mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (doomed)
When I was reading back through old entries a couple of days ago, I found my old quilt journal that I had mostly forgotten existed. It's mostly a mass of unfollowable links, but some of the links still work. Maybe I'll start posting some stuff, just for fun. Except for the couple of quilts on my couch and the bed, I don't usually even remember to look at all the quilts I've got stored away. My mother would not approve.

I've been over to LJ to gank some of my old icons from there, since I have more space, at least temporarily. (This one seems particularly appropriate.)

I don't know if it's the weather or what, but I'm feeling really crabby and I don't think trying to write a whole new entry is a good idea at the moment. So what's here will have to do and hopefully I'll be in better shape later. (The first part of this was written yesterday, you see!)

(I'm supposed to go shopping with my sister later today, but I'm wondering if that might be a bad idea if I'm still out of sorts. Hmm.)

mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (quilt - zipper)
I said I would come back and talk about the backs of my quilts, so I might as well do that! Bear in mind that I haven't made a quilt in several years now so things may have changed, some, and/or I may have forgotten a thing or two. But I think the basic idea of it's still valid.

This first one is a more simple example of how I used to do the backs of my quilts. Even if you're doing the same fabric all over, you're going to have to put at least one seam in the back for most quilts, unless you buy special extra-wide quilt backing fabric. (That does exist but it's a bit pricey and the selection is relatively limited.) I just figure, given that, why not run a few seams and use up some scraps?

This was a quilt that KarenD and I did together. I know that fish fabric was hers, and the batik was a fabric we picked out online. I'm not sure any more which one of us contributed the other pieces. Basically, though, the idea is just that you just keep going until you get something big enough.Make a row that you know is wide enough, and then make another row, til it's big enough with several inches each way to spare. (Cutting it too close is a bad idea, here - if something comes out short you're really screwed.)
back of the fish quilt

Here's a more elaborate example (this is the back of the one that's in my icon). I had lots of little pieces left over - it's the "teeth" part of the zipper, see - and I just put them together in big strings, like so:
zipper+scraps.jpg
(I actually went and dug out the link from my old quilt blog because I knew I talked about this there. It's got more detail about the dimensions and stuff, and why I did it the way I did, but unless you're actually going to make a quilt you don't really need to know all that. That blog is unfortunately just a mass of dead links, mostly, so I really need to make some effort to pull the "good parts" out and catalog them somehow!)

Anyway, if you clicked over there, this is just a bigger version of that same picture. I worked the strips of small pieces between the bigger rows and this is what I ended up with for the back:
the+back+of+the+zipper+quilt.jpg
(A lot of it is things I didn't end up using on the front!)

Added: it occurs to me that people might want to see the front of the thing in a larger size than icon size, so here's that (with Rob's head peeking out at the top). Note that the binding is not whipped down here, but other than that, it's done.
no title

I've actually found a few more pictures of the back of things so I might have another entry about this eventually.

Holidailies - blue
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (quilt - zipper)
I was reading today about how the Color of the Year is Greenery. (I wrote a nail blog post for this earlier with a lot more information - look for that tomorrow night, but I can't link to it directly til then.) "Greenery" is sort of a spring green, not-quite-lime color - it's not a color that I would wear, really, because I don't think it would be flattering on me - but it's a color I like. And then that made me think of this quilt.
Faceted Amethysts
Some of y'all who have known me for years have seen this quilt before, probably many times, but honestly I hadn't taken a good look at it in ages, it seems like. It's physically in my dining room right now but it's kind of shoved back in the corner and I tend to forget it's there!

I put this quilt together using blocks from a swap. I love the colors in this, but if I had made all the blocks for it back then - it was more than 10 years ago - I would never have used these colors. And it's the greens I'm talking about, not the purples. Apparently I was afraid of lime greens back them. If you look you can see that a couple of the blocks are quite bright, and I remember getting these back and wondering what I was going to do with them. I finally came up with a layout that went from palest at the top left and worked down and to the right to the brighter and then a few in the bottom corner that were a bit darker. Purple and green used to be a fairly unusual color combination but I don't think that's as true as it used to be. On a color-wheel, they're two-thirds of a triad, meaning they're one-third of the wheel apart from each other. I think maybe it makes more sense to say that what they have in common is blue, because purple is blue + red and green is blue + yellow, right? Anyway, I wasn't looking at a color wheel or any of this when I came up with this combination, I just decided they looked pretty together. This quilt was finished before I ever looked at a color wheel and figured out why that was.

