Thursday, March 31, 2011

Eeeeek!

Two creature issues - one cute....


Becket wandered by my sewing area and saw the pile of trimmings on the floor.  He yelled "ah - green!" (his favorite color) and scooped up a pile of the scraps to hoard in his room.  On the way to his room, he also found Caleb's ipod touch, left on the steps when he was picked up for lacrosse practice.  Becket scooped that up too.


Not so cute.  SOMETHING chewed into or out of my front door jamb around noon today.  I heard it.  

I do not like having a hole from  the inside to the outside of my house!  It's stuffed with steel wool for the day, until our door guy can come out tomorrow morning. 

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A Green Start

I love sketching out a plan, doing some quilty math, and pulling a stack of fabrics.


Inspired by the cover photo of Modern Log Cabin Quilting - I'm eager to look through the whole book.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Super Cool


Thank you Heather! 

Modern Day Quilts

Pink Lemonade is over at Modern Day Quilts today!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Blog Helper Outtakes

It had been horribly gloomy, wet and cold here - it's finally sunny (huzzah!) but at 35deg and flurries, not exactly prime spring break weather.


The last couple weeks trying to get good pictures of my finished Hobson quilts was tricky so I hoped to catch as much light as I could inside our sunroom.


Unfortunately I had to deal with both a zombie and giant invasion (the lego dudes without heads are zombies, playmobile dudes without hair are giants).  The strange result of a 5yr old hanging out with the teen brothers.  

You can see I was permitted only that little back corner.



I left the quilt and camera for a bit to find another good spot and quilt holder.  Becket decided to take things into his own hands and take the pictures himself.  Probably to get my stuff out of his area.

But first a few guys moved in to hide.  And he seems to be working on his toes-in-the-picture blog photos.
 

Friday, March 25, 2011

Pink Lemonade Finish

Thank you for all the great thimble tips!  

I ended up getting one at my LQS, but haven't had the chance to try it out.  I'll take its picture and give a little report once I use it.


Our Hobson preschool auction has been keeping me busy, but it was a big success last weekend and I had fun giving away the two quilts I made for them.

This bowtie pattern is such a fun and satisfying block to piece.  


Today's Hobson feature is "Pink Lemonade" a 64inch square picnic quilt.  

I named it Pink Lemonade because there's nothing more fun when you're  kid than a picnic with pink lemonade.  And the most fun for a kid at preschool can be found at Hobson!  It really is the best preschool ever - it's a play based curriculum, parent run co-op.


Did the home dec weight back again, as I really expect it to be used on the ground all summer.  It helps just a bit more with the damp or rough ground.

Awesome colors and pattern on the back - perfect for the cathedral windows kick I had been on.  

And see my 'label' on the bottom right?  I wrote directly on one of the white circles and I loved the look.  Can't be any easier, either!!  I used a sewline pencil first, then fine tip sharpie over the top.


This quilt was in the silent auction part, all on it's own.  I was kind of nervous/excited to find out where it would end up.  Just as the auction started, a couple I didn't know came up and said they had bid on it right away and how pretty it was...a nice thing to hear.


Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see what would happen from there.  The auction people decided to try something new this year and made some of the packages with a 'buy it now' option in addition to the silent bidding option.  A set price was at the bottom, and if you filled in your bid number before the bidding reached that price, then you immediately won the package.  Two problems with how they did it I think (since a lot of people felt a need to complain to me about it during the actual auction) they set the buy it now price at 80% of retail, and you were able to choose to buy it now after others had already bid.  For example, on ebay you must choose to 'buy it now' before any other bids are entered.  So what happened on some of the popular packages, the bidding went along until it got near the set price, and then stopped as it was then scooped up.  There was confusion and a few grumpy people with those packages.

If I set it up, I would have removed the buy it now option as soon as one bid was entered.  And/or made the set price double retail or so.

Now I must admit I took advantage of this once I realized it was going on, and scooped up a fun package that I would have paid more for, had the bidding continued - without the bidding stress.  Also, the evening was FABULOUS from start to finish in every other way.  

But of course I'm mentioning it because my quilt happened to be one of the items that had the option of a set price.  I was kind of bummed missing out on seeing where the price would go, but am super happy about who did get it.  One of the moms in Becket's class lost out on my quilt last year.  This year her husband noticed the set price option and bought the quilt for her, she was so happy and I gave her a big hug!  

I've been wishing she would come out the winner - I knew my quilt would be well loved with her.  So, it was a good end to the story.   



Monday, March 07, 2011

Binding

Stitching 250" along a home dec weight back.  
I poked a hole into my finger with the back of my needle.  
Ugh.


I don't have a thimble so I improvised.  To avoid the bulk, I cut just the fabric, sticky part of a bandage off and stuck it over the poking part of my finger. 

So do you have a thimble-type thing you like?

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Ice cream Treat


I found this little guy hiding with his ice cream when I was pinning blocks.


Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Keeping Track


How do you keep track of where your blocks go in the quilt?  


I tried numbers and stacks, but the quick digital camera print is my best bet for stitching things up exactly as planned.