have a picture of that for you yet as it looks like A COMPLETE MESS!!!  I'm following the tutorials, but it is awkward folding the excess background out of the way in order to connect the circles in a continuous pattern...bulky, bulky, bulky. 

I think it is going to work eventually, but I am very clumsy trying to do the hand applique with the weight of all that excess, folded-out-of-the-way background fabric...especially when trying to get those 6 little points to meet PERFECTLY.  I may need to do some pre-mature trimming...

I got really spoiled by the ease of hand-appliqueing all the little circle blocks...la-tee-da!  Then I hit the wall, which I will push over...at some point.  I'm feeling the pressure of Asa possibly being in second grade before he gets this quilt!!

I will show progress on how it is going together next time...until then, off to work at the quilt shop!

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Not in Kansas any more...

"Wickedly Liberated" is finished and ready to quilt.  I wanted to have it machine-quilted, but some of the bulky trims/embellishments may remove that option.  Weasley jumped in the picture...he got all excited when he thought we might be "getting" some doggies!  Here's a picture without him...

I'm pleased with the bottom-right corner house, and I ended up free-piecing a witch hat in the top-left corner to balance.  I had an extra one of Mary J's liberated witch blocks...I wish I had put it where the witch hat is now, but I think I have another, SMALLER, project in mind for that.

Thank you to all my liberated lady swap group for contributing to my top: Ola, Mary J, Judy E, Ellen, Kathy, Jean, Judy T, Chris, Mary H, Mary Liz, Margit, Barb N, Marilyn, Cindy, Cheryl, and Beth.  And thanks to Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting (and Lynne of Patchery Menagerie and Bonnie of Quiltville's Quips & Snips) for all the visual inspiration on making the free-pieced letters.  There are many more of THOSE in my future!

(Weasely, waiting to "get" the doggies...where are they?!?)

(Nessa the witch is having a "bad house day"...)

We are having another blazing hot day in southeast lower Michigan...be careful of the heat (or cold) wherever you are!

In stitches (and in Oz),

Teresa   :o)

Cloudy and a chance of falling houses...

I needed to fill a little space in the wordy border corners of my liberated lady quilt and thought I really needed a house falling on a witch.  (I think I will make a witch hat for the opposite corner.)  I cheated!  I tried and tried to free-piece the legs and slippers but it just didn't work out.  (I justified it by observing that some people in my swap embellished their blocks a little with applique...).

MAJOR ETHICAL NEW FABRIC DILEMMA:

To rip or not to rip?!?

I just dropped in on a quilt store in the center of the state (Michigan) this afternoon while running an errand in that particular small town.  I decided to support the local economy by getting some fabric from the shop on the village square (my patriotic duty, after all...), and to my horror, they ripped it!!  I know, I know...some people think that this is the best way to get fabric, but it seems so violent to me.  We rotary cut at the quilt store where I work part time, unless it is double wide stuff for backings.  AND, I always measure with "fat thumbs," which means you never get exactly 36 inches of fabric when I am cutting you a yard of goods.  Maybe I wouldn't have minded the tearing so much if I had known that I got 37 inches of fabric.  I know what the mark-up is on fabric...does it really hurt to be a tad bit generous??  I mean, really!!  I think I made a face when the owner ripped my selection, because then she proceeded to give me a lecture to justify her violent act (like I had not been quilting since 1982...).  Blah, blah, blah...

I do try and cut most of my long boders perpendicular to the selvage, but I also deal with things cut WOF as well.  I "press rather than scrub" with the iron (thanks Mary J. for that quote and reinforcement...), so I don't have much trouble with "squirrel-li-ness" of piecing, even when I cut things on the bias.

After ripping one particularly bad, screwy bolt, she tried lining up the edges to prove that everything would be fine for cutting across the width of the fabric.  She could not get the huge wrinkle out, no matter how many times she stretched out my poor cut  "rip" of fabric and re-adjusted the fold.  I nearly cried, paid for my purchases, and couldn't wait to get out of there with my wounded pieces of fabric.  I drowned my sorrows in a tall diet coke (wanted a milkshake, but got a hold of myself in the freakin' nick of time...LOL).

So, how do you feel about tearing versus cutting with a rotary cutter or scissors when purchasing fabric??  And, how do you feel when you ask for 1 yard of fabric and you get 36 inches exactly of fabric (instead of a smidge more....)??

Bitching, I mean, in stitches,

Teresa   :o)

I need a bigger design wall...or a bigger family room floor!

Weasley likes it enough to take a whole bath on it while I was staring at it and thinking.  Maybe I should have made the letters shorter...they seem a little big.  Oh well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!  Not bad for my first attempt at these letters.  Of course, Mr. furry britches is lying right on top of the witch, which probably makes you wonder why I picked that particular phrase...how do cats know these things?!?

I need to purchase a little more champagne colored "Fizz" by P&B to finish out the word border...it's amazing how much background fabric it takes to be liberated.  Then I need to think of a small outer border...

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)

Word games...

The words for my Liberated Lady swap block quilt are done...this is just five of them (for those of you trying to make an intelligent phrase from what you see in the picture...LOL).  The rest are sloppily pinned to my too-small design wall...not pretty.

These letters are in the spirit of Tonya at Lazy Gal Quilting.  I intentionally did not read her tutorials...I was trying to be totally liberated!  I probably should have read the tutorials first...especially when I got to the letters S, G, and R.  I've always been bad about reading the directions...

I was battling all day with my perfectionism, which wanted them to be the same height and perfectly spaced.  They look far better in all different sizes and with wonky spacing, which is really easy to accomplish if you loosen up and just let 'er rip!

Because the quilt center is so busy, I decided on one color for the letters and one for the background (I just love the new "Fizz" by P&B!).  Now I want to make more in lots of fun colors and fabrics.

The next step is to decide how to place the word phrases around the quilt center.  I am enjoying the "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" design style.

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Darn it, but I've been "dashed" out!

I think I have almost recovered from working at the shop (The Quilting Season, Saline, Michigan) for the Michigan Stash Dash last Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I know quilters love these things, but they can be a killer to get ready for and live through for store staffs!  After 12-hour plus days, I came home and didn't go near my stash.  I think I was on cotton overload (I didn't think that was possible!).  Shocking!

I have a few new baskets to add to the others.

I've also been doing a little stash scrap maintenance...washing, sorting, putting stuff away.   Rae Ann was nice enough to ask me to post on Stash Manicure this morning.  If you have not checked out that site, it is a MUST SEE!!!  GREAT ideas for using your stash from all kinds of invited guest bloggers!

Today is my daughter's 13th birthday, and she leaves later in the day for a church youth group trip to New York City.  I will miss her, but I am SO looking forward to some SEWING and ME time!!!!!  Shocking!

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Uh-oh...a new crush...

What is wrong with me?  For 7 months, I was a one-quilt-woman...didn't even look at another quilt with lust in my heart while working on the Civil War Bride.  Now that the bride is done, I'm like a drunken sailor on shore leave!  Little houses in a quaint village, Liberated Ladies, a baby quilt, Blackbird baskets, Aunt Clara, Klosjes, Civil War Sampler, log cabins...these are just a few of my on-going projects, some long-term, some with a deadline in mind. 

While at Borders Books with my daughter on Monday afternoon, I picked up this magazine and saw the quilt on the cover.  My heart skipped a beat.  I opened the magazine to the proper page, and there she was...Annabelle.  (Don't tell my husband...)  Has anyone else fallen for this vixen??

The magazine is sharing the pattern, which is nice.  I'm going to hold off on any starts...just daydream about it for a while.

I know, I know...SUCKER!

In stitches,

Teresa   :o)