Thursday, March 27, 2008

Showagon

I work at a couple of different libraries as part of my job. Wednesday, we were happy to host a visit from Showagon, a group of players from Theatre Memphis. I'm always happy to see them coming, they always put on a top-quality program. This year, they did 4 fables from Aesop. I had slightly younger kids this time, and they adapted it to their level really well.

Here is the lion that got caught in the trap and freed by the little mouse:



This one is from the Boy Who Cried Wolf:



The ants that worked hard all summer and the grasshopper who only wanted to sing and play and dance:



They also do some literacy activities - here they were playing a game, matching the fable to the moral:



And just a very short video clip - I didn't want to make a long one because it takes up so much space on the camera card. The little kids really liked the scary lion that got saved by the little mouse - this is the lion roaring:

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

QuiltJane RulerPants

My guild decided last year to participate in the AQS Ultimate Guild Challenge. We voted on the theme - My Checkered Past, a self portrait. It had to have a checkerboard motif in it somewhere, and be within a certain size range, etc. For more details and rules, look on our website's challenge page.

Here's my entry - I made my self portrait out of quilting supplies and sewing notions. Her nose is supposed to be a thimble, a men's cotton shirt at the local Goodwill made great 3 inch rulerpants, and the scissors, iron, pressor feet, and cutter blades are made of silvery ironing board cover fabric. I took a hammer and nail to an old bobbin, tore it apart, and put the discs from that for her eyes. Click on the pic for more detail.


I had the hardest time trying to get it to be 36 x 45 finished, and still get the checkerboard 9-patch border to work out light corners to dark corners even/odd all the way around the quilt. I also wanted the top/bottom and side borders to be the same size. If it hadn't been for EQ, I'd have given up!

We had about sixteen quilters in the guild enter the contest, and my entry was one of the eight picked to go on to the show in Nashville. :) Here's one where you can see the entire quilt, next to a couple of the other entries:



I'm not much of a quilter, so that part was the worst for me. I had to force myself to start it, to put the needle to my fabric sandwich, so afraid of ruining it. If I'd been able to send it out, I'd have asked for a nice tiny stipple on the white instead of the big loopy lines I put there.

When it comes back, I'd like to clutter it up a little by sewing on some little orphan blocks over her head (like she is thinking of quilts) and using the quilt as a showcase for some of the pins and buttons I've collected.

Now that this challenge is done, it's back to the jewel box quilt. I've been swimming in hundreds of 3½ half square triangles for it. I've almost got my 200+ bright-to-white ones done, but only 150 or so of the bright-to-blue ones. :)

Monday, March 17, 2008

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy wearing of the green, everyone!


funny pictures


More funny pictures from lolcats

I keep trying to get one picture at least to the voting pages of icanhascheezburger but no success so far. Maybe I need to take more photos? Maybe they have to have a minimum number of votes before they'll even look at them?

Friday, March 07, 2008

Snow in Memphis!

We almost NEVER get snow here, but here's proof that we've got some! 4 to 6 inches predicted between now and midnight. :)


My daffodils had thought it was Spring already.



It's not sticking to the roads yet, but as the temperatures fall tonight, it probably will, to some extent.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

My lolcat

I recently dug this picture of Toby out and captioned it, submitted it to LOLCATS. Anyone else seen this site?

funny pictures


more funny pictures of captioned cats

Caps and Block Progress

Hi Everybody! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but in addition to a booger of a cold, I've been busy! But first, a picture of something my Mom's doing... remember the incubator blankets the quilt guild is making? Mom's a knitter, and she's knitting away every night, making teeny caps for the babies that will receive our blankets. The orange and yellow tennis ball that's tucked in the pink cap is on there for some idea of size, aren't they little? Mom is making two sizes, small and extra small. This is only the first installment, she's still making more. :)



My quilt guild is doing a half square triangle swap for March - where people bring as many hsts as they want to make, swap even, and go home with as many as they came with, but in more variety. Here's our current block of the month page, if you want to see how we're doing it. I don't know if any of the blocks I swap for will end up in the jewel box quilt, or in an incubator blanket, or in a future block of the month project. A 3 inch finished size hst is useful in a lot of things!

Every night when I get home from work, I've been making the pieces that will go into my jewel box king size quilt. Since I haven't decided yet which of those three designs I'll be doing (either #2 or #3 though) there's not an exact count for most of the bits, but the color-to-blue half square triangles are at about 90 right now, and the color-to-white hsts about the same.


I wish I could be the kind of scrappy sewer that doesn't obsess about placement of fabric, but I'm not... lol First I'll divide my fabric squares and hsts up into fourths, by color, to spread them out in the 4 different quadrants of the quilt, then make sure that none of the blocks match each other, THEN make sure that none of the fabrics in the blocks are in adjacent blocks. Do any of you go to these extremes or am I the only one? But I have made a few sample blocks:



This quilt is really helping me clean out my scraps - anything I can get a two inch strip out of gets used in the 4 patch blocks... and I'm sorting thru my 4 inch squares I bought on eBay for a lot of the half square triangles. Black, browns, creams, and beiges are about the only colors I'm not using. And since this one is for MY bed, I'm making a special point to try to use fabrics from previous quilts, like a memory quilt. See the navy 2 inch square with what looks like pick-up sticks in the block above? Those are knitting needles, and I used a FQ of that fabric in the fan blades and depression blocks of the quilt Mom got for Christmas. :)
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