pieceful kwilter: May 2012

Salute

i was cruising thru my blog list this morning and was looking at all the RW&B quilts people were posting for Memorial Day and wished i had one to post

*face slap*

I DO!!

i finished the binding on my 'Salute' quilt a couple of weeks ago!

i made it with two RW&B jelly rolls from Keepsake Quilting and used their freebie pattern 'Basket Weave.' i did add a few strips from stash (and i bought some red) to help bump up the block count.

it will hang at the top of the stairs for July...

this weekend

We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them.

-Francis A. Walker

crickets

did you think i'd fallen off the edge of the planet?? i'm really busy and my life has two descriptors right now- "before i go to paris" and "when i get back" (i have a couple more customer quilts to do "before i go to paris" and the rest will have to wait til "when i get back")

i found myself needing to decompress and do some piecing the other evening and i really don't have anything 'in progress' that was calling me, so i decided to start something new. i stood in my studio, very quietly, and i heard the box of selvages beckoning to be cut up....

so that what i did.

i started my selvage quilt blocks. they will finish at 6inches. i'm sewing a scrap strip to the bottom so as to not loose any of my printed selvage and it also eliminates bulk...when i trim my selvages, i purposely cut them wide so as to have some color in my quilt...

14 down, 130ish to go....a whole quilt from what most piecers throw away- i like that idea.

SAL 2012 Part Four

here's the latest and greatest installment in my Scrap Bash Stitch-A-Long....

happy stitching!

don't forget to add photos of your blocks to the Flickr group. i like to see what and how yall are doing these :)

dinner and a show

i decided dinner at Waffle House tonight was a great idea. it was perfect timing, i was the only customer and had the whole place to myself. little did i know what a great idea it was...

about half way thru my eggs and hash browns (smothered, of course) a gentleman approaches the door. something was 'off' about him. he was out of breath, nervous, and kept looking behind him.

about then, six police cruisers come down the street all with their lights on. we all noticed the gentleman had disappeared. about that time i saw one of the cruisers coming slowly towards the Waffle House, then we all figured it out. they were looking for that guy!!

just then he went running across 6 lanes of busy traffic into the woods you see in the picture. about 4 minutes later the cops emerged escorting Mr. Criminal to the waiting cruiser.

so, what did he do?? behind the Waffle House is a huge shopping center that has a Wally World on the end. this guy walked out of the WalMart carrying a flat screen TV, made it about four stores away, dropped it (it broke), and ran. The police officer told us that he fought the officers when he was apprehended.

♫ bad boy, bad boy...

whatcha gonna do?

whatcha gonna do when they come for you? ♫

I WAS RUN-NANG!

hmmm....? somethin's fishy....

i took a couple hours yesterday and today to quilt my 'Clownin' Around' quilt and, honestly, i'm feeling that the quilting kindda ruined the quilt.

i liked the nice simple graphic of the fishy stripes and i feel the quilting ?cheapens? it. there's something wrong with it and i can't put my finger on it.

i'm thinking that 'literal' quilting isn't my personal style, and the quilting is very literal and that's throwing me off....

is it that i've just looked at it too long and have snow blindness towards it? thoughts? i'm not fishing for compliments, just honest criticism and critiques....

i'm going to put it aside and look at it later with fresh eyes....

seriously?

this chaps my ass....sorry, but it does. i try really hard to not be negative, but sometimes i feel pushed.

i ordered a quilt pattern from a well known (online) designer (high traffic blog, published book and patterns. teaches as well) for $10.00. i got it the other day and could barely wait til i got inside the house to open it.

when i did open it it was two pieces of paper!!!! TWO!!!! and only one sided!!! the 'cover' quilt shot and fabrics requirements were on one sheet and the my-kindergarten-kid-wrote-the-instructions directions on the other..that's $5/piece of paper

what the hell!!

now normally i don't A) buy patterns and B) only buy in person to open to double check this doesn't happen, but i was totally mislead by the 'reputation' of said 'designer'. when i do buy patterns/books it's pure laziness cause i don't want to figure it out, but sometimes i buy the pattern cause i can't figure the piecing from looking at the picture. these day i only buy applique or tote patterns...(with all the lawsuits flying around, i just design my own to be safe)

this is why i sit down with a pencil, graph paper, and a calculator (or plug everything into EQ) and figure out how to make a quilt from a picture, instead of forking over my hard earned money for two pieces of paper. *sheesh*

i have a little word of advice for future pattern designers-if your instructions only take one side of a piece of paper, it's best to 'fluff' the content with some nice in-progress diagrams, add a 'freebie' small project, or show some alternate layouts/sizes...cause trust me, if it comes up on conversation- i will tell my quilting friends to not waste their time or money.

oh oh oh oh.....and one paragraph at the bottom of the (already short) directions encouraged me to purchase the 'alternate fabric color chart' for $6.00. i expect that should be included with that one page $10 pattern- duh! $16 for three pieces of paper.....nope, don't think so.

this is just a bit of the 'commercialization' of quilting i'm witnessing. i miss the times when quilters would openly share and teach other quilters for the pure joy of it, not for copyright or money. i'm seriously worried for the future of quilting.

okay, i'm done.

blocks done!

clowning around

i have all my fabrics cut and made 5 more blocks....i even found a cute fabric for the border!!

shark bait, oh ah ah

movies and a hole

i went to the movies last night. i saw 'The Raven' i liked it (YouTube trailer link here)...it's an ingeniously written mystery with Edgar Allen Poe as a character (John Cusack) and was not predictable.

i saw two movie trailers that i'm interested in seeing:

'Looper' (YouTube trailer here)

and 'Seeking A Friend for the End of the World' starring Steve Carell (YouTube trailer link here)

also shown was a trailer to The History channel's 3 night miniseries about the Hatfield and McCoy feud starring Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton (link here) it starts memorial day at 9pm. hell yah! defiantly going to DVR it...

check this out....apparently a woodpecker dug something out of my mailbox post this morning.

i read blog posts all the time about all the cool wildlife seen in peoples' yards....this is not one circumstance that i'm thrilled to see wildlife....