For those interested in the pattern, this was a commercial pattern called "Faceted Jewels" and if you google that name you'll come up with a bunch of multicolored versions of this pattern (plus a really nice red & white version that I've never seen before) - the multi version was the way it was done in the original pattern. I called mine "Faceted Amethysts" since I used purples for the "gem" sections. It's basically a variation on some standard blocks, though. It's two very standard quilt blocks that alternate. It doesn't have any curves in it although it gives an illusion of curves. One of the blocks is usually called "54-40 or Fight" but the way the colors are arranged in that block is not the standard way, so it looks different. And the other block is just a combination of a square in a square and flying geese (the triangles are the geese, see). I can't remember offhand if that block has a particular name.

(Oh, wow, look at the very tiny version of this pattern in this post.)
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (winter berries)
I said when I started copying these over here that I had done a lot of them, but there were more than I realized!

Friday quilt five

Feb 2, 2007

1. What's your favorite music to quilt by?
A baseball game on the radio  :)

2. Do you have a favorite type/style/line of fabric? If so, what?  I guess I'd go with batiks

3. Have you ever purchased a kit (with pre-cut fabric & pattern)? I don't think I have. I own one that my mother gave me; I'll get around to doing it one of these days. It would make a good baby quilt.

4. What is your least favorite color to work with? Plain muslin beige.

5. What is the weather like today where you are at? Good enough for quilting? Well, it is cold and rainy, so it would be a really good day to stay home and quilt, if I wasn't at work!

Late Friday Five

Feb 10, 2007

1. What is your favorite night to watch tv? I don't know if I have one - there isn't anything I am all that crazy about these days.
2. Show off your favorite quilt picture. Well, since we're talking about crazy quilts, here's a block:
crazy-quilt block #1
3. Do you own any wearable quilts? Nope. I'm chunky enough without any help.
4. Do/have you crazy quilted? I've done a few blocks. It's fun but I don't know if I'll ever finish anything. (also it gets very expensive if you get into silks and vintage buttons and so forth)
5. In December's Edition of the Quilter's Home it mentions quilting tattoos. Do you tattoo? No. Fear of needles.

Saturday five (again)

Feb 17, 2007

1. What color is your mood today?
Let's go with blue. Possibly a more cheerful blue than it would've been yesterday.

2. List your quilting/sewing purchases for this week. Purchases? I don't need purchases, I have aninheritance. (A freaking huge one, where quilting is concerned, too.)

3. What new project (UFO) did you start? None. But I did work on the organizing some more.

4. Did you accomplish extra quilting time this week due to the weather where you are? No, didn't even (quite) freeze here.

5. Are you a member of calicocats or did you get this Friday Five from a friend? If you got it from a friend head over to calicocats and post your answers there as well! :D</lj></lj>   Oh, I'm a member. I think I've been one since day one.  :)

Friday five, back to the grind edition

Feb 23, 2007

(The title is because I'm back at work this week - sigh.)

1. Do you stay up late to finish quilting --- late, like 1-2am?  Not often - if I try to quilt when I'm tired I make mistakes. Like, really bad and/or stupid ones. It's not worth it.

2. What was/is your favorite quilting class? Hmm, I've enjoyed most of them. I seem to especially enjoy ones that aren't just about piecing - like Libbie Lehman's, and Melody Crust's, which is about coming up with your own quilting designs.

3. How many rotary cutting rules do you own? I can't possibly count because they're scattered all over the place, but at a guess I would say half a dozen. Possibly more.

4. Will you be watching the grammies Oscars this weekend? Always. Like somebody else said, my husband usually has control of the remote, but he loves movies and wouldn't dream of missing it.

5. What are your weekend plans? Buying a new (used) car! 'Cause my old one has gone to the great highway in the sky, or something like that. We have a loan pre-approved at the credit union and we are going shopping tomorrow. And Sunday I am taking a two-hour beading class. (And I also will have to make a trip over to my mother's house to oversee the extended family members who are going to be "cleaning up" over there. I don't trust them not to get carried away and throw away something that I want to keep!) I'm gonna be busy.

Friday again

Mar 2, 2007

1. What is your favorite day of the week? Friday, I guess - for the usual reasons. Weekend coming up and all that.

2. What's your favorite kind of fabric? Batiks. We'll go with batiks. I like a lot of kinds of fabric, actually.

3. Can you believe it's March already? Definitely not. I suspect that February 2007 is going to be the Lost Month in my memory.

4. What do you collect (besides fabric)? Junk.

5. Quickest project time (and picture please)? I tend not to do very fast projects. However, I guess this one qualifies: I decided to make crazy-quilted stockings for my co-workers a few years ago, and the seams are machine-embroidered. They were fast and they came out really cute.

crazy-quilted stockings

Friday five

Mar 9, 2007

1. What is the longest you have gone without checking your email/lj? I get behind sometimes, when RL interferes... possibly as much as a couple of weeks - but not often for that long.
2. Have you made a quilt out of clothing? No, I've always sort of meant to, but I haven't gotten around to it so far.
3. What quilty things did you do this week? Bought a little fabric and a couple of notions, worked on sorting through my mother's quilting stuff and brought home two big underbed boxes of fabric. And a couple of books! But still no actual quilting.
4. If you were on vacation, what would you bring back for your quilty friends? Fabric, of course.
5. Lemon or Lime? Um, I like them both, for their respective purposes.  :)   (Lemonade and margaritas, say.)

