Archive for March, 2007
Happy Birthday Adam!
My baby is 22 today. He’s far away in GA but next week I’m tagging along on a business trip with Keith and we’ll see him then. We’re going to stay Tuesday night at the Ritz- Carlton and go to dinner at the Georgias restaurant where Adam works. Chris and Becky are going to drive from Marietta to join us.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Being half Irish, I just had to spend part of my day in a pub! Keith and I headed downtown to drink some Guinness and watch the St Patrick’s Day parade down Nicolette Avenue. Keith even spent $5 and bought me some beads.
We’re not big party people so we were home by 7:30PM and now I’ll work some on my Pineapple blocks – hopefully my seams won’t be too crooked after the Guinness!
Questions in comments
Patti also posted about this today but I thought I’d add my two cents. I hate not answering questions but don’t always have time to chase down email addresses. If I get a comment and it shows noreply-comment@blogger.com most likely you won’t get an answer to your question.
You can either edit your profile to include your email address when you comment or just type your email address in your comment if you have a question you’d like me to answer.
Yesterday
I’m still on the sleep half the day and stay up all night schedule. Keith was in town last night for dinner and gone again today. He comes back from Florida tomorrow and leaves for California on Sunday. When he’s out of town a lot I get really bad about staying on a *normal* schedule.
Yesterday I quilted this top Lori in CA donated to the HeartStrings Quilt Project. I’ll try to get it bound today; and I made more Pineapple blocks. I have 20 made now but lots more to piece in order to have enough for a king size quilt.
What happened to Spring?
After several days of warm weather it’s decided to snow again! I’m sure it won’t accumulate since it’s 40 degrees out there right now!
UFO # 9 finished
Click on photo to a larger versionI finished the binding on the Rail Fence quilt last night so I’ll show one final picture. I’m very happy with the improvement that the applique and quilting made to this rather unappealing top!
This quilt will be donated as part of the HeartStrings Quilt Project. Although it’s not a string quilt, I feel that as long as we are donating non string quilts that are given to the Project to quilt and donate that I might as well label my own non string quilts with the HeartStrings label.
Raw edge applique on the longarm
Diane from Patchogue questioned whether it was OK to applique after quilting.
For this quilt, I used the longarm to stitch down the applique at the same time I was quilting. The bears and trees were fused first, then I loaded and quilted the rest of the quilt, and last I quilted the applique down. I wasn’t too happy with it last night but looking at it this morning it doesn’t look half bad.
There’s a book (one of many in my collection) called Appliquilt in the Cabin by Tonee White that uses a technique of appliqueing and quilting at the same time. Hers is done by hand but I don’t see why it couldn’t be done by machine too but unless it was a small piece I would think it would be too difficult to maneuver the bulk of the quilt.
Line Dancing
I finished loading my rather unattractive Rail Fence UFO last night and have been working on the quilting today. The plan was to stitch the applique down first and then throw a pantograph on it. After further thought I decided I’d try a Line Dancing design by Diana Phillips that she calls pine needles.
Once I finish quilting the pine needles I’ll go back and stitch down the applique. I also made another 3 Pineapple blocks last night – now I’ve finished 12 but still have a long way to go to make a king size quilt.
Progress
I’ve been sewing some Pineapple blocks the last couple nights after Keith goes to bed. I’m back off schedule – sleeping late and then staying up most if not all of the night. Usually it’s not a problem but I was supposed to cook black beans today and now I don’t have time. I could either run out to get something to cook (no grocery store run this weekend) or I could call Keith and tell him we have to go out to dinner – again.
I also started an interesting book about Catherine the Great on Saturday night. If you haven’t noticed I started keeping a reading list on the sidebar. I was only sporadically posting what I was reading so I’m trying this for a while to see if I keep up with it better.
Quilt donations
I donated eight quilts to the Ronald McDonald house in Minneapolis this afternoon. They were piling up and I ran out of room on my shelf so it was time for them to move on. Six of the eight were HeartString Project Quilts.
