Category Archives: About Me

fabric overload

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I’ve spent many hours over the last couple of weeks organizing my fabric stash.

stash (mini bolts)

I’ve put my one yard plus pieces on mini bolts (really just pieces of acid free cardboard).  They look better and it’s definitely easier to see what I have (before pics here). But the mini bolts are flimsy and I find it hard to make the fabric stay straight and neat without using pins. It also takes up A LOT more space. All in all, I’m not sure I would recommend organizing your fabric like this. It definitely doesn’t work well for pieces that are under 3/4 of a yard. If I hadn’t invested so much time into all of this folding and color coding, I might just put it back the way it was.

There is an upside to all of this reorganizing, though.  I’ve finally started to see that I’m mere yards away from true hoarder** status. My husband was right!

pre-cuts

[pre-cuts]

fat quarters

[fat quarters]

I gave up fabric buying for Lent, but I think I could easily give it up for the next couple of years.  And probably should. The pressure of all of that unused fabric is kind of cramping my creative mojo.

**I know some of you are rolling your eyes about the hoarders reference. True, there are no mountains of garbage here, but it’s not all hospital corners.

hoarders

Excuse my dog’s…ummm, grooming. He didn’t realize he was being photographed. ;)

Even though I’m not thrilled with the results, I am glad to be finished with that time-consuming project so I can get back to actual sewing. I predict lots of pre-cut friendly quilts in my near future.

katie jump what?!?!

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Last Friday I went to the Dallas Quilt Show with several good girlfriends. We met for a delicious diner breakfast and made it to the show just after it opened. I had a short wish list of goodies that I wanted to buy: a market tote basket and a curve master presser foot. I’m really trying to take a break from fabric buying but five booths into the show, I bought a fat quarter bundle of Amy Butler solids. Those pretty colors weakened my resolve. I was pretty proud of resisting the vintage quilty stuff at the next booth. Several of my girlfriends took home some really amazing stuff (Melanie’s quilt scraps, Monica’s vintage quilts) but I tried not to even look at the booth, knowing that I have four unfinished vintage quilt tops awaiting some TLC at my house already.

I did find my market basket, which was very exciting. These handmade baskets are from Ghana and a portion of the profits goes back to the community of weavers that makes them. They’re called bolga baskets and you can find them easily online (most of them are dyed bright colors). They’re ideal for your sewing room – I bought my first bolga basket at another quilt show in the fall and I use it to store pre-cuts and fabric stacks for future quilts. It holds a lot of stuff and looks pretty.

And it’s a good thing I bought that big old basket because there were even more fat quarter bundles that I could not resist.

quilt show goodies

Denyse Schmidt’s Katie Jump Rope and American Jane’s Peas and Carrots! Both of these bundles were priced at normal retail, not Etsy-OMG-are-you-for-real prices. If you’re searching for some hard to find fabrics, you must check out your local quilt shows. A lot of small shops don’t turn over inventory very fast and if they don’t have an online shop, the odds are very good that you’ll find some out of print goodies. (This quilt shop does have an online store with some Katie Jump Rope in stock.)

I was feeling so pleased with myself that I even did some sewing this weekend (I’ve lost my mojo recently so like Ron Burgundy it was kind of a big deal.). It’s a Union Jack block for Erica in the Ringo Pie bee.

union jack - Ringo Pie (Feb)

Can you tell that the blue fabric is 1930s bunnies? And the white fabric has tiny strawberries on it? I just wanted to point that out. ;)

valentines

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Since today is Valentine’s day, I’d like to tell you about the two Valentines in that picture. They are my parents and this year they celebrated two big anniversaries in the month of February - they have been married for 38 years, and it has been three years since my mom donated one of her kidneys to my dad.

Polycystic kidney disease runs in my dad’s side of the family. My grandmother (Mamaw) was  the first to have it, and three of her four children inherited it. Of my five siblings, three of us have it. I was diagnosed two summers ago when I went to the ER with a kidney stone. PKD is a disease that often doesn’t cause symptoms until middle age or later, but it is a common illness – about 1 in 1,000 Americans have it. Thankfully, healthy kidneys are also common since we’re born with two of them. But on the flip side, there are many, many people who don’t have a loved one to donate a healthy kidney. They have to wait for another family’s tragedy to save their life.  Sometimes they are saved by a stranger who chooses to become a living donor.

