Cat House Block!

Just visited Bumble Bean‘s blog.  She has the cutest house block someone sent her with a sock monkey peeking out the window.  I love it!

Of course, not to be outdone, here’s my Cat House block.  It really is square.  I can’t seem to take a picture straight on for some reason.

There’s a story behind this.  Years ago when I lived in KY, I worked at the animal shelter, and also at the vet’s office.  Because I couldn’t resist a kitty in need, I wound up with seven cats!  The vet I worked for said I had the best little cat house in west KY.  So here’s to my kitty friends from many years ago!

The next two pictures are of my newest AAQI quilt!  Actually, I finished this one the day before yesterday.  This started out as a free piecing experiment.  I just sat down and started playing with scraps, sewing and cutting, and re-sewing.

AAQI Priority Quilt

Back of AAQI Priority Quilt

The finished quilt measures 9″ by 10.5″, and it’s machine quilted.

When I uploaded the pictures, it occurred to me that I need to come up with a name for it!  Any suggestions?

The Heartstrings Quilt Project is a group that makes and donates string quilts to local charitable organizations.  I joined because I’m definitely into string quilts right now!  For my first  Heartstrings project, I decided to try a quilt-as-you-go crib quilt to donate to the local women’s shelter.

First six quilt-as-you-go blocks

Ten-inch blocks seemed a little big for a crib quilt, so mine are seven inches instead.  I’ll need 30 blocks, which will hopefully result in a quilt that will be 35″ by 42″.

I thought it would be a total pain to cut out batting and backing squares, but it didn’t take very long to cut them out at all.

Here are the six blocks I finished this afternoon.  It’s pretty easy to sew the strips down to the batting and backing.  The blocks came out really well, and knowing that they’re already quilted is a nice plus.

Of course, they still have to be joined together, but that process doesn’t look too difficult.

Probably won’t get any sewing done tomorrow.  We need to go to the VA in Iron Mountain again, for a dental appointment, so that pretty much takes up the day.  Then in the evening, we’ll be going to see the start of the UP 200 Sled Dog Race.  Hey, we’ve gotta take advantage of all that snow!

What my backyard looks like. Only there's more snow now! And the sun is definitely NOT out today.

Well, we didn’t have much snow for a while, but it looks like the Upper Peninsula is going to live up to it’s wintry reputation this week.  It’s been snowing since Sunday.  I went out and cleared the driveway yesterday, but it’s pretty much filled back in already.  Plus the city plow left a BIG pile at the end of the drive.  Oh well.  Nobody here has to go anywhere today, which is probably a good thing.

Poor Andrew had oral surgery yesterday.  He wasn’t a very happy camper last night, but he’s feeling somewhat better today.  Having had oral surgery myself some years back,  I’d rather shovel the driveway with a teaspoon than to go through that!  But at least it’s over now, and he can focus on recovering.  I’m taking good care of him, and feeding him lots of soft food.

Enough with the non-quilting stuff.  Finally finished the diagonal strip quilt yesterday.  All I had to do was to bind it, but one corner just wouldn’t cooperate, so it took a bit longer than I thought it would.  But the quilt and I finally came to an agreement, and it’s now sporting a cheerful yellow binding.  A picture will follow after it’s washed.  Then I WILL mail those three quilts off to the ALS Quilt Challenge this week!

Today I want to make another block for the BASICS Home Gather that V is doing right now.  Plus I started a small free-pieced quilt the other day.  Just sat down and playing around with sewing scraps and strips together.  I want to finish that today, and get it quilted and add it to the pile for the AAQI.  Once I get three done, I’ll register them and send them off.

Plus I’m thinking about my next donation quilt.  I’ve joined the Heartstrings Yahoo Group, which is a group that makes string quilts to donate.  You can send them completed blocks, tops, quilts, or fabric, or you can make quilts and donate them locally.  I’m going to take the second route, since I obviously have a problem with mailing things off.  (Actually it’s hard to get to the post office.  Parking is impossible.  It’s easier to walk than to drive, but it’s too cold to walk down there right now, especially with a large box.)

My plans include making crib and child-sized quilts for the local women’s center, and maybe some 60″ by 80″ quilts for the Salvation Army, too.  So I’m thinking about doing the 20″ wide strips mentioned in Mile-A-Minute-Quilts by Sharon Hultgren.  Or I may just do individual strip blocks and quilt-as-you-go.

