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:

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. :)

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy wearing of the green, everyone!





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?

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.

My lolcat

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




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. :)

More Incubator Blankets

My quilting guild has selected incubator blankets as our special project this year, for the local children's hospital. They don't go on top of the preemie, but on the incubator itself, to both help insulate and keep the heat in, and to block some of the light for the little ones.

These are fun to do, and you don't realize how quickly something small (only 24 x 24) will work up. Here's the one I made from the pastel strip set you saw a couple of posts ago. I started it Superbowl Sunday, as part of Bargellobowl. This one's my favorite of the 5 incubator tops I've done so far. Guess I'm kinda traditional when it comes to baby blankets:


And then here's one I made Heartstrings style. I had a strip of muslin that wasn't big enough to cut regular size Heartstrings foundations from, but I was able to cut sixteen 6½ inch squares. Looking at it now, I wish I'd cut those initial red strips a bit smaller, think they were 2 inches, a little wide for the small block, but there was a lot of the hand dyed red I wanted to use.



And like everyone else says, no matter that I made 16 blocks for this, my bags of strings didn't get any smaller... :D

Big Jewel Boxes

I'm thinking of starting something that'll keep me occupied for a long time... a scrappy jewel box for my king size bed. I don't have a quilt for MY bed yet, lots of twin size and a couple of queen or double sized ones.

So I know I like the jewel box pattern, and I also like the idea of pieced borders that extend into the quilt, so I got to playing on my EQ. The middle in solid white looked too plain, especially for the big expanse of a king size. Here's the top three I came up with:


First, a small 9-jewel diamond shape made by substituting some blue for the white fabrics in the very center.


Above, a large center 25 jewel diamond surrounded by a thin blue trim that almost goes out to the edges...


And last, the smaller 9 jewel diamond middle surrounded by the thin blue trim.

I plan on doing the little squares both strip pieced (from 2 inch strips) and some leader-enders. I have a LOT of 4 inch squares I'd like to use up for this, so all those half square triangle 4-square jewel blocks will finish at six inches.

The hard part will be keeping the blue and white areas counted out, for whichever final design I decide on. Which design do YOU like better?

Bargellobowl Incubator Blankets

Here's what I worked on instead of watching the superbowl - Bargellobowl was much more my kind of fun! First the top I finished already, one in brights. Got your sunglasses on? Hopefully it will brighten up the preemie ward:


I've already made a backing of the bright fabrics for this one, it's a 27 inch square nine patch, using big squares. The incubator blankets have to finish at 24x24.

And here's the strip set of the more tame, pastel one I'm making - should finish it tonight:



I also added borders to the blue incubator blanket you saw earlier, and made a backing for that one.

Bargellobowl

Need something to do while the jocks are watching the superbowl?



I think I'm going to try to make a couple of little incubator quilts using Bonnie's bargello technique. Maybe some in yellows and greens.

Anyone going to join us? If you are, you're welcome to take the Bargellobowl graphic for use on your site.

Happy Quilting!

Quiltville Mystery Top Finished

Here we go, center section of top all finished:



Right now, it measures almost 71 x 71 with no borders. I can't decide if I want to add a skinny red border, then a green border or just go on and add the green border - I don't really need it much bigger, it's going to be a holiday table topper. I do want to put at least a one inch border on there to collect all those seams on the edge, it'll make it so much easier to bind.

Not many people have been opting to do sashing, but I'm glad I did!

Quiltville Mystery Corner

The progress so far - I had to make the sashing scrappy... well, I didn't have to but was determined to use the red Christmas fabric up instead of cutting into my red not-holiday yardage.



Hopefully I'll finish it this weekend!

Quiltville Mystery revealed!

Well, she posted the last clue tonight... and wow, it's pretty! I'm glad I started the mystery. :)

I like to do things a bit different though, so I think I'm going to try my Christmas fabric version with some red sashing between the blocks:



It'll be the same 1½ inch strips that we cut for the rail fence and nine-patch blocks, so it'll fit right in. And I'll make my borders a bit smaller, so this quilt will finish at almost 76 inches square instead of 80, just a tad smaller. :)

Now I can't wait to get this all sewn together!

Mystery Part 6 and Incubator Blankets

Well, step six of the Quiltville mystery is done, 16 Ohio star blocks with nine-patch corners. Mine have different green middles, but I thought this one was 'specially cute with the Santa face looking out the side. :)


We also had to do 16 half Ohio star blocks and four ¼ Ohio star blocks. Given these instructions, I've pretty much got the layout figured out, but Bonnie asked us not to reveal it, so I'm keeping mum.

My guild picks a different charity project each year - this year it's to make incubator blankets for the local children's hospital. It's a super place to use up orphan blocks, as blankets only have to finish at 24 x 24. I've had these teeny half nine patch blocks sitting in a box for 3 years now, 12 light and 16 dark. Too many of them to throw away, and not enough of them to do anything with.

BUT, pairing the light ones with a pink hst, and the dark ones with a blue hst, I've been able to make two incubator blankets. A couple of borders and I'll be ready to go:


Not sure what color to border the blue one with yet... I have more blue for an outer border, but what for an inner border?

Heart Block and Quiltville Mystery

Well, here's my guild's block of the month for January. I try to anticipate the holidays, so, yes, we're doing hearts already. Here's the guild's web page I made with the heart block instructions - if you see any errors, please let me know.


