Finally Some Eye Candy!

Whoooooo Hooooooo finally got some photos of this beauty! This is the latest custom quilt to come off my longarm machine. When I first saw the top I was just awed by the wonderful colors. Then I had to wait about 4 months before it arrived in my studio. It was a really fun custom to do. I actually had to design as I went as often do. The biggest decision was how to break down the space as there were lots of options there. I finally decided to put feathers coming around the wreaths of foliage, fruits, and other things. I then designed a feather shape which I built off of the spine. This meant that I only needed to mark the spine shape on the quilt and then the rest of the feather was done freehand so every feather motif is a little different. Once I had that quilted the rest just kind of fell in place. I was most pleased with the overall finished quilt.

I already have another custom quilt loaded on the machine and will be trying to get it quilted in the next few days. Things have gotten really busy here this last month as more tops are coming in than finished quilts going out. This means backlog which I am very happy about. I will have plenty of work to keep me out of trouble for some time.

It is actually beginning to start looking like Spring here. I noticed my iris leaves beginning to shoot up with the new green fronds peeking out around the old dead ones. I guess it is about time to work on that little garden plot. Since I live in an area that has little rain, high elevation, is teeming with deer and rabbits, and to top it off very poor alkali soil my gardening is very limited but at least it is just enough to be able to go dig in the dirt every once in awhile.

I do love Spring and am looking forward to warmer and longer days. I also miss the buzzing of insects and the singing birds. Even the snakes are kinda interesting to watch when one comes around. I also love the lizards basking up the sun on the rocks. There are also occasional horned toads which are most interesting creatures. They are actually lizards. One of these days I am going to make a quilt that features a horned toad!

Life is Busy!

I guess for me the content of the blog is more about writing than about photos. I only wish I had the energy to post lots of great photos with each and every post but then if I did the posts would likely be few and far between.

I have been quilting like a fiend the past few days. I took a custom quilt off the frame and when I added up the hours I realized it was 31 hours of time. No wonder I thought it was taking forever. I will say though that I spent two half days and two really long days and then a few days with just a couple of hours. I had no idea I had spent that much time on it. I am quite pleased with how wonderful it looks though and will be taking (and yes actually posting some photos of it in the next couple of days). I also did a couple of pillow shams to match and then did another quilt that had an allover loose meander. No wonder I was too tired to actually quilt today. I did load another custom quilt on the frame and it is really cute and whimsical with Overall Sam or Bill not sure the exact name. It is for a young boy and is very cute. Just need to go out there tomorrow and have at it. Seems like my quilting business is beginning to really start being steady and finding the balance between a normal life and trying to get every ones quilt back when they want it is another thing. I just wish I could make a couple of clones of myself to do the quilting some days!!

How Does A Quilter Recharge Their Battery

Good question you say! Well the way I recharge my battery is a good quilters retreat. I recently attended my favorite retreat over in Phoenix. I got out of the cold, boy was it good to thaw for a few days and bask in the warmth.

I have been at this yearly event six times now and each year it is so much fun to catch up with everyone in person. We have classes but the atendees give the classes and they are included in the retreat fee. This year I taught a class on feathers which was very well received. It will be fun to see what my friends do with the information I have given them on constructing a feather with thread and needle via machine be it domestic or longarm. I took a class on convergence quilts and it was very fun but my quilt did not come out with the look I had envisioned. When my friend Hilda admired it I decided it needed to go home with her.

I had gone a day early to give a friend a one on one session on her longarm. It is very sad when someone says they do not enjoy their machine and dread turning it on. Well that has now been fixed. She has told me she is now looking forward to using the machine and is playing with all sorts of new ideas. This was not a one way street either. I also learned from her as well. I too am pretty excited to get back to my longarm and play with some new and fresh ideas and techniques.

Hopefully in a few days I will finish my current custom quilt and will share some of the feathers I am quilting on it.

T-shirt Quilt Revealed!