February is special for a couple of other reasons. My mom celebrated her birthday yesterday. I won’t tell her age, but I will say that she was born in my favorite decade. February is also the month my Mamaw was born in 1933. She was a quilter, something she learned from her mother and grandmothers.  She mainly sewed with the remnants of old clothing, not surprising for someone who was born during the Great Depression in the rural farm country of Arkansas.  She grew up picking cotton on her daddy’s farm. My dad remembers her spending long hours hand quilting on a frame that came down from the ceiling on a pulley system (much like this one). Her name was Gladys Maxine and she passed away when I was 17, too young to appreciate the wisdom of an “old” woman. She spent the last 16 years of her life on dialysis, and was quite frail when she passed. I wish that she were still around so that we could talk about making quilts. I know her thrifty country girl nature would be shocked at my fabric stash and my expensive sewing machine.  It makes me laugh a little to think of what she might say about modern quilting. She would have been 78 years old this month.

And even though Valentine’s Day is cheesy and overly commercialized, I do think it’s important to do something special for the people (or doggies and kitties) you love today. You can also do something for a stranger and donate blood (or a kidney). :)

Happy Valentine’s Day,

voices in my head

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I’m enjoying the cold weather this year. I love wearing sweaters and wool gloves, I have some slippers that keep my toes toasty while I sew, and I can smell again because the cold has killed off all of the allergens that normally torture me. Life is pretty good right now, and I’m excited about all of the new things to come this year. Tomorrow is the first Dallas Modern Quilt Guild meeting of 2011, and I can’t wait to see all of my quilting friends (our guild’s first birthday is next month and that is a huge and exciting milestone!).

it speaks to me

This week I’ve sat down to blog at least once a day and then gotten stuck. I am working on so many things, and I’m excited about all these different projects and ideas that I’m feeling completely overwhelmed. Is it possible to have too much creative stimulation? With only so many usable hours in the day, how do you get all of those pesky ideas out of your head? Web MD was not helpful, but I suspect that I have  full-on quilting schizophrenia. The fabric speaks to me.


 I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. So far I’ve been able to resist the “buy me” voices. But I’m powerless against the “start a new project” with me voices. Those Ruby Star Rising ladies are the worst, frankly. Look at their coy little faces.

quilting schizophrenia

Who can resist?!?!?!

future WIPs

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Have you seen the episode of The Office where Jim sends Dwight faxes from “future Dwight”? I have a note from my future self. She’s kindly listed out the WIPs I’ll be scrambling to finish at the end of this year.

So thoughtful, right?

I’ve been working on my resolution to get organized this week. The first day was frightening for everyone. My husband walked into the room and all he could say was “whoa” as he backed away slowly. My little Moosey, who has his own bed in pretty much every room of the house because he likes laying down and being with people, kept looking at me like this:

His bed was buried behind a sewing room explosion and everything he laid on kept getting moved into a new,  [supposedly] better organized pile. After three days of this chaos, we’re all ready to finish up so I can get back to sewing. There are some super late bee blocks waiting in my inbox that I plan to tackle tonight.

Show Your WIPs + Resolutions

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black white + aqua

I seriously underestimated how little time  I would have this holiday season. My WIP list is decidedly unimpressive, and none of my excuses are very good.

1. Love Panes quilt {binding}
2. Plume Charms quilt {quilting + binding}
[adding hand quilting]
3. Fussy Cut Bee {piece top}
4. Modern Siggy Swap 2 {piece top}
[ran out of white sashing. worst excuse ever.]
5. Wonderland in Aqua {make backing + baste}
6. Gridlock: Summer Palette {make backing + baste}
7. Happy Campers {piece top}
[my heart wasn't in this one. I fell out of like with the fabric and can't get motivated to touch it.]
8. Red + Aqua Strings {make backing + baste}
[all of my safety pins were otherwise occupied]
9. Far, Far, Away 2 plum {piece top}
[see below for the excuse]
10. Evangeline in Paris {complete all cutting}
[No excuses, but wanted to mention that I'm liking my test block more now that I read some feedback comments. Thanks!]
11. Black, White, and Aqua {piece top}

6/11 completed. I sort of sabotaged myself with number 9, the Far Far Away quilt.  In my head, the layout was going to be a simple boho design with lots of over-sized, irregular patches but when it came time to cut the fabric, those princesses wanted to be something else entirely. I’ll share a photo once I finish another block or two.