Why you don't go out on the breakwater during a storm...

This is a picture from last fall.  There’s a sign warning people to stay off the breakwater during storms because people have been swept away in the past.  Andrew was standing right at the beginning of it, but I was so nervous about him being there that he didn’t stay there very long, thank goodness.

Enough of this.  I’m off to sew!

The beach is always changing...Waves take the old pebbles away and wash new ones up all the time.

Woo hoo, a new month, full of possibilities!  What new ideas will wash ashore this month?

Wishing I had my camera right now.  I decided I didn’t feel like machine quilting yesterday, so I started another AAQI quilt.  This one will be called “Fragments,” for the fragments of memory that float to the surface of the mind.

The fabric I’m using is recycled  from an old Sacred Threads coat I had bought at Goodwill.  When I was pulling it apart, there was unfaded fabric in the seam allowances.  So I’m trying to use the frayed edges, and take advantage of the contrast between the faded and unfaded parts of the fabrics.

Most of the quilt is made up of a piece of loosely woven material.  I cut holes in it randomly, and used reverse applique to sew down some spots of material to peek through the holes, which are the memories.  I’m leaving the edges of the holes to fray out.

I started quilting it last night.  But I’m not quite satisfied with it.  It needs a focal point of some kind.  Think I’ll pin it up to my foamboard today so I can look at it as I work today.  Wish I could put a picture up.  I was desperate enough to take a picture with a cell phone yesterday, but my TracPhone doesn’t have a camera on it!  Oh well, Andrew will be home in a few days, so I can show you then.

Water changes form, to ice, and back to water again in the spring. Recycling old clothes changes their form into something new.

Read a post the other day on recycling fabrics, and now I can’t find it!  It must have been a link from one of the blogs I check every day.  I’ve already been doing this for years, on and off.  My best find was an extra large ladies’ blouse for ten cents!  It was cotton (of course), fuschia with a black print, and there must have been two yards of fabric there.  Sweet!

I’ve cut up many men’s shirts, too, but unless it’s an extra large, it can be problematic because of the pockets on the front.  I suppose I could make a pocket quilt?  Hmm, have to think about that one.  Actually, the best garments to cut up are women’s jumpers and skirts, especially if you can get them on sale.  Goodwill is getting more expensive, which I don’t understand.  I mean, it’s used clothing, right?  There is a St. Vincent De Paul thrift store right up the street from me, and also a Salvation Army thrift store across town, and they’re more reasonably priced.

But right now I need to stay away from thrift stores and fabric stores.  Let’s see, in January I pieced four lap-sized quilts, and machine quilted a UFO, and three others.  Plus I made one AAQI quilt.  But I still haven’t made a noticeable dent in my stash!  There are lots of new beginnings just waiting here…

"Winter Journey," my first AAQI Priority Quilt!

Here are the pictures I promised you yesterday of my first AAQI Priority Quilt for the Liberated Quilting Challenge.  I even got out my light box so I could take some nice photos for my records.

It took a while to finish, really a lot longer than it should have.  I was challenged by how to attach the wolf.  I wanted to fuse him down, but do you think I could find my Wonder Under?  I ended up using some very lightweight fusible interfacing on him so he wouldn’t fray.  I wanted the fraying on the background strips, but not on him.

I blanket stitched around the wolf , using dark gray embroidery floss, and then used light gray floss in an outline stitch to make him stand out from the background a little more.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out.  I really like the wolf image.  I think he’s going to show up again in some future quilts.

AAQI Priority Quilt back

I even pieced the back.  I need to register it, but I”m going to wait til I have a couple more done and register them all at once.  I already have an idea for the next one!

Barn Dance quilt top for the Hopes and Dreams Challenge for ALS. I used painter's tape to tape it to the wall for the photo. You can see it at the top! The quilt stayed up long enough for me to snap the picture before it fell off the wall.

And I finished the “Barn Dance” quilt top this morning!  Well, not quite.  I managed to sew the top border on upside down!  I’ll have to pull it off and sew it down again in the morning.  Meant to do it this afternoon, but I forgot about it til I saw the picture!

“Barn Dance” will be donated to the Hopes and Dreams Challenge for ALS when I get it quilted.