Friday five, again

Mar 16, 2007

1. What quilt/sewing project are you working on this week? I'm still in organizing mode. Also, I have a while to work on this, but I'm going to a retreat in late April and I need to start thinking about what I'm going to work on while there.

2. Show us a non-quilty picture (family, pet, house, garden)? Hmm, well, I think I used a garden picture a few weeks ago, so here's my husband instead. (I know a few of you have already seen this picture, but presumably a lot of people haven't!)

Rob's suit

3. Do you believe in leprechauns? Um, no. I am generally something of a grinch about St. Patrick's Day, anyway. Particularly when people try to pinch me.

4. Have you been sick this winter? Yes. An awful lot. I had had a flu shot so instead I just had colds, one after the other.

5. Favorite quilting quote/saying. There's a quote about quilters being crazy because they cut fabric apart and then just sew it back together, which I like, but I can't remember how it goes exactly. (While attempting to google that, I came up with this page of general needlework & sewing quotes, which has some good ones.)

The Friday (Feet) Five

Mar 23, 2007

1. How many feet do you have for your "main" sewing machine? You know what? I have no idea. I don't switch around very much.

2. Have you used them all? No. I use the darning foot for quilting, and usually the quarter-inch foot for normal sewing. I have never learned to like the walking foot.

3. Are there any feet you wish to still get? Not really.

4. Socks or Barefoot? I only wear socks in cold weather, and where I live there's not that much of it

5. Do you enjoy pedicures? Never had one. I'm not sure how I feel about somebody else handling my feet. Plus I saw that thing on 60 Minutes about pedicures gone wrong. (Shudder.)

Patterny friday five

Mar 30, 2007

1. How many pattern books do you own? I had a good many to begin with, and I just inherited more. The funny thing is that I rarely make anything out of them, I just use them for inspiration.

2. Do you make up your own patterns? To some extent, yeah. Nothing fancy, though.

3. Did you know most fabric companies offer free patterns? Yes. I've never done one of them myself, but the patterns for this quilt of my mother's came with the fabric, I believe. (Robyn Pandolph's "Moondance" line, from a few years ago.)

4. Do you use the internet to get patterns? Yes. Paper-piecing patterns, especially.

5. Do you prefer traditional (think churn dash, nine patch, 30's) patterns verses modern, more contemporary patterns? I think just about any pattern can look modern and it's more a matter of fabric choices than which pattern you use. The quilt in my icon is a "modern" one but I like tradtional patterns a lot, too.

(Since you may not see that icon, here's the modern quilt in question)

zipper-wbinding

mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (spring flowers)

Notional Friday Five

Apr 6, 2007

1. What is your favorite quilting notion?
Are rotary cutters a notion? If so, I would say my pink rotary cutters, I am inordinately fond of them.

2. What was the last notion you purchased? a pincushion, of all things - also one of those round things that bobbins go in

3. What notion have you purchased and don't or rarely use? I think there's a lot of these - a chalk marker comes to mind right off the bat. I like to buy notions, but I don't always use them as much as I think.

4. Do you have a wearable notion? I have a couple of those things that attach your scissors to your clothing, does that count? Oh, and my aunt made me a chatelaine for Christmas.

5. What do you consider a notion? hmm... just about anything for sewing that's not the fabric or the sewing machine, I guess!

Friday five, mechanical edition

April 13, 2007

1. What is your sewing machine? (please go online and find a picture to show)
A Janome Jem Gold (probably a little older than the model in the picture!)

2. How long have you had your machine? a couple of years, I guess

3. Are you planning to purchase a new machine soon? no, because I just inherited my mother's bigger Janome - I don't know what model it is but it sews really well

4. What is your dream machine? one with a stitch regulator

5. Have you taken classes for your sewing machine? no

Classy Friday five

Apr 20, 2007

1. Have you ever taken a quilt/sewing class? I took a bunch of them a few years back, but I stopped when I realized that I came out of every one with a project I wasn't finishing.  :)

2. What do you enjoy the most out of classes? (oops, I missed one)  I always come out of them withsomething I didn't know before. Plus, the company is always fun.

3. What is one technique you would like to learn in a class? I said a couple of weeks ago that I would like to take a class from the woman who did this quilt, but as far as I have been able to tell, she doesn't teach. (Anyway, I thought at the time I said that that those were pieced blocks, but it turns out they're not. They're raw-edge machine appliqued.) There are a lot of things I am interested in, when it comes right down to it. Way more things than I will ever have time to actually do!