This story began with a pile of ordinary T-shirts. A very large pile! I was asked to put these together in just one quilt but for a king sized bed. Having never made a T-shirt quilt before I gladly took on the task and went home with 4 large boxes of shirts. I had been told there were about 70 shirts.

The number of shirts turned out to be 88 and of those I was to use the back and front of two of these. I had already done quite a bit of research on the making of a T-shirt quilt so I began with step one, which was to sort and measure each shirt to determine the finished size of each one. You can see the mountain of shirts in the first photo. Next I cut out the design with some extra all around on each shirt and labeled it with the finished size as you can see in the next photo. Now the easy part was done. The next step was to fuse a woven interfacing to the back of each shirt. This had to be done with a pressing cloth as a hot iron would melt the fusible as well as the design on the shirts. This process was long and slow but I pressed on...................literally and finally had that chore done.

So now the next step was to find a space to lay these all out. The best solution was the family room where everyone watches TV. I figured a couple of days and I would be done.................WRONG! This process took all of two weeks. First I had to figure out how to lay these all out so they would actally fit in the space that could be about 120x120 square inches...................and let me tell you that is 10 feet X 10 feet! After much arranging and rearranging, and rearranging I finally got them all laid out. Ok all I had to do was get them sewn together with sashing in between. This process took days. I could not really cut lots of sashing and sew. No I pretty much could cut a few planned pieces at a time. Since the setting was variable each piece of sashing had to fit in an exact space and that ment cutting and sewing pretty much one at a time. I sewed on, and on. I took blocks to the sewing studio and worked in sections. Most of the time things worked out but there were a few times that things went wrong and ths required taking apart and redoing. At last the shirts were all in one huge piece with a nice 3" border around the outside. Let me tell you that was one moment of joy.....................and then I went to bed. I had of course accomplished that on a day when I as determined I would finish so I worked pretty late to get it done.

The quilting actuall went without a hitch. The top took up most of the space on my 14 foot longarm frame but not all of the space. I had it easily off the machine the same day. Now the final step was that binding. I played with some instructions for a machine turned binding which did not look perfect so I resolved myeslf to the handturned binding around that fourhundred and ninety two circumfrence. One stitch at a time and two days later it was DONE!

Now that I have done my first T-shirt quilt I think it will be the hardest and biggest one I will ever do. I have learned alot and am ready to do more. Of course they are all going to be smaller and have fewer shirts. I do love the idea of putting those shirts into a quilt!

Guess I Have Been Busy!

I have not been writting in my blog lately! I guess one reason is that I have been pretty busy. We are getting used to the water situation. At least we are living with it. The big thing is to just be careful to make sure the laundry is really a full load, dishes really need doing as they take quite alot of water so now they get stacked and done less often than I would like.

I have quilted my third large quilt this week! My goal at the beginning of the year was to do 100 quilts on the longarm in 2008. Well I have been working on the t-shirt quilt. That pretty much took up the last two weeks of my quilting time just getting it pieced. I was also pretty busy with the water problem, the kids and stuff around the house so did not have lots of time to devote to my quilting. Well this week I dove in. Monday was a large quilt that got a baptist fan ( I love that template). Tuesday was another large quilt that got an allover loose meander.................fast and easy! Then today I loaded the monster sized t-shirt quilt and did an allover loose meander. Now let me tell you I am feeling a huge sense of accomplishment getting that one quilted. I still need to the binding and that is gonna be alot of binding but the end is in sight at last. I will post a photo of part of the t-shirt quilt when the binding is on................there is really no way to take a full on photo as it is 127 x 116. Now that is a huge quilt................the largest quilt I have ever made. The scarey thing is I have had about 3 or 4 about that large on my quilt frame already. I am pretty happy that I opted for the 14' table.

Water - At Least More Water

This is our new water tank. I am not too happy that it sits right in front of the house but it is water. This tank holds 1500 gallons of the precious stuff. We have to have someone deliver it to the house in a truck and it is not as cheap as the water that comes thru the pipes (which are still frozen), but it is water and I can take a shower and wash my dishes without having to worry about driving half a mile to the neighboors to fill up the assortment of 5 and 7 gallon water jugs any more.

