I Occupied...

... Rupe's blog today! You might want to check it out--he's having several friends do "Occupy Rupe's Blog" posts this month, and I found the first two really interesting. Well, BronsonT's was interesting mainly because of the flashbacks to my tax-law-class days, but the info there was quite useful!

Today is devoted to de-holidaying the house. The outside lights are down--thanks, Michael!--the trees are packed up and put away, and so are the holiday houses. I've almost finished washing the holiday linens and they can get packed up for another year. Last thing will be changing out quilts--might have to take a few pics of the new look.

Bead Store Bonanza!

Bead Store Bonanza!, a photo by marie watterlond on Flickr.

(This is my post for Jan. 5. Computer issues yesterday--only semi resolved today, but at least I could upload pictures today!)

Met up with Yarn Addict Annette and her mom at San Gabriel Bead yesterday, and found some "treasures" for my crazy quilt project. I am especially fond of the variegated rattail--as much as this stuff has driven me nuts in the past, I couldn't resist buying a few yards to couch down on my tie-blocks.

The plastic boxes hold small and medium sized flip-top boxes, which will be perfect for transferring those beads in plastic baggies into. I have very little desire to be chasing beads everywhere.

The buttons are a great find, they're all glass--very appropriate for using with the Glass Man's ties, no? The only problem I'm beginning to see is that there may have to be an entire work station set up for this project, since there are so many parts to it!

More WIPs

DSCN8857, a photo by marie watterlond on Flickr.

These are ragg quilt squares. They've been batted and cross-stitched and just need to be assembled. There are 110 of them and I'm undecided about how to put them together. Perhaps two 30-block small quilts and one 48-block bigger quilt? They're probably going to be for charity, unless I repurpose one for the little great-granddaughters.

Decisions, decisions. This is why they're still sitting around stacked and ready to sew up!

Things To Do

DSCN8855, a photo by marie watterlond on Flickr.

Part of my collection of WIPs--these are pillowcases that need to be sewn up and French seamed, and then they'll be done. I seem to have a bit of a pillowcase thing going on lately--dunno if that's a good thing, or a bad thing, or just "a thing." Anyway, I'm hoping that soon I can show you a stack of completed pillowcases!

Second Verse...

Thought I'd share some more of the Christmas quilts that have been up during the holidays, since they are all going back into hibernation till next Christmas.

Not quite sure how this is going to work, since the Blogger layout looks a little wonky. However, here's some folk art angel quilts, including the famous "angels in sleeping bags" as on of the cherubs dubbed it.




There[s the wintery trees--this may stay around for a while since it's really more "winter" than "Christmas" like the Snowball Quilt from a previous post. Then there's the flying angels with their gold wings and trumpets.

Pay no attention to the butterfly quilt. That's one of my WIPs and really needs some attention. If I can work on it, you'll soon (I hope) see it as an FO.

That's enough for today. I need to experiment some more with layouts on this thing. You'd think this was my first blog.

Oh wait...

Let the Crazies Begin!

Button, button--who's got the button? Well... chances are, it's me. Yes, those are jars of buttons up there on top of the bookshelves. Those are some of my quilting and knitting books on the shelves. The silver tins (they seem to be reflecting gold light from somewhere but they're silver colored) also have buttons in them.
More jars of buttons. These are on top of the green Hoosier that used to live in the old kitchen. It's in the process of being repurposed to serve as a craft Hoosier now. The reason for the button pictures is because I'm getting ready to start the Great Crazy Quilt Tie Project... although the name may change several times over the course of the year.
Yes, I did say Ties. As in, tie one on? Ties that bind? How about, a tisket, a tasket, a green laundry basket--full of my husband's old ties. Bob wore one every day that he worked, so for my kids, ties are quintessentially "Daddy." It's been in my plans for a few years now to make a crazy quilt out of the ties--many of them are silk, or at least "silky" stuff, so they'll lend themselves perfectly to the medium.
But, you know how it goes... if I make one quilt out of them, well, who gets it? Can't play favorites, so I guess I need to make... seven quilts. Oh-kay.

Now, look over there on the right sidebar. See that CQJP logo? Well, the challenge this year is to make a block a month, at the end of which there will be 12 blocks. Right. So, if I can make one block, I should be able to make...7? Each month?

Not like I haven't had practice in assembly-line and production sewing. My earliest sewing memories are of helping my mother make doll clothes. No, not for my dolls. She sewed for Peggy-Ann and Totsy, two big producers of doll clothes. She'd get a big box delivered to her, which would have the cut out pieces for anywhere from 20 to 50 dozen doll outfits. There'd be a sample, and whatever trims she'd need to make them--laces, ribbons, rickrack, etc. She had an industrial machine that sewed forward, very fast. No backwards. A ruffler that screwed on, one of those complicated looking gizmos that would ruffle the bottom layer and sew it to the top at the same time. She'd sew the pieces one after the other in huge long chains, and my job was to snip the chains apart to get them ready for the next step.

So, good practice for piecing quilts!

Now, crazy quilts aren't really put together like that. The pieces are odd sized, and they're sort of flopped down in different directions depending on the shape of the pieces. That's why ties, with their kind of skewed cuts, are perfect for this. Here's the plan: I'm going to cut out 84 (or maybe a few extra) pieces of muslin for backing, and then I can put the pieces of ties onto them with the machine. I want to be sure that every quilt has pieces of the same ties. so doing 7 at a time ought to make that a little easier than trying to do 84 all at once. I figure the piecing part should be pretty quick--maybe an afternoon's work for each set of 7. And there's no reason I can't prep more than one set of 7 at a time--depending on how quickly I get the ties dissassembled.

It's the embroidery and trimming that will take longer. Especially since a lot of that will be done by hand. And I haven't figured out yet how to knit and embroider at the same time... so we'll see. Because of course I still want to knit!

This should be an interesting year, especially if things work out the way I'd like them to.

Lastly, here's a bit of eye candy for you! This is a quilt my friend Sandy made for her "other" friend Marie. It's truly a gorgeous thing. Every one of those squares has a different quilting pattern in it. (More pics on my Flickr page, where you can even biggen the pictures to see the details. There are even pics of Sandy with her pugs.)

Time for me to go start picking ties apart. Going to be a good thing to do tomorrow while I watch the Rose Parade on TV!

Blueberries for Sal

Blueberries for Sal, a photo by marie watterlond on Flickr.

Books have always been my idea of a perfect present, so there were books for all four of the little grandkids on Christmas this year. In the midst of all the gift opening, Audrey came to this one, and something about it intrigued her. Her gift unwrapping came to a halt while she went through the whole book, very carefully, then had her mom read it to her from the beginning.

The Snowball quilt on the back of the sofa is one I had made back when I was teaching at the "old" Bearly Stitchin'--the small shop on the corner of Roosevelt. It was the first installment of a Calendar Quilts series, one per month. That was one of my first Tuesday night quilt classes.

I do love hauling out some of my older wall quilts and draping them around. Right now there are 6 "holiday" quilts up. Hmm, idea for another post!