World Wide Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome to my edition of the World Wide Blog Hop!

If you’re new to my blog, I hope you’ll come back often. I generally post about my quilts, including English Paper Piecing (we have a monthly EPP linky party called HeLP on the 17th of each month), books (another monthly linky party called Bibliophile Files on the first Tuesday) and my cats (a weekly linky called Feline Friday).

I was nominated last week by Chantal – I can’t remember how long we’ve known each other now but I’m pretty sure it started with hexies. LOL! Be sure to visit her blog which is full of bright quilts and crocheted items, book reviews and much more!

1.  What am I working on?

I guess I have 2 main projects at the moment (but I'm always working on bits of other projects at the same time!). The first is to work on my ruby Beauty blocks from the class that I took with Bonnie Hunter a week ago.

 

Just this Saturday I made over a hundred more four patches and 150 more HSTs. This week I’ll put more blocks together to see how many more parts I need. Mom loves red so I plan to give this quilt to her (so far it’s a secret...shhhh!!!!). I measured their bed this weekend but I have yet to figure out exactly how many blocks I need. Maybe it’s best not to think that far ahead since, at just 6” for each block, it’s going to be a lot!

Zorro REFUSED to look at the camera.
I suppose he thought he would be in trouble since he isn't often allowed on my sewing table.

I’m also working on my Value Proposition hexie quilt along blocks. I’m behind because it’s school tax season and I run to the school every day during lunch instead of doing hexies. I’ll catch up soon enough. This is block #9. I’m doing them out of order so I have this block plus 4 more to catch up. In case you haven’t seen my previous posts, each block has a teal in it but the rest is scrappy. Gotta love scrappy!

2.  How does my work differ from others of it's genre?

I don’t know that I really differ from anyone else’s work. Janet will tell you that at times I have completely forgotten I own a sewing machine because I’m all about the hexies but I don’t think I do anything outlandish. I love color and I love lots of (little) pieces and I don’t like hand work unless it’s hexies. Go figure…I’m just like a lot of other people. LOL.

 

3.  Why do I create what I do?

Basically, quilting is my therapy. I can certainly tell when I’ve been away from my hexies or my sewing machine. I can get down right C.R.A.N.K.Y. I’ve somehow had lots of time to sew in the last two weeks and I feel like I’m on cloud nine, even at just an hour or two a night after working both jobs. I feel relaxed and ready for another long day.

4.  How does my creative process work?

I’m lost somewhere between OCD and ADD or maybe even ADHD at times. Even tho my “stuff” looks like a mess, I pretty much know where it is and what project it’s for. There are piles of pressed scraps to trim, baskets of partially finished zipper bags and mugrugs for upcoming craft bazaars, baskets corralling fabrics for a specific project, crocks of rulers and choco and underneath it all is my cutting mat, ironing board and sewing machine. I’m in piggy heaven. LOL.

Red & neutral on table are for Ruby Beauty Blocks.
Design Wall is always covered with bits of projects.
Plastic bins under the table Dad made me are the FQ stash, Bag is selvages.
Finished blocks hang on the end of the table while I wait to finish quilts.

When I work on a quilt I’m very methodical…preferring to make all I’ll need for a certain part of the project at one time and then moving on to the next part. On the other hand, I get bored working on a project and move on to something else for a while which leaves me with UFOs out the wazoo. Leader/Enders work great for me because I’m actually working on 2 kinds of projects at the same time but also because some of my L/E projects are made from scraps so I’m always mixing up the cutting with the sewing with the cleaning up. It’s a never ending battle of finding something to entertain myself. I guess it boils down to being more about the process than the finished product for me.

Curio cabinet holds hexie projects and L/Es
Green trug is full of scraps to trim.

Oh goodness, the last photo reminded me of a very important part of my so called process. 99.9% of the time I am listening to an audiobook while I'm in my studio. At the moment, I only have 2 audio books checked out of the library so I'm a little panicky since I usually have 5 to 10 out at any time. Hopefully when I swing by the library today I can stock up properly.

