Chicki-Clicki-Bag

Isn't this cute?  (baak bak bak...) Not my own design ... I was at a guild meeting and someone had the picture of this cutie-pie click-it bag and sent it to me.  I finally got it all together this morning.  I actually had the dot fabric that was used in the original so I figure I was meant to make it!

I love chickens so this bag is perfect for me!  One of these days I'm going to have 3 or 4 chickens roaming my suburban backyard ... hoping that the neighbors don't turn me in.  But that's down the road a bit.


I have the Batik Jacket almost finished.  Pictures coming soon.

More later.  Now that I've had my fun, it's back to work for me!







 

CELEBRATE! and the Batik Jacket

Well, time goes by and sometimes we forget something that was once so important but has maybe faded a bit into the background.  Today is my 8th anniversary of being in remission!  I'll never forget the day of diagnosis and I thought I'd always always remember the entire journey, especially that last day of treatment; however, I'm extremely pleased to let you know that life moves forward and I am at the point where I ALMOST forgot that this is a day to celebrate!  So if you are somewhere on the C-path, take assurance that the day will come where you'll lift your head from your sewing machine and think: "Oh my ... today's THAT day!"  Sweet sweet sweet ... I think I'll have a glass of wine or two tonight!  Why don't you join me?  Around 8pm EST??

The second part of the Sweatshirt Jacket Class at Kiwiquilts is tomorrow and here's the teacher finishing up at the last minute!  Isn't that the way it always goes?  We have the 2 front pieces, the back piece, and the two sleeves.  My MIL wants a batik jacket - "just like yours" - well, I can't find the exact fabrics that I made mine with about 5 years ago, but I think I picked out some pretty ones.  In fact, I actually had these fabrics in a bundle with an attached note that they were for HER quilt!  Man, sometimes I'm so organized it scares me!  If I hadn't looked I would have never found it.  The colors are purple, gold, some greens ... 

The lining is a favorite batik that I bought a LOT of some time ago.  I'll show pic of that when I get the whole jacket done.

I was going to machine quilt the pieces on Max, but realized that the lining itself is separate.  And didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if I could machine quilt with just batting and fabric.   So to make it easier for myself, I cross-hatched it using my DSM. Love that sweet walking foot with the attached measuring foot.  But it did take some time.

Ok, now back to the sewing machine and piece this sweetie-pie together!  

More later!

Dreaming of Space

Last night was guild night and it was my turn to 'showcase' a quilt.  As I told my guild, if there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I'm almost as passionate about the space program as I am about quilting.  Pick me!  Pick me!  I'll go up in a heartbeat, no kidding!  In 2003 we lost Columbia as it was re-entering our atmosphere.  And in August 2005 space flight STS-114 celebrated our Return to Space.  I sat and watched as this marvelous space shuttle landed at Edwards Air Base.  And even more interesting was that it was piloted by our first female commander, Eileen Collins.  As she landed the big bird (perfectly!) I was putting in the last binding stitch on this quilt.  I immediately knew what this quilt was all about.  It's my Dreaming of Space quilt.  It is MY quilt ... and it's really the only quilt I own that I can truly say is mine.  

One of my guild sisters told me later that she believes that Eileen Collins is a quilter ... I'm gonna have to research that a bit!  Too cool!

The quilt was constructed of 4 different stratas, each containing 7 to 9 different color variances.  It took almost as much time to pick the fabric as it did to piece it!

Have to get back to the jacket construction now.  Later ... 

P.S.  See that stand which is displaying Dreaming of Space quilt?  It's a Savage Port-A-Stand ... I fell in love with it last night and ordered my own on Amazon today!  No more trying to figure out how to do away with pictures of "Quilts with Feet"!  And my quilt "handlers" get really really tired of me saying, "A bit higher ... no, that's too high ... now it's uneven..."  This will be so much better, don't you think?

Trying to get photos

I'm trying to learn how to manipulate the blog and it is just soooo time consuming, but I'm getting there.  I've added a photo link (off to the right here), but what I'd really like to do is add a page(s) of photos.  Takes so much time.

My photogenic quilting partner (Mr. Minkee lover) is back at her place now.  Boy, do I miss the company.  I find that I can spend a whole lot of time by myself, and then feel like a mushroom when I finally lift my head up from a quilt.  It was so nice having someone here to chat with and someone to bounce ideas off of.  And being a quilter can be so very isolating.  I'm trying to take classes every other month or so in order to learn new techniques and keep myself up-to-date.  And thank goodness for cell-phone technology!  I can pick up the phone and call my long-distance quilting friends any time I need some company (***coast-to-coast wave*** again, Tina!  ***across-the-state wave***, Patsy!).  

I'm teaching a jacket class here at Kiwiquilts, so I'm in the process of making one for my MIL for Christmas.  She saw the one I made 5 years ago and wanted it then ... ok, I'm a bit slow, but at least it's being done.  If I can get some decent pictures I'll post later.  The second part of the class is this weekend.  

Sewing a sleeve onto a quilt that will be hanging at our guild meeting tomorrow night.  I never got into the habit of making sleeves for my own quilts.  Newer quilts will all have sleeves.  There's just got to be a better way to do sleeve, maybe like a removable sleeve that can be used on all quilts.  I just know it's already been developed.  I can't be the only one who hates this sleeve making!

Keep on dancing and quilting!

Sylvia

Gotta start somewhere

I'm being encouraged to start a blog (thanks, Tina!  Coast-to-Coat wave!!) so here goes.

Daughter Emily is visiting and she fell in love with minkee at our LQS.  So she has been constructing "Mr. Minkee".  

As she says:  "I LOVE Mr. Minkee!!"

Now let's talk about Minkee fur!  Good grief!  We're breathing it, we're eating it!  It is EVERYWHERE!  Her last task will be taking the vacuum cleaner and sucking that fur up!  Minkee is not for the faint of heart or someone with OCD.  It will take weeks to get rid of the Minkee Mist around here.


We have had a great time quilting together so I'm guessing that this is as good a first blog as any.  Having someone to share your passion with is great!  What a tremendous gift she has given me by visiting this past week.


And while she is here we are finishing up her 2-Color quilt that she started piecing about 5 years ago.  She finally got the sashings and borders on and we put it on Max the Millennium machine.  We have swapped out doing the quilting but since she's so involved with Mr. Minkee I'll finish up quilting the Baptist Fans on it.  She did a great job!  Good going, kiddo!

The thing about the Baptist Fan design is that the 'fans' are truly directional.  They should be rounded at the top of the quilt, so if you have a directional top you need to be sure that the BF's are going in the right direction.  Emily's 2-Color quilt top is not directional; however, her BACKING is!  So we had to be careful that we loaded the backing backwards.  She has a beautiful toile back.  More pics later.