4. Do you teach classes? No. I've thought about it, but once again, I don't have time.

5. Do you know where you can find classes? Around here, they're alll over. My guild has classes more-or-less monthly, usually at a reduced rate from what you would find at the many local quilt shops that offer them. And since I live in the Houston area, there is always quilt festival (which tends to be very expensive, which is the main reason I have never taken classes there).

Retreat!

May 4, 2007

1. Have you ever done a quilting retreat?
yup, just went to one last weekend

2. Would you ever go on one? so, um, yes

3. What would you like to do on a retreat (besides not worry about laundry and kid's homework)? get a lot done. And a little shopping is always good.

4. Where would you like to go on a quilting retreat? somewhere scenic - but on the other hand places where there's TOO much to see are not good. Too many temptations to do other things than quilt.

5. How many people do you think would make a nice size group for a retreat? One of the ones I go to is about 50 people, and the other one has been a good bit larger than that in the past. Between those two options, I think the smaller size is better. At the larger one, everybody can't be in the same room and so you don't really talk to everybody anyway.

High-calorie Friday five

May 18, 2007

1. What do you tend to munch on while quilting? I'm a bit of a messy eater, so I don't generally eat while quilting. I don't want grease on my fabric, thanks.

2. What do you enjoy drinking while quilting? Iced tea. (I can usually manage not to spill this.)

3. Do you notice that if you are quilting, you tend to skip meals - including dinner? I am bad about skipping meals anyway. I don't know that I do it while quilting any more than any other activity I tend to get highly involved in!

4. White, Milk, Dark Chocolate? Milk.

5. What is your favorite comfort food? Depends on my mood. M&Ms, maybe. And if I really want comfort I have been known to hit the cookie dough.  :)

Memorial Friday Five

May 25, 2007

1. Have you seen a memorial quilt?
Sure - since I am lucky enough to live close by, I go to IQF every year, and they usually have several, at the very least. (Often dozens, if they have a special exhibit.) Here's an example - this one is a memorial to murder victims in Juarez, by Sabrina Zarco.
Women of Juarez
2. Have you ever made a memorial quilt? No.

3. Do you think memorial quilts are important? Absolutely.

4. If you made/make one what would it be for? I have (somewhat vague) plans to make one for my grandparents.

5. What are your quilting related plans/goals for this 3-day Memorial Day weekend? Not to order too much fabric, because I've been bad that way lately. To organize some of my quilting stuff. Actual quilting will probably be impossible, I'm afraid.


Semi-organized Friday five

June 1, 2007

1. How do you organize your fabric stash? In plastic boxes, sorted by color. If I have a specific project I'm planning and I'm collecting up fabrics for that, those usually get their own box.

2. How do you organize your UFO's/projects? Well, first of all, I seem to define UFOs differently than some people around here - I assume if you haven't started something you can't really call it unfinished. So I don't count things that I haven't started yet as UFOs. Anyway, as I said above, I have usually have boxes for future projects. And since I have always done the majority of my quilting at my mother's house, I usually keep my in-progress projects in some portable form - this may just be a shopping bag. (They're lighter than the plastic boxes.)

3. What is your most creative organizing feat? Um... being organized at all is a feat for me, I am not a naturally organized person!

4. Do you regularly go through your items to reorganize? From time to time, yes. Lately I went through and pulled out all the fabric I really hated and didn't want to have to look at any more - I figured if I feel that strongly about it, why keep it?

5. Do you spring clean your items in aiding you to organize? Spring cleaning is not something I've ever gotten into.  :)

Phat Friday five

June 8, 2007

1. Do you collect Fat Quarters?
Not really "collect" per se - I buy them a good bit, though. What I mean is, I don't buy FQs just for the sake of buying FQs. I just buy them if I see something I like. I don't keep them segregated from the rest of my fabric or anything.

2. How many Fat Quarters do you have? Oh, lots, I'm sure. I bought a big set of indigo batik FQs and I won an eBay auction for 50 taupe FQs, so I am awash in them right now. I'm sure I've bought many hundreds over the years, but I have no real count to give.

3. Have you ever made a quilt just out of fat quarters? No.

4. What color do you have the most fat quarters in? Well, at the moment it'd have to be those taupes!

5. How often do you purchase fat quarters? I think they have gotten awfully expensive, at $2.50 at most stores around here, so I don't buy as many as I used to unless I see a deal.
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Happy NY - sparkly)
I was pulling pictures off my iPhone and more off of Picasa earlier, so here are some pictures and a few words to go with them:

from Picasa:
My dad was a shrimper, but he retired from shrimping, sold his boat, and spent the rest of his life (as it turned out) as a substitute teacher. (This might seem less surprising if I tell you that he was a teacher before he ever was a shrimper. He was a bit of a job-hopper. But I went to college on shrimp proceeds, so I can't complain!)

