Future Cyclones

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Suzanne

The ISU Alumni Association has a fan photo gallery on their website. Mark submitted a picture of the boys:

We are multigeneration Iowa Staters here. All of four of OUR parents went to ISU, and we met on a blind date our Senior year.

I remember when I was in school, my Dad got a call from one of those students who had to call Alumni and beg for money.

The student thought her day was MADE, when Dad informed her that he’d send thousands of dollars to the school.

She was understandably disappointed when he broke the news that it wasn’t a donation: it was just my tuition.

I’m not looking forward to the day when we are paying tuition. All I can say is that the boys better study hard and get good grades and hope for lots of scholarships.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Suzanne

I am so not ready for it to be time to put up the Christmas decos, but Holiday Happenings starts this weekend here in town, so I guess I’d better get on the stick.

Last year this window had Mark’s snowman quilt hanging in it. Two days ago I decided it needed something new. I think everybody’s probably seen a variation of this quilt before:

My packages are an inch short: I miscut some of the long rectangles, and rather than recut new ones, I decide to cut them all the shorter length…

I still need to do some additional decorating in the windows, but right now I really need to get some quilting done…

WIP Wednesday

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Suzanne

This quilt went on the frame right before I left for New Jersey. I got a bit of the blocks done, but have returned to it in earnest. I had to pull it off this afternoon because of that border. Wow.

Holy Extra Fabric Batman.

The other 3 borders are pretty wavy, but I am going to be able to beat them into submission without too much trouble. This one, though. I could have taken some pleats on the frame, but I’m never 100% happy with how that turns out.

SO, I did something wacky. I didn’t take the border completely off, but I opened up the seam and then I smooth everything out and took my scissors to the border.

I took out THREE inches of extra fabric:

THREE inches. Please. If you piece quilts. Please do yourself a favor and learn how to apply borders that FIT a little better than this did. I don’t care about perfect, heck, my borders are rarely perfect, but I surely don’t have THREE extra inches gathered up in them.

I’m quilting the blue and pink borders at the same time. I’m doing the whole quilt with a white So Fine thread. The outer borders flow from the middle to the corners, the white borders flows from the corners to the middle.

I got pretty tricky on the hearts. I did the first 2 freehand, and then I used the computer to record the 3rd one. Actually, I recorded each heart, and then I put it back together on the computer, so I had a little more flexibility about the connections.

There are 30 (?) heart blocks…which is 120 hearts if you want to get specific about it…having the computer do them for me was heaven. It took 2.3 minutes for the computer to stitch a block after I spent about 1.5 minutes setting up the block. 2.3 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but you wouldn’t believe how much picking up and puttering around you can do in 2.3 minutes.

I still have to do most of the sashing and 3 of the 4 borders, and I’m contemplating recording the sashing, too, since the blocks went so well.

This is why I bought my IQ. It’s MY stitching, only smarter and more efficient.

And I can use all the help I can on the smarter thing.

Fun! But Back to Reality!

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Suzanne

So, my super-fantastic-weekend-of-fun was…exactly that. I flew to New Jersey to spend a few days with my sister and her family. Colin (my nephew) is FOUR today, and the weekend was partly consumed by his birthday party, plus my sister and I got to spend Sunday afternoon visiting the City, seeing Wicked and getting makeovers at Sephora. I also had some quality time with 21-month old Hannah (oh, and Colin, Debra, and Matthew, too).

But, yeah. Back to reality. A house that is in dire need of straightening and cleaning (mostly because I’m hosting Thanksgiving, yikes), a backlog of quilts, and dang it, it’s time to decorate for the holidays.

And speaking of reality, after I walked in the house Monday night and said hello, I noticed the pile of mail. I should have ignored it as the piece I chose to open was the bill for my trip to the Emergency Room.

I just about needed ANOTHER trip to the ER thanks to the heart attack I got when I saw the total.

The billed amount? $1226

Thanks to the insurance adjustment, I “only” have to pay $536.

I was using my rotary cutter this evening and you had better believe I was excruciatingly careful with every single cut I made.

Wow.

As if you needed more proof

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Suzanne

So the other morning, I was blow-drying my hair. I noticed that there I had apparently dripped some moisturizer on the edge of the sink, so I wiped it up with my right index finger (the dryer was in my left hand…).

I had my hand ON THE FAUCET (so I could rinse the moisturizer off my hand) before I woke up enough to realize that turning on the water while drying my hair was probably not a good idea.

Aren’t you glad you have me to remind you of the stupid things you shouldn’t do???

Hey! If you enjoyed yesterday’s photographic trip to the farm, just wait until next week: Mark took some short videos and when I return from my super-fantastic-weekend-of-fun, I’ll try to edit and upload them, it’ll be almost like you are in the combine with us. You’ll have to bounce up and down in your chair to simulate the bouncing.