Baby quilt ready to quilt

This baby quilt has been banging around in my closet for a couple of years now.  I made it from directions in a nine-patch book by Blanche Young.  I don’t have the book anymore, and I can’t remember which book it was either!  It has a backing and batting.  All it needs is quilting, which I never did, for some reason.  So it’s in the line-up now.  My step-daughter and her hubby are going to have a baby boy soon, so it will go to her when it’s done.

I never did make a baby quilt for my step-son and his wife when their daughter was born a year ago.  So I’m going to use the little four-patches I made yesterday to make a big-girl quilt for Nora, since she’s already going on 13 months!  I spent this afternoon cutting out pink squares to go with them.  I’ll put the four-patches on point, and alternate them with the pink squares.

When I get Nora’s quilt top done, I’ll have three tops to machine quilt.  I’ll just line them up assembly line fashion, and straight line quilt them, using the tutorial provided by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

Once again, I spent the day working on quilts, sewing in the morning, and getting my next project organized and set up.  It was overcast and cold with snow on and off all day, so it was a great day for quilting!

Liberated Challenge Quilt for AAQI

Today my inspiration came from Playing Games With Squares by Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth.  She’s combining patchwork with weaving strips of fabric.  This seemed like something I could try with my Liberated Challenge Quilt.

My quilt is tentatively titled “Winter Journey.”  I wanted to portray the journey Alzheimer’s patients and their families face.  In the lower right corner, the strips are still woven together, although things are a bit off-kilter.

As you move across the quilt, up, and to the left, , the woven strips start losing their orderliness, until at the upper left corner, there’s no structure left, just disjointed pieces.

I’m going to use the smaller wolf image, and place it towards the lower right corner.  The wolf is moving into an inner landscape where once-familiar things have changed into something unrecognizable.

All the strips are pinned down right now.  There will probably be a little more tweaking, but this is close to the finished arrangement.  I think I’m going to fuse the strips right to the batting, and then hand quilt with large, primitive-looking stitches.  Then I’ll applique the wolf on the top.  By adding the wolf after the piece is quilted, I’m hoping to give the impression that the wolf doesn’t really belong in this place where it finds itself.

I’m still not sure about the fusing, since it will make the piece stiffer, but since the edges of the strips are raw, I think this will stabilize them.  I’m not sure that the quilting alone will hold everything together.  And it would be a disaster if it fell apart later on, after it’s sold!

Salvaging a quilting disaster

Remember my quilting disaster from last week?  I cut all the blocks in half this morning, and looked through my fabric to find something that would go with the scrappy triangles.  I had lots of possibilities, but not enough of any one thing.  I wanted to use the same fabric throughout, both to tie things together, and to calm down all that frenetic activity.

I found a large piece of a chestnut brown.  It looks redder than it really is in the photo.  But I think it will work well with the wild combination of scraps.  I tried a dark green, but it was a print, and this quilt REALLY didn’t need another print!

So I’ll cut some strips tomorrow, and start sewing my triangles down.  Then I can see how they fit together (if they do) and try some different arrangements.  The pinwheel looks pretty good.  I also did a barn raising design that I didn’t take a picture of.  I’m sure I’ll find lots of ways to put the blocks together.

The nice part about is that that I’ll have 60 blocks, instead of just 30.  Hopefully they’ll finish around six inches.  I may need to do some creative piecing to get them close to the same size!  I can either do two lap quilts to donate, or a twin quilt.

Molly, looking innocent, before The Great Avalanche

Molly just wouldn’t leave me alone this morning.  She walked around on  my ironing board, supervised closely while I was trying to cut and arrange strips, knocked things in the floor, and generally helped in any way she could.

I keep my fabric in one of those three-drawer plastic bins.  This is a bit unstable when one of the drawers is open, especially when a cat jumps into the open drawer when you’re not looking!  Over it went, along with the iron, which was off, thank goodness.  The noise startled me, and I let out a yell.  My hubby thought something had fallen on me, while I thought Molly was trapped under the mess.

But kitties are very fast, and she was crouched in the hallway, with BIG eyes, wondering what had happened.  I was annoyed at her, but I was also glad she was OK.   Of course, she came traipsing in while I was picking up, reminding me what a wonderful kitty she is, and maybe I could feed her a little something to help her recover from her traumatic experience?  Cats.  Ya gotta love ‘em!

Well, I promised you pictures of the finished baby quilt, but it will have to wait til I can get outside and shovel a path to the clothesline, probably tomorrow, since I’m feeling lazy today.  I tried laying the quilt on my bed and taking pictures, but between the lighting and my cat, and other logistic problems, I think I can do a better job just pinning it up to the clothesline outside and taking pictures outdoors.  Since there’s probably 18 inches of snow on the ground, I either have to break a trail or clear a path.