Anyway, I don't remember how long ago this was, but several years after he had sold his boat, we happened to go to the Blessing of the Fleet one year, and there was the boat!
(This is probably one of those stories where that doesn't seem that unusual to anybody but us, but what can you do - life is full of stories like that, I'm afraid!)
Blessing of the Fleet
It looks different but I still recognized it without even looking at the name (which hadn't changed - it was named after my grandfather, actually). It looks like everybody on board is having a good time, anyway!
Quilt backs and more... )
holi13badge-snowflake
holidailies.org
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Happy NY - gif)
[livejournal.com profile] karen_d and I made this quilt back in... I'm not sure without looking - 2005, 2006? for some friends who were getting married (and are now divorced, so I wonder who got the quilt?). We had done a previous quilt together and did a weekend of work on that one in Texas (at my mom's house, actually, because that's where all my sewing stuff was, for the most part), but for this one I went to Michigan and we worked at her house instead. I had done the red centers (which are 4"? - god, I'd forgotten I ever did anything that small - sampler blocks) in advance and she had done most of the work on the big stars and and made the white blocks with various printed sayings and well-wishes on them. So we worked all weekend on putting it together and we had the "quilt sandwich" by the time I left - that means, for the uninitiated, the quilt top, the batting in the center, and the quilt back - all pinned together and ready to quilt. Karen did most of the quilting and then she mailed it to me and I did a bit more quilting (and I think made a label) and put the binding around the edges - and then we mailed it away. I've always loved this color scheme. We found that black-and-brown batik somewhere and that was what tied the whole thing together.
1-The+finished+quilt%21_29623319
(I was talking the other day about how quilts acquire names in the process of making them. We always called this one "the fish quilt" after the nickname of one of the recipients - and we did put a tropical-fish print on the back, as I recall.)

holi13badge-snowflake
holidailies.org

Quilts

Dec. 28th, 2013 11:17 pm
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Xmas - purple star)
I think I mentioned my large collection of quilt pictures, earlier this month, but I was nosing around in Picasa the other day, and downloaded some semi-random samples, so here you go:
(They're not really random: they're things that caught my eye as I skimmed past, meaning they're ones I especially like.)

My mom made this one - it's nothing fancy, but it's cute. (I took this picture several Christmases ago - this quilt belongs to my cousin, and it was draped over the back of her sofa at the time!)
1-Stars_48702741
Lots more... )

holi13badge-snowflake
holidailies.org
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall leaves orange)
My aunt was shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that somebody in her family was pro-choice. Heh. (I refrained from pointing out that since she didn't speak to any of us for nearly 20 years, she doesn't really know me very well.)

She seems truly to think that Obama is insincere. I see plenty of faults in Obama, but I do believe he's sincere in what he's trying to do. (I started to say, "What do y'all think?" but since my friendslist is pretty overwhelmingly liberal I suspect you guys are mostly going to agree with me.) The fact is, I see the world in such a different way from my relatives, maybe the meme below is right.

Not that I didn't know this already )
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (Austin)
We just got back from dinner at Trudy's (North). The sheer volume of orange t-shirts in that place was overwhelming. But the fact that I had a couple of margaritas may have affected my judgment and/or sensitivity to the color orange somewhat.

The Longhorns seem to have won the game this afternoon - against Arkansas, this was, for those who don't automatically know these things. It was 17-3 pretty early on and I lost interest. Incidentally, I believe I checked when I first booked this trip to Austin months and months ago, to verify that it was not in fact a football weekend. Another thing in my life that Ike fucked up. (This was supposed to be the bye weekend, so the game from two weeks ago was pushed back to today.) However, aside from an awful lot of southbound traffic on 183 earlier and the aforementioned preponderance of orange garments, it really didn't cause us a lot of trouble, so oh well.


The quilt show was very nice. I went around with Anjea and her mom, which was sort of a hoot. Her mom is very opinionated, that was the hoot part. (She was, for example, aghast at a quilted grasshopper with only 4 legs. The conversation went something to the effect of: "But it's not accurate!" "It's artistic license, Mom." "I don't care!")** I did take some pictures but I don't know where the card reader I bought in Celina is, so I don't know when you'll see those. The Best of Show quilt, in particular, was really stunning.


Both of our bosses were heard from today, apparently for completely unrelated reasons. Mine wants me to do some stuff involving sending a couple of e-mails. Rob's wants him to come back to work on Tuesday, which was a bit of a surprise. We figured all along he was likely to get called back earlier than I was, but we still didn't expect it to be quite that soon somehow. (Although that will be 2-1/2 weeks since the storm, actually. Time flies.)