Well, that was a brief snapshot of me, now I would like you to visit a couple friends:

Denise and I have been friends for eons. We have a lot in common in our personal lives including tea parties, quilting, cats and hexies. It’s been a fun ride and I always look forward to hearing from her!

Missy is another friend that I can’t remember when or where online we met. She always has a lot of colorful projects, sews on treadle machines, shares yummy recipes and has a fabulous clowder of cats that she shares on my Feline Friday linky parties.

Be sure to visit Denise and Missy any time but definitely next Monday when they answer the Hop questions and link to more fabulous bloggers.

Feline Friday - 9/26/14

Momma! Are you done sewing all those strippy things together yet?



I think it's time for snacks so we can go watch the very last ever episode of Dexter!

An InLinkz Link-up

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Coming along nicely...gotta love strip piecing quilts.
Border will be camo fabric...gotta love boys and their camo :-)

Only decision to make is straight or on point setting...

Blue Ridge Beauty with Bonnie Hunter!

My class with Bonnie was this past weekend. It was a long day with driving 80+ minutes there and 110 minutes home since there was a bad truck fire on the expressway. I stopped at Viddler’s, an awesome five and dime in East Aurora but I was so tired, I wandered and left empty handed - not my norm when I get a rare chance to visit Viddler's. When I got home I put my things away and didn’t do much of anything the rest of the weekend. It’s a good thing Zorro made me take that break on Thursday – I could have used him again Friday and Saturday. LOL.

Ummm...that paragraph sounded like a real downer when what I had was a great day. Sorry L

Lots of space for everyone to sew, do demos at the front and 5 ironing stations at the back

 

Class started at 9am on Saturday. I got there about 20 minutes early and looked for free table space since the room was already pretty full. A lot of the students had taken 3 or 4 classes with Bonnie! Many people sat 2 to a table but I was lucky to get a table to myself. Whoo hoo – room to spread out which is nice when strip piecing.

We started with making 4 patches. I think Bonnie finally convinced me to layer the two strips and cut them as pairs without pinning! It worked well in class so it must work at home, right?

The 2-toned green bit on the left is my leaderEnder - a Christmas quilt for one of my nephews.

After lunch there were door prizes from the host guild and then we had show-n-tell back in our class room. I asked Bonnie to pose with me so I could put our picture on the quilt label. I guess I better get the back done so I can quilt this baby and put that label on!

No I don't know who the guy was in the painting behind me.
Class was in a museum and there antiques all over the place.

 

And then we moved on to half square triangles using my near&dear friend the Easy Angle. Bonnie demoed her 2 step method of flipping the EA back and forth but since I taught myself my own 2 step method years ago I just couldn’t get hers to work with any speed. It really didn’t affect my cutting accuracy so I just did it my way and zipped along.

 

Pretty soon we were putting blocks together and then Bonnie pulled us all to the back of the room to show us the best way to lay out the blocks. It was quite fun to see all our blocks thrown together into a riot of rainbow colors when we were more or less just making a 2 color quilt. The beauty block is easy enough I could see making another scrappy version some day.

 

Did you find me on Bonnie’s blog or Facebook? I’m there several times, including my hexie jacket on Facebook! I haven't seen a post on show-n-tell but maybe that is coming…

I think I've finally recovered from 3 very long days last week, a lazy day and another long day yesterday. Now that I'm typing this post I'm in the mood to go home and sew. I  should be home about 7 or 730 so my fingers are crossed I'll still be in the mood to make more Ruby Beauty blocks...I know a certain person who is going to want my quilt and I would kinda like to keep it under wraps and give it as a gift...

Feline Friday - 9/19/14

Wednesday night Momma got lectured by someone named Bonnie.

 

Thursday Momma took something called a staysewcation day. I’m not sure what a staysewcation is but I do know that before the sun broke she was out of bed and in her studio. She stayed there until after the sun broke and fell down again…

All. Day. Long. It was pedal to the metal with the iron hissing and the rotary cutter zip zip zipping along too. I tell yah, it was hard to get a good nap in cuz she kept doing belly checks too – something about my belly is nice and soft but I only let her check it when I’m sleepy.
 

Any ways … round about lunch time I told her it was time to take a break. I didn’t know if she was gonna make it the whole day or not…luckily she did!

