Archive for May, 2007

You’ve seen pictures of this park off my balcony but I wanted to share some from the walk Chesty and I took today. I LOVE this park and the fact that its just steps outside my door. My favorite bench in the park has this view of the Basilica of St. Mary’s.

Click on the album below if you’re interested in seeing the rest of the photos from our walk.

Loring Park – May 2007

Breakfast on the balcony overlooking the park

I’ve had these leftover strips cut for over 2 years with the intention of making a Roman Stripes quilt from them. Finishing up Mom’s Roman Stripes has inspired me to go ahead and least get this UFO to the finished top stage.

These were my first 8 blocks made last night – this one should go pretty quickly.

Tomorrow – like it or not – I need to load my aunt’s top on the longarm. I always seem to procrastinate loading a new quilt.

I was all ready to get my haircut but the salon was closed today so I’ll go tomorrow. I decided on a slightly shorter version of #5. Several people suggested highlights but I’m going to pass on any color. Thanks for the advice and when Keith gets home later in the week I’ll have him take a new photo for my profile.

Today was one of those days that I didn’t feel like I accomplished much – too many small tasks I guess. I went out around lunch to ship off quilts – one to Pam and one to my Aunt, visited the bookstore and had lunch at Panera. Then spent part of the afternoon reading and checking things off my to do list in the sewing room. Now I have 3 packages ready to mail out tomorrow – one to Mom with background blocks and setting triangles for an applique quilt she’s working on for me, one for a fellow stashbuster with a pattern, and some Chinese Coins for Becky who will use them to make a HeartStrings quilt.

Finally this evening I started piecing blocks for another string quilt – this one is also a UFO so it will eventually mean one more checked off my list.

Not the most flattering photo but one taken of me a couple months ago showing my gray hair and chubby cheeks. I’m not going to color the gray – too much time, expense, and upkeep for something that doesn’t really bother me but I’m ready for a new haircut.

Here are some styles I’m considering – does anyone have any opinions that would help me choose?

We’re back from Mankato – it wasn’t a very exciting place and I have to say I’m glad that Keith’s company moved here to Minneapolis rather than there (they have a plant there too)!

The 30′s Roman Stripes quilt is bound, labeled, and freshly laundered and ready to ship off to Pam a fellow HeartStrings member to donate.

Goals for this week are:
Stitch down the binding on another HeartStrings quilt
Load and quilt a top for my Aunt Dot
Start piecing another string quilt – this one is another UFO that I’ve had leftover strips cut and set aside from a quilt I made for Adam a couple years ago.

We’re off in an hour or so to visit Mankato, MN. Keith’s going to play golf tomorrow and we’ll have dinner with some friends. We’re only going to be gone a couple nights so we’ll still have 2 days of the long weekend at home.

Chesty will be coming with us and I’m taking two Heartstrings quilts (Roman Stripes, Irish Chain) so I can stitch down their bindings.

Maybe the last post sounded a little whiny but I don’t worry too much about the tops waiting for quilting. I don’t quilt as a *job* so I rarely have set deadlines and usually make good progress.

Today I quilted my Aunt’s top – you remember – the one one I lost my mind and spent hours pulling out the quilting stitches before going to visit my Mom. Anyway, she’s pretty *relaxed* about how she adds borders to quilts so they’re usually a challenge. After picking out all that stitching and reloading the quilt – I remembered why I had changed my mind about a pantograph in the beginning. There was way too much fullness in the entire quilt to manage from the back and the borders were going to be particularly difficult. In the end, I just quilted a loopy meander and the leaves I started with would probably have looked better.

My solution was to quilt pleats in the borders since there was no way to quilt them without getting lots of tucks. Because I’m such a nice niece I even slip stitched them down after finishing the quilting.

Before someone asks why I don’t tell her the *right* way to measure and add borders – she already knows how but just chooses not to.

I have about 25 tops in line for quilting right now and that number keeps growing. In addition to tops from my Mom and aunts, I’ve added these 3 to the pile.

Two of these are the ones Mom and I finished this past week (they’ll go to her church at Christmas) and the Roman Stripes is a top that Mom made and gave me to finish for HeartStrings and donate. The green double 4 patch is a UFO from last year and I’m happy to have that top finished and ready for quilting.

I had several comments about the wallhanging in the last photo. The picture was taken at Mom’s house and that’s a pattern I adapted for her out of a book or magazine. The center is unchanged from the pattern and we put a braid border around it to go with an applique quilt she uses on that bed.

If someone *needs* to know where the pattern came from – let me know and I’ll chase it down.

Mom and I have worked long and hard the last couple days and have made great progress on our May stash quilts. We both still have borders to add but these will be ready to go back with me for quilting when I go home on Saturday.

Thanks for all the encouraging comments – I’m going to visit Mom for a week so maybe when I get back I can finish my Spiderweb top and quilt the top for my Aunt. I’m usually very tolerant of my work so I’m not sure why I’ve been displeased lately but taking a break will help.

If my dissatisfaction with the progress on the spiderweb quilt wasn’t enough – I loaded a rail fence quilt for my Aunt on the longarm this morning. Started quilting it and decided I wasn’t happy with it either.

I’ve spent all afternoon picking out quilting stitches and still have at least 2-3 hours left before I’m done. This is obviously a week I shouldn’t be quilting!