Which means I really need to make some hotel reservations for someplace for the next couple of days, in case we have no power at home still (or worse). Typically, I have been avoiding this. I may continue to avoid it until tomorrow morning, or not, I don't know. I know that I don't want to arrive in the Houston area tomorrow afternoon and have to wander around looking for a hotel. I am going on the assumption that hotel rooms are not as hard to find as they were a week or so ago, since a lot of people have gotten their power back and - presumably - gone home.


** I don't get the impression that Anjea will mind this bit of levity at her family's expense. I hope I'm right about that! (She can retaliate with funny stories about me and my sister, if she cares to, having been witness to a bit of my family's craziness as well.)


(Incidentally, the icon has no particular relevance to anything. It just amuses my slightly foggy brain right now.)

Tared.

Apr. 23rd, 2008 12:42 am
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (buffy quote - flawed design)
(Or tired, if you're not a southerner.) However you pronounce it, I'm it. And my left index finger is sore 'cause I kept poking it instead of the fabric. But there are two quilts all ready to go, with labels and hanging sleeves and the whole kit and caboodle. And I'm going to bed now. Tomorrow I deliver quilts and wait around on the heater guy and hopefully get back to work in the afternoon, because I'm supposed to have Thursday afternoon off, too, and if I end up taking the whole day tomorrow it's going to get really hard to leave again on Thursday. (And Thursday night is the preview night for the quilt show, which is liable to be the only time I go.)
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (quilt - zipper)
Wow, I had a really insane day. Just one thing after another. But a few things before I forget again:

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on quilting last week - I meant to try to wake up for it and of course I forgot. Luckily somebody on the quilting group[personal profile] calicocats   posted the link - go here and then look for "Quilts for Sale" in the Top Videos (right now it looks like it's #2). I know Ricky Tims a bit - I've had dinner with him, back when I was an officer in the quilt guild, and I took that "Caveman Quilting" class of his that they talk about in that piece, too. He's a hoot, that's the best way I've come up with to describe him. Sort of a born showman, that type of person. Which is why he's the big star of the quilting industry - I mean, he's genuinely talented, absolutely, but he's also automatic entertainment rolled into the package.

I gave away the little quilt that I started in that class without getting a good picture of it, which is something I always kick myself about, but this is the bad one:
(Note: I went back and cropped the picture to edit out as much of my mother's loveseat as possible. Gawd, that's a bad background for a picture!)

It was fun to do - and most of that is that hand-dyed fabric of his, too, which costs $25 a yard, no less. No wonder it's a billion-dollar industry.

I've been e-mailing back and forth with my sister all week. I don't know what the status is about doing that gift show in the fall - I suspect she hasn't found time to check into it yet. Her current thing is that she wants to do, I don't know, a catalog or something, and market other people's artwork as well as her own. I don't know about catalogs, but I actually think something along those lines could be her niche - after all, artists don't like selling any more than anybody else does, and possibly less. She was managing retail stores back before she got pregnant (over 17 years ago now!), and the only real jobs she's had since were in the gift-store business, so she does have a good bit of background in that sort of thing. If she'll just sell some of my stuff along with the rest of it, I'll be happy. (Hell, maybe she can sell my quilts for enough money that it'd be worth my while financially to make them! Stranger things have happened.)

WoW

Dec. 6th, 2007 10:22 pm
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (WoW - chicken)

WoW
Originally uploaded by blp1979.

You people - well, some of you, at least! - will be more interested in this than the readers of my quilt blog will, I suspect.

mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall landscape)
There's a quilt we've been looking for since Mama died - so what, almost 10 months now? I really didn't think it was there - we pulled out piles and piles of quilts and it wasn't in any of them - but I found it today. My cousin Stephanie is the person who is really sentimental about family things; I think I'm not going to say anything about having found it and I'm just going to wrap it up and give it to her for Christmas. What it is, it's a quilt my mother made out of her father's shirts. We've been calling it the "Papa's Shirts" quilt, because that's what we called my grandfather -  although of course, since Mama made it, it says "Daddy's Shirts" on the label. I hadn't seen it in so long I'd mostly forgotten what it looked like, although I was around when she was making it. It says 1996 on the label, also, so it was before I started quilting, although not by much - otherwise I guess I'd remember more about it. But I still knew it immediately when I saw it. It was in one of those boxes we pulled out of the very back of the downstairs closet last week, which I didn't really look in too thoroughly at the time. I think I saw that it was quilts but the rest of what was in there was pretty uninteresting, and it was underneath. (On top was a really ugly sampler quilt that I also remember her making - I don't know what I'll do with that one.)