Thing is, she’s gonna get classed by that Bonnie person tomorrow. Who knows what Sunday is gonna be like??!!

 

Happy HeLP!!

Welcome to another rousing addition of Hexie Linky Party (HeLP) where we share the English Paper Piecing projects we are working on, dreaming about or even not working on!

At some point last month I decided that if I didn't even put some effort into the tree skirt there was no way it would be done by Christmas. Oh, I know it won't be done for 2014 but I've made great progress so there is a chance for 2015.

I've basted about 3/4 of the diamonds so far...which leaves about 80 left to baste. Then I can start assembling the rows - the directions have a pretty ingenious method to put each star point together.

Now lets see what you're working on - any shape, size or vintage is fair game but please link to a hexie related post and not your blog in general.

Feline Friday - 9/12/14

I'm not sure about your Momma, but mine likes to sleep on her side with one arm stuck out underneath her cat-tywampus pillow.

It made for the purrfect sleeping spot yesterday cuz I had my own spot on the cupcake pillow and I could snuggle with Momma's arm too. purrrrrrrrrr.....

More JTAAW photos

Edit - Thursday at 5pm - I was just about to write tomorrow's FF post when I realized this was sitting here as a draft...no wonder no one commented on it yesterday. oops...

I hope these are the close up photos all y'all were looking for on Monday...

This is my version of Bonnie's Jared Takes an Wife - except mine is an Asian wife due to the Asian fabrics :)

I left the sashing out of the quilt center, enjoying the secondary pattern created, but then decided the quilt needed to be bigger so I switched the fabrics around on the outer "border". The quilt is now 72" x 84".

I switched red for part of the black star points (and that is partly because after adding the black that I did add to the outer border there is only a 6" square of it left!) and I altered the star center fabrics.

Last time I posted on this, people spoke up that it should be yellow in the centers. I cut some yellow and some green and tried them both. The yellow center with yellow star points was just too much for me so I relegated those to the corners and used green centers on the sides of the quilt. Howz that for a good compromise?

Sorry for crinkly quilt photos - between the grass that needs trimming and little furry feet, it was the best I could do...

Design Wall Monday - 9/8/14

Ta Da!!!

The Jared Takes an Asian Wife top is finished and with time to spare...11 days, 18 hours, 12 minutes & 9 seconds to be exact. LOL!

I'll work on getting the back done and sandwiching it but I doubt I'll get started on the quilting before my Bonnie Hunter class on 9/20/14. My EMT class starts tonight, in addition to doing school taxes this fall so I'm not going to have much of anything to share for the next few months :-(

Feline Friday - 9/5/14

Do you think Momma will let me drive her pretty silver car?

Calculatorcat.com says I'm 37 in human years so that should make me old enough to get a permit! Right?!?!

Maybe if she won't let me drive I can be her hood ornament?

The Bibliophile Files

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Bibliophile Files - my monthly book report! LOL!

As you probably know, I am trying to complete two reading challenges by the end of the year. You can find out more details on the Bibliophile File tab above.

 

My smaller challenge is to read 9 books with certain colors in the titles. I have 2 books checked out of the library to finish this challenge. Woohoo!

 

My other challenge is to read 74 books that will have titles with words that spell out the months of the year. I'm 70% done with this challenge, for which shelfari.com says I'm ahead of pace to finish this challenge. Double Woohoo!

Death Angel (8/8/14)
Easy Prey (8/17/14)
Fatal Error (8/19/14)
*Assault & Pepper (8/21/14)
Die Trying (8/25/14)
Odd Thomas (8/28/14)
Crunch Time (8/31/14)
*Family Matters (9/1/14)
Cat & Mouse (9/1/14)

Nothing on the nightstand as of today but I am almost finished listening to The Ferguson Rifle.

I had told myself that I would not be doing any challenges next year - I wanted to go back to reading book series in order instead of what fits the challenge but then I got to thinking I could read books that fit with a smaller challenge - like spelling out my own name. That sounds easy enough. And now that I've put it in writing I don't have to think about it again until January :-)

And now it's your turn - what books have you read or listened to? Do tell!