So how do you do on the challenge? I’ll be perusing blogs and comments to find the winner tomorrow. I’m thinking of a couple of options for a prize (one of them is a Sherbet Pips charm pack!).

Now on to my resolutions for 2011.

No more squares. Square quilts can be cool, and I’ve made my fair share of them. They’re attractive to beginners and they’re very popular all over the modern quilting blogosphere, but I’m starting to find them a little boring. I want to challenge myself with more complicated piecing in 2011.

Use that fabric! My fabric stash is constantly growing, and I’m almost to the point where I look at it and wonder what the point is. There’s no way I can ever keep up at the rate I’m hoarding it. I’d have to make a quilt a week. I attempted to guesstimate the yardage, but when it got well into the triple digits I gave up. This resolution is twofold – to not only use the fabric I’m stashing away at an alarming rate, but to also cut back on new purchases. I’m limiting myself to a yard a week (or $10). That means that if I need backing, I have to hold out for 4 or 5 weeks to buy it. Any monies not spent will be added to my fabric piggy bank.

Branch Out. Before quilting infected my brain, I loved to embroider. I knit and crochet (very little) as well, but I never do any of those things because the quilting fever has got me bad. I’m going to make an effort to do more tactile arts this year. My wonderful parents gifted me with this gorgeous kit at Christmas and it combines quilting with embroidery so it’s a good start.

Get Organized. This means you scrap basket! My scraps and WIPs are overwhelming but I already have them organized in my head. Isn’t that half the battle?

There were so many unexpected blessings in my life in 2010, and I know that 2011 will also be full of happy surprises. I hope your new year is as well.

pre-Christmas Eve

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It’s a Christmas miracle! The fabric I’ve been lusting after for months has started arriving in stores.

[image swiped from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics on Etsy]

You can buy it online from the super nice Randi of Fresh Squeezed Fabrics or if you’re in DFW,  buy it from Quilt Asylum when they get their stock in (which should be any day now). I think I’m going to do both! I really want to make a dress or top from one of the floral voiles:

And this print is just perfection:

Though I wish they’d printed it on quilting cotton instead because the voile is pretty pricey. Can you imagine how good that would look as binding? I just got chills.

pebbles

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My WIP list is getting shorter.  Even though this has been a busy week with lots of holiday shopping and all the usual to-dos around the house, I’ve dedicated a few hours a day to sewing. And it’s been very therapeutic. Tonight I’m catching up on Glee and doing some free motion quilting.

quilting pebbles
[pebble quilting]

This is my Plume Charms quilt. I started it in May but put it aside because of thread issues (blogged about here). This weekend I went to my LQS and bought a soft pink spool of Aurifil for my Pfaff and she has forgiven me. The quilting is going well this time around. Thread is one of those things that I used to take for granted. For home decor or garment sewing you pretty much only use polyester so using cotton was a foreign concept for me when I first started to quilt. Then it took me a long time to find a thread that I really liked. Looking back, I think many of my early quilting woes can be blamed on inexperience and bad thread equally. What’s your favorite brand?

giving thanks

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happy thanksgiving
[fall table runner]

There are so many things to be thankful for, particularly my family and friends. 2010 has been a great year in my life, and I really do feel that every year seems to get fuller, richer, and the joyous occasions (big and small) seem to happen more often. Our Thanksgiving was filled with joy, laughter, and a bounty of delicious food. We visited with family that we don’t see enough and we watched a lot of football. I finished binding all three things I brought to work on, and I’m very motivated to begin some new things in the coming weeks. It was very nice to take a short break from my over-scheduled life and just enjoy being still.