There was also that box full of papers we didn't look at last week, which turned out to be fairly interesting. There were a bunch of old deeds in it - to my grandparent's land and the business and stuff like that. Some of it was very old, 1920s, even. I didn't stop to figure out what it all was, exactly, but I kept all of the old stuff. Because I think it's interesting, not because I think it actually has any value. Although there's some mineral-right business which does figure in the will, and the old land deeds could have a bearing on that. (I have got to call and harass the lawyer next week, anyway - I let the estate stuff slide while we were moving, and I need to kick him into gear again. Nothing seems to happen if I don't, and it's time to get all this crap settled.)

I wrote this morning that it was raining and we might not go to Mom's at all, but the rain let up and we went ahead and went. I'm glad, I wanted to get it over with. I really need to get the rest of the stuff out, and I'm going to Austin next weekend and I won't be able to go there. (Remember the trip I put off in early October? This is when I rescheduled it to, a week after Thanksgiving.


It's looking more and more like there's not going to be Holidailies this year - at least, the site hasn't been updated at all, so unless there's a last-minute flurry of activity over there... It makes me glad I went ahead and updated daily for NaBloPoMo. I'm sure I'll taper off some again in December if there's nothing to remind me to write all the time.


I'm sort of half-watching Wings of Desire. It's so low-key it's hard to really give it 100% of my attention, although it's clear it would be rewarding if I would. I knew Peter Falk was in it but it still sort of weirds me out that he's there. I guess he's too American, it seems to me.
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall leaves orange)
I think you guys need to see the Giant Jesus quilts, now that I have remembered their existence:

The St. Mary Triptych

I heard about them before I saw them, and I didn't expect to like them - not being of much of a religious persuasion - but actually I do like them. (Only one of them is actually Jesus, as you may have noticed.) The reason I heard about them is because somebody was trying to tell me about a pirate quilt, and the directions went, "You turn at the giant Jesus quilts...."  I never did find the pirate quilt, actually. But these were rather hard to miss, once you got to the right vicinity.

(The official name of these is the "St. Mary Triptych" and they were made for a Catholic church in Amarillo.)
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall foliage)
Even though it's been 80 degrees here in the afternoons, part of me seems to think it's fall - at least, I went and took the bright colored batik quilt (which is my mom's handiwork) - and the purple-dotted sheets I bought to go with it - off of the bed last night, and put on the one I consider my winter quilt and slightly more subdued sheets instead. Although then it occurred to me that I also have Mom's big Christmas quilt, so I guess I will have to switch to it soon. Or just add it on top, if it ever actually gets cold. I had better use it, one way or the other, because I went through a little mini-drama to get to keep it. I had told a certain extended family-member that she could have some quilts, and she tried to take that one with her and I said "Oh no, I was intending to keep that one," and removed it bodily from her pile. I felt sort of bad but I was perfectly entitled to do it, and I would be kicking myself now if I hadn't.

We got the easy part of the unpacking done pretty fast - the dishes and books and things like that that had obvious places to put them. Now we're down to the hard part. I think I probably need a filing cabinet for all the papers - between estate stuff and our own finances, there's a lot of stuff I'm going to want to keep for the near future, at least. And I need to get back to all that scanning and shredding I was doing before the move. We still really have papers out the wazoo. The sewing room is a mess, too, because on top of all the sewing stuff I have all of those quilts - some of mine, some of Mom's, and some that came from my grandmother's house that I don't even know who made them! (Although I'm pretty sure it wasn't my grandmother.) And clothes. Jesus, I have a lot of clothes. I hung stuff up in the half of the closet that doesn't have quilt stuff in it, and filled up all the storage things I bought for clothes (several of them) and I still have clothes overflowing. And I already threw away/donated a whole bunch of stuff! Who knew I had so many clothes?


Oh, so that was the Catacombs of Kathandrax I was babbling about at the bottom of my entry last night - not that anybody but Col cares, and he probably knew what I meant, anyway. I shouldn't post when I am sleepy, I either go off on some incoherent rant or just plain babble incoherently! Anyway, it's a GWEN dungeon with three levels and it was pretty difficult. We had six people from my guild and two monk heroes - and later five real people, because one player was in Europe and I guess he didn't realize it was going to take so long! It took... well, I'm not sure because I don't know what time we started. Two and a half hours, maybe. (They almost went off without me in the beginning. Apparently nobody was paying attention when I said "brb"!)

It is supposed to actually get cold(ish) sometime tonight. Rob said it wasn't here yet when he went for his walk an hour or so ago.
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall leaves orange)
I wrote an entry earlier but it is MIA. And I can't even remember what it's about. So you are probably getting a quick collection of randomness, so I can keep up my daily posting. I don't feel very well, actually - my neck hurts. I'm not sure what caused that. I don't think I can blame it on the mammogram I had this afternoon, although I'd like to. I hate those damn things. And I am filled with fear that they'll see some shadow like they did last year, and I'll have to go through all that crap again. Actually, even if they see something, if they say to me what they said last year - "You can go ahead and have a biopsy or you can wait six months and see" - I would be much more inclined to wait than I was last year. Cause I don't really think I want to go through that weirdness again, all for nothing. But we'll see. Hopefully they won't see anything, and it won't be an issue.

