Hello 2008

Posted on January 1, 2008 by Suzanne

I see lots of bloggers are wrapping up 2007 and declaring their plans for 2008. I was sort of thinking of doing something similar myself, but I’ve run out of steam for the day. I’ve made progress in tunneling out some of the disaster that masquerades as my quilting studio — with the general idea that Ill actually get some quilting done soon. In between picking up and putting away, I did do some sewing, and I meant to take a picture of that, but it’s all the way on the other side of the house….

I find that I’m pretty much ready to just be done for the day, but I will leave you with a photo from our trip:

I made the boys humor me while I visited Mood Fabrics – as seen on Project Runway. Wow. Aisle after aisle after aisle of more fabric (and more kinds of fabric) than I’ve ever seen in one place. I’m not much of a garment sewer, but if I had access to that kind of a selection of fabric, I might be convinced to change my mind and learn.

I hope that your first day of 2008 has treated you well, and I’ll babble at you some more tomorrow.

Suzanne

If you don’t like the weather….

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Suzanne

It’s often a joke about Iowa weather (or other places I’m told) that if you don’t like the weather, you should just wait 5 minutes.

This evening: it was literally true. We went from an absolute downpour 1 minute to a blue, blue sky the next minute.

It happened while we were eating supper — and the boys hopped up to go look and see if there was a rainbow. Sure enough:

The rainbow picture was taken from my front door facing northeast. You can still see the greyness of the rainy sky. I turned around and took a picture of the sky to the south/southwest:

I don’t have any quilt pictures (or quilt part pictures yet), but I did discover in my camera a photo of the fabric I’m using for the quilt I’m making my niece.

The star fabric at the bottom is something I had purchased for the back of a quilt — my SIL saw it and said she thought my niece might like it. Within the next few days they happened to stop by my house and the fabric happened to be sitting out where my niece could see it — and she adored it….

Her favorite color is orange, but I think that blue often vies for that top spot. Her room is blue, so I decided to go with mostly blues — and I’ve since added even more than what is pictured here. Throw in some orange, a dash of lime green, a 2nd light/backgroundy print that I fell in love with, and voila! I’ve got pieces and parts up on my design wall and I’m really liking how things are shaping up. It’ll be bright and cheerful, but not little-girlish.

I hope you are all having a great week, I’ll babble at you some more tomorrow!

Suzanne

Fabric! And a finish (almost…)

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Suzanne

just home from quilt shop. fabric for cousin’s wedding quilt — wedding is in October

the green is much prettier in person. going to use the corn and beans block, set on point with sashing.

these blocks were pieced months ago. set them together, added borders and quilting yesterday. lynn? recognize the border fabric? thread is Maxilock swirls, perfect to go with the border fabric…quilting is a freehand allover adaptation of a design from my 2nd book.

i’m trying to type with the unsore fingers. slow going! lol!

ttfn-

suzanne

p.s. first day of school report from the boys: “it was fine.”

learn anything? “No.”

typical….

Gage’s Quilt

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Suzanne

The blocks are all sewn together:

Jan commented about the quantity of John Deere fabrics in my stash: there are actually only 2 John Deere prints in this particular quilt. One is the yellow with tractors on it, the other is a green print with black tractors. The actual color scheme for this quilt came from one of the stripes that I used — I didn’t really want to make an all green/yellow quilt. When I put the stripe that has yellow/blue/green/turquoise with the John Deere prints, I knew what to look for for coordinates. I’m planning on some more black for a border, and beyond that, I’m not sure. I do have yardage of the yellow print, but a little bit of yellow goes a very long way……..I’ll probably use that for the back…….

As far as other John Deere fabrics in my collection:

I do have to admit to having bought a fairly large amount of this print a few months ago:

Look, Mom! It’s paisley!

Over the years, I’ve had other Deere print fabrics as well — we have a few pillows around (pillow panels…). I also had a plaid (blues and blacks) that had the Deere logo on it, that was used to make my father-in-law a quilt. That quilt has a blue flannel on the back that has a bunch of John Deere logo caps on it.

I also bought some fabric that has the words “Nothing runs like a Deere” repeated over the whole thing, but the weird thing is this: the yellow background is a completely different yellow from the other fabrics in the line, so it doesn’t go with anything……..

Why so much John Deere logo fabric? Have I mentioned that my in-laws farm? And that my DH works as an engineer for Deere?

The quilt above is intended for my cousin’s baby — Gage’s Daddy is a farmer (and Gage’s grandparents farm…)

Well, now that I’ve gotten most of the piecing of that quilt out of my system, I’d better go get back to work sorting and folding and organizing. I’m making progress, even though it really all looks worse than when I started….

TTFN-

Suzanne

More blasts from the stash

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Suzanne

Suzy Q. Homemaker here, reporting in. The stash hasn’t drowned me yet. It’s making a valiant effort.

I cleaned the refrigerator (yikes!) and had the boys help me clean the fronts of all of the kitchen cabinets (double yikes!). They had gotten in trouble, so they were my slaves for awhile.

One kid was clutching his red watery eye because he had gotten punched. The other one didn’t mean to punch him in the eye, he was aiming for a tap on the nose.

When asked why: He-who-punches-in-the-face claimed it was because he had been hit by a toy.

The boy-who-hit-with-a-toy “didn’t know” why he did this.

Yeah, I don’t know either. You are both my slaves now.

It is SO totally time for school to start.

In addition to the kitchen cleaning fun, I spent more quality time folding and sorting and even doing some cutting of fabric into strips and squares. The best part was finding fabric that was intended for bindings but had gotten lots into the general mess.

A few of you had great ideas for how I might make use of the vest I posted last night. Obviously everyone’s taste is different — mine has certainly changed over the years. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it, it’s still hanging on the design wall laughing at me.

Before I got started with this, these shelves were more than half empty. Fabric was everywhere: in bins, in piles in my studio, on the floor……..

I’m not sure how much foldable fabric I have yet in my stash. Mostly, it’s in bits and pieces that needs to be sorted and cut into usable shapes.

I have bins for 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3.5 in strips. The dark/medium bins are overflowing. The light bins are much slimmer. No photos, suffice it to say there is enough fabric in those bins for countless quilts.

How about this for a scary picture: the leaning tower of UFOs. This is only some of the ones that are either ready to quilt or are partially quilted or need to have the binding finished:

And last, but not least: another project that I uncovered that I’m not really sure what I was thinking when I started it. Don’t get me wrong, this one doesn’t bother me, I just need to contemplate what to do with it. I think it’s only about 24 inches square. I remember it being a lot of piecing and quite a challenge for me at the time. It’s been….7-8 years maybe? After looking it at as a photograph, I’m wondering about using it as a center, adding some borders and making it into a QOV.

My mother reminded me this afternoon that we ought to be working on a quilt for my cousin that’s getting married in October. What a concept, start now, and have plenty of time to finish it! (Although, we are actually contemplating using something I’ve already made, or possibly making use of one of the existing UFOs….). She also reminded me that this cousin’s sister deserves a quilt someday (she’s only been married for what, 9 years?), plus both cousins have 6 month old babies that haven’t gotten quilts from us yet. Good thing I have plenty of fabric around here. Oh, and my niece has moved from a twin to a queen and the quilt I made her a few years ago is too small, so I’m going to make her a new quilt this fall, too.

Sheesh, what am I doing here at the computer? I’ve got quilts to make….but first I need to go do the dishes and then head back to the studio. My back and legs are a little tired from all of the standing and hard work, so I’m probably going to spend the evening working on some of those bindings I uncovered….

TTFN-

Suzy-Q Homemaker