I will have to say that I have enjoyed camping all my life and know how to use very little water but have never been without water in the house for more than two days. I had always taken for granted that I can turn on the faucet and have water come out until I turned it off when I am in my own home. I think this has been a good lesson for me how spoiled we all are.

Water is scarce in much of the world. With our growing population and population centers spreading out to places where there is little fresh water it is a problem for many of us. Yet we continue to use it freely without a thought. I am posting a challenge here for each of you who reads this to have a look at your last water bill and see how much you used. Then for the next month think about water each time you turn on the tap. See how many ways you can cut back on your usage and tell me about it.

Here are a few things I have done this past week:

Flushed the toilet with water from doing dishes instead of sending it down the drain (this is refered to as grey water...............you can also water plants with it if it is filtered). Many people find this a disgusting subject but another saying for flushing, "If its yellow, let it mellow, if its brown flush it down." At the least you do not have to flush every time.

In the shower turn off the water exept to get wet and to rinse off. Ditto for handwashing and brushing teeth.

Only wash dishes when there are enough................if you have a dishwasher never wash less than a full load...............ditto for doing laundry.

I know that I will be thinking about my water usage much more from now on. I got by with less than 200 gallons in a week and a half for a family of four so I am sure I can cut back on my water usage from now on. These will be small changes but I am sure they will add up.

Ok now that the water crisis is over I promise my next blog entry will be more quilt or art related. I am still putting together the t-shirt quilt and now have lots of large sections together and a few single blocks to join. Hopefully by Monday I will have one humongous top ready for quilting. I have ordered the backing fabric online as I could not find any localy and that will be here end of next week so I will have to wait till then to get this quilt quilted. This is my first t-shirt quilt and it is gonna be amazing when it is all together. The customers son has collected all these shirts for running, and triathalon events and there is some amazing history in the quilt. I have been enjoying making this memory quilt and now want to do more. What a great idea to take all those t-shirts and make them into a quilt!

Still No Water

Life without running water is now in its second week. Amazing about the stories I have heard from friends. Some are horrified and there are some that actually grew up with no indoor plumbing. Everyone has a water story though. I am so hoping that someday this will be my water story. I think the worst is not being able to clean things like I would like. Dishes is really the worst. I actually can not cook as I would like to because so many things require the use of water in the cooking and of course the clean up afterwards which sometimes requires a bit of water to clean the pots and pans. No I have to keep it all simple.

Bathing is actually not the worst. At its worst a sponge bath requires very little water and even a shower can be taken with between 2-3 gallons of water if you turn off the water after you get yourself wet, shampoo your hair. Then rinse and turn off to condition your hair and then one last rinse. In and out of that shower fast as you can. Humm I am one that loves to linger under the warm water so I am saving lots of time with the ultra short showers.

The rest of life is still pretty normal. I am darned busy trying to get the t-shirts tamed into the quilt I am making. I got them all laid out finally. Since the designs come in a huge variety of sizes they are kinda like a puzzle that needs to be set in a certain space. They are currently residing on the family room floor and yesterday I began the process of removing a few at a time to apply sashing. I now have the first group together and today will try to tackle as much as I can. My goal is to have the top completed in the next day or two. The quilting is gonna be a piece of cake as it is an allover loose meander. The biggest thing with that is the large surface that I need to fill.

No Water - Day Five

It is getting frustrating to have to be thinking about water so much. I do not want to think about where I am going to get the water to wash the few pots and pans that are dirty to fix meals.

This morning I actually scolded my daughter for dumping the dogs water out of his bowl down the sink. She could not find another bowl for his food so dumped his water. Usually this would be just the normal routine.

I stayed up late last night and finished fusing all the interfacing to the rest of the t-shirts. I counted again and there are 87 t-shirts to cram into a quilt that has to be 120x115 or smaller. That is gonna take some good planning and that will be what I will try to figure out today.