So have you guys heard about Baby Grace where you are? It's a big story here, but I gather that it's made the news all over the place. It's very sad, but I can't help but wonder if she'd get this much media attention if she'd had dark hair instead of blonde. Is that being excessively cynical? It does seem to be a pattern, though, in general. (Nothing against the local police at all - it's definitely an unusual occurrence for us. We get the occasional body of a fisherman washing up, maybe, but not small children in boxes. But then I don't suppose that's really usual anywhere, is it? I gotta admit that.)

There is this muted banging noise that seems to come from the apartment next door all the time, and we can't figure out what it is. It's not really loud enough to be terribly annoying, so we haven't worried about it too much so far. Maybe there's somebody like Rob who likes to sit in a rocking chair, and they've got the chair too close to the wall. I don't know. But right now when it's quiet, it does annoy me. I hate to start hostilities with the neighbors, though. And other than this we haven't had any problems at all, so I'm thinking we're lucky, even with the banging.

As far as the ongoing posting of quilt pictures, I got one category done (Portraits) and I should be able to get another one up before I go to bed (that one will be Mixed Technique).[profile] quiltingpirate, among other people, got her pictures up faster than I did (and she took almost as many, I gather) but hers don't have labels on them yet - and for that matter since she is planning on putting up labels that puts her ahead of a lot of people. I have gotten rather obsessive about having everything labeled properly. I mean, if somebody else was going to post a picture of my quilts, I would want my name on it! A lot of people do put up pictures without knowing whose quilts they are - so I'm not picking on Toni because I gather she does know - and for that matter I am not judging any of the people who do it, really, because it's a lot of trouble to keep track of. I should know. But I personally feel better about posting them if I do them that way. And especially with the large volume of pictures I post, I feel like I should hold myself to a higher standard where I can. (I am now over the 3000 picture mark in Flickr. Not all of them are quilts, of course, but I would think a good half of them are, at least.)

I am tired. I should stop before I make somebody mad at me.
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (fall leaves orange)
I really like this one a lot. Apparently this has to do with a Japanese folk story about wisteria turning into butterflies, or hatching butterflies, or something like that. I'm not sure what those hourglass-looking things are supposed to be, though. (Anybody got any ideas?)

Nymph of Wisteria


And I think I linked to the pictures the other day, but I'm linking again, because there are more of them now, and besides, I put a lot of work into taking them, and attempting to match them up with the right names, and all that. I'm not nearly done yet, either.


The cold front finally came through about noon today. It didn't really get cold at all, although you could tell the difference - but I think it will be pretty cool in the morning, by south Texas standards, at least!

I have been working on a Spreadsheet From Hell at work - 60,000 lines or so that have to have things done to them manually. The end of that is finally in sight, though - I've been working on it sporadically for about the last 10 days. Now I just have to find my boss a nonstop flight to Pensacola that doesn't cost $900, which may be a harder job than the spreadsheet.
mellicious: Quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 1st episode: "The earth is doomed." (quilt - zipper)
Well, I got home about 5:00, I think - I'm kind of confused about this whole time change business. I felt really exhausted when I got home but I'm starting to feel better now. I got to rest while Rob and I took turns talking to Comcast - again - this time his computer decided not to work. There must not be many people with two separate cable modems because the idea seems to confuse the hell out of people, even the Comcast people. (And we are not actually intending to keep it, as soon as we get a router and figure out how to set it up we can get rid of one modem.) Anyway, Comcast eventually sorted it out and all is well again.

I took close to 400 pictures at the quilt show, I think. I bought a new memory card on the way up there, because last year I ran out of space, and I'm sure I would have this time too - somewhere after 300 is where I ran out of room, as I recall. This one cost about what I paid for the last one, a couple of years ago, but it has 4 times as much space (2gb instead of 512k), so unless I go on some particularly picture-intensive trip I am set for life, I think. A few of the pictures are already up on Flickr, but not many yet. More to come, obviously. Oh, I also bought some lithium batteries at Best Buy when I bought the card, and they really worked as advertised - they never did run out, and normally I go through multiple sets of batteries. For the annual visit to the quilt show, at least, I think those batteries may have just become a staple.

I did meet the[personal profile] calicocatsgroup last night, and I met my aunt for lunch yesterday, but mostly I went around by myself. That really seems to confound some people. A lady tried to sweep me into her group for dinner, apparently thinking I couldn't possibly want to eat dinner by myself, but I was tired and I resisted being swept. I think I was getting a bit cranky by that time so it was probably for the best!

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