"New Territory" by Robert Bertram

So instead, I’ll show you what I’m doing with my Liberated Challenge Quilt for the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative.  Lots of ideas were perking in my head, but inspiration struck this morning, in my basement, of all places.

My hubby picked up this poster last year at the local DNR office.  When I went down to the basement this morning to put the baby quilt in the washer,  the poster caught my attention.  Here was my subject!

Tracing around wolf's outline on tracing paper

I taped some tracing paper to the wall and traced around the image of the wolf.

Auditioning fabrics for the AAQI Challenge quilt

The finished quilt will be around eight by eleven inches.  I wanted to make the wolf smaller, so  I used the old artist’s trick of putting a grid on the tracing, so I could make the image smaller.  This is a slick trick for those of us who can’t draw!

Here are the fabrics I’m thinking about using.  The wolf will be cut from the gray batik, and the snow from the lighter fabrics.  You can’t really see the fabric under the gray piece, but it gives the effect of snowflakes.  I’m thinking of using it for part of the sky.

I’m trying to decide if the wolf should be isolated on a whte background, like in the poster, or if he should be coming out from some pieced or appliqued trees.   At this point I’m leaning towards using the smaller wolf image by itself, appliqued to a background made by using the Wave Runner Tutorial from V at Bumble Beans.

I’m thinking of calling it “Winter Journey,” to symbolize the journey Alzheimer’s patients and their families must make.  I want to symbolize hope by having the wolf moving towards a patch of blue sky. I also have a piece of light-colored batik with pale multicolor spirals on it, too, that may work.   But we’ll see how it all plays out.  Sometimes a project takes over and tells you how it wants to be done!

Hope everyone enjoyed their New Year celebration.  Here in Marquette, they have a lighted ball drop downtown at midnight to celebrate the New Year.  Andrew and me were going to go, but us old farts fell asleep in our chairs in front of the TV instead!  Oh well.

Driveway before I shoveled it out. It wasn't as bad as it could have been!

Our snow storm is still going on, with the snow coming and going in waves.  I finally went out this morning to clear the driveway.  Andrew tried to tell me not to bother, as he can drive out easily with the truck.  But the snow will only get deeper, so I decided to get out there and take care of it.  You can see there was a pretty good pile at the end where the city plow always leaves snow.

But it didn’t take very long to get it cleared out.  I shoveled out the end of the driveway and then used the snow blower on the rest of it.  It always amazes me how there isn’t even a slight breeze til I get out the snow blower.  Then a gale always comes up to blow all that snow back in my face!  I look like the abominable snow woman when I’m finished.

When I went inside, I managed to dump a load of snow from my hat right down my back!  ACK!  It (of course) went right down the back of my shirt and down into my long underwear.  Who needs a brother to dump snow down your back when you can do it yourself?

The result, 75 fun-filled minutes later...

These photos were  taken around 10 and 11 AM.  Looks like twilight, doesn’t it?  Actually, it was snowing pretty hard when I took the second one, which is maybe why it looks so blue.

I joined the Liberated Quilters Group at Yahoo last night.  I was interested in participating in the Liberated Challenge for the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative.  What you do is to make a little quilt that will fit into one of those Priority Mailing envelopes from the Post Office.  It has to fit without folding or scrunching it up, so that means small, about eight by ten inches.  You can see all the rules at the AAQI website.  They auction the donated quilts off to raise money for Alzheimer’s research.  A very worthy cause!

I’m looking forward to trying my hand at the Liberated Challenge.  I’ve never done anything like this before, so it should be fun.  There was a picture of a seagull-type bird in the paper today.  I cut it out to use as inspiration.  Since I live so close to the beach, there are always seagulls around here.

I’m also excited to connect with other liberated quilters out there.  It looks like a great group of people.  I’d encourage you to join, too, and take part in the challenge!

I’ve found a couple of really cool blogs to tell you about too, but this post is long enough.  So I’ll share those with you tomorrow!

Baby quilt update:  I should be finishing the baby quilt today!  I started sewing the binding on yesterday.  I should finish it this afternoon.  Then I’ll run it through the washer and dryer, sign and date it, and take some pictures to share tomorrow!