No Water - Day Four

Ok it is finally getting really old now can someone please turn the water back on? Nope I guess that is not gonna happen. We now have a 55 gallon water barrel in the garage with a pump to hook into the plumbing (not my idea). This morning with the barrel only about 1/3 full hubby and two kids got quick showers and that is the rest of the water!

Last night when I was trying to cancel my appearance at the group quilt project because I needed to figure out what to do my friend insisted I take a shower at her house. Today that is just what I did. Boy does a hot shower feel good when you cannot take one whenever you want. I also filled up two 7 gallon containers at her house while there and that is all the water we got today. I do have about 8 of the gallon drinking jugs left so we have plenty to drink but not much water for anything else.

On a lighter side I am making progress with the 80 something t-shirts and now have well over half pressed to interfacing. I am still trying to figure out how to even begin with the math to lay them all into a quilt........................no of course they are not all the same size, with over 80 the quilt would make a nice cover for a football field if they were all the same size.

I do hope to have the t-shirt quilt finished by the end of next week Then the next one will be another custom.

No Water - Day Three

In our modern world we all take so much for granted. Consider for instance water in your house. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom. First you relieve yourself and flush the toilet. Next you take a warm, or hot shower, soap down in the wonderful water, wash your hair and maybe shave or whatever you do in that shower. Then you brush your teeth and likely rinse out the sink a bit. Now you head for the kitchen and make your morning beverage using water from the sink. When you are done you rinse things out or pop em in the dishwasher. During the day you use your water any time you want, wash your hands, get a drink, pop a load of clothes in the washer and so forth.

Well what if you woke up and there was no water. That is what happened to us on Sunday! First there was very low pressure coming from the pipes and Dear Husband took a shower, we did get water to make coffee but the trickle stopped coming entirely. Next we called the water company and they came out and checked their meter. Yep there is pressure there but none at our house which is up the side of a hill. We live at high elevation and it is very cold. The bottom line is that the pipes underground are frozen. We are not alone as there are others in our area in the same boat. Basically we were told until the ground thaws there will be no water coming thru those pipes.

Now instead of waking up and going thru the usual routine it is all about my water. I no longer flush the toilet every time I go. Nope the tissue goes in a plastic lined basket and I flush only if I have to with a bucket of water and then only as little as it takes. The toilet tank has about 3 gallons but with a bucket can I use less than one gallon. I only want to flush when absolutely necessary because the water has to be obtained from the neighbor half a mile away and I only have small containers (for now). To brush teeth I only wet the toothbrush and use bottled water to rinse my mouth and pour only enough on the toothbrush to get it clean. Coffee is made form bottled water from the store. I got 10 one gallon jugs of water on Sunday so that should tide us over for a bit. Well the dishwasher was not run on Saturday night so it is full of dirty dishes. Today I am gonna try to wash them by hand using as little water as necessary. For now we will be using paper plates as much as possible until we get a larger container filled. Hubby got a 55 gallon water drum yesterday but that needs to be filled and a pump attached so we can get the water out of it. Just taking that to be filled is gonna be fun as 55 gallons of water weighs well over 3oo pounds and that drum needs to be carried in the house one we get it filled at the neighbors.

Now as for laundry. It will be the Laundromat for now. Of course there were lots of dirty clothes when the water stopped and we are a family of four. I have instructed each family member to get together a weeks worth of clothes and a few extras and I will go wash them at the Laundromat. At least I can dry them at home in our dryer. I have always taken for granted just tossing my clothes in the washer when I wanted to. I just hate laundromats as I had to go to them as a child for years. They take up so much time and of course you always arrive just after someone that takes most of the washers and that means waiting. Well I will see how that goes. Guess I will be bringing my applique with me so work on while the clothes spin.

Well the bright side is that it is the water not the power. It is winter here and cold outside. We heat with a wood burning furnace that has an electric fan to blow hot air into the house. It looks like a fireplace. We cut the wood from our property and there is plenty of it. Pretty much that is all self contained so we have heat. We have lights and all the appliances work including my longarm machine..................than goodness.