Finally, I've gotten all 100 hourglass blocks done for the Quiltville mystery. Each block has 4 different fabrics in it, though you can't tell it here, the flash makes it difficult to see the white patterns on the white.

Of course, while I had these red fabrics out for the heart, I couldn't resist cutting a few strips from them to add to my mystery hourglasses. I used Omnigrid's triangle #98 for the first time (although I've had the ruler forever, this was the first time I've used it for what it was designed to be used for.)



I can't wait for Thursday to see how we're going to arrange these bits into blocks. I've played with it on EQ, but my designs never work out into groups that would call for the right numbers of blocks... :D

Blocks and blockhead

First the blockhead... he KNOWS he's not supposed to be on this shelf, but the new cat tree puts it within climbing distance. Today he knocked off the stuffed siamese on the corner and sat there himself. He reminds me of the Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the other... one of these things just doesn't belong...


I've been collecting siamese cats for about ten years now. The breakable ones and the ones I don't want to become cat toys are inside the doors, the ones on top were all gifts. :)

And I've just finished step four of Bonnie's Quiltville mystery, 40 triangular green/white units:

Christmas Gifts

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Unveiling some of the things I couldn't blog about in case family read my blog. First, my sister in law holding a set of hot mats and a table topper kind of thing I made for her granite countertops. She says the chilly granite seems to absorb the heat from any food she puts out on it. The silvery looking fabric used on the back is what they sell for ironing board re-covering, it should be able to take a very hot pan, AND reflect the heat back. I used a very thick cotton towelling for the batting:


Then, here's my folks opening their new pillow shams to match the new quilt made for their king size bed. Does anyone have any good way to wrap a big quilt? I ended up just using a large leaf bag after looking in vain for one of those huge green ones they sell to bag the old tree with.


Here they're being silly under their new quilt. The EQ pattern for this one you may have seen waaaaay back on my blog in February '07. I can't believe it's been a year in the making - I started all the half square triangles starting last January. The only change I made to that design was to increase the border sizes.


Here's my mom reading the label - I tried to burn that part of the photo in, so you could read the words, but the flash whited it out too much. When I was cutting the fan blade shaped wedges, I saved all the scraps, and where I could salvage a 2½ square, I did. I used some of them for the label border, and still have a lot left. Little blue and white squares will be useful somewhere, I'm sure!


Finally, here's my older two grand nieces, sitting on the couch, opening gifts:

Guessing at the Quiltville Mystery

I like to play on my EQ program as well as make 'real' quilts... so based on what Bonnie at Quiltville has us doing so far for the mystery ... and thinking that she might have us use the triangle ruler to make half square triangles, here's some guesses (in my Christmas fabrics) as to where she might be going with it:



Of course, Leah also did some guessing, and her guesses include quarter square triangles and 4 patches, so maybe I need to go play with adding in some of those too!

More 9 Patch Blocks and a Mug

Here's another 80 of these little 3½ inch square 9 patch blocks for step 3 of the Quiltville Mystery quilt - she says we're done with the 9 patches now... :) Although I don't really mind, aren't they cute? I really admire quilts that have a lot of little pieces, and doing a hundred baby blocks every week is a painless way to do it.


They'll look better when they're pressed, but I'll wait for instructions on whether to press those last two seams to the inside or outside.
I've also taken an idea I saw on Tazzie's blog for a nice little Christmas gift. Do you recognize the little 1½ inch squares of Christmas fabric from anywhere?


Mine won't be as beautifully packaged as Tazzie's are, but I did borrow her idea about putting a square of cardboard under the mug mat before I put the mug on top and wrapped them both in cellophane. I also got one of those big containers of loose hot chocolate, put three heaping tablespoonfuls in a baggie, added some mini marshmallows and tied the little bag of 'gourmet mix' on the outside of the gift. The purple candy in the mug is coffee flavored, if they want to add one to the hot chocolate, that might be interesting... :)

Another idea is to take a plastic spoon, melt some chocolate, and dip the spoon several times, letting it cool between dips, so you have kind of a chocolate lollypop spoon to stir your hot chocolate with. You wrap that in plastic, tie some curly ribbon around the 'throat' of the spoon, and stand it chocolate side up in the mug you're giving. It'd be a pain to just make one though - be better if you were giving several of these as gifts.

More Quiltville Mystery blocks

Here's my finished step 2 of the mystery, 100 nine patch blocks with three light corners, four dark sides, and one corner the accent color. I also cut the spacer blocks you see off to the right side, a stack of white and green 3½ inch squares.


And here's my nosy 'helper' trying to see why I spread out all these nice soft stacks of ten blocks... is it a kitty napping-place perhaps? Did I bury any mousies under there?


Decided that I didn't want only white-on-white for the white squares, but scrappier whites, so I went digging in my FQ piles and drawers. I found some fabrics that hadn't made my 'Christmas' collection, but could go nicely in a holiday themed quilt. Then I went out and bought the red and green on white snowflakes, found some precut strips that I picked all the white or cream bits out of, so now I have some snowflakes, some white on white, some snow covered trees with teeny redbirds, white with small gold metallic stars, and last, added in the two Christmas themed FQ's on white I wasn't going to use because I only had two.

Ready for the next step! Wonder what this quilt's going to look like?