Yep not having water is darn inconvenient and later I am gonna have to go get more water from the neighbor. I will heat some on the stove and take a sponge bath and wash my hair. I have not washed my hair since Saturday and it is getting pretty darn oily. At least I know how to take a sponge bath. I was hunting for our camping shower this morning with no luck. I need to find that valuable little item as it holds 2.5 gallons of water just enough to wash my hair and soap and rinse down. It sure beats a sponge bath.

Back To My Routine!

The custom heirloom is finally finished, off the machine, photographed and back to its home. I still have not tallied up the hours I worked on this but it is for a good friend and I am glad I did it as I really got to try new things, stretched myself as far as I could and I am really happy with the final results. Now back to other things.................whew!

I have been busy the past week. I have a custom quilt on the frame now that will be my first finished quilt of the new year. The one in the photos was mostly done in 2007 so I am not counting it in this years tally. Guess that means I am now behind on the number of quilts I wanted to quilt but not so far that I can not catch up fairly easily. I am almost done and hopefully the next few will be quick ones as they are allover designs not custom...............see what I mean about catching up.

I spent the entire morning cutting up t-shirts for a customer quilt. I was given 83 of the t-shirts and now have a huge pile of t-shirts in pieces and parts and a nice neat stack of 83 cut pieces of neat designs to incorporate into the quilt. This one will be a real adventure for sure but I am up to the task. The next step in this process is to try to figure out the placement...............no they are not all the same size so this will be a real challenge but I know I can get it done. Then once that is done I am sure the rest will be a piece of cake................or so I hope.

With this new year and reflecting on what I really want to accomplish I am so hoping to be more creative and begin to get some of my stuff finished and into shows. I seem to have a problem with stalling on each project and have a million finished tops. Well not a million but in the near future (say a month is near enough) I want to get them photographed and chronicled so I can watch my progress. I think one finished every two months works for me. That is a doable goal.

I have been brainstorming on some new ideas and think where I need to begin is with a drawing journal of my ideas and then go from there. It seems like at this point in my quilting career what I need is a quilting journal that has all the drawings, colors, and fabric samples in one place so I can work on the ideas till they are just ripe for beginning my quilts. The biggest factor here is time and I might just have to schedule regular time for this series exclusive to other things.

2008!

The new year is finally here and I am ready to go! I do have a list of goals for the comming year. I do not call them resolutions as those are too hard to stick to so I just call them goals.

Mostly my goals are centered around orginization. My personal sewing studio had gotten to be a huge mess. One of the biggest problems was lack of space. Over the holiday I took out a huge oak computer table that was hogging tons of space. It had no storage space either and my computer had broken over a year ago and I have been using my husbands computer so goodbye table. It has a new home in my daughers room and she is delighted. I put up some more wire shelves and am still in the process of cleaning.............just need to keep at that a little at a time and get that space back into shape.

Another goal is to work on UFOs. I am going to pull them all out, photograph them and try to get at least 6 of them finished this year. My first project to finish will be my current project of the log cabin quilt and I hope to have it finished by the end of feburary.

I want to try to do a greater number of customer quilts this year and am gonna up the hours I work on them as well. I am going to try to work from 20-30 hours on customer quilts each week.............mabye more if I get busier.

To start off the year I have been working on the forever custom heirloom quilt and finally got the borders finished today. Now I need to go back and do a little more detail in some of the blocks. I also need to remover some stitch in the ditch I had done as the first step in quilting this. I had some tension problems with the Bottom Line thread and just want to fix that. Once that is done I can call this one finished. I am going to try to get it done tomorrow if I can.................just one final push and it will be off my frame for the last time!

I have an idea for an art quilt that I NEED to start on. I think I am gowning to work in a series on this idea. I will likely begin this first quilt in the series soon.

My last goal is to begin painting again. I have some new paints, and easel and some canvas so I just need to find the right subject and time and get started. The thing about painting is it is so quick compared to quilting. I am hoping to be able to work out some landscape ideas in paint and maybe do some quilts on the same themes.